Fast Times at Ridgemont High (29 page)

But that wasn’t the real problem. He could even deal with his new assistant manager, Harold, a guy Brad thought looked like that TV ventriloquist who worked the bitchy puppet named Madame. Harold was always asking Brad to run errands for him, and he expected Brad to love doing them. Harold was big on company pride.

Brad didn’t even mind that so much. He was the new guy at Captain Kidd, so he went along with it.

The real problem, as Brad saw it, was the uniforms. Captain Kidd Fish and Chips demanded that all employees wear blue-and-white-striped buccaneer outfits. The uniforms came with hot, baggy pants and phony black plastic swords that an employee couldn’t remove—“Where’s your sword, Hamilton? You’ve got to wear the sword!”—and worst of all, a big floppy Ponce de León swashbuckler hat. Like a bunch of pirates. Behind the fryer, Brad felt, this got to be a bit much.

At least no one from Ridgemont High came into the place.

One day Brad was at the fryer, tossing some frozen cod into the oil. It was pretty amazing, Brad was thinking. Here was Redondo Beach, a warm-water port, and they still flew in this frozen fish from Alaska. It didn’t make sense. But he didn’t eat fish anyway, so he just cooked it up and didn’t worry about it. Anyone who would come into a place with a big purple lobster on the sign out front, Brad figured, would probably love the stuff.

His thoughts were interrupted by the breathless appearance of Harold, the assistant manager. “Hamilton,” he said, “I need you to run an order for me. I’ll take over the fryer. Those boys over at IBM are really socked in, and I told them you would personally deliver their order within the hour. Can you just run it over in your car? I’ll reimburse you for gas.”

Brad dutifully unhooked his apron. “Okay. Just give me a minute.”

Brad fried up fourteen boxes worth of frozen cod and stacked them by the counter. He loaded the boxes into The Cruising Vessel, then went back to get the bill from Harold. The last thing Brad did was take off the buccaneer outfit and change into Levi’s for the drive to IBM. It was definitely worth leaving the fryer for a chance to take off that uniform.

Harold caught sight of him as he was leaving the Captain Kidd employees’ restroom. “Hey Hamilton, what are you doing? What are you dressed like that for?”

“This,” said Brad, “is how I dress all the time.”

“Come on, Hamilton. You’re going over to IBM to represent Captain Kidd Fish and Chips. I told them you would deliver those boxes
personally.
Part of our image, part of our
appeal
is in those uniforms!” He said it like he had nabbed Brad in the act of sabotaging the place. “You’ve got to be proud to work at Captain Kidd!”

“You really want me to change back?”

“Yes,” said the assistant manager, “I think so. Why don’t you change back.” He paused. “Show some
pride,
Hamilton.”

Now there was a time when Brad Hamilton might have said something, a time when he might have taken a stand. But those were the days, as he saw it, before the punching bag of life had come back to hit him in the face. His new policy was to shut up and make money. Gas was expensive. The Cruising Vessel didn’t run on pride.

“Okay,” Brad sighed. “I don’t believe you’re asking me to do this . . . but okay.”

He changed back into the buccaneer outfit and walked woefully out the door. He got in his car and rode out onto the Interstate. People in other cars were giving him strange looks.

Brad was on the Interstate when he realized what he was doing. It was already the time he would have normally taken off for lunch. But now he was out running errands for the assistant manager, delivering fourteen boxes of fish and chips—and the place didn’t even deliver. He was hungry.

Brad pried open one of the boxes and, so as not to disturb the careful order of the fish arrangement, grabbed a couple of fries. One thing he had to say: The fries were about twenty times better now that he was there. He had a few more.

He wondered how the fish tasted. It couldn’t be
too
bad; he had fried it himself. Maybe since he was the fryer that had gotten better, too. He took a nibble off one of the fish pieces . . .

It was the worst-tasting piece of shit that had ever passed for food. And that was a compliment. What was he doing at this place?

Brad threw the piece of fish out the window, a symbolic move that made him feel damn good. Some IBM executive would get one less piece of frozen Catch-of-the-Day cod. It would probably save the guy’s life, anyway.

In another car on the Interstate Brad saw a pretty girl looking at him. He smiled back at her, the winning Brad game-show-host-young-Ronald-Reagan-lean-and-hungry grin.

The girl started laughing.

The
uniform!
He forgot he was wearing that stupid uniform! And the swashbuckler hat! Shit! That girl had been laughing
at
him.

He whipped off the hat and tossed that out the window, too. And the plastic sword. And his little scarf. And even though Brad Hamilton knew it would cost him the last fryer job in town, he sailed right past the entrance for IBM.

Ritchie Blackmore’s Birthday

A
pril was a big month for school events. It was as if someone in the administration realized that unless a couple of jolts were thrown in early, the long slide toward June/Total Apathy might get mighty steep mighty quick.

There was the student-faculty basketball game, a heavy-pitched event that was the culmination of weeks of morning bulletin announcements on tryouts, practices, and challenges. The students won, and Steve Shasta took Coach Ramirez to the ground in one fight for the ball. Big news for two days.

April also brought PSAT exams, the Sophomore Circus, the Annual Lunch-Time Concert, the Chocolate Sale, college acceptance notices, and the first announcements for Grad Nite, coming in June.

Surely there was enough action there to touch on every Ridgemont student’s interests, but none of these special April events meant a thing to Randy Eddo the ticket scalper. Eddo, the man on whom most of the high school depended for their concert tickets, had his own reason to celebrate in April. To Randy Eddo, fifteen, April could tolerate no holiday other than . . . Ritchie Blackmore’s Birthday.

Who, the naïve and leaderless might ask, is Ritchie Blackmore?

Randy Eddo liked it when someone asked that question. “Ritchie Blackmore,” he said, “is the greatest proponent of pure, heavy rock music alive. He is the man to whom I dedicate my life.”

Eddo had found a true hero in Ritchie Blackmore. Blackmore was one of the first English guitarists to begin playing loud hard rock guitar in the late sixties, when Randy was still in the crib. Blackmore went on to form one of the most popular heavy-metal groups of all time, Deep Purple, before finally leaving the band in a fit of rage over the group’s commercial successes. He went on to form another, less accessible heavy-metal band, Eddo’s favorite, Rainbow.

Eddo had gone to the library and found every old interview with Blackmore he could. He knew every story of every time Blackmore smashed a camera, or threw a steak across a restaurant, or told an interviewer he could “cut any guitarist alive.” In making reservations at restaurants, Eddo used the name Blackmore. He had even petitioned Ridgemont High to officially recognize Blackmore’s birthday, April fifteenth, if only by playing his music during the two lunch periods.

Randy Eddo’s request was denied. So it was that every April fifteenth, Randy stayed home and celebrated Blackmore’s birthday
his
way.

At 8:00 on the morning of Blackmore’s birthday, Randy Eddo walked through the living room and threw open the imitation oak doors of his family’s Magnavox stereo. Then he began playing, one by one, and in chronological order, every record and bootleg record Ritchie Blackmore had ever made or had a hand in.

This year was Randy’s second annual observance, and he began as tradition dictated, with the
Screaming Lord Sutch
album. Blackmore, Eddo pointed out, was only sixteen when he performed his first recorded solo on that record.

Eddo’s parents had grudgingly decided to go along with the celebration of Ritchie Blackmore’s birthday. They simply asked Randy to keep it as low as possible, for the elderly neighbors next door, and take messages if anyone called. Randy himself did no ticket business on this day.

Mr. and Mrs. Eddo would arrive home from work at six in the evening, and Randy would just be getting into the
great
stuff: “Woman from Tokyo” and the
Made in Japan
live album with all those excellent five-minute screams from when Ian Gillan was still in the group.

“Randy!” his mother shouted. “Can’t you
go
anywhere?”

“No,” said Randy Eddo. “Suffer.”

It took about twelve hours total, but on the evening of Ritchie Blackmore’s birthday Randy Eddo could always look back on a fulfilling and wonderful experience.

Cadavers

“S
hock,” lectured Mr. Vargas, “represents your greatest threat to life. Blood collects in the abdominal cavity. A person becomes pale, cold, clammy to touch. Taken to its extreme, death occurs . . .”

Everyone knew what was coming up in May. Mr. Vargas’s biology class had gone through most of the textbook. By process of elimination there wasn’t much left on the class schedule. Except . . .

“Now as you know, we’ll be taking a field trip to University Hospital before the end of the year. I’ve set the date for three weeks from today. I want you all here on that day because it is a mandatory attend for this class, and your grade. We’ll be able to see every facet of the hospital’s life—from birth to death.”

The next two-and-a-half weeks were a whirlwind of controversy. Some students were trumpeting the fact that their parents would write a note; others claimed that they would definitely be sick on that day. No way were they going to stick their hands into any cadaver. No way would they even be in the same
room
as a bunch of stiffs. Forget all the scientific details you’d learned all year—doesn’t that stuff
rub off?

But when the day arrived, there was near-total attendance for Mr. Vargas’s famed and feared University Hospital field trip. The bus took off after third period. It was an eight-block ride.

The class was met by two representatives of the hospital. The first step of the tour took the students to the floor-one lab, where they were given a complete explanation of all the testing facilities.
When is this going to happen?
The second-floor mental ward was fascinating. They saw the emergency room, an iron lung, a cancer ward . . .
but when was it going to happen?

“Now,” said one of the guides. “I’ll leave you with Dr. Albert for your last stop today.”

The class was taken to the basement of University Hospital, to the bottom floor, attainable only through a second elevator. The class descended in three shifts.

“What you are about to see,” said Dr. Albert, “is the human body in a state of transition. These are the preserved bodies of four deceased individuals—mostly derelicts—who died some two or three days ago. They have willed their bodies to our scientific pursuits, and to University Hospital in particular. So follow me, if you will . . .”

Dr. Albert, along with Mr. Vargas, led the class through the steel doors of the refrigeration room. The bodies were stretched out on metal trays, each covered with a single starched white sheet. Dr. Albert approached one of the cadavers and yanked the sheet down to its waist.

It was the orange crumbling body of an old man. His skin looked as if it might rub off if touched.

“Now, Allen here died of a bad liver a few days ago . . .”

“What can you do with the cadavers?” a student asked.

“We perform operations,” said Dr. Albert. “Delicate operations that shouldn’t be practiced on a live patient. We study the causes of death . . . it’s really not a morbid thing. I believe Mr. Vargas keeps formaldehyde animals in his room at Ridgemont High . . .”

Vargas nodded and stepped up to Allen.

“Now class,” he said, “this is a wonderful opportunity that Dr. Albert provides us with. Let’s not cheapen it in any way. This is an opportunity to study and identify actual parts of the human body, which we’ve been studying from textbooks all year long.”