While Nicole showers, Ziggy hurls on B.O.-scented clothes, touring her belongings, most of which seem too nondescript and conventionally trendy for someone so sharp. Still, Ziggy’s used to how wealthier people surround themselves with stuff that’s sort of simplistic or dull on the eyes, ears, nose, etc. In her case, miniature porcelain animals, beige stationery, Michael Jackson CDs, chalky colored, artsy framed posters for sixties jazz festivals, a hanging air freshener disguised as a biomorphic sculpture . . . It’s like, Hey, world, I’m rich, leave me fucking alone! Or something. He cringes, trying to enter her brain, but the room stays off-putting. Eventually she’s back, drippy, robed. He uncreases the copy of I Apologize No. 19. There’s a terrible drawing of Jeffrey Dahmer raping, etc., Konerak Sinthasomphone on the cover. “Read this when I’m not around,” Ziggy says, shoves it at her. She eyeballs the front, back, lays it not that carefully on a pile of Sassys on her dresser. Then Ziggy stands around watching her dress, which makes him hard again. They sneak downstairs, chug-a-lug Cheerios and grape juice. She pets their family’s sheepdog, Anastasia, which makes Ziggy sad for some reason. The British housekeeper with frizzy, gray hair—Millicent someone—drives them to school, not seeming to care about Ziggy’s having obviously stayed overnight. Nicole’s gotten more and more friendly postshower, so Ziggy stops torturing himself about fucking up with her sexually. She’s almost girlfriendlike now in some weird way he can’t figure out. They even sort of dry-hump through their clothes in the Mercedes’s backseat, while Millicent hums the melody of . . . “The Impossible Dream”? He lets himself trust Nicole’s affection for ten minutes, tops. “Bye, Millicent, thanks,” etc. Now they stand and kiss again by the faculty parking lot. Ziggy’s so comfortable and, well, happy his eyes keep rolling back in his head involuntarily. But . . . Rrrring. School itself might as well be a giant ice sculpture, he feels so different, so . . . stiff and uncomfortable, yeah, the very second they pass through its ornate iron gate. Nicole waves, barreling off to some class, and Ziggy pretends to be strolling toward . . . whatever, Algebra I? He even deigns to shout, “Hi,” at a couple of assholes he knows. When the crowds thin, he leans way back into a shadowy nook between two banks of book lockers, waiting, bored as shit, singing Hüsker Dü’s “I Apologize” to himself, for the 8:15 bell. Rrrring. All clear. It’s utterly quiet now. Cool. So he scoots down the hall, turns right, and quickly crosses the open-air quad, dead grass crunching under his stinky Adidas, into some older, more dilapidated school buildings. Tromp, tromp . . . Reaching the door, 17, that Annie’s, ha ha, imprisoned behind, he turns the knob unbelievably slowly, pulls, reveals a cropped vista of the classroom itself. Typical. Top half becalmed by a dozen huge, bannerlike maps of the earth. Bottom half, a relative sprawl—decoration-clogged bulletin boards bracketing a messy regiment of desks, each one crammed with the blandly dressed figure of . . . whatever . . . some seventeen-year-old? Annie’s a punky eyesore in the back row, staring haphazardly at something above Ziggy’s head. Her wide, squarish face hangs open babyishly, forearms raised boxer-style, drumming to within an inch or two of the desktop. A quick, precise . . . Speed Metal rhythm, he guesses, knowing her tastes. Ziggy stares really intently at Annie’s oblivious features, ear especially, and thinks, I need some drugs, repeating that sentence over and over until, sort of para-normally, her short, dyed black hair jiggles. Encouraged, Ziggy waves his hand close to his chest. Annie, seeming a bit more, like, human now, shifts her dilated eyes’ focus to his subtle motion, and grins . . . wickedly? Ziggy gestures to come. Nodding, Annie faces front, shoots one arm into the map-colored upper atmosphere, such that her T-shirt sleeve falls, crumples up in the armpit, exposing a giant red mole . . . no, a Satan tattoo. Cool. A male, impatient, authoritarian voice asks her something—hard to hear what—then . . . “Diarrhea,” Annie yells in that thick southern accent which makes her customers, Ziggy included, think she’s so sweet and sexy. Students’ uncontrolled laughter. “Thanks, y’all.” She rockets to her feet, and hobbles directly at Ziggy, cross-eyed with mock nausea, one hand scrunching the waist of her holey black T-shirt.
“Quick, mah dude.” Annie’s originally from Alabama or somewhere. They streak down a deserted hall, past the garish, flaking Famous Scientists Then and Now mural, where Einstein’s got his arm around . . . Jonas Salk’s shoulders, if Ziggy remembers right, and into the former faculty john turned graffiti museum/drug-dealing den. “This here’s what’s available,” the girl continues, pulling three Baggies out of her jeans pocket. “Oh, hey,” she says, pausing before what’s still around of a mirror. “Ah love your magazine.” She’s checking the state of her hair in the mirror’s dull, fractured surface. “Did ah tell you? Ah rilly, rilly relate to it.” Satisfied or something, she goes over, lines up the little bags across the top of what used to be a pocket comb dispenser. “Pot, coke . . .,” she says.
“What’s that?” Ziggy asks, indicating the off-white, clogged powder in one.
“Heroin,” Annie says, sort of beaming. “Mah new, um . . . what do they call it? You know, when stores have a . . . mah new lahn?”
Ziggy nods like he gets it. “Well,” he says. “I need to get through a sex scene I might not, like, know how to be part of exactly. Any recommendations?”
Her big, clownlike lips wrench apart, the lower one wobbling about an inch from the upper, two nicotine-stained front teeth sparkling dimly between. After a bit, the lips pinch back together, lengthen into an uncertain grin, and Annie slurps down some excess saliva, it sounds like. “What kahnd of sex would be hard to git through, mah dude?” She cackles, dropping heavily onto a former toilet.
“I’m sure I told you about my two dads, and how one is this rock critic who lives in New York? He’s, like, uh . . . I sort of want to sleep with him.”
“Dude,” she whispers. “But . . . he gives you an allowance, raht? That’s what it’s about, raht?”
Ziggy shrugs, mumbles, “Not really.”
Annie frowns, leaps up, runs over and studies her row of products. “As a businesswoman, and not as a person who lahks you a lot, ah’d say . . .” She squints/frowns at Ziggy. “First, is havin’ your orgasm part of the plan?”
Ziggy reruns a typical fantasy where he’s being rimmed, fucked, etc., by Roger, then mentally rescans his dad’s pornolike letter. “I . . . guess not.”
Annie holds out the bag with the off-white powder. “Heroin,” she says. “And not jus’ ’cos ah got a whole lotta the stuff on mah hands.”
“Are you sure?” Ziggy’s thinking of Calhoun, obviously, not to mention how scary old what’s-his-name . . . Keith Richards looks in recent videos compared to how he looked on the Rolling Stones LPs in Brice’s cob-webbed collection.
“Definitely,” Annie says. “’Cos it gits you loose, raht?” She looks up at the bathroom’s grungy ceiling, for inspiration maybe. Somebody’s drawn a kind of technically accomplished red-and-black felt-tip chandelier that must appear semireal when you’re loaded. “Most people git horny on heroin. Everybody gits less uptaht than usual. You can git hard, but, lahk ah said, people say you can’t come.” Then she blushes or something resembling a blush. “And you have those pretty green ahs, so you should realahze you’ll look major drugged out. Your dad’ll know you’re on somethin’. And you may throw up raht after you snort it, but then you’ll be fahn.”
Ziggy’s been nodding along, imagining himself stumbling all over the place. “So I should snort it before he comes over?”
She hands him the Baggie. “Or raht before you’re gonna go to bed,” she advises, pocketing the unpurchased products. “Tell your dad you wanna shower, raht? Lock yourself in the bathroom, snort that, give yourself fifteen minutes to barf and feel better, maybe longer, then use some Listerine and . . . git down.”
“Thanks,” Ziggy says, flipping the heroin Baggie from hand to hand. “But, so, it won’t, like, give me diarrhea, will it?”
Annie’s mouth flies wide open again for a second. “Only if you’re accidentally aller
gic to it or somethin’.” She’s on her feet, stretching, anxious to split.
“And I . . . do it like . . . coke?” Ziggy holds out a twenty-dollar bill, figuring that should, well, cover it, hopefully. “’Cos a friend of mine shoots it. Calhoun. Do you know him?”
“Sure do.”
“He’s the greatest person who ever lived,” Ziggy says, fiddling with the Baggie.
“Nahce gah.” Annie smiles.
“And he’s my best friend.”
Annie’s just smiling, less impatiently maybe.
“’Cos he shoots it, and, uh . . . I’m kind of concerned about him.”
“Ah understand,” she mumbles. “Well, snortin’ it’s easier on the system.” She takes a few reverse baby steps, basically toward the door. “Look, don’t worry, you’ll be fahn.” One arm rockets out, grabs the bill, folds, pockets it. A couple more steps. “But . . . listen, about Calhoun?” Annie frowns, checks her watch. “She-e-it,” she says, heaving out some breath. And her head tilts way back. She sort of scrubs the “chandelier” with her eyes. They’re watery. Either that or the reflection’s intense. “Well, jus’ keep on lovin’ him, raht? ’Cos he deserves it, raht?” Now her eyes, which are definitely wet, yeah, meet Ziggy’s, scrub a little, then jolt up to the ceiling again.
“Yeah, uh . . . thanks.” Ziggy nods furiously.
Ken held up a two-foot rope of dyed blond human hair.
Robin lazed on his back. Head shaved, face pink from where Ken had used a washrag to scrub away Glam Metal makeup.
In the background, Slayer’s LP was there again full blast.
“I took the liberty,” Ken yelled.
Robin seemed like he half- to two-thirds understood.
Shaking the hair rope, Ken added, “’Cos . . . why fucking not?”
“I said okay,” Robin slurred, about the head shaving.
Ken walked over, eased down. Tipping Robin onto his side, Ken twisted the bundle of hairs once, twice, three times, whipped it jump rope style over the kid’s spaced-out head, and made a gag, quickly tying a knot.
Slayer: Observing trance awaking state / Lying still unknowing / Reciting the passages of time / Prepare for the impaling.
“Oh yeah.” Ken laughed, sitting back.
Robin said something. Nobody heard what.
“I’m gonna switch on the camera,” Ken yelled. He eased Robin onto his back. “Stay limp,” he added. “Let me direct it.”
Robin lay there.
“I like you,” shouted Ken from the video camera. “You should hang out. You’d like my nephew. He’s insane.”
“Fuck off,” said the kid through his hair gag.
The man shut one eye, zoomed in . . . in . . . in . . .
An enlarging dime nipple.
“God, you’re gorgeous.” Ken sighed, very moved, awestruck, proud, etc.
Bending over to sip from a mossy water fountain, Ziggy hears a familiar voice, female, yeah, hopelessly en-twined with . . . another girl’s voice? They’re chanting his name out of sync, which sort of thrills him at first, like he’s a band being begged for an encore. Then, imagining passersby’s sneers, he gets totally paranoid. “Yeah?” Ziggy straightens up, wiping some dew from his mouth, chin. Nicole’s walking his way down the hall with Cricket, i.e., Andrew French, a chubby boy with long, straight brown hair who always dresses in slightly outdated girls’ clothing. Ziggy’s been strangely turned on by the oddball of late, he has to admit, as insane as that sounds. So he accompanies the pair for a few minutes, down one hall, up another, trying to impress them both with the sorry details of his sexual abuse, which isn’t that difficult a task, it seems. Attractiveness, bizarre. It makes things so easy at times, meaning now, since Cricket giggles continuously the whole fucking way, like he/she thinks he/she’s walking along with Bill Murray or whoever. From the new, sneaky way the transvestite eyes him when he’s supposedly not looking, ha ha, Nicole must’ve passed on the, uh, news about their orgy last night, which is a little unnerving, considering how clumsy, etc., he was, but . . . Thank God there’s their classroom door.
“Go on,” Nicole says, nudging Cricket. Students are brushing by. “Ask him,” she adds, and when Cricket just looks away, grimacing, Nicole snorts and says, “Cricket wants your cock, Ziggy. Okay, Cricket, give him your number. God, you guys!”
Still averting his/her eyes, Cricket, who, with his/her pale, blocky face, looks Norwegian or something, holds out a folded-up paper, then, cheeks instantaneously empurpled, yuck, turns and dog-paddles into the classroom. “Bye,” he/she mumbles.
“Talk to you later, Ziggy?” says Nicole, splitting. She looks over one shoulder, eyes wide and brows wiggling.
“Oh, uh . . . definitely,” Ziggy shouts, walking away. He unfolds the note. Over Cricket’s phone number—affected, curlicue handwriting, yuck—he/she’s scrawled, Maybe Saturday night? That halts Ziggy mid-hall. If Cricket means his/her place, maybe Roger will play chauffeur, or, if Cricket intends to come over to Ziggy’s house, Roger can go for a long walk, or . . . watch them fuck, or . . . join in? Ziggy finger-combs his dirty hair, scheming. The hall’s emptied out. Several doors up on the left is his therapist’s office. Dr. Michelle Carr. Oh yeah, Ziggy thinks, maybe . . . she’ll . . . have some . . . advice . . . Rrrring. Or . . . Ziggy blinks . . . on the other hand . . . Blink, blink. He whips around, rips down the hall, taking a gentle right through the ornate iron gate, then a harder left into the public phone booth at the edge of the faculty parking lot.
Click.
“Mm-hm?” Lots of nightmarish breathing. Distorted Heavy Metal in the background. They really do sound incredible mixed together, if, yeah, okay, sort of corny.
“Uncle Ken?” Ziggy asks, catching his own breath. “What’s going on?”
“A fair amount. But you’re going to have to yell. Where’re you calling from?”
“School!” Ziggy glances around. Nobody anywhere. “I’m about to leave! Can I come by for a while?” He silently mouths “please” a few times.
“Okay,” Ken says after a moment of music. “But there’s the same little problem as last night.”
Ziggy mentally rewinds the morning, previous night, until he reaches their last conversation. “Oh, the Heavy Metal kid! He’s still there?”
Either Ken laughs or something weird happens to and/or within the background music. Maybe one of those back-masked Satanic insertions that tell you to kill yourself.
“If you mean what you’re doing with the Metal kid, that doesn’t bother me!” Ziggy checks for bystanders again. Nope. Just a dirty, water-stained herd of inexpensive, samey-looking, mostly blue foreign cars. “But . . . will there be time to blab? I sort of need to!”
Same laughlike or Satanic noise. Then Ken obviously covers the mouthpiece with his hand, ’cos the music’s squashed down to a shortwave radio–style hiss for a second or two. “Hey, come or don’t,” he announces upon his return. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’m on my way. Bye.” Ziggy’s hanging up, eyes on the street, when he hears Uncle Ken, or maybe Satan, ha ha, bellow something, and hauls the receiver back to his right ear, mouth. “Did you yell?”
“Yeah. A possible alternate plan.” Either the music in the background is over or else it’s just between songs. In any case, Ken’s voice sounds a million times more . . . entertaining, complex . . . something. “Why don’t you bring along that Calhoun kid?”
“Why?” Ziggy tenses.
“Bring Calhoun. We’ll all get high. I’ll talk to Robin here. Maybe we’ll shoot a little something with Calhoun and him.” The next song blasts on, covering Ken’s voice and breathing, an aural avalanche of snarly, sort of melodic feedback.
Ziggy’s shoulders and arms have seized up, making the receiver shake delicately in his hand. “Uh, isn’t Calhoun sort of too old for you? Besides, he’s, like, straight.”
“You mean repressed.” Ken snickers over the music. “Like you.”
“Ha ha. Uh, not really! He’s just, uh . . . I d
on’t know! Anyway, he’s my best friend, so, you know . . . forget it!” Ziggy slugs the phone. Again, again.
Ken breathes furiously a few times, which, mixed in with the Metal, is so . . . frightening or whatever, it makes Ziggy feel like his skin, veins, muscles, and stuff have gotten bunched around his skeleton, sort of like pajamas do after a bad night, but more . . . insidious. “Fine!” Ken’s voice shouts. “Then . . . come over by yourself! Jesus . . . fucking—”
Click.
Click.
“Hello?” Calhoun’s voice sounds . . . abrupt, like he’s annoyed someone’s called. But it’s obviously insane to second-guess someone so, like, amazing.
“It’s me.” Ziggy whispers for some reason. “So guess what? I got some heroin.”
“Really? From where? Is it in tar form, or—”
“Yellow powder.” Ziggy shoves the receiver between his shoulder and jaw, then pulls out the Baggie, cradling it secretively in one palm. “Or . . . off-white, I guess.”
“Awesome!”
“Yeah, cool, huh?” Ziggy blurts, dancing on his toes a little.
“Hm . . .” Calhoun’s voice trails for a second. “Maybe you shouldn’t do it. I’ve been thinking about this. See, I’m constitutionally suited to opiates. But I don’t know about you. And I’m thinking of quitting myself. And I don’t want people blaming me if you pick up a habit.”
“They won’t.” Ziggy’s sort of confused. He rethinks his answer, left hand fingering some shallow wrinkles in his forehead. “I mean, I won’t get a habit.”
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