Wise Young Fool Read online

  Husband number five, name of Lawrence, has little tufts of gray hair and miles of wrinkly skull, sitting upstairs in a leather chair next to a reel-to-reel player spooling out Tchaikovsky. There’s a jar of honey on the side table that he eats with a spoon. We take a break and Lawrence tells me he once worked on the Manhattan Project.

  “No fooling, huh?”

  “Like Oppenheimer?” Elliot explains. “The dude who assembled the first nuke? The Manhattan Project was his team. Mushroom clouds and shit. Lawrence racked the abacus and got all theoretical on Hitler’s ass. He mathed up hard and ended the war.”

  “Well, not alone,” Lawrence says.

  “L-Dog, I so had no clue you were famous!”

  Lawrence shrugs and nods, practically a living memory, a dream of tweed suits and chalkboards and differential equations, like Russell Crowe in that movie where he’s not a gladiator.

  How can you not love the guy?

  Plus, he couldn’t care less how terrible we are. How loud and clumsy and angry and awesome we are, amps cranked post-max, hammering through the floorboards for hours while he just sits there readjusting the quilt on his legs.

  “Lawrence,” I say, “you’re totally getting a major shout-out in the liner notes.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Elliot says, scratching neck stubble. “We don’t even have a name yet and you’re hanging the Grammy over the mantel.”

  “How about the Envisaged?”

  “Terrible.”

  “How about Betty Got Eddie Pregnant?”

  “Even worse. Sounds like an avant-garde theater troupe.”

  “How about Murder Coaster?”

  “Hey, that’s good,” Lawrence says.

  Elliot takes off his steel-toes and rubs his real toes. Dude don’t wear no socks.

  “Like I said, we don’t even have a name.”

  The phone rings.

  The phone never rings at the Hellas’. Literally. I have never once heard it ring before.

  We all crowd around the speakerphone. “Hello?”

  It’s the Rock Scene people. The guy sounds too happy to be alive.

  “Hey, guys, we have some great new twists this year that will be announced soon!”

  “Great,” Elliot goes.

  “Twists,” I go.

  “Like live streaming. It may go viral.”

  “Live streaming,” Elliot says.

  “Viral,” I say.

  “Also, on the downside? We’ve received your application.”

  “What about it?”

  Turns out there are two problems with our application. One is that we forgot to include the entrance fee, which is more or less a direct result of the fact that we didn’t include it, since I earmarked every last available dollar for The Paul. We were sort of hoping they wouldn’t notice, like, Whoops, it must have fallen on the floor.

  No dice.

  Rock Scene Guy goes, “Sorry, guys, but rules are rules. Deadlines are deadlines. Disqualified is disqualified.”

  We’re screwed.

  Until Lawrence reaches into the side table without a word, pulling out a checkbook made of, like, papyrus. He writes in the amount, one hundred shaky dollars, with this thing that looks more like an eagle feather than a pen. He actually dips it in a jar of ink.

  Elliot gives Lawrence the thumbs-up, already arguing with Rock Scene Guy about the second problem.

  The second problem is that we didn’t fill in a name.

  “Our name is Band.”

  “The Band? I think that’s already taken.”

  “No. Just Band.”

  “Banned?”

  “Not Banned. Band! We are called Band. Our fans know us as Band. The world worships us as Band. Should I drive down there and sound it out for you?”

  “B-A-N-D?”

  “No, genius, F-I-S-T-E-D. Yes. How many times do I have to say it? Band!”

  Rock Scene Guy sniffs, like his feelings are hurt. “If you have to say it that many times, it’s probably not a very good name.”

  There’s a long pause. Elliot knows the dude is right. He clears his throat like he’s about to apologize, and then doesn’t. The discussion continues, the whole thing extremely interesting, but I’m not really paying attention anymore.

  Why?

  Mostly because I’m way off in that space I go to alone, about sixty-nine times a day.

  The space where I’m thinking, hard, about Ravenna Woods.

  It doesn’t pay to think about Ravenna in here. So I don’t. There’re sixty dudes in one big concrete crate. Which is fifty-nine dudes too many. It doesn’t pay to think about anything you do want, anything you will want, anything you ever wanted.

  But let’s not get too dramatic.

  This is no movie.

  Lockdown and solitary.

  Shaw and shank.

  It’s mostly just a parade of dimwits, shit-lucks, knuckleheads, fist-fuckers, finger-sniffers, ass bandits, wrong-place-wrong-timers, and dudes too weak to pull off even the most minor crimes.

  Which, ironically, makes the ten guys who are actually dangerous 63 percent more dangerous.

  At Progressive Progress we have classes. Like Art Therapy, and How to Do a Job Interview, and How to Not Be High All the Time. Then there’s “counselors” instead of guards. Some of them are hard-asses. A couple true believers. Most of them are just bored.

  But that doesn’t mean it’s not hairy at times.

  You cram a hundred degenerates into a box, eventually one of them’s gonna come up with The Merchant of Venice.

  And another’s gonna come up with Undercard.

  Which two of them actually did.

  What’s Undercard?

  Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots played out by juvie knucklettes.

  Punch or be punched.

  Do not pass Go; do not explain your bruises.

  No ring, no gloves, no trainer.

  It’s about bouts. Kids crowding around going “Oooh!” and “Damn!” while they stand on the sidelines, safe and whole.

  At least for a week.

  Undercard pays in smokes. Or, as the slang-happy residents of Unit 3 call them, bones. Like, “You want to brawl, homes? No? Cost you six bones. Don’t got ’em? Then you’re on the list. We’ll see you at fight time in the dayroom.”

  Saying no is not an option.

  In the dayroom, there’re a dozen plastic chairs. This muscle dude named Conner is barn boss. He’s got eleven chairs stacked up, sitting on them like a throne, daring anyone to ask, let alone try, to take one. So people just stand. For hours. No one sits on the floor, ’cause it smells like piss. Next to Conner is his second in command, kid named Peanut.

  Peanut sits on the one other chair.

  A horizontal scar across his throat like a necklace.

  Busy picking the bouts.

  He doesn’t seem to like me a whole lot.

  In fact, word is he hates my guts.

  If Peanut hates my guts, that means Conner hates my guts.

  I’d ask them why, but that would be stupid.

  “You down with Undercard, Sudden?”

  “Um, well, I…”

  “Sorry, son, you been chosen.”

  So I lost my first two fights.

  Got punched and kicked until the punching and kicking stopped.

  Went to lunch a little on the tender side.

  “You fall down in the shower?” Conner asked, then laughed.

  I paid in cigarettes to get out of the match after that.

  But they didn’t like me ducking.

  For some reason I’m a big draw.

  Apparently, people like watching me get punched.

  I can’t figure it out.

  At all.

  School starts in one week exactly. My senior year. Supposed to be awesome. King of the Hallways and all that shit. But I’m fairly sure it’s just another fantasy, like winning the big game or nailing the hot cheerleader—except no one fantasizes about those things anymore, since footb
all is a concussion factory and cheerleaders are hot pockets of chlamydia. So it’s more like dreaming about getting accepted to Princeton on hardship or writing the next killer social media app.

  Meanwhile, I’ve been playing The Paul every waking second for a month. My fingers are bleeding. Have bled. Will bleed. Wore the lame calluses I used to have clean off. Now my fingertips are like cracked leather. My chops are getting slick. I finger-pick my way down the stairs, windmill open chords through the kitchen. I play while watching TV, twang arpeggios during every commercial, beer-car-beer, buy fish sticks, buy boner pills, please tune in to Sitcom Q while some tool delivers punch lines mathematically designed for the diminution of your intellect. I diminish minor sevenths instead. I change the strings, wax the back, tweak the truss rod. I sleep with The Paul lying next to me like a skinny Russian model, all neck and no ass. Hey, you want commitment? Even on the can, squeezing out a deuce, I got The Paul on my lap, shredding through Slayer tablature and getting one out of every twenty-three notes right. Mom is yelling, but mostly it’s to say, Bye, I’m late for work. Don’t forget to wipe!

  Seriously? That’s not a joke.

  Or is barely one.

  Mom still thinks I’m six.

  Possibly nine.

  Assuming she’s done the math at all.

  Possible Band Name List #48

  Death by Blender

  Los Stupid Texans

  Mutilhate

  Your Feet, My Ottoman

  Suction Solution

  The Glossolalias

  HoBroken

  Death by Market Share

  Sonata Regatta Cumquatta

  Stab Habit

  Death by Man, Machine, and Nature

  Kiss Me Cherry

  Tiniest Little Sips

  We Buy Sell Hair

  Kennedy Martini Left

  Craw Aerosol

  Hammershot Panicsmith

  Death by Wipe

  sMuttonChops

  The Velleity

  Death by My Chemical Romance

  The Plenipotentiaries

  Men of Mod

  Death by Rat Salad

  Psycooze

  Incest Militia Right

  The Has Binges

  Pigtail and the Curls

  Scrofula

  Use Suburb in Our Name to Signify Angst.

  ShockMom AweDad

  Death by Arty Pretension

  Ouroboros

  CutYou Slim and the Four Tercels

  Death by Koresh

  Elliot pulls his mom’s Renault up the driveway and parks next to my Saab, which hasn’t moved in a while.

  I don’t like to drive that much.

  So I don’t drive that much.

  Or, really, ever.

  He kicks open the door and starts unloading.

  There’s something different about him.

  I can’t quite put my finger on it.

  Until I do.

  He’s got no hair.

  Not a single one.

  Shaved clean.

  El Hella has gone full-on skin.

  I don’t say so, but it actually looks pretty cool, pretty tough. He left the sideburns, which are now muttonchops, proto-Neanderthal. His eyes are black and flat. He’s got a Marlboro behind his ear like he’s about to reach up, dip it in ink, and sign his will.

  “What?”

  “Something’s different. You wearing a new outfit?”

  He’s wearing khaki shorts and a Misfits shirt and sweating, squat and nut-brown and muscular. I’m wearing khaki shorts and a Pixies shirt and sweating, tall and pale and skinny.

  “No.”

  “For some reason you remind me of a baby’s ass. For some reason I want to powder you and swaddle you and gingerly tuck you under my arm.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “Hey, maybe when we get huge, you can endorse teen-formula Rogaine.”

  “Are you through yet, or do you need a few minutes to go mature in private?”

  “Nope, I’m good.”

  He starts tugging at his amp, a Fender Bassman that’s heavier than a freezer full of steaks.

  “Need a hand?”

  “Negative.”

  “You sure?”

  “I am not in the habit of taking help from dicks who are all up in my fashion sense.”

  I grab the other end anyway, mime scissors.

  “You do the honors yourself?”

  “Nah, that hot waitress at Presto’s clippered it off. In the back lot. Said she was going to sell the shit for fifty bucks.”

  “To who?”

  “One of those companies makes wigs. Long Island MILFs. Cancer ladies. Ladies who need merkins.”

  “What’s a merkin?”

  “A vag wig.”

  “They make vag wigs?”

  He shrugs. “I guess.”

  “Hey, you know what?”

  “Do not say Vag Wig is a great name for a band.”

  “But it totally is! Besides, what hot waitress?”

  “Angie.”

  Elliot is a pasta boy at Pasta Presto’s. That means putting precooked spaghetti in these little cups of warm water just before the chef slops on the sauce.

  “Angie?”

  “Yup.”

  “Angie Proffer?

  “Yup.”

  “Mrs. Proffer who is Spence Proffer’s mom?”

  “So?”

  We lever the amp into the corner of the garage, under a poster of Marc Bolan driving a tank through downtown Detroit with some ugly-ass nude chick straddling the turret. She’s got a gut and a flask and this unruly brown muff that looks like half the hippies from 1974 are communing in it. But, man, she’s smiling like you wouldn’t believe. So open and innocent. So happy. Her eyes are like melted glass, teeth an ocean wide. People don’t smile like that anymore.

  I seriously love that girl.

  “What do you mean, so?”

  Elliot gets on Beth’s old Huffy and pedals in circles around me.

  “Mind your own business.”

  “You’re right. Hey, what am I thinking? You should totally bareback Mrs. Proffer in the stockroom. Knock that cougar up. By the time we graduate you’ll be Spence Proffer’s uncle.”

  “That wouldn’t make me his uncle.”

  I get on my old Razor and start doing opposite circles inside his.

  “And he just might take a pass on beating the shit out of you, since your pink, beautiful, funky-tonk baby, whom you will no doubt immediately name Joe Strumma Hella, will be his half brother.”

  “Still doesn’t make me Proffer’s uncle.”

  “No, but when you’re in the hospital with broken arms and legs, I will have to ask for a full refund for our fully nonrefundable Rock Scene 2013 deposit under a medical hardship exemption.”

  Elliot stops short. Beth’s tire squeals. His eyes are beyond serious. He puts his cigarette out on the back of his wrist, where there are about thirty circular burns, like eraser tips, forming a lunatic’s bracelet. “Under no circumstances of any kind am I missing one fucking note of Rock Scene 2013. You got me, Sudden?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I take a big stride and launch the scooter into the wall, where it chunks out a piece of Sheetrock almost exactly the size and shape of a scooter.

  “What we really need is a drummer.”

  “Negative.”

  “But why?”

  He sighs. “Drummers are dicks, okay? They’re high maintenance. They’re always wanting to sing and write songs instead of just keeping the beat. They’re always spontaneously combusting, or choking on their own vomit, or losing an arm in a car wreck. It’s just not worth the effort.”

  “A kept beat isn’t worth a little hassle?”

  “What we really need is a name,” he says. “That Rock Scene dude keeps pestering me.”

  “How about Celestial Embryo?”

  “Terrible. Hippie nonsense.”

  “How about Elliot Hella and the Smella Glove?”

&nbs
p; “Worse. Zero funny.”

  “How about Mortis Trigger?”

  He shakes his amazingly bald head. “Unmarketable, even to Norwegian metalheads.”

  “Okay, all joking aside?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have the name.”

  “Yes?”

  “Stop Exploring. Except we insist on squeezing our legs together and saying it every time with a lisp, like Thtop Exthploring.”

  “Hmmm…”

  “No, seriously? I really have the name.”

  “Yes?”

  “Sin Sistermouth.”

  “Sin Sistermouth?”

  “Sin Sistermouth.”

  Elliot ponders it, the expanse of his skull creasing. He dumps the bike and holds up one finger.

  “That, my friend, is actually not bad at all.”

  I pick up Beth’s bike and put it back in the corner.

  So, Sin Sistermouth is our new name.

  And then, instead of practicing, we spend the rest of the afternoon working on cover art and a cool logo.

  Five Things Our Band Needs (to win Rock Scene 2013):

  1. A name

  2. A drummer

  3. A singer

  4. A signature song

  5. An enema

  Just as Elliot is splitting, Looper comes home.

  Three things you should know:

  1. Beth left us.

  2. Dad Sudden left.

  3. Looper just showed up.

  Cause and effect. Euclidian geometry. The moronic triangle.

  Looper blocks Elliot’s Renault with her PERFECTION POOL CLEANERS van before edging to the side. Elliot sprays gravel at the end of the driveway, tires leaving a tiny French patch.

  “What, you and your buddy are skinheads now?”

  Looper leans against a scuffed Coleman cooler, peeling off her rubber boots. A blue feather earring dangles from one ear. She’s got the tan of someone who stands next to water all day.

  “I look like a skinhead to you?”

  She cracks a Stroh’s. “You hang out with a skinhead, I figure you’re a skinhead, too.”

  “Well, how about you toss me a Stroh’s there, Alberta Einstein, and I’ll explain just how dumb that comment is.”