by Adam Rapp
Then I crossed to the window and looked down at the alley. It was still raining, and there was some wet cardboard where that guy from before had been sitting. Someone probably came by and stabbed him to death and dragged him into the river. Someone from one of those Caucasian rap-video gangs. They either stabbed him or strangled him with pantyhose.
I eventually made my way to the bed. I stared up at the ceiling for a while and fell asleep wondering how I was going to get through the next few days.
18.
“So, your dad’s coming to see you next week,” Mrs. Leene said, starting out our session today.
She was wearing this green turtleneck sweater that accentuated her breasts nicely, but I have to admit that since I made out with Silent Starla, I’ve been less attracted to Mrs. Leene.
“Are you looking forward to seeing him?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
“I had a good talk with him. I think he’s in a better place. The counseling has really helped him.”
She was talking about this guy from the Veterans Hospital in Davenport who my dad was seeing once a week. I guess he is half – grief counselor, half – military counselor.
“The visit might be really good for you two. Maybe it’s time.”
After my session, I had lunch with Silent Starla. We watched each other eat and smiled a lot. She kept sort of playing with my foot under the table, and I couldn’t stop blushing, which is a problem I can’t control.
“You’re blushing again,” she teased me, still playing with my foot.
What’s weird is that it only happens in one of my cheeks, like the other one is more sophisticated or something.
“You’re so pretty,” I had said to her earlier.
“Don’t lie,” she said back.
“I’m not lying.”
“Eat your food,” she said. But she was smiling when she said it, so I know she liked my compliment.
But I don’t want to get too sidetracked about Silent Starla and how pretty she is.
Back to the story part.
So the morning after my night at the old Y, I was walking up the hill on Governors Boulevard. It was maybe ten-thirty and already boiling hot.
These three jocks with shaved heads were mowing the Governors College baseball field. They all had washboard abs and these totally perfect, Coppertonetan chests, and you could tell they knew how all the cars were slowing down to watch them.
My eyes were raw and my stitches were burning pretty bad. I was starting to worry about my shin being infected — like things turning green or whatever — when the Skylark pulled in front of me. There was a familiar bumper sticker above the license plate: WWW.FUCKYOU.COM.
It was Dantly.
The Skylark idled on the side of the road like a beast waiting for food. There was so much exhaust spilling everywhere, it was as if the car had been damned to carry a little part of hell with it wherever it went.
Dantly’s head sort of lolled out the open window, his greasy, brown, unintentionally half-dreadlocked hair spilling down the driver’s-side door. During the small amount of time between pulling over and putting the car in park, I think he might have actually fallen asleep. It was the dreamless sleep of a cow or a fish.
No one’s ever really known how old Dantly actually is. He might be nineteen, but he could also be like thirty-seven, too. Once I asked Welton.
“He’s as old as you want him to be,” my brother responded.
No one knows where Dantly lives, either. He just sort of appears places, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. It’s like poof and there he is, driving his souped-up Skylark.
And Welton used to swear that Dantly has like eighteen tattoos. Once he apparently drove all the way to Kansas City because he heard about this tattoo artist who would drop acid and draw his visions on the small of your back. I’ve never seen Dantly’s tattoos, but the lore is that his back is filled with pythons and bulls playing badminton in plaid pajamas and flying mermaids and other things of this nature. I’ve asked him to show me a bunch of times, but he always says he would have to charge me ten bucks.
There’s definitely something semi-supernatural about the guy. He’s never worked out or played sports but he’s more cut than most jocks. I think it’s because of all those hard-core drugs he does. Somehow they’ve had a reverse effect on him and actually developed his muscles.
“Steve Nugent, is that you, kid?” he shouted over the engine. His voice was hoarse with the night before. Or maybe it was permanently damaged now.
He said, “What’s up, bra?”
I answered, “Not much,” and approached the Skylark carefully.
Up close you could see how totally wasted he was. His mouth was half-open like someone had just kicked him in the neck. His tongue seemed too heavy for his mouth. His facial hair was all random and extra-long in places. His pupils were so dilated, they were like the eyes of a stuffed animal.
“Dude,” he said, “what happened to your hair?”
“I shaved it off,” I answered, palming my skull with my free hand.
“Bald for the new millennium,” he said, lighting a cigarette out of nowhere, somehow making spontaneous fire with his fingers. I think that’s one of those things that just starts happening after you’ve smoked enough illegal substances — your body starts producing small flames.
Dantly snorted and said, “Where you walkin’ to?”
“Over to Carroll to register for a class.”
He sang, “Summer school,” evilly, like it had been something that either brought him great joy or great disgust. Man, I couldn’t even picture Dantly in a high school parking lot, let alone a classroom.
He coughed and swallowed phlegm. “Hop in.”
Getting in the Skylark was like stepping into a canoe full of water moccasins.
Man, his car really stank. It was one of those personal smells, like an uncle’s room, but multiplied by fifty. The back seat was full of so much half-eaten fast food, I was surprised there weren’t small animals scurrying around.
Dantly pulled away from the curb and dug something black out of his nose. I think it was some sort of a bug. He flicked it blindly into the back seat and went, “I thought you were supposed to be some kinda genius, man. What class did you blow off?”
I was like, “I didn’t. The gifted school said I could graduate early if I took a creative writing class.”
“That’s right,” Dantly sneered. “You go to the gifted school.” He smoked and exhaled. His teeth were sort of blue and they seemed too short.
We approached a red light, and for a second I wasn’t sure if he was going to actually stop, but he did at the last second. I almost hit my head on the dashboard, but Dantly made an arm bar to stop me, thank God.
“Just keeping you on yer toes,” he said, and snorted again.
Suddenly something smelled like it was burning.
I said, “Dantly, do you smell that?”
He said, “What, did you fart or somethin’?”
“No,” I said, “something’s burning.”
“Oh. That’s just the radiator. Nothing to be alarmed about.”
Then Dantly turned on the radio to a seventies rock song. Some white dude on acid was murdering his guitar.
In the passenger-side mirror, I could still see those three jocks who’d been mowing the baseball field. They were playing Frisbee now and had shrunk down to the size of fleas.
While we waited for the light to change, Dantly said, “Creative writing in July. Then what — college?”
I said, “I don’t know. Probably.”
“Corporate America, here you come! Rock on, young Nugent!”
I said, “Rock on. Right.”
The light turned green, and he gunned the Skylark for a few seconds, then slowed down. For a few blocks we drove in that weird silence that thickens between two people who don’t really know each other.
For some reason Dantly suddenly started punching the steeri
ng wheel — literally punching it like it was a kid he’d forgotten to beat up back in the eighties. We almost swerved into a little girl riding a mountain bike. Her bike was so big, it made her seem all weird and inanimate, like she was a doll. When I looked back, she had stopped riding.
Then for some reason Dantly said, “Jesus and Santa Claus got caught stealing shit at the mall last week. Get it?”
“Sure,” I said.
I actually didn’t get it at all and I still don’t. But he thought it was funny.
In the rearview mirror I could see that that little girl was walking the bike now, and she had to use every muscle in her body to keep it from falling over.
Dantly swerved back to the center of the street and went, “Someday you’re prolly gonna wind up like running a fucking Starbucks or some shit.”
I was like, “Doubt it.”
“Start starchin’ your collars. Press those trouserly trousers, my lanky East Foote brother. The days of dry cleaning and Chinese takeout are just around the corner.”
I didn’t say anything.
More smells from the back seat were starting to form.
“Dude,” Dantly said. “You should like go into the army.”
“I don’t think so,” I responded.
“Seriously, though,” Dantly continued, “think about that shit. They got chicks in the army now. Clean chicks. Babes in unis, man.”
“Yeah, babes in unis,” I echoed.
“Plus you get to travel around. Drive tanks. Sail the seven seas. Be all you can be and all that. Get the fuck outta this place.”
“Maybe.”
“I hear shooting an M-16 gives you a boner.”
I said, “Cool.”
The song with the guitar murder ended, and now they were running a commercial about some car with rack-and-pinion steering. How it would like totally save your life with no money down. The guy speaking sounded like he was on coke.
“What,” Dantly said, “you wanna wind up like me? Me or your dipshit brother? I mean, look at us, kid.”
I looked at him, and he totally had a point. I think one of his eyes was permanently closed.
“Oh, by the way,” he said suddenly, “sorry about the old bird, man. Mary Lee Nugent was a cool lady. Welton said the funeral was a trip. Everyone cryin’ and shit. Nothing like a roomful of bawling relatives. Fucking family, man . . .”
We turned onto Vista Street. College buildings. Parking lots half-full of compact cars. A church with stained-glass windows. Old people standing on the lawn. Not talking. Just standing and staring off into the general direction of the crotch of an old oak tree, where squirrels and blackbirds were totally plotting things that no one knows about.
On the radio some singer-songwriter guy was whining about broken-down cars and IBM. Dantly punched the radio and turned it off.
“Man, I’m so sick of that fucker. If he hates IBM so much, why’s he singin’ about it? Get over yourself! Make a goddamn macaroni Christmas ornament or some shit!”
He smoked for a minute. He offered me a lit cigarette and said, “Hey, has Welton talked to you yet?”
“About what?” I asked.
“We’re thinking of maybe going down to Iowa City and scorin’ a bunch of shrooms. Like several very heavy ounces. Some Dutch poet dude brought them back from Amsterdam. We could sell ’em to the frats at Governors and U.F. Nothing like a little Amsterdamage.”
“Where you gonna get the money?”
“Well,” he said, “that’s where you come in. We were thinking of like robbing the Piggly Wiggly tonight. The one by your crib in E.F. They got like zero surveillance there. A little insta-capital.”
The Skylark was so loud, I suddenly realized we had been shouting at each other.
“To do it right, you need three people,” he explained. “One to hold ’em up. One to pocket the cash. And one to wait in the car. Like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Hang on a second,” he said, cutting himself off. He pulled over to the side of the road, shifted into park, opened the door, leaned his head out, and puked. It sounded like he was giving birth through his neck. When he was finished, he turned to me.
“You think you might be interested?”
His nose was suddenly bluer than his teeth.
I was like, “Um. Maybe.”
“We were gonna ask this dude Shine from the old folks’ home, but he’s always falling asleep and shit. Shine and his goddamn K habit. One minute he’s scootin’ around like a Chihuahua, and the next thing you know he’s out cold. Can’t have a narcoleptic on the job.”
He shifted the Skylark back into gear, and we were moving again.
“I shouldn’ta snorted all that heroin last night,” he said, prying something loose from the cracks in his teeth. “I knew it was cut funny. Shit was so yellow, it was almost orange.”
He flicked whatever it was that was living between his teeth out the window, and it blew back inside and stuck to the glass over the speedometer. I tried to not stare at it.
“You know who has tolerance?” Dantly asked, clawing at his arm suddenly.
I was like, “Who?”
“Your brother, man. Welton. Welton I-Dealt-One Nugent. That fucker knows when to say when.”
I went, “Yeah.”
“It’s prolly ’cause he used to be this like total jock and shit.”
Dantly reached toward the speedometer and fingered the foreign object that had originated between his teeth. For a second I thought he was going to put it back into his mouth in an attempt to start his day over.
“You know,” he continued, “I saw your brother play basketball last year, and I didn’t even know who he was. It must have been right before he got blindsided with that sciatica shit. East Foote was playing Elizabeth. I was doing some business at the gym — showing this turtleneck sophomore these primo ’ludes I scored when I was living in Portland — and this fucker comes down the court and takes off like a goddamn airplane. Like a seven-forty-fuckin’-seven or some unnatural thing. I never saw a kid jump so high in my life. I thought you only see animals experience that kind of wind on the Nature Channel. Like spider monkeys or caribou or bionic deer or whatever. Lanky fucker can jump, bra.”
Dantly took a drag off his cigarette and half of it disappeared.
“And check this,” he continued, flicking his ash on his lap. “Last week we’re in the parking lot over at Taco John’s. I come out with a load of burritos, and the freak is jumping on top of Skyler the Skylark. Jumping on top of the motherfucker. The next day, he could hardly walk. I called your house and your dad said he was down in his room icing his back.”
“His condition gets pretty bad,” I offered.
“The other day at Econofoods, I bump into this very blond cheerleader that Welton used to run around with, and she tells me he was headed to Iowa State before that sciatica shit seized him up. Imagine playing for the Cyclones and shit. The Nugents must have some serious bounce runnin’ in the family.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. I just let the engine buzz through the soles of my Red Wings. I could feel it traveling up the bones in my legs.
“I say we definitely pull off the job in less than three minutes if we exercise the proper aerodynamics,” Dantly continued, back on the subject of the robbery. “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker — you get what I’m sayin’?”
“Sure,” I said.
He was smoking a new cigarette. I hadn’t even seen him finish the old one and reload.
“So you in?” he asked.
We were parked in front of Carroll High School now. It was amazing — I had no idea how we’d even gotten there. Dantly’s one of those guys who’s done so many drugs, he knows about relativity and black holes. I think he knows how to blip in and out of the spaces in the universe.
About eight chicks were pretending to smoke in the parking lot. Two of them were wearing tube tops. One of them looked at Dantly, and he waved. His nose wasn’t blue anymore; it was sort of grayish
white.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “But I’m not living at home anymore. I’ve sort of been crashin’ at the old Y.”
“Then I’ll pick you up there.”
I said, “Make it at that little diner next to the civic center. I have sort of a meeting there early in the evening.”
“A man with meetings is a mighty man,” he sneered. “A mighty, mighty man. How’s eight o’clock?”
“Eight’s cool,” I said, finishing my cigarette.
“You drive, right?” Dantly asked.
“Yeah, I drive.”
“Right on. What are you, seventeen, eighteen?”
“Sixteen.”
“Six-fuckin’-teen,” he sang, shaking his head. “The year of zits and pornos. Here, take one of these,” he said, offering a little white tab of paper. It was square and it fit on the tip of my finger. It looked sort of like fish food. Centered on the tab was a small picture of the Cat in the Hat.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a little bit of what you can’t get today but might want tomorrow.”
I looked at it for another second and took it. It dissolved under my tongue and tasted like nothing. Or maybe it tasted sort of metallic. I suddenly felt dull and stupid.
“Beware of the flying fish.”
I said, “The flying fish?”
“Yeah, dude. Goldfish mostly. A trout here and there.” Then Dantly spit out the window, cleared his throat, and said, “I gotta go score a piece.”
I said, “A piece of what?”
“A piece, man,” he explained. “A fucking gun.”
I said, “Oh. Right.”
“See you later, bra,” Dantly said. “Eight bells.”
“Eight bells,” I echoed.
That one eye was still closed. Before he took off, I almost reached over and tried to open it.
“Steve Nugent,” he said through the window. “Huntin’ with the big cats.”
When he pulled away, exhaust was everywhere. The whole street was suddenly cloudy with fumes. Joggers fanned the air. Bikers covered their mouths. Birds sprang from trees and flew toward the river.
Halfway down the street, I could still see the smear of vomit blown across the back end of the Skylark.
