King Dork Approximately

by Frank Portman

  The thing is, we had a lot in common, which I’m not very used to, and I guess it’s hard not to get a little carried away with sentimentality when presented with the one person you’ve ever met in your life who thinks, for instance, that deliberately mispronouncing vocabulary words is funny, especially when she has a pretty nice body.

  At the practice, when we had just finished a particularly disastrous run-through of “You Know You Want It,” she had looked up from her notebook and said: “Well, that certainly was harminomious and mellifluicious.” And then she did this little half smile, directed solely at me. It was what you call a “nice moment.” The combination of conspiratorial mispronunciation, sarcasm, and ass was too much for me. I mean, how could you not be in love with that, at least a little?

  But I wasn’t in love with her, not literally, despite the fact that I once thought I was and even told her so in one of my most embarrassing of moments. If I was in love with anyone, it was this imaginary girl she had portrayed for about two hours one night earlier in the year, basically just Celeste Fletcher in a costume. Fiona: her lack of reality did nothing to diminish her appeal, and possibly enhanced it. Or maybe it was the glasses and the too-small Who T-shirt that did it. I just couldn’t get those out of my stupid head.

  FIELDWORK

  I was thinking how nice it might be to share Sam Hellerman’s faith in the end of the world. At least it’s faith in something. And the idea is appealing: there will be this big explosion, or flood, or computer glitch, after which everything just stops and you no longer know about anything and nothing knows about you; or maybe life would be simply so changed that nothing that went before is worth caring about. It seems like that would be a tremendous relief, and if I believed in it, I’d look forward to it rather than worry about it.

  Little Big Tom’s head poked through the door at what seemed like nearly a ninety-degree angle.

  “And the weight of the world on his shoulders,” he said, with a little mustache twitch. “You doing okay there, sport?”

  I guess I’d been looking pensive, if pensive is the one where you’re thoughtful about something and you want to sound important.

  “Yes … chief,” I said. “It’s nothing. I was just thinking about Y2K.”

  Little Big Tom had been squabbling with my mom all morning, according to Amanda’s breathless report, and he was off his game. He had no jaunty commentary to offer concerning Y2K, though I could see on his face evidence that his brain was trying as hard as it could to come up with something. Finally, he gave up and pursed his lips in defeat, dematerializing mournfully. Now I really felt bad, like, seriously, I felt this ridiculous impulse to run after him and hug him, tell him everything would be okay. Not that my strict codes of personal conduct would have permitted anything like such a display. But I resolved to lob him a softball of some kind at the next opportunity. It’s just not fair to spring something weird like Y2K on a guy like Little Big Tom. I’d never seen him give up before, and the spectacle made me conscious of a melancholy void in an area of my chest I hadn’t previously known about. Pretty amazing how many of those there are.

  I had just returned from another strange session outside of Linda’s Pancakes on Broadway, sitting on the bus stop bench next to Sam Hellerman, who was once again listening to his tape, making notes, and remaining intensely aloof from Jeans Skirt Girl, except this time she had been wearing actual jeans. Which looked pretty nice, in the way that jeans look nice when worn by females.

  She evidently had a daily appointment in the area that ended around one p.m., after which the arrangement seemed to be that she’d wait in front of the 7-Eleven for her mom to pick her up. It was raining, so she had her hood on and the drawstring pulled tight so that there was a little ring of fur almost completely encircling her face. That, I had to admit, was pretty fucking cute. Sam Hellerman, on the other hand, was not too smooth-looking, huddled under a big black umbrella with his notepad and headphones and the inscrutable eyes behind his thick, half-fogged glasses.

  I had asked Sam Hellerman point-blank why on earth he was stalking this poor girl.

  “Not stalking,” he said. “Fieldwork.”

  “You do realize, don’t you, Hellerman,” I said, “that if she ever does notice you spying on her she’ll run away screaming and probably call the cops?” I added that he didn’t seem to have fully grasped the meaning of the word “aloof.” It’s not logically possible to remain aloof in any meaningful sense from a person who is unaware that you’re there doing it. “And if she does become aware,” I concluded, with my eyes, “it can only end in your own humiliation and a possible jail term.”

  Sam Hellerman didn’t answer. While I was dispensing this sensible advice, he was otherwise engaged, snapping a rapid-fire series of photos of Jeans Skirt Girl with his dad’s little digital camera.

  Once again, I had been so distracted by Sam Hellerman’s antics that I’d forgotten to ask about the mysterious letter till I was already halfway home. This was getting out of hand. It was probably nothing at all of consequence, like so many of the other little puzzles that always surround Sam Hellerman like a halo of question marks. But it would remain an ever more irritating irritant till such time as I was finally able to cross it off the list. I got out my Sharpie and wrote LETTER on my hand. Then, just to make sure, I wrote HAND on my shoe. And then, just to be absolutely completely certain beyond any conceivable mishap, I wrote SHOE on my other hand (though that was a bit hard to read because I had to write it with my left hand.) That ought to do it, I thought.

  It was soggy and muddy outside, and similarly grim in the house. Or maybe it was just my mind that was soggy and muddy and grim.

  I was agitated and irritated at no one in particular for no particular reason. Sam Hellerman was off collating the data from his “fieldwork,” an embarrassment to himself and everyone associated with him. Celeste Fletcher was sorry it was so weird, but not so sorry about it that she wanted to spend any time with me. Deanna Schumacher was remaining aloof to the degree that she had dropped off the face of the earth. I had inadvertently wounded Little Big Tom by presenting him with a therapy issue to which he had no response. My band sucked. My dad was dead. There was never going to be a lawsuit. I was dreading going back to school at the end of vacation, to face whatever horrors the normal people had in store for me: after all, they tried to kill me, and I just wouldn’t get dead like they’d planned, and I could only imagine how mad that would have made them. I was all alone with no one to keep me company but my centipede. I guess there were reasons.

  Also, it was Christmas Eve. Maybe you think it’s a little strange to mention Christmas only as an afterthought. I guess it is strange. Christmas is a big deal for most people, and probably for you. But not around here. In my house there hasn’t really been Christmas to speak of since my dad died. It was put on hold completely for a couple of years after his actual death. Then it gradually seeped back in. But when it did, it was muted, a shadow of its former self compared to how I remember it. I guess my dad had been a pretty Christmassy guy. There used to be a Christmas party every year at my house that lots of neighborhood people and his police friends would come to. One year they even had a band playing jazz or something like that. My parents danced and people clapped, and I watched from the stairs when I was supposed to be in bed: that’s one nice memory I have.

  Anyhow, nowadays, we all associate Christmas with him, so Christmas just became sad after he was gone, and everyone feels like avoiding it.

  Little Big Tom tries. He always sets up a Christmas tree, gets everyone presents, and puts up lights and such, though he doesn’t like to use the word “Christmas” for it: he calls it Yule and says things like “Did you know that Christmas was originally a pagan winter festival that the Christians took over and it has nothing to do with Jesus? It’s a very cool historical fact.” Well, yes, in fact, I did know that, chief, based on the last three hundred thousand times you’ve mentioned it, the most recent being just fifteen minutes ago.
“Okay, then,” Little Big Tom’s knowing smile seems to say. “I just wanted to make sure you’re aware that putting up these lights doesn’t mean I’m into the baby Jesus and organized religion and Western medicine and the corporations.” Then, when the lights inevitably fall down, Little Big Tom’s knowing lowered eyebrow seems to ask the eternal question “Why do these damn things keep falling down?” But that’s what it’s like living with a hippie. There’s just no cheering up the Hendersons on Christmas, is what I’m saying. Don’t even try.

  I tried to spend some time reading, but I couldn’t concentrate. I had finished most of my dad’s old books a ways back, and reading anything else now seemed kind of pointless. Those books of his, the books he’d read as a kid, were, in my mind, all about him under the surface, as though reading between the lines allowed me to see him in the books. That had become the main point of reading for me. I wondered if I’d ever be able to enjoy or understand a book he hadn’t read. On the other hand, the one of his that I was currently still trying to work through, The Crying of Lot 49, was pretty hard going, and I definitely didn’t understand it, despite the fact that it was one of his most written-in books. I have no idea what it’s about: some conspiracy of competing post offices and crazy drug people who think garbage cans are mailboxes. It was written by a guy named Pynchon, who also wrote this other nine-million-page book about physics or something, which might be good for hitting someone over the head with sometime.

  I had too much respect for my dad’s teenage library to throw any of it across the room, so I set The Crying of Lot 49 down reverently and picked up Dune, which I had started re-reading to pass the time.

  I had no idea if my dad had ever read Dune. It didn’t have his initials written in it like the others, but it was from a box in the same general area of the basement, and he could well have read it. I decided to pretend he had read it and see if that helped. For now, though, I put that book down too, opened the desk drawer, and took out the little square of graph paper containing the Catcher Code, the one piece of physical evidence I had that linked my dad with Mr. Teone. I had made a little case for it by cutting up and taping together a clear plastic seven-inch sleeve. I turned it over in my hand, thinking. At this point, it was little more than a talisman, a souvenir that had already taught me all it had to teach. But maybe if they ever did catch Mr. Teone, they’d want it as evidence. Or if there was ever a lawsuit …

  As a last-ditch effort at doing something I could actually accomplish, I put on NAR-012 as loud as possible, hoping to provoke someone to get mad and tell me to turn it down, but even that was met with what seemed like utter apathy from the world outside my room.

  My mom was in the living room, slouched on the sofa smoking one of her long cigarettes and drinking what I took to be a martini in a regular glass, based on the olives that were in it. I guess she had managed to get that jar open after all, rendering my band obsolete in the process. Ah, well, we’d had a good run. It was a slightly unusual home cocktail for her, and in my current mood, that and the coincidence of the presence of the olives from her most hated jar seemed vaguely ominous.

  Now, I think I’ve mentioned that my mom has an eccentric way of dressing, especially for a mom. She can look like a little girl playing dress-up one day, and then like a crazy lady living on the street the next, and then, on the third day, like an old-fashioned airline stewardess who has fallen out of her plane, landed on a Toys “R” Us, and emerged covered with brightly colored toys. They even called the cops on her a couple times way back when I was a kid when she was picking me up from school: her outlandish dress sense was enough to set in motion an elementary school lockdown and they had to call my dad to come get both of us just to be on the safe side.

  It’s mostly a matter of strange hats and vibrant, clashing colors. Her outfits have triggered epileptic seizures in the elderly and in cats. This is well known. But even so, I was surprised to find her wearing a kind of Christmas uniform: red-and-white striped socks, green sort of short overalls, glittery boots that Ace Frehley would have been proud to wear, earrings that were little dangling Christmas trees, and a funny green hat like a baseball cap but really puffy on top. As I explained, my dad had been a pretty Christmassy guy. My mom was not, as a rule, anywhere near this Christmassy.

  “Work party,” she said in response to my questioning look. “So …” She was distant as usual, distracted by something only she could see, remaining aloof from the entire living room, maybe the entire world. Was it likely that there would be a dress-up work party at the dentist’s office on Christmas Eve? It didn’t seem too likely to me, but what do I know about Christmas, or dentists?

  “Hand,” she said.

  My look begged her pardon.

  “It says ‘hand’ on your shoe.”

  Oh, right. By way of explanation, I held up my right palm, the one that had SHOE sloppily written on it, maintaining a deadpan expression. Now, I thought that was funny. My mom didn’t see the humor, however, and nodded sadly, as though the spectacle of a son who needed labels to distinguish his foot from his hand, and who moreover got the labels wrong, was somehow a confirmation of some dark, long-held suspicion.

  “Mom,” I said, finally resorting to words. “Did Sam Hellerman send me a letter recently?”

  Her look seemed to say “I don’t know, did he?” managing to combine maternal sarcasm, juvenile smart-assery, and her usual mournfulness in the same weird package. But in words she said, “Not that I know of, baby.”

  She crinkled her brow and sighed out a perplexed jet of smoke.

  “Love you, sweetie,” she finally said quietly, with just the hint of a shake of her head. That was one of her two ways of signaling that she had no more to say and the conversation was over, the other, less affirmative one being just getting up and leaving the room.

  Nice talking to you, Mom, I said silently, by means of placing a gentle hand on her shoulder as I walked past. She patted my hand with the bottom of her glass, and half of her mouth seemed to smile, almost. Looking back at her from the hallway, I thought her eyes might possibly be a little misty. She looked beautiful and shiny in the dim light, a long scroll of smoke spiraling from the tip of her cigarette like an Elizabethan signature.

  ALL ABOARD THE OBSESSION TRAIN

  SHOE, HAND, LETTER. If nothing else, the awkward conversation with my mom was a reminder to remember to look at my reminders to remember Sam Hellerman’s accursed letter. This better be good, Hellerman, I thought. I don’t know why I had begun obsessing about the stupid letter. Maybe because I just wanted to cross something, anything, off my list, and nothing else seemed remotely cross-offable at the moment.

  Knowing Sam Hellerman, it could be anything: a puzzle, a code, a sly insult, a puzzle that when solved revealed a coded sly insult, an informative newspaper clipping, an uninformative newspaper clipping, a picture of a sexy girl with the caption PHOTON TORPEDOES: TARGET ACQUIRED … My best guess was that it was something of the photon torpedo type, possibly to do with Jeans Skirt Girl. Or it could in fact be nothing at all, no letter, no nothing, just something Sam Hellerman said for no reason whatsoever. That was my second-best guess.

  At any rate, once I jump on the obsession train, there’s just no derailing it. I know it’s stupid, but the more I try to ignore something, the more it swirls in my mind, till I’m gibbering and laughing hysterically, brushing invisible insects from my arms, covering the walls with crookedly placed newspaper clippings containing the word “letter,” and sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night screaming “What letter, Hellerman? For the love of all that is holy, just tell me, WHAT GODDAMN LETTER?” In that quiet way I have, of course.

  Well, I vowed not to let that happen if I could help it; plus, I was going crazy with boredom as it was and I had to do something, so instead of passively waiting till the next time I saw Sam Hellerman and hoping I’d still have HAND on my foot at that point, I decided to take action. A brief tug-of-war with Amanda later, the phone-baby was in
my possession, and I was locked in the bathroom tapping in the number of Hellerman Manor.

  After many rings, Sam Hellerman’s father answered and said, in his scary German-accented voice: “It is the dinner hour, young man, and it is Christmas Eve.” He then asked if I was insane. Well, I’m sure I sounded plenty insane, especially when I begged him to put Sam Hellerman on the phone and avowed that it was a matter of life and death. That was taking things too far, I know, but if I’ve learned anything in my brief time among the inhabitants of this planet, it is that your chances of getting your way can only be improved if the other party believes you’re crazy enough to be dangerous. Sam Hellerman soon came on the line.

  “I can’t talk, Henderson,” he said in an exasperated whisper, and I didn’t blame him. It had sounded like Herr Hellerman was planning to give someone a nice Christmas beating, and Sam Hellerman was certainly the most likely candidate to receive it.

  “Just tell me about your letter, Hellerman,” I said quickly, in a tone of voice that added “that’s all I ask.”

  “My letter,” he repeated, in the way that someone who was unaware of any letter might say the word “letter” when asked about a letter.

  I was pretty sure I had my answer right there, but just to confirm I added:

  “So you didn’t send a letter.”

  “No, why would I do that?” he said. “Do you know how crazy you sound right now?”

  I was just about to hang up when I heard him suddenly say:

  “Oh, wait. That letter!”

  I could almost hear him wince over the phone when I said “Jesus fucking Christ.”