Girl ran away a year later. He was in Austin when Mom called and told him. Four years have passed with only a single e-mail.
Boy takes his cellphone out of his pocket.
There’s a message from his girlfriend, Salome, but he doesn’t check it. He can text her later. He tries to focus on the phone display. His phone looks like it has been dipped in Vaseline. Girl. He’s going to call her. Fuck it, why not? He has had her number for a while now.
With his phone practically pressed against his nose, he finds his sister’s number. He removes one of his earphones, letting it dangle down to a spot just above his navel.
~Do you feel apprehensive? Press one for often, two for occasionally, three for rarely, and four for never. Do you feel lost? Press one for often, two for occasionally, three for rarely, and four for never. Do you feel like there is no one else in the world you can turn to?~
‘Hello?’ Girl says on the other line. The tone of her voice indicates she doesn’t recognize his number. ‘Hello?’
‘It’s m-m-me,’ Boy says, holding back the wave of emotion that has swept over him. In the silence that follows, he listens for background noise that might indicate where she is or what she’s doing.
‘Hi,’ she says, instantly recognizing his voice.
‘Hi…’ His mouth is suddenly dry and his lips are trembling as if the temperature has dropped fifty degrees. A man with a shirt that says RECOVER walks past.
‘You called?’
‘Where are you?’ he manages to ask. Damn this acid. It’s hitting him too hard now.
Silence on the other line.
‘Four years,’ Boy says, feeling breathless and lightheaded. A homeless man sits down next to him, convulsing, talking to someone only he can see. Except Boy can see it too. This curse of his…
‘Four years,’ Girl says.
‘Why?’ Boy asks. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why?’
Boy can’t tell if she’s on the verge of crying or speaking or hanging up. All he can think about is how close they used to be; how he used to take care of her when Mom was at work; how they shared a room up until he moved to Austin; how he knew her better than anyone, and being separated from her was as bad as losing an arm. He feels this then, on the bench outside Spider House, but he’s too intoxicated to put it into words.
The homeless man stinks of sour milk. His black pants are dappled with food and semen stains. Friend walks out with a plastic bag in his hand. Inside, a piece of carrot cake is pressed against a plastic container.
‘Who’s that?’ Friend asks with an alarmed look on his face.
‘Sister,’ Boy says.
The homeless man burps and licks his whisker-covered lips just like Glass Wings.
Friend grabs the phone from Boy and hangs up. ‘Not cool, man! Don’t call your sister right now!’
‘Y’all are on something,’ the homeless man says at the tail end of a sweetsick burp.
‘Come on,’ Friend says to Boy.
‘See, I told you,’ the homeless man says to the mangled creature sitting next to him. It’s an imp-sized being with a face like a burnt gargoyle. Boy can see it, Friend can’t.
‘Now,’ Friend pulls him to his feet. Boy looks back at the homeless man and the creature sitting next to him. He waves at them both. The creature waves back.
The two float down 30th Street, up the hill, left on Speedway. It should be Fall but it feels like summer. Outside Texas autumn heat wave. A blue Ford escort is parked in front of Boy’s home – Friend’s surprise. The car is littered in bumper stickers advertising bands, government injustices and peace.
‘Who?’ he asks.
‘My buddy, Aiden. He’s into all this weird electronic stuff.’
‘This is my surprise?’
‘Yeah, man. It’s going to be tripped out.’
‘You gave a stranger the key to my house?’
‘Relax, I told you it’d be fine. He’s an old friend. He’s not going to jack anything.’
~Do you feel fed up? Press one for often, two for occasionally, three for rarely, and four for never. Do you feel like you have nobody to turn to? Press one for often, two for occasionally, three for rarely, and four for never~
They enter Boy’s home to find a mess of electronics snaking around his living room. Colorful lights blink in syncopation to the sharp tick of a jarring techno song. Two portable LCD screens resting on their backs are playing the same video of an old black and white film. In the corner, a strobe light is flashing behind a coat rack.
‘What’s up?’ Friend says with a grin to Aiden.
Aiden is a thin man with a shaved head and a beard fit for a pigeon. A tattoo crawls up his neck and stops just behind his right ear. ‘I wish it were a little darker outside,’ Aiden says, ‘but the sun will set soon and the lights will look cooler then. He all right?’ He nods to Boy.
‘He’s bugging out a little. No worries, though.’
‘It happens to the best of us,’ Aiden says. ‘Powerful stuff?’
Friend says, ‘Not as good as the shit we got last time, but still, not bad. Mad tracers.’
The lights are a major distraction and they seem to be blinking at the pace of Boy’s heartbeat. Boy closes his eyes and starts to hold his breath. The longer he holds his breath, the darker the images on the inside of his eyelids become. With each inhalation, a pink color surfaces and spreads upwards towards his crown.
He wants to call his girlfriend, Salome, but told her he was going camping with Friend and that he’d be out of cell phone range. Besides, Friend has his phone. Besides, he needs to take a break from Salome and her violent night terrors. He’ll wake up next to her and she’ll be screaming, whispering, or crying. Occasionally, she’ll kick or hit him in her sleep. Frightening, really.
Boy stirs from his daydream of acid images and fleeting thoughts to find Aiden and Friend smoking weed out of a glass bowl. That soursweet smell. He declines the bowl, as it is waved towards him by Friend. He can’t imagine getting any higher than he already is.
‘I want to paint,’ he says, standing suddenly.
‘Chill,’ Friend says.
‘Paint.’
‘Dude, just be cool.’
‘That’s what the paper is for,’ Aiden says, pointing to the markers and sheets of white paper laid out on the table. ‘Draw all you want.’
‘Paint. Real paint.’
‘You got a blank canvas?’ Aiden asks.
‘Studio room. Wait, canvas, no. Handmade paper. It’s in there. Big spiral.’
Aiden looks from Boy to Friend.
‘You want to paint in there or in here?’ Aiden asks.
‘Do you want to watch?’ Boy asks them both.
‘Yeah, I’ll watch,’ Friend says, grinding his fingers into the yellow eraser from the toy store. ‘What are you going to paint?’ he asks, as Aiden gathers the supplies.
‘Sri,’ Boy says.
‘Sri, or Sri Sri Sri?’
‘Just one Sri.’
‘Yeah, damn that girl at Toy Joy and her “four Sris is too many” crap.’
‘Did you like her?’ Boy asks.
‘She was all right,’ Friend says. ‘That haircut looked stupid, though.’
‘It’ll grow back.’
‘Yeah, maybe I’ll get her number then.’
Boy slides off the armrest and onto the floor. He sits at the coffee table with his knees tucked under his body. Aiden drops a spiral bound collection of paper and a Converse shoebox full of supplies onto the table. Boy has better brushes and more paints in the other room, but the box is portable, and that’s all that matters at the moment.
‘Easel?’
‘You need that too?’
‘Please. Thanks. Please, if you wouldn’t mind.’
No outlines. No charcoal. No pencils. No plans. Just pigments with ridiculous names. Arylide Yellow RN, Quinacridone Red, Prussian Blue. Boy is becoming a paint nerd. The hues have yet to pay their dues, but when they do he’ll at least
know their names, which must count for something. Aiden returns with his easel.
Boy squirts two colors onto the easel. No sense in trying to figure out a color in this state of mind. He starts a crosshatch with the red using a painting knife. From there, he squeezes the yellow onto his fingers and reaches for a water bottle lying on the floor. Still a little left. He pours the water onto his fingers, flicking them at the paper. Yellow raindrops.
The paint on his fingers slide down to his wrist and he wipes them on his jeans. With a short flat brush, Boy streams calligraphic characters on top of the cross hatch. He lets nothing dry and everything blends together as soon as the brush touches the textured paper. He spells words no one knows, letters no one has ever written or seen before.
The brush is now saturated with red and yellow. Boy needs to clean it but doesn’t want to move. Sick of moving, sick of running, sick of turning the other cheek – face the canvas and the art and the people that stand in the way. Paint them Ocean Violet and Chromium Titanate. Resist the potent paint fumes.
Boy unrolls the left sleeve of his shirt, smearing it with paint. He bunches the cuff in the palm of his hand, dabbing it on top of the paper for added texture. He laughs at the seriousness in which he does this, laughs at what he must look like destroying his shirt with a mess of paint on a sheet of paper.
Just the thought of paper makes him laugh even harder. Paper holds everything. Constitutions, money, proof of birth, degrees, criminal records, food, books, evidence, evidence, evidence.
Sri, Sri, Sri.
His life is a series of papers that prove something or other and allow him to buy food, paints and anything else he desires so long as he has paper. He presses his palm in harder. He’s angry at the paper, angry that it controls him.
Don’t take it out on the piece.
Ten minutes later, Boy is blending a mixture of colors under the flashing strobe lights using – most inappropriately – a stipple brush. The murmur of a song that sounds like plastic bags rubbing together infiltrates his space.
‘Man, you can smell those paints,’ Friend says. ‘For real.’
Boy doesn’t care. His sister, the ghosts, his mother, the fact that he was laid off and is now a Human Guinea Pig, the medicine he’s been taking, the medicine he’s been taking, the medicine he’s been taking – everything pours from his paintbrush. His problems now seem so minute, so easily fixable. With a stroke of the brush they disappear. They turn into something else, something mangled, beautiful, strikingly human, somehow manageable.
‘Medicine,’ he says, dropping his paintbrush. Medicine. Medicine. Medicine.
Boy stumbles to his feet, darting to his bedroom to find the packets of experimental pills. He does this in the dark, visualizing everything and coming up right. He counts out fifteen thin packets. Excelsior is the name of the experimental medicine. Friend appears in the doorway behind him. His shadow is large and imposing.
‘You cool?’ he asks.
‘Cool,’ Boy says.
Boy heads to the kitchen sink with the packets of medicine. Aiden is leaning against the counter. He’s licking icing from the carrot cake off his fingers. He observes Boy curiously.
~Are you ready to throw it all away? Press one for yes, two for yes, three for yes, four for yes. Are you ready to report something to Jill? Press one for yes, two for yes, three for yes, four for yes~
‘Help me,’ Boy says to Friend. Together, they begin popping the experimental pills out of their foil packets.
Are you ready to throw it all away?
‘What kind of medicine y'all tossing?’ Aiden asks with icing on his beard.
‘You don’t want to know,’ Friend says.
‘That bad?’
‘Yup.’
The pills plink against the bottom of the sink. They cry out to him as they crawl over one another. Soon, they are drowning. Soon, they are spinning down the drain and Boy is laughing at the things that hold power over him and the extent he has gone to let them remain in control.
‘I’ve quit taking the medicine,’ Boy says, watching the last pill disappear into the drain.
He looks to Aiden, who doesn’t quite understand what’s going on but seems ok with it. He looks to Friend, who knows more than Aiden, but will never truly grasp the significance of his actions. Boy continues laughing and soon, Aiden and Friend are laughing too, Aiden’s beard covered in carrot cake and Friend grinding his fingers into his yellow eraser.
‘I’ve quit taking the medicine,’ he says again. ‘I’ve quit taking the medicine!’
Chapter 7: Salome
Boy’s Age: 24
Small bar on the East Side. Rio Rita.
Boy’s sketching a picture of a flower on a page ripped from a yellowed novel he found at a dusty thrift store. Nearby: a bearded hipster sunglasses at night plays the lead track from some forgotten band’s forgotten album. Further away: a long-haired loner reading a book by John Barth. Even further: a woman with a Hitler hairdo scrolls through her phone smacking on gum. Boy will never be hip enough for Austin, so he’s moving. Or at least he wants to move. Soon.
He squirts mustard onto a napkin. Aureolin with a touch of reddish yellow. The consistency isn’t quite that of an oil, but it will do. He uses the toothpick to shade in the tips of the mustard flower.
Flowering will be the name of his new project. A giant installation piece with so many handmade flowers that it will appear almost furry. Each piece made from a variety of materials cut out like paper snowflakes and grouped together. He will arrange them in a pattern, each ring a different color.
Boy has been working on the project off and on for two months now. It might take another year to make enough flowers from varying materials. He wants it to be a testament to time, a testament to waste – found items that have bloomed again, pieces of paper that should have been trashed or recycled by now. Wasted molecules. He sees it in his head, now let it become real.
He places the flower on the table, using his plate to partially cover the flower. He’s shy about his art, especially during its creation period. He hasn’t even told his girlfriend, Salome, about it. She’s at his house writing and he’s been instructed to scram. Boy hopes she doesn’t spend the night – he needs a break from her night terrors.
Salome will wake up screaming, beating her pillow sometimes, crying, attacking him. It’s gotten worse since the start of winter. She even choked him last night. He woke up with her hands around his neck. ‘I got you! Get back in the car you little rat!’ she screamed.
Hard to go to sleep after that; hard to go to sleep after she started crying because she felt bad for choking her boyfriend. For a while, he bought Xanax from Friend and would give her little pieces. This helped. But Friend ran out, and was now planning to go to Mexico to re-up, one trip Boy would never take again.
He feels a pair of eyes fall onto him as two women sit at a table nearby. An Asian lady and a redhead. The more beautiful of the two smiles at Boy. A little headband across her head holds her red hair back; a single dangling feather earring nearly reaches her shoulder. Boy nods his head and looks back at his plate.
The woman laughs and looks up again. Definitely made eye contact this time. The beautiful woman points at the chair next to her. Her Asian friend turns, looks at Boy, laughs. Maybe drunk. Boy glances down at the flower drawn on the page from an old book. It wasn’t an important page, just the back of the title page with the Library of Congress bullshit. Once Upon the Ganges. Might be a good book.
He flips through the pages and admires the typeface, eventually finding a note about the typeface at the back:
This book was set in a typeface called Sulloway. This distinguished letter was originally designed and cut by Edward Collins Sulloway in 1845 for Patrick North of the St. Vellum Press. In design, its face blends choice elements of classical and transitional serifs, with a horizontal stress…
‘Are you waiting for someone?’
Redhead is standing in front of him now, a little wob
bly, a little frail.
‘No,’ Boy says, suddenly feeling reclusive. He wants to sweep his art into his hands and hide it from her, doesn’t want to explain himself or the flower he’s made out of mustard.
‘Maeve,’ she says, extending her hand in a playful way.
‘Real name?’
‘Real enough. Why?’
‘Pseudonyms seem to be the go-to choice for our generation.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Boy says, thinking of his girlfriend, Salome, who writes erotic novels under the pseudonym, Salome. She also prefers to be called this rather than her given name of Samantha Wilkins.
‘So you’re alone here?’ Maeve asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Care to join us?’
‘Sure…’
Boy presses his finger against the mustard on the flower to see if it’s dry. It isn’t. Maeve sees the flower, smiles at him, and turns back to her table. In a hurry, he lays a waxy napkin on top of the flower to wipe up any excess mustard, finally putting the finished flower in his folder.
He walks to the bar in the other room to buy another beer. The female bartender is tattooed, large-chested, surly and dimpled. She could kick your ass. With one fluid gesture, she pops the top off his beer and the cap somersaults in the air. It plinks against the bar and tumbles into the trashcan. The judges raise their score cards: 9.5, 8.9, 9.6, 9.2, 9.1.
Keep your cool. Boy sits quietly next to Maeve, listening as the two women talk quickly and excitedly. He occasionally nods at them, agreeing with whatever they have to say.
Maeve has long red hair with light blonde streaks. Brindle. Her cheeks are puffy, cute. Her green eyes are shaded with white eyeliner, her nose wide and covered in freckles. She looks nothing like his girlfriend, Salome, with her wiry black hair, glasses, fish lips and thick little body.
He feels something under the table. Is that her hand?
Boy looks at her but she pretends not to notice. His eyes dart back to her Asian friend. She’s busy talking about ACL, or maybe it is the Austin Psych Fest, or maybe Fun Fun Fun Fest, or maybe Marley Fest, or maybe it is Art Outside. Austin seems to have more festivals than it does yoga studios.
Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller) Page 9