Metro

by Stephen Romano

  He’s reminded of Popeye and his spinach.

  He marvels at his bizarre double life. He writes his stories and moves through it all like a phantom wearing flesh. He finds release in his art—which is violent and crazy and filled with deep confession, disguised as science fiction. He knows one day he’ll find his true reward for all this. Maybe.

  Then he meets Andy.

  • • •

  This is five years into Mark’s tenure in Austin.

  It’s 2010 now.

  Andrew Worthington Culpepper becomes the “A” in the future House of JAM when he answers Mark’s ad on Craigslist for a new roommate—six months before Jollie comes along. The kid knocks on the door, plops down in the big comfy Goodwill couch, and it’s love at first sight. He explains to Mark that he’s a kid from Kansas—even though his voice sounds casual and surfy, like an LA hipster—and he was recently relocated by way of five or six crash pads in Austin, and is totally tired of couch surfing now that he has a real job, slinging fried green tomatoes at Kerbey Lane. He lies that he is twenty-one, and doesn’t even have a fake ID to back it up. And, sure enough, one of the ladies Andy brings home about a day after he moves in—crabby Rachel West, she of the big boobs and even bigger wallet—outs the kid when she announces in a bold and haughty manner that she is making the beer run without any pretty jailbait to get her arrested. As she slams the door behind her, Mark scrawls that all-knowing look of Are you fucking kidding me? across his face. And then he pounces on Andy and grabs his wallet right from his pocket—which shows that the kid is just now nineteen, going on twenty-one.

  “Why all the subterfuge, man?” Mark says, tossing back the wallet.

  Andy looks up from his spot on the couch, half-naked in nothing but baggy pants, and says something smart: “What’s subterfuge mean?”

  “It means you lied to me about how old you are.”

  “I didn’t want you to worry about stuff and things.”

  “Why worry? This house is only full of drug dealers at all hours. Why not add corrupting a minor to our list of crimes?”

  “I’m not a minor.”

  “You’re not old enough to drink. That probably counts.”

  “If you want me to leave, I understand.”

  “Crimes, I can handle. Just don’t lie to me anymore, man.”

  “I really wanted to live here. The second I saw the place, I knew it was home.”

  Andy looks around the living room.

  It’s already covered in memorabilia and madness from many, many years of entrenchment—the wildest-looking house on the South Side. Pam Grier and Luke Skywalker and Tyler Durden wink back at him.

  “I’m sorry for lying,” Andy says. “I can help with extra bill money or something like that, if it will help.”

  “That wouldn’t be fair. Don’t sweat it.”

  “You should have seen your face when Rachel busted me. And when you looked at my ID. It was pretty funny.”

  “I was falling into an open manhole.”

  “What?”

  “That’s wisdom from Mel Brooks.”

  “Who’s Mel Brooks?”

  “Christ, kid . . . you really do need to live here, don’t you?”

  “Oh, wait a minute, wasn’t he the guy in the Lethal Weapon movies?”

  “Um. No.”

  “Oh.”

  Mark stares at him for a long moment, with a tight-lipped smile. Then they both start laughing.

  Mark plops down next to the soon-to-be-Boy Prince and lets out a long sigh, resting his bones like a tired parent again. “Mel Brooks is one of the founding fathers of post-modern comedy in film. He directed Blazing Saddles, which was really an artifact of its time. And Young Frankenstein too.”

  “Oh yeah! I’ve seen those!”

  “Of course you have.”

  “They use the N-word a lot in Blazing Saddles.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Isn’t that kinda . . . I dunno, racist or something?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. You can see the movie now as a social statement on top of a really raunchy comedy, or you can be completely offended. I think being offended may be part of the joke.”

  “That’s kinda cool.”

  “Anyway, Mel Brooks once gave an interview where he said comedy and tragedy were basically the same thing, but it all depended on where you were standing.”

  “Like whether you’re black or not?”

  “It’s even simpler than that. He said that tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die.”

  Andy starts laughing again, but it’s a nervous thing. Like he almost gets it.

  Mark looks him right in the eye. “You can stay, kiddo. Just no more lies, okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Andy makes it up to Mark later that night by talking Rachel into fucking him.

  Only takes six drinks, really.

  • • •

  It’s the first time Mark Jones has had sex in over ten years—since those lustful ladies were given to him to prove that love was a lie. It’s amazing and sweaty. But it’s over all too soon. Rachel is built like a working girl—the nasty kind—and her lips taste like beer and bubble gum. He wonders what club she strips in about halfway through, noticing how dead her eyes are. She is lovely, though—couldn’t have asked for much better to break his dry spell. But she doesn’t ever climax, and gets extra crabby about that. Actually storms out and slams the door.

  Mark smokes a joint and stares up at the ceiling, thinking of how lonely he is.

  That’s the part he was born to play.

  Even the pretty waitresses at the Cajun place where he still works a few shifts—yummy twentysomethings with ripe butts and heads filled with earthy illusion—won’t have much to do with him. He is frumpy and sad, a tortured artist. A random slob with the most common last name on the Internet.

  He’s played his part to perfection.

  A couple of goth chicks once showed some interest—probably picking up on his killer instinct, simmering just beneath the surface—but the mating ritual has always confused Mark, and he’s never known what to do about any of it.

  • • •

  So Andy teaches Mark a few things.

  Teaches him how women think, what they really want, how easy it is just to be yourself around them.

  Which is a complete fucking joke, Mark thinks.

  And then Mark thinks some more. He thinks he sees a world that he envies, and that he wants to be a part of that world so badly.

  The same way a puppy wants to be human.

  • • •

  Thus the Alliance forms.

  This is what Mark calls their friendship when they are both still addicted to message boards and digital pick-up bars. Andy burns whole weeks after work chasing virtual tail on Myspace (where the ladies never expect you to come at them, even after Justin Timberlake bought the ranch and it’s supposed to be waaaaay cooler than Facebook now) and sets up double dates with him and Mark and Total Ultimate Hottie Strags (which is short for “stragglers,” which is what you call beautiful, gullible teen queens who still hang around on Myspace). It’s always some weird low-rent adventure. To accentuate the weirdness, they blow their paychecks on dope—nothing too heavy, just weed or the occasional eight ball—and Mark watches the kid lose his mind with amused incredulity, not understanding how anyone can’t handle six rails of the good stuff.

  And they share.

  Oh, man, do they ever share.

  Girls, girls, girls.

  Just in the second week after Andy’s arrival, they hook up with Belle the Stripper and Carmine the Legal Secretary, both of them dumb and gorgeous, both of them as interchangeable as Barbie dolls run through a Xerox machine. All Mark can remember now about the one he ended up with—who ma
y or may not have been Belle—is that she had a big blonde shape living on her head.

  Everything else is a blur, like most of their early adventures.

  And then . . .

  There is Jollie.

  • • •

  It happens at one of their parties, of course. She is a friend of a friend who is the editor of a local news rag about paranormal phenomena. Jollie’s writing a political column for them, and she’s full of piss and vinegar tonight, having just come from her word machine. Mark thinks she is floating above everyone else in the room when he first sees her, spewing her amazing line to a green-haired punker in a Converse Windbreaker. He keeps looking at the silly kid and telling himself that there’s something really wrong with a Sex Pistols fan who dresses like Puff Daddy.

  But Jollie is the main event.

  Mark almost feels like the ground leaves his feet as he makes his way over to her, planting himself there, lost instantly in her words, which are the words of someone self-educated, self-absorbed, and no-bullshit—right in your face. She’s talking to the green Sex-Daddy guy about something vaguely political—because, she’ll tell you, everything is vaguely political. She’s talking about the evils that men do. Because that’s what she does. Mark takes a hit of liquid courage—it’s just rum and Coke tonight, he and Andy did all the blow earlier that afternoon—and plunges in with both feet.

  “Ever see a grown man naked?”

  That’s the first thing Jollie says to him. He just walks right over and Jollie looks right at him and she says that, and he makes a funny face and says, right back: “I saw Peter Graves naked once.”

  “Did he have a large member?”

  “I’m not sure. I was distracted by his winning personality.”

  “Cool points for that. Most people look right at a man’s dick when they see him naked, and they play hide and seek with it, like it’s not totally obvious. I mean, just take a good long look at the fucker and call a spade a spade. Tell him he’s got a fungus growing there or a nice healthy stretch of real estate. That’s the problem most people in this country have—they don’t see a dick. They see what’s wrong with themselves.”

  Mark feels instantly dumb. “You don’t think it’s just the social contract kicking in when you see a grown man naked? Isn’t it not polite to point at a fungus?”

  “That’s not social-contract shit—the social contract is deader than Led Zeppelin in a gay bar. I’m talking about social self-delusion. You see something that’s obvious and you pretend it’s something else—or you make up some elaborate reason to be offended.”

  Mark thinks about Mel Brooks, then makes another funny face and shakes his head, trying to look as innocent as possible, even smiling at Sex-Daddy with the green hair, who might be her boyfriend. “So . . . I guess I came in really late on this one.”

  “No, actually, you’re just in time. I’m getting a little bored with mister punk-rock-changed-the-world-and-I-should-know-it over here.” She aims a finger at Sex-Daddy, who snorts, saying something vaguely unintelligible under his breath, and Mark realizes how drunk the guy is with a far-off sense of relief.

  Definitely not the boyfriend.

  At the same time, Jollie is sizing Mark up, her big eyes beaming in the half-dark of the living room. Scanning and analyzing like hell. Her first impression of him is strange and yummy—that’s what she’ll tell you now if you ask her, and lots of people have. She’ll tell you she has a knack for spotting the most tortured artist in the room. She’ll tell you she’s drawn to real genius like a squeaky cartoon girlie-mouse to an oversize block of cheese, and she’ll blink her eyes fast, five times in a row, to underscore the point.

  All that social business spiraling off from a riff about seeing a grown man naked and Peter Graves, it’s all shtick from the first Airplane movie, of course, and the kid with the green hair—who wasn’t even born when that flick first came out—has no idea what they are really talking about.

  “I never saw a grown man naked,” Sex-Daddy slurs. “That’s fag shit.”

  “Eloquent and insightful,” Jollie says, looking right at Mark with those cartoon mouse eyes, and he can tell she’s really saying, What did I tell you?

  “Brilliant minds do think alike,” Mark says to her.

  She looks back at Sex-Daddy with an apologetic smirk, pointing at Mark. “I believe my new friend here is more comfortable with his masculine side, isn’t he? That is, of course, only if he remembered to get Peter Graves’s autograph when they were hanging out in the shower.”

  “He autographed my penis,” Mark says. “Wanna see?”

  “It’s in permanent marker, I’m sure.”

  “Invisible ink, actually.”

  Jollie laughs. “In touch with his masculinity and secure about the size of his dick.” And then she turns back to Mark, still smiling. “I think we should be best friends at once.”

  Mark gives her a vaguely suspicious look. “So . . . how old are you, fair lady?”

  “Just answer me one question first.”

  “Anything.”

  “If you were traveling in a car and going at the speed of light, and then you turned your lights on, would they do anything?”

  “That’s a Stephen Wright joke.”

  She laughs. “Oh my. I do think we love each other, don’t we?”

  “Hey, fuck you, man,” says Sex-Daddy, and then he pukes all over himself.

  Jollie affords the mess a half-smile and then pulls Mark toward the music in the center of the room. “He must be full. Let’s ignore him.”

  “Like true hipsters.”

  “All fucking hipsters must fucking die.”

  “I’ll help you kill them. I have a gun in my room.”

  That bounces right off her head. That’s what Mark thinks anyway.

  “I’ve just turned twenty-two,” she says, bowing with a silly smirk. “I’m legal and the age of a lamb. And you must be the infamous Mark Jones. Your friend Andy told me a lot about you.”

  “Lies, every word.”

  “He said you were charming and brilliant.”

  “Well, those words were true.”

  “This place is famous. You two are rock stars.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Heard it on the radio, of course.”

  “Who listens to the radio anymore?”

  “I do, Mark Jones. And I hear the faithful speak of many things.”

  “Of shoes and ships and sealing wax?”

  “Of cabbages and kings.”

  Mark laughs. “Naturally.”

  Jollie laughs too. “You know, Lewis Carroll was a pervert. Alice in Wonderland was actually a little girl in the neighborhood he was in love with.”

  “Did you hear that on the radio too?”

  “No, it was in a movie I saw once.”

  Mark searches for it and is amazed to find the title. “Dreamchild. That’s an old one. I only saw it once myself.”

  She stops in her tracks, a little stunned. “I’ve never met anyone who saw that movie.”

  “Then you have to marry me,” he says.

  “Set it up. I’m great with a casserole and we both love Peter Graves naked. It’s a done deal.”

  Mark smirks. “Should we invite Lewis Carroll to the ceremony?”

  “I have a feeling he’d get drunk and embarrass himself.”

  “I’ll shoot him for you.”

  “What kind of gun do you have?”

  Ah. It didn’t bounce.

  “I’m not sure,” Mark says, smiling weirdly. “I should probably look these things up, huh?”

  “Well, if it’s a love gun, make sure it’s by KISS. All the other love guns suck.”

  Sex-Daddy stumbles back over and deliriously tries to tell Mark to fuck off again, and Jollie tips him over with one finger. The
kid crashes on his back and passes out with one quick spasm.

  “Just two words for ya, kid,” she says. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Mark’s weird smile turns into big laughter.

  She’s a keeper alright.

  “I’m writing all this down later,” he says. “Fair warning.”

  “See? You need me around! I’m brilliant and amazing! I shall become the princess of the Kingdom, and our adventures will become legend.”

  She already is, Mark thinks.

  And she just named our home.

  • • •

  Their first conversation lasts for three hours straight, until everyone is gone, Andy holed up in his room with his latest conquest, the two of them facing each other in coiled-spring crouches on the couch, poised like jungle cats for the next mouthful of fresh nerd fodder, anxious and ravenous, lost in one another. The music never stops because Jollie hijacked the CD player early on with one of her famous eight-hour MP3 discs, a never-ending assault of hip-hop and pop-rockers and trippy sixties throwbacks—drunk-and-heavy stuff like Jimmy Page, who wrote the rule book, all the way around to Seals & Crofts, who sound like feather tickles on Sesame Street. Plus, every song ever recorded by the Bird and the Bee, who happen to be her favorite band this week. She says they are the Captain & Tennille of the apocalypse, and he loves her for it. He even says that to her—that she is the lady of all his dreams made flesh—and she understands that he is serious, even as they laugh at it together, and the night is soon gone, and then it is morning, and they are bonded forever in a bottomless maelstrom of machine guns and mobsters and the real truth of the world, lurking behind the smiles of Bill O’Reilly and Rachel Maddow, bad movies and dirty jokes and blaxploitation films so completely racist that they cancel out the social debt record on the black side of the line, knowledge that is power and true enlightenment in the face of letting that which does truly not matter go right the hell away, the shape of true friendship, the form of real love, all under the soundtrack to ­Inception—which, Jollie says when it comes on her mix CD, is mesmerizing and unforgettable in its Hollywood pretension and bombastic overcompensation—the ghost of the great John Barry working miracles through the muscular mediocrity of Hans Zimmer.