Pirates of the Retail Wasteland

by Adam Selzer

  “Um, Dad?” I asked. “Do you know you look like a half-man, half-rhinoceros time traveler from the future?”

  “It’s the latest style for the hair-free gentleman,” he said.

  “You seem awfully chipper,” I said. “Good day with the dye?”

  “Gonna have to let that slide for a couple of weeks,” he said. He tapped himself on the head. “I don’t have much hair left to test new models on, and after yesterday, I certainly can’t imagine you’d want to volunteer as a guinea pig.”

  “Thanks for guessing that far ahead,” I said.

  “So,” he said, “I figured I’d need something else to pass the time. I took a sick day to figure out how to make this spike and then did some shopping. Come see what I got!”

  I followed him out to the garage. The card tables he used for experimenting were folded up along the wall, and all the lab equipment was gone—presumably in the boxes in front of the card tables. In their place, in the center of the garage, where sensible people keep their cars, were a bright red electric guitar and a small amplifier.

  “You got a guitar!” I blurted.

  “Isn’t it a beaut?” he asked.

  “What kind is it?” I asked, walking up to it.

  “The red kind,” he said. He picked it up and turned on the amp. It hummed softly, until he started very sloppily playing the riff from “Smoke on the Water,” which is known throughout the land as the easiest song in the world to play badly.

  “Does Mom know about this?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “She might kill you,” I said.

  He stopped playing for a second. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought about that. But she didn’t kill me over the Mohawk. Lots of guys find themselves sort of at loose ends when they get to my age, you know. Call it a midlife crisis, a pre-midlife crisis, or whatever, it’s all the same thing. But it happens to everyone. Some guys get sports cars. Some have affairs with younger women. All things considered, she’ll know that starting a rock band probably isn’t the worst thing I could do.”

  “Band?” I said. “You’re starting a band?”

  “Sure,” he said. “No point in getting a guitar if you don’t have a band, right?”

  “Well,” I said, “one could argue that you should learn to play first.”

  “Hey, man,” he said, “it’s only rock and roll!”

  For a split second, I barely recognized him. This bald man in black with the shades and the green spike frankly didn’t look a thing like my dad. And he didn’t look any cooler, really.

  But he was smiling, at least. If I didn’t have the upcoming piracy to remind myself about, I would have been quite worried that my dad, of all people, had become cooler than me. If there was one thing that could’ve strengthened my resolve as a buccaneer, it was that. I may have been a bit of a dork, but on the worst day of my life, I hoped I would never be a bigger dork than my dad.

  Two hours later, there was an e-mail from Anna.

  Yo ho ho, mateys!

  Tomorrow at Sip during the game will be the last strategy meeting before the takeover. I’ll have the map. Troy will be joining us. Don’t tell anyone about anything. But have the following items ready:

  Nice clothes. We need to look like people who work as accountants (and not the kind who have Mohawks. No offense, Leon).

  A stapler. We won’t have pistols or daggers, like most pirates, so we should all be packing staplers.

  An office accessory. Andy offered to bring a couple of small desks in his car, but we should each bring something else. Apiece of boring artwork or a fern or something. Be creative.

  All the video gear you have. Remember, this is all for a movie. The only people who are probably going to know about this at all are people who happen to come into Wackfords while we’re there, so we won’t be making much of a point just by taking over the store. We need the movie to make our point. Wackfords is more of an office than a coffee shop. Let’s show the world, and send them to Sip.

  Anchors aweigh,

  Anna

  I quickly wrote back a message with the subject of “re: no offense, Leon.” The message said

  None taken. But the Mohawk is gone—he accidentally burned it off yesterday. Now he just has a spike and he’s starting a rock band.

  Five minutes later, I got a response. At first I thought it was just one word (“weird!”), but then I scrolled down and saw she’d added a line at the bottom.

  P.S. Out of curiosity, have you ever seen a girl naked?

  Oh, God.

  Obviously, she must have known about Jenny. Surely she knew I was refusing Jenny’s advances, right?

  This could not have been a coincidence. I checked the note in my back pocket—it was still there; she couldn’t have seen it. But she must have known somehow that Jenny was sending me notes that said that…I knew she had a class or two with Jenny. Maybe she’d seen her writing it. Did she think the fact that I hadn’t told her about it meant that I was maybe making out with Jenny on the side?

  I thought I should write back to Anna right away and confess everything, but I decided against it. After all, I didn’t have anything to confess. Sure, I’d gotten a couple of notes, and I’d had trouble keeping from thinking about certain things that day. But there’s no rule saying you can’t get moderately suggestive notes from someone you aren’t dating, right? And anyway, no one had said Anna and I were officially a couple to start with. I had every right to picture anybody I wanted naked.

  I didn’t sleep a bit that night.

  I saw Anna on the way into class the next morning, and, when she saw me, she grinned evilly and pulled some devil horns out of her backpack, then winked as she put them on, which freaked me out a bit. Did this mean she knew something? Or was she just rubbing in the note she’d sent the night before?

  I worried about what the heck was going on all morning, until finally, at lunch, when she and I sat down before anyone else had arrived, I asked her about that last line.

  “What about it?” she asked, smiling extremely sexily.

  “Well,” I said, “where did that come from?”

  She laughed and leaned in really close. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked. I thought I felt her tongue brush against my ear a little bit.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back.

  “Jenny has a crush on someone!” she said. “She won’t tell me who, though.”

  Aha! It was all falling into place. She knew about Jenny, just not what it had to do with me!

  “No kidding?” I said, using my ninja skills to play it cool.

  “So what’s the whole thing have to do with seeing a girl naked?”

  “She asked me for help writing to the guy,” said Anna, “and I suggested she put that at the end. It’s not too scandalous; it’s not like she’s offering the guy a chance to see her naked or anything, it’s just an honest question. But it’s pretty eye-catching, huh?”

  “You might say that,” I said.

  She giggled and kept whispering. “I was so proud of coming up with it that I thought I’d use it on you. It doesn’t mean I’m going to get naked for you or anything, but, well…how did you sleep last night?”

  I blushed. “Not well,” I said.

  She laughed, pulling away from my ear. “Then my work here is done,” she said.

  “Do you have any idea who the guy might be?” I asked.

  “Nope,” said Anna, smiling. “She won’t tell me.”

  “I hope the guy knows how to take the note,” I said. “There are guys who might think of that as an invitation, you know.”

  “She said he’d know how to take it,” said Anna. “And come on—it’s Jenny. It’s probably some guy who’s just as sheltered as she is.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I think it stands to reason that she’d like some cool, rebellious guy who breaks all the rules and lives like Jim Morrison, don’t you think?”

  “Nah,” said Anna. “She probably likes some guy who�
��s really good in chemistry class or something. She’d be scared to death of a guy who was really rebellious.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” I said. “She’d think he was bursting with exotic appeal. I’ll bet it’s some really cool, smart guy.”

  Twelve hours earlier, her suggestion that Jenny was probably interested in a nerdy sort of guy would have made me feel terrible, but just having solved the mystery of how Anna had known about that last line had me too relieved to care.

  Brian and Edie arrived at the table, followed by Dustin and James.

  “Shhh,” Anna whispered. “Change the subject. She doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

  I was only too happy to oblige.

  “One day to go,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said James. “I want you to have this for your takeover.” He pulled a stapler out of his backback—a small gray one that looked pretty old. “It’s part of my collection.”

  “It’s from Coach Hunter’s office?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Mais oui,” he said. “It’s the pride of my collection, but I think it’d be nice for it to be in a movie.”

  “Thanks!” I said, taking it. “It’ll look great with all the business gear.”

  “I’m not sure about this business gear thing,” said Edie to Anna.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be an office if we showed up in T-shirts,” said Anna. “Don’t you have anything sort of dressy? Something like an accountant would wear?”

  “Just the dress I wore to my great-aunt’s funeral,” said Edie.

  “That’ll do,” said Anna. “What about you, Brian?”

  “I have a button-down shirt,” he said. “And a tie.”

  “Perfect.”

  Edie rolled her eyes. “I hope this is the only time I see you in them,” she said.

  “I think I can get a bunch of those lame motivational posters to put up,” I said. “My dad has a pretty good supply.”

  “Excellent,” said Anna. “Then we should be all set.”

  And I felt her move her foot over onto the top of mine, and I was almost certain it wasn’t accidental.

  I was the first one on the couch at the gifted-pool meeting that afternoon. Edie came in next and sat down near me, but not on me. Then came Marcus, who sat on Edie, and James, who sat on Marcus. Just when I was starting to feel a bit lonely, Anna came in and sat right on my right leg, reclining her back against my chest and face.

  Then Jenny arrived, and I just about froze. I’d barely seen her since the cab ride on Saturday, since I didn’t have any regular classes with her. But when she saw me with Anna on my lap, she sort of shrank her head into the neck portion of her sweater, like she was a turtle slipping into its shell. Obviously, she was a bit embarrassed.

  “Hey, Jenny,” said Anna, very friendly-like. “Climb aboard.”

  “Okay,” said Jenny softly, and a bit nervously. But she put her Mountain Dew/Jim Morrrison’s Soul bottle on an empty desk, put her coat on a chair, and climbed onto my free knee.

  I guess you could say I was conflicted. I didn’t want to enjoy the feeling of Jenny’s butt pressing into my thigh, or the sight of that little bit of bare skin between her pants and her shirt. But on the other hand, I did enjoy it. A lot.

  Mr. Streich came in a minute later. “Hi, couch people,” he said. “Everybody have a good week?”

  We all sort of nodded.

  “Making progress on your projects?”

  “We are,” said Anna.

  “Then I yield the floor to Miss Brandenburg,” said Mr. Streich.

  Anna got off my knee and stood up. “Leon, Brian, Edie, and I are starting principal photography on a filmed monument to the old downtown,” said Anna.

  “Like the old Venture, Douglas, and Seventieth Street triangle area?” asked Mr. Streich.

  “Right,” said Anna. “Our film will be a monument to a part of town that may not last much longer in the face of the rising development of the Cedar Avenue business district.”

  “That’s a neat idea,” said Mr. Streich. “So you guys don’t like Cedar Avenue much, I take it?”

  “It sucks!” Edie shouted from underneath a few guys on the couch. It was a weird thing—Brian and Edie were officially a couple, but Edie happily let several guys sit on her on the couch. Anna and I still weren’t exactly official, but she only sat on me.

  “We feel it has its advantages and disadvantages,” said Anna very diplomatically. I liked how she left out certain details, like the main details, of the film. If we’d told him we were going to be taking over the Wackfords as part of the movie, he surely would have nixed the idea.

  “Well,” said Mr. Streich. “You aren’t going to be throwing rocks through the window of the Mega Mart or anything, right?”

  “Nothing like that,” I said. “Nothing violent.”

  “Then I hereby approve the project,” he said. “Now, if you want to throw a rock through my mother-in-law’s window, be my guest.”

  When class wound up, we all hoisted ourselves up from the couch. Jenny slinked away quickly, without saying a word. She just put on her coat, picked up her soul bottle, and headed out. But when she got to the door, she turned back and smiled in my direction for a split second before turning and walking away.

  “Basketball tonight,” I said out loud, just to confirm, though we certainly knew that tonight, of all nights, we wouldn’t be watching any basketball game. Brian, Edie, and Anna all nodded, and we went our separate ways.

  A while after I got home, I heard the sounds of an electric guitar coming loudly from the garage. After a few minutes, I decided maybe he was trying something called “The Damn Song,” because all I heard, over and over, was a discordant chunka chunka coming out of the guitar, followed by him saying “Damn!” as he hit a bad note. It was pretty excruciating. I was almost relieved when my mother came home, and he came inside to turn from Nicholas Harris: Rock and Roll Accountant, into Lester: Grilling American.

  “Yee-haw!” he shouted as he dragged the bag of charcoal to the back porch. “Time to get some vittles a-burnin’!”

  “Yeah, you’ll burn ’em, all right,” said my mother in her Wanda voice. “Burn ’em right to a crisp is what!”

  “Stifle, woman!” said my father/Lester. “You gotta make sure it’s dead, you know!”

  “I like mine rare,” said Wanda. “I don’t even like the cow to be cooked—just scare it a little and bring it on! And real men like it rare, too.”

  “Can it, Wanda,” said Lester, who was pronouncing “Wanda” like “wander.” “I know what real men like. And what True Americans do. They grill!”

  This would have made another good nature documentary—the domestic habits of imaginary suburban hillbillies. I tried to keep myself from imagining the scene where they wrestled over control of the remote and marked the recliner as their territory, but I was unsuccessful.

  As I sat through a whole dinner of this, I started to think I could see the upside of going to prison for taking over the Wackfords. Nobody has ever said anything good about prison food (except for that whole thing about choosing your last meal before they fry your ass), but you probably don’t have to watch your parents make fools of themselves while you eat.

  Eight o’clock rolled around and Dad drove me out to the basketball game, where I met up with Brian and Edie at the concession stand. Anna arrived a minute later.

  “Well,” she said, “this could be our last night of freedom if they throw us in jail.”

  “Hey,” said Brian. “If we’re in jail at least five months, then today was our last day at Cornersville Middle School.”

  As the first strains of the national anthem came out of the gym, we were walking out the door toward Da Gama Park. It was cold out, but warmer than it had been the previous few days. My nose didn’t feel like it was about to fall off, and I wasn’t thinking of saying prayers of thanks to Satan for keeping hell burning and keeping my feet warm. It was a step up.

  We marched through Da Gama Park, then do
wn Seventieth Street, with Edie complaining all the way, as usual.

  “Damn it, warm up!” she commanded the heavens. “I’m freezing my ovaries off!”

  “I think the correct term is ‘freezing my ovaries out,’” said Anna.

  “They say it’s about to start snowing again,” said Brian.

  There hadn’t been new snow in a while—it had actually been too cold for snow to come down for the past couple of weeks. We’d just been trudging through the dirty sludge that was left over from late December.

  When we got to Sip, Dustin was sitting there, just relaxing on one of the easy chairs. James was at a table, playing chess with some old guy I didn’t recognize. And Troy was sitting at a corner table, wearing sunglasses indoors. He gave us a nod, and we made our way over to his table.

  “Ahoy,” he said, smiling.

  “Hey,” I said, sitting down. “Is everything in order?”

  “Andy and I are the only ones on the schedule for tomorrow morning,” said Troy. “Andy’s bringing some office furniture you can use. You guys’ll have at least three hours before the boss shows up.”

  “Three hours?” said Edie. “I was hoping we’d have the run of the place for days.”

  “That would get you in trouble for sure,” Troy said. “You should be able to get all the footage you need by the time Harold comes in.”

  Anna pulled a rolled-up sheet of paper out of her coat. “This is the map,” she said. “So we can plot how to set up the office.”

  She unrolled the paper and laid it out on the table. It was an aerial view of the inside of the Wackfords, labeled “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe.” Outside of the drawing was a street, labeled “Cedar Avenue—here there be monsters!”

  “Arrr!” said Brian. I’m pretty sure it was an “arrr” of approval.

  “We’ll get the desk set up here,” said Anna. “In front of the main counter. The fern can go in front of the espresso machine.”