Wise Young Fool Page 4

  Because, and here’s the thing, that’s all they ever talk about outside your office, too. Except, you know, hooking up with strippers and doing armed robberies and beating down rap producers who didn’t pay their royalties on time.

  Lies, all.

  But within those lies, you can hear so clearly what every one of those guys is really saying:

  “I probably could have used a few more toys, a kind word, or even a little face time with mommy back when I was seven.”

  No PhD required to break that action down.

  But hey, either way, I sure as shit am tired of administrative hold.

  I will miss no more journal entries.

  For real, yo.

  Now, about that whole more-about-Beth thing.

  He may have been a drunk, but why call him a driver?

  Beth was snuffed by a Drunk Weaver. A Drunk I-Can’t-Find-the-Brake-Pedal-er. Dumbass crossed the yellow line, bam, his $65,000 luxury sedan head-on into her $1,100 beater Buick. The good thing about that, though, is he died, too. ’Cause if he’d lived, I would have had to kill his stupid ass all over again.

  I know, I know.

  I realize that falls squarely in the yeah, whatever, tough guy arena.

  Nevertheless.

  I would have bided my time.

  I would have planned and connived.

  I would have squatted in the dark.

  And eventually gotten my hands around his throat.

  Son, that’s not what your sister would have wanted.

  We already lost one young life; why sacrifice another?

  Besides, this isn’t going to look good to the judge.

  Hey, I don’t give a shit. The judge should have done some looking out when the Drunk Weaver got caught the first time. Or even the second.

  Like maybe yanked his license, huh? You think?

  The guy was a classics professor at a college one state over, with an ex-wife, four kids, and a salt-and-pepper beard. Went right through the windshield. Died instantly. Instant karma, doomed to reincarnate as a thousand generations of shit beetles.

  Beth died fast, too. But her Buick caught on fire. There were doctor assurances, medical examiner assurances, blah blah blah, it was over before she burned. But how could they know? Really, for sure? Sometimes I close my eyes and I see her like a witch in the Salem trials. They’ve got her lashed to a pole while the Drunk Weaver stands there in a pointy black hat, about to apply torch to twigs.

  It was her body. It was my sister. Even if she was dead. She burned.

  Afterward all my boys were like, “That sucks, guy,” and “You okay, dog?” running through the appropriately sad motions, “Let us know if you need anything.” But then two seconds later they’re all, “Dude, who saw Fear Factor last night?” and “Man, let’s scrounge some change for a sixer.” El Hella was the only one who knew enough to come over and not leave for a week. El Hella was the only one smart enough not to get all Hallmark, just sort of sit there in my room with the lights off while we listened to my parents downstairs. Yelling. Whose screwup was whose in the crashing sea of their otherwise parental faultlessness. Dad Sudden rode it out for exactly six months.

  Job in Texas.

  Blonde in Texas.

  See ya.

  That happened three years ago, which in Sprouting Pubes years is really a decade. So I’m not gonna sit here and be all, Beth and I were best friends and talk about how perfect she was. Beth was only half awesome. Actually, a lot of the time she ragged it hard.

  Mostly, though, I was just jealous.

  Me three years ago: skinny, sweaty, hairline zits, track shorts, serial masturbator.

  Beth three years ago: older, wiser, better-looking, this verging-on-hot girl who could also smack the shit out of a softball. A girl who could do beer bongs with the woo-hooers and back-slappers from the JV squad and never puke on her shoes. She and her friends always seemed to be leaving school during the middle of the day. I’d be in algebra and see her red Buick turn onto Route 6, a bunch of laughing ponytails stuffed in back, some dude hanging out the window with his arms spread like Leo the Cap in Titanic.

  Then one morning after a big party, Mom just home from the swing shift, uniform spattered with mustard, me with a mouthful of toast, we get a call. State cops.

  “Are you related… have some bad… sorry to inform…”

  That week in school there was a whole lot of crying and hugging. A whole lot of teary girls standing stonewashed in corners and doorways. They had one of those memorials in the gym with Beth’s picture blown up on an easel next to the podium, and people gave weepy speeches and even read these poems, the kind of poems that are so fucking insanely rhymingly horrible that it makes you like the reader more, not less. And then everyone’s favorite teacher, everyone’s best pal, Dick Isley, improv-ed a eulogy.

  Dick.

  Speech.

  Dickspeech.

  “Beth was a great girl.”

  (How would he know?)

  “Beth really meant a lot to all of us.”

  (A lot? Is that less than a ton? Or more than a shitload?)

  “Beth will live on in all our hearts.”

  (Not in yours, she won’t.)

  A month later, everyone was pretty much back to making jokes and grab-assing by their lockers. Except Star Petrosky, who continued to cry in biology lab all year, playing her role as Keeper of the Flame. Me and Star, we ended up dating some. If by dating you mean making out in the back of her mom’s Camry. We’d be talking at a party, How are you holding up? Are you okay? Do you want to be alone? I wouldn’t say anything and then she’d lead me somewhere dark and hug me and whisper how much she missed Beth and how everything was going to be cool, and then next thing you know my head’s inside her shirt and I’m sucking on a grieving nipple while she’s running her fingers through my hair and moaning my name.

  Listen, I know how that sounds, Look how hard I’m trying to prove I’m all hard and detached, like some lame white rapper in a Kangol and six-hundred-dollar sunglasses.

  I mean, I loved my sister.

  No doubt.

  Beth Sudden R.I.P.

  Spill a forty on the ground in tribute, splash splash splash.

  And even though we weren’t best friends, like brothers and sisters in Tom Hanks movies I’ve never seen, we were cool for the most part, and on a good night I could almost get a glimpse of the adult friends we might have grown up to be.

  Meanwhile Star Petrosky’s probably in the back row of some college business class right this second, wearing tear-stained black and carving Beth’s initials into her forearm with an X-Acto knife, driving proof of her ineradicable sadness one layer closer to home.

  I’m back in administrative hold. Mostly for language, but also content. Plus, not taking my journal serious enough. B’los is there, too. He keeps his head down on the desk until about hour four, then looks up.

  “What you writing?”

  I’m scratching away, filling up page after page.

  “Lyrics.”

  “For what?”

  “A song.”

  “Rhymes?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “No, man. Rhymes. Like, hip-hop?”

  “Oh. No, hardcore.”

  “What in fuck’s hardcore?”

  I try to decide if he’s screwing with me or if he’s curious for real.

  Mostly he just stares.

  “It’s like metal,” I finally say. “But without the stupid hair and stupid leather and stupid lyrics. Loud and hard and fast.”

  “At the core of the song, not just the edges.”

  I look at him for a very long time.

  “Exactly.”

  “So what’s it called?”

  “ ‘Ignore Me or Deplore Me.’ ”

  “Stupid title.”

  “I guess.”

  An hour later, he goes, “Or maybe I just don’t know what deplore means.”

  “It’s, like, hating shit so hard it’s almost love.�
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  “Huh.”

  Another hour later, he goes, “Changed my mind. Title’s cool.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nods and then puts his head back down on the desk.

  Ignore me or deplore me

  Floor me or bore me

  Your ignorance is my bliss.

  Life is nothing but tape hiss.

  Background noise, expensive toys

  The whole world one big

  clenched fist,

  One big

  slit wrist

  One big

  tongue kiss

  Me and you against the wall, trading spit

  Me and you in the backseat, bleeding wit.

  I got raw jaws; I got pigeon paws

  I’m like Johnny Law, enforcing laws

  Mirrored glasses and mustache ashes

  A loaded gun and nowhere to run.

  So enforce me, sir, on your knees

  So enforce me, ma’am, say pretty please.

  I was born to die

  And

  You were born to tease.

  I was born to lie

  And

  You were born to bleed.

  So enforce me, sir, on your knees

  So enforce me, ma’am, say pretty please.

  “That’s beyond awesome, Sudden,” Elliot says. We’re in a booth at Espresso Thieves, in the middle of a room full of kids picking their noses and copying algebra homework and generally failing in any way, shape, or form to rock. Also, some old people sipping tea. Elliot air-guitars a couple flourishes and then starts jotting down chords. “That there is a grade-A number-one hit song. I knew I put up with your shit for a reason.”

  “All it needs is a backbeat,” I say, slapping out a rhythm on the table. Cha-kacka-cha-kacka-cha. “Like, you know, how a drummer could give?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give it all the backbeat it can handle.”

  “You will, huh?”

  “Not will. Am.”

  I close my eyes.

  “You praying, Ritchie?”

  “Nah, I’m watching TV in my brain.”

  “What’s on?”

  “It’s a future episode of VH1’s Where Are They Now?”

  “No kidding?”

  “Nope. In this one, forty-year-old Elliot Hella is being interviewed behind the register of the comics shop he clerks at.”

  “Not funny.”

  “Yeah, Elliot’s got a big greasy pompadour, has put on seventy pounds, and generally looks like a beer keg with legs. The voice-over mentions that for years he bounced around from band to band but, despite a small cult following and a compelling amount of raw emotion, was never able to develop widespread acceptance for his antipercussive style.”

  “Enough.”

  “Oh, and here comes the really sad part where Elliot stares into the camera and insists he was blackballed in a conspiracy between the record companies and the drummers’ union. A voice-over whispers: ‘Elliot Hella was briefly hospitalized for extreme exhaustion and, also, paranoid delusions.’ In the background, a classic Sin Sistermouth tune plays as he gets choked up, a single tear rolling down his brownie-fat cheek.”

  “I swear, Sudden…”

  “Then some walking pimple asks if the new issue of Johnny Lazer and Knuckle Boy #66 is out yet. Elliot finds it, rings the dude up, and tells him to have a nice day. Roll credits.”

  When I open my eyes, El Hella is squeezing the edge of the table so hard I almost feel bad for it. His eyes are pinned. His scalp is white and tight, stretched over miles of furious skull.

  As usual, I’ve gone too far.

  Elliot leans over.

  I’m about to signal for the barista to dial 911 when he opens his mouth and starts singing “Enforce me on your knees, ma’am” in a wavery falsetto.

  It sounds kind of good. Actually, better than good.

  A couple of girls turn around to watch. Elliot grabs a bear claw off their table and uses it as a mike, cackling with glee at the look on my face.

  “I was born to lie and you were born to bleed… so enforce me again, pretty pretty please?”

  “Okay, but only because you asked so nicely.”

  Dr. Benway’s rereading the poem about Johnny Law. Her hair looks even more severe than usual. She’s wearing red lipstick.

  “Awesome?” I prompt, waiting for the compliments to roll in.

  “Decidedly not,” she says, handing it back with a sniff.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Guarded. Veiled. Borderline misogynistic. Full of un-revealing wordplay. The definition of style without substance.”

  “Huh. That sounds pretty awesome to me.”

  She smirks.

  I put a check in the Smirk Box I keep in the upper left-hand corner of my brain.

  “What it does do, through the usage of a law enforcement theme, is suggest that you saw yourself as inevitably incarcerated, even before your legal troubles began.”

  “Nah, dawg, that’s just a coincidence.”

  She makes a face. “Don’t call me dawg.”

  “I was just looking for something to rhyme, you know? Paws, laws. Imprison, incision. Butter, stutter. Poetic license and shit.”

  “Poetic and shit rarely cohabitate successfully within the same sentence.”

  “All the more reason to shack them up, right?”

  She starts writing. After about twenty minutes, during which she scribbles out the first three volumes of Proust, Dr. Benway puts down the pen, pops a piece of Nicorette gum, and gets all orgasm-face as whatever evil chemicals are in Nicorette ramp through her bloodstream.

  “You a smoker?” I say, surprised.

  “Ex-smoker.”

  “Still got the jones, though, huh?”

  “When you wrote those lyrics, you weren’t just looking for something to rhyme with. Your subconscious was guiding you, possibly to a place of self-knowledge.”

  “You mean like the only thing I really know is that I know nothing?”

  “I mean, it’s not a coincidence that you wrote ‘a loaded gun and nowhere to run.’ ”

  “Because all teenagers write dumb shit like that?”

  “No, because there are no coincidences. Things happen because you allow them to. You fail because deep down part of you wants to fail.”

  “Does that mean you smoke because deep down part of you wants to die?”

  We stare at each other for a really, really long time.

  “I quit,” she finally says.

  “What, trying to get through to me?”

  “Possibly. But no, I meant cigarettes.”

  I grin. “Still got the jones for us both, though, huh?”

  She signals for The Basilisk, who wastes no time grabbing me by the shoulder and escorting me on out.

  Mom half-assedly throws an arm around my shoulder before I can slip through the patio door. In some cultures they might call that a hug. “Have a great first day!”

  Looper escorts me to the car, gives me the keys, gives me a pep talk.

  “You can do it. Just relax. And breathe.”

  I start the engine.

  She lights a smoke, watches me pull down the driveway and out onto the road.

  Away from the safety of home.

  And then I am actually driving.

  All the way to school.

  I keep it at a steady sixteen miles per hour. A long line of cars ride my bumper, dying to pass. They zoom around corners, cut me off, stare and yell and honk.

  I keep my eyes straight ahead.

  My hands shake, barely gripping the steering wheel.

  My throat is forty-years-of-wandering-the-desert dry.

  The thing is, I don’t really like to drive.

  So I don’t.

  Almost never.

  Actually, ever.

  It’s just a personal choice, a matter of taste.

  The way I roll, homes.

  Or, you know, maybe it’s because I see the Drunk Weaver bearing down every tim
e I look up.

  Or because I see Ghost Beth in the backseat every time I turn around.

  Grinning at me, a sixer on her lap, wanting to crank up some Smashing Fredkins and hit the next party.

  A month ago Looper got tired of tooling me around in the van and insisted I buy a car. So did Mom and so did this grief counselor I talked to a few times before blowing his beard and his slacks and his “when you fall from a horse, it’s essential to get right back on” routine off cold.

  “What the hell am I going to buy it with?” I asked. “Muskrat pelts?”

  “You have a job, don’t you?” Looper said.

  “Yeah, and the huge min-wage bundle I drag home every other Friday is just enough to keep me in Slurpees and rubbers.”

  So Loop talked her boss into payment-planning me his old Saab. He’s this crazy Dutch cat named Rude. One word, like Cher. Legally changed from Ruud van der Whatever. Aside from Perfection Pool Cleaners, he also owns Video Monster, which still stocks more VHS than DVD. He’s convinced tapes are making a comeback. Or is just too cheap to upgrade. Amazingly, the place is packed on weekend nights, the nostalgia crowd snapping up all the John Cusack and Molly Ringwald movies. Either way, there’s always enough leaves, dead mice, and kids squeezing out a Baby Ruth in the shallow end of the local pools to keep them busy.

  My Saab cost six hundred bucks. I slip Rude forty a month, the car smelling like me even before I opened the door: worn, tired, smooth. Needing a wash, needing a buff, needing a new set of valves, whatever valves are.

  “Is good? We have deal?”

  I laid out two twenties and then peeled a sticker off the Video Monster gore shelf. It’s this big orange circle that says HORROR. I put it in on the Saab’s dashboard, where the sun immediately baked it into a shriveled, pulsing warning. It sits there like a cursed monkey paw. HORROR. The more you stare at it, the more it becomes Sanskrit.

  HORROR.

  I can barely drive, it’s so distracting.

  HORROR.

  I can barely drive anyway.

  HORROR.

  I park in the senior lot for the first time, my final year finally begun.

  HORROR.

  Oh, the horror.