by Ron Koertge
“Just Crystal. Amber’s totally vegan and thinks her body is a fucking temple. We’ll be there for, like, two minutes. Just enough time for me to drop off some guacamole. C’mon, Ben. I don’t want to go alone.”
“This is a bad idea, Colleen.”
“Excellent. I’ll be right over. Wear that sweater I like.”
Crystal and Amber’s new place is in a brand-new building about half a block from one of the light-rail stations. A banner announces, ONLY 8 LEFT!
The ground floor isn’t residential, though. All that’s upstairs. But there aren’t any street-level businesses yet, just big, empty spaces and FOR LEASE signs.
Colleen parks against the building, and I follow her up a curved ramp like we’re the most unlikely pair of animals boarding the ark. Everything is brand-new. I can smell the paint.
Colleen’s in a Bebe T-shirt cropped and ripped in all the right places, very short skirt, and precarious-looking shoes.
I ask, “Aren’t you cold?”
“It’s a party, right? These are my party clothes.” She leans in and kisses me. “Stop worrying. I just dress like a drug-addicted slut. I’m clean and sober, and I’m going to stay clean and sober.”
I tell her, “This is not a good idea.”
“So wait in the car. You’re not Lassie. You don’t have to go everywhere with me. I’m not going to fall in a well.”
“Take it easy. Since when do you know so much about Lassie?”
“In rehab they had all these warm and fuzzy DVDs. The whole Lassie platinum set: Lassie Come Home, Lassie Saves the School, Lassie Gets a PhD.”
Just then two girls come up the stairs and pass us, their heels clicking. “Hey, Colleen,” one of them says.
“Yeah, hi.” But she doesn’t turn around. She leans into me. “Baby, just ten minutes. Amber’s my friend, okay? I don’t want to just blow her off.”
I tell her, “Listen — if I was addicted to movies and they’d almost ruined my life, I wouldn’t be able to go to the mall, because there’d be a multiplex and I’d be tempted.”
She takes my face in both hands. “Movies have already ruined your life. Look what you’ve got for a girlfriend.”
Colleen has three or four ways of kissing me. This one is absolutely my drug of choice.
“All right,” I manage to say. “Just ten minutes.”
Then she barges in without knocking. Everybody looks up — a white kid in size 78 jeans; Amber and Crystal, in tank tops and low-slung pants; an older guy in velour sweats and what used to be called bling; a girl in a long, pretend-leather coat and big, clunky shoes; a blonde wearing earmuff-size headphones, dancing by herself in the corner; and Mr. Cool: hair slicked back like Michael Douglas in Wall Street, aviator shades, leather sport coat.
Ugly brown furniture with cigarette burns, but huge TVs — a giant plasma on the wall with ESPN on mute, and a smaller flat-screen sitting right beside its box, which hasn’t been opened so much as torn apart by something with rabies.
Colleen hugs Crystal like she hasn’t seen her in years. Then I get introduced: Mr. Velour is Randy, the ghetto-poseur is Jax (“with an x”), faux-leather coat is Dee, and Mr. Cool is Arthur.
Randy — who’s got a phone plastered to one ear — asks Colleen, “Who’s this guy again?”
“From school.”
“He looks like a narc.”
“Relax, Randy. Jesus.” She tugs at me. “Let’s take the tour.”
I stop a couple of yards away and say, “‘He looks like a narc’? We’re getting out of here.”
“I just want to tell Amber I saw the whole place and I love her new shower curtain with the fish on it.”
We go down a short hall, through a door with just a hole where the knob should be.
There are two dressers, three posters taped to the walls (half-naked girls wearing not much and holding foaming glasses of brew), and two beds. Neither one is exactly made, but one has a girl in it. She’s covered up with what looks like an electric blanket. I can see the naked prongs at one end. It’s not plugged into anything.
Colleen leans over her. “Hey, Luci. You okay?”
She’s groggy and has trouble focusing. “Leave me alone, okay? I’m behind a bunch of Valium. Randy gave me a tab of something weird. I just want to sleep.”
Colleen leads me into the hall, where she whispers, “Fuck.”
I ask, “Is she okay?”
“No, she’s not okay. I have to find Amber.”
I wander over to a card table loaded down with white bread, lunch meat, pale tomato slices, and a mustard jar with crust around the top. Jax cruises up, makes a huge sandwich, plops that on a paper plate decorated with clowns, then adds two brownies.
“Not hungry?” he asks.
“Listen, do you know that girl in the bedroom?”
“Luci? Oh, yeah. Luci knows what she’s doing. C’mon, let’s sit.”
We settle in front of the little TV. Arthur lounges right underneath the giant plasma, and Crystal brings him things. They must communicate by telepathy, because he never says a word. Compared to Randy, who shouts, “Unbelievable. You call me and tell me that? Me? Do you know who I am?”
Jax lowers his voice. His mustardy breath wafts over me.
“Remember when you were in high school and the cute guys got all the prime trim? Now it’s the heavy hitters with the designer pain relief. Take you, okay — you’re crippled and all, but if you were to, like, go into any club with, say, a zip of train wreck, those girls would be all over you. Those pole dancers, man, they can smell primo product from across the room. Like, Randy never has to be alone unless he wants to be. He’s got this grow house out in the boonies with tunnels and underground lights and guards from Thailand who are, like, blind but deadly with their hands or five-sided throwing stars. And he knows this lab in Mexico where some MIT genius Frankensteins some amazing shit. I smoked some once, and I’m, like, saving to go down there. Forget margaritas and señoritas.” He finally takes a breath, then leans closer. “But the thing is with Randy — don’t ever piss him off to the extent that he says he’s going to his car. He ever says he’s going to his car, get your ass out the back, because he’s supposed to have an AK in there.”
Just then Colleen comes and leans over the couch. “Sit tight, Ben. We’re not going anywhere until I’m sure Luci is okay.”
Jax watches her walk away. “Man, she could totally dance at the club if she wanted to. What a bangin’ bod she’s got.”
“I’ll tell her you said so. She might want to put that on her college application.”
“Wow, I didn’t know Colleen was going to college.”
Somebody drifts by and hands Jax a joint. One hit and he passes it toward me, but I wave it away.
“You sure? It’s good shit.”
“I’m cool.”
He holds the smoke in but talks, anyway, in a high-pitched falsetto. “You’re the dude with the thing on YouTube.”
“Yeah, High School Confidential. Part of it, anyway.”
He digs in a pocket and comes up with what has to be Beyond BlackBerry Supremo. His fingers dance across the keypad, and all of a sudden, there’s Oliver.
Jax watches, barely chewing, washing everything down with beer, eyeing the brownies when he isn’t looking at the little screen in his hand. Behind us, Randy yells, “What? What? A week ago you said two days.”
“Bro,” Jax says, tapping his phone, “this guy is gay.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that shit is sick. Why put that sick shit on YouTube? Little kids watch YouTube.”
That pretty much propels me onto my feet. I find Colleen and say, “We’re out of here.”
“I know. You’re right. I just want to get Luci on her feet.”
“I’ll be outside.”
It’s chilly on what I guess is the balcony, except it runs the length of the building. An outside hall, maybe. Anyway, I wish I’d worn a jacket. There’s a deli across the street with a table and a bi
g umbrella. Inside, all the lights are off except one. Under that, somebody is working on a computer. Working and not smoking dope.
I hear a door open. A woman holding a baby walks to the railing, talking on a cell phone. When she sees me, she turns her back.
Music leaks out of the apartment behind me. Hip-hop stuff. Thug life: get rich, go to jail, die.
A big black car stops right underneath me. I like the way the exhaust turns red when it curls past the taillights. I wish I had my camera.
Just then the door behind me opens and Colleen steps out. She shivers and leans into me. “What a fucking mistake this was,” she says.
“Is Luci okay?”
“I leave her alone for one minute, she does a line of coke, and now she wants to dance on the table.” She shudders and holds my arm with both hands. “What’s on at the Rialto?” she asks.
“Creature Features.”
“Let’s go, okay?”
Colleen drives slowly, one hand on the wheel, the other on me. Every block or so, she shakes her head and swears under her breath. “What was I thinking?” she finally says out loud.
And I know she’s not really looking for an answer.
We park across the street from the Rialto, next to the Blockbuster store, and wait till it’s safe to cross. When the light changes and we reach the other curb, she stops. “This is where we met,” she says.
“We met inside. We came out here afterward.”
“But this is where I threw up.”
“You threw up out the window of Grandma’s Cadillac.”
“It’s all so romantic. We should come here every year on our anniversary.”
We’ve missed Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man, but we’re in time for Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Mrs. Stenzgarden has gone home. Reginald, the manager, sells us tickets at the door and chants, “‘Not since the beginning of time has the world beheld a terror like this.’” Then he points to the poster where the Gill-Man cradles the lovely Kay.
“She’s scared of him, right?” asks Colleen.
“Oh, yeah,” Reginald says. “The monsters never get the girl.”
“Poor fuckers.” She nudges me. “Give me a couple of bucks, Ben. Since I don’t get to smoke about a pound of hash, I’ll settle for a Pepsi.”
Reginald watches her walk away. “She’s actually your girlfriend?” he asks.
“We met here,” I tell him.
“No way.”
“We’re going to name our first man-child Rialto.”
“Lucky you.”
I watch him watch Colleen. “How’s business?” I ask.
“Terrible. Too many DVDs, too much Netflix and movies on demand.”
Colleen comes back, links her arm through mine. We’re semi-alone. Reginald has to sell another latecomer a ticket. A few lost souls wander the shabby lobby.
She whispers, “That could be me on that bed at Amber’s place.”
“No, it couldn’t. You’re smarter than that.”
“I’m not. I’m reckless and stupid.” She kisses me like I’m about to leave for Afghanistan. “I’m going to call over there one more time, okay?” She points. “I’ll just be, you know, in my office.”
She glides toward the steps leading up to the balcony and sits down. While she talks, I peek inside. Thirty people, maybe, in the whole place. Some of them read. Most just stare at the huge screen, pristine and perfect as a field of snow.
Any minute now, that screen will be full of life. A beautiful girl, a handsome ichthyologist, a loathsome missing link with webbed hands and feet who can still fall in love.
Impulsively, I pull out my phone and call my mother. Who picks up.
“Mom? It’s Ben. Your son, yes. I’m just . . . Colleen and I are at . . . She’s here, but she’s . . . Wait, she was just talking to somebody, but now . . . Sure.”
Colleen whispers, “Amber took Luci home.”
“Good.” I hold the phone against my chest while I say, “She’s my mother, but she wants you.”
“Well, yeah,” Colleen says. “Who’d want to talk to a resentful little crippled urchin boy?”
“Since you put it that way.” I hand her the phone, and she takes a second to lean in and put her tongue in my ear, so that every drop of blood charges through my body.
“Delia,” I hear her say, “what’s happening in Azusa? I know it. Working just sucks. My feet are killing me, too.”
I look at those dangerous shoes of hers, that little skirt holding on to her hips for dear life.
Just then the lights go off, on, off, on. Reginald still treats this place like it was a real theater. The lights are to warn his patrons that intermission is over.
I push back the heavy, dusty curtains and let a couple of people file by me. I look at Colleen, who stands up. I hear her say, “We’ll talk tomorrow for sure, Delia, okay? I have to go now. The movie’s about to start.”
THE END
RON KOERTGE is the author of many celebrated novels, including Deadville, Strays, Margaux with an X, The Arizona Kid, Where the Kissing Never Stops, The Brimstone Journals, and Stoner & Spaz. He says, “My wife works with the learning disabled and the physically disabled. One night she came home and told me about a young man with C.P. — and a terrific sense of humor. Coincidentally, that day I talked to a former student of mine who’d recently been in rehab for substance abuse. What would happen, I wondered, if those two knew each other? Two months later — the first draft of Stoner & Spaz.” Ron Koertge lives in California.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2011 by Ron Koertge
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2011
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Koertge, Ronald.
Now playing : Stoner & Spaz II / Ron Koertge — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Stoner & Spaz.
Summary: High schooler Ben Bancroft, a budding filmmaker with cerebral palsy, struggles to understand his relationship with drug-addict Colleen while he explores a new friendship with A.J., who shares his obsession with movies and makes a good impression on Ben’s grandmother.
ISBN 978-0-7636-5081-0 (hardcover)
[1. Cerebral palsy — Fiction. 2. People with disabilities — Fiction. 3. Dating (Social customs) — Fiction. 4. Self-acceptance — Fiction. 5. Drug abuse — Fiction. 6. High schools — Fiction. 7. Schools — Fiction. 8. Video recordings — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K8187Now 2011
[Fic] — dc22 2010040151
ISBN 978-0-7636-5634-8 (electronic)
Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144
visit us at www.candlewick.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Copyright
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