I shrugged. “Well, shit, I want out of Lightsburg. I’ll always be the Shoemaker boy, here. And I’m not one of your peace-and-love never-comb-your-hair never-take-a-bath never-finish-a-sentence just be-be-be me-me-me free-free-free and love-me-’cause-I’m-so-mellow-groove-a-delic hippie freak types, anyway. A reliable paycheck with free bed and food, and a ticket out of town for good? And all they want me to do is char some babies? Well, all right then, a deal’s a deal, line up the cradles, hand me the flamethrower, and fetch me the barbecue sauce.”
Marti started laughing.
“God, that’s a relief, I wondered how far I’d have to go before you knew I was shitting you. Talk loud, I’ve got to clean the food prep counters now.”
“Thought you didn’t do the kitchen.”
“Food prep counters get two cleanings, me and Pete both. Keeps the burgers from getting cooties, or it drives away the evil spirits so they can’t possess the French fries, I forget which.”
I went back into the kitchen and Marti moved a burger and her coffee to the service countertop, keeping napkins under everything so as not to make a mess where I’d already cleaned.
“Hey,” I asked. “What was that super-personal question you were going to ask me, that I got away from with that dumb joke?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t ask you. It might piss you off.”
“I promise I won’t get pissed off,” I said, “or even if I do, I promise I will get over it and still be your friend.”
She gave me that great smile. “Back at the dance, just before the band started up again, I said something about getting to keep the friends I had made, and you said something kind of strange about how that was a problem. And you just looked so—sad. I thought I hit a raw spot. So I was wondering if maybe you’d tell me what the matter is? I mean I know it isn’t really any of my business, and you don’t have to, like if it’s too personal, but you really looked so sad, you know?”
I only thought for a second. Some people you just know are cool, from the first second you meet them. “Well, you know how Gratz called a bunch of us together after class—the Monday first-period therapy group?”
“It’s hard to forget.”
“Well, we’ve all kind of been like family with each other for ages. You know Paul Knauss, the super-skinny guy with the light brown fro? You danced with him—”
“I just knew his name was Paul.”
“Well, Paul started calling it the Madman Underground . . .” I filled Marti in on the basics. “It’s not all that cool, really, just kind of a club for weird kids that know each other’s sad stories. Anyway, Paul and me were playing together when we were too little to remember, our dads were friends forever, Paul’s my best friend . . . you know.” There was a sticky spot I had to rub extra hard. “I’m just—well, lately—well, just today, I don’t know why, but he’s definitely avoiding me.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah. I don’t have—”
Tires and brakes shrieked. Bobby Harris’s ancient cream-colored Ford Galaxie roared through the big rutted puddle out front, slapping brown muddy water all over the big windows. It made a sound like having your head in a bucket that someone whipped with a big wet towel. Harris fishtailed hard left and accelerated out of the lot, back onto Rolach Street.
By the wall clock, 11:30 on the dot.
Over the fading roar of the ancient engine and scream of bald tires, Marti said, “Shit, shit, shit,” looking down at where she had dropped her coffee onto her pants and the freshly mopped floor.
“Are you all right? You didn’t get burned?”
“No, the coffee was practically cold. Just startled and wet. Sorry about your floor. Would you mind if I rinsed my pants out in the women’s room? I’ll make sure it’s spotless when I’m done.”
“No problem. Sorry I didn’t think to warn you that that was gonna happen.”
“Thanks.” She went into the women’s room. I mopped up the spilled coffee, then rolled out the big trash receptacles and flipped them over into the Dumpster. If Harris and Tierden were going to make a second pass they did it within five minutes or so, so I allowed enough time before I got out my bucket, squeegee-stick, and hose, and cleaned the front windows. I hadn’t had to redo the windows in months.
It never occurred to Harris and Tierden that I had figured out their favorite trick. But then it also never occurred to them that no one liked them. Or that they were a pair of assmunches. They just weren’t real occurrable kind of guys.
As I was putting the bucket and the squeegee-stick away, Marti came out of the bathroom in wet pants, did a big mock salute, and said, “The bathroom is ready for inspection, sir.”
I looked inside and it was perfect.
“Who was the asshole?” she asked. “You sounded like he does it every night.”
“Assholes plural, or is that assholi? Harris and Tierden, those two creepy guys—”
“That call me the titless genius.”
“Yeah, them. They have a nasty nickname for every girl in the school. They’re petty and mean and hateful and if you listen to them for even one second, you’re
really
not a genius.”
She smiled again. It was so cool.
“What they are,” I explained, “is pure raw fuck-me-up-the-butt small-town dumbass dickweed loser assholes. I don’t like them, by the way. Anyway, they do that. That’s why I wash the windows last. They think I don’t know who does it; they’re always hinting to see if they can get me to complain about having my nice clean window splashed and having to work extra time. Besides, they’re so
proud
of figuring out how to splash a window—must’ve took ’em weeks. They pick on the Madman Underground when they can—we’re like their little wet dream of being able to hurt people who are better than they are, and get away with it.”
Marti made a face. “We had nasty guys who thought they were hot shit in genius school, but most of them were geniuses.”
“Well, these guys sure aren’t.”
“So are they going to hassle me all year, like they started to today?”
“Probably. They have minds like steel traps, get hold of an idea and never let it go even if it’s dead. But they won’t dare to hassle you too much. Last year we kind of took care of that.”
“Took care of that?”
“It’s another Madman Underground story. Maybe our finest hour, which is pathetic if you think about it. Last year their favorite target was Cheryl Taliaferro, you know, the cute social with the curly brown hair and the big, um—”
“She definitely has a big um. If her um got any bigger it would rip her sweater apart.” She saw my expression. “Sorry.”
“Well—the thing she’s in therapy for—you’ll hear all about it but she should be the one to decide to tell you—anyway, it makes her pretty sensitive about her body, and comments, and shit.
“Anyway, so for like weeks they were always saying gross things about her big boobs, whenever there wasn’t any teacher to hear.
“So there was this pep rally, where they had all the cheerleaders doing their cheerleader stuff. And Cheryl did this stunt where her legs were way apart in midair. So Harris yells ‘Nice shot!’ and Tierden shouts ‘Tuna!’ and Cheryl kind of stumbled coming out of it, and Tierden said something about her boobs bouncing, and that’s when Mrs. Emerson, who’s the cheerleading coach and the French teacher and is married to the vice principal, grabbed them both and marched them out of there, but of course Cheryl was already humiliated and it wasn’t going to make much difference that those guys were going to serve some detention time, shit, they have reserved parking slots on the bench in the office, you know?
“The next day they were making like it was a big joke and like everyone should think they were heroes for, I don’t know, putting Cheryl in her place, or standing up to the forces of busty cheerleaderism. Anyway, trust me, none of it was funny.”
“Oh, I trust you that none of it was funny.”
“So we were lucky. That Monday the therapist, Vic Marston, was a little late, and we got to have a conversation.”
9
“Don’t Be an Asshole,” Explained in Easy-to-Understand Terms
FOR EACH THERAPY meeting, Marston always wrote up an agenda on a whiteboard. When I got there that Monday morning, everybody but Cheryl was already there, and Marston was off loading up his big coffee cup.
Number one on the whiteboard was CHERYL, BULLIES, BODY ISSUES.
Everyone was quiet—we often were. I mean, Monday morning, not a lot of small talk subjects, how would you launch a conversation?
So, how’s the medication working out?
Hey, too bad your mom got arrested again.
Hey, aren’t the new sheets on the Salvation Army bunks great?
Today, though, we were even quieter.
One thing I hated about Marston, he had
no
sense that sometimes you just
need
to skip a fucking subject. He was like always trying to be a movie shrink, get right to whatever the matter is, nail us to the wall, make us say the bad thing in our lives, like that would instantly make us all better and totally grateful and we’d write our life story for
Reader’s Digest
and he’d be able to get a real job.
So he was on us all the time, telling me that my money was a defense, or Paul that he had to accept being gay, or riding Darla about drugs. For a guy who didn’t believe in stress he sure liked to push and push and push, you know?
So: #1. CHERYL, BULLIES, BODY ISSUES.
He’d push her about how she didn’t trust boys, how she didn’t set boundaries, shit that had nothing to do with Harris and Tierden. Somehow it was all going to be her fault, because Marston liked to make girls feel weird about sex. Probably that was why he went to shrink school in the first place.
I don’t know what anybody but me and Paul was thinking, but him and me were pretty much sitting there feeling sick and not knowing what to do.
Cheryl came in, and she was wearing her cream-colored silk blouse and her black cutaway jacket and slit skirt with big clunky shoes, which she called her “cheer-up suit” because she felt pretty in it and wore it to make herself feel better.
She took one look at that on the board and just
ran
right out the door, into Vic Marston, coming in. His coffee splashed all over her, ruining her favorite clothes.
She started yelling and crying, and he was trying to be all shrink with her out in the hallway where anyone could see.
The rest of us had to hear all of it because that room had just one exit.
Finally Marston said he’d give her a ride home so she could change and try to save her blouse, and came in and told us we could go back to class, or just sit and talk, as long as we
all
did one or the other. Then he left with Cheryl, who was keening like her puppy got run over.
As soon as he was gone, Darla pulled out Mr. Babbitt and said, “What’s that, Mr. Babbitt? Why, you’re right. It’s a pity we don’t have a gallon of vodka here, so we could all get drunkies as drunkies can be, and then go back to our classies and tell the teachers that good old Doctor Vic gave us the vodka. We could even say he told us to keep quiet while he went home to help Cheryl take her blouse off. Wouldn’t that be just the mostest specialest funsies, Mr. Babbitt? Oh, you’re right, you naughty bunny, it would!”
I couldn’t have laughed any harder if we’d been taking turns writing “I want you to know I’m concerned about you,” Marston’s favorite phrase, on Marston’s dick with a wood-burning pen.
After we got done gasping for air, Danny said, “Well, personally, I agree with the rabbit. I’d do it even though I don’t drink, just to get rid of Marston. Fuck, yeah.”
Darla covered the rabbit’s ears. “Why, Mr. Babbitt, don’t faint, Danny said
fuck
.”
“Danny does, when he’s
really
pissed off,” Squid observed.
“Yeah.
Fuck
yeah.”
Two fucks out of Danny in less than a minute. Definitely a red-letter day.
Squid looked around at us. “You think anybody’s gonna fucking do anything about it that will make Harris and Tierden stop hurting Cheryl?”
Paul said, very quietly, “Not unless we do it.”
Squid nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
Bonny was nodding, too. “Marston and Emerson and all them are either going to be all concerned about the de
velop
-ment of those poor misguided boys, or they’re going to want Cheryl to express her feelings. Either way Harris and Tierden get all the attention they want. There might be seminars and mandatory meetings and all that shit till doomsday, but those assholes won’t feel a bit of fear or pain about this.”
“Unless we make them,” I said.
“Well,” Darla said, “anybody doing anything tonight, say eight? It’s always dead on Mondays at Pongo’s but I work till closing.”
“Might have to park Junie in the corner with a coloring book,” Squid said, “and it’s kind of a long walk, but I can be there.”
“I’ll give you a ride,” Danny said.
“Bring Tony, come early, and I’ll buy all of you dinner, ” I said.
“Split it with you, Karl,” Bonny said. “We want you there, Squid. This is important, and you’re essential.”
Squid slammed his fist into his palm. “Deal.”
“Then Pongo’s, tonight, eight P.M., where the elite meet to be indiscreet,” Darla said. She got up and held up her silly rabbit. “Wave bye-bye to our friendsies, Mr. Babbitt, and think naughty bunny thoughts all day.”
The teachers must have thought therapy was working great, because we were all back in our classes fifteen minutes into the period, and all of us were in a real good mood all day long.
Three days later Paul and me were shooting pool with Danny and Squid at New Life, which was supposed to be a “coffeehouse” but was actually just a storefront fixed up with a couple pool tables, foosball, Ping-Pong, and some board games. There were a few tables and a little soft drink counter. Some of the churches here in town fixed it up for us youths, I guess to keep us from stealing hub-caps and making zip guns. Anyway, it was somewhere you could be for free with some stuff to do. When us Madmen were in junior high, it was our refuge a lot of times.