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Jayne Anne Phillips’s
Fast Lanes
“The author’s sympathy, her ability to imagine herself into the feelings of very different kinds of people, in no way lessens a precision that we are more used to finding at cooler temperatures.… The stories in Fast Lanes frequently hover on the edge of poetry.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“One of our most fascinating and gritty writers.… [Phillips’s] keenest asset is her ear, her ability to make art out of the desperate, nervous voices in the nether corners of America.”
—The Washington Post
“Phillips is first-rate at first-person narration. In Fast Lanes she adopts distinct voice after voice, and she’s equally adept at all of them.”
—USA Today
“Phillips weds a bittersweet, lyric prose style with stories that count on our hearts. Scenes from these stories will haunt me for a long time.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Judging from this collection, it seems as if there’s nothing Phillips can’t do … a tremendously talented writer working to the limit of her powers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Phillips has a gift.… She resists literary voices to discover real ones.… In the streets, the rooms, the truck cabs of her own time, Phillips fares well—in no small part because she hears well.”
—St. Louis Post Dispatch
“Phillips sustains her myriad voices until their words roll with the angry cadences of sex or music.… It’s a kind of dream surfing.… A writer of immense perception, her world view tarnished and yet undiminished by the fragmented reality she presents.”
—The Boston Globe
Jayne Anne Phillips
Fast Lanes
Jayne Anne Phillips was born and raised in West Virginia. She is the author of three novels and two collections of stories. She is the recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Bunting Institute fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in fiction. Her work has been translated into twelve languages.
Also by Jayne Anne Phillips
MotherKind
Shelter
Machine Dreams
Black Tickets
LIMITED EDITIONS
The Secret Country
How Mickey Made It
Counting Sweethearts
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MAY 2000
Copyright © 1987, 2000 by Jayne Anne Phillips
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States in different form by E. P. Dutton/Seymour Lawrence, New York, in 1987.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Comtemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Lyrics on this page from “Be My Baby” by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Phil Spector © 1963 (renewed 1991) Trio Music Company Inc., Universal/Songs of Polygram International Inc., and Bertha Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Lyrics on this page from “Blue Moon” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Copyright © 1934, (Copyright Renewed) by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. All rights controlled by EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.
These stories have been previously published in Esquire, Granta, Ploughshares, Rolling Stone, Gallimaufry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize IV. “How Mickey Made It” was first published as limited editions by Bookslinger Editions. “Fast Lanes” and “Counting” were first published as limited editions by Vehicle Editions. “Callie” was first published in Family (Pantheon Books).
Publisher’s Note: These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, Jayne Anne, 1952–
Fast lanes / Jayne Anne Phillips.
p. cm.
Enl. ed. containing 3 additional stories.
Contents: How Mickey made it—Rayme—Fast Lanes—Bluegill—Something that happened—Blue moon—Bess—Callie—Alma—Counting.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80883-7
1. West Virginia—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. 2. United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS 2566. H479 F37 2000
813′.54—dc21 99-057850
Author photograph © Marion Ettlinger
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
For Mark
The author wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Arts for support during the writing of this work.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
HOW MICKEY MADE IT
RAYME
FAST LANES
COUNTING
BLUEGILL
SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED
ALMA
BLUE MOON
CALLIE
BESS
Author’s Note
I have begun my freedom and it hurts.
—ALAN DUGAN
“Stability Before Departure,”
from Collected Poems
How Mickey Made It
This bed is wicked comfortable, I mean I sleep like a baby and don’t wanna wake up. I guess you OWN a bed like this when you’re twenty-eight huh (smile, tawny skin, fine sharp face) and this place is so CLEAN, nothin outa place but your head. Just kidding Darling, don’t get hot (lighting his cigarette, frowning over cupped hands). No I mean older women are fine with me, you’re fine with me really, a little awesome but I’ll call you Mom once in a while just to keep us in line (inhaling, looking up with smoke on his lips). But don’t pull any teen-ager numbers on me, that’s all in the past, remember I’m twenty now, that’s uh, TWEN-TEE—you remember, a week ago when you gave me that book of jokes, those cartoons? in the bar, handed it right over the counter with the little sketch inside of me in my nifty bartender’s coat & cardboard bow tie compliments of Savio’s, what? yeah, she remembers, signed it with love from your customer Happy birthday Mickey. Look just because we got a little boozed when you took me to lunch that next day, and you said I should call in sick so we could go to the beach, doesn’t mean you’re RESPONSIBLE for me. I mean if they fired me for that they were going to fire me anyway. I shoulda given them a better excuse but what the fuck it was a suckass job to begin with. I only had it the month I’ve been back from England, just bread till I get a band together. I’ve been fired plenty from everywhere without your help, so don’t get pent up about it. I’ll get another job tomorrow, don’t worry about Mickey (shakes his head, black curls cut short on top & long in the back, Galahad punk) I mean I haven’t been on my own since I was twelve for nothin, I can get BY you know—I’m a kid but I try real hard.
Ooh, that is intense. That is so intense … softer, a little softer, there. Oh, you feel good.… Relax, we’re OK, really, I’ll pull out.… Take it easy, I’m nowhere near coming—
Yeah for a while I was modeling downtown, what a racket that shit is—guys smearing makeup all over your face, three of them at once while you’re sitting in a chair (stands up out of bed, pulls on black denim p
ants, white undershirt) and some other guy is brushing your shoes then it’s Stand up Pull in Turn Stop Splat (flexing his long hard legs, goofing on a Marlboro smoker stance) HERE’S the smile you push GOT IT KID?? you better get it. You see I had this whole whatsis portfolio expensive shit and I walked right in and got the job and the others were pissed, really quite the pisser when they’d been licking ass for weeks to get in the office. But after it was all over—four weeks I did it—I burned the whole thing, the job the pictures the assholes, all of it, and I told that fag to get himself another boy. I mean, can you see it, some chumpy fag drooling over those pictures. Suit, swim-suit, towel around the neck, what bullshit, I never played tennis in my life. I’m a SINGER I don’t go for that commercial shit I’LL DO IT MYSELF THANK YOU, Thaaannk Yooooooo!!! Whoo! Jesus.
• • •
Doncha like to walk down the street with me, hmmm, doncha? Whoops, somethin tells me you’re not amused, not amused HEY well excuse me (dodging passersby with elaborate swoops and fast two-step skips) I’m part preppie, can’t help sliding through crowds, stay close now, we want everyone to know we’re TOGETHER and we’re RIGHT and we’re COOL, Yoo Hoo, Everyone, This is MY FRIEND, This Girl (pointing, taking off in a sleuth’s mince), Here, give HER the prize. Come, Darling. This way darling. And don’t drag your feet, I can’t AFFORD another pair of Candie’s this week … keeping you in french ticklers keeps food from my mouth as it is.… Sweetheart, your kicks are killing me, why can’t you be satisfied with that Malaysian dwarf I bought you? Ouch, OK, don’t kick the shins, need the shins, STAGEWORK you know, you gotta Stand Up to project, I got the message, I’ll shut up, we’ll just walk. HEY EVERYONE, we’re WALKING here, we’re just WALKING. Wow, I love the street. See this lady in front of us with her kid crawling under its own stroller? Hey, she loves the day she loves the kid she loves HER LIFE you can tell. Jesus, look at that face—they ought to lock her up before she walks in front of a truck—
OK here we are, take a good look, this is CHEAPO’S—Only place to buy records in this town. Darling? Sweetheart? Come back DARLING, Mickey’s gonna buy you some MUSIC, he’s gonna pay for his SUPPER, cut you off from that commercial dark ages Stones shit (dancing in doorway, bowing from the waist), Come IN now, don’t be shy, never too late for the good stuff, just don’t get LOST now that we’re on the BRINK (running down aisles in smooth reggae skip) OUH! (making faces, doing an imitation club-foot) I hurt myself, I’m SUING. Now you see that cute punky girl at the counter? She’s going to spin some tunes for us, hey, see? (lays out a dollar a record tip) here are the imports, the real stuff, there’s no real shit over here, it’s all happening in England like I told you. Now listen I’m gonna get her to play The Members, oh oh or hmmmm (sucking his finger, rolling his eyes) ahhh, The Spectator—this cut with the fabulous Moog that drifts off like balloons. You’re gonna LIKE IT, it’s gonna Change Your Life, you’ll be a rock ’n’ roll baby—You can’t take it in at first, it sounds bitter maybe but when you HEAR it you know what it is all at once … and that doesn’t mean you go out and buy yourself a string tie and put on some fashion pose, just means you KNOW what the real music is and you’ll go where you need to go to get it, like, look at these asshole album covers, you can SEE what shit they’re playing by the sparkly lights on their jeans and how they hold their fuckin streamline chromeline guitars like giant cocks—it’s sickening man and people buy this shit. You see these imports. One little rack of singles with penciled-in titles, but this shit is REAL this is REAL music and they don’t have to pretend it’s sex. Yeah, balls, the family jewels.
I don’t know I just never got along with my family, I mean they’re not my family really since I’m adopted but they are my family—and it was always weird man, I mean they told me I was adopted from the start but still, all those years it was like, uh, how come I got such dark skin and how come I just don’t really FEEL it for you. When I was fourteen they gave me the address of the adoption agency and I found out I’m half Comanche and half Spanish. I wrote four letters, four different letters man, and the agency sent me this long sheet of paper inscribed with the facts, but no names. I was born in Tucson, and my younger sister too, but she’s no blood relation. Only the oldest one, my older sister, is their own kid, and Jesus it was always obvious. I mean, who graduated from Barnard, who works for ecology and married a lawyer? Not Mickey, man. Mickey got boarded off at the age of twelve because he was a mean little kid and always in fights. NO, I ain’t gonna do it cause YOU say so man I mean who the fuck are YOU? And my younger sister, she’s a case, she’s fat, she sits all day in the easy chair and watches TV like a TV machine. Makes me sick—I tell her, I’ve told her, get off your butt, it’s plain you hate yourself. Not me man. I love Mickey. Who cares if THEY love Mickey—that’s why I said I’ve had it with this shit and I went to England when I was sixteen and lived with Nate. Nate, the kid I played basketball with at Wakefield High, after I came back from Correction School where I got CORRECTED Ha Ha. But Nate man, he was wonderful. England was really real, I grew up over there, I learned about rock ’n’ roll. We went out to the pubs and the bars and we had a band and I got into singing. There I was, sixteen and really alive while everybody back here from my old street was asking daddy for the car, oh please daddy can I? ah come on Dad, I wanna get my hand in someone’s pants in the backseat and have her home by 12:30 with her dress buttoned up right so her daddy don’t ask questions. What? Yeah, I was singing, SINGING, S-I-N-G-I-N-G and living with a nice twenty-nine-year-old lady who had a little half-black kid that called ME daddy. Yeah, you see? Quite the difference.
I went to England to stay with Nate and he was living with Clytie, she was going to marry him so he could stay in the country, but I don’t know, I just fell for her and Nate moved out with hard feelings but things settled and were cool in a few weeks—Clytie was so smart and hardheaded but crazy enough to put up with me, and had no real set on how anything should be—that’s what smart is, you know? She shared this two-family flat with her dad and he drove a lorry and picked up scrap to sell. I mean it was two separate flats but her dad was around a lot and she did his meals and he gave her dough. She had grown up with her mother and found her father right after she’d had her baby, this beautiful brown kid she called Feather though his name was really Frederick. Her dad was just a working-class stiff but Clytie could do that, show up after twenty-five years with a half-black baby and make her father love her, and he was cool about her boyfriends. Boyfriends moved in and out and it’s not true that kind of number always fucks kids up. Feather was happy, sunny cocoa face, about two and starting to talk. Nate and me took him to the club we worked, he watched while the group played. What a time that was. I’m sixteen and Escaped: school, family, house, and got what I want after all that time of bad-boy guilt trips. Nothin but YOU GOT NO FEELINGS FOR PEOPLE MICKEY, YR DAD AND I HAVE GIVEN YOU ALL WE CAN BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT DO YOU MICKEY and the day I got them to release me on my own recognizance from the state ward crap was the luckiest day of my life. I go to England and there’s Clytie, pale complexion and black hair cut real short, so she looks like a boy almost, except she’s nursing and has these round, heavy breasts. Nothing was dirty to Clytie, nothing was stained or fucked up. She showed me about the feeling of feeding a kid, that it pulled at her inside like a real faint coming and made her wet. Evenings she would be feeding Feather and I would lay down with them and fall asleep from the suckling sounds. I was out at night and she was out in the days sometimes, art-modeling, and I took care of the baby. He did, he called me daddy. Now, can you dig how that was for me? I mean, I knew a lot, I’d been OUT THERE a long time, but I didn’t know this good stuff, always before I only had glimpses, BAM, quick flash and close the shutter—ah, there, THAT’S REAL—but only for a minute, an hour maybe. I really pushed man, I pushed to get in where the juice was.
The women I’ve cared about are mostly good women, but I got no illusions about girls in general. You think women don’t use me
n for fucking? Bullshit, plenty of women have used me for sex, just want some big cock to bang their brains out, want you to walk around with them all dressed up because you got a nice hard ass in your pants, they got no feelings for you. Katrin, this other girl I know—the one I met in the bar before I met you, I told you about her—she’s not like that, she’s a nice little girl, punky and kind and shy under her red lipstick. She lives with her folks, that was her dad’s car I borrowed yesterday. Her family has plenty and Katrin wants to pay for an apartment for me, I mean she would still live at home but she would have a place to go at times, you know? What d’ya mean? She knows me, I’ve been honest with her, she knows how I feel about the jealous maniac number, no, Katrin is cool. Besides, I’ve got about eighty bucks left and none of the clubs around here are going to let me bartend right off. You got to work up through the ranks just like in a fucking bank—barback and bus and whatever else they want to rankle you with. If I have to spend my dough on just living, rent and that shit, I’ll never get enough money to split and do what I have to do. You think I’m wrong? How the fuck can you be me, how can you do that? You, with your life all peachy. Just let me be here, OK? let ME figure it out, I’m experienced.
My first real time was with a neighborhood girl the fall that I was twelve, I got into a lot of trouble over it. She had this big backyard with all these apple trees like a forest and we were back there in the trees, just innocent pushing against each other, feeling pretty loopy, like the first time you’re tipsy on booze. She was leaning against a tree and had pulled me against her and her dress was up between us. She had unzipped my pants and then suddenly everything fit, you know, sounds like a joke, I mean I wasn’t trying to fuck her, I didn’t know I could fuck anybody, but she was one of these girls who all of a sudden catches fire and then doesn’t know where she is. I mean there ARE such girls. Right then her mother has seen us from the house through the trees and starts SCREAMING the girl’s name across the yard, yelling with this hysterical warble in her voice, and I was sort of pulling the girl around the tree so the mother couldn’t see us when I slipped inside, really inside her, almost by accident. I will never forget it, I was amazed, she came, just in seconds, and I was watching her face the whole time. I didn’t know what coming was and for a long time after that I thought there was something wrong with me because I hadn’t felt the shaking SHE’D felt, with her eyes wide open but she wasn’t there. Real scary, like the sky cracking open. By the time her mother got from the second floor of the house and across the yard to us it was all over—it was the mother who had worked up a passion and she kept on with it for several days. You might say the whole mess contributed to my parents’ decision to get Mickey OUT, like once a dog has tasted blood he keeps on killing chickens. So they packed me off to where there were no chickens they’d know about—they gave up on me and made me a ward of the State. I was TWELVE man, with the whole puberty thing crashing around my head. I mean, CONFUSED? I was crazy, here was this totally heavy punishment when SHE was the one who had done that weird shaking. Had I done that to her, I mean I only just touched her in this softness and she exploded. And really the PACK HIM OFF gig was already in motion before that, I’d been in fights with some older boys and I’d done some petty stealing, but the actual change of residence came right on the heels of magic in the forest. Magic Mickey, what a laugh, it wasn’t any magic I knew about till it grabbed me. Later I did the grabbing I admit but back then I was just this hyper wild LITTLE BOY really, big for my age maybe but not that big. It was just this weird MYSTERY, all of them, all their reasons—Let’s do what’s BEST FOR MICKEY everybody and it felt like jail, like waking up in solitary. I mean it wasn’t like I loved my parents but I thought I was supposed to and they shoved me off man, they sent me off in the old lifeboat.
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