by Ray Garton
Adam asked, “Are your parents Buddhists?”
“No. They worship at the First Church of Bad Taste.”
It was an old house with arched plaster ceilings and doorways. Alyssa led him into the dark living room and turned on a lamp. Brass lamps, wicker furniture. Two tall plants in brass pots flanked a rectangular window that looked out on the front yard. Nearly one whole wall was covered with bookshelves, knick-knacks on each shelf in front of the books. A brass peace sign, a red weatherbird, a little Nixon doll hanging from a gallows, some ugly Troll dolls. A glass-topped buried wood coffee table with a shiny finish stood in front of the wicker sofa, a large brass ashtray in the center. Three barely-touched joints rested on the edge, books of matches scattered around it. Against a wall, the focal point of the entire room, a big-screen TV.
“Are you hungry?” Alyssa asked. “I can fix you something.”
“Hungry for you,” he said, with an embarrassed chuckle. It was not the kind of thing he normally said out loud. But with Alyssa, it felt right. He kissed her again, until she laughed. “What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Did you have a horny night, or something?”
“No. I missed you, that’s all.”
She frowned, took both Adam’s hands in hers. “You’re shaking. Are you all right?”
Adam wanted to tell her everything, knew it would be such a relief, but feared it would soil their relationship, send her running in the opposite direction. He said, “It’s been a rough night.”
“Family stuff?”
He moved his head in a way that might be interpreted as a nod.
“I have an orange juice craving.” she said urgently and beckoned him to the kitchen. Rather than turning on the overhead light, Alyssa went to a counter to the right of the entrance. Reached beneath a bank of wooden cupboards, switched on a long rectangular fluorescent over the counter. Then another over the sink. Even in bad light, it was a homey kitchen. Spacious, with a hardwood floor, pale stucco walls. An island in the center housed an electric range, and beyond it, more wooden cupboards and counter space, a dishwasher, and a refrigerator. Both counters and the island were tiled in glossy watercolor-yellow and -blue. Plants hung in the windows and the kitchen smelled of a mixture of rich coffees and teas. One back corner was taken up by a wooden brick-red picnic table with two long matching benches. Newspapers and crossword puzzlebooks were stacked on the table, a bag of laundry rested on a bench. In the other corner, a small desk with computer, monitor, and printer.
“Nice kitchen,” Adam said.
She smiled as she opened the refrigerator. “Yeah, you’d think it belonged to normal people, huh?” She opened a carton of orange juice and took a few gulps. Turned to him suddenly and tossed an arm around his neck, pulled him to her. She dribbled some orange juice into his mouth. Adam laughed and inadvertently spit some of it back.
“Sorry,” he said, still laughing as he wiped his mouth.
Alyssa’s mouth hung open in feigned offense as she bent over laughing, trying to be quiet. “You don’t like pulp?”
Shaking his head, he put his arms around her again. She put the carton back in the refrigerator and closed the door with her foot.
“I love pulp,” Adam said. “You just surprised me.” They kissed for a while, then Adam whispered, “Let’s go back in the living room. I hated 91/2 Weeks.”
They went to the sofa, lay face to face on its soft cushions and throws. Spoke in whispers, gently stroked each other’s faces, hair. Traded feather-soft kisses.
Adam vaguely observed that the kiss involved no physical trauma of any kind. No internal organs were jostled or damaged, and his spine went uninjured.
Alyssa seemed tense, as if anticipating something.
“Something wrong?” Adam asked.
“A little nervous, I guess. I know it’s stupid, but I keep thinking my parents are going to walk in here and catch us.”
“There’s nothing stupid about that. Nobody wants to get in trouble with their parents.”
“That’s not it, see, I wouldn’t get in trouble. If they come in here and find us naked and humping, they’ll probably tell us to enjoy ourselves. Or worse, sit down to chat.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Oh, no. They want me to do my own thing.”
“Fine, but do they have to watch?”
Alyssa laughed.
“Forget about them,” Adam said.
“I can’t forget about them. They’re my parents. God, I hate them.”
“Want to go somewhere else? Your bedroom?”
“No. It’s in the back of the house next to their room. I’m fine here. Very comfortable.” She smiled.
Adam reached up and turned off the lamp, plunged them into darkness again.
“That’s better,” Alyssa whispered.
They continued kissing and stroking as a siren wailed in the distance, approaching fast. Adam’s body stiffened, overwhelmed by the certainty that it was coming for him. He expected a few police cruisers to squeal to a stop in front of the house, lights throbbing and spinning. Officers would get out, aim their guns at the house as they squatted behind open car doors. The command through the bullhorn: “Adam Julian? You are surrounded! Take your tongue out of the girl’s mouth, and come out with your hands up!”
But there was only one siren, and it faded before it got close.
A car drove by outside with its stereo so loud, Adam could feel its beat in the wicker sofa. A horrible, vivid image flashed in his mind, crisp, real: Monty cruising the streets in his junky old Mustang, music loud. Body opened up by the contents of a shotgun shell, blood and bits of him smeared on the seat and steering wheel. Looking for Adam. Pissed off that Adam had left him on the floor of the liquor store in a puddle of his own fluids. Pissed off and looking to teach Adam a lesson.
“You’re shaking again,” Alyssa said.
“Oh, um, I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay? You’re not cold, are you?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Not afraid of me, are you?”
“Afraid of you? I’m very fond of you. I’m enamored of you. I’m crazy about you. But I’m not afraid of you, no.”
With a little more kissing, Adam’s mind was off his problems as much as it would be for the rest of the night.
A while later, Alyssa pulled her mouth from his and whispered, “So, when are we going to kill our parents and run away together?”
Adam immediately felt tense again. During the nightmare his night had been, he’d forgotten the little adventure he and Alyssa had whipped up. It tied a quick knot in his stomach. Just a fantasy, but it hit too close to home for Adam.
“Soon, and on the night of a full moon,” he said in his best Basil Rathbone. “Once we get rid of them, we’ll take my convertible and get out of this stupid city.”
“Yeah.”
“We can go, um...I don’t know, you want to go north? We could follow the coast up through Oregon and Washington. Take our time. Sleep on cold beaches, eat seafood in those weathered old cafes. Stuff that just came out of the ocean.”
“Yes!”
“Just wander. No destination. Nobody to barge in on us and chat while we’re making out.”
Alyssa did not laugh, as Adam had expected. Her breath was hot on his throat, coming faster than before.
“Will they catch us?” she breathed.
“Making out?”
“For killing our parents.”
“Oh, never.”
“And...when do we...start hunting down all those other shitty parents?”
“We could start doing that right away. Just deal with them as we find them. Travel the country helping people. Like Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk.”
“Yes.”
Everything changed at that moment, the air itself. Subtle but drastic, electric. They quickly undressed each other. Adam fell off the sofa and thunked onto the floor, landed on his coccyx. What should have been a harmless tumble was accompanied by
an exquisitely sharp pain in his seat. He grunted and cursed, got to his feet, pants and boxers around his ankles. “Shit, piss, and corruption,” he whispered, sitting gingerly on the edge of the sofa.
Alyssa laughed, then covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”
“My tailbone. I think it’s a goner.” He kicked off his pants and boxers, pulled off his socks. Alyssa smiled up at him. A shaft of cloud-soft light came through the two-inch gap between the drapes, fell across her bare breasts in a V-shape. Her breasts reminded him he had no condom. “Damn, I’ve gotta go out to the car,” he muttered, reaching for his pants. “I’ve got a condom in the glove—”
“No, no, c’mere,” she said, tugging on his arm.
They were all skin as they kissed, rubbed together. Adam’s first effort was clumsy, but on the second try, he slid inside her. They both made soft, high sounds in their throats. He opened his eyes, looked directly into hers. Alyssa looked back. Adam suddenly realized what made her so different from everyone else: eye contact.
No one in Los Angeles—not in the movie industry, anyway—made eye contact with anyone else for more than a heartbeat, maybe less. Afraid of revealing that their work and lives were deceptions, they averted their eyes. Afraid of seeing something genuine in someone else’s.
Eye contact meant Alyssa was being honest with him. He could trust her.
Later, they wiggled around on the sofa until they were in their original position. On their sides, facing each other, naked this time.
“This is going to sound stupid,” Alyssa whispered. “But that was...scary. You know? Intense.”
Adam nodded. “Yeah, it was. But it was a good kind of scary.”
“Yeah, not like a Stephen King kinda scary, or anything. We were...really inside each other, weren’t we? I mean, you were inside me, but I was inside you, too. Kind of. It was...well, it was kind of, um...”
“Hard to tell the difference?” Adam said.
“Yes! It...it’s like we were supposed to be together. Like it was our...well, y’know, our destiny.”
“You think?”
Alyssa laughed suddenly, slipped a hand between their faces and covered her mouth.
“What’s so funny?” Adam said.
“Oh, that just reminded me of something silly.” She laughed again. “Our Passionate Destiny,” she squeaked between laughs. “A stupid book I read once.”
“Who wrote it?”
“It was just a stupid romance novel. But the title came to mind, y’know? I read romances all through the seventh and eighth grades.”
“Well, even stupid romance novels don’t write themselves.”
“I think it was a Montgomery novel. Teresa Laree Montgomery. I read all of her—”
Adam interrupted her with a laugh that sounded more like a cough. “You’ve got to be—are you serious?”
“Uh-huh. Heard of her?”
“You reminded me of her the day we met, of something she wrote. A phrase from, let’s see, Passion’s Stormy Sea. ‘A mouth like a ripened fruit.’ Most of my life, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever read. I never knew what the hell it meant. Until I saw your mouth.”
Alyssa’s eyes grew large as he spoke. “That is so incredible, Adam. That...that is destiny.”
“Yes, it’s our passionate destiny.”
They laughed, kissed some more. Held each other close as they drifted to sleep.
* * *
“Good mooorning!”
Adam opened his eyes. Alyssa’s dad stood over them wearing a wine-colored caftan with a Nehru collar, smiling with all his teeth. He held a steaming mug with a teabag string dangling over the rim.
“Uuuhh, hi, Mr....Mr. um...” Adam momentarily lost Alyssa’s last name.
Alyssa jerked awake, stiffened against Adam. Made a small mewling sound as she pulled her head under the throw.
Adam cleared his throat and tried to round up some saliva. “I-I’m really sorry, Mr. um...Huffman! We didn’t, um, no...I didn’t mean to fall asleep here, really, I was just, um...I mean, we weren’t—”
“Hey, it’s cool, no problem at all, uh...Adam, was it?” He spoke quietly, smiled.
“Yeah.”
“You can go back to sleep if you want,” Mr. Huffman said. “But I wanted to let you know breakfast is ready if you’re hungry. Hot cereal, fresh fruit, and the muffins come out of the oven any second. If you want to come in and join us, that’s cool.” He nodded, started to walk away, then turned back. “By the way, Adam, I folded your clothes. They’re on that chair over there.” Another smile, and he was gone.
Adam propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at Alyssa. All he could see were her hair splayed all around her head and her eyes peering over the edge of the throw. “He folded my clothes?” Adam whispered.
Her eyes crinkled up and she laughed. “See, I told you,” she said.
Adam lay back down. “He didn’t even blink. I mean, he looked right at me, no violence in his eyes. And he folded my clothes. I think that’s illegal in some states.”
She tossed the throw away from her face. “We’re a very open family. When I come home late at night, they never ask me where I’ve been. But they always want to know where I’m coming from. And where I’m at. I’m supposed to think of them as equals.”
“Equals. Hm. If my dad told me we were equals I’d have to kill myself.”
She laughed as she sat up. Adam saw her in daylight for the first time. Pale, generous breasts. Ghostly blue veins mistily visible through translucent skin. A flat, smooth belly. The top of the patch of hair that made a V between her legs. Adam pushed her back down on the sofa and pressed his erection against her as he kissed and sucked her breasts.
“No, no, Adam, you’ve gotta go, really,” she whispered.
Her nipples hardened on his tongue. He did not want to leave.
She laughed and said, “So much for taking it slow, huh?”
“Muffins are ready!” Mr. Huffman called from the kitchen.
It was enough to wilt Adam’s normally heroic penis. Loaded guns could not deter his erection, but nearby parents rendered it lifeless. He knew it would quickly return if he stayed there next to Alyssa. He rolled off the sofa, hurried to the chair for his clothes.
“Are you hungry?” Alyssa asked as they both dressed. “I can grab you a muffin.”
“No, thanks.”
“Why do you look like you’re in such a hurry?”
“Because if I don’t go right now,” he whispered, “I’m just gonna stay here all day touching you, whether your parents are around or not.”
They walked to the door. Before opening it, Alyssa embraced him and whispered, “I’m so glad you came over. Last night was—” She was interrupted briefly by her own laughter. “It was pretty fucking amazing.”
“It was some pretty amazing fucking, too, wasn’t it?”
They agreed to get together later in the day. Alyssa told him to go before her mother, who was always naked in the morning, came out and offered him tea and a good-morning hug. Adam gave her a quick kiss and hurried out of the house.
He decided that, no matter what, he could not tell Alyssa anything. Not about Gwen or Rain, or what Rain wanted him to do. It could scare her away. He did not want to scare her away so soon after finding her.
PART 2
VIOLENCE
“I’m a student of violence because I’m a student of the human heart.”
—Sam Peckinpah, a director whose films are known for their violence
“For the same price, I can get an actor with two eyes.”
—Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures on auditioning Peter Falk
“What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that’s what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody.”
—Kirk Douglas
“People keep asking me, ‘What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?’ There is no evil. I just wear tight underwear.”
—Dennis Hopper
&nb
sp; SEVENTEEN
The news that morning reported that the twelve-year-old boy who had raped and killed his five-year-old neighbor in Canoga Park had not necessarily committed those acts in that particular order. Very brief mention was made of alleged evidence suggesting the boy apparently had been regularly molested by a man for years, possibly his stepfather, who had a record of sex crimes against children. But until that was followed up, it became immediately clear that the media would be taking up its torches and storming the usual castles: sex and violence in movies, television, popular music, and on the Internet.
A steady stream of commentary on the rape and murder came from psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and assorted members of the “Hollywood community.” Most visible from that last group likely would be Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Pictures Association of America, which rates movies. Whenever it was suggested in the media that violent children were influenced by violence in the movies, Valenti came to Hollywood’s defense. His mouth would start moving the instant he saw a camera and would not stop until he sounded like he was about to say something, which sometimes took as long as forty-five or fifty minutes.
Meanwhile, another group, made up of child psychologists, ministers, priests, rabbis, social workers, and parental experts stood or sat before television cameras all across the country and pontificated on the death of the nine-year-old boy in Canyon Country. Few of the story’s details had been released, so they discussed hypothetical reasons a father might have for forgetting he had locked his son up in a metal toolshed that morning. They could convince neither themselves nor each other with their speculations. Unable to come up with a reason to do otherwise, they reached the informal conclusion, in front of the cameras and microphones of the world, that the single father was a monster and did not deserve to live.
Two news helicopters collided early in the afternoon while following a high-speed chase over the intricate system of southern California freeways. There were no survivors in either chopper, but no one on the ground was injured.
