What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  “Standard issue,” Blitzer says.

  It must be disguises, though. I squeeze farther back into my corner of the school-bus bench, maxing the candy-cane blockage as much as I can. I whisper, “Maybe there’s two Stranglers, working together. It’s like the perfect cover.”

  Blitzer says it’s hopeless, standing between Siouxsie and me, like staying Ken dry from Barbie, we’re made for each other. We should breed little vampire kids and school ’em on slasher flicks. Serve up our Bloody Marys with the real thing.

  “It’s possible. They can’t be real missionaries.”

  “They fuckin are.”

  “Going door-to-door this time of night?”

  “Maybe they live up here. There’s probably some wack Mormon temple house, there’s everything else. Or they could be out doing last rites for somebody, making sure the will’s signed over, who knows?”

  So I’m all, Dude! Make babies with Siouxsie Sioux, hell fuckin na, you’re so into death!

  And here she comes, oh most defiantly, across the street the van door doesn’t slide but hurtles open, Stitches style. Blitzer lets out a sigh-me-a-Mississippi then pushes off and stomps outside with aftershocks thrumming in the air on land and me.

  “I won’t kill her, I promise,” he says over his shoulder. “So just kick it in there, okay?”

  Then he says her name, before she’s even close, like he’s testing it for Richter action of its own. And actually I noticed some earlier when he harshed on me for sizing him as Manson material. So I guess he heard it too.

  “Siouxsie, I don’t want to fight with you. Stay it stopped in its tracks. That’s what I did. I took off. Now you come up here. It’s on you now. Not me.”

  “Well, great to see ya too, but I come in peace, if it makes any difference.”

  “You do?”

  Siouxsie laughs and says actually that’s one thing she never does, come in peace, faking it or feeling it, just call her Give-a-Show.

  “Like the kiddie projector. Kenner’s Give-a-Show. That was my Christmas fantasy. Every year this do-gooder women’s club trooped the whole girls’ home down to jolly old Saint Nick in the May Company basement and I’d beg for one. Maybe he decided to give me a show of his own and exposed himself and I just don’t remember it. But it’s easy to find out. Let’s swing by there later, and if I suddenly go all banshee/no Siouxsie, then we’ll know.”

  Blitzer says, “So Squid screamed because—”

  “Hold your horses, Dale Evans. Or you’ll meet the same fate she did. What do they call it when they stuff people? Taxi-dermatology?”

  “She’s the one—”

  “Whose star is one up from Trigger’s. They stuffed him when he died and put him on display in the living room. Little did she know what hubby had in mind for her when she passed on. Back in the saddle again.”

  She giggles.

  “It must be like tattoos. Once you start, you can’t stop. Anyway, as I wasn’t saying, what’s peace without offerings? And I’m offering. Does that get me on the love nest list? Access all areas?”

  They crowd inside and Blitzer says he’ll stand, but she pushes him down beside me, says, “You two!” and kisses the top of my head, then steps back laughing. “All right, close your eyes—that means you too, Rockets—and hold out both hands, both of you.”

  In one hand I get a twenty, payoff from the Reno bet. In the other a still-shrink-wrapped copy of Los Angeles, the X LP, jacked earlier from the Slash rack at Poseur by no not David dizzy or Tim in a tizzy, no not Squid, the record of this and all the others, year one to eighty-one.

  “Nine count ’em nine classics,” Siouxsie says. “UNopened, UNplayed, and UNfortunately produced by look both ways then chokeitoutfastthatDoorsfuckwithglasses.”

  Blitzer gets Desoxyn.

  Two fistfuls of Desoxyn.

  “Where’d you score all this?”

  “Oh, Squid just happened to come across it. Earlier.”

  “She found it? Where?”

  “She went through Rory’s pockets. When you and Rockets were in the bathroom.”

  “There’s like forty!”

  “Well, why don’t you start breaking some up before you get your itchy fingers tangled in the laces of your dancing shoes? Because there’s something buried under Bible tracts in this little ole lunch box. And it’s very very new. And very very sharp.”

  “You got a rig? A fresh one?”

  “More than one, actually.”

  But damn it, she doesn’t have any water. She forgot it in the van.

  “I can’t go back just yet. I feel a thousand percent better over here, back with the dudes. Since you foxes flew the hen coop it’s been girls’ night out with a V-word vengeance. You got any clue how much Tim and David butch it up for your benefit when you’re around?”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Blitzer says.

  “I’m not. They actually think they’re putting on this big brave front for the Mormons. You know, cutting back on the crotch eyeing and lip smacking, at least in sync, that sort of thing. They must never get laid back there. They’re after everything in pants. If it’s not punker poontang—”

  “Punker poontang!” Blitzer says. “Who came up with that?”

  “Must have been Tim. David’s been too busy trying to sweet-talk U and I—that’s Utah and Idaho—into assuming the position. Just try and guess which one.”

  Blitzer says, “When did those dudes sign on, anyways?”

  “Right after you signed off. They came riding up the sidewalk on their bikes and there we were, on their doorstep practically, obviously in need of salvation, a pair of fallen women. Or at that point we were errant women, that was their first take, it wasn’t till the dyke thing came up later that they realized we’d already hit rock bottom.”

  “They said that?”

  “Not in so many words, but yeah, basically. At first they just asked what was going on, and I said, ‘What a coincidence, that’s what I’m wondering too.’ And I didn’t care who they were, Rotarians, Shriners, Loyal Order of Moose, any help at all getting Squidley to talk put a welcome banner on my little red wagon. They brought out herbal tea and Wonder Bread fold-overs with sandwich spread filling. Complimentary copies of the Book of Mormon. But no fuckin dice. I’m supposed to be talking you into forgiving and forgetting, by the way, so you’ll take the wheel again and the Good Samaritans can ride back down the hill, they’re later than late on their bedtime prayers and Jesus will be very cross with them.”

  I laugh on cue, but Blitzer’s cueless and clueless east of Easter somewheres, tap-tapping his fingertips on the bench between his legs like he’s punching the keys of the wanting versus wasting versus waiting calculator, function one, down some Capistrano style, there’s the want, function two, hit dry with drawn-up blood, pay for haste with undissolved waste, function three, thrive through drive like Wild Bill Mulholland and go steal some water, it’s the no-doubt door at the top of the stairway to heaven, if only heaven can.

  Wait.

  And you already know what we both hate.

  “So you don’t know why she flipped out?”

  “Hell, no. All she says is, she saw a house she recognized, where something bad happened to her once.”

  “Welcome to Hollywood.”

  “No shit. I told her I pass by houses like that every day. She said that was my business and hers was hers and you know, never the twain shall meet. So get down, bitch, in other words. And she hasn’t said two more to me since.”

  Blitzer laughs.

  “Maybe she couldn’t get ’em in edgewise. How many of these did you already eat?”

  “Spinning at forty-five am I? I made it lucky seven. I still want to fry, don’t forget. And I mean like an eagle. Higher than high. Squid’s got me worked. I’m the one who’s supposed to pull that shit. Not her. And from the beginning I told her everything. Things you know you shouldn’t tell anyone ever, even if you love them, because it gives them power over you. She knows it all.”


  “What hey, I’m all worked too. Over this and that. And then when that car—fuck, I can’t talk about it.”

  “T and D told all. After we finally went back to the van with U and I. But once they ran it down they were all puffed up over how they’d followed their principles when you tried to bail on us, there’d been this trauma, there’d been this drama, Squid was their friend, a friend in need, blah blah blah. Till I said you were traumatized worse than anybody, you were driving, you had to deal, with something really bad coming down then and there, not some ages-old memory of whoever-whatever that just happened to upset you, out of the blue, you had to cope with either saving or not saving God knows how many lives, knowing if you didn’t you’d be responsible for what happened, while the person who actually caused it went on with her life. So who could blame you for reserving the right, you know, to refuse service.”

  “Cool,” Blitzer says. “I mean thanks, I’m glad you see it that way.”

  “It’s not just me. Not now. Because this is the good part. You’ll like this. You’re working these guys tonight, right?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “I figured. So after I schooled them on Fingerpointing 101 and the rules of the blame game I gave them a good looking-over, you know, hands-on-my-hips style, and said, ‘But you guys, what the fuck is up with you? They got the dicks and they got the drugs, and you let ’em walk? Are you out of your minds? What kind of homosexuals are you?’ ”

  And that was all it took, she says, to get them wondering who the fuck’s idea was all the principled shit, anyway? One minute they were charging up to the Hollywood sign, the letter H to be specific, H for historical, H for hysterical, for high as a kite with hustler boys at night and heavy as the hang of Rotten Rory’s wang. Then next thing they knew they were spinning their wheels of misfortune in Clitsville USA, coupled with couples, cranky dykes and moral Mormons, dreaming of Maria Callas, whoever she is. And just to put the hairy cherry on the tuna sundae, deprived even of the one juicy payoff they had every right to expect for keeping to the high road: finding out the filth on What Led to It All.

  Because Squid wasn’t talking.

  But they were, soon enough, and not just locust pocus with the missionary boys who’d read all about it too, they started talking about sticking around. Renting a place for the summer.

  “Yeah, sure they’ll go back to Minnesota. For the winter? And get this: on the walk over to Poseur David let it slip why Tim’s on the outs with his family—”

  “I don’t need David’s help on that one.”

  “Well, more on the outs, awhile back he sashayed down to Florida to visit his dying rich aunt who everybody else was ignoring, so itchy to divvy the spoils their bills for calamine lotion alone were astronomical. And what did Tim do but cheer her up so much she lived another five years!”

  “That’s way funny,” Blitzer says.

  “Not as funny as this. When she finally did die she left him every penny, in gratitude. So Tim has real money, like Beverly Hills type money. And this I know for a fact, whatever your angle is so far, they can’t wait for more of it.”

  “It’s nonsexual. Completely.”

  “Whatever. Though if I were you—can’t you just let them, you know, why not just close your eyes—”

  “And what? Think of England?”

  “All I mean is, you’re first up on Monopoly square one with the little silver sports car and you just rolled boxcars. You might as well get high and motor on. Bring on Park Place, you know what I mean? Bring on Boardwalk.”

  “I guess.”

  “Oh, I know, I know, baby brother needs his medicine, where can sister Siouxsie find some water without facing them just quite yet, the wicked stepsisters, the wicked step-Mormons—”

  “If we grind it up really fine with a couple of rocks I was thinking I could do it dry.”

  “I’ll face the wickeds first. It hurts and it’s so gross. And can’t it kill you if chunks go to your heart or something? What about that place up past Versailles? It doesn’t look gated. God, they must have trucked it up here straight off the set of West Side Story.”

  “What are you talking about? It’s a knights-in-armor castle!”

  “Isn’t West Side Story the one about King Arthur? The musical? With that dude who left the cake out in the rain?”

  “Fuck, Siouxsie, it’s gangs on the West Side of Manhattan! Where all the PRs live.”

  “PRs?”

  “Puerto Ricans.”

  “Is that what your brother the priest calls them? He’s supposed to be really prejudiced, right?”

  “Just against Protestants and Jews. He doesn’t care about Puerto Ricans, what hey, they’re Catholic. What’s wrong with saying PRs? It’s just initials. I mean there must be other racial groups that go by their initials.”

  “The KKK?”

  “That’s racist, not racial.”

  “They’re all white, aren’t they?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “Well, the only other group I can think of with initials is JAPs. Does that count?”

  I say, “That’s not initials, it’s short for Japanese. And they don’t like it, either.”

  “Rockets! How nice of you to join us!”

  Blitzer says, “He’s sulking.”

  “I am not.”

  “You won’t fuckin believe what he thought I was about to do to you down there.”

  “Don’t tell her that!”

  And just like that he’s all over me, he starts schooling me like he’s really mad, but without raging or actually saying anything mean, he says he’s calling me on my shit, for playing games with people’s feelings, for thinking I can tell him all casually I fully thought he could be a murderer like an hour after we did everything we did in private, then next thing you know try to keep the whole thing secret from one of his supposed victims.

  Siouxsie breaks in all solemn saying she’s really disappointed in me too. But then she busts up and grabs me by the shoulders, yelling “How could you possibly think that, I’d kick his ass to his own requiem mass!” while she shakes me like a Rottweiler flossing its chops with Raggedy Andy.

  Blitzer stays dead serious though.

  “I don’t care how she feels about it, if she’s really your friend, and you really think I could do something like that, you should warn her, not pretend it never crossed your mind. And if you don’t, it makes me wonder if you really thought I would, and if you didn’t really think that, why did you tell me you did? What’s up with that, Rocketman?”

  I don’t know what to say, besides I’m just a kid, what do you expect, leave me alone. The deal is, Blitzer’s saying I’m not thinking things through like I should, like they’re important, and maybe too I’m letting unimportant things blow up to major things in my mind, so if I say too much right now I’ll be floating the exact same boat that’s trolling for trouble in the first place. And finally that’s my answer, the best way to show I’m taking it serious is let it sink in for a while, and come back to it.

  “Just don’t think I’m trying to duck it, or, you know, run away from it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Blitzer says.

  Then he puts his arm around me and everything feels more or less okay again too, I mean between us, to the touch he actually feels almost icy now, and I wish we could all stay the jabbering dry, and just go find water so he’ll get all better, and I mean yesterday, I mean fast.

  So here I go, wishing again, in Candyland now like on the Boulevard then. But look up this time, what do you see, both of them and lagging me, up the road and down a driveway, curved and cobbled, signed in jest or is it joust, Blitzer wants to know, but this fame thing, I don’t get it.

  Vernon and Irene’s Castle.

  Tiptoeing towards the must-be reason it’s not gated.

  The drawbridge.

  Because no shit, Sherlock, it’s elementary as jetsam to my dear Flotsam, if you draw me a bridge don’t deny me a river, just picture a moat, and what�
�s a moat without floatage for the knightly boat?

  A) Dry

  B) Concrete

  C) Painted blue

  D) All of the above

  Circle D for Circle One, Beachwood Brigade, company halt.

  “They must only fill it for special occasions,” Blitzer says.

  “Like what?” Siouxsie says. “Crusades?”

  “What hey, there’s drains, it must be meant for water, there’s a tap down there somewheres, sure there is.”

  He leads us single file down a narrow ramp next to the drawbridge that ends in a dropoff where there’s a pool-style ladder to the bottom of the moat. He says it’s bound to be a walk in Echo Park with more than one of us down there, so Siouxsie waits with me sitting under the drawbridge while he checks it out.

  Though she says we’re lurking.

  “Like trolls. That’s what trolls do. They lurk. Under drawbridges. I wonder if this is authentic. If it actually raises. I don’t see a motor anywhere. I guess it’s not.”

  “A motor wouldn’t make it authentic. More like the opposite.”

  “True.”

  She sparks a smoke.

  “To be really authentic they’d need slaves, wouldn’t they? That must be why drawbridges went out of—hey, you better take some Desoxyn, Rockets. Like three, at least. Right now.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep up with Blitzer. To kill the mood swing thing. Because that’s how it’s going now, isn’t it, you’re either rubbing each other all the right way or all the wrong way?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I can tell. Once you build up your tolerance a little you’ll be fine together.”

  “But he told Tim and David he’s a drug addict.”

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it, but—who isn’t? Who doesn’t use every day? One thing or another. Of the people you know.”

  “No one I can think of. Unless they just can’t find anything.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Well what?”

  “That’s like the definition of drug addict, isn’t it? So what’s the big deal?”

  “I just don’t like drugs very much, what they do to people.”

  “You do so.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Rockets, what makes everybody so funny and entertaining and wild and crazy? Aren’t you counting down the minutes till Blitzer’s the life of your it’s-my-party again?”