Deathskull Bombshell (10 page)

Nick stumbled out. His heart flapped around
in his chest like a fish out of water. He wandered through the
parking lot, then down the sidewalk. He walked the cold lonely two
miles home, dug into his dad’s liquor cabinet and drank old wine
until he fell asleep.

September 2015

It was about 10:00 PM, and Margot was driving
everybody back from the fall pow-wow in Ma’s old Honda Civic. She
had the speed of a turtle on the road, no, a tortoise, so slow, so
careful. She craned her neck at intersections, squinting her eyes
behind her glasses. It made her look even more like a tortoise.

“Hurry up!” Kylie hollered from the backseat.
“I gotta check my Facebook messages. Gawd, you take forever. Old
woman. Mindimooyenh.”

Parker smiled to himself. Secretly he was
glad his parents refused to buy Kylie a cell phone. Even though she
whined like a banshee, it sure beat the alternative. Boys followed
Kylie like gnats to a streetlight, and the less portable the
conversation the better.

There were enough pregnant girls.

Margot stared at the road. “Wait,” she
said.

She stopped the car.

“What’s up?” Parker asked. Then he looked out
at the road. A fox crossed, staring up at them, beady eyes like
little stars in the darkness. He put his head down and ran faster,
slinking like a cat.

“Cool,” all three of them said, same
voice.

Margot waited, in case any others would pass.
Then she put her foot down. The Civic sped up considerably, and, at
least for a moment, Kylie stopped complaining.

The car flew along the highway.

Gradually Kylie fell asleep.

Margot looked at Parker. “You mind taking her
tonight? I think Ma and Dad are at Uncle Duane’s until
tomorrow.”

Parker eyed Kylie, snoring in the backseat.
Even asleep she was loud.

“I gotta be up early for school,” she added,
“and I still have to finish these term papers.”

“Yeah, okay,” Parker said. He had to go to
school tomorrow, too, but there wasn’t much homework this early in
the semester. He had a daily art journal for Intro to Drawing,
which he worked on between dances at the pow-wow, and then some
preliminary sketches for his painting class. It was okay. Not like
Margot had much space in her apartment anyway. Parker and Nick had
an entire house. It was an easy choice.

“We’re here,” Margot announced.

“What?” Parker asked. “Dude, this is the
middle of nowhere.”

“Don’t call me ‘dude’,” she admonished him.
“I’m a grown woman. I deserve to be addressed as such. And this
isn’t nowhere. We’re at a gas station. I need Red Bull.”

“That shit’ll kill you,” Parker warned.

“Don’t worry. I can handle it.” She turned
the car off, decisive, and walked inside the gas station, leaving
Parker with Kylie and any crazed gunmen that might be out this late
on a Sunday.

Parker was getting more panicky in his old
age. At twenty-eight, his hair already had grey stripes creeping
through, and his muscles hurt more than they did in his early
twenties. Work made him sore. If there was ever a crazed gunman…
well, he tried not to think about it.

“Get some real food, stupid!” Parker shouted
after Margot, but she was already gone. He could see her in the
bakery section, dawdling over the Twinkies and Swiss Cake
Rolls.

He sighed and lit a cigarette, breathing in
the menthol smoke. Life was bad for his nerves.

April 2009

“We need to talk,” Corey said, crossing her
arms over her stomach.

Post-pregnancy, she still looked bloated. Her
eyes were puffy.

The miscarriage was a long time ago. She went
on with work and school, didn’t miss a single day. It happened the
day of his uncle’s Easter party, a Sunday. She was back in class
the next day. Like it never happened.

Nobody needed to drop any GPA points over
some dead baby, she said.

She was a 4.0 sort of girl, 40-30-38, a
perfect ten. Very mathematical. Practical. One might even say
sturdy. So this needing to talk thing, Austin thought, this needing
to talk thing probably had something to do with numbers, and would
probably end up in some sort of subtraction, and then some sort of
division.

He was right.

He wasn’t sure what reasons she gave. The
ground dropped out from under him, making it hard to listen.
Nothing to grab onto for safety. He fell out, then, from her, from
himself, from the earth. The poles of gravity removed themselves
and there was Austin Dillard, floating somewhere in a dark sky with
nothing to ground him, no baby, no woman, no love. Free. This was a
blessing they said, men would kill for freedom. Long-term romance
killed everything good about a woman.

But they didn’t understand.

Corey Davisson was perfect.

Somehow it was him she ended up with. He
didn’t know why God had bothered to favor him like that. Now it all
seemed like a big joke.

He remembered all the guys in the hood who
knew Corey growing up. They noticed when Austin started chasing
her. They got protective, mean, but when he refused to budge, they
seemed to decide collectively to run with it. Sometimes they’d
punch him on the shoulder, go on pickle boy, hah-hah-hah, you be
careful now, like they were already married.

Maybe that was the problem, he wouldn’t marry
her. Maybe it was the baby. He didn’t know. As soon as she started
talking break-up, he died. He was gone.

She did give him reasons, he could tell by
her face. She looked sad, concerned, but not angry. Her eyes were
calm, they were dark. They looked like the sea. He wanted to
disappear there and drown, or get a camera to get this all down and
prevent it from happening completely. Just something he could
keep.

But then she was packing up all her maternity
jeans and sweatpants and baggy hoodies and eyeliner pencils from
his mom’s basement, everything in a suitcase, and he just sat on
the bed, their bed, only now it was his bed. It would never be
their bed again.

He watched Corey walk out the door. Somehow,
deep in his heart, he knew he’d never see her again, and even if he
did, it would never resonate quite like love or friendship. Now,
only nothing connected them but history. If he saw her again they
would never be lovers, only two dead people avoiding each other’s
shadows on the sidewalk.

May 2009

“I’ll think about it,” Nick said into the
phone as he dried the dishes, the phone tucked in the crook of his
shoulder. He always wore an apron during dish duty, and it was
always a different apron than his cooking apron. Nick was very
particular about this. Green apron for dish duty, and Kiss the Cook
apron for cooking. “Uh-huh,” he said, putting the bowl he was
drying aside. He grabbed a baking tray, caressed it with the dish
towel, then put it down and picked up the notepad he kept by the
telephone. He wrote a few things down. “Okay. Alright, I’ll call
you. Uh-huh. Bye.”

He hung up, making a face. “God.”

“What?” Alex asked.

“My friend Heather. She’s always on my ass
about do this or do that.”

“That sounds nice,” Alex said.

Nick glared at him. “Her friend’s looking for
a place to live, and she wants to know if we need a fourth
roommate. What do you think?”

“I think we should ask everybody and take a
vote,” Alex said. “A three-person vote makes more sense than only
two votes. Suppose one of us disagrees.”

“Hey, Parker!” Nick shouted up the staircase.
“I made tilapia!”

Parker bounded down the stairs, several at a
time. He was obsessed with fitness lately, forever testing new ways
to run and jump and stretch. Nick suspected it had something to do
with his old friend Stevie, who’d recently broke his leg. Suddenly
it was a real thing that invincible men could feel pain.

Parker looked around the kitchen, where there
was no tilapia. “Liar,” he said.

“My friend Heather just called us. A friend
of hers just got dumped and he’s looking for a place. He works
full-time.” Nick paused. “Do you want a fourth roommate?”

“I don’t care,” Parker said. “I want
tilapia.”

Nick gave him a blank look.

“No, I don’t mind. Jeez.” Parker rummaged in
the freezer.

“Okay,” Nick said. “Alex?”

“We should interview him first so we know
he’s not a serial killer or an escaped convict. I saw on the TV
once, this guy, he killed all of his roommates and then he ate
their corpses. It was pretty nasty. He used their bones as
furniture. I don’t think they interviewed him first. I don’t know
what kind of sauce he used either. You’d think people meat would be
kind of dry.”

“Right on.” Nick nodded, looking at his
notepad. Sometimes you had to just treat people like what they said
was logical. “Well, the guy’s name is Austin. He’s twenty-four and
he’s a telemarketer. I don’t think he’s in school right now, but it
sounds like he has plans to go back. Heather didn’t mention any
cannibalistic tendencies, but we can bring it up in the interview.”
He looked at the dishes in the sink. “I’ll call her tomorrow. I’m
sick of the phone.”

Parker stretched, scratching his stomach. “Me
too. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”

“Me three,” Alex said.

Nick rolled his eyes. Dumb. It was tough,
living with them, but somehow they made it work. He wondered if
this Austin guy did housework. Well, a full-time job was a good
sign. It’d help with rent and utilities.

Something caught Nick’s memory, but he
couldn’t remember what it was. His hand, and something about
cigarettes. He looked at the ceiling, but he couldn’t quite place
it.

December 2003

“Who’s your favorite of the Misfits?” Parker
asked. They were sitting together on the floor going over old punk
magazines. A plate of unfinished Cheetos, just out of reach. Parker
wanted to eat them, but he didn’t want to risk getting the orange
Cheeto crap on his hands and ruining the magazines.

It was like professional photography. You
couldn’t replace that.

“I dunno,” Nick said. “I never really thought
about it.”

“Oh,” Parker said.

They sat together silently, looking over the
pages. Their knees were almost touching.

There was a picture of the Ramones, looking
effortlessly cool with their sunglasses and leather jackets. Parker
liked that one. The Ramones were badass. Everything about them was
badass. Dee Dee was his favorite, so poetic, the most handsome of
the Ramones with his dark eyes and pissed-off stare.

“What about the Ramones?” he asked. “Do you
have a favorite of them?”

“Not really,” Nick said.

Parker sighed.

They flipped the pages.

Chrissie Hynde scowled at them from
underneath a spooky hairdo and gobs of black eyeliner. “Do you like
this picture of Chrissie Hynde?” he asked.

“I guess,” Nick said.

“You guess?” Parker said. “But she’s so
beautiful and hot.” He frowned, trying to sound enthused. “Man, I’d
like a piece of that.”

“I like the Ramones better,” Nick said.

August 2009

In the bathroom, Austin shaved his face as
Parker brushed his teeth, spitting in the bathtub every so often.
Tuesdays were busy.

Both of them worked Tuesday mornings, Austin
at TeleCollectCorpUnion and Parker at Phat Appetizers. It was
easier to just share the bathroom. Nobody really cared.

From what it sounded like, growing up, Parker
lived with all his siblings and a few cousins and family friends at
any given time, so he was used to sharing small spaces with
people.

Austin didn’t mind the company. Talking to
other people distracted him from Corey. He was glad he chose to
rent a house with three other guys, instead of a studio by
himself.

“Did you always know you were gay?” he asked,
for something to talk about.

Parker leaned over and spat into the bathtub.
“No,” he said. “I thought I was a mutant at first. Waited forever
for Professor Charles Xavier to give me a call so I could go to
mutant school, develop my powers and shit.” He grinned. “Never
happened.”

“Huh,” Austin said. He stepped back to
inspect his chin in the mirror, checking for the stray bits of
beard that always seemed to evade his razor. “How’d you meet
Nick?”

“Long time ago, I kicked a soccer ball and it
landed on Nick’s science project. Bam.” Parker made a motion with
his hands to illustrate the impact. “Big diagram of the
constellations. Completely toast. I destroyed his entire world. He
damn near killed me. I offered to help fix it, but he said no.
Hated me for years.” He ran his toothbrush under the faucet, and
bared his teeth at his reflection in the mirror. He added more
toothpaste, then resumed brushing his teeth. “One day there was a
field trip to Minneapolis, and we were forced to sit together on
the bus. Had to. So crowded, you know. Nobody else to sit by. He
didn’t say a word to me, just read his book.” He spat again. “Then
some girl got the idea to sing on the bus. Mariah Carey. She was so
bad, dude, oh my god.” He screwed up his face, remembering. “To
drown her out we started talking to each other. I had a huge crush
on him.”

“But he was a guy?”

“Yes,” Parker said. He spat his toothpaste
into the bathtub, then grabbed a glass of cold water to
half-heartedly rinse it out.

“Was it weird?”

“Not really,” Parker said. “Felt normal.”

“Oh,” Austin said. He splashed his face with
cold water and slapped on aftershave. It stung. “You think I’ll
find someone?” he asked.

“I dunno,” Parker said. He ran a hand through
his hair and set it in a sloppy ponytail. “Get over your old girl
first, maybe.”