Going Nowhere Faster Read online

  “Mom, I’m way too old for these.”

  “Nonsense. They’re fine.”

  She’d gotten them on sale somewhere. It was time for stronger tactics.

  “But isn’t Superman just a pawn of the corporate power elite?”

  “That’s an excellent question, Stan, but, the answer is no.”

  “Yes he is!” I said. “He’s a polluter! There’s huge chunks of kryptonite all over the place! It’s ruining the water supply!”

  “Now, Stan . . .”

  “I am not, no way, no how, ever wearing them.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, from way up in the clouds, her voice booming, “you can go barefoot. I did when I was your age.”

  “But . . . ,” I said (how do you compete with that?), “but . . .”

  Somehow my father intervened, and a compromise was struck. I would still have to wear the sneakers, but my mother would dye them blue. So she tossed them into a saucepan with some RIT dye and a few days later gave them back to me. They were even worse. You could still see Superman, except now he was a sickly green and looked like a flying corpse. Also, every time I wore the sneakers, my socks would turn blue. Then my ankles would turn blue. I looked diseased from the shins down.

  FIVE PREFERABLE PIECES OF FOOTWEAR:

  1. Nike “Air Broken Glass” high-tops

  2. Crown of Thorns sole-wrap

  3. Barefoot in Cow Field inter-toe squish

  4. Oliver Twist brand dirty/wet rag bundle

  5. Scorch Puppies briquette-lined loafers

  “Perfect! They look great! Now, that wasn’t so bad after all, was it?”

  After the second day of school, when I’d absorbed an astonishing amount of ridicule (“Hey look! Egghead’s got Superfag on his sneakers!”), I started to hide my father’s work boots in my backpack and then change in homeroom. Of course, the boots were about five sizes too large, but they were still an improvement and sometimes even went unnoticed, despite the shuffling limp I used to compensate for five extra inches of toe. The real problem came in gym class. With shorts on, the boots were absurdly large, and I was immediately, and for the rest of the year, dubbed “Duckfoot.” I was also punched before and after kickball (Hey, those boots are cheating!), until Miles intervened, just walked up with his hands in his pockets and said something like:

  “Hey, are you sure you guys don’t want to, you know, just leave him alone?”

  All casual, no hurry, just a suggestion really. Which, amazingly, they took. And that’s how we met. We’d been best friends since.

  “My ankles are still blue,” I admitted.

  Miles laughed, shifting gears. We roared past pines and oaks and overgrown shrubbery. Large houses with many-car garages were set off in the woods.

  “They still smell, too. Just don’t let Ellen too close.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said. “Where’s Cari?”

  “Meeting us there.”

  “Where is there, exactly, anyway?”

  “Adam Pratt’s. His parents are skiing in, like, Aruba or something.”

  “Aruba is an island in the Caribbean,” I said. “I doubt they’re skiing.”

  “Okay, Good Will Hunting, so they’re snorkeling.” He reached into the backseat and then handed me a can. “Want a beer?”

  Have I mentioned yet that I’ve never been drunk? Probably not. It’s embarrassing. I mean, I’ve tried a couple of times, but I almost immediately start feeling queasy and then more or less give up. Miles keeps insisting I’m just not trying hard enough. I’ve had plenty of chances to prove him wrong, but for some reason, don’t. Miles always had beer, and always offered, and I always said no.

  “No.”

  He handed me one anyway. “C’mon, Culkin. A man’s gotta get thirsty sometime.”

  I put the can on the floor between my feet. Maybe I was scared of having too much and making a fool of myself. On the other hand, since I made a fool of myself all the time sober, there wasn’t a ton of logic there. Also, beer smelled like Keith. Anything that smelled like Keith, especially if it wasn’t actually Keith himself, I wanted at least a hundred yards away at all times.

  “Whatever,” Miles said.

  “Miles, who’s gonna be at this party?”

  He reeled off the usual names, Amanda and Wendy and Sarah and Todd with two D’s and Jed with one D and the five different Conners and the four different Liams and the three different Ians, but no Stan.

  “Who else?”

  Miles shrugged. “I dunno. You’ll see in a minute.”

  “No . . . I mean . . . is Chad Chilton going to be there?”

  “Oh, Lord,” he said. “Will you give that a rest? Huh? Chad Chilton joined the marines or something. That guy is long gone.”

  “I know,” I said. “Probably.”

  “There’s no probably about it, Shaggy,” Miles insisted. “You think that guy cares enough about you to hang around this town?”

  “Not likely,” I admitted, secretly thinking he just might. For one thing, he’d promised. For another, I was not the world’s luckiest guy. If there were a two-person Lotto, I’d always come in second. Oooh, just missed! If a meteor fell, it would land on my bike. If you had to pull names out of a hat, I’d get Stan. “But lots of weird things have been happening.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you. Like tonight, for instance, someone tried to run me off the road on purpose.”

  “On purpose? On your bike?”

  “Yes,” I said, knowing I sounded like a moron. “I think it was him.”

  “For such a smart guy, you sure have a one-track mind,” Miles said. “You think if Einstein was worried about Chad Chilton all the time he would have invented television?”

  “Einstein didn’t —”

  “Or the toaster? Or the ozone layer, or whatever?”

  “But . . .”

  Miles turned on the stereo.

  “Not Nirvana!” I said, just as Nirvana filled the car like a broken Weedwacker. They were his favorite band. His only band. It was all he ever played. It was okay at first, years ago, but now I couldn’t stand it. Kurt sang in his sad rasp and delivered his sad lyrics buried under a thousand miles of sad distortion. Miles had driven all the way to Seattle, nonstop for three days, to attend Kurt’s funeral with a hundred thousand other goatees-in--mourning. At least he did in his mind, since he was about five when it happened. Still, he insisted he was there. No one ever pressed him about it. In fact, the only thing he ever got mad about was when someone mentioned (I know, I know, why would they ever?) Courtney Love.

  Miles began to sing “and I pro-mise, I don’t have a gun, nooo, I don’t —”

  “You have a terrible voice,” I interrupted.

  “I have a great voice,” he said.

  I turned the volume off. “Don’t you have any Sinatra?”

  Miles laughed. The little car tore around the corners, faster than the high beams could catch up.

  “Slow down,” I said.

  “Shmo shmown,” he answered. The car glided beneath us. It was like he was impervious, and so, by extension, for once, was I.

  “So how’s the script coming, Kubrick?”

  “It’s coming,” I said.

  “What’s it called again?”

  “Going Nowhere Faster.”

  “Oh, yeah, right . . . what’s it about again?”

  “Robot ducks.”

  “Come again?”

  “Killer ducks. Made of metal. With laser eyes. They attack in waves. Quack. Zzzt. Quack. Zzzt.”

  “Sounds like a winner,” Miles said, and then made a ring ring ring sound before picking up a pretend telephone. “Hello? Yeah, he’s right here.” Miles held out the fake receiver. “It’s Brad Pitt’s agent. They’re interested.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  “Ha-ha,” he said.

  Eventually, we began to pass lines of cars parked on the side of the road in both directions.

  “Is tha
t Chad Chilton’s?” I asked, eyeing a jacked-up Chevelle. There were muscle cars naturally grouped together, hunkered down like wolverines. They all looked like something Chad Chilton would drive or own or crash on purpose and then stand on the side of the road with his arms crossed laughing maniacally. I tried to spot the one that had run me off the road, but they all seemed the same.

  Miles punched me in the shoulder, not too hard. “Relax already, okay?”

  “Seriously, though,” I said. “On the way home from work tonight? This car? It came flying down the road, and —”

  Miles sighed loudly. “Can we be positive from this point forward? Party? Fun? Girls?”

  I nodded. “Fine. I have but one life to give to my country.”

  “Ben Franklin, right?”

  “Actually . . .”

  “Good,” he said, then handed me my discarded can, which had rolled around under the seat and was covered with dirt and grease and God knows what else. The party was in full swing. Even a block away you could hear the music, or at least the bass line, turned way past distortion, some kind of hip-hop cranked into an excruciating mush, a frequency that no doubt was sterilizing every frog and lizard within a two-mile radius.

  Miles gave up looking for a spot and parked on the lawn, with a one-handed flourish, the car skidding to a stop. The house was set back in the woods, a brand-new mansion built for a brand-new millionaire, lit up like an enormous candle. People stood around in the front yard, yelling, slapping five, tackling each other. I stayed in my seat.

  “C’mon, Jane Austen,” Miles called, already halfway up the driveway. “Your destiny awaits.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE very LOST and very lonely, and also fairly nauseated WEEKEND

  I woke up the next morning, late. My head hurt. Olivia was crying and my mother was trying to quiet her. I remembered I’d promised to take her to the lake hours ago. Ass. Then I belched and smelled Keith. Hole.

  FIVE THINGS I FELT LIKE:

  1. A dirty waffle

  2. A dirty slipper

  3. Dog butt

  4. Wet cardboard

  5. Dry cardboard

  I walked downstairs in just my shorts and drank half a carton of orange juice, standing in front of the solar refrigerator without noticing Prarash at the kitchen table.

  “Stanley, my friend.” He smiled, brownish Zen teeth hidden beneath scraggly growth. I jumped, looking at him unsteadily. He was wearing a purple muumuu. Or a tent for a tarot reader. Two books sat on the table, large bound volumes. One was called When Your Inner You Is Nearly Perfect-ish. The other was titled Advanced Concepts in Humming. “I didn’t know you sang so well.”

  I rubbed my eyes. It made no sense. “I don’t sing.”

  “Oh, really?” he said, sweeping crumbs into a pile on the table. Then he wet his thumb and pressed it into the crumbs. And then ate them. I gagged. Orange juice ran from the corners of my mouth, sticky and unpleasant.

  “Moderation,” Prarash advised, holding up two fingers in some sort of spiritual (Vulcan?) gesture. I nodded, just because it was easier. He was about to offer additional wisdom, but I turned and woozed outside, careful not to let the screen door slam.

  My father was in the backyard, half-under an old Volkswagen bus, fixing the brakes or the transmission or possibly retrofitting it to run on chocolate pudding.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He stood up, wiping his hands on a rag, and peered at me through greasy specs. He was small and wiry, hair cut short, and wearing thick glasses. Still, he was imposing. Thick wrists and calves. A man who spent a lot of time building things. When he was standing next to my nineteen-foot mother, though, it was a different story.

  “You weren’t driving, were you?”

  I gulped. “Huh?”

  He scrunched up his nose, like a rabbit, and then rubbed it with a screwdriver. “Last night. On the way home. When you decided to have whatever it was you had.”

  I sighed and sat on his workbench and picked up a wrench, slapping my thigh with it. Chopper waddled across the yard and laid his jowls on my bare foot, which was instantly wet with drool.

  “Well?”

  I didn’t want to tell him. Anything. A number of lies popped into my head and a tiny Miles sat on my shoulder and made suggestions about which were best. I pictured myself, in Aruba, on a beach, rubbing 40 SPF oil on Ellen’s feet. Then I pictured myself, three hundred pounds later, becoming Keith, and no one, for any reason, letting me touch their feet, ever.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I finally said, which was true. I said, “I don’t know what happened,” which was also true.

  He tapped my chest with a spark plug. “You’re almost eighteen, Stan. I am well aware that nothing your mother or I say is going to keep you from doing some things we’d rather you didn’t. Still, you need to promise me no driving. . . .”

  “But I don’t even have my license.”

  He nodded. “What I’m talking about, Stan, of which you are perfectly well aware, is getting into a vehicle as a passenger when others, in particular the driver, have been drinking.”

  “I wasn’t,” I lied, which caused my stomach to knot. I tried to stop, but couldn’t. “Really. I was on my bike.”

  He wiped his hands on his shorts. There were tools and metal scraps, templates, and engine parts all over the lawn. He pursed his lips, like he always did when he was trying to decide something.

  “Really,” I said again, like a parrot. A liar parrot. I saw myself with green feathers and a huge hooked beak, bobbing on Bluebeard’s shoulder.

  Is this where the gold’s buried, bird?

  Yeah, caw, that’s where it is, yeah.

  Are you sure.

  Really, caw. Really.

  Then I envisioned an empty hole and an apple shoved in my beak and angry pirates standing around a spit on which a certain parrot roasted.

  “Well, riding your bike inebriated is also very dumb,” my father said, scratching his nose, which now had axle grease on it, “but I suppose you get a pass on that. This time.”

  “Mom won’t forget it,” I said.

  “You let me handle your mother,” he said, stroking his beard, a long graying flag that would have made Fidel Castro weep with jealousy. I still had not one chin hair. None. Zip. It didn’t seem fair. Also, as far as I could tell, he had never, in any situation, handled my mother. No one had. At least not without a stepladder.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  He frowned. There was a loud noise in the kitchen, something breaking, and then prolonged humming.

  “Dad, why is Prarash always here, anyway? Can there be a new rule or something? Where he’s not here so much? Or, really at all? Ever?”

  “Your mother finds him . . . companionable.”

  The screen door slammed. Prarash waddled out, a big wet stain on his purple muumuu. It could have been egg.

  “‘Companionable’?” I whispered. “Is that a Zen word for ‘He Who Smells’?”

  My father pretended not to smile, but I saw it, a tight grin behind his beard.

  “Well, off to work!” Prarash called, as he waddled across the yard. “It is work that makes us both more and less present.”

  When he was gone, my father looked at me. “I understand your little sister is not so happy.”

  “I know,” I admitted, feeling truly horrible. “I screwed that up, too.”

  “Want to tell me what happened?”

  I began to recollect some of the party. Images flashed, like an arty French film that no one ever rented, me seeing Ellen talking to some Soccer Moron. Me deciding Screw it and being taught how to “shotgun” a beer can by some football dude (poking a hole in the bottom with a pen, then holding your mouth over the hole and popping the top, causing the beer to rush down your throat all at once), and then giving everyone an extremely dull lecture on the actual physics that caused the shotgun process to work. I recalled being thrown into the pool, and then surfacing and seeing Ellen still talking to the Soccer M
oron, looking down shyly and holding her hands behind her back and giggling. I remember having another shotgun but this time keeping the physics to myself, then telling Miles and Cari how much I loved them and how they were going to get married and have perfect children, and Cari telling me how sweet I was and Miles calling me “Oprah,” and then Cari found me a towel and Miles was talking to Ellen, but I don’t remember anything after that.

  As if reading my mind, my father said, “You lay on the lawn and sang some Beatles song at the top of your lungs over and over until I came out and had to carry you in.”

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  “Nope, not much to do with God,” he sighed. “My understanding is that it mostly has to do with a chemical reaction called fermentation.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “Is it a girl?” he asked.

  “Umm . . .”

  “You don’t need to answer,” he said, holding up his hand. “It’s always a girl.”

  I blushed. I slapped my leg with the wrench.

  “Even so,” he said, “that’s no excuse. The point is, now you need to make a decision. Is that person, that man, lying on our front lawn like a tuneless otter, is that who you want to be?”

  I nodded. I didn’t deserve his reasonableness. I didn’t deserve the understanding from this greasy, squinting man in ancient paint-spackled safari shorts, or from anyone else. I burned with embarrassment. Chopper looked up at me with rheumy eyes, a sympathetic expression that knew the score.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why did you name him Chopper?”

  He scratched his beard with a volt converter. “Well, I seem to recall your mother wanted to name him Twinkle, so I guess I thought just about anything else was okay with me.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, “but was it his teeth?”

  Chopper used to have three teeth, until we found one embedded in the leg of the sofa, and since then it’s just been the pair. My mother makes him special beef-flavored tofu nuggets because even Alpo is too hard for him to chew.

  “No, I think it was the expression of flatulence.”

  “Huh?” I said, too beer-addled to put it together.