by Paul Haines
#
Playtime would be too early to try and be chummy with Samuel. At lunchtime he followed us around again, though he kept his distance and we did our best to pretend he didn't exist.
During the afternoon's spelling quiz, he answered more of the questions than me; that pissed me off and earned a smile from Nicole. And that pissed me off even more. I was the best speller at school and I didn't want this fat American wimp taking over my crown.
But I let it ride.
In the afternoon break, when Samuel didn't come out to play, I spied him in the classroom reading his Mad Magazine.
Perfect, I thought.
I went into the classroom and he looked up. But not warily. He didn't seem scared of me at all. Maybe he didn't realise I kicked him; maybe this would be easier than I thought.
'Hi,' I said.
'Hi.' Nasal Yank whine.
'You're a pretty good speller. I thought you'd get some of them wrong seeing as how we spell differently here.'
'I like spelling. I know a lot of words. I like languages, too. Can you speak Spanish?'
'Nah.' I pointed at the comic. 'You like Mad Magazine?'
'Yeah.' He closed it, so we could see the cover. A black sports car was on a hoist, and underneath it C3P0 and R2D2 worked on it, while Alfred E Newman grinned on idiotically. The words 'Knut Rider' were printed beneath the Mad logo. 'I just got it. In this issue they take Knight Rider and Square Pegs to pieces. I love Knight Rider, do you?'
'I've never heard of it. Or Square Pegs.'
'They were on in America. Square Pegs is okay, but Knight Rider is really cool. It's about this car that can talk.'
'Really? Like Herbie?' It sounded lame to me.
'More like Magnum PI.'
'Cool!' Now I liked that show. Magnum was the best cop show on TV and he had this great Ferrari. Even Richey liked watching Magnum.
Samuel pushed the comic across the desk towards me. 'Would you like to read it?'
We stared at each other for a second, both of us knowing what it implied if I took the comic.
'You can give it back to me tomorrow.' He inched it closer to my fingertips resting on the desk.
I nodded and smiled. So be it.
He was in.
That afternoon I started reading the lampoon of Knight Rider. I'd never heard of it, but that didn't mean anything, as it could take months for things overseas to make their way to our shores. Take Richey's Electronic Games magazine for instance. It was over six months old and we still didn't have any of those games available for sale in the shops yet. They'd stuffed up the copyright in this issue of Mad though, as it had been stamped with 1983. 1983 was still four months away! Geez, what a fuck up. Then again, it would be just like the usual gang of idiots to do something like that.
And even better, if I finished it tonight, I'd use it to bargain with Richey to read his Electronic Games.
#
I was reading about the 2600 version of Asteroids after tea, when there was a knock at the door. It sounded like Tony's mum, Mrs Barnaby.
'John!' Dad called from the front door.
I put the magazine down on the bed, careful not to crease the cover or pages, and ran to the door, where both Mum and Dad stood with Mrs Barnaby. She looked nervous, her pale, wrinkled skin more creased than normal. Her eyes were red behind her thick-rimmed glasses and her long bony fingers worked at each other incessantly.
'Have you seen Tony recently?' Dad asked.
'Not since yesterday.'
'When did you see him?' Mrs Barnaby's voice sounded frail and weedy.
'When we got off the bus from school,' I lied. 'Why?'
She worked those bony fingers some more. 'Tony wasn't in his room this morning, his bed wasn't slept in. We think he might have run away again.'
I nodded. Tony must have scored big time last night.
'If you see him, can you tell him to come home?' Her face seemed caved in as if Tony's disappearance had sucked a little more out of her remaining years.
'Sure thing, Mrs Barnaby.' I went back to my room and ran my fingers across the photo of the Asteroids screenshot. It looked just like the real thing from the arcade. I heard the door shut, and my mother and father talking in the lounge, mostly about how Tony was always getting into trouble and then in hushed tones that they should limit the amount of free time I spend with him.
I shut my bedroom door and lay back on the bed with Richey's magazine. I pressed the play button on my tape deck and Duran Duran's Rio kicked in halfway through the chorus of the title track. First thing after school tomorrow I'd head up the creek towards the hut and see what goodies Tony had managed to pick up from the Goldstein's.
#
I'd expected Samuel to hang around with us at lunchtime seeing as how I'd given him the all clear but he chose to spend it with the girls.
I watched from a distance as he and Nicole Wymer, with three other girls, swapped books. What the hell sort of books would a boy have that girls wanted? I decided to return Samuel's Mad Magazine, earn some points with the girls, but they all stared at me in silence as I handed over the comic. Nicole held my gaze, her eyes passionless, cold. They were reading Judy Blume books. Some of the covers had words like Blubber and Maybe I Won't and Forever. Girl's stuff and meaningless to me. As I walked away, they laughed and chatter resumed. I knew they were laughing about me.
After school, I followed the creek about a mile up into dairy farming country until I came to our hut.
'Hey Tony! It's me!'
Nothing.
Inside the hut there were a couple of Mr Barnaby's Playboys yellowing on the wooden plank floor, an old DB Draught beer bottle that Tony and I had pinched from my dad's beer fridge and drunk a few months back, scattered lolly wrappers and some of my old army men—a British paratroops regiment and some German infantry. Old stuff.
Nothing new.
And no Tony.
I waited around for a couple of hours hoping he might show up with his duffel bag loaded with goodies, but when I knew it would get dark soon, I followed the creek back home to a Friday evening in front of the TV watching Magnum PI.
#
A week later, Samuel invited me to his place after school. He had about 150 Mad Magazines, some of them dating back to the early 60s, and he was keen to show them off. And I was more than keen to be shown off to. I figured I'd be able to borrow a few, and that they may live at my house for an indefinite period of time.
His mum, sorry, 'mom', had been busy painting the front of the house. Samuel said she was employed as a creative talent, but I didn't know what that meant. Looking at the front of the house, smothered in swirls of ginger and white stripes and cherry red explosions, coated in chocolate browns, I thought she was either extremely cool or as crazy as a mad woman's shit. She was perched atop a ladder, wearing a tight white singlet spattered in paint and tight denim shorts that hugged the curve of her arse. She paused from her task, wiped a tanned arm across the sweat on her forehead and smiled down at us. Her white teeth dazzled and even from here, I imagined stars in her eyes shining just for me.
She was beautiful.
'Hi,' she said. 'You must be Johnny. I've heard a lot about you. You boys go on inside, it's nice to meet you.'
She had an American accent, but unlike the horrible sound that came from Samuel's mouth, the words dripped off her lips like sugar.
I loved her.
She turned back to her task, her toned arms reaching up to the guttering running around the roof, where she was mounting several twelve-inch dolls.
'That one's Yoda,' I whispered to Samuel as he led me through the front door.
'Yeah. She's got Boba Fett, Han Solo and my favourite Jabba the Hut.'
'Who's Jabba?'
'The big slug that captures Han Solo. You know, the crime lord! He can live up to a thousand years.'
I nodded, though I had no idea who he meant. I hadn't seen any big fat slugs in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back.
T
he house was tidy. Two big comfy rose-coloured sofas sat in the lounge near a huge colour TV. A stereo with a separate record player and a double cassette deck with a fifteen bar graphic equalizer stood between two big fat speakers near one wall. A pile of records leaned up against the stereo cabinet. It was the best stereo I'd ever seen and with that double cassette deck I could copy tapes without positioning two tape decks facing each other in an impossibly silent room, while one played and the other recorded.
Samuel led me to his room. His bed had a Darth Vader quilt. Posters of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and The Wrath Of Khan covered the walls. Wow. The new Star Trek movie hadn't even come out here yet and he already had a poster! A massive bookshelf took up one wall, crammed with books and comics, and—my heart beat double time as I spotted the Atari logo—video game boxes! I tried not to goggle, and snapped my mouth shut, doing my best not to look like a gaping, gasping fish. This bedroom was as close to heaven as I'd ever get.
He pulled several comics from the bookshelf. He removed one of them from a sealed plastic bag and handed it to me. 'This is one of the earliest ones I have.'
Mad #87, June 64. On the cover, Alfred had smashed his head on the concrete after breaking through a trampoline. Choice! I immediately flicked to the back for Al Jaffee's fold in. It was in black and white. Man, this was old. I quickly flicked through and saw all my favourites: Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Spy vs Spy. These guys had been doing this for longer than I'd been alive.
He was about to take it off me when we heard a crash followed by a loud scream from outside. Samuel froze. I looked at him, but he didn't move, his eyes glassy and his arm outstretched and taut. His fingertips quivered.
'That was your mum!' I rushed outside and found her sprawled on the lawn, the ladder tossed to one side.
She looked up, her face red and angry, though still beautiful, a Roman goddess hurling thunder from the clouds. As she saw me, she relaxed, the anger draining from her face.
'Are you okay, Mrs Goldstein?'
'Yes,' she smiled, struggling to get up. 'Call me Hazel.'
Like Hazel O'Connor, I thought, picturing the poster of Breaking Glass that Richey had on his wall. O'Connor was sexy, too, though in a kind of scary punk way.
'Well, I should be fixing you boys some food, don't you think?' She brushed herself off, removing any blades of grass, and for a second I saw her nipples press hard against the white singlet she wore.
I blushed and looked at my feet, knowing she had seen me.
'Come on then,' she said, leading me gently by the shoulder to the doorway, where Samuel now stood. I shuddered with pleasure and felt even more embarrassed.
We sat at the kitchen table, reading Mad, and eating nachos, smothered in a thick sticky cheese sauce, sour cream and some tomatoey goop called salsa. Samuel told me it was Mexican, but everyone in America ate nachos, not just Mexicans. It tasted pretty good to me, especially all that melted cheese. Hazel then gave us a Twinkie and two Oreos each. I nearly choked on my corn chips. Twinkies! Oreos! I'd only ever seen these on the back of Richie Rich and Conan comics. They tasted delicious melt in your mouth yum yum and I couldn't believe my luck. And we drank it all down with a glass of Coca Cola! We only ever had that when we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and we had to wait until someone had a birthday to do that. It was so expensive. Here I was, friends with the fat kid and loving it like a pig in shit.
As I was eating, I noticed a games console hooked up to the TV. My stomach quivered in anticipation. Could it be? Could it really be? But before I could find out, there was a knock at the door.
My brother Richey, come to take me home.
What? Since when did he do this? Despondent, I left the table, one last glance at the console, though from here I couldn't see it properly as the TV obscured my view. I thanked Samuel and his mother for having me.
They both smiled and said, 'You're welcome. Any time.' We all laughed at this, including Richey, who was ogling Hazel openly.
Richey and I walked down the road, back home. The crickets and cicadas were going nuts, heralding in the onset of the summer evening, spring be damned.
'She's hot!' said Richey. Then he punched me in the arm.
'Ow! What's that for?'
'I had to water the vegetable garden because you pissed off to fatty's house before you did your jobs.' He punched me again. 'You owe me.'
'I think he's got an Atari 2600,' I babbled. 'He had these video game boxes in his room. I saw Space Invaders and Galaga and I saw the 2600—at least I think it's a 2600—hooked up to their TV.'
'No bullshit?' Richey forgot about punching me and I told him everything that Samuel had and how cool it all was and what we ate and how I saw Hazel's nipples under her singlet.
And then it all came crashing down as we sat at the dinner table. I faced a mountain of new potatoes, green beans—stringy of course—broccoli and lamb chops. I managed to eat the chops, but the vegetables seemed insurmountable. They cooled on the plate in front of me, my belly full of corn chips, cheese and Twinkies. No way did I want to eat the stuff from our garden.
I sat there for what seemed like hours, until it was time for Richey and me to do the dishes, and after that, bedtime.
I dreamed of playing Galaga with Hazel, beautiful Hazel, as one of her fingers worked furiously on the fire button, the others clasped around the joystick, jerking it back and forth. I woke up in the middle of the night, horrified, my pyjama pants wet and sticky. After using the pant legs to dry off my groin, I put on a new pair and hid the old ones under my bed. This worried me badly and I took ages to get back to sleep.
#
I dipped my hand into the bowl of Cheese Doritos on the coffee table and grabbed another fistful. They weren't available in New Zealand, but Samuel's uncle would send parcels of American food over, usually once a fortnight. I made sure I was here when they arrived. They were delicious, so much better than those shitty CCs.
One of the Burns boys, James, wrestled with the joystick, while Samuel sat watching silently. I washed down the 'little bits of gold' with a huge gulp of Coca Cola and poured myself another glassful.
We were playing a game called Satan Gender Hell and James was currently dragging his golem around the screen trying to capture the souls of the dead before the succubus weaving her way through the clouds at the top of the screen could summon them to her. I hoped James would miss another soul because then the succubus would wiggle her computerised breasts. We'd been playing this one a lot lately—I was close to clocking it, I think, but you could never tell if you were going to restart or a secret portal would open up and transport you to another level—and Richey would listen jealously as I told him about the game play, the feedzones and the way the succubus wiggled her boobs. He'd tried to find out about the game from the shops but to no avail and we had to wait at least another couple of months until the next issue of Electronic Games came out to see if it was mentioned.
Outside I heard Richey now: the muted roar of a distant lawnmower as he sweated and toiled over cutting Hazel's lawns. I knew what he was up to, sly bugger, trying to muscle in here and get a go of the Atari 2600. I'd given word to Samuel that this was not to happen. No way was Richey getting a foothold here in the Goldstein's house.
A wet kissing smack slurped from the speakers on the TV and the succubus did her victory wiggle. James's golem collapsed in broken chunks of pixellated stone.
'Shit. Fuck.' James perused the bowls of goodies on the coffee table, then scooped up a handful of M&Ms. They were like Pebbles or Smarties, and I didn't think they were any better, though the colours on the candy shell were much brighter.
The toilet flushed and Stevie Norris came back into the lounge, still fiddling with the fly on his stubbies. There was a small wet patch next to the zipper.
'Hey, pissy-pants.' I flapped my fingers at the stereo. 'Put on some more music.'
Stevie grimaced, then flicked through a stack of cassettes, eventually choosing J Geil's Band Freeze Frame
. Stevie had broken out in pimples a few weeks ago and I would've laid some shit on him except I'd popped a couple on my forehead this morning before I came over. We were growing up. The Freeze Frame cameras snapped from the speakers and the organ and horns kicked in. We all started singing the verse as the smell of the Big Ben mince pies cooking in the oven wafted through the house. It hadn't taken much to convince Hazel that good old Kiwi meat pies and sausage rolls were great for lunching on, too.
Samuel changed the game cartridge over, and Joust displayed in all its glory on the screen. This was a good one, because two of us could play at the same time in jousting mode. Stevie and James took the sticks, and flapping their ostrich wings, attacked each other with lances while collecting eggs. The game was amazing, the graphics so sharp and clean. There was nothing like this in Richey's magazine.
Thinking about Richey then, I realised that the drone of the lawnmower had stopped. I peered out the kitchen window, and saw Richey bare-chested and wet with sweat, a Budweiser in one hand. He was laughing and joking with Hazel, who was also drinking a beer. I felt sick to my stomach. What was happening here? As I watched, they clinked bottles in a toast, and then she pushed him gently on his chest. Richey grinned back harder and took another swig from the bottle. Hazel indicated the thick bushes down near the creek and they both walked towards them, Hazel pointing out various overgrown trees and bushes.
It was pretence. He was going to kiss her!
The smell of baking filled the room, as the oven slowly overcooked the pies, the meat spilling from their pastries no doubt. That hot little oven cooking them too hard and too long. I felt sick. Stevie and James were thrashing their sticks and Samuel sat completely still and silent, staring at the screen like an immovable statue.
I slipped out the back door and crept down to the creek, using the garden bed of ferns and pongas as cover. Even though the day was warm, the earth felt cool on my skin as I crawled towards their voices, Hazel's sweet tones and my brother's dull ratchet, so much deeper than it had been only a year ago. I couldn't make out any words, so I crawled closer still.