The Portable Veblen (31 page)

He played his recording for the judges when his turn came. One was a long-haired man in a yellow sweatshirt, who said, “So you took the recorder like an interviewer and sat there?”

“No,” Paul said. “I had it mounted over the bucket. When I couldn’t be there I just let the tape run. Then I’d go back and listen.”

“And were you present when the recorder picked up these sounds?”

“Um, yes, I was,” Paul said, making sure to keep his story straight.

“You were there.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you see at the time?”

Paul stared into the middle distance, beholding a Saturnalia of snails. “They were crawling all over each other—it was chaos—I couldn’t tell which one was doing it. I mean, it’s not like one was standing up with its mouth open, like an opera singer.”

“I see,” said the man. He narrowed his eyes at Paul like an assassin. “May I hear that recording again, please?”

What a prick.

The other judges moved on, but this arbiter of pubescent efforts lingered and listened to the recording again. “One more time?” he said when the tape ended.

Was there some fatal flaw in the recording? Maybe the guy was a certified Foley artist and knew exactly how Styrofoam could scream.

“Very interesting,” said the man, and made some notes.

“I bet you’re going to win.”

“Me? Nah.”

“Yes! You’re in a league of your own.”

Millie’s parents came by next. Millie’s mother had a square, ruddy face, with platinum curls fitting tightly on her scalp like on a Roman bust. She wore a necklace of bulbous black pods, and the gold watch on her arm had dug a canal in the pattern of chain mail on her stout wrist. She had coral-colored lips that looked ready to lecture, and other parental units stopped to talk to her about their dogs and cats. Millie’s father was shorter than her mother, an affable-looking CPA with an air of inertia.

“Screaming snails!” he said. “That’s wild.”

Paul and Millie had been laughing and she said, “Mom? Has anyone ever taken a bug in to see you?”

Her mother ignored the question, preferring to continue her conversation about heartworm treatment with a sheltie owner.

“Mom?” Millie was laughing. “Mom!”

“What is it, Millie?”

“Has anyone every brought in a bug as a patient?”

“Don’t be silly. Reptiles. I had an elderly corn snake with pneumonia last month. Put her on antibiotics and she’s doing beautifully.”

Her mother began talking to another parent about a recovering boxer with a broken forearm.

“A snake’s not the same as a bug,” Paul said, sensing an opportunity to triangulate, which was his deeply ingrained habit in the presence of overwhelming favoritism for his brother.

“She’s so busy,” said Millie. “She works all day and gets calls all night.”

“My parents are supposed to be here,” Paul said.

“You live the other side of Wilson’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe they had a flat tire.”

“Figures.”

He abandoned his display at one point for the pay phone, dialed home, and left an irritable message on the crusty, seed-covered home machine.

Back inside, the awards ceremony was starting, but watching the door for his parents distracted him. Third place went to a guy in eleventh grade with “Tractor Factor,” measuring the rust on
farm equipment. Second place went to “Birds of a Feather” and a twelfth-grade girl who did a biodiversity study in a nearby valley. Millie looked at him expectantly and Paul cleared his throat, and then they announced the winner—Hans Borg, for “Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?”

Millie leaned over and whispered, like a geranium in his ear, “You were robbed.”

He left swiftly. Just as well his parents weren’t there. His ideas about going to medical school, recently nurtured by Mr. Gielow, were fragile within him, and anything that pointed to him being inept in the sciences he tried to keep strictly under wraps. This included car trouble. A man of science ought to be able to fix a simple car, but here was Betsy inert, the ignition switch coughing like an old bag saying her tea was cold. Cough. Cough. Goddamn it!

Yet surely the mighty of the earth experienced humiliation too. Probably even more, because they were always out there pushing on the front line! The mighty ignored it or kicked it squarely in the jaw. That’s what he had to learn. Not to cower like a scolded pup under a newspaper, but to bark, to back the master into a corner flashing his fangs!

From the driver’s seat, he saw Millie crossing with her father. They lived just across from the school.

“Guess what, my car won’t start,” he yelled out the window.

“Come use the phone at our house,” called Millie.

“Okay,” called Paul.

He ran to them gratefully.

Millie’s house confirmed everything he had believed about
her—nice and pretty and neat. Containing nothing to be ashamed of. No equipment for the handicapped. No Zig-Zag packages on the end tables. No grotesque lamp stands forged in the backyard. He phoned home and still there was no answer, and he left another message, saying the fair was over and the car was dead and would they call him at Millie’s.

Millie’s mom had gone back to the pet hospital. Millie’s dad, who worked from home, said, “We can drive you home, Paul.”

“Thanks, I’ll wait,” Paul said. “It’s a long way out there.”

“I’ll drive him!” said Millie, and the arrector pili in the area of his groin contracted mightily. “Please, Dad?”

Millie’s father had a faraway look in his eyes, as if judging this to be a meaningful rite of passage in his daughter’s life. He nodded, but then, as if remembering fatherly protocol, said, “But you know there are a lot of crazy people out there. You’ve got your illegals who do the picking, you’ve got your cartel members coming to make deals, you’ve got crazy nuts defending their property with AK-47s, you know the drill.”

“We won’t pick up anybody hitchhiking,” Millie said, as if that solved the problem.

“And maybe you could call me when you get there, before you turn around? So I know where you’re at?”

“Sure, Dad. Thanks!”

“Paul, how’s that road? Do you see a lot of crazies out there?”

Paul said, “I’ve never seen any guys with guns. I avoid the hitchhikers. They usually wait at this one spot, so I just go by and it’s fine.”

“All right, then. Have fun, you kids.” He started to root around
in his pile of tapes next to his desk. “Listen to this if you want. It’s really good.”

Suddenly Paul saw the cosmic trade-off. Hans Borg got the science fair, but he got time with Millie. The world stayed in balance. They climbed into her parents’ Jeep Wagoneer and drove off.

“Thanks,” Paul said. “Your dad’s nice.”

“Compared to my mom.”

Paul was shocked to learn there was a crack in the perfect surface of Millie’s life. “She doesn’t seem that bad.”

“You have no idea,” Millie said, emboldened. “Remember when she said ‘Don’t be silly’ when we asked about bugs? That’s her campaign against the world.
Don’t be silly
. She just wants to stifle everything.”

“I hate that,” Paul said.

“Me too.”

They drove up through the forested hills, along a creek lined with ferns. Paul rolled down his window and let the air go through his fingers. He realized the less he cared about the science fair, the less his failure tainted him. “I’m glad you see through Hans Borg,” Paul said. “He’s so full of himself.”

“You know who likes him?” said Millie. “Christine.” Christine was a chubby girl at school who drew on her hands and was the sister of younger twins who excluded her.

“Good,” Paul said. “I’m sure they’ll be very happy together.”

“Christine used to like
you,
” said Millie.

Paul pulled on his collar. “Really? What made her stop?”

“Oh, she knew someone else liked you.”

His cheeks burned, and he crumpled up a dollar in his pocket.

Millie said, “I love this song!” and turned it up,
“I’ll stop the world and melt with you,”
and they had all the windows down, drawing in the smells of the forests and the damp ground, and birdsong flitted in the windows as they passed. Paul felt as if he were in a film about a teenager who was about to lose his virginity.

“Want to hear a weird dream I had?” Millie said. “I was a dog. A Border collie, I think. And since I was a dog I was happy because I knew my mother was going to take care of me.”

“Whoa. Really symbolic!”

“I know. It almost sounds like I made it up, but I really dreamed it.”

“I dreamed once my brother was stabbing me, right in our living room, and that my parents just kept shellacking some cabinet they bought at a flea market.”

“Whoa! Your brother has MS, right?”

“No, it’s some kind of brain damage.”

“I’ve seen him in town and he looks nice.”

“He’s not that nice.”

“Once I dreamed that Gielow was showing us his formaldehyde jars and specimens and he said one of them was his nose but it actually looked like a penis. And he
had
a nose when he said it, so in the dream I knew he was lying.”

Paul laughed, aroused by her willingness to say the word
penis
.

“He liked yours much better than Hans’s,” she said.

“You think?”

“Definitely. When Hans did his in class, he was taking roll.”

“Mine could’ve been better,” Paul said.

“It was so original and risky. It was based on something undocumented.”

“True,” Paul said, feeling better about himself. A willingness to risk and be caught up short, that’s what he had, as nothing great was ever accomplished without mistakes and humiliation first.

“What’s the worst thing you’d do if you could be invisible?” he asked.

“Probably go into a bakery and take bites out of everything.”

“That’s all?”

“I don’t think I’d rob a bank or anything. It wouldn’t be satisfying to get rich that way.”

“I’d probably get on a plane and go somewhere as far from here as possible,” he said, starting to laugh. But she stuck out her lower lip in a flirtatious pout.

“For what?”

“Well, to start my clinic.”

“So it would be altruistic?”

“Yeah, ultimately.”

“My mom pretends she’s altruistic, but it’s an act. She’s so phony it makes me sick.”

He enjoyed Millie’s complaints about her mother, and felt a keen bond.

“Turn left,” Paul said when they reached a fork in the road.

“Turn up there at the big tree,” he said a little later.

“Is this your property now?”

“Yeah,” Paul said. “Just go around that grove, and we’re there.”

He went on high alert as they rolled past the trees into the clearing. He didn’t want her to linger and see Justin or the hippies. The van was still parked off to the side, as was his parents’ other car. Had they simply forgotten? He burned.

“Well,” said Millie.

“Thanks,” said Paul, starting to climb out. “I gotta get going so thanks and see you and—”

“But remember what my dad said, about calling?” Millie asked as she turned off the engine. “Besides, I want to see your snails.”

“Oh, yeah,” Paul said, wondering if that was a euphemism. “Sure.” He looked around, assessing the risks. “Okay.” He paused. “Some freaky friends of my parents are visiting, so don’t hold it against me.”

“God, around here?” said Millie. “I don’t care.”

Just then he heard a sound from the forest, and Hacky Sack John ran across the meadow, naked except for a Peruvian knit cap with llama silhouettes woven into it.

“I hate these people,” Paul muttered, and Millie laughed.

Walking up to the house, they encountered a circle of the guests lying on blankets, arms spread, staring up at the sky. “It’s a beak,” someone said.

“I see it,” said another.

“Quick, inside,” he whispered to Millie, but a voice harpooned him right through the neck.

“Pope Paul!” It was Cool Breeze, lifting his head and squinting.

“Yeah, hi,” said Paul, and he and Millie ran up the steps. Inside, he encountered a strong mix of odors: a stinking bong must’ve tipped, spreading its foul water into the carpet. In the kitchen, flies had lit on a feast around the sink, bowls with cookie dough clinging to the edges, cracked eggshells on the floor, a baking sheet sitting on the open door of the oven with one melted chocolate chip left on the edge. There were carrot tops, brown lettuce leaves, and a partly chopped onion, all over the counter, and the big vat of lentil soup from the night before was now encrusted on
the outside as well as in, and the ladle lay across the stovetop, crustiest of all. Three large flies threw their bodies at the window over the sink, as if hoping to break through the glass. The wall clock ticked loudly.

“This is gross. It’s not like this normally,” he insisted.

“Can I have something to drink?”

Paul tried to find clean glasses, but had to wash them, filling them with soapsuds, nearly scalding himself to make sure hers was sanitary enough. “Water? Juice?”

“Juice.”

Cider sat in a brown jug on the counter, the kind his parents made in the fall from their own apples. At least the lid had been screwed on.

“I want to see your room,” said Millie, taking a gulp.

“Don’t you need to call your father?”

“I’m not his flunky,” Millie said, licking the juice off her lips.

The cider was sweet and flavorful, and Paul could at least feel proud of their cider-making abilities. “Stay here. I want to see if my parents are upstairs.”

The farmhouse was a hundred years old, drafty and full of squeaks. He ran up the narrow wooden steps, but his parents’ room was vacant. Justin’s room was empty too. He stopped in the bathroom quickly, squirted some toothpaste into his mouth and spat it out, then brushed his hair and looked at himself in the mirror. Something about his eyes looked funny, kind of velvety and deep, his pupils black as trampolines. He wondered if Millie thought he was handsome, and approached the mirror with his face as if to deliver a kiss. This was a bad idea. He backed away and ran downstairs.

Millie stood at his bedroom door, peering in. Coming up behind her he was greeted by the sight of entwined naked bodies on his bed, then overpowered by the smell of sweat and the sound of slapping skin.