John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch-Out. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the part where you can still get a draft of beer for $3.00.
Wheat Pizza (November, 2011. Issue 33.)
C.C.'s old man was crazy. Everyone knew it. This was common knowledge if you were friends with C.C. and wanted to remain as such. James Talento had a multitude of personalities, and you were never sure which one you were going to get. You could get the decent father who maintained an active interest in his son's life. Or you could get the vengeful lunatic who stood at the end of his driveway, playing his acoustic guitar while we tried to play a wiffleball game. This only happened when one of us was fighting with C.C. and he was inside sulking while the rest of us played on the small concrete space that was our dead end street. Mr. Talento would come outside and stand there with his guitar, and just play away. He wouldn't let us get our wiffleball if it went in his yard. Many times a game ended without a decisive winner, the white wiffleball snug in the Talento's grass, as the group of us sullenly walked off the concrete field to an acoustic Clapton or Hendrix guitar solo.
The worst James Talento was the psycho version. The one who marched out of his house, came onto the concrete field, requested the ball, and decided that he was pitcher for the remainder of the game, as if he were called upon in long relief. This was the James Talento that the old neighbor ladies had warned us about. The dark James Talento clad in an Army field jacket and a Fidel Castro hat pulled so low you couldn't see his eyes, just the tops of his pocked-marked cheeks. The James Talento who, wrapped up in spite and suppressed rage, then yelled for his miserable, friendless, nonathletic son to come back outside amongst his sudden enemies. He made C.C. play the field, berating him with each hit that got between his legs, mocking him when he inevitably cried. The James Talento rumored to have killed his girlfriend's dog back in the 60's while high on acid. The man who made C.C.'s mom nurse his sister until over the age of three. He only stopped when the child bit the poor woman's tit in a movie theater; at least that's what Annie Talento said to our mothers during her neighborhood rounds, the ones she used both to apologize for James' behavior and garner sympathy for her family and herself. The James Talento who wouldn't allow his wife to scream in pain, our mothers said. We were afraid of the James Talento who told us that he knew men in Vietnam, ones who threw kids out of planes. We were afraid of the James Talento who had kneeled in the middle of the concrete street, in the midst of a quiet and unseasonably warm Thanksgiving Day, a butcher knife in his hand, begging his wife to slice his neck. That was the James Talento us kids feared the most.
The Talento's were vegetarians and health nuts before it was fashionable to be so. And aside from his old man's oddities, this culinary fact was just one more thing that held C.C. apart from the rest of us. He could never have lunch on one of our porches on a hot summer day. He wasn't allowed the sugar in the iced tea or lemonade, the salt or preservatives in our peanut butter, or whatever was inside the white bread. C.C. couldn't have a simple chocolate chip cookie. He ate carob chip cookies and all-natural, tasteless peanut butter sandwiches on crumbling pita bread, which he was forced to eat on his own porch, just across the concrete cul-de-sac from my house. He had to sit there and eat that food while his old man's electric guitar reverberated through the walls and outside, loud enough for the neighborhood to hear. C.C. claimed that his old man got his ideas about food and health from a book that he'd read when he was in his twenties. The book was called "Sugar Blues." I'm not sure that it ever existed, as I never found it in a bookstore or library. Even today, when I get nostalgic about my childhood, I'll think of C.C. and look up the book online. I never find a thing.
I blamed myself for the slight terrorism that came C.C.'s way within the caste system of my neighborhood. He was my friend and I pushed him on the others. He was the first kid that I met when my family moved. We bonded over our love of Star Wars and Star Trek, and a love of the music of the Monkees, a band who were having a major resurgence on MTV at the time. We played with our action figures together or listened to music, or watched television. We used my old wiffleball bats to pretend that we were The Monkees. In fact, of all of us neighborhood kids, I was the only one of us ever in the Talento's home. I was the only one to sit on the Talento's plastic covered furniture, to observe them in their own habitat, to smell their smells, and to watch James Talento's eerily quiet patriarchy play itself out within the confines of his own domicile. He ate and drank just like all of us did, even if it was sugarless and tasteless vegetarian food and drink. He spoke when spoken to, and mostly stalked around his home in the same lumbering way all of our dads did, clueless, wondering how he'd come to claim a wife and children. Only our dads didn't know people who threw kids out of airplanes, and they never killed their girlfriend's dog or kneeled with a knife to their throat.
The other guys didn't like C.C. because he didn't collect baseball cards, like we all did, and he wasn't good at sports, because he was thin and lanky, his bones showing through his skin. They didn't like C.C. because he ate his "weird" food and was content to spend summer hours playing with Star Wars men on the porch, or else playing board games or watching Star Trek episodes. Everyone thought that he was a fag. Why not be outside in the summer playing ball, working up a sweat with your friends? They'd ask me. Because sometimes you just want to be alone, I'd wanted to say, but never did. I knew all about being alone because my folks had moved me three times in as many years, and because I was getting fat. My old man called me porky and the kids in each successive new school ignored me and I ignored them. It was just as well, I thought. I probably wouldn't even be going to that school next year. I was more content with television reruns and Lays potato chips.
I found the friends that I had in the neighborhood because they found me; C.C. first and then the rest of the guys over my first few months living on the dead end. My parents forced me to go outside as a matter of protocol. I got along with everyone that I met because my situation dictated it. You couldn't find your social niche if you kept moving, so you had to be kind of personality-less. I could be a ballplayer or a sci-fi geek. I could be a junior member of The Monkees, or anything else that I wanted. I wouldn't be pigeonholed as the neighborhood weirdo, or even the fat kid, if I kept myself in check. C.C. could never be the same way, being the son of James Talento. The other guys looked at me like one of them because I was easygoing and I did what they wanted to do. They blamed James Talento for C.C.'s odd, introverted behavior. Or they couldn't see the kid beyond those obvious things. And while a good deal of C.C.'s problems were James Talento's fault, C.C.'s inherent desire to be left alone, or left in more intimate company, came purely from himself. I mean I never blamed my parents for my moods or quiet nature, despite all that my family had been through.
In his defense, C.C. did try. I dragged him to plenty of baseball card shows, and he bought a pack here and there, even though he had no use for cards and eventually gave them to me anyway. I'm the one who called him out of his solitary revelry to play ball with us, even though he threw with his non-dominant hand (or like a girl), put the wrong hand on top of the bat, and basically was inept at any and all fielding positions. I'm the one who forced C.C. into hanging out with the neighborhood gang, even though they barely tolerated him. I thought it would be good for C.C. to have these other friends, like I did, even though they outright mocked him at times, and even though he would've been content to wait them out, and then come over to visit me and play after they'd all gone home for dinner, an evening baseball game, or whatever else occupied the guys' time when we weren't together. I was naïve back then, assuming all one needed to do was be like me and not have an opinion or a personality. I thought all you had to do to get by in our kid world was to be a ghost. C.C. was pale and sickly looking but he wasn't able to be a ghost.
I felt bad about the wheat pizza, even though the whole mess had been Alec Petrakis' idea to begin with. It seemed simple enough. The three of us, C.C., Alec, and myself has been tossing around the Nerf football on a Saturday afternoon, and we had grown hungry, but not for anything in our homes. Another school year had started, and we were all a little bit older, the days of playing with action figures over, but with no new interests to fill the space. That is to say we were bored most of the time back then. Alec and C.C. had paper routes, and they had pocket money coming in pretty regularly. I was still doing chores around the house, quite badly to be honest, and not really earning anything. I made enough to keep myself junked up on the significant baseball card habit that I continued to foster during most of my waking hours. Mostly I was a pauper, reduced at times to digging underneath the couch cushions to see if my old man had lost any quarters on those nights when he passed out in front of the tube watching a West Coast ballgame or some mundane crime drama.
"So are we going or not?" Alec asked. He tossed the football up in the air, and then ran back a few paces for it. He let it drop enough to kick at the spongy spiral as if it were a Soccer ball, bouncing the thing on his knee until the ball dropped to the concrete and lay prostrate. Alec was the only kid I knew who played Soccer beyond the age of nine, and in my mind he will always be clad in a gray sweatshirt, a pair of black Umbro shorts, no matter the weather, the curly tufts of his hair blowing in a light wind.
"I'll have to ask my mom for some money," I said.
We looked at C.C. He shrugged. "I can probably come and just hang out."
"That's stupid," Alec said, picking up the football. He nodded his head at me, a signal that I was to run a short pattern, the ball getting me softly in the gut as soon as I button-hooked. Afterwards, Alec walked toward C.C. "I mean what's the point in going to a pizza shop, and just sitting there."
"I can't eat the food," C.C. said.
"You can't eat pizza?" Alec looked over at me, shook his head. "What's not vegetarian about pizza? Its dough and sauce and cheese. There isn't any meat on it unless you ask." Alec gave us all a confident stare; most of the guy's knowledge of vegetarianism back then only developed so far as to know that those people didn't eat meat. We never gave a thought to where cheese came from.
"It's the ingredients," I said, by way of defense. "It's what's in the food too, like the sugar and salt and stuff."
"Preservatives," C.C. said, quietly.
Alec made a face. "Preservatives? They make the stuff from scratch at this place."
C.C. raised his head, hopeful. "Really?"
"I'm dead serious." Alec motioned for the football and I tossed it back to him. He gave a quick turn, and tossed the ball to C.C. without giving him any warning. C.C. sputtered with the ball, his spindly arms moving about madly to maintain control. But he managed to hang on. He always hung on around those guys.
"Is it wheat pizza?" he asked.
"Sure," Alec said. He winked at me.
C.C. flipped me the ball. He pulled out his wallet and dug through it. Then he turned to me. "I have a ten on me. You probably don't even have to ask your mom for any money."
"But..." I started.
"I got it," C.C. said, giving me an anxious look.
I knew. Just looking at C.C., I knew that in one small moment a sudden shift had happened for him. Wheat pizza? No pizza parlor in our neighborhood made wheat pizza. Each place made your standard salty, doughy pizza cut into dumpy triangles or squares with too much sauce and not enough cheese on them. C.C. knew this as well. He must've, as he was so health conscious with everything else that he ate; a health consciousness that was beaten into him by James Talento. If a certain food even sounded like it was to be consumed or enjoyed by the hoi polloi, C.C. most certainly wasn't able to eat it. And you didn't get more common than pizza. C.C. had to know that there'd be no wheat pizza at the place we were going to, but the look in his eyes told me that he didn't care. Restrictions and rules were suddenly out the window that day. Maybe he was tired of the ridicule and exclusion. Tired of the teasing, of being different, or of having to defend the banal aspects of his life, such as what was for lunch. Maybe he just wanted to be a regular kid with a few bucks in his wallet, a Saturday afternoon trip to the local pizza joint with friends simply a common adventure in his life, and no culinary lunacy set up by his lunatic father was going to stop that from this moment on.
"I have to let me mom know that we're going," I said.
"Good point," Alec said. "Let's meet down by my house in five minutes." He motioned for the ball and I tossed it to him. C.C. and I watched Alec run down toward his house.
"C.C.," I said, giving it my last attempt.
"They have wheat pizza," he said.
I went and told my mom where I was going, but C.C. made no move to do the same. Then he and I walked to Alec's in silence. Alec came out of the vast shrubbery in his yard and joined us, and then our trio made our way up the small incline of Penn Oak Drive. C.C. was quiet but it wasn't in any ominous way. Like I said, where I was pleasing and eager to please in mixed company, C.C. was always quiet and contemplative amongst others. Quiet was a symptom of his life.
I was glad that it was Alec who was with us that day. He teased C.C. the least, taking the aspects of the kid's life as if they were minor absurdities, instead of outrageous breaches of human etiquette that needed to be dissected then mocked, as many others did. Alec was also in the same grade with C.C., and the two had a couple of years on me. They went to public school wherein I went to catholic school. And while Alec maintained a cool relationship with C.C. within the confines of their junior high halls, and on the bus to and from school, he never joined in with the other bullies who tormented C.C. on a regular basis, exposing his differences and making them much more than they were. When Alec wasn't mildly amused with the aspects of C.C.'s life, he simply didn't care. If anyone was going to share my burden of watching C.C. thwart the gastronomic guidelines of his family structure, as well as outright disobey James Talento, Alec was the best choice. Alec wouldn't care about the ways in which one kid's worldview had become perverted from his family's credo. He'd just be glad that his pubescent desire for sauce and dough and cheese had been fulfilled.
After two long blocks we came to a shopping plaza. I'd been able to walk to this plaza, without parental supervision, for over two years now, but it still held an illicit excitement for me. This was due to the fact that we kids were out of earshot from our parents at the plaza, and anything was a go. Many of our kid dramas played out at this place. There were fights in the parking lot over minor indiscretions. Teens were rumored to smoke pot and have sex in the woods behind the plaza. Packs of baseball cards were bought and then swapped on the spot. I had tried chewing tobacco on the desolate loading docks of a grocery chain. I'd bought the tobacco on a dare. I made up some story to the drug store cashier about it being for my dad, but she didn't seem to care. Times were different back then; all you needed to get products like cigarettes or chew was a "note" from your parents or a half-baked yarn. I chewed that tobacco on the loading dock, spitting the tangy brown juice all over the cracked concrete, laughing, and thinking that I was a tough guy the whole time. Until I vomited along Ritzland Road in such vast quantities, that it was rumored, for weeks, that I was possessed by the devil.
The pizza parlor rested on the far end of the plaza. We kids rarely went there. Our parents certainly never chose the place for a quick Friday night family meal. The slices were terrible, slapdash. Square. They tasted like someone had put spicy ketchup on bread, with only a small amount of barely cooked cheese on them. Rumor had it that the parlor was a drug front, and the pizza makers were ex-cons. A lot of older teenagers hung out there, when they weren't fornicating or torturing us, as well as some of the shadier guys in our neighborhood, like some of the ex-hippie dads looking for a nostalgic high. The place only had three booths and a small counter, faded pictures of Italy hanging on dirty walls, and painted-on, smudged menu prices smeared on dirty, large windows. Truth be told, I was intimidated by the place and would've rather gone somewhere safe and bland like McDonalds. Fries were vegetarian, right? But Alec was bold. He had to be. He was short. God only knows how C.C. felt. I looked at him but he gave me no quarter. Determined? Frightened? I couldn't make him out.
Alec stopped us at the parlor door. I gave a quick look inside. The place was grease-colored with shadowy figures moving about. "Okay, we should divide the money before we go in."
"I got it," C.C. said.
"The whole thing? I thought you were just taking care of him." Alec pointed to me, so that we all knew who the broke one amongst us was.
"I told you I have a ten on me."
Alec looked at me. I shrugged. I could no more follow the narrative of Charles Christian Talento than he could on that particular day. "You don't have to do that," I said. "I can even go back and get some money."
"I want to," C.C. said. He smiled. "It'll be fun."
"It's up to you, man," Alec said. We went inside.
A smell of sweat and basil hit us the minute we opened the door, then the hot inferno of the ovens nearly boiled our skin. Wallpaper peeled but hung in place if only because of the grease on the wall. I could feel my own sweat bead on impact. Alec led the way and we grabbed the last table in the sparsely populated joint. It overlooked the end of the shopping plaza, a stretch of road whose end I was not familiar with, and a commercial oblivion that I had yet to traverse. I looked over the head of my Lilliputian friend to take in the landscape. There was a gas station, a convenience store, and the prospect of another shopping plaza over the lopping band of road.
"This is wheat pizza, right?" C.C. asked us, having yet to sit down, breaking me out of my revelry. Oh, that old issue, I thought.
"I told you," Alec said. He nodded. I found myself nodding too. If C.C. wanted to believe then let him believe. If he wanted us as accomplices to his infidelity of diet, so be it.
"I'll be back."
C.C. went up to the counter to order from the large ogre who had been eyeing us up the moment we came in. Definitely a convict, I thought, watching the order/money exchange. Alec played with an oregano shaker, saying nothing. He knew and I knew what C.C. most probably knew, what the pizza maker would most likely confirm for him as well. There was no wheat pizza. But it would be good, I reasoned, this small step my friend was taking. He'd have a good time. Rumor would get around, just like all rumors got around, that the freaky vegetarian kid with the lunatic dad was going underground, at least in a culinary sense. Kids would look at C.C. in a different way. There'd be less ridicule and more unlawful meals. A hot dog? French fries? The sky was the limit for this kid.
"It'll be okay," I said to no one in particular.
"What?" Alec said. But by that time C.C. was back at the table, looking a tad worse for the wear than before. I chalked it up to having to deal with the truth from that Italian mongrel at the service counter.
"How long?" Alec asked.
"About ten minutes," C.C. said.
We didn't talk much while we waited for the pizza. Had it been me and C.C. alone, we would've had a seamless conversation about the possibility of new Star Wars films in the future. We'd lament the loss of our action figure playing days, wishing it were socially acceptable for us to go one more round with our old toys. C.C. would school me in music, whatever junk James Talento was wailing out into the neighborhood, or older bands resurging on the radio. We'd wonder if Mike Nesmith would be joining the Monkees on this round of reunion tours, or if he'd be a holdout again; the prospect of seeing them live. Alec and I would probably discuss baseball or baseball cards. He was a notorious miser with his collection, shrewd, a shyster if there ever was one in the baseball card game. Or we'd talk about girls, neighborhood girls like Madeline Jones, who'd gone from playmate one summer, to object of our collective desire the next summer. Alec would talk about Madeline and I'd imagine some other kind of equitable bliss because I was overweight and no girls liked me. That's what would happen if I were in the pizza parlor with each of my friends separately. Together we discussed nothing. We made faces and shifted nervously, or occasionally commented on the characters coming into the parlor.
The pizza arrived. Or, rather, Alec had to go up to the counter to collect it. The big, dull Italian did little more to inform us of our pie than to slap its metal sheet on the counter and shout, "Hey, your wheat pizza" for he was too busy in secret conversation with the delivery man, a lanky blonde with a long dirty ponytail and a patchy beard, who'd just arrived back from a pizza/drug run, and gave us an odd look after the word "wheat" spit out of the goon pizza maker's mouth.
Alec came back with the pie, a short stack of paper plates clasped in his fingertips. He set the pie on the table then passed around the plates. We dug in. I grabbed a large square that didn't look too sad or perverted, and Alec found the sauciest one that he could get. The food was mediocre at best, but it tasted like teenage heaven to us, freedom bought by my good pal, C.C. Talento, whose reputation would only be increased by his generosity that day. I looked to him to give him a smile of thanks, and to see how he was reacting to the bliss of the food of the common man. He had to be happy with his first big boy steps. But C.C. 
wasn't smiling. He wasn't full-mouthed like Alec or me. He was sitting there examining the pie, a lost and lonely look on his face. I stopped eating, my hunger on pause for the moment.
"It's not wheat pizza," C.C. said. He looked at Alec. "You lied."
"Come on, dude. Did you ever expect it to be wheat pizza?" Alec said his mouth half-full with his last bit of slice. He chewed ravenously, waiting for C.C. to respond, grabbing another slice the moment he swallowed the final bits of the last one.
"But you said..."
"I was kidding, dude. Be reasonable. Did you honestly expect a shitty pizza joint in a strip mall to make something like wheat pizza?"
"I thought..." C.C. started.
"No you didn't," Alec said. "You're just acting like this now." He took an angry bite of his new slice.
C.C. turned to me. "I can't eat this."
"Why did you order it?" I asked. "Why did we even come here?"
"I don't know. But I can't…"
"Can't you try?" I said, my stomach rumbling, my soul desperate for the piece of pizza that I'd just abandoned to this small drama.
"My dad."
"But he's not here," I said, using the logic of anything goes at the shopping plaza. "And I won't tell him."
"I won't say anything, either," Alec said, killing that second piece of pizza. I had to take a bite of mine, before he somehow woofed it down as well.
"No," C.C. said. "I can't."
"Christ," Alec said, throwing a last corner of pizza down on his plate. "What the hell, man?"
"You said they had wheat pizza."
"Stop it. Stop acting like a baby. This is America. We don't have wheat pizza in America, all right." Alec shook his head. "You went up and ordered. Obviously you asked the guy at the counter."
We all looked up at the counter. The pizza maker was glaring back at us. "He told me they did," C.C. said, suddenly realizing that the whole world had conspired against him that day. "He lied too."
"He was pulling your chain," Alec said.
"That's not right."
"Stop being such a pussy."
"Guys," I broke in. "It's just lunch." I turned to C.C. "I mean this is essentially vegetarian. And preservatives can't be that bad. So what if it's not wheat."
"He'll know," C.C. said.
"How?"
"He'll check my wallet or something, and find the ten dollars gone. Or he'll smell it on me, or something." C.C. nervously tapped his fingers on the table, sweating for reasons other than the heat of the place. He started rocking back and forth. "I need my money back."
"I have three bucks," Alec said, taking a third slice. Everyone knew what I had.
"I need ten dollars," C.C. said.
"I don't know what to tell you," Alec said.
C.C. stood up. He pointed one of his long fingers at Alec. Alec pushed it away. C.C. held on to his hand as if severely wounded. I was embarrassed by his weakness. "You lied to me."
"You're psycho, dude," Alec said. "You're going to end up just like your crazy dog-killing dad, worrying about sugar and meat and shit. Why don't you run on home and play guitar with your crazy old man, and just get it over with."
Tears welled in C.C.'s eyes, but he didn't say anything. He stood there, nearly bouncing from anger and his own impotence. There was nothing that he could do. We couldn't get the money back for him. He couldn't deny the lunacy of his old man. C.C. couldn't match small words with Alec, and he certainly couldn't fight him. I was in the middle, my pizza still resting on my plate, the cheese coagulating, the sauce getting cold, and my hunger completely ravenous but in a frozen state. C.C. quit holding his hand. His cheeks flushed. A tear fell. In an instant he was gone from the pizza parlor, knocking over a chair from one of the other tables as he left. The greasy Italian yelled at him then at us. We were to finish eating our "wheat" pizza quickly and get out. I picked up the chair as a peace offering. I watched C.C. walk the length of the shopping plaza, stopping from time to time, talking to himself as he'd sometimes begun doing when I spied him alone on the street, scaring people going about their business. Then he was gone.
"That kid is psycho," Alec said. Then his finished his third piece.
"He has problems," I said. I didn't want to but hunger made me grab at my slice.
"Yeah, well, his problems aren't mine." Alec killed another piece of pizza.
We finished eating in silence. In a way I felt that by sitting there with Alec and not chasing after C.C. that I was somehow in cahoots with the enemy. I should've chased after him. I could've said something. But what? I didn't have words for what it was like to be boxed into an ethos when you were barely a teen, and trying to figure out your life. I didn't have words for what it was like to carry the second generation burden of your old man's unscrupulous reputation. The basis of my friendship with C.C., yes, had been founded on the gloomy and hard trails of childhood, but we came at each other from different tangents. His was from a lonely and wretched upbringing, and mine was from plain old loneliness itself. I didn't think I had what he needed in terms of words, because, try as I might, I could not understand the social, oedipal complexities that exited every time C.C. walked into his house, into a room where his old man sat playing guitar or ravenously reading one of his New Age health bibles.
But I was a friend and that should've been good enough. Yet I sold him out for two more subpar slices of pizza.
Alec and I left the pizza parlor. There was nothing else to do. We left and we left what would've been C.C.'s three slices of pizza right there on the table. The goon at the counter told us not to worry about wrapping it, as wheat pizza wouldn't keep for too long. I was almost sorry that we'd given this guy something to stretch the boundaries of his limited wit with, by going into that disgusting joint that day. We should've taken the pizza as a matter of course. But we didn't. Alec didn't want it, and my old man would've ridden me for eating too much food for lunch, wondering where I'd gotten the money. Plus Alec had a jones for purchasing some of this season's Football cards and didn't want the burden of carrying a box of greasy pizza, so we left the parlor and hit up the chain drug store a few spaces down in the plaza. I turned back once to see our pizza maker cleaning our table; one of C.C.'s lost slices of pizza hanging out of his mouth as he wiped down our vacated table.
We'd just cleared the plaza and were wide open in the parking lot, our heads bowed as Alec and I examined the contents of one of his packs of cards, when a large stick went sailing by. Alec turned on a dime and was hit with another stick. He dropped his cards and grabbed his cheeks. That's when I turned and saw C.C. standing there, his face streaked with red, a James Talento manic look in his eyes. He was holding a gathering of small rocks and thick sticks in his left hand, collected from within the woods. He tossed another at Alec but it missed, barely. C.C.'s inability to throw a wiffleball apparently did not translate when he tossed rocks and sticks in a fit of anger and presumed betrayal. Before C.C. knew what was coming, Alec had raced over to him, pushing him, the sticks and rocks flying out of his hands and scattering all over the place. C.C. fell to the ground, his long arms bracing him from any impact more dangerous than a bruised ass.
"Liars!" C.C. shouted into the gray afternoon. "Liars!"
"You're the liar," Alec said. He had a small, red streak on his left cheek, more from his hands than from the stick. "You knew! You knew!"
"Liars!" C.C. cried. Heaving, wailing sobs came out of him. He caught them in his boney hands. It had been a while since I'd seen another boy cry so hard. It was horrid. "My dad, my dad," was all I could make out in between sobs.
"But you didn't have any," I said, dumbly. "You're okay."
C.C. looked up at me as he sobbed. There was a look of hatred in his eyes. "No! No!"
"What?"
"You don't, you don't…" was all that he could get out before he fell into another torrent of tears. I looked at Alec helplessly, but he was red-faced and angry, pacing, angling for a fight.
"But I do," I said. It was no use.
"Come on," Alec said to me. We watched C.C. cry for another moment and then began walking away. In a second, another projectile came at us. A rock this time. Alec and I turned back and saw that C.C. was on all fours, collecting the weapons that he had lost from the push.
"Don't get up. Don't you even get up," Alec shouted, storming back over to C.C. He started kicking rocks and sticks away. C.C. cried and wailed, and made the worst kind of guttural sounds, as he flung mere twigs, and tried to bat at Alec with his long arms. Alec lightly kicked at C.C. but only to get him to stop. He looked at me, as I stood there frozen. "A little help."
Fool that I was, I thought that Alec wanted me to start collecting sticks and rocks, as if I could clear up every stick and rock in the parking lot. So I ran over to him and C.C., and began picking up rocks and sticks off the ground, as they lightly tussled and C.C. continued to cry. I had my head down so I couldn't see them. I could just hear Alec's angry pleas and C.C.'s ugly moan. I didn't see the rock that hit me in the right temple and then had me up and staggering toward my infamous grocery store dock.
"Shit," Alec said. He ran over to me; put a friendly arm on my shoulder as I tried to shake it off. It was enough time for C.C. to right himself and stand there, his sobs now weak, anger taking over his demeanor. His hands were fists instead of boney conduits for sticks and stones. Luckily the rock wasn't large and the blow didn't hurt too badly. It had just caught me by surprise; surprise at C.C.'s continued good aim; surprise that I had been a target.
"What's wrong with you?" I said, standing upright. I was angry several times over and had no clue what to do with it. I didn't fight. I hadn't been in fights since the old days of Lawrenceville when Billy Kokus and I used to go at it in the old neighborhood. We fought almost daily and I had gotten good at throwing blows. But that was what? Six years ago? Seven? It was half a lifetime for me at that point in my humble existence. Since then I'd been relegated to fat kid status, ghost status and humble punk status. I took my lumps and kept quiet about them.
"I thought you were my friend," C.C. spat.
"I am. I mean…" I said, but the rage was boiling in me. "Go and fuck yourself, veg-head. You and your old man."
C.C. dropped the anger for a moment, and an incredulous look fell on his face, based on what had come out of my mouth. I suppose if I had a mirror, through the anger, I'd look as disbelieving as well. C.C. and I fought, true. We fought as kids fought, over toys, over our favorite music, over who was right and wrong. Those fights maybe lasted an hour or two. I'd go inside my home and C.C. would stalk back over to the Talento home to face his hell, then someone would come outside a short time later and call on the other one, and everything would be forgiven. These were almost kind fights in terms of what we'd seen happen between other kids; pulpy blowouts that usually resulted in parental involvement, threats of trivial lawsuits, the balance of friendship hanging in the delicate negotiations. They were surface arguments meant to prove a point and not belittle. I'd never once mocked or criticized C.C.'s family, his father, or his lifestyle. And he had never made mention of my being overweight. But now all bets were off.
"Fat ass," C.C. said. He stuttered as he said it, as if viewing me as a "fat ass" had been beyond his capabilities up until that point.
"Very original," I said sharply, still it hurt nonetheless. "Fucking veg-head."
There were no more words. C.C. cried out once and then charged me. He was far enough away that I could set myself, brace myself in case he got to me first. What would it be like to hit again? I wondered. To be hit? I thought of Billy Kokus and his ancient cries as our kid fists wailed, but there was no time to think beyond that. As if in an instant, C.C. had invaded my personal space, and, with eyes shut, I swung. I felt the hard edge of C.C.'s jaw on my fist. I opened my eyes and waited on his rebuttal but there was nothing. C.C. had reeled backwards and was holding his jaw.
"Damn," Alec said. He looked at me as if he never thought I had it in me. I hadn't and I knew it. It was a lucky shot that I needed to capitalize on. Instead of relenting I barreled in toward where C.C. was holding his sore jaw, the memory of fighting polluting my mind. He looked up and I hit him again, this time right on the cheek.
"Oh," C.C. said, trying to rise from his crouching position, a shocked look on his face. I hit him a third time, connecting with the top of his chest as he rose. His sharp collarbone caused a piercing pain to go up the length of my left arm. Was my hand broken? How to explain this to my mom and dad, I thought, my anger rising at the further complications compounding my life. Then I threw punches at random; lefts and rights at a torrent of speed. I didn't care whether or not I connected. I just wanted this over quickly, no matter the outcome.
"Hey!" someone shouted. The foreign voice made me realize that C.C. had stopped fighting and was just standing there as best he could, trying to block what I was giving him. Finally I stopped.
"Where do you kids live?" the voice asked. I looked toward my left. It was as if magic had placed a red convertible right beside the site of our fight. There was a man inside the car, balding, with a light beard to compensate for his hair loss. He had on sunglasses even though the sky had turned gray. They reflected the whole of the shopping plaza. "I'm talking to you."
C.C. took off. He brushed me hard before he broke into a sprint, clearing the end of the shopping plaza, and then taking off down Ritzland Road until we could no longer see him.
"Speak English?" the man said.
"They had a fight," Alec said.
"Clearly. Do you know that kid?"
"He's my friend," I said.
"Some friend," he said. "I should find a payphone and call your parents."
"You don't even know us," Alec said.
"Don't get smart."
"Whatever." Alec gave me a congratulatory slap on the back and went to retrieve his cards, while I tried my best not to look at the bald man in the red convertible. He was making me feel guilty when none of this had been my fault, the pizza or the fight. "Let's go."
'What's your names?" the man called after us.
Alec and I left the bald man where he was idling, and began walking down Ritzland. There was no sign of C.C., but we were on guard should he pop out from any piece of shrubbery lining the verdant suburban landscape, and come at us again with nature's weaponry. The bald man in the convertible pulled out of the plaza lot and began trailing us. He was like a brand new set of problems, like one of those child kidnappers or molesters that we were always seeing on the nightly news. I didn't like the way he'd talked to us, slowly, elegantly, with condescension oozing out of his nasal tone. Alec looked back a few times and he picked up the pace. I tried to as well, but my legs were nervous and wobbly from the fight. Eventually the bald man passed us without as much as a look. We thought for sure that he was gone. But when we got over the small crest of Ritzland there he was, parked at the stop sign where Ritzland intersected Penn Oak Drive, talking to C.C. When C.C. saw Alec and me, he turned tail and ran down Penn Oak. The bald man looked back at us. Then he revved his engine and tore up Rizland and was gone.
"Creep," Alec said to himself. Then he said to me, "Christ, what a fight."
"It sucked," I said, as we made the turn down Penn Oak Drive.
A couple of the other guys were waiting at the end of our street. God only knows what they'd said to C.C. when he ran passed them. Fight or no fight, deep in me I still felt it my duty to protect him from those guys. When they saw Alec and me they began tossing the football back and forth as they made their way up Penn Oak to meet us. Mickey Santangelo nodded in my direction, a knowing smirk on his face. Then he palmed the Nerf ball in both hands, before fading back like an NFL quarterback, and sending a perfect spiral my way.
"Did you see veg-head?" Mickey asked. I flipped him the ball. "He's all pink and welted."
"He did it," Alec said, pointing to me.
"No shit?"
We turned up the dead end, our youthful chatter infesting the quiet of a Saturday in the suburbs. Alec told everyone the big story about C.C. and the wheat pizza, as I walked a few paces ahead, not proud, but mostly sad and exhausted with the tale already. I guess I didn't really want to hear it. But Alec wouldn't shut up. I determined that I never wanted to fight again. My soul felt crooked and lacking, and my left hand still hurt. All I really wanted was absolution from my friend and an ice pack. Instead I got a pick up football game.
"Go deep, slugger," Mickey said to me. He gave me that go deep nod and I complied, running up the cul-de-sac of the dead end until I was right in the center of it. The ball met me square in the chest. Mickey was good like that, a street ballplayer if ever there was one.
"Slugger," Alec said, running up to meet me. It was to be my new nickname, at least for the next week or so. Everyone called me Slugger. Even Madeline Jones.
We began setting up for our game when the Talento's door opened, and James Talento stepped out onto the porch in his field jacket and Fidel Castro hat. We all gave each other that ominous look. "At least it's not baseball season," Mickey said.
"Hey," James Talento called out to us. Us? He was looking right at me. "Did you and C.C. have a fight today?"
"Um…yeah," I said.
"At the shopping plaza?"
"Yeah."
"Over what?" James asked, although something told me that he knew the specifics of the argument.
"Pizza," I said.
"I assumed you knew that C.C. couldn't eat regular pizza."
"Yeah."
'And this wasn't wheat pizza," James said.
"No," I said, thankful to say something different.
"Yet you still went."
"C.C. wanted to go," Alec said. James Talento turned his eyes from me to give Alec a cursory glance. Then he looked back and held my gaze until my eyes dropped.
"He wanted to go," I said. "He paid."
"So C.C. knew that he was going somewhere that didn't have wheat pizza, and he paid for the meal?" James asked.
"Yeah."
"Thank you," he said, going back inside and then shutting the door.
The guys gave each other a round of tense looks and then laughed, and we got down to the business of street football. I lined up at Wide Receiver. Usually because of my size I had to play Center or Running Back on short yardage plays, Nose Tackle on defense. Today I was special all because of that stupid fight. I was the Slugger. The hero. It was my moment to seize our little world and take it for what it was worth. But I played for shit. I dropped balls and missed plays on defense. I kept looking at the Talento house hoping for some sign of life, but it was dead quiet for a long time. Slowly but surely it came to life. As we played faint guitar trickled out of the Talento house and out onto the street. Soon the guitar was searing. It made a withering bleating sound that haunted our little street like the moans of the damned. It was just so loud and mournful. I couldn't hear the plays being called on our concrete field. Neighbors shut their windows and doors in order to keep the noise from infesting their peace. Others looked outside and gave disapproving looks toward the Talento home. Alec looked at me and shook his head. Someone was sure to call the cops on James Talento. Over the din, Mickey Santangelo called for a Hail Mary pass to end the game. I lined up again, listening for him to call out "hike." And then I ran.
Prune Boy (September 20, 2010. Issue 21.)
We were sitting in the living room with the air conditioning on, and the television on ESPN, when my mother came storming in the room. She looked like she had a bug up her ass. She paced around the room. I tried not to make eye contact. When I did she shook her head at me. I turned toward my younger brother, but he was awash in the news of the coming NFL season. He didn’t care what kind of a look mom had on her face.
“That’s it,” mom said. She went over to the television and shut it off. “I’m not going to have you sit in this house all day, watching television.”
“What would you like us to do?” I said.
“Don’t get smart.” My brother turned the television back on with the remote that he had practically welded to his side. Mom came over and grabbed the remote out of his hand. “I don’t need smart in this kind of heat.”
“Then sit down in the a.c.,” I said.
“I’ve been cleaning the house.”
“It looks nice,” my brother said.
“No thanks to either of you,” mom said. She looked at the two of us. “I want you out of the house right now.”
“But it’s ninety-degrees out there,” my brother said. “We’ll melt.”
“Then go to the pool,” my mother offered. “You’re dad and I spent all of that money getting a membership to the pool, and you hardly go.”
“I went last week,” my brother said.
She turned to me. “You haven’t been there at all. You just sit in this house watching television and listening to music.”
“I like television and music,” I said.
“You told me you like to swim too.”
“I do.”
“Then why haven’t you gone to the pool at all this summer?”
I had my reasons. Most importantly, I was a thirteen-year-old boy, and I was pushing a size forty in jeans, almost a double x in swimming trunks. I liked to swim, true. But I liked to swim at the homes of family friends, or at relatives; people who didn’t point and laugh when I took off my shirt and waddled toward the water, or if they did they were just cousins or kids that I’d known long enough to have seen plenty of embarrassing things to tag them on and make them feel like shit as well. I didn’t want to go to the private pool my parents paid for because I didn’t want to be looked at by strangers or, worse, many of the kids from school who went to that pool.
“Kids pee in that pool,” I said, by way of defense. My brother laughed.
“That’s a load,” my mom said.
The back door opened up and my old man came in the house holding a warm beer, wiping down his brow. He’d been outside mowing the lawn in the ninety-degree heat. It didn’t matter to him that it was ninety out, so long as the lawn looked all right for every asshole neighbor on our street. He had wanted me to mow the lawn, but I kindly told him to get bent. I didn’t care what the neighbors thought of our lawn. He told me that I was lazy, which was his own kind of way of saying that I was fat. My old man told me that one day he’d have me out there mowing that lawn.
“What’s going on in here?”
“They’re just sitting in here,” my mom said. “They’re just watching the television.”
“Shut the goddamned thing off,” dad said.
“I did. I’m trying to get them to go outside.”
“There’s still lawn work to do.”
“I’m trying to get them to go to the pool,” my mother said.
“That’s a good idea,” my dad said. “Your mother should take you both to the pool.”
“I’ll go already,” my brother said.
Everyone looked at me. “It’s too hot to go to the pool.”
“That’s bullshit,” dear old dad said. “A pool cools you off. It’ll do you a world of good to get out there and swim around for a while.” Which was his way of telling me that I needed exercise.
“I would prefer not to,” I said.
“Well, you’re going,” he said. Dad went into the kitchen and grabbed another beer. He came back into the living room, popped the top on the beer, and shot it down. Then he sighed. I looked at my old man and couldn’t wait until I was old enough to sigh over a beer. “You’re mom is taking you whether you like it or not.”
Good old mom turned to my old man. “You’re going too. I’ll be goddamned if you’re sitting here all day, drinking beer, and falling asleep on that couch.”
“But I just mowed the lawn,” the old man said.
“I don’t care. We’re all going. We’re going to go to the pool as a family.”
The pool was already packed with people when we got there. There was a sea of people. And they all looked good in their bathing suits, even the older people. Everybody looked like they belonged at the pool, even my family. My mother had her black one piece that her friend, Pauline, said was slimming, and she had her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. My old man had his trusty red trunks and his old Iron City Beer t-shirt that covered his small belly. My brother was just in his trunks and flip-flops. He had a thin, tanned body; my old man liked to remind everyone that my brother looked like him at his age. All three of them were in sunglasses because they had perfect vision. I was squinting through specs that took up half of my face because I was blind as a bat. I had on my black, whale-sized trunks, and they weren’t slimming in the slightest. I was wearing a large Beatles t-shirt that I purposely put on because the only way that I was going in that water was with a shirt over my fat, white flesh, and I sure as hell wasn’t risking my Beatles t-shirt on this bullshit family outing.
“There’s a good spot,” my old man said, pointing toward an un-shaded nook. The four of us lumbered over toward it. I was positive that the only reason the space was open was because the sun shown down upon it with a blazing fierceness that would make a normal person ill.
“I’m going in,” my mother said once we’d set up our blankets in the browning, dying grass. “Who’s joining me?”
“I see some of my friends down at the deep end. Could I go and play with them?” my brother asked.
“Sure,” my old man said. He turned to my mom. “Let’s do it.”
They looked at me. “I’m fine here,” I said.
“Suit yourself.”
My brother went off toward his friends, and my parents headed toward the shallow end of the pool. I put a towel over my head and sat in the scorching sun, hoping that I wouldn’t die of heat stroke. I had to admit that the water looked refreshing. It looked like an ice-cold baptismal river. Christ, how I wished that I wasn’t a pathetic fat ass in that moment. I wished that I was thin and tan like my little brother, the spitting image of our old man as a child, and that I could run off and laugh and join my friends at the deep end of the pool too. I wished that I didn’t like food and television so much. But I wasn’t any of those things. I was fat and lonely, and I had tits bigger than some of the girls in my class. I wasn’t going in that pool.
“Jim, is that you?” A voice said. Maybe thirty-minutes had passed. I had no clue. I was lying on my back in the itchy grass, dying a slow death by heat and dehydration. “Jim?”
I removed the towel from my eyes. “Mark?” It was Mark Bayhan. I had a year on Mark, but we had both been in the Cub Scouts together about
three years ago. He was a good guy, and almost as fat as I was, only it didn’t seem to bother him. Mark was one of those happy-go-lucky fat kids. He took the insults and mocking in stride. He befriended his tormentors, wherein I huddled into myself and wished them all dead.
“I didn’t know you belonged to the pool,” he said.
“My parents do.”
“Cool.”
“Not really,” I said.
“Why not?”
I looked up at Mark. He was staring down at me with his big, happy brown eyes, his bowl haircut streaked with chlorine water and sweat. He had his shirt off and his man-tits were on full display for everyone to see. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You should go in the water,” Mark said.
“Can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because this is the only t-shirt that I brought,” I said, sitting up so that he could see the majesty that was my Beatles “Let It Be” t-shirt. “And I’m not taking my shirt off at this pool.”
“That’s silly,” Mark said. “No one cares what you look like.” This coming from a kid who found three bras in his desk last year, all of which belonged to his mother. Figure that one out.
“They all care.”
“Come on,” Mark said. He smiled at me. “I’ll go in with you.”
“Great. Two moving targets,” I said. But my resolve was wearing thin. It felt as though it was getting hotter by the minute. I couldn’t stand it anymore. “All right.”
“Cool.”
I looked around to make sure that no one was watching, and then I took my Beatles shirt off. I got up. I covered my man tits as if they were precious stripper jewels. I pushed past Mark and made for the pool as fast as I could, hoping that no one would see the stretch marks around my belly as well. When I got there I skipped the formalities of slowly getting in, but jumped right into the shallow end. My feet hit the bottom hard, jamming my legs a little bit.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Language,” my mom said. She and my old man were hanging by the side of the pool talking to a few of their neighborhood friends. They were talking about lawns.
“Sorry.”
“Hey Mr. and Mrs. Bachorski,” Mark said, after he’d waddled over to the side of the pool. He slowly climbed down the metal ladder, easing into the pool. “Isn’t this the best?”
“The best,” my old man said.
“What do you think, Jim?’ Mark asked me.
“I think little kids pee in here,” I said. “There’s probably shit floating in this pool.”
“Language, mister,” my mother said again.
“Sorry.” I turned to Mark. “Let’s get away from these people.”
So we swam for a while, and it wasn’t so bad. My ugly, fat body was concealed underneath the blue water of the pool. I sort of had fun. Mark hooked us up with a couple of other kids we knew, Billy and David, who were all kind of fat as well, and we played water tag for a bit. Then we wrestled in the water, scaring away people and little kids, until a hot lifeguard yelled at us to take it down toward the deep end. So we did. In the deep end we doggy paddled and talked baseball until there wasn’t much left to say. The day didn’t seem so hot anymore, and I wasn’t so worried about what anyone was thinking about me.
“I need to get out,” Mark said. “I’m hungry.”
“Me too,” Billy said.
“Let’s all bum money off of our folks,” David said. The three of them got out of the water, but I stayed in. “Aren’t you getting out, Jim?’
“Hell no,” I said. “It’s too nice in here. Screw food. I could swim all day.” I felt like I was telling the truth. I loved swimming. If I could swim every day, I wouldn’t be so goddamned fat, I thought. Maybe I would come to the pool more often.
Mark and the guys left. I doggy paddled for a while and then I floated on my back, letting the sun hit my face, listening to the murky noises of life filtered through the water. I felt like I had it made. There was still a lot of summer left and I had it easy. No job. No housework. No goddamned mowing the grass. Leave that the plebeians. I was a man of leisure.
I quit floating and daydreaming and lifted my head out of the water to look for Mark and the guys. I thought maybe I would join them for something to eat, considering that I was going to lose all of this weight swimming. I looked around the pool area but didn’t see the guys. What I saw was much worse. Heading toward the deep end was Dara Dennis, dressed in an emerald-colored bikini that showed off her cute, little tits. She was with her clique, Jules Brenner, Cynthia Miller, and Jessica Hart. They were all cute, an assortment of blonde and brunettes in other little bikinis. They were all in my grade. I had it the hard for Dara. I’d been in love with her for years. She knew that I was fat and alive, but that was about it. I looked around the swimming pool. There was nowhere for me to get out without the girls seeing me in all my blubbery glory. I was stuck.
“Hi, Jim,” Dara said. She sat down by the edge of the deep end of the pool, and dipped her emerald-painted toes into the water. All of the rest of the girls joined her. “I didn’t know you went here.”
“Oh I’m here all of the time,” I said, trying to sink deeper into the water.
“Saw your brother. He’s going to be cute when he gets older.”
“Yeah, he got all the looks,” I said. Dara and the rest of them laughed, but they didn’t deny it.
“Who are you guys here with?”
“Parents,” I mumbled.
“Oh.” Dara stared down into the water. “We never swim in this water.”
“Why?” I asked. I had no clue why I was keeping the conversation up. “The water is nice.”
“Kids piss in that pool,” Jules Brenner said. “You’re swimming in piss, Jim.”
“It’s chlorinated.”
“Still.”
It was right then that my brother came over with a few of his friends. Dara and the girls said hi to them, and then they started teasing the younger boys, joking and laughing with them in a way that they’d never done with me. This type of shit no longer upset me. I’d grown used to it, especially once girls became cute. I knew that I was invisible. I just hoped that maybe my brother would hold their attention long enough so that I could get back to the shallow end of the pool, and sneak out without one single man-tit or stretch mark put on display. But it wasn’t to be.
“Jim, mom said you got to get out of the pool,” my brother said to me, breaking himself away from the attention of the older girls for a moment. “Like now.”
“We just got here,” I said.
“Like hours ago. Dad’s hungry and hot.”
“Tell him to go back in the pool.”
“You get out and tell him,” he said.
My brother and I started arguing about going home from the pool. It was funny in a way because we were arguing about a pool that I didn’t even want to go to in the first place. But, again, there was no way I was taking my fat ass out of the dip as long as those girls were sitting there. They showed no signs of going anywhere. Dara and the girls continued to linger. They watched our argument, and seemed to enjoy it. Soon I gave my brother a look. It was one of those with the raised eyebrows, like I was asking him to help me. But he didn’t get the subtlety. My brother didn’t have to worry about girls from his grade seeing him pull his pasty, bloated stomach out of a pool. He went and got mom instead.
“Oh boy,” Dara said. All of the girls laughed and she looked at me and smiled. She winked but it was all bullshit. Still...God, how I loved her.
“What are you doing?” My mom asked when she got over to me. My brother and his buddies stood to the side of her shaking their heads, and laughing.
“Swimming,” I said, nudging my head toward Dara and her pack.
“Didn’t your brother tell you that we were leaving?”
“We just got here.”
“We’ve been here for two hours,” mom said.
“But I’m having fun,” I said, which was a huge lie. I was back to hating this goddamned pool. I vowed never to return.
“Good. Then I’ll have us up here every day. But right now I need you to get out so that we can go home, and I can start dinner.”
“But mom...”
“But nothing,” she said. Dara and the girls passed looks between each other. They were smiling and kind of laughing at me. “Just get out of the water, Jim.”
“No,” I said.
Mom put her hands on her hips. She had that same expression on her face that she’d had when she came storming into the living room, the turned-up nose look; a look that said she’d smelled something rotten. A look that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. “I want you out of that pool, mister. Now.”
“No,” I said again. “I’m not getting out this pool, lady. You must be nuts.”
“I’m getting your father,” dear old mom said. Then she stormed off toward where the old man was still baking in the sun. My brother smirked at me then followed her. His pals stayed behind to watch me.
“You’re going to be in serious trouble, Jim Bachorski,” Dara said.
“Fuck them,” I said, trying to sound tough. In the distance I could see my mom pointing and gesticulating toward me. The old man gave me a look, piercing my through his sunglasses. Then he got up. “Fuck them and their rules.”
“How long have you been in there an
yway?” Jules asked.
“A couple of hours,” I said. “I like to swim.”
“Ewwww,” Dara said. “You’re probably turning into a prune.”
“Prune Boy,” Jules said. And all the girls laughed. My brother’s friends laughed. They started saying it over and over, like a chant. Prune Boy. Prune Boy. They said it until my family got over to me, and old man began making his typical threats
“Screw this,” I said.
They started chanting Prune Boy again. I looked toward my family. My mother was smiling. I guess she thought that the kids and I were playing some kind of game. She thought that we were friends. My brother was smiling too. Then he started pointing and laughing, chanting Prune Boy along with the rest of them. My old man was red-faced and yelling at me. He said something about how hard he works all week, and how he doesn’t need this shit. He told me that I’d be finishing the mowing tonight. But I didn’t care. I was done listening to all of them. I took a deep breath and dunked my head under the water. Everything was a fine blue blur. I wondered if I could stay under there long enough for all of them to go away.
Modern Romancer (December 20, 2009. Issue 12.)
“Come here,” he says.
“I told you I don’t think I can,” she answers.
“Just this one time.” He pats the cushion, beckons her with a smile. “I’m feeling a little lonely and vulnerable.”
“I’m not programmed for this.”
“Right. But you sure were programmed to do what we just did.”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t come sit next to me?”
“No,” she says.
He smiles. “You seem uncertain. It seems like you want to.”
She looks at him. Her eyes are beautiful but he notices a coldness behind them. “That is simply what you perceive.”
“Perceive? Why so formal?”
“Programming.”
“Programming,” he mumbles. Then he gets up. “Look, you want a beer or something?”
“How can I?” she asks.
He lifts his arms. “I don’t know. It was just an idea.” Then he goes into the kitchen to get a beer. When he comes back in, she is standing. “Where you going?”
“It is time to start your dinner and do your laundry,” she says.
He sighs. “Right. Dinner. Laundry. How ‘bout we order out tonight. Pizza?”
“It is your decision.”
“Of course, you won’t eat no matter what I bring in here,” he says.
“That is correct.”
“Well, can’t you at least let the laundry go. I mean how many tighty whiteys do I need? You do the laundry so much I don’t think I’ve even touched most of my wardrobe.”
She looks at him. “Would you like that I clean the bathroom?”
He sits down, cracks his beer, and takes a pull. “No, I would not like that you *clean* the bathroom.”
“You are mocking me?” she asks.
He laughs. “A little.” Then he turns on the television. He looks up at her. “Are you going to sit or what?” She sits down in the chair where she was. “That’s not what I had in mind.”
“As I said before I’m not pro...”
“Programmed,” he interrupts. “What exactly are you programmed to do?”
“To love you and serve you,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow, has some more beer. “Sweetheart, what we do isn’t love.”
“It is a form of love.”
“Sometimes,” he says. “More often than not it isn’t.”
“But it is what you requested. It is what you said you wanted. Is it not?”
“I...” But then he puts down his beer and studies her. She has the most beautiful face: porcelain skin and a chin that comes down to a point, all surrounded by waves of auburn hair. She has a slightly upturned nose. It gives her a little bit of an air about her, a subtle aloofness. He likes it. Her eyes are such an icy blue they make him cold. “I guess it is.”
“Then am I not serving you as you requested?” she asks.
“I guess you are,” he says.
“You sound troubled.”
“Look,” he grabs his beer again and leans forward on the couch, “I’m just trying to say that this isn’t exactly what I bargained for. Do you understand?”
“No.”
He has more beer. “Okay, let me break it down for you this way. In a relationship there are certain obligations, sexual or otherwise. We got the sex thing down, baby. Don’t think I’m complaining here. You’re exactly what I asked for. It’s just...it’s...well, I didn’t think I’d miss the intimacy as much as I do, you know?” He looks at her. She is staring back at him blankly. “I guess you do know.”
“Intimacy is not a part of my protocol,” she says. She rises and hands him a piece of paper out of her back pocket. He takes it but does not read it. He already knows what it says. “I have been programmed to love you and serve you, as per the contract, as per what you specifically stated in the needs and desires section of the agreement. Has there been a problem with my service? Do I not do exactly as you stated, as you need and desire?”
He puts the paper down on the end table. “You do exactly as I ask in the contract.”
“Good.” She rises again. “Then if you desire food out and do not want your laundry done, then I will go and clean the bathroom now.”
“Fine,” he says.
He watches her leave the room, and then sits there absently watching a baseball game. He takes a few more pulls on his beer, before getting up. He goes into the kitchen and grabs another beer from the refrigerator. Above him, he can hear the sounds of water running, of the bathroom being cleaned explicitly as he stated it should. He opens the beer. He takes a few pulls before he feels sick to his stomach.
He puts the beer down on the kitchen table, and then leaves the kitchen. Quietly he goes up the steps. He leans in the bathroom doorway, and watches her scour the bathtub. Porcelain skin. Pointed chin. Upturned nose and waves of auburn hair. Icy blue eyes. She looks so much like Samantha it makes him ache. He thinks he’s had enough. And when she looks up at him and doesn’t smile, he knows he has.
“Stand up,” he says.
She puts the scrub brush down, and does as commanded. “Is it time again?”
“Yes. Turn around.”
She turns around and faces the bathroom mirror. She puts her hands on the sink. “Is this what you like?”
“Yes,” he says.
He gets behind her and leans in close. He sniffs. She smells of nothing but bathroom supplies and his scent. He leans closer, moving some auburn hair out of the way. He looks at her neck. It is thin, swanlike. He wants to kiss it but suddenly realizes that it doesn’t matter. So instead he raises his one hand and flips the small switch behind her left ear. He smells a whiff of ozone and immediately she goes limp. He catches her. He turns her over and looks into her eyes. They are dark and vacant. Then he cradles her in his arms for a few minutes, before gently setting her on the ground, and going back down to the kitchen to finish his beer.