One Hit Wonder

by Charlie Carillo

  “That was a magical night at the ballfield,” I said. “You healed Brendan that night.”

  “You think?”

  “I know.”

  She smiled. “Maybe you’re right, Mickey. But do you remember another night that wasn’t so magical?”

  “Which night?”

  “The night of the flaming ropes.”

  Her face darkened. My own face felt numb. Maybe I’d made a mistake, playing the memory game with Lynn. For every kite-at-the-ballfield story, there was a flaming ropes story.

  I finished my drink, poured myself another. Lynn didn’t try to stop me.

  “Remember the flaming ropes, Mickey?”

  I gulped my drink like a cowboy, waited for a shiver to go through me like a gust of evil wind.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said softly. “Be pretty hard to forget the flaming ropes.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It happened shortly before the Captain banned me from the Mahoney house. It was a Saturday, well past midnight. We’d been to a dance in the gym at my high school and Lynn wanted to make us hot chocolate.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “everybody’ll be asleep.”

  The smart thing would have been to kiss her at the door and go home, but when you’re crazy in love you don’t always do the smart thing. Besides, something else was going on.

  We’d been close all night, without even having to talk. I suspected this was the night it might happen between Lynn and me, as naturally as the sun sets and the moon rises. I had a three-pack of Trojans in my jacket pocket, just in case. I’d bought them at a pharmacy near my school, miles from home. I was conflicted about the rubbers, and it wasn’t a moral issue. I just didn’t want to use them. They would be putting a layer between Lynn and me, and there were no layers between Lynn and me. In a funny way, I feared that the act meant to bring us even closer might actually push us apart….

  We went into the house and closed the door behind us as quietly as we could, but before we could take a step toward the kitchen we noticed a glow from the fireplace. That wasn’t particularly unusual—the Captain loved fires and often built them when the weather turned cold. He’d probably built this one and gone up to sleep when the flames burned down, but then I noticed that the screen hadn’t been placed in front of the fire, a big no-no under the Captain’s rules.

  There was little time to ponder this oversight because suddenly, a five-foot horizontal flame leapt straight from the coals, right toward the couch. It winked out so fast it was almost like a mirage, except we’d both seen it.

  We heard the Captain’s throaty chuckle before we saw him seated there on the couch in his boxer shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, clutching a rectangular can that turned out to contain lighter fluid, the stuff you use to get a barbecue started.

  “Oh God, I hate when he does this,” Lynn breathed, and then he did it again, squeezing a line of lighter fluid toward the coals and laughing at the rope of fire that leapt at him and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

  He laughed out loud, clutching the can as he turned and saw us.

  “Well, hello there, kids!”

  He was bombed out of his skull, so totally out of it that he actually seemed happy to see me. But I was about to find out why he was so cheerful.

  “Dad. Are you all right?”

  He seemed offended by the question. With his other hand he picked up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the floor and took a long, gurgly slug.

  “’Course I’m all right! What could be wrong? I’m makin’ flaming ropes!”

  Lynn was paralyzed with fear and embarrassment. The Captain offered me the lighter fluid can.

  “What do you say, Mick? Wanna make a flaming rope?”

  “Please go to bed, Daddy.”

  “I’m not tired. Here.” He patted the couch cushion. “Sit here. Works better if you sit.”

  “Daddy, I—”

  “Sit down here, Mickey!”

  His voice rocked the rafters. I obeyed him and sat down, if only to keep him from shouting again. I waited for his wife to come running, or any of his sons, but nobody did. It seemed impossible that they could have slept through a sound like that. Maybe they heard it and were too petrified to come downstairs….

  The Captain held the can up to my face and shook it so I could hear the syrupy fluid slosh around.

  “See this stuff? Very dangerous. You’re supposed to squirt it on charcoal, let it sink in, and then light it.” He belched. “But that’s no fun. Squirting it on fires is fun! Watch!”

  He squeezed another line of fluid at the coals. The flame leapt toward him like an enraged snake, but at the last instant he tilted the can upward to break the connection.

  The air was ripe with the reek of oil smoke. The Captain chuckled, well pleased.

  “See that? See what I did there? Gotta be quick about it, or the can’ll explode in your face.”

  He handed me the can.

  “Your turn, Mick. And try not to blow up the house.”

  A deadly challenge, from the man who hated me most. Jesus Christ Almighty.

  “I’d rather not, sir.”

  “Pussy.”

  “Daddy!”

  He ignored his daughter. “Do it like I showed you and you won’t get hurt.”

  “Daddy, what’s the point of this?”

  “The point is, I want to see this little guinea grow some balls.”

  The boxing fiasco was nothing compared to this. This was absolute lunacy. I had no idea things were this bad. I always knew the guy was an asshole, but until now I never thought he was a psychopath.

  And a calm psychopath, at that. This was his element, the climate of fear and danger. He could see how terrified I was, and it pleased him. It made him more of a man than me. He was so much of a man that he was willing to sit beside me at the risk of getting his own ass blown to Kingdom Come, just to see me suffer. That’s how much he hated me.

  He put a hand on the back of my neck and gave it a squeeze, such a hard squeeze that I felt a tingle of nerves down my back and all the way to my heels.

  “You gonna do it, or you gonna chicken out?”

  Lynn had left the room. It was me and the Captain. The can felt slippery in my hand, from my own sweat and the greasy residue of the lighter fluid. I held the can upright, gave it a gentle experimental squeeze. It was about half full.

  Fuck the Captain. I was going to do it. If it went wrong, at least I’d be taking him with me.

  I rehearsed it in my head—aim, squeeze, then tilt the can upward to keep from blowing myself up. The bed of coals crackled, glowing as red as a pile of rubies.

  “Aim for the middle,” the Captain advised. “That’s where it’s hottest.”

  I was hyperventilating. I felt dizzy. Holding the can in both hands, I pointed it toward the fire, willing myself to give it a squeeze. I wasn’t the type to pray but I might have knocked off a quick Hail Mary right then, a prayer to keep me from fucking up, and as I clenched my teeth and urged my hands to do it Lynn came rushing back to the room, moving awkwardly because she was carrying a huge spaghetti pot by its two big handles, a pot so full of water that it lapped over the edges, and then it seemed as if the pot became a wild animal Lynn was struggling to subdue as it tipped over the coals and drenched them in a roaring hiss of steaming smoke.

  Black water sloshed out from the fireplace, soaking the floor in front of it. Lynn kicked chunks of blackened embers back into the fireplace and stood there in defiance of her father, who’d staggered to his feet.

  “Jeez, Lynn,” he mock-pouted, “you wrecked the game!”

  “The game is over, Daddy. Go to bed.”

  The Captain stared at her, then at me. He brought the whiskey bottle to his lips and took a long sip, draining it. Then, ignoring the puddle of black water, he put the screen in front of the dead fire, turned to me and held up an instructive forefinger. I stood to face him.

  “Safety first, Mick. All it takes is one spark, and thi
s house could go up like…”

  He strained for a comparison, and suddenly his eyes closed. He turned and collapsed face-first on the couch, as if he’d been shot.

  Even as he came crashing down he managed to hang on to the empty whiskey bottle. He rolled onto his back and cradled the bottle as if it were a newborn. Then he was snoring, his big feet hanging over the arms of the couch.

  Lynn set the spaghetti pot on the floor, then found a quilt to cover her father. I could feel my hands pulsing, looked at them and saw that I was still clutching the can of lighter fluid.

  I set it on the mantel and reached out to hold Lynn, but she was mortified by what had happened, and she didn’t want to be touched.

  I let my arms fall. “I’ll help you clean up, baby.”

  She shook her head. “I can handle it,” she whispered.

  “I’ll get some paper towels. They’ll soak up—”

  A jarring sound from the couch—the Captain had begun snoring. Even asleep, the fucker was a loudmouth. Lynn stood guard over him, as if fearing he had one last move to make, one last scheme to humiliate me.

  “Mickey,” she said over her shoulder, “go home.”

  “You sure that’s what you want?”

  “Please. Go.”

  And that’s what I did. I’d expected to make love to my girl that night. Instead, I left her house without even touching her.

  I didn’t start crying until I was outside, halfway down the Mahoney path. As the Captain slumbered, his one and only daughter cleaned up the ravages of his latest escapade. There was nothing I could do to help her, nothing she would let me do to help her.

  The night had turned cold and I pulled my jacket tight around myself, feeling the bump of the Trojan box in my pocket. So close, and yet so fucked up.

  Now, all these years later, we were seated on that same couch. Lynn gulped the rest of her drink and shuddered, holding herself by the elbows as she got to her feet.

  “You’d better go now, Mickey.”

  “I will. But I have to tell you something about that night.”

  She looked at me without saying anything. I cleared my throat, actually felt my face reddening.

  “I thought we were going to do it that night.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. The thing we never quite got around to doing.”

  A tickle of a smile came to her lips, just a tickle, but at least it wasn’t a frown.

  “I had a three-pack of Trojans in my pocket. I was afraid you’d feel the bump when we were dancing.”

  “I did.”

  “You did? You never said anything!”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you.” The smile grew. “We would have, that night.”

  “You think?”

  She nodded without shame. “I was ready.”

  “So was I.”

  I stood up and looked at her, stared at her, willed her to love me. The words came from my heart, not my brain.

  “Please come back,” I begged. “Come back to who you were.”

  She buried her face in her hands, and when she took her hands away her eyes seemed dark and hollow. “There’s no way back.”

  “You love me. I know you love me.”

  “I can’t say that I do.”

  “Well then, I’ll say it. I know it. You could have gotten your mother back into bed all by yourself. That’s not why you called me tonight.”

  “It’s not?”

  “It was like lifting a laundry bag. You could have done it alone, but you wanted me here. Let’s quit fooling around.”

  I stretched my arms toward her. “Lynn, hold me. All I’m asking is for you to hold me.”

  I kept my arms out, but did not approach her. Days seemed to pass, but it was actually only seconds before she moved to me and fell into my arms.

  I buried my face in her shoulder and wrapped myself around her. She quivered as if a current were running through her, but at last that stopped, as if it had been calmed by my embrace. She let out a jagged sigh and pulled back to look at me, her hands on my cheeks, eyes wide and green and shining.

  “I saw you, Mickey.”

  “Saw me where?”

  “In concert.”

  I was staggered. “You told me you never saw me perform!”

  “I lied.”

  “Where?”

  “Seattle.”

  I remembered the Seattle concerts. I was the one-song opening act for the Rolling Stones, believe it or not, performing in a one-piece black zip-up suit smothered in sequins. The zipper only went as high as the middle of my sternum, the better to display my generous forest of chest hair. I left the stage to the somewhat disturbing sound of hysterical teenage females, and that’s when Mick Jagger spoke his one and only sentence to me.

  “Mate,” he said, “I wish I could be Italian for just one night.”

  Lynn was giggling. “I loved that black suit you wore.”

  “You should have come backstage.”

  “It would have been awkward.”

  “Why?”

  “I…wasn’t alone.”

  A great green dagger of envy cut my heart in half, as if the fucker had just joined us in bed.

  “Who was this person?”

  “Just a guy.”

  “Did you tell him about me? Did you tell him the song was about you?”

  “No. Funny thing is, going to the concert was his idea. All his life, he wanted to see the Stones in concert.”

  “Oh, swell. So even when you went to see me, you weren’t really going to see me. I just happened to be the opening act.”

  “Don’t be like that, Mickey.”

  “You fucked him, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, Mickey—”

  “So you must have been in love with him.”

  “Wrong. I fucked him because I wasn’t in love with him.” She hesitated. “I fucked all of them because I wasn’t in love with them.”

  All of them. A population.

  “I’m sorry, Mickey,” she said, “but you pretty much did the same thing, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but only because you left me.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She was killing me, and she knew it.

  “Let’s not talk about that concert anymore, Lynn.”

  “Okay. But there’s just one thing I have to ask you, about that thing you did when you finished your song.”

  “What thing? You mean blowing a kiss to the crowd?”

  “You didn’t blow a kiss to the crowd.”

  “Excuse me, but I always blew a kiss to the crowd. My agent made me do that. He thought it was cute.”

  “You didn’t do it the night I was there.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You got up, walked to the edge of the stage, spread your arms and yelled, ‘Bring back my angel!’”

  “Bring back my angel?”

  “Your exact words. It was like…a plea to the heavens.”

  “Jesus, I don’t remember doing that. If I did do that, it was the only time.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because it was the only time I was ever in the audience. Somehow, you must have sensed that.”

  Son of a bitch. She was still a believer, after all.

  “Maybe you’re right,” I allowed.

  Mrs. Mahoney let out a long, low moan, all vowel sounds. It was time for me to go. We both knew it.

  “Wait,” Lynn said, “I want you to have something.” She ran upstairs and came back with a rolled-up paper with a rubber band around it. “Don’t look at it now. Open it when you get home.”

  Lynn held my hand as we walked to the front door.

  “Can I see you tomorrow?” I asked.

  “No. Not on a school night.”

  “Funny.”

  “You get paid on Friday, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Come by my window and make a deposit, and we’ll…take it from there.
”

  “Okay.” She let me kiss her on the forehead. “Friday.”

  My parents were asleep. I crept quietly to my room and unrolled the paper. It was a faded watercolor painting of a little boy flying a kite in a big green field, with a teenage couple cheering him on. A sliver of yellow moon gleamed in the sky. It was signed simply “brendan” in pencil, all lowercase letters. I taped it up on the wall, next to my framed record cover.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Patrick Wagner was having a hell of a day. He couldn’t stop yawning, and seemed to be tripping over his own feet. Flynn was worried.

  “Jeez, Patrick, you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Hell happened to you?”

  He rubbed his sweaty face with both hands, leaving dirt streaks. “Scarlett made me go to the movies in the city. Didn’t get back until midnight.”

  “Holy Jesus, this girl’s gonna kill ya, Patrick.”

  Patrick was about to offer a mild, polite objection when his sleepy face suddenly came alive. He turned to me.

  “Hey, I almost forgot. I heard your song in this movie last night!”

  I thought he was fucking with me, but quickly realized that Patrick never fucked with anybody. He suddenly looked like an Indian in war paint, the skin of his face burning red with excitement behind the dirt streaks.

  “You heard my song in a movie?”

  “Yeah!”

  “It can’t be.”

  “‘Sweet Days,’ right? Something about it feeling like a haze?”

  I swallowed. “Yeah, that’s my song, all right.”

  Flynn whacked me on the back. “That’s great! They gotta pay you for that, right?”

  I shook my head. “I sold the rights to that song a long time ago.”

  “Aw, jeez! What’d you do that for?”

  “Needed the money. Tell me about this movie, Patrick.”

  It was a love story, he said, about a summer romance that comes to an end when the girl meets a rich guy and dumps her boyfriend, a housepainter.

  “Typical,” Flynn sneered.

  “In the end she doesn’t want either of them,” Patrick added.

  “What’s the name of this movie?”

  “Uhhh…give me a sec, I’ll think of it.”