Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (4 page)

But then Roddy nodded and pointed at one of the kids, and the
kid
produced a Camel hard pack and let Roddy bum a cig. Roddy stuck it in his mouth and then gestured—two more? Can I get two more for later? But the kid closed the pack. No dice. Maybe if we get some beer going later, he seemed to say.

And it hit me—I stole this poor bastard’s BB pistol. The dude owned an air mattress, a bottle of shampoo, and three shirts. Hell,
I’d
want weapons, however useless, if I slept in the closet of a movie theater.

I looked in the doorway and Trace was standing there, looking as stricken as I felt. We didn’t say anything to each other, but there it was, hanging in the air between us. Why had we stolen nine of the maybe sixteen possessions that Roddy owned?

“You wanna put ’em back?”

I said, “I do,” almost before he could finish. I slipped the BB pistol into his hands, out of range of a woman’s gaze, waiting to buy her ticket to see Timothy Dalton take on the ultimate Bond villain—Joe Don Baker.

“See you downstairs later.”

I said, “Is Bryan putting his back?”

“He already did,” said Trace. “I’m going to go talk to Gary Jay.”

The first customers pressed against the ticket booth, and I mentally calculated how many half tickets I could sell.

The last show of the night was at nine thirty. Once I bagged the receipts and wrote the gross in ballpoint pen in the separate brown paper bags, I closed the booth. I had $80 in my pocket from half stubs. I headed downstairs, to where Roddy was Windexing the glass top of the snack bar.

“You wanna go on a beer run?” I asked.

“What’s everyone want?”

Trace came out of the projection booth. He’d probably just rolled Dan onto his belly so he wouldn’t choke on vomit. He said, “Get the one bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. Or something strong like that. And then a case of beer? Pabst Blue Ribbon?”

“I don’t want to carry a case back by myself. Someone come with me,” said Roddy. “Gary Jay.”

“He should usher
Adventures in Babysitting,
” said Trace, a little too quickly. “There’s a bunch of middle school douchebags got dropped off by their parents down there.”

“Well shit, you’re still on cleanup.” Roddy turned to me. “You come. You wait outside the Giant Foods. I’ll get two twelve-packs; we’ll carry those back”.

I looked at Trace. He was trying to look bland and nonchalant and he was burning a lot of calories doing it.

“Yeah, I’ll go. Okay.” Roddy and I started toward the stairs leading to the street. Right before I turned the corner to follow Roddy, I saw Trace pivot and bolt downstairs, to the theaters.

* * *

“I’m being cool about it, but one of you assholes stole some of my shit,” said Roddy abruptly. We were passing by the big, carved wooden lions in front of the Hunan Garden. The lions’ scoop-jawed, toothy grins seemed to mock Roddy, who, even now, speaking through clenched teeth, looked like his droopy lower lip would slide and puddle onto the front of his shirt.

“Someone in the theater?”

“No, someone in the Pentagon, fuck-neck,” said Roddy. “I went in for a second, to get some Freshen-up gum I’d stashed in my
Back to the Future
vest, and some of my shit was gone.”

“What stuff?”

“Like you don’t know.”

I said, “I don’t. Really. I don’t know what you keep in there.”

Roddy didn’t say anything for a second. We were at the automatic doors for the Giant Foods.

“You almost slipped up there. See, if you’d said, ‘i didn’t take any of your throwing stars,’ I’d know you were lying.”

“Someone took—you have throwing stars?”

“Five of ’em. And I’m a dead shot throwing them. I’ve got air pistols, and Bruce Lee sticks, but no one took any of them,” said Roddy, half to the air around us, like he was putting together a puzzle. “So I’m looking for someone with quick arms. Which you don’t have.”

I said, “Okay.”

“See, I’m better’n Columbo at figuring this stuff out.” And then he stepped backward through the hissing-open doors, unable to suppress a girlish half chuckle as the doors opened as he’d hoped they would and he didn’t bounce his ass on glass after uttering his exit line.

On our way back, Roddy expounded on
Columbo,
which was his favorite show. I realized, just before we reached the theater, that Roddy believed Columbo had a trained owl.

The last patrons climbed the stairs to the surface and home. Now it was us and Roddy.

Deep Purple’s
Perfect Strangers
album was blasting through the sound system. Usually, before we started drinking, one of us would run to the tape machine, to try to slap a Van Halen or Hüsker Dü cassette in before Roddy could put in his beloved Deep Purple and claim the soundtrack for the evening. Now, in a misguided attempt to placate Roddy, someone had put in Deep Purple. But the Deep Purple cassette was in Roddy’s room, nestled in its slot in his cassette carrier, among his .38 Special and Eagles and Jimmy Buffett tapes. So already, he knew that, again, someone had ransacked his stuff.

At least, Columbo would have guessed that.

Roddy placed his twelve-pack on the snack counter. I hurried downstairs, to hide the other one behind the last row of seats in theater one, our designated drinking area. Roddy would use his twelve-pack to entice his court of paint huffers and skate rats down into the theater, so we’d learned to stash our own. Roddy made friends with thirsty burnouts.

When I arrived back at the snack bar, Trace and Bryan were shotgunning beers. Roddy was slowly sipping his, still holding the bottle of MD 20/20.

“Where’s Gary Jay?” I asked.

“Yeah, where is that strong-armed little fucker?” asked Roddy. “You’d think he’d—”

And then Melinda came around the corner, from the stairs leading up to the street.

Melinda restocked the salad bar at the Giant Foods and was currently having a sloppy romance with Bryan. She was still in high school but heading toward senior year. She was gap-toothed and apple-cheeked, but it all hung together as “cute.” Bryan, vaguely dropping hints that he’d someday join the army and maybe become a Green Beret, hid his blazing, doomed passion for Melinda with a gruff nonchalance.

“Hey, guys,” said Melinda.

“Yeah, what’s up? Huh,” said Bryan, sipping his beer to hide the smile that cracked his face.

Roddy looked pissed. You could tell he’d had something sinister and threatening in the breech, and Melinda had queered his pitch with her dopey cheerfulness. Melinda slid her shoulder under Bryan’s free arm and tickled his stomach.

This was dark territory for Roddy. Two obviously innocent fellow employees—my stammering and buddy-buddy eagerness on the beer run had crossed me off the suspect list, and Trace’s big, open face was a window into his crammed-with-facts, college-bound brain. My love of R.E.M. and science fiction were two more strikes against me. Roddy couldn’t conceive I possessed the boldness of thievery with such mama’s-boy tastes.

And, worst of all, there was Bryan, sharing the warmth of a female.

“Yyyyyyeah. Well, I’m going up, get my buds.” Roddy grimaced as he killed his beer, placed the MD 20/20 on the counter, and mounted the stairs, off to collect his low-protein minions.

“Naw, I’m not giving them back,” said Gary Jay. “He can’t even prove I’ve got ’em.”

Trace said, “Who else would steal ’em? Someone came in to see a movie, and then they went into his room . . . ?”

“Maybe.” Gary Jay, Trace, and I were in the projection booth. The muffled sound of Deep Purple’s “Wasted Sunsets” thrummed through the walls. Dan’s carpeted snoring was louder.

“Man, the dude’s such a psycho. He’s up there with his dickhead friends; you can go put ’em back now,” I said. Maybe I whined.

“He
acts
like a psycho.”

I said, “What difference does that make?”

My guts were gnarled with this unpleasant feeling of fear, and then anger at myself for being afraid, and then guilt. If Gary Jay went down, it would be only because he got caught. I had a sneaking suspicion that Bryan, Trace, and I—compared to Gary Jay—were pussies. If he’d put the throwing stars back, I could erase some of that. An hour ago I was boring a hole through my limited suburban existence, catching a glimpse of the larger world. Now I was begging my friend to preserve the lame-ass status quo. The next few years of my life—all through college, actually—would be a cursive progression: a huge loop forward and then a frantic, straight line back.

“Well, I tried,” said Trace, like he’d carved it on a fresh tombstone. He walked away, defiantly, out of the projection booth and down the stairs into theater one for a fresh beer.

I took two seconds too long in thinking of something equally final and self-absolving to say. Roddy kicked the door open.

Behind him I could see four of his runty associates. It was as if Roddy were Dr. Moreau but, instead of trying to turn animals into men, he’d tried growing new versions of himself out of trimmings from his wispy mustache. Each of his burnout satellites was attempting to grow the same piebald caterpillar under his nose. The experiment wasn’t a success, however—none of the runts had Roddy’s dark circles under their eyes.

“Where’s my fucking throwing stars?” Roddy was jutting his jaw as far forward as he could. The rerouting of energy made his belly sag. He only had so much to go around.

“In my pocket, next to my dick,” said Gary Jay. One of the runts went, “Whoop!” You could tell Roddy couldn’t figure out if Gary Jay was questioning his manhood. Was this a twisted, homophobic Labor of Hercules—recover your weapons by sucking my cock?

“Why’d you take ’em?”

Gary Jay said, “’Cause I wanted ’em. They’re badass.”

“You’re right,” said Roddy, as if conceding a point in an argument. “Why didn’t you take the air pistols? Or the nunchakus?”

Then he turned on me, as quick and close to an adder striking as his starchy constitution could muster. “Were you gonna take my guns?”

“We were all in there,” said Gary Jay. “But he and those other guys pussed out.”

Roddy turned back to Gary Jay.

Somewhere, in that moment, there was a historic concert happening for two hundred people in a tiny room. Somewhere a band like Fugazi or Minor Threat was building its legacy. Somewhere a young filmmaker was sitting in a rep theater, watching
The Fallen Idol
or
The Red Shoes
and deciding, in their mind, to be an artist. Above me, in the ticket booth, was a book and a cassette of music I was trying to lash together as some sort of life raft to my future.

But right then, I only wanted one thing in the world. I wanted a guy to return five throwing stars to a guy he’d stolen them from, and avoid seeing something ugly, so I could go drink cheap beer and listen to mid-career Deep Purple.

Finally, Roddy turned back to me. “Ha! Yeah! You
did
puss out!”

Then, as if illustrating to his Acne Legion that true power lies in giving it away, he swiveled his gaze back to Gary Jay and said, “Keep ’em, I don’t give a fart. They’re not balanced right anyway.”

Holy shit, I had to get out of Virginia.

Hours later, wrapped in a tingly overcoat of beer and sweet wine, I sat in theater one.
Perfect Strangers
had been playing, nonstop, the entire time, but we were beyond caring. We’d broken out the BB pistols and, in a ritual we repeated almost every night from that point on, we shot at Roddy’s minions. That was the price they paid for the alcohol they drank. They’d stand down in front of the screen and let us ding them with metal BBs.

Trace and Gary Jay sat together, aiming each shot. I was firing the 1911-style gun one-handed and missing. The booze wasn’t helping. Out of a dimly remembered mercy we aimed only for the torso.

Roddy sat next to me, explaining in detail how he’d solved the mystery of the throwing stars. Normally I’d have been annoyed, but the sheer level of bullshit in his story—he actively disremembered conceding the throwing stars to Gary Jay and was planning on ambushing him with nunchakus later—delighted me.

Bryan and Melinda were behind us, doing the kind of frantic tongue-kissing that made it look like they were each eating a peach
^*
The scruffy punks, air-guitaring— badly—to “Under the Gun,” were now absorbing head shots. But, armored with bellies full of fortified wine, they were beyond sense or concern. Another night at the Town-center 3—a night that never really started—was about to not really end.

I still think about the Towncenter 3, some nights before sleep. I imagine floating above an all-ages show at the Birchmere in Washington, DC. Fugazi is cutting a swath of gut-bucket fury through space and time. I was never there. But like Roddy, I can re-remember things to suit my regret.

Then, in my memory, I float northwest to the suburbs, to Sterling, and over the Towncenter 3.

And then I begin descending down, down, underground. Past Gary Jay, painting the men’s room with regal purple MD 20/20 vomit. Past Dan, sleeping on his side and muttering about riding the high country. Past Bryan and Melinda, sharing Junior Mints at the snack bar, outlined by a heart they couldn’t see was already broken. Then over to Roddy’s office, where Trace restole the nunchakus.

And finally, down to theater one, where a cocky corpse named Roddy shot skate punks with a BB gun.

Where’s our coffee-table book? Oh, wait. No one took pictures. And we were all ugly.

^*
At least, that’s what Kurt Vonnegut said. Go with your ’gut, always.

^*
The lapin Agile and Elaine’s, as of this writing, are still going strong. The Factory—and the building that held it—gone. CBGB is a John Varvatos store. studio 54 is now a theater, with “franchises” all over the world, including a location dropped inside the MGM Grand in Vegas like a core sample of the seventies dropped into a museum of glittery loss.

^*
I’m changing everyone’s name in this, and some other things. But if any of the people I worked with at the Towncenter 3 are still alive and continued making the choices they made when we drew paychecks together, then they’re beyond consequence or remorse and will kill me.