Ed King (16 page)

At ten-thirty, DeathTrap came onstage, and there was Barry in black leather pants, shambling toward a battered drum set, shirtless, pale,
stringy, even gaunt, but with a splooch of stomach hanging over his pant waist and a drumstick between his teeth. He’d changed his hairstyle to bald, and, if Walter was seeing right from the back of the hall, he’d painted his lips like Dracula’s after a kill.

There was nothing for Barry to do at first except beat on a tom-tom and crash a cymbal while six college girls in white dresses were “sacrificed” onstage, one at a time, by a studly-looking guy—the band’s lead singer—who bit each, from behind, on the neck, hard, which appeared to elicit, from each, a fantastic orgasm. All of this while a dwarfish sideman chanted things like “The dark one has come!” and “Lusty wench, let thy blood feed Lucifer!” “Lydia would hate this,” thought Walter.

After each girl had come, and dropped to the floor, they suddenly all rose from the dead as one and, standing at six mikes, sang, to Barry’s beat, “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!” With that, the lead singer took center stage.

The other bands had been loud, but DeathTrap was louder. The resurrected girls got down on all fours, and the lead singer, sporting a codpiece, cavorted among them with theater and irony, stopping now and then to straddle one and hump her, much to the delight of the crowd. Barry pretended not to notice, and wailed away primitively, and threw and broke sticks. To Walter he seemed desperately self-aware, as though, instead of playing the drums for an eclectic, cerebral, hard-core band, he was making fun of someone who played drums for a group like that. Walter felt hollow—ill in his soul. It was so inexplicable, wounding, and tragic that his son had chosen such dark perversity from among all the choices life offered.

After its forty-five-minute assault on good taste and social norms, DeathTrap gleefully left the stage, Barry
sieg-Heil-
ing and goose-stepping away with a drumstick protruding from the fly of his pants like a long and very thin erection. Walter hurried outside, to a set of double doors at the back of the pavilion, where he was stopped by a bouncer with a badge reading manager—actually, a kid who’d spent a lot of time in a weight room. “I don’t care if you’re God, sir,” he said, “you have to have a pass to go in here.”

“Come on,” said Walter. “Be logical about it.”

“I am being logical. And the logic is, you can’t go in without a pass.”

“But that’s not logical,” Walter insisted. “Obviously, you don’t care about being logical, because if—”

“Hey,” said the bouncer, blocking Walter’s way when he tried to bluster past, “get the fuck out of here.”

Walter sat in his car for over an hour, watching the back entrance for a sign of his son, who finally came out with a cigarette between his lips and his arm around the waist of a girl Walter recognized as a sacrificed virgin. “About time,” thought Walter, then struggled out from behind his steering wheel and, feeling heartless now, headed for a showdown. The tang of pot hung on the air, and the stars and moon looked more vivid than at home. Many of the Battle of the Bands fans were leaving. Walter, despite his foul mood, saw beauty in the moment: the concert dénouement, the August warmth, the young people showing off attractive skin, and—the main thing pervading all of it—the probability that a lot of them were going to have sex in the next hour. It was great, except that he was so pissed at his son that everything else was in the background.

“Barry!” he called. “Jesus!”

Barry turned toward his father’s voice, took the cigarette out of his mouth, tossed it, and disengaged from his virgin. “Barry!” repeated Walter. “What the hell is going on with you?”

When he got close—close enough to smell pot on his son’s breath—Barry was staring at the ground. The virgin, who wasn’t really all that cute, looked Walter over and then looked away as if at something across the parking lot. He could see, in her face, that she’d decided to keep mum, and to stay invisible, through whatever was about to happen between this middle-aged guy and Barry. “Hey,” said Barry, “how’s it going?”

Walter sighed. “How’s it going? How’s it
going
? Jesus, Barry, what
happened
to you?”

“What?”

“I was there at two.”

“Whoops! Sorry, man.”

“Jesus, Barry.”

“I fucked up, I guess.”

“Barry.
Jesus
.”

“I’m a fuck-up.”

Walter thought the virgin might be laughing now, in a private way that barely showed. She was young, in her prime, with nice breasts and a horse face, and still wore the white dress she’d been sacrificed in that night. Despite his wrath, Walter thought first and foremost that he’d like
to fuck her. “Sorry,” he said, “whoever you are. You shouldn’t have to listen to all of this.”

It was as though he hadn’t spoken. She didn’t even say “Whatever,” or shrug. Not a flicker of an eyelash, nothing to acknowledge him. And this nothing was the worst, the most disappointing response of all, which he was sure she understood. She was wielding the weapon, so female, of disdain, and that made Walter even more furious at Barry. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“DeeDee.”

“Well, DeeDee, Barry is my son, and Barry was supposed to meet me in his dorm room, but Barry never showed up.”

More nothing—and so intensely was it nothing that it was also, from Walter’s point of view, everything. “I suppose you guys are headed off to fuck,” he heard himself say—and he was saying it to DeeDee. “Well, go ahead.”

“Dad,” said Barry.

“I hope you enjoy yourselves,” said Walter.

Now DeeDee—at last—put her head down, where it belonged, and he and Barry were face to face. “Hey,” said Walter, “you’re shaking.”

“Dad.”

“I pay for everything, remember?” said Walter. “If I stop now, you’re in trouble, Barry, because then you’d have to get a job.”

No answer. It was satisfying, for Walter, to humiliate his son in front of DeeDee. To see him on his heels, shaking in his leather pants, devoid, for once, of a comeback. At the same time, Walter felt terrible, because letting loose on Barry wasn’t good parenting. It was something he was doing because he’d lost control of himself. He’d always held back, sensibly—until now.

Barry, scowling, spat on the concrete and said, “Why are you so fucking
blind
?”

“What?”

“I don’t want your money. Keep your money, Dad. Wake
up
, okay? Take a look at yourself.”

Walter answered, “Nice meeting you, DeeDee,” and walked away.

It was a rough night in Room 15 at the Cougar Land. From Room 14 came another Battle of the Bands, and when that finally drew to a merciful
close, the relative quiet revealed that in Room 16 someone was snoring with the television on. Walter, a pillow over his head and wads of crumpled paper in his ears, lay awake replaying the parking-lot confrontation, particularly his part in it, which he felt acutely. By the time he fell into an unsatisfying half-sleep, there were cleaning carts rolling along outside, car doors opening and closing in the parking lot, and the voices of people walking past. Walter woke after ten with a headache, showered, and lay on the bed again.

At eleven-thirty, he paid his bill, then bought doughnuts in a bag for the road, and got out of Pullman. Passing between wheat fields, he festered over Barry, and over himself, and over Lydia and Tina, and the more he festered, the more disconsolate he felt. What a mess it all was, and what a waste of time, coming all the way out here like a good Samaritan, or like an envoy—of Lydia’s—on a peace mission. Time, money, goodwill, all wasted, and now, blue and at a loss, he was going home to Lydia with her tin of peanut-butter cookies admonishing him from the passenger seat. What would he say about the fact that her cookies remained undelivered, despite her repeated exhortations? And why did there have to be repeated exhortations? For that matter, why Lydia’s vapidity, condescension, sentimentality, and moral superiority? Why her constant leveraging? Why the guilt and punitive slavery? Why was she doing all of this constantly? Why did she treat him like he was serving a life sentence? What was in his oppression for Lydia? Walter, of course, knew the answer to these questions. It was that—as Barry might have put it—he was a fuck-up.

“What have I ever done right?” thought Walter. “My son despises me, my daughter hates me, my wife doesn’t trust me, and everyone at work probably thinks I’m a jerk. On top of that, I’m a serial adulterer. I’m a shitheel who slept with his wife’s best friend. I’m a chronic, fucking liar. I got blackmailed to the tune of two fifty a month by a goddamn teeny-bopper. It’s been payola through the teeth for … for more than sixteen years. That’s, what, almost fifty grand? Jesus, what else? How low can I go? I know how low—I’m a fucking statutory rapist. I’ve got a kid out of wedlock who I don’t know a thing about. That’s the real story of my life.”

A fat rodent ran across the road in front of Walter and, while he hovered between speeding up to hit it and slowing down not to, made it to the safety of the wheat. Now and then he saw doves on the phone lines, as still as glass insulators, inert in the heat. Nothing else seemed to live here,
especially not people, and the farther Walter drove into this stark, friendless landscape, the more deserted it felt, and the more deeply he experienced it as a last hiatus of relative peace before, as he thought of it, Lydia’s hammer fell.

“I should just lie back and enjoy the ride,” he thought. “I should be grateful for the beauty of this drive in the countryside, savor my freedom, and forget all the rest, since it isn’t here right now.”

At a dilapidated barn, he slowed to thirty, because in front of him a car was in the middle of the road, straddling the centerline. Maybe it was someone having engine trouble, he thought, or a photographer interested in the rural picturesque who’d stopped to weigh the barn’s merits as a subject. Walter saw the silhouette of someone by a tree, and was prepared to give whoever it was a pass, cut him some slack, until it turned out to be a young punk taking a piss. Who did the little fucker think he was, hogging the road like that while someone—Walter—needed to get past, and had every
right
to get past? How could anyone be this
dumb
? Didn’t this kid have any sense?

“Asshole!” thought Walter, and, pressing the accelerator, laid on his horn with the same irritation he’d felt when he’d let Barry’s dorm phone ring a million times. He gave the kid the finger furiously. Until now, irritation had been as far as it went for him when it came to other drivers, but this time he was seized by rage. He felt murderous, capable of anything. Unbridled, cut loose, he screamed “Fuck you!” and punched it. Passing, he noted that the car had racing stripes, and that a girl in a leather jacket was watching him from the passenger side. There was freedom, he knew, in reckless speed, and the whole operation, his defiant pass, left him with a keen sense of victory.

But he wasn’t victorious. The kid gave him the finger back—two fingers—ran, and jumped into his car. “Oh, no,” thought Walter. “Stupid of me
again
.” Fearfully, he watched the kid gain in his rearview mirror, and then, even more fearfully, watched him ride his bumper. Walter rolled down his window in a panic and waved him off, gestured for surrender, but the kid just rode his bumper all the harder. There was no way to shake him, because his car was souped up. In a straightaway, the kid pulled neatly alongside so his girlfriend could flip Walter off with both hands. Walter had a fleeting view of his adversary’s face—the face of a raging, powerful young warrior—and the remaining manliness and heat
went out of him. He felt scared into a thorough and quaking submission. Trembling, he hit the brakes to indicate docility, but as he did the kid forced him off the road into a wheat field. Poor Walter. He was turned upside down. He hung from his seatbelt with his head against the roof. He survived, in terror, the first of four rolls, but as the roof overhead hit the ground a second time, it caved in and broke his neck.

Jim Long was disciplined and didn’t drink insensibly, especially compared with his brothers. He’d come home in the evening from Long Alpine headquarters, ask Diane about her day, listen to her answer, ask follow-up questions, make her a cocktail if she wanted one, and, if she was at the sink in the kitchen or bathroom, pin her from behind and plant a kiss beside her ear. She liked Jim, at first, despite his conventionality, because he treated her like a princess. Jim was her hero, defending her against the pettiness and testiness in his clan of snobbish ski barons, and enjoying, literally, kissing her feet, due to what emerged as a foot fetish. He squired her to concerts and plays, and took her out for prime rib, king crab, or oysters on the halfshell. When they dined at the Benson, Heathman, or Seward, Diane felt self-conscious and feared she’d be revealed as the onetime consort of well-to-do hotel patrons. On the other hand, she’d left behind Blonde Ponytail Barbie and, on her way toward thirty, embraced Impeccably Arranged. Impeccably Arranged meant that, with enough money on hand and time to spend preening, no one would notice that she wasn’t perfect anymore. Why this was so important to her at such an early age was a question Diane pondered in a self-punishing
way; she wondered if she was neurotic or normal, an obsessive narcissist or an average woman with an average concern about the degradations of time. Sometimes she felt like the victim of chauvinism, someone who had thoroughly objectified herself because of forces beyond her control. Other times she felt that she was pulsing with power—that, because she still looked relatively spectacular, men were putty in her hands. Looking spectacular was a fascinating game—without it, Diane felt, life might be boring. The only problem was that looking spectacular got harder as she got older. Gradually, adjustments to makeup, hairstyle, and wardrobe became less like fun and more like work, demanded rigor as the window for good results began to close, and took not only too much time but too much emotion. On any given day, Diane could be made to feel good or bad by the results of her labors at her mirror. That made her feel like a shallow twit, someone who spent time wondering if her current bad-hair day was a harbinger of unending bad-hair days to come instead of spending it wondering what she was going to do with her life. Diane thought about her looks with a terrible constancy. It was the monologue in her head for lonely hours at a time, the one that animated her current persona as the Impeccably Arranged Mrs. Long.