by Jeff Vrolyks
I began my hobby at fifteen years old, filling a void left by my mother’s passing. I was at my friend Skippy’s house, along with five of our friends. One kid pulled out a joint and we smoked it. I am not one for drugs, but it was a strange time in my life. With a good buzz, I picked up Skippy’s guitar and strummed a couple notes. When I heard the familiarity of a specific note, I became curious. I hit it a few more times and realized it sounded like a Pink Floyd song. I hit other notes until I found the next note in the song’s sequence. Soon I had the basic rhythm of the song down and played it enthusiastically. My fingers hurt and palm burned, but I played through it. I played nonstop for hours, teaching myself several songs by trial and error. They didn’t sound good, but they sounded decent, and were recognizable to Skippy from the next room. He was impressed. Every time I went to Skippy’s after that day, he wanted me to play and nurtured my talent. Eventually he bought a bass guitar to play along. We didn’t sound great but it was a ton of fun. Later that year I wrote songs for us to play together. Our fan base consisted of the local neighborhood kids, which was ideal for a borderline agoraphobe. James, one of our friends, bought a drum set. He was good enough to hold a beat, and that’s all that mattered to us.
The guys started smoking more and more pot, occasionally infusing other drugs. I became straight as an arrow, knowing I couldn’t hone my skill with a clouded mind.
Not once did I fantasize about becoming a rock star. I only wanted to cultivate my talent, reach the peak of my ability. We had a dozen songs down to a tee, but since none of us could sing well, we didn’t progress. And, of course, I was happy with that.
After playing VonFurenz’ latest single a few times, I decided it was time to get ready for the evening. I was antsy thinking about phoning Holly. When I turned the amplifier off, the phone rang immediately. I answered. It was an automated lady speaking.
“Hello, you have received a collect call from… do you accept the charges?”
“No, I do not. Tell me who you are first.”
No response, so I hung up.
I wrapped a plastic trash bag around my cast and undressed. I stepped inside the bathroom and hit the light switch: a flicker of light, a dull pop, and then darkness. I checked fruitlessly in my junk drawer for a new bulb. Oh well, I was in a spirited mood so I showered in the dark, with the door open to allow traces of late-afternoon sunlight in. The trash-bag over the cast idea was worthy of national recognition, I thought. I didn’t realize at the time that it was common practice. I sang along with the music in my head, aware that my voice was probably making the paint peel. I was in a great mood and gave way to it. All I could see was the mirrored reflection of the open door. A rectangle of pale light in the darkness. Shampooing with my clumsy left hand brought the sting of suds into my eyes. I closed them tightly and stepped forward to the shower-head, bumping my sonofabitch right arm on the sliding door in the process. At least the sting in my eyes was gone, or at least superseded. I had a sudden craving for medicine. I rinsed my hair and shut the water off.
The phone rang.
I yanked the draped-over towel into the shower, and froze. An icy finger ran the length of my spine. It had been dark in here, yes, but not this dark. A cloud blotting out the sun could dampen the ambient light, but not to this degree. I gazed through the frosted glass at the mirror. The door-shaped illumination was hindered by another shape. Vertically it filled the door. A narrow strip of light flanked both sides of it. My visceral reaction: a man stood in the doorway. But a man eclipsing the full height of the doorway? I hadn’t any outrageously tall friends. My heart was pounding. The phone continued to ring.
“Hello?” I said inside the shower. My answering machine is set to pick up on the fourth ring. Evidently it was turned off. I gripped the shower door rail and felt like a chicken-shit when I hesitated to open it. “Is someone there?”
This is ridiculous, nobody is there. Open the door.
The best way to remove a Band-Aid is swiftly and without thought. The best way to get in a pool is to jump right in. I shunned my cowardice long enough to make a quick pull at the sliding door.
As the frosted-glass door moved, so did the shadow, and it moved toward me. I reflexively lunged backward, loosing my footing to the slick tub. I came down hard. Lights out.
Chapter 7
The phone wasn’t ringing when I came through. For a split second I wondered why I was sleeping naked and wet in the bathtub. And why the hell was it so dark? The throbbing pain in my arm made acquaintances with the dull ache at the base of my skull. I got up remembering what happened. The sliding door was open and I had a clear view of the reflection of the unimpeded doorway. I was still wet, so I hadn’t been unconscious for long. Feeling pretty silly I got out of the shower and without hesitation checked the small apartment, armed with a towel and nakedness. All was well, as I knew it would be. Before drying off I marched straight to the Codeine bottle, chewed two of them and slurped tap-water under the bathroom faucet.
Once dressed I decided to give Mike a call to find out when he was leaving for Greg’s. He said he was leaving in five minutes and regretted that Greg’s wife was going to be home after all, along with her sister and sister’s kids. We agreed to make the best of it. Before I set the phone down, it rang. I answered it.
“Hello, you have received a collect call from… will you accept the charges?”
I said nothing and waited for the caller to announce himself. I heard a distant and unclear voice. It aroused my curiosity.
“Hello, you have received a collect call from…”
This time I pinched the phone between shoulder and ear, palmed my left hand over my other ear, effectively snuffing out ambient sounds. What sounded like a single syllable word was repeated again and again in a raspy bass-heavy tone. The volume was inadequate, but I think I knew what was being said: Messed.
It’s like when you listen to a song that you know most of the words to, but there is that one word you can’t quite decipher. Whatever word you decide upon is only the correct word until you think of another word, and then it’s definitely that word. The writer Sylvia Wright coined the word mondegreen for the phenomenon—as a child she misinterpreted the line of a Scottish ballad ‘and laid him on the green’ to ‘Lady Mondegreen’. The power of suggestion is amazing. It wasn’t messed, it was best.
“Do you accept the charges?”
“Who are you?”
“Best… Best… Best… Best…”
I slammed the phone on the counter, took a deep breath and focused on Holly. But I couldn’t shake it. The prank caller had succeeded wildly at pissing me off. It was time to leave. I grabbed my wallet and keys and locked the front door. I proceeded down the stairs and heard the phone ringing behind me. Once upbeat and welcoming, now spiteful and taunting. I had no intention of answering it.
I began my fifteen minute drive to Greg’s. Turning the stereo up was my weak attempt at diverting attention away from the phone and the damned thing in the doorway. But music was annoying me so I turned it off and replayed my conversation with Holly.
Less than a mile away from my apartment I realized that I forgot the napkin with Holly’s number. I pummeled the steering wheel with my palm and cursed at the top of my lungs. I made the first available U-turn, still cursing.
I returned to my parking spot and warily made my way to the door. The phone rang on cue with the opened door. My anger was now a fifty-fifty split with fear. I decided to accept the charges. The dollar charge to my phone bill would be a bargain for the knowledge it would bring, that being who was calling me. I picked up the phone and waited for the automated lady to ask me the decided question.
“Kevin?” Mike’s voice was instant relief. I exhaled deeply. “I can’t remember if Greg’s new place is on Hoover Street or the one after it.”
“It’s the street after Hoover. Reagan Street.”
“Shouldn’t the street after Hoover be Roosevelt?”
“Roosevelt is a couple str
eets before Hoover.”
“They got these streets all wrong,” Mike said. “Reagan should be after Carter.”
“There is no Carter Street. I don’t think they intended to give a history lesson when they named the streets.”
“You don’t need to be a smart-aleck about it.”
Interrupting Mike was a call-waiting beep. Mike was talking when I clicked the phone over to the other line.
“You have received a collect call from... Best… Best… Best… Best… will you accept the charges?”
“Yes! I’ll accept the damned charges! Asshole!”
“Thank you for using Western Bell.” A bell chimed.
“Hello?”
“Best… Best… Best… Best.”
“You listen here, asshole. If you have something to say, say it. I’ll change my phone number if you keep this shit up.”
“Best… Best… Best… Best.”
I slammed the phone on the receiver, snatched the napkin and hurried out. I guess I hung up on Mike, too. Oh well. An unopened gift of ringing-phone began as I locked the door. As I descended the stairs the phone in the downstairs apartment began ringing.
My fifty-fifty split was now pure fear.
Chapter 8
The drive to Greg’s was an eternity stuffed inside fifteen minutes. I was nearing Greg’s house when I saw a little red car with hazard lights flashing on the shoulder of the road. It could only be Mike’s Hyundai. I pulled over in front of him. His engine turned over but wouldn’t start. The poor guy’s car had been a money pit for years.
“Damn car won’t start, again. I don’t think it’s getting any fuel but the tank is full.”
“I have Triple A. I’ll call them when we get to Greg’s.”
“Thanks, Kev.” Mike kicked the front bumper.
We pulled onto the road in my truck. Mike, always in a great mood, was now dour. I depend on him to keep my spirits up and right now I needed him more than ever. “Hopefully no cops come by or they might see your Twinkie tags, huh?” Mike looked away and nodded. “Maybe the cop would write you a fix-it Twix-it?” He chuckled vaguely. “Or maybe the cop will feel bad for you if you tell him the sticker fell off while driving on a Rocky Road? And you’ll replace it next Payday?” Mike started laughing. My giant was back.
I turned down a long gravel driveway and parked behind a few cars. We crunched gravel as we skirted one of the cars. Mike laughed. I asked him what was funny. His laughter was growing worse by the second, but he managed to point at the car before us. A Twinkie was taped to the license plate where the registration sticker would otherwise be. I laughed until I couldn’t breathe.
Greg welcomed us in. The living room was littered with empty beer bottles, mostly on the coffee table, some on the entertainment center. A louder than hell televised martial arts fight was the focal point of evening (if you discounted the beer). Watching it was a pair of half-cocked half-wits recessed deeply in the couch. Chris and Steve weren’t friends of mine but I maintained acquaintance status with them because they were beloved by Greg, united by a lust for voluptuous women and a never-ending repertoire of the four-lettered vernacular. I mumbled a greeting which lacked the enthusiasm warranting an earnest response.
Mike grinned and said, “So which one of you assholes put a Twinkie on that car?” Steve divested interest in the TV just long enough to admit culpability.
Greg let me use his phone to call the tow truck. After a five minute phone conversation I went to the fridge and staked claim to my first beer. By the time I reached the trashcan to toss my bottle cap, the beer was half empty. I humored a savage belch and cut it short when I heard female laughter down the hall. The bedroom from where it came was a hub for like-minded wives.
The adjacent room had yellow light flickering under the door. It opened. A gothic kid charged out and startled when he almost walked through me. He flanked me with an icy glare and exasperated sigh. The kid spelled trouble. I was sympathetic toward his unlucky parents. He wore black eyeliner, a chain choker-necklace, and tall spiked hair. I heard The Cure giving up on life inside his room. I polished off the other half of the beer and refreshed it anew. A headache was competing with my broken arm and it was a draw. I pinched a codeine from my pocket and chased it with a gulp of beer. The teenaged Goth kid whined at Greg, who sat reclined trying to watch the fight. Greg reluctantly followed him to the bedroom.
I told Mike we had fifteen minutes before the tow-truck arrived. I took another long pull from my beer and sat it on the counter. I headed to the bathroom at the end of the hall to empty my bladder. I glanced in the kid’s bedroom and saw two more kids on the floor with a board game and candle between them. The Goth kid gesticulated to a skeptical Greg.
I continued to the bathroom and relieved myself. I looked in the mirror and wondered how Holly could like someone so bland. After washing my hands I killed the lights and opened the door. Incandescent hall-light shone in. I alarmed by something from the outermost corner of my eye. The recently familiar icy chill ran the length of my spine. In the bathroom mirror was the reflection of the dimly-lit opposing wall, defaced by a light-deprived hole in the wall in the shape of a wickedly tall figure. I recalled the flowery wallpaper that was in its place only a moment ago.
I got the hell out of there without looking back. Mike passed me in the hall to take care of business. He closed the bathroom door and I waited for his dreadful reaction. It never came. I wondered if what I saw in my apartment and again just now was a figment of my imagination. I didn’t consider myself to have much of an imagination and I’ve never hallucinated. Or if I did my hallucinations were so perfect that I received them as reality. Maybe it was the medicine. I had never taken narcotic pills before. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The phone calls, too. I pinched the second pill from my pocket and tossed it in the trashcan.
* * *
Mike and I took care of the paperwork and watched his Hyundai sail off behind a tow truck. Instead of mentioning my recent episodes to him, I fielded questions regarding Alison, none of which I knew the answer to. I inquired into the Gothic kid. He was Greg’s wife’s son, as I assumed. Greg wasn’t fond of him but tolerated him for his wife Steph. I suppose she did a lot of tolerating as well, being the wife of a carousing babe ogler. We motored along the residential road. My gaze drifted away for a brief moment; I barely noticed the cat dashing across the street. I slammed on the brakes, banked hard to the right, mowing down a mailbox and a sizeable section of hedge. I lunged out of the truck searching for the cat. Mike asked if I was crazy. There was no dead cat; a close call. When I got back in the truck Mike called me a lunatic. I backed over the mutilated hedge and drove away, indifferent to the property damage I just created. My official statement to the authorities would have read Because I’m twenty-three years old.
“You realize you could have killed us both over a stupid cat, right?” Mike asked peevishly.
“I will never run over a cat. Never.”
Mike left it alone.
Back at the house the only thing that had changed was the immense quantity of beer bottles on the coffee table. It looked like a carnival ring-toss game. I grabbed the beer I had left behind, now tepid, and drank the remainder remembering a quote from an old friend: Always drink beer warm because sometimes you have to. He was a second-tier Confucius. I took a pair of cold beers from the fridge and checked the clock above the kitchen sink: 7:25 (or 19:25 for you fellow soldiers). It was almost time to call her! The knot I had in my stomach earlier was now butterflies. I twisted the bottle-cap off and took a hearty swig, making up for lost time. I tossed the bottle cap at the trashcan, but this time I was a couple feet off mark. In the living room I handed Mike the other beer. He was sprawled out on the smaller couch. Zombies Chris and Steve were facing the tube on the larger couch.
Greg had returned to his recliner, was watching less than attentively the last fight of the night’s ticket. He wasn’t typically the thinker type, but this evening seemed t
o be different. I plopped my buzzed butt on the couch next to Mike and solicited his attention with a wide grin. He laughed and accused me of being a lightweight.
“It’s the medicine,” I retorted. There was probably some truth to that.
The annoying Goth kid re-entered the living room to bug Greg once again. Didn’t I just watch this a half hour ago?
Greg followed the rabble-rouser back into the bedroom. His empty recliner looked supremely comfy to me. I uprooted from the couch and tripped over the coffee table in my stupor, damn near fell on my face. The idea of re-breaking my arm sobered me for the moment. I reached Greg’s recliner and plopped my buzzed butt in it with every intention of making it my new seat for the night. I pretended to watch the fight but didn’t give a rat’s ass. I was admiring the angelic penmanship of the napkin now on my thigh.
Greg came out of the derelict’s bedroom, found me in his chair. I was prepared to defend my squatter status as the new armchair captain of the SS Lazy boy, but instead he passed me and sat on the couch in complete apathy. The Gothic kid had done something to him; witchcraft or voodoo was my guess.
It was 7:55 and I was fidgeting and working up a nervous sweat. I took a deep breath and informed Greg that I was going to use his phone again. I dialed Holly’s number and stepped out the front door—I didn’t want an audience. It rang a few times before picking up.
“Hello?” It was her voice, unmistakable and as lovable as a puppy.
“Hi, Holly,” I said. “It’s Kevin.”
“Hey, sexy. I’m glad you called. I want you to come over. Guess what?”
