The New and Improved Romie Futch

by Julia Elliott

  We stood in the shadow of the cloud. Brooke looked up with an ominous wince. Then she smiled and stroked my arm.

  Some kind of shuddering electronica, interspersed with ghostly animal bleating, pulsed from a wall of vintage speakers, mostly 1970s monsters in faux woodgrain.

  “Cool tunes,” I said. “Who is it?”

  Brooke squinted at me. “Yeah, totally. It’s Narcolepsy, this recluse from Finland.” And then she turned back to her little screen.

  Buzzing on bourbon, I idled over to the wild-game-themed food table, where venison jerky and trout-and-turnip crudités were coupled with pickled okra and deviled eggs. On my right, a pair of pretties in ’50s crinolines were checking out my Panopticon diorama. On my left, a dark dork in a black mohair cardigan grimly examined The History of Marriage. And just behind me, tucked behind the antique bourbon barrel, was some kind of rockabilly hipster, his hair swirled up into a glossy ducktail, his skin eerily pallid, his T-shirt and jeans so form-fitting that he looked like an action figure made of molded plastic.

  The rockabilly hipster grinned at me, raised his mason jar. And Brooke hurried back over, her smile tense.

  “See that guy in the seersucker suit?” She nodded toward a lushly bearded man in his thirties who stood before The Sultan in His Labyrinth, squinting, ruminating. “Art writer for Dead Parrot,” she whispered. “Please remain chill.”

  I studied him, trying to comprehend the juxtaposition of Grizzly Adams facial fur and old-boy seersucker, thinking a fussy goatee would be more fitting. And he studied me, eyeing me through twinkling nineteenth-century specs, assessing, I feared, my lame haircut and aged hide, trying to peg me culturally, calculating the ratio of naïveté and urbanity that fueled my art. I was the oldest person in the room, and I longed for the cozy obscurity of my Lord Tusky mask.

  But the bourbon was working its magic. Brooke Burns was stroking my arm again. At last, fashionable people were streaming in from the summer night, dressed in the clothes of bygone eras, sporting interesting coiffures and curious clusters of facial hair, every species of mustache, beard, and muttonchops represented. And there were older people among them too, frumpier, not as chicly dressed. The bourbon barrel was a hit. Within fifteen minutes, the room filled with a respectable level of festive chatter. A photographer snapped away, sleek as a seal in his all-black ensemble, multiplying my image and sending a hundred Romie Futches rocketing through cyberspace. Meanwhile, familiar faces materialized among the strangers like dream figments.

  Lee Decker shuffled forth to shake my hand. “Totally killer,” he said. “I knew you were a genius back in high school.”

  Marlene teetered tipsily in a midnight-blue muumuu, her coiffure extra-teased for the occasion, and pressed her perfumed plumpness against me.

  “Your father’s so proud of you,” she cooed. “Even if he won’t say so.”

  “She had one too many at dinner,” said Dad, who dawdled behind her, looking shrunken and yellow amid the youthful throng. From a remote drawer, he’d dug a pair of ill-fitting dress slacks, which he sported with suspenders and a new plaid shirt.

  “We got lost on the way over here,” he said, glancing up at the exposed beams. “What kind of fool place is this?”

  “It’s an old Confederate ammunition warehouse,” I said.

  “You said it was an art gallery.” Dad bugged his eyes at Marlene.

  “It is, honey,” she said. “It’s hip. Urban chic. They made it into an art gallery. That’s the thing now.”

  Dad harrumphed and frowned, but his eyes brimmed with emotive moisture, making my heart go soft like a Nerf ball left out in the muck.

  “Time for your moment in the sun,” said Brooke, coaxing me toward the roped-off corner where a clutch of interns geared up to activate my animatronic Hogzilla installment. The room was getting packed, filled with the churchy fug of warm bodies in close proximity. I looked around for a glimpse of PigSlayer—dark hair, streaks of gray—and saw no one who matched her HogWild profile pic. I drained my bourbon glass. Walking through the mob, I partook of the collective anticipatory mood, breathed in the over-processed air, and felt a delicious dizziness. I walked with my snout practically wedged into Brooke’s sweaty nape, which, contrary to the room’s general funkiness, smelled miraculously of fresh lemon. I wondered if I, the celebrated artist, ought to cash in on the hype and get myself a hot young babe.

  “Rad turnout,” said Brooke. “You ready for the big shebang?”

  She stroked my arm again and gave one of her interns a little wave.

  The lights dimmed. A moody surge of experimental classical—Schnittke’s Sonata for Cello and Piano no. 1, inspired by poor Trippy J—swelled from the wall of vintage speakers. As the haunting music played, an enormous sun of molded plastic resin, which hung suspended from the ceiling, grew brighter and brighter. The fake sun actually warmed the room with its fiery blaze. As lights flashed behind this translucent orb, the sun’s surface seemed to boil as though molten.

  The crowd let out a collective gasp. The music grew more ominous, oozing like black honey as various images flickered upon the walls: pictures of me standing in triumph upon the slain hog; close-ups of my maimed finger; glam shots of yours truly dressed as Lord Tusky. In addition to these personal images, I’d acquired an animated graphic of Hogzilla’s sequenced DNA, which featured cryptically upon all four walls, bright double helixes that twirled and pulsed, conveying the essence of the dystopian hog—that Frankensteinian beast born in a laboratory, that futuristic food product dreamed up by academic dorks or, darker still, that flesh-and-blood war machine hatched by the US military.

  As Schnittke’s sonata lapsed into its frenetic second movement, garish images from Hogzilla’s autopsy flashed upon the screen. And behold: a great beast surged forth from a trapdoor, a thousand-pound feral GM hog, stuffed with a hollowed rhinoceros form and held aloft by an elaborate pulley system designed by a graduate student from the USC theater department. The hog soared upon semisheer patagia, wing bones and veins visible in the light of the artificial sun. Hogzilla bobbed sluggishly around the solar orb, circling closer and closer as the cello part grew more frenzied.

  The hog’s skin glowed. His Bio-Optix II rotator eyes swelled with arrogant light. Tusks curling, the beast seemed to sneer with pride. In sync with a startling piano boom, the boar released a long dragonish squeal (the collective squeal of over a hundred live hog recordings, compiled by a media arts student) as his wings sprouted flames. And then the aspiring boar tumbled to his doom. Performing somersaults in the air, Hogzilla plummeted to the floor, landing roughly within the confines of the roped-off area. He flailed and grunted and spurted purple and red streamers that represented the spectacular explosion of his entrails.

  The sun dimmed. Hogzilla lay still as the melancholy coda of Schnittke’s sonata plied its ominous notes. After a spell of silence, the crowd erupted into applause.

  I felt hot. The track lighting shot sparks into my eyes. The crowd pitched forward, hundreds of drunken red faces, sweating in the tight space. Nervy pain flitted up and down neurovascular paths of my brain.

  “More people than I thought,” Brooke muttered through her clenched smile. “Fire hazard.”

  I scanned the audience, looking for PigSlayer. I saw Dad hightailing it toward the exit, Marlene in hasty pursuit, her mouth open in midharangue. I saw Lee in a corner, chatting up a pretty hippie. I saw Helen in the distance, big with child, attempting to waddle toward me. Boykin, the old cuckold, shuffled behind her, looking ten years older than the last time I’d seen him. Right behind Boykin, communing with both his phone and a cute redhead dressed like a 1960s airline stewardess, was Adam.

  High on my success, I entertained the notion that Helen would go into labor and announce my paternity that night, disposing of pitiful Boykin. But then I spotted Chip Watts in the crowd, flashing a chimpanzee fear grin as big as the moon. I had not spoken to the idiot since our camping adventure in the deer stand, and I felt my heart pop a
valve. But it was not Chip Watts—just another sunburned, hypertensive fool with bright white veneers and a hick-van-dyke.

  My blood pressure was almost back to normal when I espied another Chip doppelganger near the EXIT sign—same arrogant grin, same ham-hued face, but with a white fleck of mustache. Yet another Chip Watts stood three feet in front of me, leering.

  I saw the sweat drops on his flushed cheeks. I saw every speck of dandruff in his eyebrows. I looked out at the seething sea of people and beheld a multitude of bloated ATV salesmen, gloating in unison. Helen parted the great sea of assholes with her pregnant belly and strode toward me. I could see the child growing within the mysterious brines of her uterus. It, too, had the chapped pink face of Chip Watts. But then I blinked, and the swarm of ATV salesmen vanished. Helen stood before me, looking tired and tense in a peach nylon cocktail dress.

  “Good job, Romie,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks for making it out, especially in your, uh, I mean—”

  Boykin, the old dupe, smiled proudly. “She’s about to pop.”

  Now I knew that Helen had not told him the truth, and this disappointed me.

  “I’ve got three more months.” Helen rolled her eyes. “I was an early shower. And now I’m just huge. Also, exhausted. Just wanted to say hello before we headed out.”

  She leaned closer. I gave her a clinical hug. After exchanging a high five with Adam, I watched the dysfunctional family make its way through the crowd.

  I felt a presence behind me. I turned to find the rockabilly hipster almost pressed against me, so close that I could smell his fruity hair gel. A blue vein pulsed on his temple. His skin looked vaguely amphibious. When I pushed my way to the edge of the crowd, he shifted toward me. When I trudged to the bourbon barrel, he came skulking after. And when I ducked into the unisex bathroom, he sheepishly entered, avoiding eye contact, his bloodless skin shining in the sickly fluorescent light.

  Backing away from him, I dropped my mason jar, which bounced on the linoleum tiles without shattering. I hunkered down to pick it up and he did the same. There we squatted, face-to-face, blinking at each other. He picked up my glass.

  “Here you go,” he smiled, revealing strangely tiny teeth—corn-niblet teeth—a perfect row of seed pearls save for two incisors that twinkled like the fangs of a toddler vampire. When he handed me the jar, his fingers brushed mine, and I swear I felt a prick, a minuscule sting, as though his finger emitted an electric shock. I shuddered. I took the glass. The young man stood up and thrust his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

  • •

  I woke with a panic attack in Brooke’s kitsch-cluttered apartment and stumbled toward the bathroom, which was decorated with Jesus camp. As I fell into the throes of gastric distress, the handsome blond Messiah gazed down at me from a lacquered oval of pine. The previous night’s events flashed through my mind’s eye in a headachy montage. I saw Brooke scooting me out of the Bomb, offering maternal sucks of bourbon from a flask as we traversed a dim grid of city streets. I saw Brooke leading me down a staircase into a windowless bar that smelled of leaky plumbing and the ashen residue of the public smoking era. I saw myself drinking more bourbon, tucked into a corner behind a birdcage filled with sparrow skeletons. I radiated a sketchy smugness fueled by bourbon and what I fancied was artistic success. Brooke was more mobile, hopping up and down to fetch drinks, hug hipsters, shimmy her lithe body in the dim, candied light of the vintage jukebox. She kept touching me with her satin fingertips, tickling my skin with the mothy film of her dress, pressing her hip bones frankly against me. I would have succumbed to the pleasure principle had I not spotted, sitting behind a pierced and rainbow-haired gang, alone at a booth and nursing a lager, the rockabilly hipster. He smiled cryptically while fingering his phone.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Brooke.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Just some rockabilly guy.”

  And then I was back at her apartment, slumped in a wicker peacock chair as she cleared her futon of vintage frocks. Next, I was hacking over an enormous bong. Finally, I was naked and crouched over her, lost in the intricate foliage of her sacral tattoo. At last, I found my target (the pudendal configuration floating abstractly beneath the cartoon tree) and burrowed the mauve snout of my phallus. One minute I was pulling mental gymnastics lest I melt in instant pleasure. The next I felt numb, fearful of humping to the rhythm of the chillwave loops that trickled from Brooke’s iPod dock. Later, I was staring down at the sea medusa of a spent condom floating in the commode.

  Had the lady experienced pleasure? I could not remember my own, much less hers.

  But there she was now, stretching sultrily in her sunlit kitchenette, wearing an antiquated red velvet robe that looked like something the Empress Josephine would’ve moped in when on the rag. She seemed cheerful enough.

  “I’m thinking brunch at the Grub,” she said, consulting her phone. “They’ve got these vegan ham biscuits I’m addicted to.”

  We headed down to the Grub, a retro diner with a smiling neon maggot on its roof.

  “The worm is way more awesome at night,” said Brooke as we waited in line.

  We met Brooke’s friends, a scruffy crew of dashing youngsters, on the patio. We were seated one foot from a busy road. Had I stretched out my leg, a car would’ve mangled it. Partially due to the roaring road, partially due to my failing ears, partially due to my cultural cluelessness, I could barely understand the kids’ chatter, most of which revolved around the names of things: apps, turntables, bands, blogs, sneaker brands, vintage cameras. Their jokes were densely referential and impenetrable, their laughter like the cawing of raptors, a dozen little talons pricking my brain tissue.

  My jeans were the wrong color. My hair was thin and blighted with gray. I downed several Bloody Marys. I could feel my ghoulish jowls drooping from my jawbone. And there was Brooke Burns, radiant despite last night’s endless bacchanalia, consuming faux ham, laughing the summer day away. She glanced at my ravaged face with a businesslike eye that belied her bonhomie. She was not rude to me. But she no longer reached out to touch me with her silky hands.

  It would be a relief to be back in my truck, I thought, speeding toward home, but first I had to pick up my stuff from my hotel room. I tried to finish my eggs, but they tasted strangely bitter and my stomach recoiled. I discreetly spat a half-chewed mouthful into my napkin and ordered another Bloody Mary with half the vodka, settled into a semibuzzed groove of exhaustion and resignation, waiting for brunch to be over. This too shall pass. But then I saw him sitting two tables over, eyes obscured behind Ray-Ban Wayfarers, hackneyed bicep tattoo half protruding from a rolled T-shirt sleeve, his skin cadaverous in the sunlight. It was the rockabilly hipster munching an English muffin.

  Was he an obsessed art fan? Did he have the hots for me? Or was this just a coincidence—a cool guy hanging at a cool place?

  I fled to the restroom. When I came back, a starling had alighted upon the rockabilly hipster’s empty table. It pecked up a crumb, cocked its head, and regarded me with its blank black eye.

  • •

  On the way to my hotel, I felt a queasy delirium, a psychedelic nausea that reminded me of my old mushroom days, when Lee Decker and I would drop shrooms between third and fourth period. I made it to the Econo Lodge, somehow produced the necessary card, swiped it, and stumbled into my room. I collapsed on one of the beds, lay breathing in odors of synthetic honeysuckle and doom.

  I longed to sleep but felt a raging thirst, so I forced my dog-tired body out into the blinding sunlight in search of a vending machine. I watched my shadow skulk along the stucco wall. I paused to consider the sun, lewd and boiling in the blue abyss. I regarded the quiet degradation of an overflowing dumpster, the poignancy of a half-empty motel parking lot.

  And then my heart drained of blood, turned to ashy frass, and dissolved in my chest. There, three cars down from my truck, idling in a black Ford Focus and chatting on his phone, was the rockabilly
hipster. His windows were open. His ducktail had gone clumpy, but it was definitely the same guy. I ducked behind a Camry, crept around a Jeep, and peered at the apparition.

  I was close enough to make out his ironic bicep tattoo, a med-text diagram of a heart, the words OEDIPUS REX flowing along a ventricle in ornate cursive. I recognized the near-iridescent sheen of his pallor, which made me think that he might be some kind of apparition installed by the Center, a shimmering configuration of neurons.

  “Don’t worry, boss. He’s nodding off as we speak.” The creature spoke into his phone. “Yes, got a blood sample at the show. He didn’t feel a thing, and the girl, Brooke, she saw nothing. Innocent as a lamb. Yes, he’s safe, perfectly isolated. In his hotel room. Did a blood scan last night. VSST2. Bumped into his waitress and dusted his eggs with the nano serum at 10:20 or so but didn’t activate the Lethe until he checked in. Okay, Doc. I’ll install the hardware within the hour, promise.”

  I watched the young man’s lips break open to reveal a cocksure smile—self-congratulatory, infuriating. I reached into his window to grapple with whatever he was. My crimped fingers did not pass through a spectral neck but sank into pliable flesh. My opponent emitted a satisfying shriek, flailed as I applied pressure to his Adam’s apple. I withdrew my hand, tensed it into a fist. I was about to break his jaw when the sky receded with a big whoosh. My head hit asphalt. I saw multiple red suns popping up from the horizon like bubbles of liquid mercury. I saw clouds condensing into dark clots and breaking apart again. I saw the rockabilly hipster sinking toward me, his throat bruised, his lips pinched into a line as he scrutinized me with trypan-blue eyes.