What We Do Is Secret

by Thorn Kief Hillsbery

  “I’m not giving you shit. I wish I’d been here.”

  “I was scared.”

  His fingers again, soft rippling my scalp.

  “Let’s bail, get the fuck over to the Hong Kong. Come on. You’ve got your color back.”

  I wish he still touched me when I tell him we can’t leave yet, not before I talk to Slade.

  So I’d know if it’s real, the chill I feel.

  “Shine him on. We’re leaving town anyways.”

  “I can’t. I want to ask him something.”

  “What?”

  “Why he put me up there tonight.”

  “Like he’ll tell you the truth.”

  “He might.”

  “Dude, he’s got no truth to tell! He’s like Darby without the poetry. And the truth was in the poetry. The rest was—you know what it was.”

  “What he did was cool.”

  “What he did was use you.”

  “How?”

  “To make himself look like Darby reborn.”

  “What I did I did on my own.”

  “I mean before that. When he was talking.”

  “You sound like you’re jealous.”

  At first his voice just throws up his hands, I’ve heard it before.

  “Of Slade so-called Vicious?”

  But then it throws a knife, at me, I’ve heard it never.

  “Should I be?”

  In my lap I twine my fingers, sticky, bloody, dirty, shaking like they shook onstage.

  “Blitzer, I don’t even think Slade—”

  “He came on to Darby, all the time. He came on to me.”

  “And did you—”

  He spits on the floor. He says, “Does that answer your question?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then even things up and answer mine.”

  “No.”

  “No you won’t answer?”

  “No is the answer.”

  “Then let’s drop it. Let’s forget it. Let’s go outside.”

  We head for the stairs.

  “Why was it hard to watch me?” I ask. “You never said.”

  He thinks about it all the way down to the sidewalk.

  “Because it felt like someone should be stopping you,” he says finally. “And nobody was.”

  38

  “Brother, brother, brother.”

  It’s Animal Cracker. Back in the day we made this pact to say we’re brothers, whenever we’re shoulder to shoulder behind the wheel of fortune and it spins past treasure to stop on the pleasure of making your acquaintance, pleased to meet you, hope you bless our claim. And stick to it blessed or un-blessed, believed or not believed, from here to infirmity. It’s just a walk in the amusement park, nothing to do with that time at the PCP when Tar had me chair-tied set to torch me for burning his videos and it was AC kicking in with a steel-toe vasectomy that saved me in the good Saint Nick of rhymes with slime.

  The brother thing came later, around the time those English 2-Tone bands were three-minute heroes, I remember Animal Cracker buying up fifty-cent porkpie hats from thrift stores and selling them to wrong small Valley boys for twenty-five and thirty bucks apiece outside the Whisky. But that was still B.C. on the After Darby timeline so there’s a jillion jacks and vice squad versa who’ve rocked around the punk rock block so many times they’re dizzy as Miss Lizzy Boredom who think it’s truer than grit in John Wayne’s spit. Even Hellin Killer’s husband, Paul from the Screamers, keeping company doing my laundry like two months ago he said he saw my brother getting his dinner on St. Andrews, meaning he was scoring China White, but Hellin had to be the one to break the news you can abuse, because Animal Cracker and me, our lips are Marineland of the Pacific, trained and sealed.

  I barely get out the What of What’s going on before Blitzer cuts me off, knife-cuts too, rewind-repeat like upstairs, though not aimed Sid-like as in my way.

  “Cover your fuckin tracks, man! You can’t go around like that, a cop could see those from across the street, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Dude, I left my shirt behind in Rory’s room, he said he’d—”

  “That’s Rory’s room?”

  It’s the full pause that represses, no one says anything.

  “What room?” Animal Cracker asks finally.

  “At that Nast Western on Hollywood, down past Torung Thai.”

  Animal Cracker answers back so low and slow the pause this time’s while he’s talking, not before, between every syllable, “Different room.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “You look fuckin awful. What you hitting with, a fork? Jesus.”

  “You got points? All I got’s a veterinary rig, the point’s king-size, like for dogs, you know, big dogs.”

  “You sure it ain’t horses?”

  “It’s dull besides.”

  “Put on a shirt. Jack anybody’s. Hold out your arms to one of these little surf punks, he’ll piss his bondage pants. Point-wise—”

  “What have we here, the Three Little Punks?”

  Johnny Valium palms me a head rub and I jump back thinking there’s ice cubes in his hand, but it’s rings, one to a finger. He says, “Quiz time. What’s the name of Rockets’s new band?”

  “The Sperms?” Animal Cracker says.

  “Sex-Ray Spex?” Blitzer says, and squeezes my shoulder.

  “The Staple Singers!”

  Then Johnny asks Blitzer if they can walk the walk and talk the talk around the corner. And right before they turn it, Blitzer yells back, “Find a fuckin shirt, punk!”

  Animal Cracker does a Darby, says, “Gimme a year, one fuckin year,” sparks a smoke, and shares it.

  “Dude, if there was a cop across the street right now it’s you he’d be double-trippin’-trouble-takin’ on, not me. These tracks ain’t pretty woman walkin’ down the street but next to that— not even close. No school in session for you, though.”

  I tell him Blitzer just finished with me upstairs, all jealous of Slade, and how at the troll bridge earlier he raged against me maybe wanting to slam, the whole time he was fixing for himself.

  “If I was you I’d stay it dry. I got really bad eyes, that’s why I miss so much. Everything up close is blurry.”

  From reading in bad light, I bet, at the PCP he was always reading. He’d bail to jack food and come back with books instead. And on Robo runs he’d mystery-dance over to the magazines and rip out articles too, there was one poshboy one with perfume ads that reeked hard but for some unknown reason this punk-crazed writer who ranked even harder, he ran down new hope for the wretched from England every month, all up to date instead of later than late from Slash coming out whenever Kickboy had eightballs in the air on land and look up, what do you vitamin C? Then back at the Towers AC would gather us children saying be queer like Revere and read out stories on the Raincoats and Essential Logic and Gang of Four like he was Steve and Melody rolled into fun, all gee-whiz in a G-string mixed with bass line just-think-folks, this-music-could-change-the-world.

  “All you need’s glasses.”

  “You can’t just jack ’em, they’re custom made.”

  “There’s clinics though. The free ones.”

  “Dude, I’m a runaway. They’ll bust me.”

  “Cops don’t care about that, there’s so many.”

  “They do if your parents are looking for you. They have like a list.”

  And I’ve heard of kids going home on their own, but never being tracked down or anything, so I say his parents must be pretty mean then. But he says they’re not that bad, he bailed because he was adopted and he always felt like he didn’t fit in.

  “So I ran. And found out I felt that way everywhere.”

  “Even at the Masque?”

  “That ruled okay.”

  “No shit.”

  “So many cool bands played. Remember the Screamers? Tomata? They never even made a record, and they were like the best of all. There’s more punks now, though.
”

  “Less in Hollywood.”

  “True.”

  He touches my arm, barely barely like he’s afraid to, it must be autopilot from his own being sore.

  “At least I got adopted, you’re thinking? Like I should be grateful?”

  “No.”

  “So you and Slade, huh?”

  “No way.”

  “I won’t say nothing.”

  “Tonight—I don’t get it. Really.”

  “He’s got friends. Ranking. The kind who back you up.”

  “Yeah. I met some. Earlier.”

  Blitzer comes back so much closer to perky than jerky on the Velvet Underground meter that he must have done a bump with Johnny. He tells Animal Cracker he’ll flow him what he needs if a certain lezzie-byrd will make like a comb and part.

  “With points.” Then he says, “So where’s Rory tonight?”

  “I wonder.”

  “Wonder?”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “He’s a lifer. He never misses gigs.”

  “Me neither. But I show plenty for just the last song.”

  A car pulls alongside, one of those Made in USA monsters with an engine that could power whole stamp-collector countries you’ve never heard of into the Appliance Age. The window buzzes down on the passenger side and it’s strictly KMEX on the interior airwaves, though not that awful mariachi polka shit, more like Señorita Sinatra I guess, you know, sleazy listening. From behind the wheel a dark brown voice says to Blitzer, “May I speak with you please? In private?”

  Animal Cracker’s all, Twice makes a trend, privacy must be this week’s ska.

  I say, “Or next week’s rockabilly.”

  Blitzer tells the dude to hold on one sec, then turns back to me and hand-plants on my shoulders.

  “Just go kick it at the van, okay?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “If we drive off it’s just around the block. Twenty minutes. Max.”

  He gets in and thunk shuts the door then buzz slides the window till it closes tight with a drawn-out squeal like a freight train whistle in one of those songs on the jukebox at Palomino Club, only twice as lonely.

  There’s this tightness in my chest, this worseness in my belly.

  They pull away.

  I realize I’m standing statued.

  Animal Cracker says, “Do you need anything?”

  It’s part of our brother deal. Whenever we run into each other, only one of us gets to say it, and who’s out with it first tries to help with whatever. Most times it just sets up a joke. But the top-of-the-table idea is checking out of Heartbreak Hotel and into Easy Acres when you really do need something, since that’s when it’s hardest to ask. And it only took me the half-life of a Twinkie in a third grade lunch box to figure out what’s under the table, because isn’t that amazing, nine and a half times out of ten Animal Cracker notices yours falsely first. But by then I’d already sworn by the Knights of Columbus, Ohio, I’d be honest Injun from here to infirmity and clue him in like Gunga Din when I’m coming up Short Line on the basics.

  I just wish I’d sounded off when I heard that first “brother.” I know at least two things Animal Cracker needs, a shirt and some points. But what do I need?

  I could always ask him for a kiss.

  We never have.

  Done anything.

  Just like Blitzer and me before tonight.

  Bad idea.

  “I need somebody raised from the dead.”

  He lets out a long breath. Draws in a longer one.

  “Fuckin Darby.”

  I just say Yeah. But it’s like this long conversation between us in three words or less. He had something going with Darby for a while too, fully maybe-maybe-not like lots with Animal Cracker, he’d vanish from the PCP for days sometimes then show with serious wealth he’d share in drugs and pizza and ice cream till it was gone, and after Reggie Mental got a look-see jungle go ape crazy over mass bloodstained bills in one of his cash hauls we all figured he was roughing up gay dudes and robbing them, he’s big for his age, not so tall but musclewise and where it counts I guess too, since Darby went for him. But Animal Cracker just said he couldn’t tell a bloodstain from a wine stain and didn’t think we could either so end of discussion.

  Not exactly a no to robbing someone if you think about it. But how likely is it you ever will when what follows the discussion and I mean immediately is Animal Cracker taking like seventeen punks to the Cinerama Dome on Sunset for that Space Odyssey flick where they all dosed hard on fry and sat onstage right below the screen and I know dudes who talk to this day in the wary month of May about the after-images from the spaceships.

  “You know what’s wrong with The Decline?” he says. “Too much X. Not enough Germs. The parts with Darby are the best. Even in the kitchen with Tony’s suck-ass tarantula.”

  “I was there when Stickboy herded it into the freezer while Tony was taking a leak. And when he finally found it after this search we kept delaying by flowing him drugs and fucking with the stereo so he had to keep tabs on us. Stickboy said it must have crept in while he was refilling ice trays but no worries, it’s like Walt Disney, in the future they’ll figure out how to revive it.”

  “I thought it drowned or something.”

  “Only if it wasn’t dead already. Tony wanted to revive it right then and there and filled the sink with hot water. But it sank like a stone so Stickboy swore it was already frozen through. He was all, I told you so, it’s gone for good now, and it’s all your fault.”

  “It was Stickboy got me booted from my crib last month.”

  “No way.”

  He laughs.

  “Not in person. His picture. That daddy dude A.R.’s got a place on Yucca, up from Playboy Liquor. He gave me a key. And one whole wall is this photo mural of Stickboy, butt naked, lounging there grinning at the camera. Dude, it’s huge, beyond life-size, it’s jumbo economy size, and his dick—ranking slackness. It’s supposed to get you in the mood, I guess. But it just gets old. Way old. I was sitting there tweaking and couldn’t stand him spying on me anymore so I took a marker and blacked out eye-dominos like in old porn mags. Then I did another hit and next thing you know Stickboy had a nice big rack of knockin’ titties. A.R. came home and shit double-edged Gillettes.”

  “No go on them she-males, huh?”

  “That pervert. I should have listened to Darby. He always said to stay away from those two. A.R. and Tar. And that Steve guy down in Manhattan Beach. He’s the worst of all. He was fucking this nine-year-old named Roy and Darby tried to turn him in over the phone. But they wouldn’t take an anonymous complaint. He called on three different shifts. You know Faith Junior? His sister? I tried to run that down for her at the funeral. Like, the good citizen just below the studs and spikes. But as soon as I said ‘nine-year-old’ her big dyke girlfriend got this hard look going and kind of pushed me away.”

  “We were out at that cemetery tonight.”

  “You were? You and Blitzer?”

  I nod.

  “Too bad him and Rory are such—”

  “I know.”

  “Lately we—you know. Rory and me.”

  “Really?”

  “When he washes his face and stuff, when he’s not all broke out? He’s a good-lookin’ dude!”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything bad, it’s just earlier Siouxsie said something, I think she’s got a little crush on him.”

  He laughs.

  “Rory always gets the girls. Fuckin Gerber.”

  “But only till Darby—because now she doesn’t care, right?”

  “Rory hates her. He thinks she caused it, that night.”

  “It was Amber. There or not there. She took Darby over. Her and her money. Her and her drugs. He even told me once, sort of. He said, ‘It’s easier. It’s just easier.’ ”

  “Darby needed more friends like Slade’s. The kind who back you up.”

  “The bad kind fuck you up.”
/>   “If you let ’em.”

  And Darby did. These rich porker chicks the rest of us would spit on, light their hair on fire, pee on passed out at parties. We were trying to drive them off. And it was backing him up, that’s exactly what it was. The best way we could. But how long can you back up a dude with a white flag in his hands?

  Animal Cracker says, “You start slamming, it’ll fuck things up with Slade. He looks right through me. Too much of a druggy boy.”

  “He’s totally clean?”

  “They all smoke weed. Like fuckin hippies. ‘Duuude! It’s a plaaaant!’ They get all mellow. Fuck that shit. Who wants to be mellow? It’s like wanting to be dead.”

  “You were like the mellow boy at the PCP.”

  “I was quiet. Quiet’s not mellow. Mellow sucks. You think I was mellow?”

  And how could I, after he got me loose from Tar? He must be thinking I don’t even remember.

  “Not even. I just wished you’d tell your stories. You’d go off tricking big-time and come back like Santa Claus but you always said you’d forget what happened as soon as you told it and you wanted to remember so you could write it all down some day.”

  “Kickboy style.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Smart and funny. Fuck the world.”

  “I heard he’s moving to England.”

  “With Philly.”

  “You could take his place. At Slash.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s French. He’s got something to say. I’m American. I got nothin’ to say.”

  He laughs.

  “Except ‘That’ll be a bill up front and I don’t do anything, man.’ ”

  “I scored a bill and a half off this dog groomer dude earlier.”

  And he just busts up, he’s been there too.

  “Forget Merv, that’s the video I want to watch, you of all people sitting there glued to the screen while old—”

  He sneezes and rips a flyer off a utility pole to wipe his nose.

  “I mean, it takes it to a whole—”

  He sneezes again, then goes into a fit of that raspy deep echo-y coughing you hear downtown on Los Angeles Street, and Sixth Street, people waiting on the soup kitchens and the rescue mission handouts, but talk about lifers, they’re like career bums, and Animal Cracker can’t be what, sixteen?