by Chris Lynch
I turned to Ling. “Well, she’s your sister,” I said.
Ling shrugged, backing away from the door as if it couldn’t protect him from her.
“So I guess that means you’re not taking her on,” I said to Ling. I turned to Jerome.
“You’re joking, right?” he asked. “I wouldn’t even fight their mom.”
Since Cecil was fully reclined in the barber chair off in TV-repairman heaven, snoring like a tractor engine, we were left once more with the last line of defense.
Johnny on the spot again.
“Come on, ya big chickens,” Rock called, kicking the metal door and making a thunderstormlike racket.
“Ya, ya big babies,” Ness added, kicking right along.
Slowly—but with dignity—I began sliding the dead bolt open. There were only bad things on the other side of that door, but there are times when a man’s got no choice….
“Hey!” my uncle Lars screamed, storming out of his office. “Who is out here banging on my doors, making all that noise, screaming? … This is a place of business…. You know how much a door like that costs? … I’ll teach ya, ya rotten punks….”
“Ah, Lars …” I said weakly as the bolt unlatched.
Like a jack-in-the-box, Rock exploded through the door as soon as it was unlocked. She blasted right past me and met up with … shocked Uncle Lars.
“Holy—” he yelped.
There was an audible crash of bones when Lars and Rock locked. She put this great two-handed claw-hold on both of his shoulders and drove him backward, all the way across the garage. The crowd followed the action, like it was a normal street brawl.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Lars moaned as she tossed him around.
Jerome laughed. “Hey, he sounds like me.”
“Who are you? What are you? What are you doing?” Lars was understandably a little lost.
“I am Rock. I am your worst nightmare. And I am beating you up,” she answered helpfully before hip-rolling him to the floor.
She dropped on top of him, with her elbow digging into his ribs.
“Oooofff!” The door slammed behind us, with the rush of wind that escaped poor Lars.
“I love it when she makes them go oooofff,” Nessy said.
Rock stood up. Lars did not. Rock dropped down again. Same elbow, same ribs.
“Oooofff!”
Rock stood up. Lars did not.
She came over to the crowd and shook my hand without my even offering it. “So then, anybody else?”
“Welcome aboard,” I said. Then I went over to where Lars was struggling to his feet. “You okay?” I asked, taking him by the arm.
“Sure I am. Fine. Just, you know, had one of my epileptic seizures. Happens all the time. Nobody was watching, was they?”
“No,” I assured him.
“Good,” he said. “Because, of course, they’re a lot worse to look at than they actually are.”
“Sure,” I said. “I know. Listen, you want a haircut? How would you like a nice haircut?”
“That’d be nice, thanks,” he said.
I signaled Jerome, who stared at Lars. “He better have his own comb,” Jerome said. “Because I am not running mine through that. No way.”
9
Steven’s Dream
NOW IT ALL MADE sense to me. Like a vision, like a dream, like a sign from above, my purpose was clear.
Steal every last one of renegade He-Man Wolfgang’s recruits. Break him. Stomp him. Show him who’s boss once and for all. Maybe, just maybe then, when he comes home, crawling on his hands … his hands and hips, or whatever … maybe then when he’s left the dark side of the force and begs me to bring him back …
I will say no.
I brought back Jerome. I lured Nessy. I got Rock. This was all so predictable. Of course the world would wind up beating a path to the He-Man door.
And so what if our two roughest He-Men—besides me—happened to be girls? They weren’t the girly kind of girls, that’s for sure. And wasn’t this the 1990s, after all? Sure, we’re cool.
“I’m still the boss, remember,” I said to the two new ones at indoctrination.
“Ya, sure,” they snickered.
That makes me so mad.
“Hey!” I said, yanking up my shirt to give them a good fright. “You see these?”
We all know what I was pointing at.
“Take a good look. He who wears the chesthairs calls the shots in this club.”
“My,” Rock said, acting impressed. “He seems to be spraying a lot of testosterone today.”
Cecil was walking by. “Testost … what is that? What’s he spraying?” He looked me up and down nervously as he asked.
Rock laughed. “It’s a chemical, Abner. It’s what makes men all … manly.”
You could not have missed Rock’s sarcasm from across town.
Cecil missed it.
“Coach,” he said to me, “I make a recommendation that we get us some of this stuff. Sounds like just the thing we should have in stock. Where can we get it? Does it come in cans or what?”
The girls were laughing it up.
“Don’t worry, Cecil,” I assured him. “We’ve got plenty.” I turned to Ness and Rock. “You two. I have made an executive decision—which I do all the time, as a matter of fact. I am signing you up as Junior … ah … Associate Level … Secondary members of the club. Also called GALS—”
“What?” Rock said.
“It’s a temporary, provisional thing. Only until we have been satisfied as to your loyalty and trustworthiness.”
Rock ran over and grabbed her brother by the collar and pulled him right up out of the barber chair.
“Hey, I’m nowhere near finished with that,” Jerome protested.
And he sure wasn’t. Ling looked like a half-eaten bowl of spaghetti.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Rock demanded, “that this worm had to go through your stupid GALS program?”
“No, he did not.”
“Then why do I?”
“Because … well, come on, you know why.”
“No, spell it out for me.”
“Because girls are not as trustworthy as boys.”
Rock was actually restrained by Nessy from going after me. Nessy got up on her toes and whispered in her ear. Rock smiled and nodded. “Oh ya, you did tell me he’d do a lot of stupid things before he learned not to be afraid of us.”
“I am not—”
“Fine, fine,” Rock said. “We’re GALS. Let’s get on with destroying Wolfgang.”
Ah, mutual ground.
“Good,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “But first, tell me your name. I know it’s not Rock, and if we’re going to be working together …”
“My real name is Duke.”
“Fine then, Rock, here’s what I need to ask you: Do you, in fact, hate women?”
This was the test. They couldn’t possibly fake this. If they said yes, then they had to mean it. If they said no, they were out.
“Yes,” Rock said confidently.
Well, that was a surprise.
“But we don’t hate all of ’em,” Nessy squawked. “Let’s get that straight right now. I hate the one that held Jerome’s hand all day long.”
“And I hate Monica,” Rock growled with a most impressive bone-deep hatred.
“It’s not necessarily the quantity but the quality of your Women-Hating that matters here. And Rocko, you picked a good one.” I walked over and we exchanged high fives. When Rock’s big meaty hand slapped my normal one, my whole arm bent backward—and not at the elbow, either; it was the forearm bone that bowed.
“Ouch,” I said. “So what is it? What makes you hate her so much?” I walked them over to the Lincoln and leaned comfortably against the fender, preparing to enjoy a delightful story.
They told it as a team.
Nessy: “It’s him, really, Wolf-face.”
Rock: “Him and her.”
N: “Right. See, he was suppose
d to be hers—Rock’s, that is.”
R: “He was. He was mine. And I fell for it. It was always, ‘Yo, Rock, pick me up. Rock, scratch my back where I can’t reach. Rock, can you wheel me to the store for a jerky stick, and by the way, could ya pay for it too? Yo, Rock, I’m bored, could ya break another brick with your head?’”
Oh yes, that sounded like our Wolfgang.
R: “I’d give him a jerky stick … and all the while …”
N: “The whole time …”
They were getting all frothed up. I wished I had some popcorn and a Coke.
R: “He was just slobbering over her. The little mouse. Then, the day I walked in and he was giving her rides around the shop in his chair … grrrrrrrr.”
Pang!
Whoa. Where did that come from? I must have forgotten to eat breakfast this morning.
“And remember?” Ness added. “When we came in and found him shampooing her hair? …”
Pang! Zip! Zing!
What was going on here? My stomach had no business, no business at all, doing these things to me. What could I possibly have cared what the two of them did in the privacy of their own … sick, demented, disgusting little club?
“That’s it,” I announced. “He’s out of business. We are going to put his club into the ground no matter what it takes.”
“It wouldn’t take much,” Rock said. “The other girls are pretty well sick of him too. All you have to do is give me the okay, and I can have them all over here with us in fifteen minutes.”
It was evidence of how crazy I’d gotten that I didn’t even hesitate before saying, “Go get ’em!”
My original, male, club brothers had been listening in closer and closer as this conversation grew, and at this point rushed in.
“Are you nuts?” they all yelled together, as if they’d been rehearsing.
They just didn’t understand, which was okay because leadership was my job.
“No,” I said. “I am not crazy; I have a vision.”
“Crazy people have visions all the time,” Jerome answered. “Isn’t that right, Cecil?”
“Huh?” Cecil asked.
I sent the GALS out to do their job and proceeded to gather my men into the car to explain the plan. “We have to do some dirty work here, guys. Because we have a mission. Once Wolf is destroyed, we will deal with the fallout here, but at least then we won’t be fighting a war on two fronts.” I ended with a big wink.
Ling winked back. It didn’t matter what I said, as long as I talked in military terms, he was with me.
Cecil winked back. He hadn’t the slightest idea what I said, but he didn’t like to be left behind.
Jerome stared at me hard, a fatherly glare like the He-Man Club founder that he was. “Steven,” he said sternly, “I still say you’re nuts. But as an initiation, every new member has to let me cut his or her hair. And if they don’t like what they get, they’re out.”
Every man has his mission. And his price.
10
The Sweet Smell of Victory
THE BRIGHT SIDE: IT turned out to be fortunate that Wolfgang was the kind of guy nobody wanted to tell when they quit his club. I was loaded with double agents. So just like that, my club was filled with all the members we’d stolen from Wolfgang’s club.
The dark side: My club was filled with all the members we’d stolen from Wolfgang’s club.
We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. The He-Man Women Haters was never built to be this big. It was never built—duh, no kidding, Steve-o—to have women there either. I tried to spend more time inside the car, but one of the new recruits had hung a rosewood air freshener inside, and even after I’d removed—and stomped—the thing, the scent was there to stay. The whole experience of the car was perverted now.
And if I went under the hood, or under the chassis on the creeper, Rock would already be under there, fixing something, having the time of her life.
Jerome wouldn’t stop lodging official complaints that Vanessa had once again picked him up and squeezed him.
Cecil did nothing anymore but lie on the floor on an old piece of carpet he’d found, occasionally scratching behind one ear with his foot.
Ling was into one more of his full-blown transformations, walking around in a velvet smoking jacket and having Jerome give him a new hairstyle every day. Hairstyles had replaced hats as Ling’s disguise of choice.
“The pressure is killing me,” Jerome said of the demand.
My uncle Lars refused to come out of his office from the time the girls arrived to the time they left for supper. He did all his work at night. Some days he didn’t even show, and I had to open the garage and receive customers myself.
Finally, I just had to get out. I had soundly whipped the enemy, but found it to be a hollow victory.
The only pleasure left was to go over there and revel in it.
I knew when to get there, and where to go, so by the time Wolfgang did show up, I was already in the wall, watching Yvette and the manicurist do their boring, girly business. I was happy to see Wolfgang show up because I figured at least now it would be interesting.
I had no idea.
The first thing I saw was Wolf—the once-mighty, rotten, slick, sinister Wolf—roll up to Yvette and ask her if he could get her some tea.
“No thank you,” she said, continuing to clip without even looking at him.
“Really?” he asked. “I picked up some Earl Grey on the way over today because I knew—”
“Wolfgang,” Yvette snapped at him. Then she composed herself, took a deep breath, and spoke more like an adult to him. “I said no, thank you. Listen, I’m very busy here and … well, you know, Wolfgang, maybe you ought to think about looking up some of your old friends…. See, there really is only so much you can do here … and I’m about …” She stopped herself, biting her lip. “Never mind. I don’t want any tea.”
I put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing and giving myself away. Good, ya rat, I thought.
Then he wheeled over to where Monica was giving herself a manicure.
“How ’bout you, Mon?” he said. “Some nice Earl Grey?”
“Wolf,” she sighed. “I do wish you’d stop asking me if I want tea.”
The honeymoon was apparently over.
“But I thought you always liked—”
“It’s not the tea, all right?” she yelled.
“Monica!” her mother scolded.
Suddenly I had the feeling I was in the middle of a family thing that I didn’t want to see. But I was stuck.
“Well then, can I rub that cream on your feet again?” he said.
That was quite enough now. This was unbearable. It was way, way beyond the point of even being funny.
“Wolfgang, go home,” Monica said in a very tired voice. As if she’d said it before.
He bowed his head. As if he’d heard it before too.
I came here for a laugh. This wasn’t it.
“Wicked,” I blurted.
Everyone turned toward the mirror—toward me.
Oops.
Ah, what the heck.
“Wicked! I was right all along. Wicked, wicked, wicked. Who do you think you are, talking to him like that?”
They were all backing away from the mirror now, staring at it up and down, like I was some kind of all-powerful talking volcano or something.
How cool.
I got louder. “You have no right talking to him like that,” I boomed. “He may be a chump sometimes—”
“Chump?” Wolf objected.
Monica’s face brightened. “Johnny! Johnny Chesthair! What a pleasant surprise to have you here, hiding like a rodent within our humble walls.”
“I’m not hiding,” I said.
Wolf cut in, concerned with only one thing. “How long have you been here?”
I couldn’t resist. “Shaddup and fetch me a cup of tea, you.”
At least I brought out some of the old Wolf.
“Fetch
you a … I’ll fetch you a cup of teeth,” he said, waving a fist in the general direction of my voice. “Come out where I can see you, ya coward.”
“If I come out,” I asked, “will you rub cream on my feet?”
He shot back, “No, but I’ll rub your face on the sidewalk.”
I laughed mightily.
The woman who was getting her hair done started putting on her coat. She still had the smock on, and her hair was half cut.
Yvette rushed to the mirror. “You, get out of my walls. The two of you macho, macho men, take it outside.”
“With pleasure,” we both said at once.
I scrambled to get out of my cramped space, the tension and excitement of the moment causing my chest to swell up to three times its regular barrel size. I saw Wolf whiz past on his way out the aquamarine door.
“Hey,” I called. “Wait up. I’m stuck. My chest is too big.”
It would be just my luck that he didn’t hear me, but Monica did. She walked right over to the opening in the wall, stared down my secret passageway, and grinned. “I could come in there and help you,” she said.
“I’d rather let the termites eat me,” I answered.
“I know why you were here,” she said.
“I came to laugh at you two, that’s why,” I said. “Ha-ha-ha. See. Now I can go.”
“You came because you were jealous,” she said so sweetly, so viciously.
“Argghhh,” I groaned as my chest expanded even farther. The two-by-four framework of the wall creaked. But like Samson, I summoned all my might, gave a great heave, and shoved my way out.
“Let’s see any girl do that,” I bragged.
“Right, let’s see any girl get herself stuck inside a wall first. Ya macho moron.”
Obviously, we had nothing more to discuss. I stormed out.
“Hey,” she said from behind, “have a cookie before you go? You’re going to need all the strength you can get.”
I did not have a chance to respond. As soon as I crossed into the alley, Wolfgang had me by the shirt. “You don’t have enough cookies to save this boy, Monica.”
“Oh really,” I said, grabbing him by his shirt. We remained like that, yakking at each other and barking at Monica at the same time.
“I cannot believe this,” she said. “I always figured this was, like, a TV thing, that actual humans—even boys—could never be this boneheaded….”
