“But you’d have seen something,” David says. “The street’s right there under your nose. There’s no engine separating you. And you’re elevated, too. You see everything.”
“Yeah, well, Davey boy, that’s just it, a dude like me maybe sees too much.”
“The more you can see when you’re driving, the safer it is.”
“I’m trying to tell you something, man. You’re not gonna like it, but just listen. Now first off, I never made no claim to be like this perfect driver. I got a license, okay? And out of all of us, all things considered, in the heat of the night, this night—”
He starts schooling Tim and David on what he means by seeing too much, what he means exactly. And schooling me too, I don’t think he knows that, though, maybe I’m just supposed to realize stuff I never even think about.
“I see things that aren’t there. Not monsters and all that your-brain-on-drugs shit, just—movements. All the time. Past like day two especially. I’m a tweaker, okay? A drug addict! Got that? I didn’t plan it or anything. It wasn’t like my goal in life. But it happened and I got to deal with it and how I deal with the seeing-things part is ignore the fuck out of it. Just say Shine. Later days. Only what if? What fuckin if ? What if it was real movement? Right before Squid?”
He takes a long jagged breath.
“That little tweakery twitch of light out there?”
Another.
“That I think I thought I saw?”
So that’s why why why, when she went into wailing wall-to-wall mode.
Why he crossed the center line on a curve just reacting and looked up, what couldn’t he see, brights-blinded, not at first, what no one low in back could see or ever saw, thanks to this being a maxi-van, no windows back or sides?
(Else maybe they’d get it, the Squid thing.)
Close, coming fast, right at us.
“I don’t know how many faces, front and back. Lit up by our lights. Jammed in like a Pinto or something. All these little brown faces. Kids. Five at least, just the kids. In this fuckin aluminum can on wheels.”
And no, not the kinds of things he ever saw that really weren’t there.
They were there, they were terrified, we were Death.
“I know I slammed the brakes but I don’t remember it. I just remember no control. No control and we were the death of all those kids.”
Tim says, “But we weren’t.”
“Dude, it’s just luck. We almost were. And it would have been on me. All that death. I don’t mean the law. I don’t mean the blame. I mean the wrong. You don’t do that to your friends. Put them in that place. Not unless it’s pretty fuckin unavoidable. There’s enough bad chances in life already. I don’t know what’s up with her. I don’t even want to know. I don’t care. Fuck her.”
David says, “Let’s just get them back in here and try to stay calm. You don’t just throw your friends away on the street in the dark like cigarette butts, either.”
“It’s your ride. Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then.”
He opens the door.
“Maybe I’ll catch you two—or we’ll—Rockets, you with me?”
Tim says, “Is this really necessary?”
Blitzer says, “Yeah, it is.”
David says, “But what will you do?”
“Keep walking up the hill. We got those mice still. We promised ’em.”
And Blitzer’s wrong.
We didn’t.
I did.
But follow me don’t follow me, I’m with him, sure I am.
22
I keep up with him too, though Beachwood’s steeper every step it seems, we’re pretty far up.
But not Up.
Not at all, not anymore, it’s like I never even did that Desoxyn. Same goes triplex quadruplex for Blitzer, however much he’s done. I can tell. I thought about asking him, right after we left the van. Just to make conversation. Just to not be silent. But I already knew, so why ask? And likewise with every single thing I’ve thought to say since, there’s always some reason not to. Whether it’s how long it might take to get to the Hollywood sign or what’s up with the drug addict deal or dude, I meant to tell the tale, I blew mass chunks on the Dog Groomer to the Stars, and not just anywheres either, I gobble-greased his hairy spleen, and I think he
liked
it.
So the only thing I’ve said to him period since things went coco-loco nuts is “What did you do to them?” And every breath I take it bothers me more, not too friendly-sounding, now was it. It’s not like Blitzer’s in the wrong, not at all. I guess that’s part of what’s giving me this speaker’s block or whatever, I’d rather say nothing than the wrong thing. Especially at the wrong time or place, and this feels like both, for almost everything.
But the longer there’s nothing, the harder to replace it with something. And Blitzer’s never gone this long without saying anything, not around me, not awake. It creeps me a little, like thinking back earlier on Siouxsie asking me about the cops, with Rory.
Right.
This.
One bruise especially. And these too I’m always, late nights especially, dreamy, the clock says it’s time two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Wondering, wondering down at the yellow bricks, bruises dreamy, let me let me, fields of poppies, blizzards of gauze, get some get some, words out now.
“Hey, can I bum a—”
He stops walking, and frisks himself for smokes while my voice trails off then fades back in, lower and slower on the alternate route, the brain bypass I guess, like I’m listening in to all the boys and all the girls, sweet-truthed, not saying it myself, “I was wondering if I can bum a kiss off you?”
He doesn’t say anything, but I said the right thing, I know that. We melt into each other, that’s what it’s like, we don’t melt down, it’s more cup a flame to keep it going than try to set the night on fire.
He lets out a long long breath and what he finally says, I don’t understand, I’m all, What?
“I said your name.”
“Tell me more about Idaho.”
He says, “Ohhh . . .”
“If you want to.”
He says my name again, or sighs it, actually.
“While we walk, I mean.”
“No, let’s kick it here a few. What hey, it’s Candyland. There’s even peppermint stripes on the little school-bus shelter there. Liz Taylor–made for a smoke break.”
Sitting on the kiddie-sized bench inside the arch of plywood candy canes I hear all these crickets suddenly. Like they just started up. But do they do that? All at once? Maybe they were there before and I’m just noticing.
I wonder if Blitzer hears things too. Like he said he sees things. Things that aren’t there. Like what if he’s hearing these crickets and ignoring them, thinking they’re only in his head.
“I’m tired,” he says.
I really want to ask him.
“That was so fuckin gnarly, Rockets.”
But I’d better not.
I say, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What? Fuck, no. You said Idaho.”
So he talks about this hike he went on with his cousin, to a high lake in the mountains it took three days to get to, carrying everything on their backs. And from the shore you could see deep down in the clear water of the lake three triangle rocks, perfect even identical triangles, huge rocks, thousand-pound rocks, arranged in a line, too big and too deep for people to have moved them, and he was sure it was a gateway to another dimension, or a way back into the past, or even another world. And you could feel it too, even at night, even with your back turned. He says he wants to go back and just kick it there to see what happens, with mass amounts of Vitamin S in place of all the groceries you’d need otherwise. And he talks about how green it is in Idaho, everywhere, how speaking of groceries green like that’s food for the eyes, nourishment you need to see all there is to see, and you just don’t get it in places like LA, so really and truly all of us are partly blind.
The more he says the more a softness drapes like extra warmth on this word here and that word there but never sweats or smothers them, gives a glow I guess, it’s not like he’s talking in his sleep, more like talking from another place, so different from Candyland it might as well be on the far side of those rocks in that Idaho lake, another world, another dimension. And when he stops I start telling him that but there’s no sign he notices when I break it off, so he must have lullabyed himself, that’s what it was, so I just sit here remembering and wondering if he does too, if he remembers when we only slept.
“Rockets?”
“Yeah.”
“You were talking.”
“I stopped.”
“Why?”
“I started thinking.”
“About what?”
“Shaving off my spikes. Being all skinheaded again, for my birthday. You know, to match my face now.”
“Too bad you didn’t jack those clippers.”
“
I did.”
I rap my knuckles hard on the plastic in my crotch, loud enough for knock-knock action, oh most defiantly.
“Who’s there?” he says.
“Little Boy Blue.”
“Little Boy Blue who?”
“You son of a bitch, you forgot already?”
To make amends for amnesia he shaves my head, right here in the shelter so no passing cops can bust him for barbering without a license. He takes it slow and stubble-checks constantly with his open palm, so I’m rubbing up against him practically purring by the time he puts finishing touches on outlines of sideburns I mostly imagine and maybe partly feel. More than tension, anyways, it’s gone all gone. It’s like everything’s back to how it was, though when exactly I’m not sure, after we got the mice I guess, because they’re definitely getting scratch happy in their carrier, smelling all this nature. I tell Blitzer Thanks a trillion billion, and say I’m glad he didn’t go through with it down there.
“Go through with what?”
“Killing them.”
“Killing who?”
“Squid and Siouxsie.”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
“After you yelled at them.”
“You thought I’d kill them?”
“I was scared you would.”
“How?”
“With your hands. You sounded so—deadly. I knew you could. I was waiting for the sound.”
“You’re serious!”
“Well, like I said, now I’m just—”
“How could you think that? How could you fuckin think that?”
“You yelled at them like that! You don’t know how it sounded. Really really serious. Not like Rory and Darby yelling that they’d kill each other. They never sounded like they’d really do it. You did. You fully did.”
“I told them to get out of the van. I didn’t say anything about killing anybody.”
“True.”
“I didn’t fuckin lay a hand on them!”
“You didn’t think about it?”
“No! I never hit girls.”
“What about Gerber?”
“When did I hit her?”
“You said you never hit girls but you can’t remember hitting Gerber or not?”
“You’re fucking with me! If I ever hit her it wasn’t on purpose. It was in the fuckin pit. That doesn’t count.”
“Oh.”
“What’s up with you all of a sudden? Just a few minutes ago—”
“Nothing! Just forget it! I kept worrying I’d say the wrong thing, so I didn’t say anything. I should have stuck to it.”
“You didn’t say the wrong thing, if that’s what you were thinking. But it’s just—fuck, I don’t know, it’s—”
“What?”
“Depressing! Why I lost it was people could have been killed from her flippin’ out like that. People almost
were
killed. It was horrible. How can you think I’d go from that to killing people myself?”
“I didn’t know that. It was before you explained what happened.”
“You should have known anyways. You think you tell people to get out of a van and they do just what you say but you’re still not happy so next step is, kill ’em? With your bare hands? On a public street full of witnesses? That is psycho shit. It’s like the Strangler. It’s worse! Killing your own friends. In front of other friends. You think I’m like that?”
“If I did I wouldn’t—”
“What?”
“Kiss you. Or, well—feel this way.”
“What way?”
“You know, all—”
“Excited? You feel like that right now?”
“Not fully. But—kind of.”
At first he’s wordless, totally. Then he reaches over and rubs my head and almost under his breath says, “Okay. That’s cool.”
“I mean you said, back at the motel, remember you said we were just getting started, and it keeps coming back to me.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
He circles one hand around my wrist and says my skin’s really soft there.
I say, “Not to change the subject or anything, but I was wondering if . . .”
He laughs.
“Dude, you ask once, it’s good for at least fifteen minutes.”
“Well, actually—”
“Oh,” he says all flat and disappointed. “Actually.”
“I was wondering if you noticed all the crickets.”
“Crickets?”
23
Locusts?
What’s the dif—
Stop! What hey, that sound? Everybody look, what’s slowing down?
The van! It’s them! But—
Bush of a buffalo. Sperm of a springbok.
Zion Country Safari.
“They’ve been jacked by Mormon missionaries!”
Fuckin teeth as white as their shirts, check. Black ties, check, blond hair, check, always travel in pairs, double check. And for verification purposes, jaw check, jaw check, dome light on, driver dude turning, quarter, half, full, hell fuckin na, profile perfect, Sergeant Rock.
“Standard issue,” Blitzer says.
It must be disguises, though. I squeeze farther back into my corner of the school-bus bench, maxing the candy-cane blockage as much as I can. I whisper, “Maybe there’s two Stranglers, working together. It’s like the perfect cover.”
Blitzer says it’s hopeless, standing between Siouxsie and me, like staying Ken dry from Barbie, we’re made for each other. We should breed little vampire kids and school ’em on slasher flicks. Serve up our Bloody Marys with the real thing.
“It’s possible. They can’t be real missionaries.”
“They fuckin are.”
“Going door-to-door this time of night?”
“Maybe they live up here. There’s probably some wack Mormon temple house, there’s everything else. Or they could be out doing last rites for somebody, making sure the will’s signed over, who knows?”
So I’m all, Dude! Make babies with Siouxsie Sioux, hell fuckin na, you’re so into death!
And here she comes, oh most defiantly, across the street the van door doesn’t slide but hurtles open, Stitches style. Blitzer lets out a sigh-me-a-Mississippi then pushes off and stomps outside with aftershocks thrumming in the air on land and me.
“I won’t kill her, I promise,” he says over his shoulder. “So just kick it in there, okay?”
Then he says her name, before she’s even close, like he’s testing it for Richter action of its own. And actually I noticed some earlier when he harshed on me for sizing him as Manson material. So I guess he heard it too.
“Siouxsie, I don’t want to fight with you. Stay it stopped in its tracks. That’s what I did. I took off. Now you come up here. It’s on you now. Not me.”
“Well, great to see ya too, but I come in peace, if it makes any difference.”
“You do?”
Siouxsie laughs and says actually that’s one thing she
never
does, come in peace, faking it or feeling it, just call her Give-a-Show.
“Like the kiddie projector. Kenner’s Give-a-Show. That was my Christmas fantasy. Every year this do-gooder women’s club trooped the whole girls’ home down to jolly old Saint Nick in the May Company basement and I’d beg for one. Maybe he decided to give me a show of his own and exposed himself and I just don’t remember it. But it’s easy to find out. Let’s swing by there later, and if I suddenly go all banshee/no Siouxsie, then we’ll know.”
Blitzer says, “So Squid screamed because—”
“Hold your horses, Dale Evans. Or you’ll meet the same fate she did. What do they call it when they stuff people? Taxi-dermatology?”
“She’s the one—”
“Whose star is one up from Trigger’s. They stuffed him when he died and put him on display in the living room. Little did she know what hubby had in mind for her when she passed on. Back in the saddle again.”
She giggles.
“It must be like tattoos. Once you start, you can’t stop. Anyway, as I wasn’t saying, what’s peace without offerings? And I’m offering. Does that get me on the love nest list? Access all areas?”
They crowd inside and Blitzer says he’ll stand, but she pushes him down beside me, says, “You two!” and kisses the top of my head, then steps back laughing. “All right, close your eyes—that means you too, Rockets—and hold out both hands, both of you.”
In one hand I get a twenty, payoff from the Reno bet. In the other a still-shrink-wrapped copy of Los Angeles, the X LP, jacked earlier from the Slash rack at Poseur by no not David dizzy or Tim in a tizzy, no not Squid,
the
record of this and all the others, year one to eighty-one.
“Nine count ’em nine classics,” Siouxsie says. “UNopened, UNplayed, and UNfortunately produced by look both ways then chokeitoutfastthatDoorsfuckwithglasses.”
Blitzer gets Desoxyn.
Two fistfuls of Desoxyn.
“Where’d you score all this?”
“Oh, Squid just happened to come across it. Earlier.”
“She found it? Where?”
“She went through Rory’s pockets. When you and Rockets were in the bathroom.”
“There’s like forty!”
“Well, why don’t you start breaking some up before you get your itchy fingers tangled in the laces of your dancing shoes? Because there’s something buried under Bible tracts in this little ole lunch box. And it’s very very new. And very very sharp.”
“You got a rig? A fresh one?”
“More than one, actually.”
But damn it, she doesn’t have any water. She forgot it in the van.
“I can’t go back just yet. I feel a thousand percent better over here, back with the dudes. Since you foxes flew the hen coop it’s been girls’ night out with a V-word vengeance. You got any clue how much Tim and David butch it up for your benefit when you’re around?”
“You’ve got to be joking,” Blitzer says.
“I’m not. They actually think they’re putting on this big brave front for the Mormons. You know, cutting back on the crotch eyeing and lip smacking, at least in sync, that sort of thing. They must never get laid back there. They’re after everything in pants. If it’s not punker poontang—”
“Punker poontang!” Blitzer says. “Who came up with that?”
“Must have been Tim. David’s been too busy trying to sweet-talk U and I—that’s Utah and Idaho—into assuming the position. Just try and guess which one.”
Blitzer says, “When did those dudes sign on, anyways?”
“Right after you signed off. They came riding up the sidewalk on their bikes and there we were, on their doorstep practically, obviously in need of salvation, a pair of fallen women. Or at that point we were errant women, that was their first take, it wasn’t till the dyke thing came up later that they realized we’d already hit rock bottom.”
“They said that?”
“Not in so many words, but yeah, basically. At first they just asked what was going on, and I said, ‘What a coincidence, that’s what I’m wondering too.’ And I didn’t care who they were, Rotarians, Shriners, Loyal Order of Moose, any help at all getting Squidley to talk put a welcome banner on my little red wagon. They brought out herbal tea and Wonder Bread fold-overs with sandwich spread filling. Complimentary copies of the Book of Mormon. But no fuckin dice. I’m supposed to be talking you into forgiving and forgetting, by the way, so you’ll take the wheel again and the Good Samaritans can ride back down the hill, they’re later than late on their bedtime prayers and Jesus will be very cross with them.”
I laugh on cue, but Blitzer’s cueless and clueless east of Easter somewheres, tap-tapping his fingertips on the bench between his legs like he’s punching the keys of the wanting versus wasting versus waiting calculator, function one, down some Capistrano style, there’s the want, function two, hit dry with drawn-up blood, pay for haste with undissolved waste, function three, thrive through drive like Wild Bill Mulholland and go steal some water, it’s the no-doubt door at the top of the stairway to heaven, if only heaven can.
Wait.
And you already know what we both hate.
“So you don’t know why she flipped out?”
“Hell, no. All she says is, she saw a house she recognized, where something bad happened to her once.”
“Welcome to Hollywood.”
“No shit. I told her I pass by houses like that every day. She said that was my business and hers was hers and you know, never the twain shall meet. So get down, bitch, in other words. And she hasn’t said two more to me since.”
Blitzer laughs.
“Maybe she couldn’t get ’em in edgewise. How many of these did you already eat?”
“Spinning at forty-five am I? I made it lucky seven. I still want to fry, don’t forget. And I mean like an eagle. Higher than high. Squid’s got me worked. I’m the one who’s supposed to pull that shit. Not her. And from the beginning I told her
every
thing. Things you know you shouldn’t tell anyone ever, even if you love them, because it gives them power over you. She knows it all.”
“What hey, I’m all worked too. Over this and that. And then when that car—fuck, I can’t talk about it.”
“T and D told all. After we finally went back to the van with U and I. But once they ran it down they were all puffed up over how they’d followed their principles when you tried to bail on us, there’d been this trauma, there’d been this drama, Squid was their friend, a friend in need, blah blah blah. Till I said you were traumatized worse than anybody, you were driving, you had to deal, with something
really bad
coming down then and there, not some ages-old memory of whoever-whatever that just happened to upset you, out of the blue, you had to cope with either saving or not saving God knows how many lives, knowing if you didn’t you’d be responsible for what happened, while the person who actually caused it went on with her life. So who could blame you for reserving the right, you know, to refuse service.”
“Cool,” Blitzer says. “I mean thanks, I’m glad you see it that way.”
“It’s not just me. Not now. Because this is the good part. You’ll like this. You’re working these guys tonight, right?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I figured. So after I schooled them on Fingerpointing 101 and the rules of the blame game I gave them a good looking-over, you know, hands-on-my-hips style, and said, ‘But you guys, what the fuck is up with you? They got the dicks and they got the drugs, and you let ’em walk? Are you out of your minds? What kind of homosexuals are you?’ ”
And that was all it took, she says, to get them wondering who the fuck’s idea was all the principled shit, anyway? One minute they were charging up to the Hollywood sign, the letter
H
to be specific,
H
for historical,
H
for hysterical, for high as a kite with hustler boys at night and heavy as the hang of Rotten Rory’s wang. Then next thing they knew they were spinning their wheels of misfortune in Clitsville USA, coupled with couples, cranky dykes and moral Mormons, dreaming of Maria Callas, whoever she is. And just to put the hairy cherry on the tuna sundae, deprived even of the one juicy payoff they had every right to expect for keeping to the high road: finding out the filth on What Led to It All.
Because Squid wasn’t talking.
But they were, soon enough, and not just locust pocus with the missionary boys who’d read all about it too, they started talking about sticking around. Renting a place for the summer.
“Yeah, sure they’ll go back to Minnesota. For the winter? And get this: on the walk over to Poseur David let it slip why Tim’s on the outs with his family—”
“I don’t need David’s help on that one.”
“Well,
more
on the outs, awhile back he sashayed down to Florida to visit his dying rich aunt who everybody else was ignoring, so itchy to divvy the spoils their bills for calamine lotion alone were
astronomical
. And what did Tim do but cheer her up so much she lived another five years!”
“That’s way funny,” Blitzer says.
“Not as funny as this. When she finally did die she left him every penny, in gratitude. So Tim has
real
money, like Beverly Hills type money. And this I know for a fact, whatever your angle is so far, they can’t wait for more of it.”
“It’s nonsexual. Completely.”
“Whatever. Though if I were you—can’t you just let them, you know, why not just close your eyes—”
“And what? Think of England?”
“All I mean is, you’re first up on Monopoly square one with the little silver sports car and you just rolled boxcars. You might as well get high and motor on. Bring on Park Place, you know what I mean? Bring on Boardwalk.”
“I guess.”
“Oh, I know, I know, baby brother needs his medicine, where can sister Siouxsie find some water without facing them just quite yet, the wicked stepsisters, the wicked step-Mormons—”
“If we grind it up really fine with a couple of rocks I was thinking I could do it dry.”
“I’ll face the wickeds first. It hurts and it’s so gross. And can’t it kill you if chunks go to your heart or something? What about that place up past Versailles? It doesn’t look gated. God, they must have trucked it up here straight off the set of
West
Side Story
.”
“What are you talking about? It’s a knights-in-armor castle!”
“Isn’t
West Side Story
the one about King Arthur? The musical? With that dude who left the cake out in the rain?”
“Fuck, Siouxsie, it’s gangs on the West Side of Manhattan! Where all the PRs live.”
“PRs?”
“Puerto Ricans.”
“Is that what your brother the priest calls them? He’s supposed to be really prejudiced, right?”
“Just against Protestants and Jews. He doesn’t care about Puerto Ricans, what hey, they’re Catholic. What’s wrong with saying PRs? It’s just initials. I mean there must be other racial groups that go by their initials.”
“The KKK?”
“That’s racist, not racial.”
“They’re all white, aren’t they?”
“Don’t ask
me
.”
“Well, the only other group I can think of with initials is JAPs. Does that count?”
I say, “That’s not initials, it’s short for Japanese. And they don’t like it, either.”
“Rockets! How nice of you to join us!”
Blitzer says, “He’s sulking.”
“I am not.”
“You won’t fuckin believe what he thought I was about to do to you down there.”
“Don’t tell her that!”
And just like that he’s all over me, he starts schooling me like he’s really mad, but without raging or actually saying anything mean, he says he’s calling me on my shit, for playing games with people’s feelings, for thinking I can tell him all casually I fully thought he could be a murderer like an hour after we did everything we did in private, then next thing you know try to keep the whole thing secret from one of his supposed victims.