Berserk

by Tim Lebbon

  Dale looked away, unable to face Jonah as he confessed, “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Ah, truth will out!”

  “And here comes the lecture,” Dale grumbled.

  Thanks to the sixth sense that comes from spending so much time with a person, Dale was correct. Jonah was about to deliver a lecture, though he didn’t know why. Dale never seemed to listen or learn from the exchanges. But these little sermons tended to leave Jonah with a vague sense of accomplishment. (Either that or superiority, Dale could never be sure.)

  Jonah drew himself to his full righteous-fury height. Which wasn’t much, since he was sitting. And very short. “Once a year, Dale. I only get vacation once a year.”

  Dale ignored Jonah, staring out the window at the passing scenery instead. “How far are we from Nevada, anyway?”

  “But instead of spending it at home like I wanted to this year, I agreed to go all the way to Reno with you.”

  “Like you would have had fun at home for a week.”

  “And in light of the situation,” Jonah pressed on, “I got a full night’s sleep, like a responsible person.”

  “Blahdy, blahdy, blah.”

  “But once again you decide to party the entire night before we leave.”

  “God, don’t you ever stop talking?”

  “I asked you to get some rest so we could share the driving for once.”

  “Look, Carla wanted to give me a going away blow job, and before I knew what was happening, it turned into a going away fuck. Not that I’m complaining.” Dale smiled wide before he added, “Then Barbara came over and it turned into a going away—”

  “Enough!” Jonah raised his hand, cutting Dale off mid-description. “I don’t need to hear the torrid details of your carousing. It isn’t like I couldn’t hear your antics all night long. The point is, you pulled an all-nighter before a trip, and now I am left to do all the driving. Again.”

  “Nope. The point is, I got some pussy and you’re jealous. Again.”

  “That has nothing to do with it, and you know it.”

  “Make that pussies. And asses. And mouths.”

  Jonah cursed under his breath and mumbled, “I swear, it’s like living with Ron Jeremy.” Louder, he said, “I’m talking about responsibility. I’m talking about follow-through.”

  “I’m responsible.”

  “Dale, at the grand, old age of twenty-five, the only thing you’re responsible for are broken hearts—”

  “Guilty,” Dale interjected as he raised his hands in submission.

  Jonah finished with, “—and unwanted pregnancies.”

  Dale hissed. “Dude, don’t even joke about that. Why are you so wound up, anyway?”

  “Because I’m the only one out of the two of us who seems to care about the serious stuff.”

  “I can be serious,” Dale whined.

  “I mean I’m the only one who cares about booking gigs and paying bills and holding a steady job and stuff.”

  “I got us this job, didn’t I?”

  That was true. Weird, but true. Dale, while quite enthusiastic about playing his guitar and attracting groupies and then having loads of sex with said groupies, had proven lackadaisical on the business end of things, as was his usual modus operandi. Then, out of the blue, he booked the pair a single night performance at a small casino in Reno. Jonah suspected there was an ulterior motive to playing in the distant city, such as the obligatory trip to Vegas when they were done with the job.

  “Yeah,” Jonah agreed. “I guess what I mean is that I’m just tired of being the only grownup in this relationship.”

  “Relationship? Jonah, seriously, you sound like my mother now. If I wanted to live with my mom, I’d dig her up and move into her coffin. Now shut the fuck up about it already.”

  “Yuck,” Jonah said, as he stuck out his tongue in disgust. “What ugly rhetoric.”

  “And stop speaking French; you know I hate that.”

  Speaking French was a code phrase, one of many the pair shared in times of distress. Speaking French was Dale’s way of saying that he didn’t understand a word, or a set of words, or an entire situation. It wasn’t the language of France that Dale hated. No. What he really hated was being made to feel stupid, which was an easy feeling for the poor man to achieve, because, truth be told, he wasn’t very bright. Where Jonah considered himself a little above average in intelligence, he considered Dale to have all the brainpower of a piece of cheese. (And that depended on the cheese. Some of the moldier ones had enough live cultures to give Dale a run for his intellectual dollar.)

  After a few minutes of silence, Jonah nodded at an envelope surreptitiously tucked in the passenger visor, and asked, “Are you gonna open that or not?” He knew that it had been surreptitiously tucked away, because he had done the surreptitious tucking.

  Dale raised his gaze to the envelope and snorted. “No, thank you. That’s why I threw it out. I thought I told you to leave it in the garbage.”

  “Really? I don’t think you did.”

  Which was a lie. Dale had in fact told Jonah that very thing, more than once, and Jonah heard every word. But Jonah couldn’t just leave it in the trash, because his curiosity was piqued by Dale’s refusal to open it. That, and Jonah was a sucker for all things that arrived by mail. He found mail to be a cathartic outlet for his pent-up frustrations and constant self-loathing. Ads for car dealerships, unwanted credit card offers, even chain letters—he didn’t care as long as it was something physical he could open and read and relate to. In the day and age where everyone conversed by text messages or emails, Jonah was in love with the old fashioned notion of a handwritten note. Even something as simple as a thank you card was a small treasure to Jonah, something worth saving, because it took more effort to produce than just pointing and clicking.

  Eyeing the envelope again, Jonah said, “I wonder who it’s from.” He had been wondering this very same thing for three full days, because there was no return address.

  “I don’t,” Dale said, as he pulled his cell phone free from his trouser pocket. “But that might be because I already know.”

  Jonah hung in that empty space of verbal pause, that thin area where one awaits an explanation, hoping to receive it without having to ask for it. The pause stretched into almost a full minute before he realized there was no explanation on its way. Jonah was left to ask, “Who is it from?”

  Dale spoke without looking up, concentrating instead on some mindless game on his phone. “Aunt Clare.”

  “You sure?”

  “I can tell by her handwriting.”

  “That so?” Jonah wondered if Dale and Clare were on the outs, and, if so, why Jonah didn’t know about it. “You should see what she has to say.”

  “No thanks, man.” Beeps and boops sounded from the phone, and then a very loud voice announced that Dale had won level one. “Not interested. Not today. Not ever.”

  No matter how you sliced it, that sounded like a fight. “I didn’t realize you and Clare were fighting.”

  Boop! Beep! “We aren’t.”

  Then again, maybe not. “Why not open it?”

  “Because it’s not from her.” Beep. Beep. Boop!

  Now Jonah was confused, not an unusual state for him when it came to a conversation with Dale. “It’s not?”

  “Nope.” Beep! Boop. Ding! “She’s forwarded another letter.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Beep! Beep! “For one, I can feel another envelope under the first.” Boop! “And second, that’s why there’s no return address. She and I both don’t care if I get it or not.”

  This was moving way out of the ‘interesting’ phase and deeply into the ‘fascinating’ phase, but the more Jonah prodded, the more Dale became engrossed in his game rather than spilling his guts. Jonah was frustrated almost to the point of pulling over and shoving Dale’s phone right where the sun don’t shine. But instead he asked, “Dale, can you put that down for a minute and talk to
me? I’m worried about you. This doesn’t sound right.”

  With a heavy sigh, and a loud ding from the phone, Dale lowered the thing to his lap and stared at Jonah. “There, you have my full attention for exactly sixty seconds.”

  Jonah shrugged. “I just want to know what could be so horrible in that envelope that you don’t want to read it.”

  “You don’t want to know. Fifty-five seconds.”

  “I’m just saying that you have someone to lean on.”

  “Thanks but no thanks. Fifty seconds.”

  “Stop counting down! I’m being serious. If it’s bound to be such terrible news, then you know I am here for you. Right?”

  “Whatever.” Dale snorted again and went back to his game, unmoved by Jonah’s sympathy.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “For God’s sake, why won’t you open it?”

  Then Dale said four words that cleared everything up. If he had said the four words at the beginning of the argument, Jonah wouldn’t have pressed on. If he had said the four words when the envelope had first arrived, Jonah would have left it back at home, in the trashcan where he found it. But as it was, the envelope was in the car, and now they had to carry it with them for their entire trip.

  The four words Dale said were: “It’s from my dad.”

  Jonah blushed, out of embarrassment, out of shame. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Dale returned his full attention to his beeping cell phone. “Can we please drop this now?”

  Jonah was silent for a few moments, trying to concentrate on the road to the melody of beeps and boops. Drawing a deep breath, he said, “I’m… I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just thought—”

  Dale lowered the phone again. “Man. I said it’s okay. Let it go. I haven’t talked to him in fifteen years, and I have no plans to start now just because he wrote me out of the blue. I know you are just trying to help out, but I’m fine with this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Now are we done with this?”

  “Sorry.” Jonah wanted to let it go, but, both sheepish and contrite, he found he couldn’t beg for enough forgiveness. “I should have left it in the trash.”

  “Yeah, you should have.”

  “I just thought you threw it away by mistake. That’s all.”

  “Jonah, don’t sweat it. I know you’re gay for mail.”

  Jonah flinched at the timeless accusation. “I am not.”

  “Sure you are. You’re the only man I know that has a box of junk mail under his bed instead of porn.”

  “I do not!” Jonah shouted, though under his bed rested a shoebox of thank you cards, old valentines from his mom, and unusual ads. He just didn’t know Dale knew. “And for the record, the content of that box is private.”

  “Sure it is. If private is another word for gay.”

  “I’m not gay!”

  Dale’s smile beamed like a florescent bulb in his joy at getting under Jonah’s skin. “I never said you were gay. I said you’re gay for mail.”

  “I am not.”

  “Not what?”

  “You know what.”

  “Gay for mail?”

  Jonah sucked a quick breath between his teeth. “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

  “What? Gay for mail?” Dale continued to smile, wide and annoying.

  “Give it a rest.”

  Dale did just that, but not without chuckling under his breath first. Jonah tried to drive in unperturbed silence, but soon his mind wandered to the echo of that chuckle. It seemed as if the man insisted on questioning Jonah’s sexuality. Not that either of them particularly hated homosexuals, but it seemed as if it were Dale’s life’s work to prove Jonah was not interested in women. Contrary to popular opinion, Jonah was very interested in women. The fact that he didn’t bed every woman he met didn’t mean he didn’t want to. He was just shyer than Dale.

  And not as handsome.

  And not as confident.

  Jonah decided to turn the conversation to a very Dale-like topic in order to prove that his own testosterone-fueled fantasies did indeed exist. “So Barbara dropped by?”

  Dale grinned again as he nodded. “She sure did.”

  “I must have been asleep by then. I didn’t even hear her come in.”

  “I heard her come. Several times.”

  Jonah gripped the wheel harder, his knuckles fading from pink to white as he dreaded the next question and the answers that surely followed. “Okay, what happened?”

  The next twenty miles were spent in lurid description as Dale outlined the acrobatic feats that made up his typical sexual escapade. Jonah was left to wonder where all the extra limbs wound up. Dale never clarified, and Jonah never asked.

  This was the way of things.

  Two

  Winnemucca, Nevada

  “You’re such a nerd,” Dale snorted.

  “Why?” Jonah asked. “Because I pay my bills on time or because I don’t fart in the presence of others?”

  “Like you know how to fart. You’re too much of a tight-ass to let one rip.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “I mean, look at this thing.” Dale tapped on the yellowing pages spread on the table between them. Half-empty plates and half-full cups covered the edges of the thick book, holding down the well-worn pages that tried their best to curl. “What kind of asshole uses a road map these days?”

  Jonah shrugged, embarrassed by Dale’s poor conversational skills. “I like them. They make traveling fun.” Which, while accurate, was not the whole of the truth. Jonah liked maps for the same reason he liked mail. A map was tangible proof of the world beyond his door. With a map, he had evidence of places besides the three blocks around his apartment. With a map, Jonah had a printed reflection of the world. Or, in the case of this particular set of maps, the United States. “And just how did you expect to find Reno without a map?”

  “Google it, like a normal person.”

  Jonah snorted. “That’s funny. You and normal in the same sentence.”

  “At least I didn’t leave a perfectly good GPS at home.”

  “A GPS makes it too easy. I like using a map.” Jonah bristled at Dale’s demeaning look for a moment, then added, “And for your information, it’s not just a map. It’s a road trip book. It has extra stuff about where you are and why. See?”

  Dale’s flat expression revealed just how impressed he was. “Which makes you a nerd.”

  Trying his best to shift the subject away from his obvious nerdiness, Jonah asked, “You sure you wanna go to Vegas when we’re done?”

  “Yup.”

  “Again?”

  “What’s wrong with Vegas?”

  Jonah wrinkled his nose. Three years ago, on one bright spring morning, the pair of them embarked on what became the first of many road trips. They could have gone to so many places over those years. Seen so many things. But, at Dale’s insistence, each and every journey led to the same place. Las Vegas. Jonah had hoped that this jaunt to Reno would encourage Dale to try new things, but no. It was Vegas. Again.

  “Vegas is so boring,” Jonah moaned as he drew lazy circles on the map with his fingertips.

  “No, Reno is boring. God only knows why we have to go there first.”

  “Because that’s where we’re booked to play.”

  “Boring,” Dale whined, mimicking Jonah’s falsetto. “Reno’s for old people.”

  Jonah cut a sideways glance at the man. “Dale, may I remind you that you’re the one who got us the job?”

  “Ugh. No, you may not remind me.”

  “Then why did you get us a job there?”

  Dale shrugged the question off.

  “I think Reno will be fun,” Jonah said. “At least it’s different.”

  Dale shrugged again. “Whatever.”

  “Don’t you want to see someplace new?”

  “I said whatever
.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Jonah fancied he spied an opportunity for mockery. “You’re afraid of new things.”

  “No I’m not.” But there was a hesitation in his voice that suggested otherwise.

  Jonah grinned, wondering what that hesitation was all about. “Then prove it. Pick somewhere other than Vegas, and after Reno, we will head that way. We might even pick up another gig on the way.”

  “Wherever you want to go. I don’t care.” Dale slurped on his shake again before turning to attack his bowl of chili.

  The diner was small, but cozy, and the food was pretty good. It also had a giant donut on the roof, which was what attracted the guys to it in the first place. Jonah liked these little roadside attractions while Dale claimed they were the warts of America.

  “Come on,” Jonah said, around a mouthful of fries. “Consider this your trip, buddy. For getting us our first out-of-state job.” He pushed the road map toward Dale. “You pick.”

  Dale shoved the map back to Jonah. “No way. You stick your nose up at every suggestion I make.”

  “I do not! I just don’t want to go back to Vegas.”

  “Okay then.” As if to prove his point, Dale, with a wide smile and smug attitude, announced a destination that should have come as no surprise. “The Chicken Ranch.”

  Jonah almost choked on his mouthful. After swallowing the errant fries, he whispered, “Keep your voice down.”

  “Why? It’s an American icon. Who don’t like chickens? Come on, Jonah. Let’s go! We’re halfway there anyway.”

  Jonah kept his voice low as he argued, “I am not driving out to the deserts of Nevada just so you can legally hire a prostitute.”

  “See? You don’t like any of my ideas.”

  “It’s not the idea, it’s the point. The whole thing is a gigantic waste of money.”

  “Only you would think sex was a waste of money.”

  “I meant it’s not like you can’t get a piece anytime you want.”

  “Yeah, but this is different.”

  “You’ve had more women slip between your sheets than I have ever had the nerve to say hello to. How can a hired woman be any different than a free one?”