by Adam Rapp
“What about the maintenance workers?”
“They got off like twenty minutes ago.”
Then she turned the light off and removed her shirt. Her breasts were maybe the best things I’ve ever felt in my life. Sort of soft and round, and her nipples were highly aroused. Someone had forgotten to turn off this clip light on the other side of the room. It was on pretty dim, but I could still see her pretty good.
“Call me Sinead,” she said while she ran her hands through my hair, which has grown out enough by now to actually grab onto a bit, which she was doing, which was making everything even more masterful than it already was.
“Sinead,” I said, kissing her breasts, “Sinead.”
Then she took my clothes off — all of them — just like that, and I was standing there naked, trying to sort of cover my erection, when she started touching me. At first she sort of touched my stomach and then she touched my knees and then she touched the scar on my shin and then she did some other stuff that I won’t gross you out with, and then she took her clothes off, and she has a pretty masterful body, I must say, and her pubic hair was nice and trim and sort of glistening, and then she produced a condom from some unknown region and then she was putting it on me and then she leaned back and sort of pulled me on top of her and she made me touch her between her legs for a while and then she pushed my hand away and put my penis inside of her and we made love.
I only lasted like four minutes, and I really had no idea what I was doing, but Sinead guided me through it and she was incredibly helpful. And even though I was probably about as suave as a blind three-legged mule, we still did it and I officially lost my virginity and now I am in love with a girl named Sinead who everyone knows as Silent Starla.
While stretched out on the cold cement floor, I asked her why she tried to kill herself.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just got really bored with everything.”
“Kitchen cleanser?”
“You can shoot it, but I cut it into my arm with an X-Acto knife.”
Then she pulled one of her Chicago Cubs wristbands up and showed me this purple scar that was like an inch long and pretty deep.
“You can touch it,” she said.
I ran a finger across it, and it thrilled me for some reason.
“Kiss it,” she then said, so that’s what I did.
“There,” she said, and pulled the wristband back up.
“How did you wind up here?” I asked.
“They thought I might be schizophrenic, but they tested me and I’m not,” she said. “So Burnstone Grove was the next option. My parents are basically shitheads who don’t want to deal.”
I will go into more detail about the events surrounding my loss of virginity later, but I am getting too excited and I think I should probably return to what happened after I fell asleep in that alley.
Which was that I woke up naked.
I’d been feasted on pretty ferociously by mosquitoes and it felt like my whole body itched. The weird thing was that I was still wearing my Red Wing boots, which were moist with my own vomit.
I had fallen asleep in that alley and I was sort of sprawled out on my stomach. I rolled over and looked up. My clothes were hanging from the fire escape, like twenty feet in the air. I have no idea how they got there. I looked in my dad’s Marine Corps bag for a pair of underwear. Inside there was a bottle of Robitussin and an almost-empty pack of cigarettes and nothing else.
I swallowed.
My mouth tasted like gravel.
I had about four headaches going at once.
I grabbed my dad’s Marine Corps bag and pushed on.
You’d be surprised how far you can walk into the more commercial sections of downtown Foote while completely nude. It might have been 6:30 A.M.
I fished a copy of the Foote Daily Bugle out of a trash can. I wrapped it around my waist. The Foote Daily Bugle is actually salmon-colored, which isn’t bad fashion when you’re using newspapers as clothes.
I tried lighting a cigarette, but it was soaked with Robitussin and it wouldn’t burn.
My Foote Daily Bugle miniskirt crackled with each step. A fifth headache started materializing. I found myself walking toward my dad’s electronics shop. It was only about six blocks away, and my legs were just sort of taking me there. At this point I had pretty much decided that I was going to kill myself. Why I chose my dad’s shop for this, I don’t know. I didn’t even know how I was going to do it, to tell you the truth — maybe I would pummel my head with an antique cash register or electrocute myself with an old toaster oven or something. I guess I just wanted everything to end, and that’s all I could think about while I was heading there. I told you before how I’m part Blue Grouper. Well, this is where that part reared its ugly head.
The sky was still pretty dark and the heat had totally lifted. I was shivering so much it was making it hard to walk.
When I reached the shop, the lights were off and the OPEN sign hadn’t yet been turned around. They’d done something weird to the door. It looked like the paint had been totally sanded off of it.
Through the window, I was surprised to see Lyman Singer working the books at the counter. It was way too early for anyone to be up and working.
I knocked on the door. Lyman Singer’s eyes were closed. For a moment I thought he was praying. When I knocked again, he opened his eyes and made this face. I know I was probably the last person in the world he wanted to see. And in my condition it must have been at least a little shocking for him. He studied his watch and squeezed around the counter and opened the door.
“Is that you, Steven?” he asked. There was a pencil fisted in his hand.
I was like, “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Are you okay?”
What I wanted to do was sit down and ask him for a drink of water, but for some reason, even though she was already dead, I felt the need to say, “My mom had this dream about Welton.”
“Oh,” he responded politely.
“He was at the circus, and his pants kept falling down.”
Lyman Singer just kept staring at me and holding on to that pencil.
I said, “That’s pretty funny, right?”
“Sure,” he answered. “That is quite funny.”
His head was bald and huge. I’d never noticed how big it was before.
“You’re wearing the newspaper, Steven,” he said. “And your poor chest is bleeding,” he added, still holding the pencil. “What happened?”
I started feeling like I was going to fall. I had to lean against the counter.
“Things have been a little weird lately,” I tried to explain. The words came out slow and they felt huge in my mouth.
“Here,” he said, “sit down.”
“No thanks,” I said.
I felt like if I just kept standing, things would somehow work themselves out.
The shop smelled like glue, and it was making my stomach knot up. I didn’t sit. I just sort of kept leaning on the counter.
“Why are you here so early?” I asked.
“I’ve been pulling a lot of double duty since your mom got sick,” he explained. “Your dad’s needed some time to deal with things at home.”
“Yeah,” I said, “things at home pretty much suck.”
“Well,” he said, “grief does strange things to all of us, Steven.” His hands were tense and hairy. I thought the pencil was going to snap. “I’m just staying here till we get confirmation that the new alarm system is functioning. I have an old cot set up in the office. Here, take my shirt,” he said, slipping out of this light-blue cotton pullover. It had a collar and there was an alligator on it. There were patches of hair all over his stomach and shoulders, and he had these totally flabby, womanish-looking chest muscles.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling his shirt over my head. It smelled like after-shave and avocados.
“Let me see if I have an extra pair of trousers back in the office,” he offered, disappearing into the small room on the other
side of the counter.
I could hear him sorting though some boxes in the office. I scanned the shop. They had already started to reorganize. There were new shelves, and the floor had been polished. I could just see my dad operating one of those rented oscillating machines, the marble floor getting all buffed and slippery, Lyman Singer erecting the new shelves, measuring the Sheetrock, getting fancy with those plastic dry-wall anchors, using the power drill.
I almost fell again, but I continued to use the counter.
Lyman Singer returned with a pair of these totally satin, parachute-looking slacks things. They were so red they practically laughed.
“You’re more than welcome to use them,” he said, offering the pants. “They’re part of my old clown costume. I used to do these kids’ shows. . . .”
I stepped out of my boots, let my Foote Daily Bugle miniskirt fall to the floor, and started to slip into the clown pants.
We stared at each other for a moment. My permanent marker black bush looked like some weird birthmark I’d never be able to get rid of. You could hear the air conditioner going back in the office.
“I’m so sorry about your mother, Steven,” Lyman Singer said. “I didn’t get a chance to express my condolences at the memorial.”
But I didn’t want things to get all weird so I was like, “My dad been by?”
“He was here last night,” he said. “He actually left something for you. In case you were to stop in.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Lyman Singer pushed buttons on the old-fashioned cash register. It chimed and rattled, and after he struck its side a few times, the drawer flew open. He reached under the tray and produced an envelope. I could see my name on it. Well, it wasn’t my name, really.
It said:
Son
Lyman handed it to me and I tore it open. Inside was a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill. Ben Franklin’s face staring back at me again. Underneath the cash was a note. It read:
Steve,
Use the money for whatever you need.
Dad
Also included was a longer letter. I didn’t bother with that and stuffed it back in the envelope. I shoved the cash into the pocket of my clown pants and put the envelope in my dad’s Marine Corps bag.
“I’m sorry about the shop,” I said to Lyman Singer.
“Steve,” he replied, “what’s done is done. I understand you’ve been through a lot. Your whole family has. What you did is forgivable. I forgive you. Your father forgives you. I’m sure God forgives you.”
“God’s just bored,” is what I said for some reason.
Then I almost fell again, but I played it off pretty well and caught my balance.
“You should really call your father,” Lyman Singer continued. “One doesn’t want to live in regret. An intelligent, sensitive young man like you.”
“He might as well be dead, too,” I said.
“Steven, he’s your father.”
I said, “If you see him, tell him I say hey.”
“Life goes on, Steve,” he added. “You need to stop punishing yourself and try connecting with those who care about you.”
I exited the shop with my dad’s Marine Corps bag. My clown pants were light and satiny. When the new door closed behind me, it made a loud click.
24.
The Foote sky was pretty gray that morning. There was no wind and the streets seemed eerily calm. It usually gets that way before tornados. The thought didn’t put me much at ease.
I entered the Dunkin’ Donuts on Culvert Street. A radio was playing easy-listening rock. Coffee was brewing. There was a sign over the cash register that said that Dunkin’ Donuts possessed the best coffee in the world. A man was doing stuff behind the counter. He had a mustache and he wore a smock. He was arranging hundreds of colored donuts and sort of humming along to some totally overly inspiring Whitney Houston song.
The fluorescent light was harsh, and it made my whole face hot. My clown pants billowed about my legs, and I knew in my heart that I looked incredibly stupid. Lyman Singer’s baby-blue golf shirt was sticking to my skin, and little flowers of blood were sort of bleeding through from where I had been raking away at all my mosquito bites. My Red Wings stank of sweat and vomit, and I was having a problem telling whether or not I could feel my shin anymore. The air conditioning was so cold that it somehow made everything feel like it didn’t matter, even more than just hours before.
The man behind the counter finished arranging a row of these things that looked like the glazed anuses of blond orangutans. He turned. He eyed me with a surprising lack of suspicion.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Um, sure,” I said. “I’d like . . .”
I could feel something running out of my stomach. It was sort of intense. It actually felt like something was scurrying out of me.
“Yes?” the man said.
Whatever it was ran up my chest and sort of got stuck in my throat. My ears felt suddenly missing, like they’d been twisted off or something.
“Would you like another minute?” the man asked.
“No,” I said, “I —”
And then, just like that, my mouth was full of blood. The taste of it was all warm and metallic. The man stared at me with a pretty suspicious look all of a sudden. I was probably making some horrible, tortured face.
“Are you okay, son?” he asked.
I shook my head.
Then he actually leaned toward me, and I made a strange gurgling noise that sounded more like something a car would produce, and vomited on him. It was mostly blood. There was suddenly this like gross, extra-large pink tulip running down his white Dunkin’ Donuts smock.
He rushed around to the other side of the counter and attempted to help me. I remember that his nametag said BILL.
“Take it easy now,” he said, trying to keep me from falling. “Steady as she goes.”
It felt like the laws of gravity had suddenly changed pretty intensely. Bill led me to a booth and I sat, still managing to hold on to my dad’s Marine Corps bag. The table was cold and clean, and I was suddenly keenly aware that my teeth were chattering.
“I got a hundred bucks, I got a hundred b-b-bucks,” is all I could say for some reason.
“No need to worry about money,” Bill said. “Stay right there. I’m going to call the hospital, okay?”
I nodded.
Then he disappeared.
My tongue felt all contorted and tight, and my heart was beating so hard I could almost taste it in my mouth.
Bill was talking to medical officials on the phone.
“Yeah, a lot of blood,” he was saying. “Orally, yes. Through his mouth. . . . Just some kid off the street. . . . No, I don’t think he’s homeless. He looks pretty beat up.”
I reached into that envelope that my dad had left for me at the electronics shop. I removed the folded piece of paper. It was handwritten in blue ink, and the cursive was sort of faint and childish-looking. My teeth were still chattering like crazy, and I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking. I did my best to flatten the letter on the table.
It read:
Remember Me
Remember me, please. An ordinary woman with a good heart. A woman who loved her children and took great pride in them. Remember me — I was the big sister, the second mom, the confidant who’d always listen to a problem and try to be helpful. Remember me — a plain Jane who wore glasses and had irregular skin and large hands that could comfort. Remember that I was a great nurse who treated everyone with the same compassion. Remember that I wanted our family to be close but that I died without that happening and I felt sad about it.
To my sister, Ricky: Don’t forget all those phone calls when we’d crack up laughing over anything and everything and that you were a great comfort to me when things got bad.
To Chris and Dot: I’ll take with me the memories of your help and concern. You lived so far away, yet cared so much.
To my two boys: Remember that I
loved you both with my whole heart and though I was far from the perfect mom, I did the best I knew how. Welton, have faith that your back will heal and that you will one day again play basketball. Steven Jacob, remember that I loved you — my “white knight” — and would have done anything to stay with you. I think you are the smartest person I know, my sweet boy.
Richard, my love, remember to enjoy life. I always felt you were the brave and strong one. I admired you so much.
Remember that I loved books, classical music, patchwork quilts, my bed, sunshine, spring, Charles Wysocki’s art, and a good laugh.
The Moon will rise
The Sun will set
Please do not forget . . .
Mary Lee Nugent
I folded the piece of paper and put it back in the envelope.
Then I stood. But that was too hard, so I sat.
I had my money. And I had my dad’s Marine Corps bag.
I stood again.
For some reason I counted to four. One, two, and three came out with relative ease. But four was like some gastrointestinal freight train. My body made a sound like an elephant burping and then I hit the floor.
Which was covered with hard, white tiles.
I could smell cleaning products.
A sour mop. Fresh doughnuts.
Then everything went red.
Easy-listening rock was on the radio.
25.
Sleep was gigantic and soft.
I dreamed of a fast-food community dinner. The dream took place at the McDonald’s by the civic center. June was there. Mary Mills was there. My mom and dad were there, too. The lights over the hamburger grills were all screwed up, and bugs were sort of swarming everywhere. My community service supervisor — that guy Jerry Willems I was telling you about — was standing on a ladder trying to change a tray of fluorescent tubes.
June took our order. She was smoking my last Camel Light and it looked so good I wanted to snatch it out of her mouth, but my hands were too heavy.
The dining area was filled with cops and teachers and gym coaches. The gym coaches were trying to organize a restaurant-wide Presidential Physical Fitness Test. There would be a standing broad jump. There would be pull-ups. There would be sit-ups and an improvised shuttle run involving condiments and Special Sauce.
