Friends and Traitors

by Jarett Kobek

  “You imagine me some fey creature of whimsy,” said I. “My only mistake was in thinking that you’d want to know about the omnipotence of your spermatozoa. Don’t delude yourself. You came to this city because you wanted to live in New York. None of this was for me or for the baby.”

  I promised Nash Mac that I shouldn’t ask a thing of him. He was appalled. He wanted to be in his child’s life. I assured him that he would, leaving the details vague. We didn’t know a thing about this child. Why make plans?

  Yet I knew that I couldn’t keep Nash Mac out forever. Every action has its consequences.

  His experience at Enteractive offered enough trauma that he was soon ringing LucasArts, informing them of his imminent return. We’d passed into the year 1994. The company’d released Sam & Max Hit the Road and were ramping up for Full Throttle. “None of these games are great,” said Nash Mac. “No one is as good as Ron Gilbert.”

  He departed through the same terminal gate by which he’d arrived. The true horror of sex spilled out, right there on the industrial carpeting of Terminal 3. The inescapable Nash Mac.

  He wasn’t nothing but some guy who’d given me the time in San Francisco. I’d done no wrong, kept myself protected, but it hadn’t mattered. Caught stealing from the cookie jar, we’d been sentenced to a lifetime of each other. Oh Jesus, make up my dying bed!

  Goodbye, New York, said he. Goodbye, Adeline, said he. Goodbye, Nash Mac, said I, hoping that I might yet discover a path to navigate the awkwardness of our special relationship.

  With Nash Mac stationed back in Californy, I didn’t have another soul to help with my pregnancy. Luanna only went so far. There were many considerations. Should I move? Should I convert Baby’s room into a baby’s room? What of the delivery itself and the prenatal care and the vitamins and the food and all the other miseries with which Nash Mac had been helping?

  Darlings, I was at my lowest. I telephoned Dahlia.

  My sister, that abominable fool, that delirious idiot. She and Charles had separated and reunited on three separate occasions, never quite divorcing and somehow bringing two children into this mortal world. A daughter and a son. Dahlia was an old hand at motherhood. For the first time in her life, she knew more than yours truly.

  Yet she remained Dahlia, unable to transcend herself. “Pregnancy,” she said, “is like the worst flu you’ll ever get. It’s a nine-month sickness. It’s, like, an agony. When I was carrying Deanna, it was, like, the worst time of my life. My stomach swelled up, I got so fucking fat, I retained water in my ankles, I got hemorrhoids, I was sick all the time, I got varicose veins, I peed every thirty seconds, I ate like a whale, I craved like the grossest foods, and when I did, like, give birth, the labor was thirteen hours and it felt like shitting a baby seal. You’re in for it.”

  Dahlia arrived for the last month of my pregnancy, helping with the preparations. Her most vital role was serving as a buffer between me and Mother.

  My coinage couldn’t cut it. Though I still refused to speak with the old crone, I’ll say one thing for Mother. She did pony up the cash that eased her third grandchild from my womb.

  Emil was born at Roosevelt Hospital. The labor was as bad as Dahlia had warned. Even with all the pain and all the drugs, I kept hearing her stupid advice. There I was, darlings, experiencing the miracle of birth, and the only thing flying through my drugged brain was how dreadfully close the process felt to shitting out a seal.

  When it was over, I had the child in my arms. Emil’s bruised and purpled face. All was forgiven.

  Dahlia remained for two extra months. She’d fallen in love with the East Village’s upmarket diversity. Through the magic of telephony, I know for dead certain that both of her children and Charles were happy for an interregnum. Life without my sister’s inane dialogues and meditations. I was their favorite.

  Her focus fell on yours truly and my son. Yet even here I can’t rightly complain, as Dahlia taught me the very basics of motherhood, and helped keep Trill on schedule. We never missed an issue or a ship date.

  Consider it, won’t you, darlings? My two great contributions to human civilization. Emil and Trill. In a horrible way, their success was down to Dahlia.

  The very soul that had haunted my adolescent years with her manic braying and incessant preening. Dahlia! Dahlia! My wretched old sister. Now I owed her everything. She’d saved me! She was my hero. She was all that I had!

  No one ever claimed that adulthood would be easy.

  I saw Baby beside the fountain in Washington Square Park. Blond hair, farmfed good looks only modestly weathered by city life.

  I’ve no shame confessing my moment of doubt. I considered gathering Emil and avoiding complications. The old bitterprick of anger about Mother, emerging from sheer hypocrisy.

  Baby’d only done what anyone would, which is receive a cash infusion from the family coffers. I myself was guilty of the very same. To whom did I run when it became clear that I’d birth Nash Mac’s demon seed?

  That’s the problem of people like Mother, people with serious money. We are bent to their wills.

  I said, “Hello, Baby, how do?”

  Without expectation of things playing out as they did, but that was only yours truly making herself the fool. I loved Baby. I’d always loved Baby. I’d missed him, even if I loathed admitting it to my lonesome.

  So there we were, the old messy duo standing in Washington Square, a child in my arms. I invited Baby to 7th Street. Perhaps it was too soon. Oh, Adeline, said I to myself, throw caution to the wind. This is Baby. Baby whose only crime was getting an education. No ill fortune can befall you. Not from Baby.

  As we walked towards Cooper Square, Emil squirming in his stroller, I said, “When I was in San Francisco, I heard a song on the radio called ‘Detachable Penis.’ What a preposterous name! Do you know it?”

  “I heard it once or twice. I didn’t really pay attention,” said Baby. “The chorus is stupid.”

  “Baby,” I gasped. “One must always listen to the verses. That’s where songwriters hide the most diabolical messages. ‘Detachable Penis’ is about this doltish East Village denizen who makes an appearance at a party and wakes up hungover only to discover that he’s lost his penis, which, as the title infers, has a detachable mechanism. He goes on a wild and woolly bildungsroman throughout this very neighborhood, attempting to find the missing member.”

  “Where does he go?” asked Baby.

  “The Kiev,” I said. “He walks down Second Avenue, right next to Love Saves the Day, and finds his penis being sold by one of the junk merchants. Imagine it, Baby! There I am, in a café in the Richmond District, hearing a song about my old neighborhood! A song about the Kiev! It’s a bad omen. A cruel wind blows towards New York. People are taking notice.”

  Baby emerged into his old demesne and his eyes went agog-gog-gogmagog-gog with the changes that I’d wrought upon the place.

  Via and viva Dahlia, I’d asked Mother for a tad more money in order to ensure that her grandchild wouldn’t choke on lead paint or receive a rusty nail through the foot. Poor Emil, bless his heart, couldn’t grow up in the bozo bohemia of our former lives.

  Mother distributed a heavy influx. I’d refloored the place and repainted, replacing the fixtures. New kitchen and bedrooms. Nothing could be done about the bathroom. The toilet, the bathtub, and the sink remained split asunder. There still was no buzzer.

  I’d transformed Baby’s room into a nursery, painted light blue and filled with all manner of tasteful toys. I wouldn’t let Emil touch anything plastic, so I’d scoured for vintage playthings built of solid wood.

  Yet the room proved an afterthought used mostly for storage. I couldn’t bear to sleep apart. Emil remained cribbed by my bed. I hadn’t yet attempted sleeping together. I wasn’t one to wake in a damp spot of overflowing urine, or worse, retching in the pudding of his shit.

  “It’s like you’ve gone yuppie,” said Baby. “You may have become part of the problem.”

  �
��This child,” I said, “will not grow up like the half-loved orphan of a drug casualty. He’ll suffer all the affection that he can handle. All the stability, too. New York will not ruin him.”

  “Where’s the cat?” asked Baby. “I’ve been missing the Captain for so long.”

  “I didn’t want to say,” I said, “but the animal has passed from our mortal world.”

  “How?” asked Baby.

  “A tumor on the spine,” I said. “We could have operated but it seemed cruel. That’s the thing about pets, isn’t it? They always break your hearts.”

  “I need to sit down,” said Baby.

  New York would not ruin my dear child, but his overactive bowels certainly might. A stench wafted through the apartment. Sitting on the floor, he looked up with a tell-tale expression beneath his shock of thin hair.

  “The child’s linen must be changed,” I said. “I’ll spare you the quelle horreur and bring him in the other room.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Baby. “I have to do something. I’ll be right back. Do I still have to yell to get inside?”

  “A handful of things, my dear,” said I, “never change.”

  Whilst Baby stomped down the stairwell, I put Emil up on the counter and investigated the matter. His stool was solid, a happy digression from the previous several days. I’d grown worried enough that if he’d gone another day with looseness, I’d resolved to bring him to the doctor.

  Catching my reflection in the toaster’s metal as I cleaned my child, I laughed, wondering what Patrick Geoffrois might think of my fixation on Emil’s stool. The science of diapers was almost petty divination, attempting to read the symbols and smears of the child’s thrice-daily deposits.

  The sourness passed from Emil’s face. I put him back on the floor. We sat and waited. Baby cried from the street. I descended the stairs and let him inside. He carried a brown paper bag.

  Baby bent over and spoke with Emil. “Hello, little guy,” said Baby. “Do you mind if I pick him up?” Baby placed his bag on the kitchen table and lifted Emil in the most unusual fashion, keeping the child at a grave distance and holding the young one by his underarms.

  “I can’t believe this living being came out of you,” said Baby.

  “Welcome to a very unexclusive club,” I said. “I’m fairly certain that it happened.”

  Baby lifted his bag off the table and brought out a book. “I bought this at the St. Mark’s Bookshop,” he said, handing me an odd-looking volume entitled Trapped Between Jupiter and a Bottle. The cover depicted a man with an elephant’s head. “This is my book,” he said.

  “Very nice,” I said, handing it to Baby. “But why show me if you haven’t read it?”

  “Adeline, this is my book,” he said, pushing it back. “I wrote it.”

  The second page bore a dedication. TO ADELINE, WHEREVER SHE MAY BE ON THIS AMERICAN CONTINENT.

  “I had no idea if you’d ever see it,” he said. “I never told you my pseudonym.”

  “Baby,” I said, “I’ve something to show you.”

  I went into my bedroom and pulled out all ten published issues of Trill. We were selling an unfathomable amount each month. I never asked for the numbers, worried that they’d give me performance anxiety, but Winter-bloss said that we moved enough units that if I met all of the people buying the book, I’d occupy the rest of my life simply saying hello.

  “Here,” I said. “Take them.”

  Baby flipped through the pages.

  “Written by J. W. Bloss,” said Baby. “That’s Jeremy?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But who’s the artist? M. Abrahamovic Petrovitch. Минерва?”

  “Why would it be Минерва?” I asked. “It’s me, Baby. It’s yours truly.”

  “Why aren’t you using your real name?”

  “Jeremy believed it was best if no one knew that I’m a woman. Comics are America’s most sexist industry.”

  “Why the fuck are you the one who has to pretend?” asked Baby.

  “We’re both pretending. Why do you think he’s calling himself J. W. Bloss? His real name is known within the industry. I pretend that I’ve got a penis and Jeremy pretends that he’s not Black. It’s an ugly business, but it pays the bills.”

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 1994

  Baby and Adeline Watch Television

  I won’t bore you with the rest of the motherhood rag, as I’m sure you all have your own terribly disinteresting friends phasing through the throes of parenthood. You know the type, don’t you, darlings?

  Those folks who’ll telephone at any hour, simply dying when little Tommy takes his first step or utters his first nonsensical monosyllable or reaches some arbitrary milestone only appreciable by those with a direct genetic link. I’m not sitting in judgment on those souls, those friends of yours. I’m with them in Rockland. I’ve made a fool of myself over Emil more times than I care to admit. Yet I won’t bore you, reader. I know you have better things.

  I’ll spare you, too, all the disinteresting little details about me and Baby and our reunification. You know as well as I that it was inevitable. If it hadn’t happened, your nose wouldn’t be buried within this book, would it? You’d be reading one of those sad little stories about people who spend their sour lives crying into store-bought beers.

  When New Year’s Eve rolled around, it was Baby and I sitting in my apartment, Emil fast asleep. I was outraged, as one will be when one’s child might be woken by the sounds of nighttime revels. “These mongoloids are making a hullabaloo in the street,” I said. “They have no respect for the delicate nature of a sleeping baby.”

  “There was a time when you stalked the East Village.”

  “I never ran wild with abandon, shouting out whatever market-tested non sequitur passed through my idiotic head. Advertising slogans and human degradation! Is this how they ring in the last five years of the millennium?”

  If you can believe it, we had my old black-and-white television tuned to Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. I lived on the island of Manhattan, and had lived here, more or less, for ten years. Never once had I been tempted by the Sodom and Gomorrah of Times Square on December 31. Yet there we were, watching it flicker on the screen.

  “You need a new television,” said Baby. “I can’t believe this thing still works.”

  “When it breaks, I’m not replacing it. The radio is good enough. Emil won’t grow up as one of these fat children whose best friend is the blue glow of the death box. If this contraption still functions when he’s old enough to understand its purpose, I’ll throw it out.”

  Although Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve focused on New York, the musical numbers were performed remotely and introduced by the comedians Margaret Cho and Steve Harvey. One watched crowds crammed into Times Square and then the camera cut away to performances at Walt Disney World.

  Melissa Etheridge, The O’Jays, Jon Secada, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Salt-N-Pepa. I’d half hoped that they’d feature this reggae singer named Ini Kamoze. At that very moment, he had a huge crossover hit called “Here Comes the Hotstepper.” I found it inescapable. It drifted to my ears from stray radios, from cars, badly warbled from people’s mouths. One couldn’t leave the house without hearing of the hotstepper and his arrival.

  As enlightened as yours truly counted herself, a Buddha done up in Aveda, I remained a creature of my own era. Having come of age during the lilywhite daze of synthpop, there was a distinct decay in my understanding of popular culture. Gone down to dust was the Great White Rocker, at last replaced by the sounds of hip-hop.

  Emil rendered me too distracted to give two farthings of a faker’s pretense. Busy with my child, busy with my drawing. Even if I hadn’t gone over to motherhood, the thing that I’d’ve wanted least was to be a woman on the verge of her thirties maintaining the pretense that she retained an acute comprehension of teenage tastes, hoping beyond hope for a genuine connection to evolving trends of lowbrow culture. Imagine me talki
ng about Snoop Doggy Dogg!

  A few days earlier, I’d rented an awful film from Kim’s Underground on Bleecker, a location with a far better selection than the Kim’s on Avenue A. The title of this awful film was Return of the Living Dead III. As the Roman numerals imply, III is the third installation in a series of zombie films possessing a tangential association to the grandsire of the genre, Night of the Living Dead. The original Return is well liked for its ultracheeze ’80s punk overlay, a bit like Jubilee by Derek Jarman if Derek Jarman’s Jubilee were absolutely moronic and had its theme sung by Dinah Cancer.

  Don’t you dare ask why I’d rent such a thing. I offer neither a sane nor reasonable answer. I am an inveterate loather of zombie films, if you exclude my thumping heart for Bela’s bravura performance as Murder Legendre in White Zombie and my great admiration for I Walked with a Zombie by Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton. I will profess even a certain affinity for Night. Those exceptions aside, the zombie remains horror’s stupidest trope.

  With a wee bit of squinting, one can see its appeal to the American mind. We’re a militaristic society, born in battle, defining our historical periods through war. Bloody G. W. enthroned as our first president, the War of 1812, Baby’s idée fixe of Mr. Lincoln’s agony, WWI, WWII, Vietnam. Our silly little history ain’t much but war history. Our entire dialogue is a reference to war. The War on Drugs. The War on Poverty.

  Link that with our present-day empire in decline, our high point hit around 1963, and armies of animated corpses begin to make a semiotic sense. I’m not a girl who holds much truck with allegory, intentional or otherwise, but one can’t miss the equation. War culture + societal death trip = a nation enthralled with images of the walking dead.

  Filmed in 1992, Revenge of the Living Dead III makes overtures toward the perceived youth culture of its moment. Posters festoon the male lead’s high school bedroom, advertising every alternative band that one can imaginate, including my old favorites L7. The female lead’s fashion is a hodge-podge of early-’90s clichés. Leather jackets, fishnets, dyed hair.