There were boos from the crowd. Hisses, too. Some of the hisses had begun as boos.
“What, you don’t think she’s hot?” said Fontana, bugged his
eyes in mock incredulity. Or maybe it was genuine incredulity. The man this hammered, it was splitting hairs.
“Wrap it up, Fontana!” somebody said.
“You’re a has-been!”
A Lazlovian hook veered through the lights.
“I’ll wrap it up when I’m good and ready,” said Fontana.
Maybe he would have, Catamounts, but we’ll never know because at that moment Fontana finally lost his cage match with the hootch, crumpled to the floor. Daddy Miner shot me a wild stare and I jogged over to retrieve the microphone, tamp its screech.
Fontana was having a peaceful snooze at my feet.
“Teabag!” somebody shouted.
“Hey,” I said into the microphone.
“Miner smokes poles!”
“Not like I do!” Ryan Barwood called. The more enlightened louts in the crowd started clapping. Ryan flashed me a thumbs-up.
“Are there any MCs in the house?” I said weakly, held the microphone out.
“You!”
“Come on, man!”
The room had hushed down. Somebody crushed a plastic cup. I was about to set the microphone on the stage, slink away, when I spotted Gary shoving his way over. He reached up, grabbed my collar, yanked me close. His grip was weak, his eyes watery. A few flakes of coke had caked in his nose.
“Step up,” he whispered. “Be a fucking hero.”
Gary careened off into the darkness of the hall and I was alone up there again. I looked off to the edge of the stage, saw Loretta and the other Jazz Lovelies. Loretta smiled.
“Ladies and gentleman,” I said. “My name is Lewis Miner. It seems it’s fallen to me to introduce the next and final act. But before I do—”
“Tell it, Teabag!”
“Pardon?”
“Tell it like it motherfucking is, motherfucker!”
“I’m telling it,” I said. “I’ve been trying to tell it all along. If they’d only let me have my say in the … I mean, does anyone even read
Catamount Notes?
I didn’t think so. Look, here’s the deal. Here’s my update. I didn’t pan out. Okay? I did not pan out. But what the hell does that mean, anyway? What’s success? What’s achievement? What’s wealth? What’s power? Is it anything besides climbing over the corpses of your fellow human fucking beings? And when you get there, then what? Everybody’s gunning for you. Look at Glen Menninger. Look at Mikey Saladin. Look at Stacy Ryson, Glave Wilkerson. They’ve got it all. But for how long? At what cost? Is it worth it?”
“Yes, it’s worth it!” somebody called.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe it’s worth it. I don’t know. I’ll never know. Look, I like to beat off. A lot. I eat shitty food. I’m a fat fuck. I used to tell myself it was because I couldn’t afford nonshitty food but it’s probably laziness. I mean how much is a head of lettuce? Or some asparagus? I drink too much, Catamounts. I lost my bride-to-be. I’m falling in love with another woman and I’ll probably lose her, too. I used to be bright for my age, but then I got older. These days when I read a book I can’t remember a word of it. But a bad line from a stupid movie sticks with me for weeks. Did I mention how much I beat off? My mom died. Everybody’s mom dies. Can you believe that shit? But that’s not even the worst of it. You know what the worst of it is, Catamounts. We all know what the worst of it is. But you know what? I’ll tell you what. I’m going to live my life, not die of it. Or, rather, I’ll live it until I die of it. I’ll always be Teabag. I know who I am. I was Teabag long before those bastards threw me down on the locker-room floor. I don’t blame them. It couldn’t be helped. Even Will Paulsen, beautiful, beautiful Will, even he couldn’t help it in the end. We live our lives wanting to love, to be loved. We are not loved. We sense the darkness just beyond. It’s a scary fucking darkness. Where is the light? There is no light. We lash out in the darkness.”
“What should we do, Teabag?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“You’ve got the microphone. Tell us what to do! Tell us what to be!”
“What to do?” I said. “You want to know what to do? What to be?”
“Yizza!”
“Huzza!”
“Booyah!”
“Well,” I said, “let’s start with what not to be. Don’t be an evildoer! Don’t be an evil can-doer! Conversely, don’t sit on your ass all day wondering why ‘cleave’ means two completely opposite things! I spent a month on this, and to no avail. Avoid fried or fatty narcotics. Make an effort. Volunteer in your community. Bathe the children in your neighborhood. Keep a dream journal. Send it to your congressman. Flood the legislature with dream journals. The government will have to respond to our unconscious desires. Keep it simple, simpleton. Buy your best friend flowers. Buy your lover a beer. Covet thy father. Covet thy neighbor’s father. Honor thy lover’s beer. Covet thy neighbor’s father’s wife’s sister. Take her to bingo night. But mostly it’s about the don‘ts, Catamounts. Don’t lie with beasts of the field, at least not without their consent. Don’t be a borrower nor a lenderbee. Don’t sweat the sweaty stuff. Don’t touch turtles without washing your hands afterward. Especially buck turtles. Don’t confuse the issue. Don’t duck the question. Don’t get preachy with the choir. Don’t chew more than you’ve bitten off. That part’s you. Don’t let anybody pack your luggage. Don’t mention anything, even in jest, at an airport. Don’t monger things. Don’t walk. Don’t walk under ladders. Don’t live near power lines. Don’t be born into difficult circumstances. Don’t inherit diseases. Don’t get all ‘Third World’ on me. Don’t struggle with depression. Don’t struggle to pay the bills. Don’t expect a goddamn handout from the very people who have worked so hard to hijack your opportunities. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to corner the market on
fish and be thankful for the small acts of philanthropy he may perform while depriving most of the world of fish. Have faith. Take stock. Take five. Never surrender. Live to fight another day. Better a dead dog than sleeping all the time. Don’t rob Peter to pay some other guy. Don’t judge people just because their beliefs teach them to despise you. You could easily be in the same position. Think about it. Now ask yourself. Now close your eyes and imagine. Now stop living in a dreamworld. Gravy boat, people! Do you understand? Don’t be with us. Don’t be against us. We are not of us. Don’t play the bounce. Don’t steer into the skid. Don’t let them see you shit your pants. Don’t fuck a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Yeah!”
“That’s right, Valley Kitties! Heed my words! Mark them, heed them! If you can’t do the crime, do the time. If you can’t stand the heat, burn down the kitchen! If you can’t say anything nice, you’re beginning to see the bigger picture.”
“Whoo-hoo!”
“We’re at a critical juncture in the history of our homeland, Valley Kitties. It’s now or never. It’s now
and
never. We must choose once and for all: police state or police state!”
“Wowza!”
“And another thing. What I said about turtles goes double for dead birds!”
“Bowza!”
“Alright already!” somebody called. “Bring on the dancers!”
“What?”
“The dancers!”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. We love you, Teabag.”
“Sort of!”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. The dancers. What the hell am I doing, not bringing on the dancers? Let them deliver us from darkness, at least for the duration of their routine. The dancers! Ladies and gentleman, alumni of Eastern Valley High School, I present to
you the astonishing and inimitable Loretta Moran and the Catamount Jazz Dancing Club, featuring Jasmine Herman and Brie Nachumi!”
Now the sirens started up again. An organ note, deep, sustained, filled the hall like some sonorous gas. Out from shadows floated the Jazz Lovelies, Loretta first, Brie and Jasmine hovering close behind. They assembled themselves with asymmetrical grandeur in a stark oval of light. Brie and Jasmine wore canary yellow bodysuits, feathered belts. Loretta stood between them in a purple leotard, her hair pulled back in a burnished bun severe enough it seemed a coat of lustrous paint.
The other Lovelies commenced a swift methodic rocking, tilted sideways from their hips. They seemed the matched functions of some multiform machine. Each time their torsos, shoulders, swung together, as though to pinion their leader in the vise of their pates, Loretta would plunge forward, down between her knees, clasp her wool-slung heels, her fingers bunching yarn for purchase.
Some cheered, bland and lewd, made high animal sounds, but seeing Loretta there in her limber majesty, the rhinestones in her leg warmers catching sweeps of light, put me in a holy state of mind. Loretta was our high priestess, almost sexless in her beauty, fulcrum of desires born not of scrotal ache. The other Lovelies looked a bit undone by their canary sheaths. They had humanity, wore winces. They were just trying to get through this. Perhaps somebody, a therapist, a therapeutic sister-in-law, had said this was something to be gotten through.
Not Loretta.
She seemed seized with dreamy perfection, a beloved ballerina making her adieu.
She would accept just enough love for the next farewell plié.
I thought I would puke from all the love I had left over.
“Go, Brie!” some doofus shouted.
I caught sight of Fontana waking, sitting up. He wore the look of
a man in sudden awe of the everyday, the sunset out his kitchen window, the lush slope of his yard, the fawn shitting pellets at the edge of it.
The organ paused, the deep note died. The hall fell silent and the dancers froze. Lit smoke billowed up from their feet. We were all of us frozen now, waiting, waiting. Here it came, Catamounts! Synths, saxophones, a heaving beat. Our awful ancient music! The Jazz Lovelies detonated themselves to it. A roar rose up and the dancers flew into their schemed deliriums, their steps loosely synchronized, so that for each pivot which flung a Lovely away from the thick, another reeled one back. They were a whirling panorama, a Möbius snarl. Now they were snakes, now eels, now flowers, soldiers, dolphins, cities, engines, curls of ocean, ribbons of steam, stalks of waving wheat. Whatever they were, Loretta was their lodestar, their queen, her light-flecked leg warmers slipping down her calves with the force of her slides, her splits, her dips, her huge antelope leaps.
They danced, and danced, and of a sudden came a shudder, a rip, an invisible wave concussing the crowd. I figured it for some natural buckling, us pitched by the power of our witness. Then I saw him, bushwhacking through the Togethering, carving a path with low sweeps of his mace. Catamounts parted, pressed in behind the barricades the buffet tables made. Brie and Jasmine were the last to flee, bared stricken, courage-sapped looks to their fellow Lovely, peeled off for the safety of the throng.
Loretta and Hollis stood alone. Or Hollis stood, mace up easy on his shoulder, evil’s yeoman, a farmer of skulls. Loretta, she kept dancing, the music killed now, Valley Kitties shouting, shoving. Yes, Loretta kept dancing, or kept herself in some version of motion, as though her life depended on her continuing to undulate, sway, enact some artful swoon, refuse the monster’s tinted gaze. Hollis watched until the room got quiet. He’d waited all night for his scene.
“You dumb fucking hag,” he said. “Look at you.”
Loretta did look, studied the curve of her arm, the arch of her foot, calm with craft.
“Go away,” said Loretta.
“You stupid fucking bitch,” said Hollis.
“Leave.”
“Let’s go then.”
“No. Just you, Hollis.”
“Just me? Okay. But first I’m going to kill you right here in front of all these people.”
“No, you won’t,” said Loretta, long fingers up like tongs, spread now for some luminous butterfly pose.
“Fucking A I won’t!” said Hollis. “Keep still and hear what I’m saying! I’ll crack your bitch skull you don’t come with me right now! You want that? You want our son should want that?”
“My son,” said Loretta.
“That’s not even funny.”
Loretta fell still, gathered up a stare.
“It’s not supposed to be funny.”
“You saggy stinkhole, I swear to God, I’m going to do you right here.”
“Do me, babycakes,” came a voice, liquid, silken, through the speakers. “Do me first, you big phony.”
Fontana strode out from the darkness, woozy, the microphone in his hand.
“What did you say?” said Hollis.
“You heard me,” said Fontana. “Everybody heard me. Everybody’s heard me all night. What do you think I’m saying?”
“You active,” said Hollis. “Get out of my face. I’ll do you, too.”
“Exactly, babylove. Except you’re missing the big picture. I’m saying do me first. You want to, quote unquote, do this kind, talented, beautiful lady because she won’t bend to your vile whims? I say unto you: do me the fuck first.”
“You better watch it, sport.”