My Tiki Girl (15 page)

We play “Dead Aunt Mary” again. This time, Troy adds a guitar solo, and he has me do a solo, too, and while I’m playing Dahlia starts to do a low moan into the microphone, and it’s the saddest and sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. I play back to her, closing my eyes, imagining my notes and hers entwining, caressing each other, while Troy gives us a quiet strumming rhythm. Dahlia’s moan turns into a howl and the music builds, then she screams, “I’ve got a knife in my heart, a knife in my heart, a knife in my heart,” clutches her chest, and drops to the ground with the microphone.

“Some ending, Wainwright!” Troy says, a wide grin showing off his perfect teeth. “This is good. We are gonna be so hot. Truly.”

And Dahlia says, “Yeah, we are,” and just like that, Troy’s in the band.

“So do we have a name for this band or what?” Troy asks. Practice is over and we’re sitting on the couch eating chips and salsa.

“Don’t know yet,” Dahlia says. “Anyone got any ideas?” She looks right at me when she asks, like I’m the only one who matters. Having her and Albert together in the same room makes me painfully aware of just how stupid it was that I ever went out with him. I never felt anything even close to what I feel for Dahlia when I was with him. I was just going through the motions.

If I ever had any doubts, they’re gone now. I am in love with Dahlia Wainwright. Watching her here with Albert and Troy just makes the whole thing worse. Loving her actually kind of hurts.

“I’ve got an idea,” Troy says, jumping up. “Come on, we’ve gotta go to my room.”

We follow him upstairs, practically running through the living room, where we lose him around a corner. Without thinking, I lead the way through the front hall, up the stairs, and down a long, carpeted corridor and take Dahlia to the last door on the left.

She gives me a puzzled look and says, “Let me guess, you’ve been here before?”

I shrug.

“You’re just full of surprises, LaSamba, aren’t you?”

Troy’s bedroom hasn’t changed at all since last time I was here. It’s huge, with a set of weights and a bench in the corner, a stereo that would make any music lover drool, his own wide-screen TV, posters of Jimi Hendrix on the wall. There’s a massive oak desk that seems to be just a place to throw dirty clothes. Troy pushes some of these aside and pulls out his Magic 8 Ball, which Sukie gave him for his birthday two years ago. It’s just too weird to be here again like this, Dahlia by my side while Troy shakes the very same oracle that once told Sukie she and Troy were going to get married one day.

“Shout out a possible name,” Troy says.

Albert laughs. “Alternate Universe,” he says.

Maybe that’s where I am now
, I think.

Troy gives the ball a shake, then reads, “Very doubtful.”

Dahlia’s looking around, taking everything in, when all of a sudden her eyes get huge and pissed-off-looking. I follow her gaze. There, draped over the weight bench, is a rubber devil mask.

“You,” she says accusingly to Troy. “It was you guys who followed us last night in those dumb masks.”

Troy shrugs. “Just a couple devils out looking for a good time.”

“Kind of twisted, Farnham,” she says.

“No more twisted than killing poor innocent garden gnomes,” he says, reminding her of her own crime.

She turns away from him, pulls a cigarette out from her bag, and digs around in there for a lighter. She’s taking everything out and setting it on Troy’s unmade bed. Cigarettes, pens, lipstick, licorice allsorts, the little scissors. She pulls out one of her notebooks and gives it a shake, like a book of matches might be hiding in there. What falls out is a sheet of paper dolls: girls in grass skirts holding ukuleles, arms linked in a chain.

Troy leans over, holding out the silver bullet, which he flicks with his thumb, lighting her clove like the gentleman I know damn well he isn’t.

“The Paper Dolls,” I say, my eyes going back to the row of Tiki dolls Dahlia’s made.

“What?” Troy asks.

“A band name. The Paper Dolls.”

Dahlia’s eyes light up. “It’s perfect, Maggie! We’ll be The Paper Dolls!”

Troy gives the Magic 8 Ball a shake.

“Yes—definitely,” he reads, and it’s decided.

I’ve named our band.

14

“I’ve met the
String Man,” Jonah confesses in a whisper.

The boy wizard has been doing a weird thing lately: he comes home from school, dumps the books out of his knapsack, then grabs a dusty rejected can from the back of the cupboard—fava beans, mandarin orange slices, cheddar-bacon soup—something given to them when they pick up boxes at the food shelf in the basement of the Congregational church during times of true desperation. Once he’s got his can, he leaves the apartment and doesn’t come home until dark.

“Are you feeding animals or something?” Dahlia had asked the first afternoon he did it.

“Sort of,” he had said, shrugging his shoulders and escaping before she could question him further.

So today, after watching him drop a can of creamed corn and two Twinkies into his bag, Dahlia demanded to know what was going on and said she hoped for damn sure that Jonah wasn’t wasting Twinkies on raccoons.

“The String Man?” she says, narrowing her eyes like she doesn’t quite believe him.

Jonah shifts from foot to foot, fiddles with the straps of his knapsack.

“Honest,” he says. “And I was right, he
is
a wizard. I was scared of him at first, I thought he was crazy or something, but it turns out he’s smarter than anyone I know. And he
knows
things.”

“What kind of things?” Dahlia asks.

“All kinds. Like when it will rain. How to fix a bird’s broken wing. What makes engines work.”

“Take us to meet him,” Dahlia says.

“I can’t,” Jonah says, looking away.

“Why not?”

“I promised I wouldn’t bring anyone.”

“Well, you’re bringing us,” Dahlia informs him.

“But I promised,” Jonah whines.

“Well, if your String Man is so smart, he’ll understand you had no choice. Now come on.”

With this, Dahlia’s out the front door with Jonah right behind, begging her not to make him do this. When his pleading does no good, he runs ahead of us, walking quickly, pretending we’re not right behind him.

We follow Jonah through town, around parked cars, past the 5 & 10 store, where Thanksgiving decorations line the shelves in front of the window. The boy wizard never looks back, just marches onward through puddles left by this morning’s rain. He’s mad at his sister, you can tell.

Dahlia’s wearing this crazy gypsy dress with a thousand bright, shimmering colors like a peacock’s. She has an emerald-colored silk scarf tied on over her hair, completing the gypsy look. Everyone stops to stare at her as we move through town; she’s that dazzling.

Eventually, we slip through the fence to the railroad tracks behind Jonah’s school. Dahlia pulls out her pack of clove cigarettes. Then she produces Troy’s silver bullet lighter.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“Farnham gave it to me,” she says. “It’s pretty cool, huh?” She lights her cigarette, then drops the silver bullet back into her bag.

The sad truth is, Dahlia seems to think a lot of things about Troy are pretty cool. Like his car, for one. She used to call his vintage Trans Am an idiot muscle car, but now she accepts rides to and from school, which has every girl at Sutterville High talking, which seems to amuse the hell out of Dahlia.

Jonah is ahead of us, walking tightrope along the tracks.

“I still can’t believe it about you and Albert Finch,” Dahlia says.

“Like I’ve told you a million times, it’s no big deal,” I say. “We went out back in eighth grade.”

“So you hung out with Troy then?”

“Sometimes.”

“When Sukie was going out with him?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“So what, were you and Sukie, like, buddies?”

“Kind of.”

“You and Sukie Schwartz were friends?”

“Weird, huh?” I say. I try a casual little laugh, but it comes out nervous and idiotic.

“Yeah, LaSamba.” Dahlia’s not laughing. “It’s definitely weird. Why were you keeping it a secret? Were you two queer for each other or something?”

“No!” I say, a little too defensively maybe. “It wasn’t anything like that.”

But we sat in the closet and read those magazines. Sometimes we slept all curled up against each other. Did I have the hots for Sukie and not even know it? Is that even possible?

“Good,” Dahlia says. “She doesn’t seem like your type.”

I laugh. It sounds better this time. “What is my type?”

“Not Albert Finch, that’s for sure,” she says.

“Well, who then?”

My stomach is doing flips because I think maybe she’ll say it. Maybe she’ll open her mouth and say,
Me, LaSamba. I’m your type.
But she just smiles and drops the subject entirely.

“So, Jonah,” she calls, “does your String Man live there in the cave?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes he goes to his other home.”

“Does he have a job?”

“He does odd jobs. Mows lawns. Fixes stuff. That kind of thing.”

“What does he look like?”

“You’ll see. We’re almost there.”

“He’s not a pervert or anything, right?” Dahlia asks.

“Not at all. Just a little odd. You’ll like him. I promise.”

We walk the tracks past the soda factory—I never did ask my father about his office window. The sun is out, making it feel like fall, but the wind, when it comes, is a brisk reminder that winter isn’t all that far off. We follow Jonah all the way to the bridge, where we make our way down the steep, muddy path until we get to the stream, which is swollen and brown, rushing violently by.

In the clearing, we can see someone’s been here recently. The place is a mess with cigarette butts and beer cans. The muddy ground has dozens of footprints, all huge and smeary. We stand silently for a while, surveying the stream, the footprints, the rocky bank on the other side. The stream looks too swollen to cross, like we might be swept away. The stepping stones only show their very tips, which look slippery and unsafe. I doubt I’d make it across with my bum leg. I’m thinking the boy wizard might just have to levitate across when, all of a sudden, a man comes crashing down the hill across the stream and stops just on the other side. No, he’s not a man, but a boy—big, but awkward with his size, like his body is just an outfit he’s trying on, some Sunday clothes that itch behind the neck, the sleeves a little too short.

He’s wearing torn jeans, a flannel shirt, and dark brown leather boots with red laces. His hair is straight and sandy brown where it sticks out from under his black watch cap, and even from here I can see the dark purple scar that seems to divide his face in two.

Jonah shouts, “Hello!” across the stream. “It’s him,” he tells us excitedly. “It’s the String Man.”

“It’s Joey!” I say. My mystery man from Shop class is Jonah’s new best friend!

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Dahlia says. “
Joey
is the String Man?”

“You
know
him?” Jonah asks.

“He goes to our school,” Dahlia says.

“He’s in my Shop class,” I say.

“I . . . I told you—come alone!” Joey shouts over the roar of the stream as Jonah raises his hand in greeting.

“Hi, Joey!” Dahlia calls, waving. “So he talks after all,” she says to us.

“
Of course
he talks,” Jonah blurts out.

“Go-go-
go
a-way!” shouts the boy. He’s putting his hands over his face, trying to make us disappear the way a little kid might.

“But I have Twinkies!” Jonah says, sliding the knapsack off his back, pulling the snack cakes out to show the strange boy. “Come on, it’s just my sister and her friend. They wanted to meet you. They made me bring them.”

“Really,” Dahlia says. “We made him. It’s our fault he broke his promise. Now come on over here and have a Twinkie, will ya?”

Joey considers for a few seconds, then comes bounding sure-footedly across the rushing stream. Once he’s across, he looks all nervous and out of place. He goes and stands beside Jonah, who gives him a Twinkie. Joey just plays with it, crinkling the wrapper.

“This is my sister, Tiki, and her friend, LaSamba,” Jonah says.

Joey bows to Dahlia. He gives me a nod.

“Jesus, I didn’t think you even talked,” Dahlia says to him. “I’m totally tripping here. You live in that cave up there?”

Joey nods, studying the Twinkie.

“I want to take him home to meet Mom,” Jonah says, mostly to Dahlia.

“I don’t know, Zamboni . . .”

“Please, Tiki,” Jonah begs.

Dahlia looks over at me, like my opinion might matter.

“I think we should,” I tell her.

Joey is dancing around nervously, like a little kid who has to pee.

“Okay. Come have supper with us,” Dahlia says, touching Joey’s arm. He holds still and nods, as if Dahlia’s touch was all he needed to be calm. Then his face breaks into a broad smile, and I’m afraid it’s going to split in two along the dark raised scar. It’s hard to notice anything else about his face. It’s like the scar has taken over completely.