Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck
Page 12
The other girls glanced nervously between Lyon and Madame Pompadour, as if watching two gun-fighters squaring off in the Old West and wondering who would draw first.
“Of course, I can’t make you do anything,” Madame Pompadour replied. “Just like I can’t make you star in your own Statusphere television show, Pippi Mississippi, on the Dismay Channel.”
“Okay, I’ll do it!” Lyon cried.
Madame Pompadour smiled, the kind that forms when you get something that you never doubted for one second you would get.
“Excellent. In the meantime, I’ll have my assistant—my competent one—draw up the standard papers for your temporary releases from your respective circles,” Madame Pompadour said. “For your vice principals to sign. I’ll position it as a Heck Badwill Tour furlough. But I want the specifics of our deal kept on the DL, if you catch my drift. No Principal Bubb, no Big Guy Downstairs. So keep those beautiful profiles low until the time is right. And I’ll be seeing you in Blimpo. I’ve business there to attend to … so this way, I can kill two birds with one cliché.”
Madame Pompadour looked down at her phone and saw that both of her Inferns’ extensions were presently engaged: one of the madame’s many procedural no-no’s. Farzana knew better than to have her lines tied up—that is, unless she didn’t know that one of the lines was …
Madame Pompadour’s cat pupils tightened into sharp slits. She shoved back her leather roller chair into her vanity, causing Bordeaux to yelp, and stormed across her office, grabbing the doorknob.
“May I help you?” Marlo puffed, having nearly yanked Madame Pompadour’s arm out of its socket pulling open the door.
The madame rubbed her shoulder.
“I … what are you doing?” Madame Pompadour sputtered.
“Anticipating your needs, ma’am,” Marlo replied. “Isn’t that what you are training me for?”
“I told you not to call me … What were … You’re trying to fluster me!”
“Fluster you, ma’am? Isn’t that a little paranoid? Farzana and I were actually just talking about how you think everyone is talking about you….”
“Why were both of my direct lines busy?” Madame Pompadour spat. “Were you eavesdropping again?!”
Marlo widened her eyes in an approximation of irreproachable cartoon innocence, like Bambi only with more eyeliner.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marlo replied before adding for effect, “ma’am.”
Madame Pompadour was so flushed with rage that her silky white fur appeared pink and bristly. She marched back to her desk, yanked open her top drawer, and grabbed a coiled parchment.
Marlo noted the perfect faces in the vanity behind Madame Pompadour.
“Eeww … is that her?” Dijon, a redheaded preppy girl with wide green eyes, gasped.
“Wow, you didn’t do her injustice, Lyon,” added Marseille, an African American girl with straight, honey-colored hair.
“All I want to know,” interjected Strasbourg, an olive-skinned brunette, “is who let the dog in?”
“I did,” Madame Pompadour snapped as she muted her VaniTV. The Narcissisters continued to diss, rebuff, and otherwise disparage Marlo silently from behind the desk. “Miss Fauster, since you seem to have nothing better to do than to eavesdrop on my conversations—”
“I know you’re getting old and forgetful, but like we just discussed, I never—”
“One more word and you’re Principal Bubb’s way-too-personal assistant, back in Limbo with a big fat F on your Soul Aptitude Test to match the big fat L that’s on your forehead, the one that everyone sees but you.”
She threw the rolled parchment at Marlo.
“The devil is due for his lunch,” she hissed. “And he is very particular about what goes in his mouth and on his forked tongue.”
Marlo bent down and retrieved the parchment. She unrolled it, staring at the words with slack-mouthed disbelief.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she murmured.
Madame Pompadour laced her dainty fingers together and leaned back against her desk.
“I don’t kid,” she explained as she extended her claws languidly. “Even when I play, someone always seems to get … scratched.”
16 • JAiLHOUSE RUCKUS
“THANK-YOU-VERY-MUCH,” the chunky teacher in the studded white-leather jumpsuit slurred into the microphone as he flipped his calfskin cape over his shoulder.
The boys regarded one another for a moment before hesitantly rewarding their teacher for whatever he’d just done—a sort of seizure from the waist down—with faint applause.
There was no mistaking who their Beginning Opera teacher was: Elvis Presley. This had less to do with the boys’ knowledge of the King’s music—Milton had only recognized him due to his face being plastered on the Psychomanthium, otherwise known as the Elvis Abduction Chamber, back in Lester Lobe’s Paranor Mall—than the towering backdrop of red lights behind him on the small stage that spelled E-L-V-I-S.
“The first time I appeared onstage, it scared me to death,” Mr. Presley said as he stalked back and forth across the small, creaky platform. “Now that I really am dead, it all seems so darned silly. When I was out there, I really didn’t know what all the yelling was about. So I asked the manager backstage, ‘What’d I do?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, but just go back and do it again!’”
“You still got it!” shouted a jowly African American man with a bowler hat as he swept his sausagelike fingers across a piano.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Fats Waller!” he said, punctuating his shout-out with a wobbly judo kick.
Hugo, seated on a tiny metal chair with bowed, quivering legs, looked across the room with his puffer-fish face.
“Ladies?” he murmured.
The dapper pianist rose to his feet.
“Thank you, boys,” Mr. Waller said as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “As I can tell by lookin’ at y’all, you’re all here on account of followin’ your appetites. Now, there’s nothin’ wrong with that, within reason. Me? I blame my parents. I mean, what did they expect, namin’ their son Fats?!”
“Now, now, Fats,” Mr. Presley chided. “You shouldn’t be disrespecting your momma and poppa.”
Mr. Waller sat himself back down on his bench. “Of course, you’re right, Elvis,” the man said contritely as he plunked out “Chopsticks” on the piano as penance. “I loved my momma. She couldn’t help that she confused hugs ’n’ kisses with chicken-fried steak ’n’ buttermilk.”
“Well, regardless of how we all got here—me, mostly through Momma’s fried peanut-butter sandwiches,” Mr. Presley said with his low, tremulous voice, “we’re all here to learn the finer points of opera.”
Mr. Presley adjusted his belt. His buckle, as big and shiny as a burnished serving platter, blazed in the boys’ faces.
“Let’s see what we’ve got to work with here,” he said.
Mr. Presley nodded over to Mr. Waller, who cracked his knuckles and played a stunning classical piece, his fingers summoning deep emotion from the keys.
Mr. Presley scanned the room with his blue eyes. “Let’s start with you, son,” he said, pointing to Milton, whose knack for being called on first had continued, unabated, into the Netherworld.
Milton stomped onto the stage. Mr. Presley winced as he got a closer look at Milton’s hideous suit of meat.
“Mercy,” he murmured as he flipped the chalkboard around. On the back were the lyrics to a French aria, or in Milton’s case, complete and utter gibberish. “It’s from Faust,” Mr. Presley explained, “which I thought was appropriate.”
The boys stared at their teacher with a profound lack of understanding.
“You know, the whole pact-with-the-devil motif … never mind. Now, don’t worry, son. I’ll sing along with you….”
Mr. Presley drew in a breath that, like most every breath the husky man took, was deep. Filling his lungs to capacity, the teacher began to sing.
Mr. Presley pulled the emergency brake on their duet.
“We’ve all got talent, son,” he consoled. “Some folks just got to dig deeper than others to find it. Now, let’s give someone else a chance. You”—he waved his diamond-ringed fingers lazily toward Virgil—“step on up and show us what you’ve got.”
Virgil rose nervously, his metal chair sighing with relief, and trudged up to the stage as Milton shambled off. Ever the good friend, Virgil tried to high-five Milton after his disastrous debut, but due to Milton’s Pang-suited delayed reaction, he just ended up slapping him in the head.
“Sorry,” Virgil mumbled to his friend as he stood before the chalkboard.
“Just follow my lead, son, and relax,” Mr. Presley slurred supportively.
Mr. Presley began to mournfully croon.
“Au signal du plaisir,
Dans la chambre du drille,
Tu peux bien entrer fille,
Mais non fille en sortir …”
Virgil pulled in a great breath and began to sing.
“Bonne nuit, hélas!
Ma petite, bonne nuit.
Près du moment fatal.”
In a word, Virgil’s voice was stunning. In another word, he was a virtuoso. In four more words, Milton was very surprised. Virgil’s thrilling spectacle of pitch and tone was like a vocal fireworks display, and his breath control left the rest of the class breathless.
“Fais grande résistance,
S’il ne t’offre d’avance
Un anneau conjugale.”
Riding the melody as if it were a racehorse, Virgil scaled the piece to its summit, hitting the peak with a clear, beautiful note that pierced the heart.
Mr. Presley donned a pair of mirrored sunglasses, simply so he could peer over them in surprise. Virgil heaved in breathless confusion as if a spirit had abruptly fled his body. Mr. Presley put his hand on Virgil’s great slope of a shoulder.
“Diva Las Vegas!” the teacher exclaimed in an amazed rumble. “All you need is a flashy one-piece jumpsuit and a manager/mentor who takes complete control over every aspect of your life, and we may get you a gig at Carnagey Hall in Sadia … nice captive audience.”
As Mr. Presley plotted the details of Virgil’s burgeoning career, the bell rang. The boys stomped toward the door. Their heavy footfalls knocked a picture of Mr. Presley’s mother off the wall.
“Whoa, whole lotta shakin’ goin on there, boys,” he said sadly as he stooped down to pick up the picture, bursting a seam on his jumpsuit. “Before we return to sender, I want to stamp your young minds with a li’l something….”
Mr. Presley hopped off the stage and turned to give his microphone cord a tug. Milton noticed that Mr. Presley had one white wing, delicate and impossibly small, like that of a hummingbird, sprouting from just beneath his left shoulder blade.
“Songs are dreams that you dream with your ears. So no matter what happens, keep singing a song. It’s how you keep dreaming in a world of nightmares. Good night.”
The lights went out, and the boys, confused, staggered out into the hallway.
“You were amazing in there,” Milton said to Virgil as they lingered in the doorway. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Virgil’s freckled cheeks reddened.
“Neither did I,” he replied meekly. “I mean, I know I have a lot in there, but I didn’t know I had … that. I swear, when I was up there singing, I felt so light. Like that soul balloon in Limbo. Like I could float up, up, and away.”
Milton could see a fluttering from the corner of his eyes. In the classroom, Mr. Presley was chatting with Mr. Waller. His teensy-weensy wing flapped weakly when he laughed.
It must be weird, Milton thought. Not quite a demon, not quite an angel. A large man, gifted with some kind of flight but too heavy to actually take to the air. He keeps singing, so at least part of him can float up, up, and away.
17 • COOKiNG UP TROUBLE
IN A DARK, restricted hallway behind the Lose-Your-Lunchroom, the boys congregated like starving acolytes at the feet of a savory savior. At the center of the feeding frenzy was Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack: a bright red and yellow corrugated tin shed on wheels. Through vents on all four sides of the mobile hut poured the sweet tang of barbecue, the most mouthwatering that Milton had ever had the pleasure of inhaling. No wonder Dr. Kellogg’s Off the Eaten Path Dusted Double Lentil Trail Mix Biscuits were growing moldy and stale.
Virgil, Hugo, Thaddeus, and Gene had faces smeared with red-brown sauce. Clutched in their hands were baskets overflowing with tender, mouthwatering meat—though Milton couldn’t discern what it was the meat of. It didn’t exactly look like brisket, chops, or links, but rather a composite of all of the above, a delectable dream team comprising only the best, most appetizing cuts. There was also a selection of hot hush puppies and steaming black-eyed peas, but they were mostly ignored by the boys, who went straight for the meat.
“Eat up, boys,” Chef Boyareyookrazee said with a smile extruded upon his sneer-shaped mouth like old, dried-up Play-Doh. “It’s on the house, courtesy of your kindhearted vice principals. But hurry: it’s for a limited time only.”
With the promise of free, delicious food compounded with the threat of it being taken away, the boys gulped down their meals like Super Mario munching Super Mushrooms.
“His secret,” Virgil managed to utter to Milton between bites, “is that he deep-fries the meat after he barbecues it. It locks in the flavor and throws away the key….”
Milton peered inside the cramped cart to get a look at Hambone Hank. All he could really make out from the billowing clouds of burning mesquite and fatty fried fumes was a dark, robed figure with a sauce-and-grease-splotched apron reading SOUL FOOD WITH REAL SOUL. Occasionally the smoke would clear, and Milton could see that the cook, standing next to several large upturned jars, wore a hairnet and a surgical mask over his long nose. His dark eyes flashed at Milton, holding him in their gaze for just a fleeting moment, but that time felt like an eternity. It was as if Hambone Hank were reading Milton, judging him, with one short-yet-infinitely-deep stare. The tall, slender man seemed so familiar.
The bell rang.
“That’s weird,” Hugo said as he quickly gnawed a bone clean of any evidence of meat, like wiping a crime scene of fingerprints. “We’re not supposed to be in class for another half hour….”
Several scaly demons brandishing pitchsporks appeared at the end of the hallway.
“Hey, wide-loads,” the darker of the three similarly serpentlike demons called. “Get your butts to the Gymnauseum. And though it will be difficult for you, try to get them there in one trip.”
The demons snickered as they prodded the boys down the hallway.
“Figures,” Milton mumbled as he felt his Pang suit contract with hunger. “I didn’t even get a chance to eat.”
“Here,” Virgil said, offering Milton his last bite of mouthwatering meat with a heroic lack of hesitation.
Milton smiled and gobbled up the tender morsel.
“Thwanks,” he replied with a full mouth.
The taste was so incredible that Milton was temporarily paralyzed. So complex, robust, intense, and oddly … haunting. The flavors seemed to somersault in his mouth, each entirely different. It was delicious but, at the same time, unsettling. Strange, unconnected images flashed into Milton’s mind with each flavor: a plane crashing, a raft bobbing in the middle of a shark-infested ocean, a car spinning out of control…. Milton swallowed and the disturbing images melted away.
He looked back as Hambone Hank growled at a pair of demon guards begging for a sample of his insanely flavorful barbecue.
“That’s weird,” Milton said. “He won’t g
ive the guards any of the food.”
Virgil shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The mysterious cook bared his long white teeth. The demons trotted away, suddenly remembering a pressing engagement.
Virgil shrugged.
“I guess it’s just like Chef Boyareyookrazee said. The Burgermeister and Lady Lactose just want to do something nice for us.”
Hmmm, Milton pondered as he entered the locker room. “Nice” like a farmer and his wife filling the pigs’ trough. Nice with some kind of wicked agenda.
Virgil stepped onto the black iron scale.
“I’m baffled,” Dr. Kellogg declared as the hands of the scale settled on 247 pounds, 6 ounces. “You’ve all actually gained weight. Step off the scale, son. No need to put the machine through any more trauma than it has already suffered.”
Virgil sulked off the scale.
“My system is scientifically proven to thermogenically burn fat, raise metabolism, and cure a host of psychosomatic ills while eradicating disease proneness and resetting the subject to its original weight blueprint!” the teacher said, scratching his white hair.
The boys stared at their teacher glumly.
“I’m flabbergasted!” he said as he raised his skinny white arms in frustration. “If you don’t lose weight, you don’t graduate, and if you don’t graduate, this place will fill up with big-boned boys faster than you can say ‘the buffet is now open’!”
Dr. Kellogg paced across the foam-mat floor.
“Into the DREADmills with you, then,” he exclaimed with a toss of his hand.
“The DREADmills?!” Milton cried with a mixture of disbelief and trepidation: heavy on the trepidation. “Again?”
Dr. Kellogg glared at Milton and the boys.
“Orders straight from the top, Mr. Grumby,” the teacher said, pointing through the glass ceiling at the balloon kingdom hovering above. “The vice principals are worried about everyone pulling their own weight—in particular, the fact that there is so much of it. So, from now on, every other class will be gym.”