Vernon God Little (19 page)

'You all right?' asks an ole lady, approaching down the aisle. I must be gasping like a fish or something. She brings her hand to my face, and I meet with it like it was the hand of God.

'I'll be okay,' I say through a curtain of spit. She withdraws her hand, but my face follows it, without instructions from me, aching for another touch.

'I'm so sorry you have troubles. I'm right over here - if you need some company, I'm right over here.' She pulls herself back to her seat.

An angel from heaven, that ole lady, but I can't feel a thing except pain and darkness, the darkness of purgatory. I bury my face in my hands, and sit shaking with hurt, praying for some kind of hopeful distraction. Then, I swear on my daddy's grave, Muzak starts to play in the bus. Just a welling violin note at first.

Sailing, take me away …

It's light when we roll into San Antone, but too early to be busy. I'm as hungry as a loose dog.

My eyes are still gritty with salt. I skulk around the terminal restroom until eight o'clock, then I go to the phones to call Taylor Figueroa's folks. I just feel empty, drained of my life juices. The current logic is this: if I can get Taylor's number, and take the first step into my dream, it'll boost me up, maybe even enough to call home and explain things. If I don't get Taylor's number, then I'll have so little left to lose that I'll call home anyway, because I won't care about being boosted up.

I punch in the number. A thought comes as I do it, that maybe my ole lady became best friends with the Figueroas overnight, and is over there drinking coffee, or bawling, more likely. You know how Martirio is. It's shit, because my ole lady never went to the Figueroas' in her life. But you know how Martirio is. The number rings.

Teaches,' Taylor's mom answers in a cool, deep voice.

'Mrs Figueroa? This is a friend of Taylor's - I lost her number and wondered how I could get in touch.'

'Who's speaking?'

'Uh - just an ole school buddy, like, from school.'

'Yes, but who?'

'Oh, it's - Danny Naylor here, excuse me.' Big fucken mistake. Her voice immediately gets all relaxed and intimate.

'Well hi, Dan, I didn't recognize you at all - how's life treating you up at A&M?'

'Oh, great, great, I'm loving it, actually.'

'I saw your mom at the New Life market the other day, and she tells me you're coming down for the bluebonnet cookout.'

'Oh, sure - you know me.' Sweat runs down my fucken back, my vision gets metallic, like I just downed forty cups of coffee.

'Hooray,' she says. 'I'll be seeing your mom at the committee meeting tomorrow, I'll let her know you called, and that you're fine.'

'Oh, great, thanks a lot.'

'And I just know Tay'll be pleased to hear from you - hold on, I'll get you her number.'

Now there's a fucken thing. 'I just know Tay'll be pleased?' I get a sudden twist of the knife over that. Typical of asshole Naylor to horn in on my thing. Like, he only ever had one good joke in his whole school career. It makes me want to go, 'Yeah, I'll just update her on my genital cancer,' or something. Fucken Naylor, boy.

'Here it is Dan, she's still down at UT Houston - I know she has a lunch date, so you'll catch her then, if not right now.'

I list the number under 'T', and under 'F, in case I get amnesia, then I write it across the cover of the address book as well. 'Thanks Mrs Figueroa - you take care now, and give my love to Mom.'

'Sure, Dan - see you at the cookout.'

I hang up the phone, shaking my head from the dumbness of it all. You can picture Danny arriving at the cookout and going, 'What fucken call?' Or everybody finding out he died in a line-dancing accident a week ago, or something. I just take the fucken cake, boy. I mean, there must be some highly twisted gangstas out there, really hard cases and all, but I bet they never got involved in a dorky piece of slime in their lives. Like, I bet ole Adult Hitler, a nasty piece of action, never had anyone looking out for him at the cookout because he called pretending to be Danny Fucken Naylor.

Having Taylor's number makes me look like I've got Attention Defecit Disorder, or whichever one it is where you freeze on the spot, or do mime acts or whatever. I devise a facial expression to cover it, frowning like I'm calculating Pi to eight billion decimal places. Underneath my new expression, I run all the thoughts that would've made me look stupid. Like the thought that my ole lady will be up by now. Probably being fucken defibrillated already, or whatever it is when the paramedics yell 'Clear!' I shuffle to the terminal doors, where a bus schedule is displayed. Buses leave regularly to Houston, which means I have plenty of time to call my ole lady. And buses from Houston leave regularly to Brownsville and McAllen, down by the Mexican border. I'm tempted to buy two tickets to the border, and just present one to Taylor, like a wedding ring or something. But my brain says no, don't even buy one yet. Chill for a second. Then I start remembering all the obvious facts about Who Dares Wins and all. Like, maybe the fact I don't take a ticket means I won't get her to come. I end up frozen at the fucken door, re-calculating Pi.

Say, for instance, two guys want to drag Taylor Figueroa to Mexico right away. One brings her roses, and says he has this plan to go to Mexico, and would she like to come along. The other dude turns up with a quart of tequila, a joint, and two tickets to the border. He doesn't show her the tickets right away, but says, 'I have hours to live - help me kill the pain.' He gets her wasted in three minutes flat, sucks her tonsils out of her throat, then pulls out the tickets and says, 'Ten minutes till the cops arrive and take you in as an accessory - let's jam.' Which one does she go with? You know the fucken answer, I don't have to tell you. And let me say, it ain't all on account of one being nice, and one being a slime-ball. It's because one of them knew she would come. As Americans, we know this to be true.

We invented fucken assertiveness, for chrissakes. But in amongst all the books and tapes, in between that whole assertiveness industry - and I don't mean how to fast-talk people, and increase sales and shit, like, that's a whole other industry on its own, I mean in the industry where you end up knowing like day is day that something's going to happen for you - you never once hear how to actually fucken do it.

Like, for my money, just thinking positive doesn't cut the ice at all. I've been thinking positive all year, and fucken look at me now. My ole lady thinks a new refrigerator will turn up on her doorstep, but you ain't seen the fucker yet.

I limp back to the phones. I ain't sure Taylor will come along. In fact, if I'm really honest, I guess I feel she won't. She has a lunch date, and her life is all separate, and full of sunny-smelling skin and panty lace. I just have grisly fucken reality, uninvited, with its smell of escalator motors and blood, and whirrs and beeps that suck away your shine. Dreams are so damn perfect, but reality just always tugs the other way. The fact that our two lives will rub together for the time it takes to say hello doesn't automatically mean sparks will fly. The best you can probably expect is that her peachy-lace life gets smeared with booger-slime. It's enough to make you bawl. Specially because now I'm in the wrong frame of mind for it to happen. There's the learning, O Partner: that you're cursed when you realize true things, because then you can't act with the full confidence of dumbness anymore.

In the end I just piss myself off. I pack up my goddam philosophical activity set, and pull a quarter from my pocket. I toss it. It comes down heads, which means call her in Houston immediately. I pick up the phone, and punch in her number.

fifteen

'Hello?' The voice is liquid ass in panty elastic.

Taylor, hi - it's Vern.'

'Wait up, I'll get her,' says a girl. 'Tay! Taylor - it's Vern.'

'Who?' calls a voice in the background.

Then you hear giggles. I fucken hate that. Your chances with a girl fall sharply in the vicinity of giggles. Learning: never try to deal with more than one girl at a time.

She finally clatters onto the line. 'Tayla.'

'Uh - hi, it's Vern.'

'Vern?'

'Vern Little - remember me?'

'Vern Little? Like, gee …' As she speaks, you hear the other girl in quiet hysterics nearby.

'You might've seen me on the news, Vernon Gregory Little - from Martirio?'

'Like, I'm real sorry - I heard about the massacre and all, but I usually only, like, watch cable, you know?'

'Anal Intruder Channel,' squeals the other girl.

'Fuck off, Chrissie, God.'

'Uh - well, I'm the messy-haired dude, from outside the senior party that time - I kept back some stuff of yours …'

'Oh hey, Vern. I'm sorry - you took care of me that night, like, boy, did I overdo it or what!'

'Hell, no big deal,' I say. In the background you hear her kick the other girl out of the room.

Pause for giggles while she does it.

'Well it was really, like - anything could've happened to me, you know?' I push some spit around my mouth, imagine some things that could've happened to her. 'So how'd you get my number?'

she asks.

'It's a long story - thing is, I'm coming over to Houston, I thought maybe we could grab a coffee or something.'

'Gee, Vern, I'm like, wow, you know? Maybe next time?'

'But, what about lunchtime, or something?'

'See, my cousin's coming over, and it's just like, whatever, a girl thing, you know? Anyway, it's real sweet of you to call …'

She utters the winding-up words, just like that. Then comes an awkward gap as she waits for the corresponding ending from me. A spike of horror makes me gamble.

'Taylor, listen - I just got out of jail, I'm on the run. I wanted to tell you some stuff before I disappear, you know?'

'Holy shit, like - what happened?

'I can't really talk on the phone.'

'God, but you seemed like, wow, you know, such a quiet guy.'

'Maybe not so quiet, as it turns out. Not so damn quiet anymore.'

'God, but you're only, like - fourteen, no?'

'Uh, seventeen actually, now, these days. So yeah, I guess I must've just snapped, against the injustice and all.'

'Oh my God . . .'

I stand at the phones, flick my eyes around the terminal, and wait for the bait to drop. I wait in the name of all the conclusive knowledge, collected throughout the history of the world, that says girls just can't resist bad boys. You know it, I know it. Everybody knows it, even if you ain't allowed to say it anymore.

'Vern, maybe I could, like - whatever, you know? I mean it's like, God. D'you know the Galleria in Houston?'

'Not a whole lot.'

'See, I have to be at Victoria's Secret around two - I could, like, catch you out front, on Westheimer or whatever.'

'Victoria's Secret?' I trample my tongue.

She giggles. 'I know, it's so embarrassing - I'm supposed to be, like, underwear shopping, I can't believe I just invited you.'

'I'll wear shades.'

'Whatever,' she says, laughing. 'Are you, like - in a car?'

'I'll take a cab.'

'Whatever, look - there's like this inflatable octopus out front of the Galleria, some kind of promotion - I'll keep an eye out around quarter of two.'

See how things work? First I'm like a skidmark on her mouthpiece, and she wants to wind up the call. But see what happens now I'm in trouble. See the awesome power of trouble. Trouble fucken rocks.

The Houston bus costs twenty-two bucks. I'm hungry, but I only have forty-four bucks fifty left.

Getting both of us to Mexico will cost more than that. When my bus pulls into Houston, just before one o'clock, I head to the phones and look up 'Cash' in the yellow pages. My music has to go. A cab drives me miles away, to a pawnbroker where I get offered twenty-five bucks for my two-hundred-dollar stereo, which I accept because the taxi meter is running, and already cost me ten bucks, which I had to pay up-front as soon as the driver knew we were going to a fucken pawnbroker. I also get offered twenty-five cents apiece for my discs. I sneer at the pawnbroker, and he gets mad. Real red ass on the pawnbroker, actually, as we say down here.

Then the cab drives me along this fancy set of highways, past big reflector buildings, to the Galleria. I try not to imagine what Taylor'll be wearing, or how she'll smell. Better not to get fixated on anything that leaves room to be bummed if it's not true. I might focus on those same shorts from before, then find her in jeans or something, and lose the wind out of my sails.

I distract myself by watching the driver. He's a career driver, whose body and ass are permanently molded into the shape of the seat. He seems okay, kind of big and whiskery, with a relaxed smile. Reminds you of Brian Dennehy, from those ole movies, like with the alien eggs in the pool. A bunch of us at school used to wish Brian Dennehy could be our dad, same way we wished Barbara Bush could be our granny. Not like my snotty ole nana. But my ole man was still alive when I saw those movies, and I felt I kind of betrayed him by wishing Brian Dennehy could be my dad. Maybe that percentage of negative energy contributed to his death. Who knows?

The cab turns onto Westheimer, which is like four Gurie Streets stapled together. I try not to be conscious of my pulse, but it goes up anyway. There's no fucken cure for that, by the way. In movies, your pulse goes up when you want it up - out here it just does its own thing. Your fucken pulse is the death of cool. I take some deep breaths as this humongous mall appears alongside us; a large blow-up octopus sways on some ropes by the sidewalk. My balls crawl up my throat.

'Right there, by the octopus,' I tell the driver.

The figure of a young woman stands by the road. I slouch low, hoping she doesn't see me yet. I hate it when you go to meet somebody, and they spot you twenty fucken miles away, and just stay staring at you. You feel like your steps bounce too much, or your shoulders are too dangly or something. You hold the same dumb smile.

It's Taylor Figueroa. She's in a short khaki skirt. Her legs and arms flow warm and careless under sparkling brown hair. Her eyebrows flash up when she sees the cab. I feel sick to my fucken stomach.