Cold Plate Special

by Rob Widdicombe

  Then, like a robot arm over which I had no control, like it was on automatic, I reached up even further, with even more determination. But she pushed my hand away even harder.

  Then she stopped kissing me altogether.

  “This is going a little fast for me,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought…you were…um…you know.”

  “You just thought I was what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That didn’t sound like nothing.”

  “I just, I dunno, your piercings and tattoos and all that…”

  I felt her stiffen up. She pulled away from me.

  “What, that makes me a slut or something?”

  “No. No. I didn’t mean that at all.” Wow, I thought—I am really fucking up here.

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry.” I leaned in to try to kiss her again, but she pushed my shoulder back.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Why don’t you just get the fuck out?” She had a meanness in her voice that I hadn’t heard before.

  She was mega-pissed.

  “But I didn’t mean anything—”

  “Get the fuck out!” she yelled, and then she kicked me in the knee with her construction boot heel.

  “Ouch!” I stood up and rubbed my knee. She got it good.

  One of the dogs got up from its spot on the floor. Another one growled a little.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  “Don’t worry about it—just go.”

  “Okay,” I said as timidly as possible. I stood up. I still had a boner, but it was fading at record speed. I walked down her hallway with my head down. How could I be such a stupid idiot moron? Everything was going so great. It was all my hand’s fault. Stupid fucking hand. And my stupid mouth.

  I stepped out front and shut the door behind me. It was twilight. An ominous purple and pink twilight. A white hot panic started shooting through me in every direction. How could I do that! How could I say that! I really liked her and now she hated my guts. I wanted to die right there. I headed down the sidewalk to Shred’s, hoping a neighborhood posse would pop out and beat me until my head was a bloody wad of pulp.

  I deserved it.

  What the hell was I doing? I should have spent all this time and energy preparing for Motorcar, planning my verbal assault, logistics, psyching myself up. My knee really hurt. I stopped and rubbed it. Bending over there on the sidewalk, I was hit with the feeling that I had no right to confront Motorcar. Who did I think I was? I deserved to be molested and abused. I was such a piece of human shit. You piece of human shit! That was actually a pretty decent zinger. Great—I finally decide on a good zinger and it was directed at myself. Piece of human shit!

  I came up to Shred’s house and noticed a funny odor, a burning mechanical smell. Like someone had been driving around with their parking brake on. Couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I got on the porch and tried to pull it together. I felt horrible about Summer but I couldn’t let it ruin my mission. I just couldn’t. I felt like I was being tested. I had to do this. I had to overcome these obstacles and face my demon. Motorcar was the piece of shit, not me. Okay, maybe we both were, but he was worse. I took in a deep breath and refocused: I was going to go into Shred’s, grab my back-pack, go have my showdown and start living my damn life.

  17

  I went in. Seemed darker than usual. I heard talking. I went down to the living room where Shred and Kenny and Farns were seated in a sort of triangle around the coffee table, Kenny on the couch in his usual spot, Shred and Farns in chairs. There was no music playing, which seemed odd. A bottle of Jim Beam sat on the table. They were drinking it on-the-rocks. They all looked really somber and heavy, like they were having a séance, waiting for some dead friend’s soul to come back and give them final instructions.

  “There he is,” Shred said like a good-ol’ boy.

  “There’s the man of the hour,” Farns said. “How y’doin?” He nodded. Farns was being way friendly. Strange. What, were they sitting there snorting horse tranquilizer or something? Probably.

  “You guys having a funeral?”

  Shred looked at Farns and then up at me. They were all looking at me. What the fuck?

  “Have a seat, Jar,” Shred said.

  Now I felt like I was at a business meeting, the agenda for which included me getting fired. I almost expected to see Reinhaus pop out of the kitchen and fire me again. Piece of human shit!

  No one was saying anything.

  “What’s going on?”

  Nothing.

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Jarvis,” Shred said very seriously, “we’ve been talking about how to help you, y’know, with…your thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “You can’t just go about something like this on your own,” he went on. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “You know what we’re talking about,” Farns said like a kindly father.

  “I do?”

  “The guy,” Shred said. “The guy you came here to see.”

  “Dude!” I yelled at Shred. “I told you not to tell anybody!” My heart was in my neck, like a dry ball of bread dough pressing on my chin.

  “You gotta to be careful with this kind of thing,” Farns said. “I’ve heard of priests packing guns these days, ready to shoot if some kid they were a pervert to comes back for revenge.”

  I just looked at him like, do I know you? “Who else did you tell, Shred?”

  “If it wasn’t for my leg,” Kenny said, “I’d totally help you kick the guy’s ass.”

  “Who else did you tell?”

  “All fucking perverts should be lined up and shot,” Farns said.

  “Damn right.”

  “But like, tortured first.”

  “Evan!” I yelled. “Who else?”

  “Hey—don’t ever call me that. I hate that name.”

  “Death by blow torch,” Farns continued.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Jarvis, you’re my cousin. We’re family. You can’t just go and do this on your own. You need a posse at your back. And we are that posse.”

  Farns nodded. “That’s right.”

  “If you don’t tell me who else you told, I swear I’m gonna pop you one.”

  “Hey,” Farns said, puffing up in his seat like he was ready to fight me.

  Shred raised his hands in a calm-down gesture. “Everybody just chill. I only told people who were cool, Jar. I didn’t go blabbing it all over town or anything.”

  I wanted to kill him.

  “We were just talking about some of the options we do have here,” Farns said. “We can duct tape him up, throw him in my van and move him to my shop. Ice him there. Or we could…have you cased out his crib yet?”

  “Hold on just a minute here,” I said. “I never said anything about kidnapping the guy. Let alone killing him. Are you fucking kidding me? I just wanted to have a healthy verbal confrontation.”

  Farns laughed. “A what?”

  Shred threw his hands out to the sides. “Oh, come on, man!”

  “Shred told us you wanted to take the guy’s head off,” Farns said.

  I looked at Shred. He just had this look on his face that said: Well, you should want to take his head off, so you might as well have said it.

  “I’m getting the fuck out of here. You people are crazy.”

  “No—man—no—you can’t go—can’t leave now,” Shred and Farns both said, their words all mixed up and overlapping.

  Kenny was just sitting there, observing. He probably didn’t care one way or the other about me or Motorcar or any of it, but he seemed to be enjoying this spectacle, watching with his far away, painkiller eyes.

  “Tell me who else you told.”

  “You can’t just leave,” Shred pleaded. “You gotta at least face the guy and speak your peace thing. Punch him
maybe. With a shovel. In the fucking face. I sure wouldn’t mind getting a piece of him myself.”

  “Can’t let this stand,” Farns said. “Sonofabitch raped you and you’re just gonna let him walk the streets?”

  “Raped me?” I said. “Where the hell did you get that?” I looked at Shred. He just shrugged. “Look—I never got raped and I don’t want to kill anybody. I don’t even really want to hurt him. That’s not the point.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with admitting you got raped, man. It’s not your fault.”

  “But I didn’t get—”

  “Let’s rethink this a little bit here,” Farns said. “You don’t want to kill him. Fine.” He appeared to be thinking things over, rubbing his chin. “There’s more than one way to lay down a cold plate special on someone’s ass.”

  “A what?”

  “A cold plate special, brother.”

  “What do you mean? Like, cheese and grapes?”

  “Means revenge,” Shred explained. “From that old saying: ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ I’m pretty sure that’s it.”

  “Khan says it in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” Farns added.

  “I heard it on The Simpsons,” Kenny chimed in. “Mister Burns says it.”

  “I think it’s in some book from the seventeen-hundreds.”

  I just sat there, a sore red nub, my innermost places probed and poked at by these dudes I barely knew. My eye hurt. My knee hurt. My life hurt. I just wanted vaporize myself into an invisible space gas and float away.

  “Well,” Farns said, “if you don’t want to kill him or kick his ass, we can always do a Wash the Car on him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You crack a dozen eggs and mix them up real good with a bottle of bleach. It creates this sticky evil shit that has the worst death smell ever invented, once it all starts to rot together. You pour it into the grill of their car and that’s it. Car’s toast. It reeks so bad, they can’t even sell it. They have to throw the car away.”

  “That’s so awesome,” Shred laughed.

  “Probably one of the worst fucking smells on the earth,” Farns said.

  “I know someone else I might do that to,” Kenny said. “Soon as my leg’s better.”

  “Definitely a good one,” Shred said. “But this situation really calls for something harsher. I say we kill him.”

  “Would you please stop with this? It’s not a situation.”

  “We can Flare Gun him,” Farns said, “where you scare them with a flare gun and then shoot it off right by their head. Scary as shit and it’s legal.”

  “That is not legal,” I said.

  “How about if you take the flare gun and shoot him in the face?” Shred asked. “How’s that for legal?”

  “That might kill him.”

  “Or burn his face off,” Kenny said.

  “Stop it!” I yelled. “You people are insane! I never should have told you about this. Don’t you realize this is a personal thing? A very private thing?”

  “You don’t have to suffer in silence about this, Jar. Me and Farns and Kenny are all here for you, man.”

  “But I don’t want you to be here for me—you’re missing the whole point. This is something I have to do on my own.”

  “What if the perv has a gun, though?” Farns said. “What’re you gonna do then?”

  “You could always just take a lead pipe to his head,” Shred said. “That’ll get your frustration out. There are some random lengths of pipe out in the back yard you can use.”

  “Look,” I said, “believe me—I have thought many times about killing him, a thousand different ways. But it’s just not—”

  “Good,” Farns said. “That’s good.”

  “Yeah,” Shred agreed. “See? You do want to kill him.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Kill!” Kenny said. “Kill them all! Muuuur-der…”

  “Shut the fuck up, Kenny,” Shred told him.

  “Look,” I said, “are you gonna tell me who else you told about this? My private business?”

  “No one. I mean, just these guys. And a couple of other…people.”

  “Who!” I yelled. “Tell me!”

  “Only cool people, Jarvis. You’ll never meet a better man than Farns here, and Kenny—what did you want me to do? Make him take a walk around the block on his broken leg while we talk? He won’t tell anybody.”

  “I won’t tell anybody,” Kenny said, smiling.

  “Okay,” I said, “but aside from these guys, who else did you talk to about this?”

  “No one, except—”

  “Who did you tell!”

  “Okay, okay—but I only told Rojo Peterson and Summer and this really cool lady from work, Eileen. She’s like a mom type. I didn’t say anything to her about killing him, though.”

  “You told Summer?” I said.

  Shred nodded. It felt like a rain of cinder blocks dropping to the bottom of my stomach swamp.

  “She’s solid peeps, dude,” he said. “No worries.”

  Now I didn’t want to disappear, I just wanted to go ahead straight to dying. No wonder Summer was being so nice to me. I started going back over our whole day together, re-thinking events through the filter of her knowing about Motorcar. She didn’t really like me for me, she just felt sorry for me. She only acted like she liked me because I’m damaged fucking goods. I was a project. And then I even screwed that up! Death please come now!

  “I still like the idea of torturing him with some of my welding equipment,” Farns said.

  I couldn’t believe Shred told Summer. I never felt so exposed, so violated. Naked. I couldn’t fucking handle it. I put my head down in my hands. The sick frozen nuclear winter was blowing its ice wind, the purple-black death cloud breathing through me. The flying space robots were swarming, whole divisions of them. Whole armies. It was too much. Way too much. I reached for the bottle of Jim Beam and threw back a giant shot.

  “There y’go,” Farns said.

  “Man needs a drink, that’s all,” Kenny said.

  Shred just sat there, nodding his head.

  I coughed a little and wiped my mouth on my shirt sleeve. Then I took another. No one said anything. No one tried to stop me. I took a third shot, a big one, and then I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  I felt human again.

  Chapter (b)x-1#13.7

  Swirlishy blue-green medicine fog spank-out, floating in on the heels of a backwards electric space drizzle, drizzling sidewards, and people are really just puppets, and the Puppet Master is union. Can’t be fired. If he is fired, there will be an arbitration, overlorded by a federal mediator who has a thirteen-hundred million thousand dollar per diem fee, and the Puppet Master will be reinstated. Though perhaps he will lose his back pay for the time he was suspended to make it all fair. So you can’t fire the electric Puppet Master or make people into not puppets. But you can bang the puppets’ heads together and it won’t hurt. You can tell them secrets and they’ll never tell because their mouths are made out of wood. But then there are the goddam helicopters, and the puppet strings get caught in the helicopter blades, and all hell breaks. Steel death birds popping up over the horizon with no warning. And then the Puppet Master is screwed, the strings all twisted around all going all crazy, and the little puppet is in a convulsive death dance, spinning, punching itself. If you confront the perpetrator and speak your vengeance, he might instantly dissolve into a toxic green space gas, and then there’ll be trouble, buster. Sorry, but our time is up. Sorry, but our time is up. Sorry. Time’s up. Mister Henders? Mr. Henderson? Are you there? Are you there at all?

  Space Captain Jarvis the Lucifer sits belted into his captain’s turbo-chair, his proton death ship topping out at double light speed times nine. He is on his way to battle the army of flying electric space robots who’ve attacked the peaceful spice mining colony on Vorlox 13 with toxic z-rays. The robots only have three metal fingers on each hand, but t
hey’re still cold when they touch you on the no-no place. But Space Captain Jarvis is free, free like the broken glass spraying out in slow motion from a shattered window. He’s cut his puppet strings with a pair of steel kitchen shears, the kind you use to cut the strings on a tied-up turkey or trim the fat off a New York strip steak. Potatoes and onions. Chocolate crunchies and candied apples. Cooling off in the cinder block rain. Do you like the special pot holder I made for you while I was away at camp, Mommy? Do you like it? Do you? I made it special. Please don’t kill me tonight for what I did.

  Space Captain Jarvis: holy son of the frozen proton clouds. Soon to be elected High Lord of the Galactic Mind Realm, Ruler of all Vagrant Space Robots, Master of the Puppet Master, Mediator of the Gosh Danged. He flies with the fishes and swims with the birds. He drinks his milk directly from cow. He doesn’t walk on the sidewalk, he skips across the magnetic treetops, doing a hundred miles every fifteen parsecs, never falling through somehow. Too fast. Too fleet-footed. And then in flight, all the blue-green medicine fog is washed away, blown to oblivion by the icy space winds, the cleansing whip of cold metallic breezes swirling around in a trillion mile-wide cone of dead, empty zero-ness. The absolute freedom of absolute zilch—the sweet endless backwards atomic French kiss of nothing.

  Otherwise known as Space Love…

  17.2

  These guys were so fucking cool. They were my new dad, these guys. Even Kenny, old gimpy boy. These guys were cool. I’m cool. Why was I being such a tight ass?

  “Can we play some music?” I said. “Got anything normal? Like Billy Joel?”

  They laughed. I loved to make people laugh. Shred put on a CD of something. Never heard it before. Weird guitars getting blurred and stretched all over the place. Muffled drums that sounded like they were in another room away from the rest of the instruments.

  “So what’s it like jumping off planes?” I asked Kenny.

  “Like nothing else. Like flying.”