King Dork

by Frank Portman

Since the whole “Thinking of Suicide?” debacle, I was supposed to tell Little Big Tom and Carol where I was going every time I left the house. Maybe they thought I’d slip up and say “well, Mom, I’m off to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge—oops! I mean…,” and then they’d know to withhold their permission and avert a great American tragedy. In fact, though, I was finding that playing D and D at Sam Hellerman’s house was all the excuse I ever needed.

  “Slay an orc with a lightning bolt for me!” said Little Big Tom as I headed out the door.

  Now, you’re going to think I’m nuts, but I spent quite a bit of time during the ride over to Salthaven thinking about Timothy J. Anderson and Tit. I mean, I was wild with anticipation over the reunion with the elusive fake Fiona; and I was still reeling from the surprising conclusion to my inept attempt at telephone communication. “You’d better come over, then.” Sounded pretty fucking promising. Great song title, too.

  But while one part of my mind was picturing Deanna Schumacher naked, seminaked, outfitted in fake mod and schoolgirl fetish gear, tied to a pole, sitting on a motorcycle, and so forth, another part of my mind was trying to figure out why The Seven Storey Mountain, CEH 1963, had contained a funeral memorial card for a funeral that didn’t appear to have occurred, for a person who didn’t appear to have existed.

  If the card wasn’t a funeral card, I couldn’t think what else it might have been for. It was very much like the card for my dad’s funeral, except that it contained a lot less information and no photo. There was a cross on one side; the quotation, date, and location were centered on the other. It didn’t seem like very good printing, and the amateurishness was one of the reasons it looked so creepy and disturbing. But assuming it was for a funeral, why had there been nothing about it in the newspaper? The church would probably have a record of it somewhere, as would the city or county. I’m sure it was possible to track it down, if I had the energy and inclination.

  Did I? I was starting to realize that Tit’s code and the mystery of Timothy J. Anderson, as exciting as it had seemed at first, had been distracting me from what I really hoped to learn from all this. I found I didn’t really care all that much about Timothy J. Anderson. What I really wanted was to get an idea of who my dad had been, the kinds of thoughts he had had, the kind of world he had inhabited, things that were still dark to me. I had started out with a simplistic, unquestioned caricature of my dad, the Charles Evan Henderson I had known as an eight-year-old. Now I didn’t even have that. Tit and Timothy J. Anderson had crowded my dad out of the picture. I realized I had been looking at the memorial card as a kind of sign from beyond, which was pretty nutty. What had I been thinking?

  Maybe there was no real message: kids do bizarre things and construct elaborate games to drive away the boredom. Tit could very well have been playing some nonsensical game with no relation to actual reality, and I was just falling for it decades later, very much like how Little Big Tom misread the Talons of Rage fantasy blades, or how my mom had misread “Thinking of Suicide?” It was weird to think that I was playing the role of the Clueless Adult from the Future, but maybe I kind of was.

  The whole thing left me with an empty, lonely feeling. I did know one thing, however: I didn’t much like Tit. There was something nasty about his note and about the fact that he had taken such care to encipher part of it, and had a sort of—what? Gleeful? Yeah, a gleeful, flippant attitude, when the subject matter was pretty somber. And including the ramoning boast in the same breath as the reference to the funeral and to being tied up and whipped—well, this Tit was clearly a weird guy.

  Then again, there was Deanna-Fiona’s sexy stomach and her “maybe you’d better come over, then” to look forward to and be nervous about. Why was I obsessing over Timothy J. Anderson? Under the circumstances, it was a crazy thing to do. I got a bit lost in the (devil-head) labyrinth of plazas, terraces, caminos, lanes, vistas, circles, and courts, but I finally made it to North del Norte Plaza Circle in Salthaven with nearly an hour to spare before Deanna/Fiona’s pumpkin meter was set to run out at ten-fifteen.

  As directed, I “parked” before I reached the Schumacher residence (hiding my bike in some bushes a couple of houses down) and walked as quietly as I could down a path running alongside the house. When I reached the side door, I tapped lightly. And I was pretty freaked out by what I saw when the door opened.

  FOX ON THE RUN

  I was in a kind of daze as I followed Deanna Schumacher through the door, down a dark hall and some stairs, and into a basement bedroom. Because as soon as I saw her, I knew that this was not, in fact, the Fiona of the fake-mod party. She was much shorter, and kind of chunky, though not chunky in a bad way—she was actually pretty sexy and curvy, to be honest. My Fiona had been taller and much skinnier. Even allowing for the headiness of the moment and the mists of memory, there was just no way you would find anything like the Fiona stomach underneath Deanna Schumacher’s loose, untucked blouse. No way.

  I just stood there in Deanna Schumacher’s room, not knowing what to say. Now, I feel safe in assuming that that’s what I would have done in any case. But if I had had my Fiona standing in front of me, it would have been a different type of speechlessness. How had this mistake, if mistake it had been, come about? Somehow all roads led to Sam Hellerman in that line of inquiry, and for some reason I wasn’t really in the mood for thinking about Sam Hellerman at the moment. So I examined Deanna Schumacher and tried to shift gears, in a dilemma I never imagined I’d have: what do you say to a girl you have never made out with at a party while she was in a fake-mod costume but who has nevertheless invited you to a secret tryst in her bedroom without realizing that you thought she was someone else? We had not, as it turned out, met at a party. And we did not, accordingly, have any matters to discuss, like I had said. Not really.

  She wasn’t wearing a school uniform like I had expected, but she did have on a pretty short skirt over bare legs and the loose blouse I mentioned. She was actually quite pretty, in a mousy/nerdy way (which I found I really liked). The glasses were sexy, and she somehow managed to keep her mouth slightly open at practically all times. It was just naturally that way, I guess. Naturally hot.

  “Take off your coat and stay a while,” she said.

  I threw my army coat on the floor, and then felt a bit embarrassed when she immediately scooped it up and put it on a chair.

  She asked how my mom and Amanda were doing. The fact that she knew so much about me and my family would have been pretty spooky coming from the real fake Fiona, but coming from the fake fake Fiona it didn’t have the same effect. And while I had been walking in and planning my dialogue and checking out her legs and so forth, I had also put two and two together and realized that not only must she have known Susye Teneb, but also that there had been a Didi a grade ahead of me at McKinley Intermediate, and that this was probably her. She must have gone on to Immaculate Heart Academy rather than public high school, which happened sometimes, especially with delinquent or troubled girls. So her knowledge of the Henderson family and my nickname wasn’t all that surprising.

  “I never got to say,” she said, suddenly very serious, “how sorry I was to hear about your father.” I was stunned, both by the unexpected condolences and by the even more unexpected grace with which she offered them. “My father was with the Santa Carla coroner’s office, and he speaks very highly of him.” Stunned. Again.

  I still hadn’t said a word. She motioned me over to sit next to her on the ruffly, frilly bed.

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning thanks for being sorry to hear about my dad, and also for letting me sit on her bed next to her. The silence that followed could be seen as respectful, excruciating, peaceful, tortured, uncomfortable, exciting, tense, or divine, depending on how you looked at it.

  “What have you been up to, Tom-Tom?” she eventually said.

  “I’m in a…band,” I said. “A band.” And even though the current band name, Balls Deep, had been fixed at least till after the Festival of Lights
, the habit of a lifetime asserted itself. “Super Mega Plus,” I added. Me on guitar/vox; Sam Hell on bass, prevarication, and procuring young girls under false pretenses; Brain-Dead Panchowski on irregular timekeeping; first album A Woman Knows. But I didn’t say that last part. “We’re playing at lunch lunch at Hillmont in a few weeks.”

  “Lunch-lunch?” I was getting a little tired of that joke, to be honest. Then she said: “Tom-Tom the rock star. Look at you.” I’d rather you didn’t, actually. Then, I kid you not, she said: “You’re so cool.” Well, I mean: certainly not. I couldn’t sort out the sarcasm from the politeness from the sincerity. There was a tiny bit of sincerity, I thought, wasn’t there? Maybe not. Maybe it was all politeness. She was a very, very polite young thing. Even her mockery was kind of polite.

  She grabbed my wrist to look at my watch, and I thought she was going to go all Dr. Hexstrom on me and say “I’m sorry but our time is up,” but then she suddenly turned around and straddled me and after shooting me an unreadable look leaned in and started to lick my lips. I was, again, taken aback, but I knew what to do. Or I thought I did. This time, the kissing part was going much better, but when I reached beneath her blouse and located her left breast just under the front of her bra and started to squeeze it Fiona style with my nails against my palm, so it went nails–upper nipple–bra-palm, she squirmed, and not in a good way. And when I tried it again, she twisted away a bit, and I paused and made a note to self: not all girls like the nipple thing. Check. She hadn’t been too fazed, though, and she continued the kissing, which was a lot sloppier and—what? Wild? Yeah, wet and wild. Sloppier, wetter and wilder than it had been with Fiona, anyway. I hadn’t known there were so many variations.

  So my right hand had been rebuffed, but I reached up with the left and placed it neutrally yet with reverence on the other breast, which felt very nice. See, I figured I’d let the right one cool off for a while. I moved my rebuffed hand down to her thigh and then started sliding it up toward her butt, while we were both still slobbering on each other’s faces, her tongue ring clicking occasionally against my teeth. Then, feeling no resistance, I slid my fingers up even farther. I don’t even know how to describe what that felt like; there isn’t anything remotely like it to compare it to. Let’s just say it was really, really nice.

  She leaned back and laughed just a bit with that open-mouth thing she did and said, “You really know your way around a girl.”

  Now, I had to laugh at that, because it was so, so, so not true. Probably just more politeness. They grow ’em up sweet and well mannered in the Catholic church, I can tell you that right now.

  What happened next was: she stopped kissing me, leaned back, snatched my wrist to look at my watch, and then looked at me. My return look said “what?” but I was prepared to be shown the door at any moment.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” she said finally in a matter-of-fact tone, “giving you some head.” Well, I guess she could tell I wouldn’t mind it all that much either, because she added, “Why don’t you get in the bed?” And she leaned over and pulled back the Holly Hobbie bedcover.

  I scrambled back quickly, not knowing exactly how what was going to come next would end up coming, or even knowing what that would be with much specificity.

  “With your pants on, huh?” she said. “Well, that’s different.”

  Too late, I realized I had committed some horrible (devil-head) faux pas. I quickly got rid of my shoes and slithered out of my jeans and sat there in my U.S. Army shirt and white BVDs leaning against Deanna Schumacher’s headboard. It had a horse on it. I looked pretty stupid, I’m sure, and I’m not surprised that Deanna Schumacher started snickering a little bit. “You’ve got to get some boxers,” she said.

  What she did then was kind of weird, or I thought it was weird. She put her glasses on the pillow next to me, slid under the sheet, and put it over her shoulders like it was Superman’s cape or something; and then she moved the sheet so that it was over her head, too; and then she kind of swooped down and the official blow job part of the program began. I wasn’t really in a position to complain, but the sheet was kind of a bummer. I wanted to watch, to see what it looked like, as I had been fantasizing about this precise scenario since time immemorial and I was pretty interested in how the reality would match up to the pretend images and the porn. She clearly didn’t like being observed while she worked, however. She also wasn’t very into having a person’s hands on her head during this operation, even though I couldn’t help putting them there anyway, just a bit. That wasn’t a deal-breaking faux pas, though. I realized, with a bit of a shock, that even King Dork, the (devil-head) embodiment of the faux pas, hadn’t committed a deal-breaking faux pas the whole time. Maybe, in the end, there weren’t any deal-breaking faux pas in this situation. I didn’t have a lot of data at my disposal, you understand.

  It was great. It really was. But I was also very aware of the ticking pumpkin-meter, and it made me nervous and distracted. Yeah, that was probably it.

  At one point she leaned up, the sheet around her face like a—what’s it called? Babushka, I think. But she didn’t say “matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.” What she said, in a hurried whisper, was:

  “We only have around ten minutes left, Tom-Tom.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. It was nice to get the reminder, though hearing her say it made me even more nervous. However, I wasn’t going to let this one go. It was my big chance. I concentrated and replayed my memory of the episode with the real Fiona in my head, as I had done hundreds of times before, and it relaxed and excited me at the same time as it always did. We were back on the right track. And it wasn’t long before I was feeling glad all over, believe me.

  Then she emerged from her little sheet fort, leaned up, and pulled my hair back from my face so it was flat on top of my head, staring at me up close from above for what seemed like quite a while, despite the still-ticking clock. Then she said:

  “My boyfriend gets off at ten, and he’s going to be here any minute, so you’re going to have to get out of here. Don’t”—she paused—“Don’t, um, please don’t—” I could tell she wasn’t sure how to ask me not to tell anyone about what had just happened. It was the only time during the whole episode where she seemed less than perfectly composed and all-knowing.

  My look said “oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Your secret is safe with me.” But she was no slan, so I added, out loud, “Don’t worry—I won’t tell anyone. Promise.” She smiled, and then leaned over and kissed me softly and lightly on the mouth. A hefty twenty-four words and a couple of urgent inarticulate spasms had escaped my lips during the whole affair, but I couldn’t help adding another four words in spite of myself. “You’re very pretty, Deanna.” And I meant it, too. I suddenly realized that she kind of reminded me of the “Thinking of Suicide?” girl from the pamphlet, which really pushed my buttons. But Deanna Schumacher didn’t seem too interested in discussing the matter any further at the moment. Maybe “you’re very pretty” was laying it on too thick. It’s really hard to know.

  She said she was going to have to run upstairs to brush her teeth. Straightening up the place for the next customer, I guess. “It was very nice seeing you again, Tom-Tom, after all these years,” she said, back in her well-mannered element. “Say hello to your mother and sister for me. Maybe you could come by again sometime….”

  I was very, very proud of myself.

  On the way home, I was singing “Glad All Over,” “My Baby Loves Lovin’,” and “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,” at the top of my lungs as I rode through the near-deserted streets. When I did “Fox on the Run,” I tried to sing the “I” loud enough that it would echo, “I…I…I…,” just like on the record. And it kind of almost did.

  THE FOG OF DEANNA

  Believe it or not, it didn’t hit me till I woke up the next day that Deanna Schumacher was not only a confusing sex kitten I had never made out at a party with, but also the daughter of a man who had known my dad and worked with him in so
me capacity. In other words, he was a potential source of information about the circumstances surrounding his death. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be easy to engage Deanna Schumacher on that topic—nothing was easy when it came to talking to her. But I resolved to give it a shot sometime, if I ever had the chance.

  Here’s how I knew I was starting to fall for Deanna Schumacher: I began to take time off from trying to psychoanalyze her and from replaying the mental video of our “date” and from splashing around in a pool of self-pity and instead started writing love songs about her. “I Wanna Ramone You,” for example:

  I wanna ramone you

  hier and ici.

  I wanna ramone you

  là and aujourd’hui.

  If your boyfriend’s been postponed

  and if we won’t be chaperoned

  and if you wanna get ramoned,

  comment? come on, come on…

  There’s more where that came from, but it should be enough to demonstrate: I am a Romantic Genius, and a Dreamer.

  I was still scared to call her, though. In fact, it took me a couple of days to get up the nerve even to dial Holden Caulfield style—that is, with the intention of hanging up. Our secret date had been on Thursday, Veterans’ Day. I stalled on Friday. I took the weekend off. Then I took a deep breath on Monday and picked up the phone with steely determination. I needn’t have bothered with the s. d., however. Her answering machine was full, and I couldn’t have left a message even if I tried. I hadn’t realized that it was possible for frustration and relief to come in the same box, but it did. Maybe her family had gone out of town for a long weekend. So who had been leaving all those messages on her machine? That thought drove me crazy and made me cry, though not quite literally.

  She could have gone away with her boyfriend—Tim, was it?—instead of with her family. Or perhaps the boyfriend had gone along on the family excursion. Maybe they were riding in the backseat of the family car surreptitiously groping each other underneath a blanket. Maybe they were ramoning right now. I was starting to feel a little jealous of Ted, or Dan, or whoever. In fact, I thought I might be starting to hate him. But I squelched that thought. There was no future in that line of thinking. And I was impressed with my own maturity for realizing it. The whole thing was very adult and sophisticated.