by Laird Barron
Visage? Vex? This is pod person talk. Has my boyfriend had a brain transplant? I let the silence stretch. “Rocky, have you been hitting the nitrous again? You sound totally fucked up.”
“I’m high on plasma. Speaking of fucking. To be honest, babe, I had to get my rocks off. Today was a real stressor. I drove Reyline to the flats and banged her like a drum. Didn’t mean anything. She’s a skank. I double-wrapped my junk.” He waits for me to respond; I don’t because my heart is a lump of ice in my throat. He eventually goes on, “Don’t be pissed. You are, aren’t you? I get it. I was disgusted with what I’d done and I thought about capping her on the spot. Crack her open and dump the whole mess into the bay. I’ve done it before. Usually I stick to dogs because nobody misses them. Nobody makes a federal case over a dead animal. You still there?” Rocky laughs and it’s not his laugh, it changes. Steely J says, “Sorry, JV. Just messing with you. I’ve got a natural talent for mimicry.”
“Holy shit, you asshole. Be sure to put that in as your yearbook quote. A natural talent for being a douche.” I can’t tell if I’m having a heart attack. Bunko wakes from whatever cats dream of and his fur puffs. He yowls, swipes a claw at my phone-hand, and leaps from the bed.
Steely J laughs again and says in a not-quite perfect imitation of Rocky, “For the record, your boyfriend is a schmuck. Two to one he is taking a cruise with Reyline as we speak. Probably imagines he’s spiking a puppy instead of a football whenever he scores a TD. It’s in those beady eyes. What I said about Kaufman is also true. He really started coming around my place one dark autumn. For my dad it was James Dean. I’ll tell you the whole story later.”
He hangs up before I can answer with a stream of profanity. Amazement overcomes my immediate anger. Got to hand it to the freak — it’s an epic prank. I laugh it off like I’m supposed to. Not so deep down, I wish there was someone like a friend to call and unburden myself.
* * *
I ditch the neck brace and my lips finally deflate to regulation air pressure. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (one of Granddad’s top five quotes, although the way my luck is running, the pointy end of a stick might have my name on it).
After a week with no contact, I track Steely J to the school stadium. It’s lunch period. He’s hanging with Jessica Mace on the football stadium bleachers. Surprising, given their history of mutual animosity. During seventh grade, he snapped her bra strap on a dare from Nolan Culpepper. Mace clobbered Steely J with a bicycle pump. Thirty stitches and no truce. Yet here they are, thick as thieves. Like I said: high school is global politics in microcosm. Factions are ever-shifting ice sheets, calving, drifting, merging.
Mace rises with languid insolence and blocks the path. She wears a faded jersey that reads ANCHORAGE WOLVERINES ROLLER DERBY SQUAD 1978. Her mom’s blood is still spackled in the fiber. Lucius Lochinvar (her maiden name) had skated under the handle Scara Fawcett. A goon. Jackie knew her, even back then. Whatever happened with them led to a twenty-year feud. Violence is my bet. Thuggishness seems to be a Lochinvar-Mace trait.
Down on the field, my girls of Raven Squad are drilling — Raven Power! Let’s go, Ravens, Let’s Go! Raaa-ven Power! Juke To The Left, Juke To The Right! Beat Em Up, Beat Em Off, Fight-Fight-Fight! Raven Power! Raven Power! Rat Shit, Bat Shit, Yay Team! Something along those lines.
“Hey Julie Five. How’s tricks?” Mace smiles, and like Steely J, it means less or more or worse than you’d think it does. She may as well have a storm cloud boiling overhead. Her eyes are fierce. Eyes of a drunk or a woman who just had angry sex. Her fighting rings glint — three on the left, two on the right. The death’s head could crack a bone.
My inclination is to smack her with my crutch. I rein in the impulse.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Julie, you’re a cooz and I’m calling you out.”
“What’s up your ass?”
“Elmer’s a dear personal friend of mine. You kicked him to the curb. Broke his heart. I’m going to do unto you by breaking your face.”
“Think so?”
“Know so.”
“Isn’t this is a teensy bit out of the blue?”
“Been on my honey-do-list for a while.”
I flash a sneer to cover the fact my knees are knocking. “Real brave picking a fight with a girl halfway in traction.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie. I like cold dishes. This’ll wait until that chicken leg is out of the brace. Be sure to keep your veterinarian on speed-dial. You’re gonna require his services.”
“Fuck you in the ear,” is my witty rejoinder as I squeeze by.
Mace sticks a cigarette into the corner of her mouth. “Save the date, bitch.”
Steely J sits on a bench, filming the cheer squad with a handheld movie camera. He doesn’t glance at me as I collapse beside him. “Jessica M. is in a bad mood. Might want to avoid her.” His lips barely move. He did a ventriloquist routine at the school talent show once. His dummy had lacked a lower jaw and its sundress costume was rotten with mold. He’d called her Veronica. Have I mentioned Steely J is an odd duck?
“Nice, thanks. What’re you doing, perv?”
“Picking out victims.”
“Hello?”
“Annual sacrifice to the death gods is nigh. If I’m gonna be the American Fulci, got to get my hands bloody.”
“Sick. Start with Showalter. You could be right and the twat is gunning for my spot at the head of the squad.”
“Only a virgin sacrifice will do.”
“The death gods are going to starve around here, I guess.”
“Sometimes terror is enough. Put on the mask of the dark of the moon and wander the earth.”
“Damn, Steely, you say some loco bullshit. Ought to hang with the goth kids. They’d love your shtick.”
“I’m too edgy. The goths don’t feel me.”
“Go figure. Anything on those tickets? You’re supposed to be hooking me up. You gonna come through, or is your rep bullshit too?”
He sets the camera in his lap. “Meant to tell you, I checked with my sources. Clifton isn’t on the schedule.”
“Dee Dee swears he is.”
“Dee Dee got suckered by secondhand info. It’s smoke. Somebody probably thought it’d be a great joke to start the rumor. Classic Kaufman.”
I close my eyes and concentrate on not shrieking my frustration. I imagine the last time I kissed Rocky. Two days before the trampoline debacle. We’ve fucked thirty or forty times and it’s okay, although I never come. Is it me, or is my stud merely adequate? A busload of other girls would love to double-check my findings and that’s why I don’t complain. I imagine tripping Mace down the concrete staircase on the other side of the cafeteria. I’ve only seen her cry once after her younger brother was in a car accident. The memory of her ugly tears keeps me warm on long arctic nights. It helps now, too.
Steely J says, “There’s another possibility. We could get creative. Do some community theater. My audition was convincing, right?”
“This a creative way to separate me from fifty bucks?”
“One hundred bucks.”
“Where the hell am I going to get a hundred dollars?”
He mimes sucking a cock. “Seriously, though. I’ll need a week or two to rehearse. Perfect the delivery.”
“Rehearse? Rehearse what?”
“A command performance.”
“How come you’re so great at imitating voices?”
“Told you — it’s natural talent. I meditate at night. Sit in the middle of my room and open my mind to the cosmos. All kinds of shit is floating around in the dark. Seeps into us every minute of the day. I just figured a way to make it happen faster.”
“Anybody can meditate.”
His expression slackens by one or two turns of a screw. His pupils expand. Funny how a millimeter or two can change someone’s face so dramatically. “See, I’m really into it now. Used to take all night in full lotus. I can slip sideways at will.” He wriggles his tongue and says in
a Don Pardo voice: “Would you care to hear my idea?”
“I’m all ears.” A glib pronouncement that belies serious misgivings regarding my deepening association with Steely J, Man of a Thousand Voices. I should have obeyed my instinct to tell him to piss up a rope.
* * *
Diehard leaves in the birch trees turn yellow and drop after a real cold snap toward the end of September. A few minutes past six and dark. I’m pacing in front of the window, nervous as a freshman awaiting her prom date. Hilariously, Jackie and Dad figure from the way I’m behaving Rocky is going to pop the question. Dad has spent a significant portion of the afternoon sharpening a Bowie Knife from the display case in the basement. He’s only half drunk. There’s an omen for you. Jackie warms him a TV dinner. The gusto with which he attacks his Salisbury steak confirms he’ll adjust to his inevitable group home environment with aplomb.
Steely J’s car parks with one tire on the curb. Even though he’d warned me, I’m jarred by his radical transformation from oafish, pervy teenager to the hulking schlub in the Vegas lounge singer suit who strolls up the walkway. Middle-aged, pale, bad toupee, worse skin, tinted glasses, ruffled shirt and bowtie, gut overhanging his belt, disco pants, and scuffed loafers. He carries a case sheathed in red velvet in his left hand. The change wouldn’t be more complete if he’d transformed into a werewolf.
I open the front door and do a spit-take. It’s really Tony Clifton, or at least someone who resembles Clifton. No way, no freaking way — Steely J has to be under there somewhere, right? Unless he’s paid one of his pals to act as an accomplice and really sell the gag. He knows everybody and one of them could be an actor on the make.
“J, is it you?” I whisper as he grips my fingers near the tips and gives them a shake the way you do with a toddler.
“Tony C, baby. Tony C plays live.” His accent is nasally and he smells like he took a bath in Aqua Velva. I still can’t decide. “Course, you’ve invited me in, I can return anytime I wanna.” He says it deadpan.
Jackie comes around the corner. Her stare wavers between bewilderment and horrified recognition. Mommy dearest is a control freak. She dislikes the unexpected. “Who is this, dear?” That stilted tone reminds me of the time she slapped my mouth. She’s wearing a red blouse and a black skirt and the shoes she won’t be caught dead in away from the house. I also know she knows Tony Clifton from her conversations with Dad over the years. I hate it when she plays coy. She truly does take Machiavelli to heart.
Steely J winks. “Hi, toots. Be a doll and fix me a drink, will ya.”
Before she can yell at him, I tell her it’s Dad’s big surprise. Step aside and let the magic happen, Mom! She frowns and departs for the kitchen to mix a tray-load of cocktails. Monday is Caribou Lou night at the Vellum casa. Steely J, or whoever the fuck, ambles after me into the den and there’s Dad slumped on his La-Z-Boy throne, a yellow Husqvarna ball cap tilted back. Blue light from the oversized TV screen glints in his eye as he regards the spectacle of Steely J unpacking a karaoke box and microphone. After a few minutes of strained silence, Dad gestures at me with his knife. His expression is similar to Mom’s. Expectant with dread and willfully ignorant. “Honey, what the Sam Hill is going on?”
I take his free hand and say in a well-honed baby-girl voice, “Daddy, a friend of mine heard you’re a major fan of Tony Clifton. Tony’s in town for a couple of nights and—”
“Don’t bore your old man to death, sweetheart,” Steely J says and the accent slips. However, his patronizing contempt is one hundred percent authentic Clifton. “You’re giving me an earache. Where’s my highball?” He snags a glass from Jackie’s tray as she edges by and swats her ass hard enough to make her bunny hop.
I’m astonished: A) the jerk has the nerve, and B) my mom blushes and keeps stepping as if she’s a cocktail waitress pulling a shift in a 1960s club. What the fuck, over?
My heart flutters — Dad will blow sky-high; aggression and territorial pissing are hardwired into him. Instead, he smirks and a trapdoor opens in the collage of my memories of childhood. Sure, I’m used to their civil antipathy. Nonetheless, there’s a rawness to Dad’s smile; his hatred is laid bare. Things with them are more complicated and bitter than I’d dared to imagine.
Steely J leans over and his pants ride his crack. He switches on the sound. After a burst of feedback piano keys tinkle, building. “All right, all right, everybody park your caboose so’s I can get this show on the road. I can’t stay here all evening, I got a gig in Anchorage. My manager lined up this charity crap or else I’d be at the Gold Digger squeezing pole dancer titties and drinking real booze. You know it, cousin.”
Dad guffaws. “Gimme some Pat Boone.”
“Shuddup, wiseacre. I’ll sing what I wanna sing.” Steely J clears his throat. “As it happens, I wanna do a number by Pat B.” He proceeds to sing, or kind of sing, “Speedy Gonzalez,” including the cartoonish bridges by Speedy and his put-upon wife. Visualize, if you will, a flat affect teen mimicking a dead comedian imitating a middle-aged crooner who enunciates through his nose imitating a faux Spanish accent and fucking the lyrics over precisely enough to sprain your brain, and you get the picture.
“Sweet baby Jesus, what am I hearing?” Jackie mutters through her clenched teeth. She grips my elbow while smiling to shame a constipated beauty queen. “Who is this idiot?”
I return the grin with interest. “Tony Clifton, Ma. None other. Look how happy Daddy is.”
“Speedy Gonzalez” wraps. The lull segues into an instrumental. Steely J huffs and puffs. Sweat makes tracks in his makeup. He sips the highball and nods at Dad. “Alaska, huh? Land of the Midnight Sun. Where men are men and so are the women. That wife of yours, buddy. Whadda ya do? Kidnap a mountain goat and slap a dress on it? Lady, another round and keep ‘em coming.” He hands Jackie (who looks like she’s chewing tenpenny nails) his empty as the intro for “Green, Green Grass of Home” kicks in.
At this point, I’m naïve enough to hope it’s going to be a success. Alas, during the instrumental, Steely J says to my dad, “Last time I did a charity set, it was at a children’s ward. Cue-ball central. Really pathetic, I tell ya. Now, you look pretty good for a guy with the big C. Really good, really vibrant. Can’t tell what’s under your hat. Looks like a full head a hair. You got some meat on your bones. Got a nice gut goin’, hey? Dunno, maybe beer has cancer-retarding qualities and that’s why your hair hasn’t all fallen out yet. Cancer of the ass, right?”
“Jeff isn’t on chemotherapy,” Jackie says coldly. She directs a withering glance at me. “Julie, I don’t know who this…lout is, or if he’s a friend, of yours, but I’ve had quite enough—”
Steely J snickers and waves dismissively. “’Quite enough’? Way you stomp around the house in your fuck-me pumps, you ain’t had any in a while. Amirite, Jeff? Cancer of the asshole does take a man’s zest for life out of the equation. How you supposed to concentrate on shtupping the missus when you’re distracted by a burning ring of fire?”
“Oh my.” I cover a horrified smile with my hand. I can smell the brimstone. The roof is sure to collapse and bury us alive any second. Such is my desperate plea to a non-existent God, at any rate. Dad and Jackie appear dumbfounded.
“Christ almighty, I’m thirsty.” Steely J tosses the mike and does his penguin-strut out of the den.
“He has to leave. Immediately!” This from Jackie. She grips a shelf for support. Weakened and shocked, she’ll recover to assume her ultimate form in a minute, I have no doubt.
“Mom—”
“Fine! I’m calling the police!” Strength returning. Rage will do the job.
“Overkill, Mom. Overkill.”
“No, that’s it. I’m calling 911.”
“Mom, Jackie, what do you want the cops to do?”
“What do I want? What do I want! I want him to take his crappy karaoke box and get the hell away from us!”
“I’m gonna stab him,” Dad says thoughtfully. He hasn’t moved, and his
expression is sort of dopey rather than furious, but he’s white-knuckling the Bowie knife. “Jackie, I don’t like how he’s talking. I’m gonna slice his neck.”
I tell them to cool their jets and stay put for the love of God. I go after Steely J. He’s not in the upper living room or the kitchen. I’d run through the back door if I were in his shoes. Not the dude’s style. His car remains parked on the street. He’s the sort to hang his head and absorb whatever verbal or physical punishment is dished at him. At the moment, it’s the physical punishment that Dad will inflict that has me worried.
The door to the half bath is wide and there’s Steely J on all-fours, head dipped into the toilet. His foot twitches as he gurgles and laps with the rabid gusto of a hound attacking his favorite bowl. Gag me with a spoon. I kind of scream and he shudders and gazes over his shoulder, water dripping from his askew fake mustache.
“Yeah?” He says in a voice I haven’t heard before this moment. It isn’t Tony Clifton’s and it isn’t quite his own.
“My parents are straight tripping. Holy shit. Get your ass out before Dad stabs you or my mom calls in SWAT.” I’m convinced he’s got to go for several reasons. Imminent injury will suffice. “Are you…Are you drinking that?”
He paws his smeary lips and cracks his neck. “I’m due a commission.” Almost in character, although his pancake makeup is ruined.
“Please, dude. I’ll catch you with the dough later.”
“Fine. Pay Steely J.” He rises unsteadily. His bulk crowds the whole bathroom. The front of his suit is soaked.
“God! Beat it before I hurl.” Well, too late on that count.
* * *
I expect a mushroom cloud and nuclear fallout. Instead, Jackie tiptoes through the house with a sheepish expression. We mumble weather-related factoids. Dad continues to marinate. I hobble around campus and grit my perfect teeth (thank you, retainer manufacturing company!) when I hand Steely J his hundred bucks. He’s cool; counts his money and walks away like nothing.