by Cole Alpaugh
“You dumbass,” Stoney said, then choked back another hit, spiraling tendrils of smoke rising from the corners of his mouth and out his nose. Chase thought Stoney looked like a curly haired blond wizard when that happened. Not the Wizard of Oz kind of wizard, but the Merlin Gandolf Frodo Baggins kind.
Chase’s brain was as foggy as the room. He was a bobble head doll with gigantic cheeks that he touched with his warm fingers. He needed to shave at some point and would kill for a bag of Fritos with their salty, crunchy goodness, oh, my. The cafeteria was closed, but there was a vending machine in the student center. If only he had a quarter.
“I need to find a quarter.”
“You lost your quarter.” Stoney pointed at the ceiling and Chase followed the wobbly finger down to the mess on the floor.
Yes, right, there was a quarter down there, he thought, surveying the immediate area for some silvery glint off Washington’s face or an eagle’s chest. The bits of trash and colored dirty clothing—combined with a dozen or so bong hits—made the floor a kaleidoscope of amazing textures and earthy hues.
“I have to focus.” Chase rubbed his face, then swallowed a shot of some harsh, clear alcohol his roommate shoved toward him. “This is really freaking important. This is my future.”
Stoney handed him the bong with its bowl packed tight. He flicked the lighter.
“Okay, last one.” Chase prepared by shaking his upper body and taking a few deep breaths.
“Heads,” Chase was accepting the summer journalism internship the Salisbury Daily Times had offered; “tales,” he was applying for a lifeguard job at a local community pool to work, party, and scam on bikini-clad girls until fall semester. David Eugene “Stoney” Steinmetz, his roommate for nearly three chaotic and often stoned years, was his connection for the lifeguard job. Stoney had miraculously risen through the ranks of lifeguard hierarchy, charged with training new guards and keeping children and adults safe for the last two summers, despite spending much of the time quietly sleeping in his perched chair behind mirrored sunglasses and an oversized umbrella. He’d fallen out of his chair at least a half dozen times, right onto the concrete deck. Luckily, he was always still drunk enough not to get hurt trying to break his fall.
Remembering he was on a mission, Chase handed back the spent bong and exhaled the smoke.
“I gotta find the quarter.” But Stoney’s latest stash of Columbian Gold had rendered him a spastic marionette. Pinocchio, he thought and tried to spell it while rolling off his cluttered twin bed to the cluttered floor. He was as careful as circumstances would permit to search while still preserving the outcome of the flipped coin. “This is vitally important to my current life situation.”
“You’re gonna fry your ass, son,” Stoney said, referring to the maze of stereo and hot plate wires. Their appliances all came from various trash days, and even the slummiest frat houses tossed out anything with cords frayed this badly. One day they were really going to come through on the threat of buying some electrical tape and making these things as good as new.
Chase paused to replay the coin’s arc, path, and last-known coordinates in his head. Under or behind his desk was the most likely spot.
Who had tossed used fucking condoms under here?
Oh, yeah. He should try calling that chick. Anna? Mary Ann? Ann Marie? If he could find this quarter he’d definitely call her. She smelled great and didn’t wear panties.
“The RA’s are gone, so I’m crankin’ this up.” Stoney brought Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” to life, which was distracting because it was the music Chase had used to nail that chick. Or was it? Maybe it had been Zeppelin. That chick smelled great. She drank a half gallon of sugary sangria and chased it with a pint of gin. She had the finest blond hair on her legs. She probably didn’t have to shave them, but her pit hair wasn’t cool. Next time, Chase thought, he was just gonna leave her shirt on. Problem solved.
“I think I found your driver’s license.” But the music and bubbles from the bong Stoney was hitting were too loud. He shouldn’t be driving anyway. Some ice cold sangria would sure hit the spot.
Chase found the dog-eared copy of last year’s February issue of Hustler Magazine.
“Picture of the World’s Grossest Sex Freaks!” announced the cover. And, “How to Buy Life Insurance.”
Chase tried flipping to the centerfold but most of the pages were stuck together. Fucking Stoney. Always the same shit. One of the guys from down the hall had left a pack of family vacation photos his mom had sent him on Chase’s desk while stopping by to score a few joints from Stoney. The guy—what’s his name?—remembered to get them the next day only to find them stuck together, tight as a brick. Stoney had defiled pictures of the guy’s mom and little sister, Minnie Mouse and Cinderella.
“Snow White is hotter than Betty Boop,” Stoney had quietly announced late that night before passing out with a smoldering joint in the corner of his mouth.
What the hell was he looking for down here? That chick’s number!
“Hey, Chase!” Stoney shouted from above. Side one of the album was already down to the last song, “The Great Gig in the Sky.” Had he really been down here that long? “I see it!” Stoney called.
Reaching forward to push himself back from under the desk, Chase accidentally grabbed the frayed stereo wires, which turned out to be an awful lot like being hit in the head with a shovel. He involuntarily jerked sideways, slamming his already stunned head into the side of the desk, splintering the wood and making the needle bounce across the record.
“What the fuck?” Stoney bumped him with his knees while lunging toward the turntable, as Chase made a feeble effort to simultaneously unclench his jaws, hands, and toes. “Dude, you just scratched the shit out of my record.”
Was that burning hair Chase smelled? Was that sizzling sound his head on fire?
From somewhere deep inside, Stoney’s lifeguard training kicked in and he rescued Chase from under the desk, pulling him out by his leather belt. “Dude, you musta touched the wire. I told you not to touch the wires. They’re totally electrified.”
Chase’s jaw was starting to ache like crazy, the record skipping to what sounded like a crackling heartbeat.
Shhh-thu-bump … shhh-thu-bump …
Getting no reaction, Stoney began chest compressions and Chase nearly threw up—which indeed could have been fatal at that point if he had aspirated it—as he began prying open his mouth to begin ventilation. The relief his molars felt from the unhinging was immediately tempered by that first dry, cotton-mouth kiss.
Chase recalled the old images of the long, sloppy wet kiss Stoney had given the CPR doll as a joke when he smuggled her back to their room one night. Chase never saw him hump it, but if ever there was a sure thing ...
Stoney’s own head bumped the desk and the tall bong he’d abandoned to rescue Chase tipped over. The pungent brown water cascaded over the back of Chase’s head, soaking his hair and both their shirts. Wow, that bong need to be cleaned, Chase thought. The record needle found a groove, killing the heartbeat and setting free Roger Water’s beseeching vocals.
“C’mon, you gotta come back to me, Dude.” Stoney huffed, pumping Chase’s chest and wiping nasty white spittle from his mouth, working like a true professional, despite the fact that neither Chase’s heart nor breathing had ever stopped.
“That’s it, walk to the light!” Stoney shouted, now thumping the patient’s chest with a closed fist. “Go toward the light!”
And from the panic in his eyes—was he also crying?—Chase knew just how good a friend Stoney was. He could sense how much he cared, despite being stunned and barely conscious from the 120 volts. Chase knew Stoney loved him as a brother despite the fact that he was pretty much beating him to death.
“Aaaaaaccckkkk,” Chase finally managed after Stoney removed his lips from a long, chest-expanding ventilation. Stoney grabbed him by his dank shirt and hugged, shaking and rocking him in a trembling embrace.
&n
bsp; “Oh, man, oh, man,” Stoney repeated, as they settled that way for a while, swaying slowly to the Pink Floyd. Chase suddenly remembered it really had been this album he’d screwed that girl to.
Chase wanted to tell him, but then decided it wasn’t important.
“I’m really gonna miss you this summer, you motherfucker,” Stoney whispered in his ear. Despite the bong hits and the blow to the head, Chase realized his friend had seen the quarter and it was heads.
Chapter 4
“Photography internship?” Chase was trying to keep pace with his new boss, who was jogging from copy editor desk to the press room and back again. The man in charge of his summer internship was a sweating flurry of cusses and thrown papers. Managing Editor Mack Butterfish’s once crisp white button-down shirt was streaked with black printer’s ink after clearing paper from a jammed gear in the press. His navy dress slacks had a six-inch split down the butt seam. It was apparently all hands on deck when something got in the way of the morning run. Even Chase’s palms were black.
“You called it a photo internship,” Chase tried again.
“It’s all journalism.” Butterfish coughed and spat as they bounded down a hallway and through a set of double-doors to the loading dock. Hundreds of heavy stacks of newspapers, all tied in neat bundles with thin kite string, were waiting on the wood platform. “You’re the kid from Mason, right?”
“Yeah, but …” Chase stopped, realizing he’d be completely screwed if he turned down the only spot available. He’d taken pictures for the school paper with the point and shoot. They sucked and were slightly out of focus, but only because he hadn’t really tried. With a foot in the door he could always talk his way into writing instead of shooting.
“You see that?” Butterfish pointed at the pavement below the loading dock. “You see those thirteen trucks lined up right there?”
Chase shook his head. It was barely dawn and he’d only slept three hours. Should he be seeing trucks?
“I have thirty thousand papers not being loaded into the backs of trucks at this very moment, but do you know what the real problem is?”
Again, Chase shook his head, taking a step back to avoid Butterfish’s jabbing finger.
“I have forty goddamn business owners who paid to have their ads tossed into the front yards of thirty thousand goddamn subscribers.” Butterfish was nearly yelling. “And not one of my goddamn drivers is here!”
Butterfish hiked his black framed glasses with the knuckle of his right middle finger, probably to avoid smudging them with ink. The overhead lights gave his round face a yellow sheen. Butterfish opened his mouth as if to continue the rant, but spun on his heels instead. He kicked back through the double doors so hard that a square pane of glass cracked and fell out of its heavy frame. Chase followed at a safe distance.
Butterfish stormed into the newsroom, grabbed a phone from the nearest reporter’s desk and began yelling at the receiver. When the phone rang on the adjacent desk, he added it to his other ear and kept up the unbroken tirade. With deadline long past, the room was otherwise barren except for one old guy a few computer terminals down a narrow isle. The man appeared to be trying to hide from the commotion, pecking lightly at his keyboard as a meandering wire of cigarette smoke drifted from an overflowing ashtray toward the bank of fluorescents above his desk. His eyes darted from the screen to Butterfish and back.
Chase sat on the corner of a metal desk and inspected his stained hands while Butterfish continued his rant to the phones about the missing drivers.
The old guy coughed and cleared his throat. He held up his phone’s handset and pointed at it to get Butterfish’s attention. “Call on four, boss.”
“This better be somebody with one hell of a good explanation.” He dropped one phone and jammed the number four button down with a stubby index finger. “Butterfish here!”
There was an almost deafening pause, silence except for the ticking of the AP photo transmitter across the room and the hum of the lights. As he watched the transformation of Butterfish’s expression, Chase imagined these might be the sounds familiar to a professional bomb diffuser. It went from angry, to puzzled, to horrible realization.
“Is it about the funeral procession, boss?” The old guy at the computer rubbed out his cigarette.
“This didn’t happen.” Butterfish let both phones drop from his hands. They clanked off the desks and hit the floor. Butterfish went for the men’s room door.
Chase looked at the old man and shrugged his shoulders to ask if he knew what had happened. The man eyed the bathroom door and motioned for Chase.
“Mack was supposed to send a whole team to cover a funeral and then the procession.” The man lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and checked his watch. “The show’s probably wrapping up right now.”
“What’s it got to do with the delivery trucks?”
“It’s one of their boys that’s dead. He was supposed to be loaded up at the funeral parlor and shipped to the graveyard in the first truck. Real sad story. And Mack had forked over enough cash to paint up all the trucks for a photo op. Not something a tightwad like him would do unless he had bigger plans.”
The man paused and cocked his head. It sounded like Butterfish had turned all the faucets in the restroom on full blast.
“Dead kid was kind of a moron,” the man finally said, then loaded his lungs with more smoke. “Not a run of the mill retard, just gullible and dumb as a shingle. Name was Clayton Butterfish, same as Mack. An old family name, there’s tons of ’em here on the shore. Some are good and some are mean as snakes. This one was too dumb to be either. Don’t matter, though, after you’re dead. People mostly forget what degree of shitheel you were on two feet.”
“But why such a big deal?”
“Mack had two reporters work up a real nice feature on the kid. Then he ran the raw copy past one of the girls who’d move on over to the Washington Post from this shithole. She loved it, saw all the possibilities for a real tearjerker. She was here for two days and talked to everybody under the sun.”
Chase’s entire body tingled at the idea of going from a newsroom like this to the most important newspaper in the world.
“Mack convinced the Post editors to leave everything up to him. This is his territory, after all, so their reporter was sharing a byline with our guys. Mack screwed up something fierce this morning. I’m surprised he isn’t on the horn trying to get the kid dug back up for a redo.”
“Wouldn’t at least one reporter have gone to the funeral without being assigned?”
“Nah, it just doesn’t work that way around these parts.” The man tapped his cigarette into the overflowing ashtray. “You’re either on the clock or off it. And you just don’t see a whole lot of mixing among drivers and reporters. Two different bars after quitting time. No, Mack let a big fish get away. Today’s front page should have had a four-column shot of those shiny Times trucks coming across the bridge over the Wicomico, the sun rising up from behind. But now the weekly cross town has first crack. Instead of interviewing our drivers, they’ll talk to the half-wit’s nutty aunt about how Little Clayton had gotten his life turned around after setting fire to a litter of kittens. Kid was dumb enough to take Polaroids to show his teacher.”
“Jesus.”
“Wasn’t really the kid’s fault.” The man used the stub of his cigarette to light a fresh one. “And, speaking of Jesus, he found Christ and gave up heroin while at a camp for young offenders up in Delaware. You get the picture?”
“So what was the good angle for a story on him?”
The old man’s fingers clattered across his keyboard. “C’mere and read for yourself. Here’s the copy the Post girl turned in. It might run like this in her big city paper, but it needs a hard massage for our readers.”
Chase came around behind his desk, fanning away smoke with one hand. He leaned over the man and scrolled down with the arrow key.
***
Leon Tooman didn’t particularly like p
eople. The girl who’d asked him a bunch of questions about Clayton had a decent enough rack, but her ass lacked any sort of real beef to hold his interest. You give a woman a steady diet of fried soft shells and beer and that problem tends to go away. And having to talk about the dead nitwit choked him up bad. He hadn’t wanted to tell how he’d helped kill the boy, but feared losing his job by refusing to talk.
Clayton Butterfish had been drawn to Leon mostly just because he didn’t go out of his way to cause him any extra pain. Didn’t make fun of him and didn’t flick cigarette butts at him when he walked past. At least that was the theory Leon had come up with. Leon had been put in charge of training the idiot kid to handle a delivery route in one of the Daily Times trucks. Kid drove just fine, never got a case of road rage, and never showed up any drunker than anyone else. The real pain in the ass was hanging around the dock with the CB turned on because, after dropping the last bundle, the boy would just pull the damn truck over to the side of the road and sit there like he was waitin’ for a big ol’ train to go by. It was the damndest thing, like the kid had some sort of switch problem inside his brain. Leon would click down to channel three and shout himself hoarse getting Clayton to pick up the damn microphone and answer. If he couldn’t get him on the horn, Leon would have to go track him down and fetch him back.
Two hours after every other man had gone home, Leon might finally get an answer. “This is Clayton Butterfish,” he’d say real slow and drawn out.
“I know who the hell you are,” Leon would shout. “What in the name of Christ is wrong with you, boy? Get your ass back here!”
But Leon knew exactly what was wrong with him. Clayton had spilled his guts in his never ending gum-flapping way that would have driven just about every other human to the nut house. Not that Leon Tooman cared or was all that interested in anything the boy went on about. Leon helped Clayton load every morning, then went over his route time and again. All the while, the noise just kept coming out of the half-wit’s pie hole.