by C. D. Payne
A half hour later Sheeni was distressingly dry-eyed as we said our farewells. Not even my last minute gift to her of my favorite F.S. album (“Songs for Lonely Lovers”) activated her tear glands. She hugged the Corn Dog Queen, shook Jerry’s hand, and gave me a sisterly peck on the cheek. Then she whispered in my ear, “Don’t forget, darling. Red wine and Consumer Reports.”
They were the sexiest words that ear had ever heard. I grabbed her and kissed her. She tasted of donuts and dog. Then Jerry fired up the big V-8, and suddenly Sheeni was a small figure retreating in the distance. Then we turned a corner and she was gone. I felt alone. Alone and numb.
Happy to be back on the road and towing something (a trucker’s mission in life?), Jerry popped a Hank Williams tape into the dash and put the pedal to the metal. We roared down the highway, passing everything in sight (including a poignant turnoff sign for Ukiah). Needless to say, the top was down. I sat in the backseat wind tunnel, dodging bugs and trying not to think of Sheeni getting ready to welcome Trent. (Though I certainly hoped she’d have the decency to change out of that yellow tube top.)
Mom, I noticed, was being coldly correct with Jerry. Women do this to drive men to the brink of insanity. She and Jerry had had words this morning over that always controversial topic, “Where do we park the trailer?” Since Jerry’s apartment (the world’s smallest in-law studio) doesn’t come with parking (or anything else), he proposed to store their Love Mobile in our driveway. Mom pointed out that this valuable space was already occupied by his dead Chevy. Jerry replied he didn’t own a Chevy, and the battle was on. I wasn’t sure how it turned out, but no one had any obvious bruises.
To our surprise, when we got back to Oakland (even drearier now after a week in the country airing out our aesthetics), we discovered the issue was now moot. The camouflaged Chevy was gone. Apparently, the sailor had had a change of heart and had readopted his sick car. Here Mom made a tactical mistake. While she was thinking up some coldly correct comment to make on this new development, Jerry quickly and professionally backed the trailer up the driveway—threading it neatly between our house and Mr. Ferguson’s ramshackle garage with just inches to spare. Faced with this fait accompli, Mom could only say, “Jerry, this is just temporary.”
“Sure, babe,” was his smug reply. He hopped out and began to unload as Mom bustled into the house.
Flecked with bug splatter, I climbed out stiffly and looked about. Here was the place where I had lived before I knew the sweet taste of a woman’s lips. Or the tangy taste of a warm nipple. I had left a child and returned a man—a man with lash marks on his heart and feminine fingerprints on his privates. These profound thoughts were interrupted suddenly by a woman’s scream. I dropped my bags and ran into the house. Mom was standing in the doorway to the living room, her face twisted into an ugly mask of shock and horror. I looked beyond her. There in the living room, surrounded by all the furniture pushed neatly against the walls, was Jerry’s old camouflaged Chevy.
Jerry joined us and stared in stunned disbelief. “Holy shit! How in the name of God?” he muttered.
“How indeed!” exclaimed Mom. “And why!” She stared accusingly at her paramour. “You should’ve given that man his money back!”
“No way, babe,” replied Jerry obstinately. “It wasn’t in the code.”
Mom looked confused. “The California Vehicular Code?”
“No, babe. The code of the streets.” Jerry lifted up the hood and whistled. “Boy, everything’s complete. There’s even water in the windshield washer.”
“How did they ever get it in here?” demanded Mom. “My front door couldn’t be more than three feet wide.”
“Looks like they brought it in piece by piece, babe. Then reassembled it. See, all the bolts show recent wrench marks.”
Mom looked incredulous. “But it would take an army of mechanics to do all that!”
Jerry slammed down the hood—a startlingly loud noise in a living room. “Or a navy, babe,” he said. “Or a navy.”
“Quick, Nick!” shrieked Mom. “Get a pan from the kitchen. It’s dripping oil all over my new shag!”
After we unpacked and ate lunch, Mom made Jerry call the sailor in Alameda. Bad news. His ship had sailed and he wasn’t due back for ten months. Mom was livid.
“Jerry, what are you going to do about this?” she demanded.
Jerry sucked his beer and thought about it. “Well, Estelle. You’d been talking about wanting a new couch. Now you’ve got two of them. Plus a trunk.”
“That’s not funny. I want that car out of here!” Mom looked like she was ready to “fly off the handle” (as Dad used to say)—never a pleasant experience for her loved ones.
Jerry recognized the signs too. “OK, babe. Just kidding. I guess I’ll have to come by in the evenings and take it out bit by bit. But I’m not putting it back together again.”
“I don’t care what you do with the pieces,” said Mom. “Just don’t leave them around here!”
“You’re the boss,” answered Jerry, sipping his beer. “I’m the peon.” He looked at me. “Hey, kid. Want to learn how a car is put together?”
“No, thank you,” I replied. “Auto mechanics don’t interest me.”
“See, Estelle,” said Jerry. “I told you the kid was queer.”
Once again, Jerry zoomed to the top of my shit list. Only the execrable Trent rates higher.
After unpacking, I rode my bike over and found Lefty still camped out. His back yard now resembled Guatemala City after the big quake. The teen refugee was sitting on a camp stool amid piles of empty Coke cans and Pop-Tart boxes. He greeted me with a dispirited “hi” and complained he hadn’t received any postcards. I lied and said I had sent him three, including one with a naked woman lying spread-eagle on white sand.
“I bet the damn mailman stole that one!” he said bitterly. Lefty confided he was now dressing from the cast-off clothes box in People’s Park. He looked like it too. A few days before, Martha had sneaked into his closet and dribbled motor oil on the crotches of his pants. The stains won’t wash out and now all his trousers have permanent peter tracks. “My life is a living hell, Nick,” said Lefty in despair. “A living hell.”
This was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I told Lefty all about Sheeni and Albert. He was flabbergasted at my romantic progress and demanded a complete accounting. I filled him in on the torrid details. Understandably incredulous (I would be too), he demanded photographic evidence. What a shock! I had neglected to ask Sheeni for a photo. But I did have her note apologizing for reading my diary, which Lefty accepted grudgingly as temporary evidence.
I laid out my proposition: “OK, you take care of Sheeni’s dog for a week or so, while I work on my mom. And I’ll get Martha off your back.”
Lefty looked doubtful. “How are you going to do that?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan.” (I didn’t, but hell, the strategy worked for Nixon in ’68.)
“But I’m allergic to dogs. I swell up.”
“I’m not asking you to keep the dog in the house. Just tie him up out here. Allergens are dispersed outdoors, so you won’t have any problems. Trust me.”
Lefty contemplated life without peter tracks and round-the-clock crooners. “OK,” he said, “it’s a deal.” We shook on it.
I asked him if the vitamins were having any effect on his disease.
Lefty looked even glummer. “I don’t know, Nick. I’m so traumatized by it all, I can’t get it up anymore. I think I’m impotent.”
He pronounced this word with the accent on the second syllable.
“Don’t be retarded,” I said. “You can’t be impotent. You’re only 14. That doesn’t happen to guys until they’re 30, and then only if they beat off too much.”
“Tell that to my dick,” replied Lefty. “It’s been Limp City down there for a week.”
“You need to get out of this depressing yard,” I said. “This place is a slum.”
So for a change
of pace, we got on our bikes and rode down to the bus station in Oakland’s skid row. Unfortunately, the bus hadn’t overturned and Albert was waiting for us in the baggage room. The trip hadn’t improved his disposition. He looked up at me and growled.
“What an ugly dog,” said Lefty. “What did you say his name was?”
I decided for his life in Oakland Albert needed a more macho name. “It’s Al,” I replied. “His last name is Bear. We named him that because he has a face like a bear.”
“Looks more like a bat to me,” observed Lefty, “or what do you call those monsters on churches?”
“Gargoyles?”
“Yeah, gargoyles. He looks like a gargoyle.”
This was too much for Albert. He sniffed Lefty’s aromatic People’s Park pant leg and applied a new layer of scent.
“Damn!” yelled Lefty.
“He likes you, Lefty,” I said. “He’s staking you out as a territorial claim.”
“Fuck you,” replied Lefty. “Fuck your dog. And fuck your girlfriend.”
I knew he was only bluffing. “And what about Martha?”
“Her we don’t fuck. Her we hunt down and kill.”
We stuffed Al in my backpack and headed home. On the way we stopped at Safeway. I bought a bag of generic dog crunchies and Lefty shoplifted a hotrod magazine. As a matter of pride, he tries to steal at least one item from every store he enters. Back at Squalor City, we tied up Al behind Lefty’s garage and fixed him up with food, water, and a bed (a pile of sibling war surplus trousers). Al gazed about dazed, slurped some water, flipped over his food dish, and peed on his bed.
“What a retarded dog,” commented Lefty. “Your girlfriend actually likes him?”
“Women,” I explained.
“Yeah,” answered Lefty. “I know what you mean.”
When I got home, Jerry was sitting in the front seat of the Chevy, drinking a beer. His toolbox was open on the carpet. The dented back bumper (with a TRUCKERS DO IT WITH MORE GEARS sticker) now drooped slightly. Mom, I noticed, had arranged some books on the hood to cover the spray-painted greeting “Pay up or die!” She had also rearranged the furniture to sort of work the car into her decorating scheme. Now the Chevy looked like the world’s largest coffee table.
“How’s the demolition going?” I asked.
“Not so good,” replied Jerry dejectedly. “Those wackos used some kind of locking compound on all the bolts. Plus they rounded over the heads. I’ve been working like a dog for hours. All I got off were two bolts. Had to saw ’em off with my hacksaw. This will take forever.”
Serves you right, I thought.
Jerry belched. “And it’s not even my car. Or my house.”
“But Mom is your girlfriend,” I pointed out.
“Maybe,” sniffed Jerry. “She likes to think so.”
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: the man is God’s perfect asshole.
9:30 P.M. I just spent two hours writing my first intellectual missive to Sheeni. I managed to mention Nietzsche, Clausewitz, and John Stuart Mill—all in the same sentence. What a struggle! I have to be impressed that the ever-pretentious Trent can do this daily. I’d give my left ball for a copy of one of his letters—just to see what I’m up against.
After practicing harmonica awhile (I wanted a clarinet like my god Artie Shaw, but Mom said she couldn’t afford one), I went downstairs and caught Mom and Jerry necking in the back seat of the Chevy. They had turned down the lights and tuned the radio to a ’50s rock-’n’-roll station. I wish they’d grow up. It’s unnerving for a kid to have his parental figures trying to relive their childhoods.
I desperately want to call Sheeni, but am constrained by economic want. I have to find out when long-distance rates are cheapest. Probably, we’ll be doing all our phone chatting at 4 A.M.
SUNDAY, August 26 — Forty-eight hours without the warm touch and doggy taste of Sheeni’s sweet lips. I fear I may go starkers before I see her again. These long-distance romances are murder on the nervous system. Everything reminds me of her now—the smell of donuts, the sound of church bells, even the color yellow (that tube top is seared into my memory for eternity).
I counted 28 hairs in the shower drain. I realize now I’m in a race against time. I have to get engaged to Sheeni before my hairline goes north for good. Otherwise, I don’t stand a chance against those hairy French intellectuals.
Dad and Lacey beamed over two hours late. We fought our way through Bay Bridge backup and spent the afternoon museum hopping in San Francisco. Dad does this periodically to stockpile ammunition for his competitive cocktail chatter. Lacey had on a curve-hugging green knit jumpsuit that drew more admiring glances than all the neo-surrealists put together.
Dad just cashed in a CD (expensive turbo trouble in his Beamer), so he splurged and took us to dinner in Ghiradelli Square. We sat outdoors on a terrace and watched Sausalito turn 64 shades of mauve. Beautiful view but paltry conversation. I have nothing to say to that man. I knew if I told him about Sheeni I would only be ridiculed. So I laconically ate my scampi and tried not to stare at Lacey’s fabulous bod.
11:30 P.M. Desperate for the sound of Sheeni’s voice, I just called her trailer. My hand shook as I dialed the number. With each ring, the pounding of my heart doubled. Finally, I heard the line click and Mr. Saunders boomed a sleepy “Hello, dammit.” I asked to speak with Sheeni. He said sorry she was still down at the lake—with Trent! Did I care to leave a message? I considered asking him what punishment, in his professional opinion, a 14-year-old youth could expect from the state of California for a premeditated, double homicide. But I didn’t and hung up.
I feel like my emotional system has just been processed by an agricultural combine: I have been uprooted, plucked, debarked, shredded, pressed, centrifuged, filtered, separated into composite compounds, and baked in a retort at 5,000 degrees.
MONDAY, August 27 — After a sleepless night I awoke to the sounds of bedsprings creaking rhythmically through the wall. I’m not saying one’s parents should not have sex lives. That would be unfair. I’m merely proposing these people not have sex lives once their children reach the age of reason. Later, when their offspring leave home, they can pick up where they left off.
Jerry, if the auditory evidence is to be believed, appears to have remarkable “staying power.” In fact, I’d be quite surprised if my mother got to work on time this morning. I lingered in bed, feeling like yesterday’s smegma, until they finally left the house. Thank God, Jerry’s leaving town with a load today.
Then, while I was morosely chewing my way through a bowl of Cheerios, Mr. Ferguson from next door came over to inform me there was “a slight problem” with the trailer. I hardly felt this concerned me, but I rose from my lonely breakfast and followed him up the driveway. The back yard smelled like a Third World sewage treatment plant on a muggy day.
Holding a hankie over his nose, Mr. Ferguson pointed to the source of the stench. A valve on the trailer holding tank was leaking. Apparently, the old geezer hadn’t bothered to empty the tank. God only knows how many years the stuff in there had been marinating. Each brown, oozing drip contained the distilled aroma of 112 truck-stop rest rooms. “Maybe you can tighten the valve,” suggested Mr. Ferguson.
Holding my nose, I stooped down and gave the valve a turn. The noxious dripping intensified. “The other way! The other way!” he screamed.
I turned the valve in the other direction and a brown tidal wave washed over my bedroom slippers. “Oh my God!” yelled Mr. Ferguson. Too stunned to move, brown from the knees down, I stood in the fragrant pool, idly contemplating the flecks of paper clinging to my pajamas. Life, it seemed, had reached its nadir.
“Shit!” exclaimed my bewildered neighbor.
How true. How very, very true, I thought.
Yet life really is wonderful. Because 45 minutes later the phone rang and a wonderful, enchanting, extraordinarily desirable voice said, “Hi, Nickie.” It was my darling Sheeni. She’s official
ly dumped Trent!
“Of course, he was disconsolate,” she explained. “But we talked day and night all this weekend and he’s come to see this as an opportunity for growth. We both wept when he left for Ukiah this morning. I was struck by how his appearance had altered. Had matured. He said he would try to turn his pain into poetry.”
I hope he turns it into malignant cancer tumors!
