The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories

by Steve Almond

  Flem was not frozen in place, exactly, but he felt an odd, dreamlike sharpening of his senses that seemed to recommend against movement. All around him, people were buying caulk guns and levelers and sconces, devices to brighten their lives, their hands running along edges, knocking on wood, testing consistencies. Flem watched Teddy totter into a maze of grills. “Jacob, could you please, your brother, Jake!” But Jake was into the rotisserie skewers now, waving them like a pirate. “I’m serious, Jake. Teddy, please, honey, come back. Both of you.”

  Jake said, “No way, loser!” and ran in the other direction, and Teddy laughed, too, and put an artificial wood chip in his mouth and something went boom, and this was hard for Flem to watch, because he’d supposed Larsen was having a grand old time, somehow, not struggling to keep his kids under control.

  “Teddy, honey, spit that out. That’s not candy!”

  He felt embarrassed for Larsen, and vaguely relieved. Once Larsen saw him, he could act surprised and help corral the kids. They would have to deal with the novel, true, but then at least that would be off his conscience and into the world again. Flem said “Ted!” and “Hey!” but Larsen didn’t appear to notice him. Jake shotput a brick toward his brother, which landed at Flem’s feet. The boy rushed by. Larsen trundled after him, passing Flem, saying nothing.

  FLEM SET ASIDE Saturday, locked his study, and cleared his desk of all but half a box of paper clips. By 3 P.M., he had constructed what he considered a passable model of the Arc de Triomphe. He napped until dinner. At half past ten, having completed chapter 7 (of 57), he slogged to bed.

  “How’s it going?” Beth said.

  “Great,” Flem said quickly. “Just great. No problems. Flying through.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Well, yeah, I’ve been a little distracted.”

  Flem couldn’t stop thinking about Larsen, there in the Home Depot, chasing after his hellions, looking out of sorts, sad. After an hour of tossing, he got up and wandered to his study. He took up the manuscript. Something in the stillness of the hour, the impossibility of other activity, helped him focus, and he found himself, if not flying through Larsen’s novel, at least skittering. It was a lot like watching TV. Red bumbled from one perilous situation to the next, from Mafia back rooms to Mexican gold mines, into Massive Government Conspiracies, always somehow managing to locate a local juke joint, where he could “blow the river of his soul” through his horn. When things got too hot, Daddy Bones appeared, or the Galaxions, or sometimes both. There was a lengthy naval digression, which Flem gathered was roughly based on the Odyssey and which was marred by the improbable appearance of Horatio Hornblower’s great-great grandson Chop. Book II was a slow-moving affair, devoted to Red’s strenuous wooing of Mona Divine, the “uniquely incomparable dental hygienist of his dreams.” And there were several subplots—Red’s pilgrimage to the Hopi nation to treat Native American children for gum disease, most prominently—that felt both painful and extraneous.

  Still, there was a certain undeniable momentum to the proceedings, once you got beyond the prose. Red wanted a lot of things and he got all of them, with little struggle. Larsen’s novel was unlike life in this regard, and it lacked the tension that often accompanies life. But it was gripping in a wishful, overblown way. By the end, a cloying family scene in which Daddy Bones announces that Red is his “onliest son” (thus allowing Red to no longer feel different), Flem felt, if not an identification with the hero, then at least not the overt hatred that had been his initial reaction.

  Outside his study, dawn was creeping in, blue and hopeful, the stars punching out. He felt an odd fondness for Larsen, and imagined him pecking away at his keyboard in the faint morning light, grinning stupidly at his metaphors, smacking his lips.

  IT WAS A FINE December day, a light snow melting off and giving the world a moist, tinkly sound. He rang the doorbell three times before Teddy Jr. appeared, in his long johns. “Is your daddy here?” Teddy Jr. stumbled backwards, landed unceremoniously on a box of Cap’n Crunch, and burst into tears.

  The house was in ruin: dishes underfoot, trash heaped in the sink, alps of unwashed clothes. Larsen himself was in the den, hunched over a model rocket.

  “What’s going on over here?” Flem said.

  Larsen shrugged. He pressed the rocket’s nosecone against the fuselage. Flem could see his fingertips redden under the pressure.

  “I came to talk about your novel. I finished it.”

  “Hallelujah,” Larsen muttered.

  “It’s good. It took me a while to get into it, which, you know, sorry about that. But I really enjoyed it. I did. The plot and all, the characters.” Larsen would not look up. Flem shifted his feet. He could hear Teddy Jr. wailing away. “Where’s Jude, Ted?”

  “Good question,” Larsen said.

  “Seriously, Ted. What’s going on here?”

  Larsen shrugged again. “We seem to have had a rift.”

  “She’s gone?”

  Almost imperceptibly, Larsen nodded.

  “Since when?”

  “Wednesday? Thursday. Somewhere in there.”

  “What happened?”

  “The book was distracting me from her and the kids,” Larsen said quietly. “But there was other stuff, before that.”

  “God, Teddy. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You wouldn’t take my calls.”

  Flem felt like someone had just punched him in the belly. He wished someone would punch him in the belly. “Christ, Teddy. I’m sorry. I’ve been, I really screwed up.” Flem looked around Larsen’s den: scattered papers, an overturned file cabinet, his prized recliner smeared with what looked like feces but was likely chocolate pudding. Teddy Jr. continued to wail. A ribbon of black smoke rose from the backyard. Was it any wonder that Larsen should imagine himself liberated from these circumstances: handsome, charismatic, soulful, somehow chosen?

  “I don’t guess this matters so much, but I really did enjoy the book. I’m sorry it took me so long to say so.” Flem laid a hand on Larsen’s shoulder, which stiffened. “I guess I was a little jealous that you’d gone ahead and written a novel.”

  The nosecone collapsed with a snap. “Too much pressure,” Larsen whispered.

  “Look, Teddy, Jude’ll be back. She loves you. She probably just needs to blow off some steam. In the meantime, we should get this place in order. You know? That’d be a good place to start. Should we do that?”

  Larsen stared at his hands—beautiful hands, Flem noticed. They were trembling.

  The smoke in the backyard had thickened considerably.

  FLEM FOUND JAKE out back, burning a pizza box on a small pyre. “The Indians burned their trash,” the boy said, without looking up.

  “I thought they buried it.”

  “Nuh-uh. Those were the Seminoles. The Plains Indians burned theirs. Big bonfires. You could see it from twelve miles away.”

  “Huh.”

  “Someone’s got to do something,” Jake said. He had Larsen’s same gargoyle face, only softened, the angles still forgiving. Flem could see a rocket launch pad set up a few paces away, the metal base blackened by exhaust fumes. “I was thinking maybe I’d help your dad get this place cleaned up a little bit. Could you maybe help out with that?”

  “Teddy pooped all over the place.”

  “Yeah. We’ll have to get him cleaned up, too.”

  The kid shifted his weight and glanced up at Flem through a hedge of brown hair. “My dad’s a loser, isn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “That’s why you’ve been blowing him off. It’s okay,” Jake said softly. “It’s cool.” He grabbed another pizza box and threw it on the fire.

  “Listen,” Flem said. “I haven’t been ignoring your dad.”

  “He is, though. A loser. He thinks he’s some kind of writer and his best friend won’t even read his book.” The boy kicked at the fire. “Mom’s gone, you know.”

  Flem felt sweat trickling from his armpit
s. “Your father is not a loser,” he said. He dropped to his knees and tried to face Jake. “The reason I didn’t call your father is because I didn’t know what to say. I was jealous. Do you understand? What your father has done, to write a whole book, that’s something amazing, something I could never do.”

  “Anyone can write a book that sucks.”

  “No,” Flem said. “Not anyone can write a book. Believe me. And your father’s book doesn’t suck, Jake. It’s a good book. Not perfect. But nothing’s perfect. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Nothing’s perfect. That’s not why we’re here. We’re here just to try. And do you know who wins, in the end, Jake? Who the winners are? The guys, like your father, who try. Those are the winners.”

  Jake hardened his gaze. He knew he was being lectured now, informed of those things that the adult world wished him to believe. And he knew—and Flem knew—that winners were winners and losers were losers, and trying had almost nothing to do with it. That was just something people told you, usually after you’d lost.

  The boy had tuned out. Yet something in his profile, a certain intractable Larsen goofiness, buoyed Flem. Years from now, Jake, or better yet, one of Jake’s children, would stumble up to the attic storeroom and find a red velour binder emblazoned with Larsen’s name. And, if he were a certain sort of child, the sort willing to believe in the power of trying, he would open this binder and find inside the story of his grandfather. Not the sad loudmouth who sat cursing the Rams for their losses, but this other creature, pouring his wishes out awkwardly, unoriginally, hoping. What a beautiful thing it was, to leave your inheritors this gaudy, ill-fated record of who you were.

  But that was the business of the future. For now, there was Larsen himself, and his sons, and his wife, and the damage Flem had done all of them. He hurried toward the house, to begin cleaning. At the door, he turned and called out Jake’s name and waited, full of dumb hope, for the boy to follow.

  SKULL

  MY FRIEND ZACH stopped by for a few beers. We’d been pretty good friends in high school, gone our separate ways for college, then wound up in the same city, more or less by accident. He was a sweet guy, eager and a little sentimental at times, which probably gave us something in common. We were sitting on my couch, drinking, talking shit.

  “How goes it with Sharon?” I said.

  Zach sat up a little. “She’s amazing.”

  Sharon was his new girl, a tall, elegant redhead, a little older than us. She had the kind of voice you always imagine a phone sex operator would have, moist and soothing. The unusual thing about Sharon, she had a plastic eye. Or actually, it was a polymer. Zach had clarified this for me. (“It’s a polymer, man. Get it right.”) She’d been shot in the eye with a BB gun when she was a kid and they hadn’t been able to save it.

  “We’re having a great time,” Zach said. “I mean, this girl knows how to have a great time.”

  “Lucky bastard.”

  “You’re not going to try to work things out with Lucy?” Zach said.

  I’d broken up with my girlfriend a few weeks after Zach met Sharon.

  “Nothing to work out,” I said.

  “You guys seemed crazy about each other.”

  “That one night you saw us, sure. I don’t know. We drove each other nuts.”

  “Love does that sometimes.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t feel like I was getting to the real stuff with her.”

  “That’s not a problem with Sharon,” Zach said. He laughed a little.

  “What’s that mean?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Not really.”

  He got up to fetch another beer. That was one thing about Zach. He could make himself at home pretty quickly. He settled back onto the couch and we talked about making a plan. But we were both shitty at making plans. We couldn’t decide anything. The only films around were based on comic books, and we knew all the cheap bars would be full of college kids. So we kept drinking and smoked half a joint and watched the Red Sox clobber the Tigers.

  “What’s she up to this evening?” I said.

  “Some dinner up in Auburn Hills.”

  Sharon did corporate fund-raising for an educational nonprofit. This explained her clothing and her sexy phone manner. It impressed me that someone could earn money attending fancy parties.

  “How long has it been with you guys?”

  “Nine weeks.”

  “Nice.”

  “She’s special,” Zach said. “There’s something about her.” He made an expansive gesture. He’d drunk four or five beers by now. It was hard to tell because he always put his empties in the recycling bin right away.

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “I lucked out.”

  “She’s sexy,” I said.

  “She’s sexy alright.”

  I let this sit. As I say, it had been a while since I’d been with a woman. “Fucking Tigers,” I said. Weaver had just given up a homer to some pigeon-toed bastard from the Red Sox, I didn’t know who.

  “Fucking Hello Kitties,” Zach said.

  We didn’t say anything for a while, just let the announcers drone on. I was thinking I might just call it a night, though I was worried if Zach left I’d be tempted to call Lucy up and make an idiot of myself. There’d been some of that already.

  Zach got up to get another beer. He was staggering a bit upon his return.

  “You okay there?”

  “Sure.” He sat heavily. “This is your last malt beverage. You wanna go halfsies?”

  “It’s yours,” I said.

  “Thanks man.”

  Zach took a gulp and swirled it around his mouth. He’d told me once that this was the best way to keep debris from settling between the teeth. His dad was a dentist, so he was full of such useful advice.

  “Listen,” Zach said. “You were asking about Sharon before.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “She’s amazing.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  “There’s this one thing,” he said.

  “What thing?”

  “In terms of, like, our intimacy.”

  “Right.”

  “She likes to do different stuff.”

  “Different how?”

  Zach glanced at the TV. It was a shaving commercial, some gorgeous idiot with the face of a Greek statue. “More offbeat, I guess. Offbeat might be a better word.”

  I remembered now what had always creeped me out about Zach, which is that he had a tendency to say a little too much when he was sloshed. One night, back in high school, he’d mentioned that he was sort of attracted to certain short-haired breeds of dog. “Not enough to do anything,” he assured me. Still, it had pretty much killed the evening.

  “She’s a big fan of the face,” Zach said.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Involving the face more.”

  “As in, what, like facial massages?”

  “Those too,” he said. He paused and glanced at the TV. “I’m going to mention something here, Pete. Okay?”

  “That’s the whole point,” I said. “We’re talking.”

  He glanced at the TV again.

  “You want me to turn off the game?”

  “If you want.”

  His whole posture had changed. He was sort of hunched over. I turned off the game and put on the only album we could ever agree on, which was Al Green’s Greatest Hits. “It would have to be, like, strictly confidential. No kidding.”

  “Scout’s honor,” I said. This was an old joke. We’d both been Boy Scouts back in high school, for about two seconds.

  “It’s just this thing,” Zach said. “This sort of sensual play, involving the face.”

  “Sensual play.”

  “She loves to feel me, you know, rubbing against various parts of her face.”

  “Hold up,” I said. “What parts?”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “I’m not the most experienced g
uy in the world, in terms of sexually. I’ve kind of let her take the lead.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want to freak you out,” he said.

  “You’re not going to freak me out,” I said.

  What I was thinking about, oddly, was depth perception. I’d discussed the fake eye aspect with Lucy—we’d gone out to dinner with Zach and Sharon that one night—and she mentioned afterwards that she knew a girl who was blind in one eye and that it had screwed up her depth perception. This made the act of giving head difficult.

  “She likes for me to rub her eye,” he said.

  “Her eye?”

  “Not really her eye,” he said. “The area around her eye.”

  “The socket?”

  “Just listen,” he said. “Okay?” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t know about any of this shit, but you know she had a couple of surgeries. They’ve been able to make some real advances in ocular rehab.” He killed the last of his beer, swished it around. “You’ll notice, for example, that she can move the eye a little. It doesn’t just sit there. That’s because of muscles around the ocular nerves. She has to do these exercises, every night. To keep the muscles strong.”

  “Right.”

  “She does them, you know, with the prosthetic out. Most nights, I mean, by the end of the day those muscles are pretty sore. So she removes the prosthetic.”

  “You’ve watched her remove the thing?”

  “No,” Zach said. “She goes into the bathroom for that. Then she comes out with this patch. For the first few weeks, she always wore the patch. But this one night we’d been drinking and she asked if I wanted to see what she looked like without the prosthetic and I said yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  “It was kind of heavy,” Zach said.

  “What did it look like?”

  “It’s like, I guess, sort of like a little cup. There’s some scar tissue.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She has to rub this balm in, to keep the flesh moisturized. So this one night, a couple of weeks ago now, I rubbed the balm in for her. Does this sound creepy, man? Am I freaking you out?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Because I’m not trying to freak you out.”