Cold Plate Special

by Rob Widdicombe

  “Boy…uh…that was a crowd I didn’t need to see,” I said in a voice that came out high-pitched.

  Summer seemed a little too amused by all this. “You can’t show your fear to these jerks. They can smell it out like dogs.”

  “That’s exactly what Shred told me.”

  We pulled out of the neighborhood and onto Route One. The wind came rushing through the car windows and I could feel it drying my sweat.

  “So, what was Shred like when he was little?”

  I felt a little twinge of jealousy like a pair of needle-nosed pliers nipping at my lower intestines. “You mean when he was just ‘Evan?’ Well, he was actually really quiet. Kinda dark. Not like now. Hyper-ass.”

  “Mmm,” she said.

  “He was always kinda weird, though.”

  “So, nothing much has changed.” We both laughed.

  We didn’t talk the rest of the way. By the time we got there, I was jonesing for coffee so bad my hair hurt. Summer knew everybody at the diner, of course. It was nice that she was introducing me as “Jarvis” instead of “Shred’s cousin Jarvis.” I was developing my own identity. It was also nice when the social wave blew over and we sat down and she started asking me questions about me—where I was from, what I was into. My answers seemed so boring before they came out, I felt like I had to spice them up: I liked sports, but extreme sports. Music? I liked all different kinds. Did I have a girlfriend? No, we just broke up.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She left me for a hang-gliding Zulu bond trader from Portugal.” I didn’t know where this quick-wittiness was coming from, but I was in the zone. The waitress arrived and I ordered coffee and iced tea. I was getting ready to ask Summer where she was from and what she was into, but before the words came out, a looming figure stood over the table.

  “Farns!” Summer shouted, jumping up out of the booth. She hugged him, looking like a toy baby doll in the arms of a grizzly bear man-child.

  “I missed you, you big piece of shit!” Summer said. Farns seemed to have no intention of freeing her from the hug. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off, jeans and construction boots. Looked more like a typical redneck than the mythical cool guy everyone had made him out to be. He had a beer gut and thinning hair, but big, powerful forearms and a thick, tough-guy neck. He had to be at least thirty-five. I was unimpressed. And I didn’t like the way he was hugging the new love of my life.

  When he finally let her go, she sat down and patted the bench seat next to her. Shit, I thought, this guy is joining us. It was like someone had parked a tractor-trailer on my picnic blanket.

  “Who are you?” he asked me, and not in a friendly way.

  “Farns!” Summer scolded. “You be nice. This is Shreddie’s cousin from Maryland. Jarvis, this is Farns.”

  I held my hand out and he squeezed until it hurt. He didn’t make much effort to hide the fact that he was sizing me up. And by the dismissive look on his face, it appeared that he had come to the conclusion that I was a major douche-bag. He turned to Summer, who asked him how New Orleans was. It was too hot, he said, and he drank too much and had too much fun. The guy was a real extremist.

  People started coming up to the table to pay their respects, treating him like he was back from a heroic expedition to save mankind from itself. They were all ignoring me. I could see our waitress trying to get through to take our order, and then giving up. The irritation was teeming through my veins. My guts were curdling like an environmental disaster. I was so hungry my head felt like it was about to break away and float off.

  When the welcoming committee finally settled down, Farns was beaming. He obviously loved the attention. I finally got to order my French toast. Summer ordered a Caesar salad. Farns went with a double bacon cheeseburger with extra Swiss and extra fried onions and a side of onion rings.

  “So, Farns,” I said. “Is that short for Farnsworth?”

  “No,” he snipped. Then there was this pregnant silence, pregnant with Siamese twins conjoined at the head, with red eyes and horns.

  “I gotta piss,” he said, and got up. He smelled like burned motor oil.

  “What’s wrong?” Summer asked.

  “Oh, nothing. I just…I don’t like aggressive people that much.”

  “Who, Farnsy? He’s a big teddy bear underneath all that macho bullshit.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. He’s great.”

  I couldn’t swallow down the lump of goo that had congealed in my throat. The waitress never brought us waters. Farns came back and they started talking about people I didn’t know. I sort of zoned out. Felt like everybody in the diner was looking at me, the goofball one-eyed yuppie. Then the food and coffee and water all came. I was psyched until I realized that my French toast was gray. It looked like planks of flattened vomit. I wanted to disappear. Farns dove into his burger like he was having grudge sex with it. Summer ate very delicately. I covered up the grayness of my French toast with a lot of fake maple syrup and took a bite. It tasted like floor.

  “Happened to your eye?” Farns said, chewing with his mouth open.

  “Oh, um, the kids in Shred’s neighborhood threw rocks and bricks at me yesterday.”

  Farns laughed. A laugh of joyous hilarity. What an asshole. A little piece of pink burger fell out of his mouth landed on his plate. Disgusting.

  “Farns, you play nice,” Summer said.

  He finished laughing and wiped his mouth. He actually used a napkin. “They gotcha pretty good there, huh?”

  “They got me all right.”

  Farns chuckled at me. “What’d you throw back at ’em?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. Immediately I realized I should have said something witty, like a car or Shred’s house. I threw a house at them.

  Now Farns had this little smile on, like he was amused with me. He had these little tiny horizontal scars on the upper part of his cheeks. They were barely noticeable, but they looked like they might have been old scars from fighting. He probably liked to beat people up so he could laugh at them while they squirmed on the ground in mortal pain.

  Summer started telling Farns about the Burnt Thunder show. How killer it was. The band had sounded to me like a series of fatal accidents at a chain saw factory, but they were both enthusiasts for the Thunder. Farns said he was bummed he missed it, but he had caught them in Philly back in April. A real globetrotter, this guy.

  Klavin came up to the table, the corpse guy. He wasn’t wearing his black trench coat, only a tee-shirt that said OSTRICH. He didn’t even say hi or anything, he just stood there.

  “Hey, honey bunches,” Summer said. It made me jealous. Were they going out? Was he even capable of the sex act? Was Summer some kind of necrophiliac? Farns looked at Klavin with a face of searing contempt, then went back to making out with his burger. That made me feel good—I wasn’t the only one despised by Farns.

  “What are you doing today?” Summer said.

  “Nothing.” Klavin could just as easily have said: Oh, going back to my coffin.

  Summer smiled at him. Her lips were so delicious. Klavin took off and she looked at me. She had big brown eyes like a deer. I wished that all of these other people would vaporize and we could be alone together.

  “So where you from again, Jerry?” Farns said

  “Jarvis. Towson, Maryland.”

  He chuckled at me again. He was a chuckler. “I’ll be right back.” And he took off.

  “So, come here often?” I asked Summer.

  She laughed. It made me feel better. She’d only eaten about half her salad. My French toast was down to a couple of French rinds.

  “Hey,” I said, “not to be a spoil-sport, but my eye is feeling pretty crusty. I think I need to change the bandage.”

  “Okay, we can go soon.”

  The waitress had put the check on the table when she brought the food. I grabbed it. It was covered with grease spots. The Farns showed back up and plopped his big ass back down next to Summer. “You guys
aren’t leaving, are you?”

  “Yeah,” Summer said. “He’s gotta—”

  “C’mon, stay a while. I was thinking about getting a little afternoon drinky-drink.”

  I started to say that I needed to go change my bandage, but then Farns would have pegged me as a pussy for sure. I just wanted to stab him in the face with that corkscrew of Summer’s and get out of there. I had shit to do. Bandages to change. Zingers to invent. Uncomfortable situations to escape from.

  “Stay a little bit longer?” Summer said to me.

  I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  “Your eye will be okay, right?”

  “What, your eye hurts?” Farns asked.

  “No, it’s cool. I mean, yeah, it hurts a little but I really just need to change the bandage.”

  Farns rolled his eyes and almost started to laugh. “Rip that bandage off, you’ll probably feel a lot better.”

  The waitress came over and Farns ordered a PBR. Summer’s choice was a vodka and cranberry. I asked if they had any non-alcoholic beer and she said yes.

  “You actually drink that crap?” Farns sneered.

  “I’m an alcoholic,” I said, thinking I would somehow seem cool or mature, but instead sounding uptight.

  “Sheeeeeit…” Farns said. “All the alcoholics I know drink bourbon and gin.”

  I had no comeback for this and Summer didn’t scold him this time. There was another unbearably pregnant silence. Sextuplet alien devil babies from space hell this time. The kind the doctors are morally obligated by God to euthanize as soon as they emerge from the demon birth mother. The waitress brought drinks. Farns smirked at my near-beer, as if he was offended to share the booth with it.

  Thankfully, a red-headed dude came up to the table and wanted Farns to come see his new car, a freshly painted ’68 Chevy Impala, he said. Farns chugged his beer and zipped off.

  “You’re drinking that awfully fast,” Summer said.

  “That’s the beauty of it—you don’t have to worry about getting zonked.”

  “How’s it taste?”

  “Like a finely carbonated toilet water.” Then I drained it. “Mmm…”

  She laughed. “Want to leave?”

  I nodded, which made my head hurt.

  The waitress looked busy, carrying about five plates of food to a group of construction workers, guys who looked they would order chili on top of everything. So we went up to pay the cashier directly. She was this thirty-something lady with a flower print blouse and cat-eye glasses.

  “Farns said not to let you guys pay,” she said. “He’s getting it.”

  “Aww,” Summer said. “That was sweet of him.”

  “Yeah,” I said, seething inside. “Sweet.” I was supposed to be the one buying her lunch. That S.O.B. bested me. I hated Richmond and all of its inhabitants at that moment. “I’ll leave the tip.” I went over and put a fiver on the table. Then I thought about it and I put down three more singles.

  Summer had to say goodbyes to a couple different groups of people. Took forever. We finally went outside and the gods must have been smiling on me because Farns was nowhere to be seen. He must have been around the corner looking at the Chevy, dispensing his expert opinion on what was cool and what wasn’t. We got into Summer’s car and I had to slump down. Not to hide from anyone, but because the vinyl seat was scorching and I didn’t want the backs of my legs to fry.

  “My friend Nelly is coming over in a bit, so I need to get home. She’s bringing me a mannequin.”

  “A who?”

  “A mannequin. I collect them.”

  “Weird,” I said. “I mean—yeah, cool. What, um…why do you collect mannequins?”

  “I just like them. Paint ’em and dress ’em up. Glue stuff on them.”

  “That’s really bizarre. But, yeah, like…awesome?”

  “It’s okay if you think it’s weird. I know it is. That’s why I like it. You wanna come over and see?”

  “Yeah, definitely. I just have to change my eye thing first.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I keep forgetting.”

  Then I remembered that scene in Chinatown where Faye Dunaway helps Nicholson with his nose wound, and what happens after.

  “You know, it’s not so bad,” I said. “It can wait.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  We stopped at a red light, and for some reason the lack of talking was making me uncomfortable.

  “So, uh…what do you do for a living?” It came out way too adult.

  “Bartender at the Ditch.”

  “Oh, okay. The Ditch. So the other night at Burnt Thunder, that was your night off?”

  “One of them. I work three nights a week.”

  I thought wow, the bohemian lifestyle down here was something to behold. Three nights a week. Shred didn’t seem to work much either. This place was Slackylvania for sure. I heard a warning bell go off in my head, an alert to the pitfalls of wayward lives devoid of accomplishment. But then I thought of, say, Steve Reinhaus the lawyer, a major world class jerk-face. What were his accomplishments? Screwing people over? Living the American dream of being a rich asshole with a big front lawn, snot-ass kids in private school and a trophy wife who banged the young Ecuadorian gardener every afternoon in the greenhouse behind the orchids? At least Summer and Shred were making art. That seemed like a much more tangible accomplishment than anything Reinhaus ever did.

  16

  Back in the hood, there was no sign of the Hillites, which was good since I was trying not to think about them. Summer parked in front of her duplex, and the dogs must have known the sound because I could hear them barking from inside. Poor dudes were having separation anxiety.

  “Do you take the dogs with you to work?” I asked as we got out of the car.

  “No, silly.” But I didn’t think it was a silly question.

  We went right into her apartment. She hadn’t even locked the door. The dogs went nuts, jumping, barking, licking, banging into each other, sprinting up and down the hall. We went down to her living room. The place was like a thrift store boutique. The first thing I noticed was a mannequin in the corner, naked, painted purple and green, serving as a coat rack. The coats and a jacket were hanging from her hands. “She” wore a blond curly wig and really set the tone for the whole room. There was a leopard skin covered sofa, black candles across the mantle of a defunct fireplace, posters of bands I’d never heard of on the walls. There was also a completely bizarro thrift store art collection: an African batik of native peoples playing primitive instruments, an amateur oil painting of ancient Egyptian temples, a big greenish Picasso print of one of his French carnival models wearing a funny pointed hat. Its frame was hand-painted red, probably Summer’s handiwork. I wondered where she was going to put the new clown painting. It didn’t look like there was room for it anywhere. In the corner sat a hamster cage on top of some milk crates. Above it was taped a hand-painted sign that said: Hamsterdammit. There were also strange things hanging from the ceiling: a monkey doll on one side of the room and a scary red and black piñata that looked like a devil dog on the other. A thick smell of opium flavored incense saturated the room. I felt like I was in another country. On another planet. Shit, galaxy.

  “You want something to drink?”

  “No thanks,” I said, thinking I wasn’t in the mood for any raw asparagus juice at the moment. I went over to Hamsterdammit, but I didn’t see any hamsters.

  “Jerome died a couple months ago,” Summer said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. He had a long, rich hamster life.”

  “What are the dogs’ names?”

  “Moosie, Vertigo and Soup.” She pointed at each one as she said their name but I knew I wouldn’t remember.

  “Nice.”

  Summer went into her kitchen. I looked at a framed picture on top of her TV, an old faded photo of two hippie parents holding up a baby with garland on its head. The dad wore a tye-dyed tee-shirt and h
ad long hair. The mom had flowers in hers.

  “Are these your parents? Here on the TV?”

  “Yep. That’s Henry and Lisa.”

  What a rebel. She was so cute I wanted to die. I started thinking about getting the bandages and ointment I had at Shred’s and getting her to help me change it. He only lived two blocks away, but I might run into the Hillites again. I should’ve brought the stuff with me when we left for the thrift store. I went into her bathroom to take a pee. The walls were painted pink, which was strange since she claimed to hate pink. This was a woman of complex contradictions. Made me hot. I made sure to put the toilet seat down when I was done. I started washing my hands and I realized my armpits smelled worse than a fast food dumpster at three p.m. in August. If the Hillites can smell fear, my armpit reek would surely mask any fear odors. Otherwise, I felt like a prisoner. Then I said to myself: fuck this. I’m not going to let a bunch of inner-city redneck drop-outs dictate my moves. Any more than they already had, anyway.

  When I came out, Summer was in the living room drinking something that looked like cranberry juice. She was petting one of her dogs and asking it, in baby-talk: “Whatchoo doin? Whatchoo doin?”

  “Summer,” I said, “my bandage is feeling kind of fucked-up. I think I’m gonna run back to Shred’s and change it. Maybe jump in the shower real quick.”

  “Cool. You gonna come back?”

  “Definitely.” Then I just stood there. I should have turned and just strutted out cool-like, but I stood there like I was waiting for her to say something else. It was an extra ten seconds of awkwardness added to my life that I had no use for.

  “Okay, um…see you?” I said, and made a little half-ass wave and left.

  I stepped out onto her front porch and looked around. All clear. I felt pretty sure Summer liked me, but why would she? I wasn’t a hipster or artsy in the slightest. I took a deep breath of hot, humid air and reminded myself of my mission. No rock in the face was going to keep me from confronting Motorcar and giving him a faceful of ice hot zingers. I could think of an ice hot zinger on the drive over to his house. I had time. My confidence was growing and with it, the belief that I would come up with something before the deadline. As soon as it got dark, I’d be on my way. I felt good. In control. In the mean time, this Summer thing was making me feel pretty damn all right and I was going to enjoy it.