Giraffe People

by Jill Malone

  “Cool,” I say, imagining her superpower is high soprano notes that incinerate buildings.

  “Now you see why I don’t mind being her sidekick,” he tells me.

  “This is supposed to be me?”

  “That’s you.”

  I look harder at his drawing. She doesn’t look a thing like me. I could never pull off those boots.

  “What’s her power?” I ask.

  “She has several.”

  I wait, but he doesn’t say more. What am I supposed to do with this?

  Later, on stage, I tell the crowd of teens in their Benetton shirts to sing along, and then we roar into London Calling, and I realize who Bangs drew: Gig Girl. My guitar on my hip, my outfit completely outside my comfort zone, but accurate—spot on for this delivery. I feast on the songs; the ragged stroke of my guitar feeds an airy wildness into Ernie’s solos as Joe bounds around, and finally climbs a speaker, tears away his shirt, and thunders at the crowd. I hear Trevor scream, “Yeah” into the mic, and I am airborne.

  At the end, I sing our crowd a lullaby; the band shining with sweat and vibrancy, hardly moving on the stage, the music hushing around us like new snow as my voice rasps: I’ve fallen out of love. I’ve fallen out of time. I miss the days. I miss the days. I’ve fallen out of love. I’ve fallen out of time. I miss the days when you were mine.

  “Where the fuck,” Trevor asks me backstage, “did that come from?”

  As my alter ego, I’ve slipped my sweatshirt back on, and put my guitar in its case after wiping the strings, and am mild again. “What?” I ask.

  “You. Out there. Where did that come from?”

  “I’ve been listening to jazz.”

  He stares at me a second, and then laughs. For the first time in living memory, Trevor wears a button-down shirt. One of those weird snapping cowboy shirts—I don’t know if he means to be ironic.

  “You,” he tells me, “are one far-out chick.” We finish loading the van with our gear; the boys smoke out, and then we return to the club. Tucked around the bar: stools, and high tables with more stools, and on the far side, a bouncer guards a flight of stairs, which leads to a small, roped section for the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Anyone with alcohol can watch the stage from the balcony. The interior of the club is painted a burnt orange, and has sweeping arches on the ceiling that remind me of flying buttresses.

  Kelly, Nigel, Nate, and Bangs have the table nearest the bar, and a partially obstructed view of the dance floor.

  “What are you drinking?” I ask Kelly.

  “Coke,” she says. She stands, “Let me buy you a drink.”

  “Shirley Temple.”

  “We should dance,” Trevor tells us.

  “Dude,” Bangs says, “we’re resting. You wore us out.”

  Trevor turns to me. “How ’bout it?”

  “I can’t dance.”

  He takes my hand, and leads me between groups of hopping kids at the outskirts of the dance floor, then deep into the heated center. This isn’t dancing. We’re thrashing and pushing and trying not to be crushed. House music blares Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) as Trevor, with one hand on my waist, guides me through the chaos. The dude towers above most of the kids here, and seems incongruous with his lanky hair, his snapping shirt, and his huge laugh.

  As I decide the house music sucks, they play Just Like Heaven. Suddenly, Joe and Ernie appear, and we’re all four bobbing with drunken grins. The first time I listened to The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me was basketball camp in seventh grade. Between sessions, I lay alone in my dorm room, playing the tape over and over. It felt like consciousness, as though I’d discovered myself in the music, as though the album were written for me in particular, alone in all the world.

  The next band plays a bunch of radio songs, but they aren’t terrible, and occasionally we dance. (Even to Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive, which is a song I secretly love.) I realize, swigging my third Shirley Temple, this has been the perfect evening to cap a perfect day.

  And then, good Jersey boys, the band on stage plays Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark. And we do. We dance in the dark until we cannot breathe.

  “Do I know anything about jazz?” Leroy repeats. Behind him, the radiator clatters and kicks itself awake. This morning, we’re the only two people in this long, decrepit room. “You kidding me?”

  “Well,” I say, flushing, “I didn’t want to assume.”

  “’Course not,” he laughs. When Leroy laughs, he pulls his legs up, and shakes his shoulders, and kind of hunches over his right arm as though he’s trying to catch the sound in his hand. “Kid, I know all kinds of things about jazz.”

  “I’ve been listening to Dave Brubeck, and I think I understand something new—about tempo and how it relates to tone.”

  “How tempo relates to tone,” he says, cocking his head inquisitively.

  “Performance—being on stage—the way I deliver the songs is up to my interpretation, right? I can make them new each time. You know what I mean? Like maybe the line just occurred to me. I can make the songs feel spontaneous just by the way I manipulate the lyrics, and the stutter of the rhythm, and whether or not I slow the whole thing down, or rush along to the chorus.”

  “Show me.”

  I play him the first verse of a tragic ballad, and then, for the second verse, pluck the strings playfully and clip the lines, and suddenly the song’s comic, the lyric subversive.

  “Dave Brubeck taught you that?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Next week, I’ll bring you a couple tapes. Change everything you know every time you listen to ’em.” He gestures toward my guitar. “You write that one?”

  I nod.

  “Play it again—all the way through with the plucking. Jazz never was an excuse for sloppy downbeats.”

  We do scales, and he plays me some Hendrix and talks to me about melody.

  “The thing about tempo,” I say. “Have I got it wrong?”

  “Not even a little. If the song sounds the same each time you play it, you’re not trying.”

  “You won’t forget about the tapes? Next week?”

  “I won’t forget.” He stands, and puts his suit coat back on, smoothes his hand over his tie, slides on his cap. “Who gave you this Brubeck?”

  “My dad has tons of old jazz albums.”

  “Check for Ella Fitzgerald. That woman singing Summertime will kill you.”

  After church on Sunday, I head upstairs for a bath, and another go at Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I don’t know how to break it to you, but Thomas Hardy hates all of us.

  Maybe, after all these Sundays, I’m out of practice. Maybe Thomas Hardy does something devastating and irreversible to my brain. When the knocking starts, and persists—though I holler that I’m in the bath—and I’m forced to climb from the tub, dripping across the tiny tile, and the brown carpet, right up to the metal door, even then, I don’t expect Meghan.

  She looks at me in my towel. “We have our vocab list,” she says, and holds up her notebook.

  “Right,” I say. I leave the door open, and stalk back into the bathroom. Scalded pink, but marginally dry, I scramble into pajamas, and hurl my towel at the draining tub. She’s standing at the foot of the bed, looking around. Nothing has changed, except the piles of albums on the chairs, and the record player on the desk.

  “You’re listening to jazz,” she observes.

  “Not right this minute,” I say, before I can stop myself. If I were Kelly, I’d have snide skills. I’d nail disdain into every word, and the meanness wouldn’t ricochet; I’d never be wounded.

  Meghan hasn’t moved, but agrees, softly, “No, not this minute.”

  I sit cross-legged on the floor, and open my notebook. Pen uncapped, and dutifully perched above my completed list, my expression wiped away, I look up at her, waiting. Her face is chapped. Her sweater, a cabled blue grey, as intricate as a web, falls at her hip.

  “Don’t you wa
nt to do the list anymore?” she asks.

  “I never wanted to do these lists. This was your idea, remember?”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Cole.” She crouches down, and puts her hand out, the way you would in a petting zoo to a goat.

  “Don’t. Don’t you dare.”

  “Cole, I panicked. I started thinking about everything—about what your family would say, and what the Army would do—you’re sixteen, you’re just a kid. It’s wrong to do this to you—to ask this.” She drops to her knees, and grabs my arms. Her hair has come loose from her ponytail, and a strand snags in her mouth. “And every time I’m near you I don’t care, and I can’t think, and you’re so angry. I’ve never seen you so angry.”

  “You’re babbling,” I tell her. “You’re totally incoherent. And thanks for telling me I’m just a kid. It makes me feel loads better about everything. Thanks for keeping all of this to yourself—I mean, why talk to me? Thanks for leaving. Thanks for vanishing before Christmas and leaving a stupid note. Thanks for coming back a month later and acting like nothing had happened. Thanks for protecting me. What a champ you’ve been. What a hero.”

  “Cole.”

  I hate her for saying my name. I hate her for that most of all. “No, it’s too late to be noble and heartfelt. You’re the villain. How could you start this and then leave me with all of it?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “I don’t want your apology.”

  “What do you want?”

  A little of everything. I want a little of everything. “Nothing. I don’t want a fucking thing.” I smooth my hand over my notebook. The first vocab word is viscous. I misread it as vicious.

  “Look at me,” Meghan says. “Cole, please, look at me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I won’t anymore. I swear. I won’t hurt you again.”

  Lies. The villain telling intoxicating lies. But I’m just a kid, and I want to believe.

  Fulminate. Verb. To utter or send out with denunciation. To send forth censures or invectives. Hey buddy, go fulminate yourself!

  When I get home from school, the war is on television. On a couch in the sunroom, with her basket of receipts, her ledger and checkbook, Mom listens to CNN while she pays the household bills.

  “An air campaign?” I say, trying to decipher the image of a trembling hotel.

  “The reporters keep changing the name,” Mom says. “First it was Operation Desert Shield and then Sword and now Storm. Operation Desert Storm sounds like camping gear.”

  Vietnam was on television: the war right in your living room. Anyway, that’s what my History teachers always tell us. This isn’t that at all. We can’t really see anything. Terrific booms and shaking structures—scary, of course; but unclear. “Are they using chemical bombs?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “The Iraqis.”

  “Not yet.”

  In an air campaign, my atheist will be safe a while yet. Ground forces won’t be deployed until we have air superiority. (I’ve been an Army brat for sixteen years. I know some things.) Besides, Saddam would have to be insane to attack Saudi Arabia. “How insane is Saddam, do you think?”

  “Off the charts.”

  “Oh.”

  Taking off her half-moon librarian glasses in order to see me, Mom asks, “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? I just bought some apples—they’re in the basket.”

  “I’m sure.” Will we have to ration butter and sugar and meat? Have victory gardens in the courtyard? “What will he do, do you think?”

  “Saddam? Your father thinks he’ll attack Israel.”

  “What do you think?”

  Mom peers at me overtop her glasses. Sometimes I can imagine her as a schoolteacher. Dad says the first time he visited her classroom, he found Mom in the hallway spanking some poor little kid. “I think your father’s right.”

  “And then what? What’ll happen after he attacks Israel?”

  Mom opens and closes her ledger. “I don’t know, honey.”

  I watch the news for clues, to decipher this. I need a signal. I need them to interview my atheist, and he can pull at his ear, or scratch his nose, give me some sign that it’ll be all right.

  It’s like watching one of the videos of my basketball games that Nigel filmed last year. You just want the camera to be still, so you can get your balance; orientate yourself to your surroundings. You can’t really figure out what you’re looking at. It’s all so amateur: messy and unfocused.

  I have to write my eulogy for English. I doubt Overhead realized the war would start today when she assigned this, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I’d rather write my epitaph. Wouldn’t the assignment be more interesting if we had to be brief? I mean, who can’t go on and on about herself?

  She said we could write it as though we’d died today, or invent a future for ourselves. Pick already: reality or fiction.

  Born into a military family, Nicole Alyssa Peters lived a life of variety and adventure. She played guitar in a rock band, and excelled at soccer, field hockey, and basketball. Nicole is survived by her brothers, and her parents, and her beloved dog, Pepper. She has been known to mess around with girls—one anyway—but it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry. Also, she died with an intact hymen, but not for lack of trying.

  Today we mourn the loss of Nicole Alyssa Peters, Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and fabulous philanthropist. A woman devoted to the poor, and to sensible shoes.

  Nicole wrote a eulogy, but unfortunately we’ve misplaced it. We, the bereaved, can assure you that Nicole worded her eulogy eloquently. You would have been quite touched. As it is, we probably won’t remember half of her accomplishments, and we certainly must be vague about her feelings, and her character. But we do know she enjoyed her life. We will vouch for that. In her later years, Nicole cheated at cards, and played doubles every morning on a grass court. She took a lot of photographs of tree branches.

  On the record player: Ella Fitzgerald sings Summertime with Louis Armstrong—turns out Dad had a recording in his collection. At night, I play it over and over, and have come to love the verse Armstrong sings as well. It’s a mourning song, isn’t it? A sorrowful song. Her voice a string on a balloon, a staircase, a trade wind: So hush little baby. Don’t you cry. They could play this song at my funeral.

  Nicole Alyssa Peters died today. She had so much still to do.

  On Friday, I have to debate for women in combat. Timely, huh? Monica Prader promised to meet me in the library during lunch to prep our argument. Maybe in two years I’ll get drafted, and meet my atheist on a desert sortie.

  For Biology, Bangs is typing up our lab notes—he types faster and more accurately than I do—and this afternoon during commercial breaks, I finished Spanish and Geometry. Now I’ve only my eulogy to write.

  Cole Peters believed in God a good deal of the time. She envied kids playing stickball, or jumping naked into swimming holes. She wished she’d lived in a less formal time—one without electricity. She should never have let Jeremy leave angry.

  Nate is alone in the kitchen when I go down for a pudding cup.

  “What happened to the pudding?” I say, staring into the fridge.

  “Have some yogurt.”

  “There was pudding this afternoon.”

  “Have yogurt and hot chocolate. That’s practically pudding.”

  “Jeez,” I say. I grab a yogurt, and sit down across from him. “I’ve been writing my eulogy all night.”

  “What are you doing that for?”

  “English.”

  “That sounds kinda sick to me.”

  “What would you say,” I ask him, “if you had to write one?”

  “Billionaire Nathan Parker Peters died today in a fiery explosion. He leaves his fortune to the charitable organizations he founded, and also, relief in Africa. Nathan Parker Peters will be remembered as a man of singular vision and vast acco
mplishment. His wife, the former supermodel Christy Turlington, is in mourning, and asks the press to respect her privacy. Also, she encourages mourners to make donations to one of her husband’s many philanthropic interests. We must find some way to carry on his vital work without him, Turlington wrote. Flags around the world will be flown at half-mast.”

  “A fiery explosion?” I ask.

  “It could happen.”

  “It’s a little more likely than you marrying Christy Turlington.”

  “You always underestimate my charm.” He stands and stretches. In the last month, Nate has finally grown taller than Dad. He made a big ceremony of penciling their heights on the back of the kitchen door. “You want me to make hot chocolate?” he asks.

  “Sure. How about you? What are you doing up this late?”

  “Chemistry.” He stretches again. “I gotta start running with Nigel. Soccer trials start in March. Kelly keeps asking me if you’re gonna play.”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You’re totally gonna play. I call it.”

  “I’m going to quit the band and play soccer?”

  “No, genius. You’re gonna do both. And babysit for the Thorns, and get straight A’s. You’re that girl.”

  “Am I?”

  “This is news? You’re accelerated. You do everything faster than everybody else. I’ll bet you score more goals this year than you did last year. I’ll put money on it.”

  “Where’s my brother, Nate—tall guy, charming?”

  “He died today in a fiery explosion.”

  The kettle whistles, and Nate makes two mugs of hot chocolate, adding whipped cream and a bunch of rainbow sprinkles.

  In Geometry, we have a substitute who gives us a free period to do homework so long as we’re quiet and let her read her newspaper.

  “I love this lady,” Joe whispers. “She subbed in my physics class last month, and let us watch television all period.”

  “Nice.”

  “We’re playing at Stoked again on Friday. Did Ernie tell you?”