Authors: Christopher Ransom
Can the fucking talk show patter, Dad
. Memories of Julie floated up, a piece of evidence in his scattered defense.
‘Julie saw it,’ Noel said, backing away. John’s hand slid from his shoulder and a dazed expression came over him.
‘Saw what?’
‘It. She saw it happen.’ Noel felt a hot rush of vindication building within. ‘The day of the accident. When Lisa fell on
the stairs. It happened in Julie’s bedroom. I disappeared. There’s no other word for it. I was there, then I was gone, and
Julie saw it. I was talking to her and she couldn’t find me. It scared her. Scared her bad.’
John’s face reddened. ‘Is that right, Noel? Tell me, how does a fourteen-year-old kid disappear? Was it magic? How did you
do it?’
‘I don’t know how it works. But it fucking works.’
‘Can you do it now? Help me understand. Show me how you disappear, for Christ’s sake—’
‘Stop pretending you don’t know! It’s real! It’s the reason Mom lost her mind. It’s the reason you left us. It’s the reason
Lisa’s wearing a diaper and the reason I woke up in a hospital today. You arrogant asshole. Think
you know everything. You can’t see it, and so you don’t believe it. But whether you want it to be or not, it’s real, a separate
entity, a medical problem or disease as real as Lisa’s broken back.’
‘All right!’ John shouted. ‘Since you brought it up, fine. Let’s talk about that day. You let yourself into our home without
permission. You would have been welcome there anytime, but you had to break in and steal things that didn’t belong to you.
And then you got mixed up with Julie. You charmed her with this bad boy bullshit, and then you got cozy, and then minutes
before the accident you forced yourself on her. Forced yourself on Julie. Her words, Noel. “He tried to kiss me. He attacked
me. He grabbed me on the stairs and covered my face and blinded me!” That’s what she told me, her mother, and the police.
She allowed you to stay a few days and tried to be your friend, and what did you do? What did you do? You attacked my daughter—’
‘She wasn’t your daughter then,’ Noel said softly, cutting his father off. ‘But I was still your son.’
‘Splitting hairs,’ John said. ‘Those girls were my family as much as you are today. You know what you did, you ran away and
didn’t care who you stepped on, and it ruined an innocent woman’s life.’
‘I didn’t do anything, John,’ Noel said, seething with calm. ‘I can’t control it. It controls me.’
John stomped off, barking at the gray sky. ‘Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re talking about science fiction! Comic book
horseshit! You’re not Spiderman, Noel, and most kids know that by the time they turn
five. Please. I brought you here today to tell you about your mother. You’re a young man. You don’t have to live your life
like she did. But you have to be stronger. You have to choose which way to go. And if you don’t think there’s a choice to
be made, today, right goddamn now, you are worse off than she ever was.’
‘Yeah, Dad? And what’s my choice? What choice do I have?’
‘You can choose to believe in demons and magical powers that absolve you from responsibility, that take you away from the
real world with all its challenges and problems. And with it, your ability to lead a normal life, your sanity – gone. If you
go that way, you will forfeit everything in favor of a sick childish fantasy and it will ruin you, I promise it will.’
Oh, take me now, you stupid blink. Let’s show him the sick fantasy. Let’s surprise the ever-loving shit out of him and give
him a massive heart attack.
John continued on, trying to show him the light. ‘Or you can choose to face up to your mistakes and accept the damage your
mother has done. You can choose to be honest with yourself, get some therapy, work hard, earn a living, have lasting friendships,
and maybe one day make a family of your own. It’s not easy but it’s real. It’s real. You have more brains than me or your
mother. You can do anything you want. Anything, and I will help you if you let me. It’s your choice, but there’s only one
of these ways that allows you to find love, Noel. Only one that allows you to find peace inside that head of yours. Inside
your heart.’
Noel hated his father at this moment. Hated him for popping back into his life after leaving them alone for so many years.
For saying these things about his mother. Hated him for the possible truth in his words and what it meant for him.
‘What do you want?’ John said, quieter, wrung out. ‘You want to wind up in a hospital, drugged to the gills? Isn’t some life
better than that life? Don’t you want to have good things in your life? I don’t think you need a hospital. I think you are
stronger than she ever was and all you need to do is choose to be your own man. Hell, you’ve managed to get this far on your
own and that is admirable, but this is a wake-up call. No more, Noel. No more.’
Noel couldn’t respond. He was crying and he didn’t trust his voice. John came back and reached for him. Noel backed away and
John surprised him by lunging, stopping them both, clutching Noel tight against him.
‘No. Don’t hide. Let me help you. Please let me help.’
Noel resisted but his father was stronger. He gave up, wrapped his arms around John’s ribs. The skin along his left arm felt
tight, prickly and burning in fine lines.
‘I know you think I don’t understand,’ John said. ‘But I promise you I do.’
‘Okay,’ was all Noel could manage.
‘Okay?’
His father’s pleading, frightened tone broke the impasse.
‘I’ll get some help,’ Noel said. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’
They separated and looked at each other.
John cleared his throat. ‘Okay, then let’s get the hell out of here before we freeze our balls off. What do you say?’
They went a few steps, stamping the cold away, finding their legs again.
‘The Flash,’ Noel said.
‘Hm?’
‘Fuck Spiderman. I always wanted to be the Flash.’
John laughed.
In the warmth of the rental car, Noel’s thoughts returned to Julie. He hadn’t forced himself on her, he knew that. They had
shared something good, for a moment. There was always something good, for a moment, before the veil descended.
Noel hoped his father would be leaving soon, before something bad happened to him, too.
That evening, father and son dined at Boulder’s finest steakhouse, The Cork. The low, unassuming, adobe-type building was
located in North Boulder, its darkened interior lit with wall torches and a large gas fireplace, where men in sport coats
and women in cocktail dresses gathered for a classier, we’re-not-really-drunks version of happy hour. Cozy groups of four
or five tables were tucked into various rooms, with throne chairs of fine leather strapping. The dinner menu was no longer
inscribed on both faces of a large, dulled meat cleaver – as it had once been in the days when the place was still called
The Cork & Cleaver and featured a cow’s face on the sign out front – but many of the dishes Noel remembered from those very
rare special occasions during childhood were still on offer.
Attractive waitresses with pinned-up hair and masculine dress shirts tucked into dark skirts conspired with a wandering sommelier
who seemed to know half the patrons by name. He wormed his eyebrows and offered
Noel the wine list as if keen to sniff out a young man deserving of a drink and one more way to gouge the old man.
‘Have whatever you like,’ John said, jovial from all they had accomplished in one day. After delivering the heavy speech in
the park, John had spent the rest of the day cleaning Noel’s apartment and doing laundry while Noel napped.
Noel had woken around three, apologizing for not helping.
‘Don’t mention it,’ John had said. ‘How’s the arm?’
‘Stiff, hurts. But not too bad.’
Noel showered, holding his arm in a newspaper baggie outside of the spray, and then John took him shopping for a plethora
of household supplies – trash cans, toilet paper, cleaning products, shaving cream and a high-end razor with sleek disposable
heads, a pack of athletic socks, honest plaid boxer shorts, a new microwave oven and, what the hell, a new 32-inch Zenith
color television.
John unloaded everything while Noel sat at his kitchen island feeling like a child invalid, then wrote a check for $2000 and
told him to buy some good groceries, start eating better. Splurge on a girl, he said, and, not knowing what his father’s estimation
of his social situation might be, Noel wondered if the plea was to find a date or hire a prostitute.
‘You don’t have to do all this,’ Noel said. ‘I have my own money.’
‘Overdue,’ John said. ‘I still collect a pension from
Richardson’s, plus the stock. The chain went public two years ago. We’re in Brazil and Japan now.’
‘Awesome.’ Noel folded the check into his shirt pocket.
John strongly insinuated there would be more checks of this nature if Noel kept his doctor’s appointments and stayed out of
the emergency room. He made Noel promise to call every day. It was exhausting having a parent in his midst, but also comforting.
He was grudgingly surprised and a little hurt, then, when at dinner John informed him that he was booked on an eleven o’clock
flight that night. What if Noel hadn’t been able to come home from the hospital? What if he had been a drooling idiot who
couldn’t stop screaming?
‘May I suggest a heartbreaking Malbec,’ the sommelier said to Noel. ‘Drop-shipped this week from Luigi Bosca’s eighty-five
private reserve, with delicate notes of grass and anise. It pairs exquisitely with our famous teriyaki filet.’
‘That sounds rad,’ Noel said. ‘But a Coke sounds better.’
‘Low blood, low blood sugar,’ John said, and laughed a bit too heartily. ‘I’ll have the house red and some more butter to
go with these rolls.’
The sommelier nodded mournfully and left to plead his case at another table.
They ordered the teriyaki filets, pilaf, spring greens. Beside them, a girl of twelve was celebrating her birthday with her
parents and a slice of mud pie that stood at
least seven inches high and must have weighed two pounds.
‘Save room for one of those,’ John said.
Halfway through their meal, a stabbing pain lanced its way through Noel’s stomach and lower, into his bowels. He broke out
sweating and his arm tingled hotly. A dog-whistle ringing he knew no one else could hear bored into his ears. The gas fireplace
glowed at his face like a small sun. The room spun and he knew he was either going to throw up, shit himself or pass out.
‘Excuse me, Dad,’ he said, sliding back his chair.
‘Everything all right?’ John looked up, his steak knife sawing to a halt.
‘It’s great,’ Noel said. ‘Be right back.’
He hurried through a corridor of textured plaster walls and shoved the door open. He was disappointed to find the men’s room
occupied by a hand-towel and mint-dealing servant standing at the center of the back wall, facing the double-sink vanity layout.
The short, plump Hispanic man looked like an implant from the 1930s, with his lard-matted hair parted down the middle, a push-broom
mustache, placid unseeing eyes and a white towel draped over his left forearm in horizontal salute. He did not so much as
nod or blink as Noel careened past, locking himself in the far stall.
Noel fell against the wall, closing his eyes. It wasn’t a nature call. His entire body was trembling. The sweat on his face
and back had turned to ice. He placed his right hand over his tripping heart. What was this?
Nerves, exhaustion, a reaction to the stress of trying to present himself well in front of a man he hadn’t seen in a decade
and who happened to be his father. It would all be over soon, this day, this night. Then he could go home and sleep for twenty
hours. He concentrated on the restaurant sounds coming through the walls, clinking plates in the kitchen, the murmuring guests,
the lone peel of raucous laughter from the now-inebriated bar crowd.
The door banged open. The restaurant’s speakeasy din pierced the tiled room and just as quickly ceased as the door shut. Someone
else was in the bathroom now, and somehow Noel knew he had been followed.
Two or three footsteps moved slowly toward him, business heels clacking on the floor, and there was a judgmental intake of
breath:
tsk-tsk-tsk
… like somebody’s grandmother catching a child in the act of stealing a cookie. Noel didn’t know how he knew, but was sure
the admonishment was coming from the butler attendant with the towel draped over his arm.
‘Evening, Carlos,’ a man with a helium voice said. ‘How the patrons treating you tonight?’
Carlos, if that was the attendant’s name, did not answer. The crackle of a urine stream melting bar ice echoed off porcelain
and filled the room.
The interloper sighed. ‘Whattsa matter, hombre,
el gato
got your tongue?’
Noel raised the back of his head from the wall and opened his eyes, as if staring at the inside of the stall would allow him
to better hear the exchange.
A disgusted string of muted Spanish issued forth.
‘What was that?’ the high voice said, testy and daring. ‘Wha’d you say to me, you dirty little kumquat?’
‘Voy a chupar la polla por cincuenta centavos.’
Whatever this was, it earned a round of high-pitched laughter. ‘Is that right? Maybe I’ll suck
your
cock for fifty cents. How’d you like that, shortstack? Talk to Bobby about getting you a raise, but first you take care of
el chorizo
, eh?’
‘
Chenga a tu madre, bastardo
,’ Carlos hissed.
The urinal flushed. More slow footsteps crossing the room. A strained silence, followed by a single smack of flesh, very like
a palm slapping a cheek. Carlos grunted. The high-voiced man tittered, released another sigh of pleasure.
Then … nothing. A minute passed. No one spoke or moved.
Noel leaned down and peered under the stall. Carlos the bathroom attendant’s feet were in the same spot as when Noel entered,
and another pair of shoes – polished black and white spats draped with cuffed charcoal trousers – were standing nearly toe
to toe with them. What the hell were they doing? Kissing, he thought, until the whispering began.