Tales of the Madman Underground

by John Barnes

  Well, I’d figure out what to tell her later.

  I’d left home without any books, and I was done with everything but the windows, but I didn’t want Harris and Tierden to see me just catching a nap in here. It was always possible they’d figure out the way I’d been avoiding having to double-clean the windows. Since it had rained all day Saturday, the McPuddle by the window was all filled up. They’d make their big splash, I’d wash the windows that I had to wash anyway, and we’d be all even and done.

  So I wanted them to think I’d already gone home for the night, and therefore I was hiding from their view, since they never got out of that car. I was sitting reading on the bathroom floor, with the bathroom door propped open. I’d fished out a Sunday Toledo Blade that wasn’t all grody from having been in the trash, and was trying to keep all the Watergate crap straight because Harry would be telling us what to think about it tomorrow.

  Instead of the big splash, I heard a knock on the window. I came out of the bathroom. Marti was looking in the window like a puppy in a pet store. I went outside, but she didn’t come right in the door, so I walked up to her. She stood like she didn’t want to be touched.

  “Locked out?”

  “My parents were fighting. Mother was yelling at Dad because he created an ugly geek daughter, and I will never get a date because I’m too brainy and too weird and I’ll never learn to do anything like a normal person, and my boyfriend is the biggest fag in the high school. Dad was blaming Mom for having contaminated his genius blood-line with crazy drunken whore blood. I don’t think they noticed when I left, which was six hours ago, and they might not have noticed yet. I drove halfway to Cleveland, and then realized I only had enough money for gas to make it back here. So I turned around and now I’m here. Are you going to let me in?”

  “Of course. I only came out because you didn’t move.” Once I had her seated at the counter, and put a couple of the remaining hamburgers in front of her, she just kind of sat there, head down, like the kind of rescued baby animal situation when you know you’re going to be up all night but the poor little thing isn’t going to make it.

  “I’m locked out, too,” I said, lying or maybe not. “I have a room at the Carrellsen. There’s room on the bed for two, or there’s a couch in the room; either way I’m pretty much a gentleman. Might take some smuggling to get you up there, but we’ll manage.” I picked up one of the burgers. “If you’re not going to eat that, I’ve always got room.”

  “Help yourself.” She sat there while I finished. “Are you just waiting for the assholes to splash water on the windows?”

  “Pretty much. Then I have to hang out here till I can clock out. Get a nap if you need one, and I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go to the Carrellsen.”

  “My first time checking into a hotel room with a guy. My mom will be so proud.”

  She slept, and I read the paper. It got close to closing, and Harris and Tierden didn’t show up, so I finally just washed the windows, woke Marti, and clocked out. Marti parked her car on the side of the Carrellsen that you can’t see from the front desk.

  I went in the front entrance, chatted with Marilyn for a minute, went up the steps towards my room, descended the stairs to the side entrance, looked all around the parking lot to be on the safe side, and gestured for Marti. She slipped out from between two parked trucks and hurried into the doorway beside me. I pulled the door closed, careful to keep it quiet, and we went up the stairs together.

  “How close is the front desk?” she breathed in my ear. “Where do I hide if she comes up the hall?”

  “About a mile and a half beyond some closed doors,” I said in my normal voice, “and Marilyn won’t leave that front desk to walk the halls. She’s the only staff here, and she’s so conscientious about staying at the desk that I don’t think she ever takes a pee break for her whole shift.”

  Marti made that snorting, fizzy laugh, pinned her back against the wall, and moved sideways like she was in a commando raid in a movie, quietly singing the Mission Impossible theme—“Bump-bump-bump bump-BAH-DUMP, Bump-bump-bump bump-BAH-dump.” I about bust a gut. “Come on,” I said, “We should get into the room anyway.”

  As I closed the door, Marti said, “Well, yeah, okay, I am a hopeless romantic, but this is the cheapest-looking hotel room I’ve ever been in, exactly like the kind of place I always figured I’d be staying in when I started having real adventures out in the real world, and I think this is cool.”

  I’d lost track of how many times I’d crashed out in one of these rooms, so “cool” was not a word that would have occurred to me. The Carrellsen was old; it had been a railway hotel, then a bum bin, and though for the moment it was back to being sort of a hotel, it made most of its money off the bar on the ground floor, and you could tell it would be a bum bin again in a few years.

  The room had hairy gold wallpaper with a red rope pattern on it, and a tall ceiling. There was an ancient radiator that had been painted so many times it looked like it was made out of dirty yellow snow and the spring thaw was on. The gray-beige carpets were the color of the local mud. The furniture was a lumpy old double bed, a desk taken up entirely by a TV, a hard-back chair that looked stolen from somebody’s dinette set, and an old couch, one of those thirties designs that was all curves, sagging so much it looked like Dr. Seuss had drawn it. The bathroom contained a greasy mirror, two big towels, two little towels, and one really ancient pink toilet that didn’t match either the tiny sink on a stand or the old claw-foot tub with an aluminum-tube circle above it, from which hung a plastic shower curtain dirtier than Mom’s bathroom floor.

  “Well,” she said, “embarrassment time if you want to be embarrassed. What do we do about showers and jammies and all that?”

  “Humph,” I said. “Well, we each get a bath or shower, then get dressed in our dirty clothes, and come out and sleep in them. That’s what I’d say.”

  “Or,” she said, “how much of a gentleman are you? We move the coverlet to the couch, where I’m going to sleep. You won’t need it, this place is too warm anyway. We each take a shower and come out wearing a towel, with our dirty clothes on hangers. We hang up the dirty clothes on the rack so they at least get some air. The second one out turns off the lights and then you get into the bed, because you paid for the room, and I get under the coverlet on the couch, in our nice clean skin. That way we just wear our stinky clothes for a few minutes tomorrow morning. Unless, of course, knowing there are naked ta-tas in the same room is going to keep you awake all night.”

  Hunh, no naked ladies in my life for seventeen years, and now twice in a day. By the time I was thirty I might get to touch one.

  I wanted to flip a coin to see who got first shower, but Marti insisted that paying for the room trumped on that, so I got my shower, tied on the towel, and went out and got between the sheets. I figured if I was already asleep I could trust myself to be a gentleman.

  I drifted off but woke when she sat on the edge of the bed. “Um, Karl, this is embarrassing. I need your help for something.”

  “It can’t be any more embarrassing than anything else today has been,” I said. “What do you need?”

  “There’s this cream,” she said, “for my acne. When I get a real bad flare-up, like I’m having now, it itches and gets sore. And I’ve got a patch on my back I can’t reach. Could you, um—”

  “Just get me the stuff and I won’t open my eyes till you tell me you’re stretched out on your stomach,” I said. “Then you close your eyes, unless you want to be struck with awe at my manly equipment. I rub it in where you say, and get back under the covers, and we reverse the process. Duck soup.”

  In a minute she had it all together and was lying on the bed, with the sheet down to her waist, on her stomach. In the light of the crappy little lamp, all I was looking at was a frizzy mop of blonde hair and a bare back with one big angry red patch on it, but Jesus fucking God she was beautiful, and if you don’t understand that, I’m sorry for you.


  When I went to rub it in, I could see the skin was badly broken and erupted down in the lower part between her shoulder blades. “That looks awful,” I said.

  “It doesn’t feel good, either. But the cream kills the itch and dries it out. You have to kind of work it in.”

  “Let me know if this hurts.” I rubbed a little of the cream in, and she said, “You can rub harder.” So I did, and reflected that here I’d been wishing to touch a naked girl and I was getting to. Obviously God or somebody had one hell of a sense of humor.

  Once she wasn’t itching and hurting, it kind of turned into an overall back rub; she just seemed so small and her skin was so soft, and, well, we had the time. “That couch looks like it’s uncomfortable,” I said. “Not to mention like it’s probably rough on your skin. There’s room in the bed for two of us to sleep without touching.”

  She breathed in and out before saying, “If you turn out the lights, and we both get under the sheet, are you gonna turn into a crazy rapist?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I don’t know if she peeked but I didn’t; it wouldn’t have felt right.

  I was tired, and so was Marti, and we were almost asleep when a big old thunderstorm came booming in, filling the room with flashes of bright light. “I’m a little scared of storms,” she said. “If I take your hand, you won’t break out in hair and go for my throat or anything, will you?”

  “When there’s a thunderstorm on,” I said, “I can’t see the moon anyway.”

  So we fell asleep holding hands. If married couples got to do this all the time, shit if I could understand how there were ever divorces, or even fights.

  PART SIX

  (Monday, September 10, 1973)

  24

  The Long End of the Stick Isn’t So Hot Either

  THE DOOR BOOMED.

  I opened my eyes to see it was five fifteen just after I jumped out of bed with a yell, because I thought it was one of Mom’s crazy boyfriends coming upstairs to beat me up because Mom was mad at me.

  I remembered where I was in about half a second. We had set the alarm for five forty-five, so we could slip out before anyone saw us—the bedroom lamp came on, and I looked back to see Marti sitting up, clutching a sheet around herself. I turned back to the door and shouted, “What!”

  “Police. Open up.”

  “We have to get some clothes on,” I said, not thinking very clearly.

  Behind me, Marti was scrambling to get into hers. I dove for my T-shirt and jeans.

  But I hadn’t put the chain on, so Marilyn just used her key to unlock the door, and a whole parade came through—first Marilyn in her dyed-black beehive, dumpy brown dress, and sensible shoes, hand to her mouth, looking perfectly like a cartoon of a middle-aged lady being shocked. Then Officer Williams, Lightsburg’s family court officer, a big man with a heavy black mustache, his level gaze appraising everything in an instant—two kids frantically putting clothes on, one bed with covers flung all over.

  Behind them came Mom, and Mrs. Nielsen, both of whom had that hard-set mother-jaw that means: “You have embarrassed me.”

  And behind all of that, looking like the most embarrassed guy in the world, which he couldn’t possibly be, since I was right there, was Mom’s Wonderful Bill.

  Mrs. Nielsen shrieked first. “Oh my god, oh honey, what did that boy do to you?”

  Marti blinked. “Mom, we—”

  Mrs. Nielsen and Marilyn had rushed to her like she was bleeding to death and they were trying to win the International Special Tourniquet Award. “Did he hurt you? Did he leave marks? Oh honey—”

  “Now just a minute,” Mom said. “Just a damn minute. Karl would never—”

  “How fast can we get a pregnancy test?” Mrs. Nielsen demanded.

  Officer Williams opened his mouth but didn’t seem to have anything to say, maybe trying to decide which craziness to deal with first. Just as he seemed to settle on Mrs. Nielsen, Marilyn asked, “Can the Carrellsen Hotel get into legal trouble about this? I don’t think it’s fair if we can get in trouble for people doing things like this.”

  Williams froze again. I don’t know how they let a guy like that be a cop; what would he do in the middle of a bank robbery?

  I looked away—really looking for anything besides two raging moms, one beehived old church lady, a bewildered old cop, and a bum-bin hotel room. Bill was standing halfway in the door—the room was a little big for the crowd and he couldn’t quite get in past Williams’s broad, lardy back. Bill was wearing big old tire-tread sandals, chinos that looked like they’d been fished out of the laundry basket, an untucked Mud Hens T-shirt with holes in the belly, and one of those silly patch-on-the-elbows corduroy jackets. He looked so disheveled and out of it that the pathetic stupid fisherman’s cap, perched on the back of his head like a lost pancake, sort of helped by at least hiding some of the mess of his hair.

  Out of nowhere he gave me this funny little sideways smile and a wink.

  I didn’t know what the fuck he meant, but it did make me feel better, come to admit it.

  Meanwhile, everyone else except Marti had gotten into yelling at each other, trying to settle whether I was a rapist psycho, or Marti was an out-of-control little slut who lured me here to give me VD and trap me into a loveless marriage with a baby that probably wasn’t even mine. At least I think that’s what the two mothers were saying, trying to shout over each other, and over Marilyn, and over Williams asking them to calm down.

  At first I thought they were drunk. Then I realized Mrs. Nielsen had what Mom called a “slamover,” a sleepless hangover that you get by sobering up while staying up all night. And Mom—I didn’t know. She just looked sick for some reason.

  It was kind of hard to keep it all straight with both of them going at the same time, and Marilyn asking if the hotel was in trouble and helpfully suggesting that all of us ought to be tested for drugs. All three of them were pretty much drowning out Officer Williams, who seemed to be trying to get them to just come at him one at a time.

  Finally Williams’s patience wore out just as Mom and Mrs. Nielsen paused for breath, which left Marilyn pointing out that all this was probably because of drugs, if you just looked at the people involved, and Williams lost it and barked “Shut up!” at her, kind of loud.

  She got an expression like he’d just given her ten million volts across the nipples, and her face started folding and crumpling like a soggy paper towel in a campfire, and it was like you could see poor old Williams brace himself for half a second before Marilyn let loose with a wail like she just saw her kitten go under a tire. She flumped down on the bed and just sobbed, because it all wasn’t fair, the Carrellsen was going to be closed because of this, she knew it, and she’d lose her job and it was all because some people couldn’t keep their kids away from drugs. Her beehive was kind of working its way loose, shaking more and more as she talked and sobbed, and it looked like in no time it would be all down around her face.

  Williams sat down next to her, and patted her arm, and told her everything would be fine, the Carrellsen and her job would survive, really, and she should just go on down to the desk, he’d handle everything and it would all work out.

  She sniffled once, then fled like her butt was on fire; her cheeks were streaked with makeup and eye shadow avalanches and the beehive was more like a squirrel nest.

  Williams looked a little at loss for words.

  Bill said, “Look, I’m just the chauffeur here, but I think somebody ought to ask and give them a chance to just tell us. Did you kids have sex?”

  “No!” Marti and I both said, pretty loud.

  At least that seemed to surprise Mom and Mrs. Nielsen. Williams opened his mouth again, but Bill rolled on. “And did you come here to have sex?”

  “No,” I said.

  “We were locked out and we needed somewhere to sleep, sir,” Marti said, in that stubborn-sincere way that seemed to drive Gratz apeshit (but I could tell Bill believed her).

  “Yo
u weren’t locked out, Karl,” Mom said. She didn’t sound happy. She was on probation for marijuana possession, and locking your kid out, unless they were violent, was a crime.

  “I thought I was locked out, Mom, I was sure I would be.”

  She stared at me, and I realized her confusion was real. “Karl, I’ve been out looking for you for most of the night. And Rose has been looking for Marti. Bill was driving us around. I was worried.”

  That was so weird—Mom worrying about what was happening when I was out—that she and I just kind of stared at each other for a second while the weirdness washed over us.

  “I want to go to the hospital,” Mrs. Nielsen announced.

  I swear I was still so freaked-out that for one crazy second I wondered if she was sick.

  Unfortunately she wasn’t. I mean, not that it would have been fortunate if she’d been sick or anything like that. I mean, she didn’t want to go to the hospital for herself. “We’ve got to find out what this creepy little boy did to Martinella right now,” she said, arms folded across her chest. “That’s all there is to it. You’re not going to railroad me with any small-town bullshit, Officer, we are going to make sure the truth comes out. Martinella is going straight to the hospital for a pregnancy test and a VD test and whatever kind of whatever else they can do for her.”

  “Uh, ma’am,” Officer Williams said, “neither one of those tests would show anything right now, if she just now got pregnant or infected. I guess if we test them both we can find out whether either one could have infected the other—”

  “He could not have gotten it from Martinella! He could not! We are just going to test to see whether she got it from this—this—”