As we drove back to Shred’s and my neck started to cool down, it was starting to hit me—I had seen Motorcar’s house. I had been probably less than thirty yards from Motorcar himself, where he was inside, probably whacking off to kiddie porn or something. The whole thing had shifted from concept to reality. And now I had to go face him—tonight!—or Farns and Shred might kill him before I got a chance to get it off my chest and rip him with zingers. Then I’d never be able to get my shit together. So it was settled. I was inspired anew. Inspired or provoked. Either way, this was it.
As we turned onto Shred’s street, Farns had half a smile on his face. Then he slammed on the brakes, jerking me around just enough to make every part of my body hurt like a motherfucker in spite of the blue landmine.
“All right, man,” he said. “Thanks for helping me out in the shop.”
“No problem.”
“Good luck tonight.”
“Um…thanks.”
“How you getting over there without your keys?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I can always hot-wire my Hyundai.”
“You know how to hot-wire a car?”
“Not really.”
“Well, either you know how or you don’t.”
“Maybe Shred will let me borrow his van.”
He looked like he was thinking something over. “Actually…” Then he reached over and opened his glove compartment. “These might help.” And he pulled out my keys.
I looked at them. They weren’t covered with dried blood or beer but they were mine.
“Dude! Why didn’t you tell me you had these?”
“They yours?”
“Yes. Thank you!”
He shrugged.
“No sign of my wallet or cell phone, huh?”
“You lost those, too?” He laughed.
“Yeah, remember?”
“So when are you going over there? To kill the guy.”
“If I was going to kill him, you’d be the first to know.”
“Just call me or Shred if you change your mind and want any back-up. Okay, man?”
“Will do. But I think I got this.”
“You think or you’re sure?”
“I’m sure. A million percent.”
I opened the van door and climbed out.
I made a peace sign at him.
“Peace,” I said.
“Peace off,” he snapped. His van motor was coughing and spewing before he kicked it up to a hell roar and blasted down Laurel Street, the punk rock stickers fading into the hazy summer distance.
19
The door was unlocked, as usual. No one was home. It was weird to see Kenny not there. The couch had a big blank space on it. Maybe he was at the doctor. Where the hell else would he go? Oh yeah—the pharmacy.
I took a shower. I decided to just let the hot water hit all my cuts and scrapes. The beige polo shirt was covered with sweat, sawdust and grease. No way I was putting that back on. I held it up and looked at it. God, I hated beige. I stuffed it into Shred’s kitchen trash can. The trash was kind of full, so I tied up the bag and took out back to the super-can. I felt like I lived there. And had for years. I couldn’t find a new trash bag to put in the can. Figures. I got the NEWTON CHEESE FARMS shirt from Shred’s room and put it on. Then I went back into Kenny’s bedroom and stretched out, touched my toes. It didn’t feel that great. The pain pill was working but I was actually hoping it would wear off soon. I wanted my head to be clear. I had to focus, focus.
I sat on the edge of Kenny’s bed. Sweat started running down my forehead. I felt horrible about Summer. Why did I insinuate that she was some kind of slut? She was a nice girl, godammit. So she had tattoos and piercings and wore weird make-up—that makes a girl promiscuous? I was such a fucking idiot.
It was something I had to do—I had to apologize to her and make things right. If she was going to corkscrew me then I had to take it. I made four glasses of black iced tea and chugged them. Took a pee and headed out the front door and down the street with my puffy lasagna face and broken body. Didn’t give a singular damn about the Hillites. Her car was out front. I didn’t want to go up there, but if I didn’t, I knew I was going to call myself a piece of human shit the whole way home. I stood on her porch and shuffled from foot to foot. Then I bumped into a milk crate that had a potted plant on it, and her dogs went wild barking. I knocked.
Summer opened the door. Her mouth fell open about an inch. Her forehead scrunched up. She was feeling my pain, absorbing my face.
“Oh no!” she said. They were the sweetest sounding words I’d ever heard in my entire crappy life. “Come in.”
She grabbed my hand and led me down the hallway. I guess she wasn’t mad at me anymore. Thank God. She sat me down on the couch.
“I heard about what happened to you. Those assholes.”
“Eh, I probably deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
She put her hand on my thigh. I flinched a little. I guess I was traumatized or something. She patted me on my leg and then sprang up from the couch.
“Summer, I am really sorry about what I said yesterday. I didn’t mean it.”
“I’m sorry, too. Hold on, we’re gonna fix you up.” She headed to the bathroom.
She was sorry, too? Then I remembered—she probably just felt sorry for me about the whole Motorcar thing. Oh well, I thought, sympathy was a lot better than getting booted in the knee.
She came back with a washcloth.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. Here.” She took the cool, wet washcloth to my face, just to dab some of the sweat and crust off. There was real concern in her eyes. I hadn’t felt so pampered since the diaper years. A guy should get his ass kicked more often. Now she was smearing anti-biotic cream on me, touching my face. Pure heaven.
“That feels good.”
A dog growled.
“I’m really sorry about what I said. You’re a nice girl.”
“Blah. Sometimes I am.”
“All the time.”
“You don’t know me that well yet.”
“I feel like I do.”
“I shouldn’t have been so rough on you. I know you’ve had some…hard things to go through.”
“I can’t believe that douche-bag,” I said, thinking of how Shred spread my personal business all over town like a crop duster.
“Yeah, that pervert motherfucker!”
“No, I mean Shred. I told him not to tell anybody about that.”
“Oh.”
“And then he immediately went and told everyone he knew. Kind of embarrassing.”
Summer dabbed some more Neosporin on the cut above my eye, the old one with the stitches. The rock throwing incident already seemed like a hundred years ago.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.
“Oh, I’m not ashamed. I just—”
“It’s not your fault. It’s something that happened to you. You didn’t cause it.”
“I know. It’s cool, it’s cool.” But it wasn’t cool. I was cringing.
She looked at me dead on and put her hands on my shoulders. “You know it’s not your fault, right? That it’s not your fault?”
“It’s actually not that big of a deal.”
“If it’s not that big of a deal, then why are you here? Why did you come to Richmond?”
Damn, I thought, any one of these crazy Richmond artist musician punk-necks would have been better at cross-examination than me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just to yell at him and get it all off my chest.”
“Well, that sounds like a pretty big deal to me. What are you gonna say?”
“I’m not sure yet. Something good. I haven’t had time to think it up yet.”
“Mmm?”
“How about…” I cleared my throat and in my best Brando said: “I’m an errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect an overdue laundry bill.”
“What?” she said, lo
oking perplexed. “Isn’t that from Apocalypse Now?”
“Yes, ma’am. Kinda sorta.” We laughed a little bit, then we just sat there for a minute. She put her arm around me. I was beat to shit, but her arm over my shoulder in that moment very well could have been the best feeling I’d ever had.
Not far from the end of Shred’s block, Oregon Hill became an open air park of grass fields and a couple of giant old trees. One was an ancient magnolia. Across a street the woodsy land dropped in a steep slope to the river. You could see bits of the river water, a sparkle here and there through the trees and brush. This was real Mark Twain looking crap. To the right was an old cemetery rising up on a hill, old stone monuments and headstones poking up between its trees. Summer said it was called Hollywood Cemetery. I thought that was hilarious for some reason.
“J.E.B. Stuart is buried up in there.”
“Wow.”
“And Jefferson Davis.”
“No shit, huh?”
“Sometimes the rednecks put little Confederate flags on their graves.”
We sat down on a park bench by the magnolia.
“Perfect time of day to come down here,” she said. “Not too hot.”
“Yeah, not so hot.”
Her dogs were running around, pooping, peeing, barking, playing tag with each other. There were no other people anywhere in sight. It all felt so free. And Summer—so spunky and sweet and hot and bad-ass and smart—I felt like we already had this huge history. In reality, I barely knew her, but I felt something. Some kind of substance that I never had with Carly. And the feeling must have been real, because three days ago I would never, I mean never have seen myself with a punker art chick. Now it easily felt like the most natural thing in the world.
The sun was getting ready to drop, the sky beginning to turn purple-orange. Summer pressed her shoulder into me. A feeling ran through me, like warm embers from a sleepy campfire. Something must have been wrong because for once I didn’t feel nervous. Maybe it was the blue landmine, but that thing had pretty much worn off. She grabbed my wrist and squeezed, actually kind of hard said: “You don’t really seem like a lawyer type. What made you decide on that?”
I thought about it for a minute, but my answer sucked. To get rich. To screw people over. To be a professional asshole. I looked out into the trees and the shiny bits of river. I really didn’t have an answer.
“What do you mean exactly by not the lawyer type?”
She started running her finger along the edge of my ear. “You just seem…I dunno…the way you say things, the way you think. You have more of a creative sort of mind.”
“Seriously? Like how?”
“You just have a unique sort of take on things. It’s different.”
“You think I’m different? Ha! I thought I was Mr. Super Beige.”
She laughed.
“A real beige-hole.”
“All the guys I know try to be so cool and indie and hip. You don’t seem to care about any of that.” She smiled again. The skin crinkled on the sides of her eyes. She really was gorgeous.
“Actually, I do care,” I said. “I’m just a failure at hip.”
“Nuh-uh.”
I started to tell her I liked her, but the words piled up in my mouth like falling cinderblocks. All I was able to get out was: “I—”
Next thing I knew, our mouths were swimming in that warm blue aquarium of deep-sea lusciousness, that endless place where nothing matters, nothing matters except you and the other person kissing. But I wasn’t thinking any of this. I was there in the moment, living through lips and tongue and campfire embers. And it was good. It was very, very good.
We kissed for a while, until a couple of rap-pounding redneck Hillite kids cruised by in their boom-boom cars, staring at us. I tried not to give off the smell of fear, but rather the alpha smells of danger and lust and reckless abandon. I also didn’t stare back exactly. I stared off into the sky like I didn’t notice them. It seemed to work okay. After they moved on, we started kissing again. When we got to a mutual stopping place, I realized I was breathing very heavily. But this time I was a gentleman with my hands.
We sat there as the horizon turned purple. After a while, Summer whistled for her dogs. She was a good whistler, she did it the two-fingers-in-the-mouth method. The doggies scrambled up and we headed back toward her house.
“Will you teach me how to whistle like that sometime? I never learned how.”
“Sure.”
One thing’s for sure, I thought—she sure does laugh more than Carly. Then I told myself to stop comparing them.
We got to her porch.
“Well,” I said. “I guess I should go get psyched up.”
“Come by the Ditch later and tell me how it went. I’m going in for a few hours to help Freebone.”
“Okay.”
She reached for something in her pocket. “Here,” she said. “Take this.” And she handed me her corkscrew.
“Oh, no. No, thanks. I don’t need it. I’m gonna stick it to him with my words.”
She pressed it into my palm. “No, take it. Just in case.”
“Thanks.”
“Jarvis?”
“What?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You should rip his pervert head off and ram it up his fucking corn chute.”
She said it serious as a corpse.
Harsh. I swallowed. It was so…un-ladylike? I guess it was the tattoo punk rock kick-him-with-your-combat-boots in her coming out. I liked it, though. Summer had major balls.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a piece of…fucking loser neck.”
“Good luck.” She kissed me on a carefully chosen spot near my chin, then she just went inside without saying anything. She shut the door and I was still standing there like we were going to keep saying goodbye some more. Summer was at least 10,000 times cooler than I was. As I limped out onto the sidewalk, I felt like everybody in the free world was watching me and knew exactly how cool I wasn’t.
I carried my ass down the street, looking out for rock throwers, space robots, child molesters, crazy punk-neck ass-kickers, shady lawyers, screaming parents, deranged ex-girlfriends. Luckily, I didn’t see any of them. This time. I reached down in my pocket and felt Summer’s corkscrew. I ran my finger up and down the curls of steel screw. Try me, motherfuckers. Just try me.
20
I knocked and went into Shred’s. “Hello?” I called. Nothing. Music was playing and the TV was on with no sound. Shred stood in the kitchen doorway.
“Wassup?” he yelled. His eyes were bugged out and his hair was super short, very patchy and spiky. He’d definitely cut it himself. Or gotten a one-eyed drunk man to do it.
“What did you do to your head?”
Kenny was sitting on the couch like a robot with its power shut off, staring blankly at the wall next to the TV.
Shred ran up to me. “Man, look at you!” he panted. “I tried to stop ’em, but you kept coming back for more.”
“I really don’t remember much. None of it, actually.”
“Maybe that’s for the best.”
“I’m really sorry about the whole thing.”
Kenny laughed.
“How’s that cut?” He inspected my rock injury. “Mmm…holding together. You need to get some bandages on this other stuff. Damn.”
Shred looked very wound up. He kept nodding his head and biting his lip. Looked like his personal electricity was about to blow. “So, you going to go fuck him up tonight? I mean…speak, speak to him?”
“Yes,” I tried to say calmly.
“So what’s going on with you and Summer, huh?”
It seemed to come out of nowhere. Kenny looked up at me—dead blank cold. News gets around fast in this town. My confrontation with Motorcar was probably going to be on the local news.
“What? Nothing?” I smiled.
He turned and bounced into the kitchen. “Better tell me!”
“So why you doin’ this, anyway?” Kenny snapped
.
“Doing what?” I said.
“What’s the fucking point? Yelling at him? Scolding him? Isn’t gonna change anything. A pervert’s always gonna be a pervert.”
At this point, I’d had it with Kenny’s negative crap. He hated me, fine, but he was hating me and sticking his head all up in my business. I felt a hot wire shooting up the back of my neck, lighting my head up.
“What the fuck do you care? Why don’t you just climb back up on your space cloud and space off.”
I couldn’t believe it. This was the absolute best, most well-timed, perfectly slung zinger I had ever laid on anyone in my entire life. My words and delivery had completely frozen Kenny. He couldn’t say jack. I was in shock myself. And then I waited the perfect amount of time and said: “I’m out,” and I took off down the hall and grabbed my backpack from Kenny’s room and went out the front door. I didn’t say goodbye to Shred, but he never seemed to say hello or goodbye.
I went out into the street thinking bring the rocks and bricks, motherfuckers, but nobody was out there. I got into the Hyundai and started her up. What a smoking cold zinger I just laid on Kenny though. I was feeling zinger joy and loving it. I do have it in me. Now I had the confidence that a brutal purple-black death zinger would rise up when I needed it to. Something spot-on that I could scream into Motorcar’s face. A professional-grade toxic hazard mongo-gotcha. Maybe thinking one up ahead of time and memorizing it wasn’t the way to go after all. I had to trust my capacity for spontaneous brilliance. Yeah. I felt great. I was beat to hell and still standing. I had an awesome girl in my corner. I was ready. I was adrenaline ready. All I needed was to be able to find Motorcar’s house and get the balls together to knock on his front door.
And then the shit will fly.
Motorcar’s house wasn’t so easy to find at night. I couldn’t find the map I’d printed out. I thought I’d remember the way, but it was dark and the swelling over my eye made it hard to see. And I may have been suffering from post-traumatic brain stress. First I couldn’t find the grocery store I had picked out earlier as a landmark. Then when I finally found Motorcar’s subdivision, I immediately got lost. I saw Glade Farms Lane, Glade Farms Circle, Glade Farms Road, turned up and back around saw them all again. But I wasn’t freaking out, I was thinking—I can’t believe it, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m going to have the face-down, the righteous, cleansing face-down with sicko boy.
Cold Plate Special Page 17