Going Nowhere Faster Read online

  You could see it all just by looking at him. Why in God’s name he put up with me was still a mystery.

  “Sorry, Dick Nixon,” he apologized. “I keep forgetting you’re DJ-phobic. Anyway, you wanna go to a party?”

  Miles had the habit of constantly referring to me as someone else, usually some celebrity or historical figure, depending on the situation. He did it without thinking. All the girls thought it was cute. I thought it was annoying as hell. Also, I definitely, absolutely, completely did not want to go to a party.

  “NO PARTIES!” my mother yelled from the living room. We had only one phone and she was hundreds of feet away. There was no possibility she could have overheard.

  “How does she do that?” Miles laughed.

  “Psychic hotline,” I said. “She’s really a Jamaican priestess.”

  “Anyway, Bob Marley,” he said, “party?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Ellen’s gonna be there.”

  My throat constricted. My brow furrowed. My cliché clichéd.

  Her name was actually Eleanor, but everyone called her Ellen and there were many, many nights that I lay on the carpet in my room and said her name over and over and over again until it was one long yogic chant. I’d been crazy about her for a year, and she absolutely didn’t notice or care. Plus, she was so beautiful it made my teeth hurt. Pale, with a small nose and small hands and small feet. She had a way of smiling, almost a smirk, that drove me crazy, one lip up and showing her teeth like I know something you don’t. She wore sweaters with necklaces dangling outside of them and jeans with a tiny butt inside of them and she had slender, tapered fingers, like they were made for something more important than just fitting into gloves.

  There was one other thing. No big deal, really. Just sort of a minor obstacle. A hiccup. Like your grandmother might smile after you broke her favorite candy dish and say, “It’s okay, sweetie, life’s full of little problems.”

  Ellen was Chad Chilton’s girlfriend.

  Or ex-girlfriend. Depended who you asked.

  “Um . . . ,” I said. “Ummm . . .”

  Miles laughed. “You have absolutely no poker face, you know that, Johnny Chan? Absolutely none.”

  “You can tell over the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ummm . . . ,” I said again. Ellen. Every single inch of me ached.

  “Meet me at the bridge in fifteen minutes,” Miles commanded. (He refused to come to my house on the off chance that he might run into my mother, or even worse, Prarash.)

  “What are you afraid of?” I goaded.

  “Man, is that Prarash dude there?”

  (Was he ever not here?)

  “Nope,” I lied.

  “You’re lying, Benedict Starnald, I can practically smell him over the phone.”

  I laughed. “Okay, okay.”

  “Dude smells funky, you know it? And he’s always smiling, too. His leg could be on fire and he’d be smiling away, telling you how blessed he was to be warm.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed.

  “I don’t know how you stand it,” Miles said ruefully.

  “I guess since I have no choice, it’s pretty easy.”

  “True,” he admitted. “Now hurry up and pedal over, Lance Armstrong, and I’ll pick your Casanova butt up.”

  “Wait!” I said. “Holy crap, Miles, I forgot to tell you how someone almost ran me over, and . . .”

  I stopped explaining when I realized the line was dead. Besides, I needed time to pick out the right clothes. And the right deodorant. And the right face.

  FIVE THINGS I PROBABLY SHOULDN’T WEAR:

  1. An orange Speedo

  2. A gold medallion that says “Love” on one side and “Hate” on the other

  3. High heels

  4. A chocolate mustache

  5. One large Yogi Bear tie

  Actually, the Yogi tie wasn’t half-bad. But I settled for a sweatshirt instead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MR. AND MRS. (no, seriously) SMITH

  Her name was Eleanor, but everyone called her Ellen, and her last name was Rigby, so she spent a lot of time explaining herself:

  Typical Football Moron: “Eleanor Rigby? Your name is Eleanor Rigby, like the Beatles song?”

  Ellen: (sigh) “Yup.”

  Typical Football Moron: “Cool. Just like the Beatles song.”

  Ellen: “Yup. Just like it.”

  Typical Football Moron: (loud and within earshot of all his pals) “So what’s your mom’s name, Madonna?” (Ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha.)

  Ellen: “Gosh, I never heard that one before.”

  So, we had a lot in common, given that my name was not only Stan, but also Smith, for the combined wonder of Stan Smith.

  Typical Soccer Moron: “Your name is Stan Smith? Stan Smith, like the sneaker?”

  Me: “Yup (sigh), like the sneaker.”

  Typical Soccer Moron: (loud and within earshot of all his pals) “So what’s your mom’s name, Air Jordan?” (Ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha.)

  Me: “Hilarious. Believe it or not, Cleft Chin, I’ve never heard that one before.”

  Typical Soccer Moron: (before punch) “What did you say?

  Me: “Nothing.” (then) “Ouch.”

  So, as you might imagine, we’d bonded over this likeness, during our one (1) wonderful, precious, life affirming conversation, the day she came into Happy Video with her father and they walked around while I stared, stared, stared, pretending to listen to Keith tell yet another (incredibly loud) story about either scoring the winning touchdown or preventing the other team from scoring the winning touchdown (his two variations on hero-dom). For some reason, just watching her, just talking about dumb and meaningless things, for the first time I felt like I’d connected with someone. Someone female. It wasn’t like with girls at school, blond and giggling and beautiful across the room, sitting in the cool row of desks, which might as well have been in Moscow for all the chance I had. It wasn’t like models or commercials or magazines or videos. For once it didn’t feel plastic. There was something there, and I knew it was true because even Keith couldn’t ruin it. Especially when he tried to show me off.

  “Stan knows where every movie in the place is, don’t you Stan?”

  I shrugged, turning red.

  “Watch!” Keith said, winking. “Bull Durham.”

  I closed my eyes for a second. “Third shelf. Far wall. Fourth from the end.”

  Mr. Rigby looked. It was there. “Wow,” he said. Ellen stared at me.

  “Free Willy!” Keith yelled.

  There was a joke there, involving his belly, but I let it go. “Second cubicle on right.” Ellen was looking at me like I was a bug. “Bottom shelf. Between 101 Dalmatians and Freaky Friday.”

  Mr. Rigby checked again. “That’s amazing!”

  “I have a lot of free time on my hands,” I admitted.

  “Hey, Stan!” Keith called. “Movies with the word ‘bridge’ in them!”

  I reeled them off in a low monotone. “A Bridge Too Far. Bridge on the River Kwai. Across the Bridge. Graffiti Bridge. Girl on the Bridge. Bridges of Madison . . .”

  Keith was giddy. He stuffed an Almond Joy into his mouth and blurted, “Movies with ‘pink’ in the title!”

  Ellen shook her head sadly, but somehow I couldn’t not answer.

  “Pretty in Pink. Pinky. Pink Flamingos. All sixty-eight Pink Panther films. Pink Narcissus, Pink Cadillac —”

  “Purple!”

  “Purple Rain, Purple Rose of Cairo —”

  “Bill Murray!”

  “Ghostbusters, Ed Wood, Meatballs —”

  “Murray alphabetical!”

  “Caddyshack, Charlie’s Angels, Coffee and Cigarettes . . .”

  “That’s some noodle you’ve got there, son,” Mr. Rigby said, poking his temple with one long index finger. “So, have you picked out a college yet?”

  “Dad!” Ellen said.

  “What?” her father asked, confused.
r />   Ellen pulled him by the sleeve and they talked in low voices for a while behind the Teen Comedy section. I pulled myself by the sleeve and went in back and wiped my forehead with an adult video catalogue. In the end, Ellen rented Casablanca (what a fabulous and lovable choice) while her father (with his pipe and his sleeve patches and corduroys) chose Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore (typical, despicable).

  “Hey, Mr. Movie Guy,” Mr. Rigby called, “I have a question for you. Why didn’t they ever make Bio-Dome II?”

  “DAD!”

  “Sorry about that,” Ellen said, waiting at the counter to pay.

  “What are you sorry for?”

  So we talked about what we were embarrassed about.

  “Umm . . . Keith?”

  “Umm . . . my dad?”

  And discussed our various names.

  “Like the sneaker?”

  “Like the song?”

  And talked about our favorite actor.

  “Duh? Bogart?”

  “Duh, me too!”

  And she smiled shyly from underneath her little black bob haircut, with her pale, pale cheeks and delicate hands, and I actually added her total incorrectly (two times $2.99 . . . think . . . Think!), which Keith gave me crap about for weeks, and then I floated, absolutely floated, the entire rest of the shift just remembering the feel of her index finger as our hands touched, as I handed her the (incorrect) change and then she walked away, out of the store, out of my sight, away from me, forever.

  Until tonight.

  “Warm,” I said, to the showerhead. Nothing happened. “On,” I said again. Nothing happened. So I washed out of the sink and shaved out of the sink. (I didn’t need to shave, since I had no facial hair, but managed to cut my chin anyway.) “Flush,” I told the toilet, and it did, which was some kind of victory.

  Treatment for the feature-length film titled

  GOING NOWHERE FASTER©

  Written by Stan “Sweet Memphis” Smith

  Danny Green is a tough young kid from the wrong side of the tracks who wants to escape his life of crime and violence and make it as a musician. He’s been playing banjo for years and is really, really good at it. So good, it’s only a matter of time before he’s discovered and offered a three-album deal. The problem is his evil brother Denny, who is jealous of Danny’s talent and will do anything to sabotage his leaving town. Including talking Danny into robbing a store, Denny pretending he needs the money for his girlfriend’s operation. But then Denny peels away in the escape car and leaves Danny holding the bag as dozens of police cars come flying over the old wooden bridge that metaphorically leads to the wrong side of town. Thinking quickly, Danny hides inside his banjo case, and then escapes on the back of a garbage truck, but is now on the run from both the cops and his conscience, with only the hauntingly beautiful tones of his banjo to lull him to sleep at night, and also the free cable channels at the motel.

  Will Danny seek revenge on Denny? Will the cops find him? Is his music career ruined? Does . . .

  God, this is stupid. This is really stupid, right?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SUNSET is a bad time to be caught on the BOULEVARD of broken dreams

  I hid my bike under the rusty struts of the old bridge, which not a drop of water had trickled under since they’d built an Enormo-Mart three towns up. My mother (towering over the picket signs) led the “No Blood for Enormo!” petition drive, not to mention the protests and the blowing of whistles and yelling of slogans outside the construction site. Prarash sat in the path of the bulldozers in a yoga position and absolutely, under any circumstances refused to move, until the bulldozers got close and revved their engines, at which point he moved. None of it did any good. Enormoco still dammed the stream and all the fish died and all the frogs and newts died, but, on the plus side, once the inaugural Enormo doors opened, people for miles around were suddenly free to buy one-hundred-quart cans of corn niblets and pallet-sized lots of irregular diapers and jars of ketchup bigger than mailboxes. If you factored in the savings, it was probably worth it.

  Miles was, of course, late. It was also pitch black. I was suddenly positive Chad Chilton was going to come rushing out of the darkness and knee me in the spine, so I picked up a rock. It was heavy and sharp and hurt my palm. It was also stupid, so I put it back down.

  Miles, like anyone named Miles invariably would be, was one of the few guys I knew who not only had his driver’s license, but also a car, and not just any car, but a cool car; an old souped-up Toyota with no muffler that sounded like a Sherman tank and had carpet on the dashboard and incense sticks poking out of the air vents and a cooler full of beer in the trunk, which he sold for two bucks apiece, and he was always flush with cash and never asked you for gas money and was always willing to pay for Slim Jims and sodas, all the things I never had the cash for myself.

  Where’s all that Happy Video money? you might ask. Where’s the huge Keith paycheck (which he tended to “forget,” at least once a month, to cut for me)? Well, given the relative state of Smith’s Natural Foods and Gifts, not to mention the fact that neither of my parents had ever had a real job, or at least one that would require they be beholden to the Man, all family money coming in, including a certain minimum-wage-video-clerk’s minimum wage, was earmarked for family usage. Yes, I was expected to pull my weight. Especially since we barely had a car ourselves, at least one that worked. For ten years my father had been retrofitting an ancient diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. Every once in a while he’d get it working and my mom would fold herself into the front seat and we’d all go out for a family trip, which was huge fun all around, except that we’d have to stop every twenty miles or so at a Burger King or KFC and then sit in the car while my father went in to ask the managers for their used french fry grease, and I would nearly die of embarrassment. Being embarrassed didn’t seem to bother my mother too much.

  FIVE THINGS LESS EMBARRASSING THAN THE FRY MOBILE:

  1. Naked at church

  2. Solo contestant on The Newlywed Game

  3. Caught in chat room for Hasselhoff enthusiasts

  4. Fall down at Oscars, break Pacino’s nose with flying head of statuette

  5. Named Stan on purpose

  “It doesn’t matter what other people think, honey, you know that.”

  I didn’t know that. It really did matter.

  “We’re all God’s people, and she has a plan for every one of us.”

  “She?”

  My mother would reach back her nine-foot arm and playfully rub my hair, which I’d long since learned was her signal for I’m through explaining unless you’re ready for an hour-long lecture.

  And what made it even worse, since we were already there, was that I wasn’t allowed to eat any of the food.

  “Hamburgers are poison,” Mom would say happily, a paper sack in the trunk filled with the tofu pups and beet salad she had prepared for our picnic lunch. “You’ll find that out when you study biology. In college.”

  College?

  “Okay, what about cheeseburgers?”

  “Those too, silly.”

  “If they’re poison, then how come it’s okay to use their oil?”

  “That’s different, Stanley.”

  “But how?”

  “It just is,” she’d say, reaching back and ruffling my hair again, this time without even turning, with an arm that just kept coming. “Ask your father.”

  “I can’t.” I’d point to the plate glass window behind which my father would be shaking hands with a skinny man in an orange jumpsuit. “He’s in there.”

  “True,” my mother would (oh so rarely) admit, and then my father would back the Mercedes (faded yellow with gray primer spots) up to the kitchen door, and all the cooks and dishwashers would laugh and shake their heads and watch with amazement as we siphoned off the rancid dregs of their Fry-O-Lator, first into the gas tank, and then into a fifty-gallon drum welded to our roof, and then we’d drive away smelling like the world’s largest onion ring.<
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  “Mom! Everyone’s staring!”

  “Shush . . . they’re just jealous.”

  “They’re not jealous, they’re laughing!” I’d wail, as car after car that actually used gas would roar past us (the Mercedes’s top speed, when it was working at maximum crispy-chicken efficiency, was forty mph), their occupants holding their stomachs and pointing and howling with laughter.

  A dribble of oil would begin to run down the window.

  “Mom! We’re leaking!”

  “We are not. Have some beet salad.”

  I replayed that scenario, with some variations, for about an hour, until Miles finally roared up in his Toyota, spraying gravel all over my sneakers, and held open the door.

  “You’re late.”

  “Yeah, sorry, had to stock up on provisions.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, briefly hating him for making me relive the McHorror.

  “So, are you gonna get in, Duckfoot, or what?”

  I spit in the dirt and then got in. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry, Rumsfeld,” he laughed, and then peeled away.

  “Duckfoot” had been my nickname in seventh grade, ever since my mother had bought me a pair of Superman sneakers. They actually had ol’ Clark Kent, arm outstretched, flying away from the laces in his stupid blue tights. Of course, I refused to wear them. In second grade, they would have been great. In seventh grade they were a guaranteed disaster.