by Ron Koertge
“Just give me a minute. I’ll be fine. I’m used to this.”
“Why do you do it?”
Colleen props herself up on both elbows. “Oh, I don’t know. There’s a point where I’m just about perfect: just high enough but not too high. Everything makes sense to me, or if it doesn’t, I don’t care. So I guess I figure if I feel this good on a few hits, I’ll feel twice as good on twice as many. Stupid, huh?”
“Kind of.”
She sits up then and rubs my arm. The nearest one. The withered one. I flinch, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry I called you a snob.”
She’s not looking at me, so I’m not looking at her. Yet. But her bare hand on my skin feels out of this world. “I’m sorry I called you a drug addict.”
She lets her hand slide down to my fist then, because that’s what I have on that side. A permanent fist. “I know I smoke too much.”
“I don’t try hard enough. I should talk to people more.”
Colleen leans into me then. She puts a hand on my cheek. “I like your hair.”
“Man, you are loaded.”
“It’s cute. You’re cute.”
“If you pet me,” I say, “I’ll follow you home.”
“Yeah? What’ll you do if I kiss you?”
I don’t know what to say to that. I can’t think of a thing. You have to remember: I’ve been a spaz all my life. I never kiss anybody. Nobody ever kisses me.
Colleen murmurs, “My science teacher is always saying, ‘Try. You won’t know what a combination of elements will do unless you try.’” She leans closer. Her breath is heavy and sweet. “What’s the worst that could happen, huh?”
I think, I could explode and then you’ll wish you’d worn your safety glasses. But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything. I’m getting ready for this kiss. I’m licking my lips, because that’s what people do in the movies, and I’ve seen a million of those.
About an hour later, I ease through the front door and close it behind me. I’m as stealthy as Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible.
“Ben? Is that you?”
But, apparently, not stealthy enough. I sigh. “Yes, Grandma.”
“Can you come in here a minute, dear?”
I lurch down the hall (either making out or smoking dope seems to have made my limp worse, but it was worth it), pause outside the door, and smooth down my new hair. Colleen doesn’t wear lipstick but I rub my mouth on my sleeve, anyway.
When I step inside, my grandmother is tucked into her narrow bed like a knife slipped into a sheath.
“Did you have a good time?” she asks. “Was the movie interesting?”
“It was fine. What’s wrong, Grandma?”
“I’m afraid I’m ill, Benjamin. Will you get the thermometer?”
In the medicine cabinet everything has its place: cleansing cream here, nail clippers there. One blue toothbrush hangs beside a spotless drinking glass.
I shake down the thermometer with my good hand.
“Did you cleanse it with alcohol?” Grandma asks.
I stare at the thermometer. I’m still a little high. The mercury is beautiful. “Did I cleanse it? No, it was in its little house so I figured . . .”
“Cleanse it, dear.”
“Grandma, this isn’t Russia, where there’s one thermometer for all of Moscow.”
“Benjamin, please.”
I plod to the sink and run some hot water. Back in the bedroom, I thrust the slender glass cylinder under her tongue.
“Iz ust aim on,” she said.
“Grandma, don’t talk.”
She waves the thermometer like a tiny baton. “This just came on. One minute I’m fine, happily listening to a very nice young man in a beautiful Armani suit talk about opportunistic infections; the next I’m woozy and flushed.”
“Grandma, stop talking. I’ll be back in a minute.”
In my bedroom, I pick up the phone and stare at it; even it’s pretty, light reflecting off its ivory surface. Then I dial Colleen’s number. It’s busy.
“Ben. Come and read this, please. I must have left my glasses in the kitchen.”
Back in the room I squint and say, “A hundred and two.”
“Oh, god, I’ve got influenza.”
“Probably. A lot of kids at school —”
“It’s different for an elderly person.”
“You’re not elderly.”
“What if it goes to my chest? I’ve always had weak lungs.”
“You’ve never had weak lungs.”
“I don’t tell you everything, Ben. I don’t want you to worry.”
“You went to the doctor and he said you had weak lungs?”
“I don’t need a doctor to tell me I can’t hold my breath as long as I used to.”
“When do you hold your breath? You don’t dive for pearls; you talk to your broker.”
“Sometimes when I’m here alone, I test my lung capacity.”
“What a picture that is.”
“I’m glad you’re home safely. Anxiety can undermine one’s immune system.”
“Colleen just gave me a ride to the movie and back.”
“She has an eye tattooed on the palm of her hand!”
“Just a little one.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“You don’t know her, Grandma.” I sway a little, then sit down heavily on the edge of the bed.
My grandmother tries to sit up. “Are you all right, dear? You aren’t getting sick, too, are you?”
“I’m hungry. I’m really hungry. Have we got any cookies?”
FOR TWO DAYS THIS IS WHAT I HEAR: “Ben, could you warm this tea up just a little, please? Not too much, though. My tongue feels peculiar already.” “Ben, may I have a glass of water? And not from the tap, dear.” “Ben, will you rewind The Sound of Music and start it again? And then sit and watch with me for a little while.”
Or variations thereof. So I’m glad to go back to school. I’m peering into my backpack when Colleen appears. I can’t tell her that I missed her. She’s not that kind of girl.
So I say, “Did you get my message?”
“Yeah, Granny was sick. Thanks for checking in. I didn’t call you back, I figured . . .”
“Yeah.”
“You look kind of fucked up.”
“Haven’t you heard? The hills are alive with the sound of music.” I lean against the wall, which is painted the color of grasshopper guts. I look over Colleen’s shoulder, then my own. A lot of kids carry their books in those black luggage carriers with little wheels: flight attendants to nowhere. “You okay?”
“I’ve been baby-sitting, too. Mom got collagen in her lips and something went wrong so she looks like Daffy Duck. I hung out with her and we watched a really cool movie on cable where this totally cute cowboy can’t keep his hands off this chick named Pearl.”
“That’s Duel in the Sun with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones. He’s Lewt McCanles and she’s Pearl Chavez, the fiery half-breed.”
“That was hot. Made my mom’s lips throb.”
“I used to practice flicking my cigarette away like Gregory Peck, because in the movies, girls always go for the bad guys.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I used a Tootsie Roll miniature.”
“You’re kind of far-out in your own weird way, you know that?”
“Really?”
“I like the way you argue, too. I say I’m sorry I called you a name, you say you’re sorry you called me a name, and that’s that. When Ed and I get into it, he pouts for about a week.”
I step closer. “Look, let’s go over to Marcie’s.”
“I don’t know, Ben.”
“Oh, c’mon. I just want to see her camera.”
Colleen shakes her head. “Making out when I’m loaded is one thing; making social calls is . . . I don’t know. Doesn’t one of us have to wear pearls for shit like that?”
“It’s not a date.”
“It wasn
’t a date the other night, and I ended up with my tongue down your throat.”
“Like you said, you were loaded. So leave your stash at home. I think totally sober you’ll find me pretty easy to resist.”
“I don’t get you sometimes. What do you want with me, anyway?”
“I want you to go to Marcie’s with me.”
She looks down at her black fingernails. “Let me think about it.”
“I’ll call her after school. Then I’ll call you.”
I’M WATCHING FOR COLLEEN, so by the time she parks, I’m right there at the curb.
“I’d ask you to come in and say hi to Grandma, but she’s already in bed. That flu really got her good.”
Colleen grimaces. “That’s okay, especially if this is the same Grandma whose car I threw up in.”
“Actually, you threw up out the window.”
“Oh, well. Then she could see I’d been brought up right.”
I point to Marcie’s house. “Ready?”
“I did what you said — I left the weed at home.”
We let a couple of cars go by, then start across the street. “So how is it?”
“I’ve been straight before. I can’t recommend it as a lifestyle, though.” A hot, dry wind off the desert nudges Colleen’s hair and even the purple lobelia lining Marcie’s walk.
When we get to the porch, Colleen stops. “What am I supposed to do, anyway, while you go to film school? I’m gonna have to talk to her.”
“Grandma says to ask questions.”
“Things like, ‘Say, Marcie, that’s a nice rack for an old lady. Are they real?’”
I slump against her. Accidentally. On purpose. “That sound you hear is the blood draining from my face.”
The door opens almost before I can knock, and we step inside. A little fountain that I don’t remember from the first time I was over stands in the foyer; water trickles off a tiny ledge and into a bowl-sized pool.
Marcie’s wearing overalls and a blue T-shirt. I can see her bare feet as she points at nothing in particular and says, “Take a look around.”
Colleen and I amble through the living room like museumgoers. There are a lot of books, and on the walls long scrolls decorated with big Chinese-looking letters.
Colleen picks up a little pile of old-looking coins. “Souvenirs?”
“Oh, that’s feng shui stuff. Those and the fountain and the mobiles.”
“What’s . . . whatever you just said?”
“Oh, I dabble in things. A little meditation, a little prayer, a little tai chi, and in this case a little bit of the way of the wind and water.” She points toward the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink?”
When we’re alone for a minute, I say, “Nice house, huh?”
Colleen nods. “She didn’t buy this place making documentaries.” Then she nudges me. “How am I doing? Did you hear me say, ‘Souvenirs?’ Granny would’ve been proud.”
Marcie drinks red wine. Our Cokes are in milky-looking blue-and-white glasses. Colleen takes a big gulp, plucks a picture off the piano, and says, “Who’s the little guy in the robe?”
“One of the Buddhists I studied with when I was in Tibet.”
When a breeze rustles the scrolls on the wall, Colleen asks, “What do Buddhists do? They don’t go to church like regular people, do they?”
Marcie folds her napkin. “When somebody asked a monk what went on in the monastery, he said, ‘We fall down and get up, fall down and get up.’”
Colleen grins. She’s beautiful. “I guess they’re not just clumsy.”
“They might be that, too, but mostly he meant they’re not too hard on themselves when they screw up. Mostly Buddhists pay attention to the Four Noble Truths, only two of which I can remember at any one time.”
It’s my turn: “What are they today?”
“If you’re alive you suffer, and there’s a reason for your suffering.”
Colleen sets the picture down. “Those zany Buddhists. Always kidding around.”
“I know it sounds grim.” Marcie stretches extravagantly. “But Buddhists are probably the happiest people I’ve ever met. Every time I sat down with my teacher he warned me about wasting this incarnation, and all the time he’s got this huge grin on his face.”
This time Colleen doesn’t sound so cocky. Maybe nobody would hear it except someone like me who has sat in the dark for years listening to dialogue. “So,” she asks, “were you wasting this incarnation?”
“I still haven’t figured that one out. I flit a lot, you know — here, there, hospice work one year, classes at Caltech the next.” She offers Colleen more Coke out of a big blue pitcher full of ice. “What do you guys see at school? Are kids passionate about things? Ben’s in love with movies. What are you in love with, Colleen?”
Colleen and I look at each other. She shrugs before she says, “I used to write letters to the President.”
“What about?”
“Saving trees, mostly. I was, like, really nuts for trees.”
“Are you still involved in the movement?”
Colleen finishes her drink. “I, uh, kind of got distracted. I still have a thing for plants, though. Some plants, anyway.”
That’s my cue to change the subject. “How about a little toast?” I say. “To the person who made Meandering Hearts, a very cool movie.”
Colleen raises her Coke. “I’ll drink to that.”
Marcie takes a long swallow of wine. “Wasn’t it amazing how some of those people really valued their new hearts and kind of babied them by losing weight and eating right and all? And then others were just like, ‘Okay, now I can have all the lard sandwiches I want.’ I mean, they had a chance to change their lives and they didn’t take it!”
The Tibetan scrolls undulate again, but there isn’t a breeze. The hair on my arms stands up. I wonder if Marcie is talking about me, too.
Colleen puts her glass down, careful to keep it on the woven coaster. “How long did it take you to make the whole movie, anyway?”
There it is again. When we first sat down it was like Colleen was reading questions off note cards. But now she really sounds kind of curious.
Marcie frowns as she does a little math in her head. “Oh, a couple of months, I guess. But a lot of that was logistical: tracking people down, getting to where they were. I sure shot a ton of film I didn’t use. But that’s part of it. If people are too nervous, it’s no good. If everybody’s real slick, the whole thing looks rigged. They had to trust me, you know? They had to feel that I wasn’t going to exploit them for my own ends.” She reaches over and pats my arm. “You should make one of your own.”
“Yeah, right. The only things I know anything about are my grandma and the movies.”
“You should do high school,” Colleen says. “Call it Weirdos Galore.”
Marcie stands up. “That’s a good idea. Let me show you the wonders of iMovie. Maybe you’ll get inspired.”
In the study, Marcie reaches into a drawer and comes up with a small camera. “I can loan you this old Sony. It’s analog, okay? But don’t worry about that. I’ve got an adapter that’ll digitize it so we can feed it right into the iMac and edit it. Then we’ll turn it back into analog so we can play it on a VCR.”
“Say that in English.”
“For right now, shoot a minute or two of film.” She offers me the camera.
“If you need two hands for this, there goes my new career.”
“One’ll do.”
I put my fingers, the ones that work, through the strap on the side. “So what should I shoot — you?”
“Me. The room. Colleen. It doesn’t matter.”
I try peering through the viewfinder. “Like this?”
“That’s all there is to it. Now push that button.”
Easier said than done. “I can’t.”
“If you have to, rest the camera on your bad arm.”
“It won’t go that high.”
“Try putting the camera on th
e desk. Then push the button.”
So I do what she says. “Is it working?”
“Is the red light on?”
“Uh-huh.”
She waves one hand. “Now pick it up and pan around for a little bit, so I’ve got some film to work with.”
The camera has a little foldout window on the side that shows me what I’m shooting, so I don’t always have to use the viewfinder. I walk over to a coffee table and pan Marcie’s collection of little carvings: lizards, birds, snakes, and a few hearts made out of amber and jade. When I get to Colleen she, of course, gives me the finger.
When Marcie signals, I turn the camera off and follow her back to her desk, where she mutters about firewire ports and iLinks, taps her keyboard a couple of times, and shows my movie.
“Gee, it’s shaky, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh. It doesn’t have any built-in stabilization. You might have to get a tripod, especially if you want to use the zoom.”
I look down at my left side. “Nobody’s gonna want to talk to me.”
Marcie says she thinks they’ll perk right up in front of a camera. “It’s The Real World to them. It’s Survivor. They’re the digital generation.”
“And if they don’t,” Colleen adds, “they’ll find themselves driving down to Main Street to get their, uh, school supplies.”
“But what do I ask them?”
“Start with the obvious. Do they like high school.”
“Marcie, who’s going to say they like high school?”
“Do you?”
“No. Well, wait a minute.” I glance at Colleen. “Lately it’s been a little better.”
“See, now I want to know why. And so does the guy watching your movie.”
“But most kids aren’t going to say that. They’re going to say they’re scared.”
“Because . . .”
“Does the word guns ring a bell?” Colleen says.
“A trick our teacher shared with us is to just ask questions that you’d like to have answered.”
“Actually, I’d like to know what it’s like to be a tough guy.”
Colleen says she knows who’d answer that one in a hot minute, and that makes me remember Ed, something I don’t like to do.
