Twelve

by Nick McDonell

  Every time a car passed by, it seemed to Hunter that the noise was as loud as thunder. The sky was so clear there couldn’t be a storm coming, but the thunder he heard was so loud. And then he saw clouds, thick and black, start rolling across the sky, and covering up the stars, but the moon was so bright that when it was covered, it was like the moon had blasted out a hole in the clouds. And then, only for Hunter, a light drizzle started to fall.

  White Mike was watching his friend. Hunter kept looking up like he was afraid, as if something were coming out of the sky, but not rain. So White Mike looked up too, and he saw the stars. He recalled some melodramatic kid in his class, maybe actually Hunter, who had written in an English assignment that the stars never shine over New York, or that it was so bright you couldn’t see them. But White Mike could see them now, so he thought what a crock that was. You can always see the stars if you want. It’s just that no one is out late enough to get a good look at them. And a big van rolled by fast.

  And Hunter felt the crack of thunder in his bones, and with it, the sky split and the rain really started coming down, and he could see White Mike walking next to him, and it was like all the moonlight was shining on him and keeping him dry, because now it was raining so hard that the streets were starting to flood, though White Mike was still dry. Hunter felt the water start rising to his knees. And as they passed the next tree wrapped in lights, it burst into flame, and as the water rose to quench the flames, the smoke was unbearable, and Hunter frantically waved his hands in front of his face to clear the smoke.

  White Mike watched Hunter waving his hands and grabbed his shoulder to stop him from walking into the street before the light turned. Down on the MetLife Building there was a huge cross of lights. White Mike hadn’t noticed the cross before, and he thought it was weird not to notice until now.

  When Hunter emerged from the smoke, he had to push through the water because it was up to his hips, and the cross down the avenue jumped out at him from behind the burning trees, and the MetLife sign above it expanded, and Hunter realized, Oh, it must stand for Metropolitan Life, here is Metropolitan Life, and the letters appeared over the building, over the cross. And something didn’t seem right. The water was flooding higher and higher. Hunter thought if he could just get to the cross, he could walk on the water, hahaha, like Jesus. And he looked at White Mike and thought, Okay, and the two of them rose up and started walking on the water. But then Hunter looked behind him, and he saw that Park Avenue was buried in a slate-green ocean, and the sky above was sending down forks of lightning, and the water was rolling back and forth and threatening to knock down the buildings. And there was smoke rising from the water where the burning trees had been extinguished.

  White Mike was worried now. He hoped Hunter wasn’t having a bad trip, whatever, exactly, that was. But his friend kept looking over his shoulder like something terrible was coming after him.

  Hunter saw what was happening. He and White Mike were sinking, because all the water was rolling back toward Ninety-sixth Street, collecting there at the top of the hill. And Hunter was on the ground walking again, and he was below the cross at the MetLife Building. And as he looked, he saw a wave rise up and fly toward him, towering even above the buildings, rising out of the canyon. And the wave was so dark it was black, and it blocked out the moon, and it was bearing down on him and White Mike. And the image was suddenly there in his mind, forever, of this wave crashing down Park Avenue, and the trees on fire hundreds of feet below the crest, and the flames reflected off the inside of the face, and the water then looked dull orange and green, and the moon suddenly shot through with its white light.

  White Mike could tell that Hunter was doing badly. He turned him around so they were facing uptown, and he looked to hail a cab. They stood waiting.

  Hunter stood there as the wave came close and grew taller and the sound was a roar, louder than the thunder, and it filled his ears and he started yelling to try and drown it out as a cab pulled up next to them.

  “Easy, Hunter,” White Mike was saying, because Hunter had started yelling in the cab, and the cabbie had gotten nervous and was making as if to pull over. White Mike threw a twenty through the partition and told the guy to keep driving.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  ANDREW WAKES UP nervous. He fell asleep in his clothes on top of his bed, and he is sticky and uncomfortable and nervous. Today is the day of the party, and he doesn’t go to parties like this. They happen, but he never goes, never hears about them till afterward. So when he showers, he wonders if he should have waited till later in the day because that might make his skin look better and he wants to look good when he goes to the party tonight, when he sees Sara. Maybe he should take two showers. He masturbates in the shower because he doesn’t want to seem too horny if he ends up hooking up with her, which he understands is a long shot. Maybe he’ll masturbate again if he takes another shower. Sara has a boyfriend, for chrissakes. He ignores this. There will probably be other girls at the party. He puts on jeans and a sweatshirt and makes himself eggs, scrambled with cheese and tomato and pastrami, then pours a glass of orange juice. He eats fast and does the dishes. He is nervous, and surprised that he is nervous, butterflies in the stomach even, this early in the day. What to do today, he thinks. Today is really about tonight. Maybe he’ll get a haircut. That’s it. A haircut. You always look good after a haircut, if it is a good haircut.

  At the Unisex Hair Connection, Andrew looks through the window at a forty-year-old homosexual with blond hair in a ponytail, tight black jeans, and shirt open down to his chest. The homosexual is cutting a woman’s hair. Andrew decides he wants an old-fashioned barber-shop. He wonders, idly, if he is homophobic. He doesn’t have any gay friends. He knows hardly any gay people. There is only one openly gay kid at school, and Andrew doesn’t know him. But he knows he’d rather go to an old-fashioned barbershop. He thinks he remembers where one is, way over on Eighty-first Street.

  There is a red and white barber’s pole and a faded red awning that reads THREE STAR BARBER SHOP. Andrew walks in.

  There are only three chairs in the place, in a row facing the big mirror. All of them are occupied. The three barbers are all short, all old, and all bald. They also strike Andrew as of the same demeanor and level of skill. They energetically, though carefully, snip away at their patrons, all of whom are middle-aged white guys in suits. It is lunchtime, and they have come to get old-fashioned haircuts.

  Andrew moves his hands over the magazine rack next to the chair he waits in. There are many magazines; Esquire and Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated, but Andrew is drawn to the bright colors and lurid nipple detail of Playboy and Hustler. Shocked, he hastily covers them up and moves down the rack to pick up the day’s papers. His eyes just move over the paper as he considers how they could have magazines like those in the waiting area. Weren’t they just jerk-off books? What would you do with them here? Read them while you waited for the old short bald dudes to cut your hair? Talk about the women in them with other waiting customers, like Take a look at those!

  All three barbers finish at the same time and look at him. Via the mirror, Andrew watches himself approach one of the chairs. The little man asks him, in a thick South American accent, what he wants. Andrew makes vague motions around his ears and says, “Just a trim, you know, clean it up a little bit, not too short.” The man nods and goes to work snipping around the ears. Andrew stares into the mirror, watching every cut. He worries that he should have been more specific but says nothing. When the barber moves to the back of his neck, he is confronted with all the short fuzz that runs haphazardly down Andrew’s nape. The barber leaves for a moment, and Andrew anticipates the pleasant buzz of the electric trimmer. When the barber returns, though, he puts hot shaving cream on the back of Andrew’s neck. Andrew sits up straight.

  He still does not really have to shave; every once in a while, maybe once a week, he takes a safety razor to his face, dodging pimples and forgoing any shaving cream. A
nd now, for the first time, there is shaving cream on his body, and the barber has a straight razor that he is stropping on a piece of leather. Andrew has never seen a straight razor outside of the movies; it is thinner and keener than he expected, not the horror-movie death instrument, although it does catch the light. Andrew feels its sharp edge run against the back of his neck. Even, long pulls as the barber moves up and down and flicks the spent shaving cream into the sink every couple of strokes. When he is finished, he wipes Andrew’s neck and asks if Andrew would like a full shave. Andrew almost asks “of what,” but considers it a milestone to be asked. He declines.

  The haircut costs thirteen dollars, and Andrew notes the ten-dollar difference between that and what it would have cost at the Unisex Hair Connection. He walks out with the clean feeling of a new haircut and runs his hand through his hair a bunch of times. He stops and views his reflection in windows. How does the haircut look? He is not sure. On the way home, he gets a sandwich for lunch. The day is winding down. It is time to really start getting ready.

  Naked in front of a mirror at home, he gives himself a full going-over, like a panning shot in a movie, the kind that starts at the toes and works its way to the head, except that it usually happens for women. Andrew looks at toes, shins, knees, thighs, balls, cock, pubic hair, faint traces of “treasure trail” between pubic hair and navel, navel, stomach, ribs, nipples, clavicle, neck, and finally face. Special attention is given to the new haircut.

  Andrew decides he looks bad. He is doomed. It is too short. It makes his forehead look too big and accentuates his pimples. He is all red, like the rotten mangoes his mother recently threw away. Who eats mangoes in the winter in New York, anyway? Not me, thinks Andrew. So they went bad and got thrown away.

  Andrew puts on a clean shirt, Quicksilver, dark blue and stylish, and spends the next fours hour in front of his TV waiting until it’s time to go to the party. He plans to get there at ten; he wants to be sure that Sara will already be there be cause, he realizes unhappily, he wont know anybody. Or he probably will. Everybody knows everybody. Sara said to come early, because kids would be there early and then all night.

  Andrew decides that tonight might be one of those rare occasions on which he will get himself drunk.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  MOLLY WAKES UP and jumps rope. It is her favorite exercise. She was queen of double Dutch at school. It was funny. There had been a kid in her class from the program that brought poor kids to the private schools. The girl introduced all her new white friends to double Dutch when they were in the first grade, and during recess that was what the girls would do. Molly was great at it. Years later, when nobody jumped rope in recess anymore, Molly still wanted to, so she bought one and jumped at home. She thought that when she exercised, she felt better. She did it sometimes when she was nervous too.

  So now she is in her room gracefully jumping rope. The ceiling above her has black marks in one place where the rope slaps the ceiling every second with the same sound. Molly is counting down from one hundred; ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, all the way down to zero. All it is, thinks Molly, as she feels a burning in her calves, is the endurance of time.

  I know I’m going to work and do the hard thing and be good. There’s no equivocation, so it’s really just waiting it out. I know I’m going to keep jumping, so it’s just getting past sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven ...

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  CHRIS DECIDES WHEN he wakes up that he had better go buy some condoms, in case he finally gets laid tonight. Pops his cherry. Fucks her brains out. Fucks her raw. Fucks her hard. Fucks her from behind. Fucks her gratuitously. Taps that ass. Gets with her. Gets some. Gets in. Gets it on. Pokes her. Bangs her. Boinks her. Scores.

  Does the hibbity-dibbity.

  But what monster is more heinous than the man behind the counter. Chris walks casually into the drugstore. It is large, with the condoms in the back behind the pharmacy checkout. He grabs a plastic basket and prowls the rows of deodorants, picking one out. He gets some shampoo and a razor. He picks up some hydrogen peroxide, tosses it in his basket. Then, with an air of finality, he strolls to the back of the store and the condom display behind the counter. He makes as if to pay, then gives an audible oh and snaps his fingers: “Could I also have a pack of Trojans, please?”

  “Which ones?” The man motions up and down the dizzying wall of contraceptives.

  “Oh, umm,” think fast, think fast, “regular’s fine.” Please God, let there be a regular.

  The man hands him a pack of condoms. Chris pays for everything and leaves, walking as fast as he casually can.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  BACK HOME, the maids are cleaning up. They’ll be gone by five. Chris suspects people will start showing up not long after that. It’s not like they have anywhere else to go.

  Chris doesn’t have much to do in the way of party preparation. He doesn’t bother to move any of the valuable stuff, but he does rearrange his room beyond what the maid usually does. He has stuff that he doesn’t want seen. He checks his stash of pornography and decides that it is well enough hidden (behind a grate in the ceiling). Then he thinks, I’m about to get laid. I’ll never need porn again. From now on I can get someone else to whack it.

  So he takes all his porn, a great armful, and shoves it into a garbage bag. He carries the bag downstairs, knowing that the garbage gets taken out every two days, and dumps it in the can behind the kitchen. Chris is elated by this disposal, feels liberated as he climbs the stairs to play video games for a couple of hours before showering and taking great care dressing himself.

  Chapter Eighty

  WHITE MIKE GOT a pair of high-powered binoculars from his father for Christmas one year, and he looked into different windows with them. He never saw anything that interesting, but there was one window across the street that he had a good view into and liked a lot. It was a living room, and a family of five watched television and ate dinner in the room. White Mike imagined the times and travails of the family, and though he could not make out their features that clearly, he invented personas for all of them. There were two boys and a girl and the parents. The entire family, White Mike saw, was redheaded. The kids watched The Simpsons almost every night. The parents occasionally fought, and once White Mike saw them making out on the couch. He made a point of checking on them regularly. It was another one of the things he did. Like, it’s eight-thirty, time to check on the Joyces, which is what he named them.

  White Mike did not feel guilty about watching them. He didn’t stay to watch the parents kiss on the couch because that felt weird, but otherwise, he watched. White Mike didn’t know why. Maybe, he thought, it was just voyeurism. Or maybe he was living through them. Whatever. Families interested him.

  What the fuck, Mike, he thought. What do you do? You watch a family through a window with binoculars every night at eight-thirty. Fucking loser.

  Chapter Eighty-One

  ON THE WAY back to his room from the shower, Chris pauses at his brother’s door and knocks. There is no answer, but he can hear his brother padding around the room. Chris knocks again, harder. He hears the padding feet come closer to the door, and it opens a crack. It looks dark inside.

  “Claude, you know I’m having an open house tonight. You know, like you used to have.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I just wanted you to know, there’ll be a bunch of kids here. Maybe some pussy for you.”

  “Whatever.” Claude thinks about how he might engrave the handle of his sword.

  “Tobias is coming. He’s bringing some model from one of his shoots.”

  “Whatever.”

  “What’re you doing in there, Claude?” Chris is thinking about how into these kind of parties Claude used to be.

  “Nothing. Later.” Claude closes the door in his brother’s face, turns around, and sees his room in candlelight. He has drawn all the curtains and blacked out all light from the outside. Every candle in
the house has been gathered and is now alight and flickering before him. More chips have been hewn from the wall. In front of the full-length mirror on the door to Claude’s bathroom, there is a circle of candles on the floor. Another half circle surrounds the weapons closet. Locking the door, Claude goes back to the closet, opens it, and admires how the candlelight shines along the steel of his weapons. He takes out the sword, razor-sharp from his furious sharpening that morning, and walks over to the circle before the mirror. He stands in it and takes off his shirt. He is wearing jeans only, and he looks at himself in the mirror in the circle of candles, the sword in his hand. He looks quite attractive, like some sort of action hero at the climax of the movie. Just what he wants to look like. Claude is glad he stopped taking drugs. This is better.

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  AS ALWAYS, White Mike notices the tops of the buildings as he walks. He sees gargoyles and urns in relief, and various edifices repeating in similar patterns from building to building, a function of zoning laws that requires new buildings in the best neighborhoods to be constructed to match the style of the neighboring buildings. They don’t actually have to have solid cornices, as long as they look the same. The projecting cornices and gargoyles on some of the new buildings are in fact not stone but rather hollow, weather-resistant plaster. So White Mike knows that if he has to jump from rooftop to rooftop, he will have to be careful not to catch himself on any of the projecting cornices or gargoyles as he is landing, for while some of them would hold, others would snap and crumble.