Home Land: A Novel (18 page)
During the perp trot to the cruiser, one of those unnecessary evils we’ve come to depend on as a viewing public, Roger Menninger
poked his Team News microphone at Don Berlin’s defiant face.
poked his Team News microphone at Don Berlin’s defiant face.
“Don! Did you do it? Why did you do it?”
“I built it,” said Don. “It was mine to burn.”
“He means that metaphorically!” screamed a fat man trailing after them.
It was another thrilling Catamount moment, alums, because that fat man was Lee Nygaard, class of ’87, Fordham Law graduate and current counsel for Don Berlin.
“A damn good lawyer, too,” said Daddy Miner, when I called him at the Moonbeam.
“He once drank a fifth of crème de menthe before a school assembly and puked on Miss Robinson.”
“I thought that was you,” said my father. “I tell everybody that was you.”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, did you hear what Don said on the news?”
“That man is a tough cookie,” said my father. “He had me beat all these years. I hate to see him go out like this. He was a warrior. But now the age of the Moonbeam has begun. Your friend already called.”
“What friend?”
“Stacy what’s-her-name. The doctor. I don’t remember her from your graduation. Did she have big tits? Was she that hippie with the tits going on about some oil spill?”
“I don’t know, Dad. What do you mean she called you?”
“The Togethering. It’s at the Moonbeam.”
“What about the shamans?”
“Pushed it up. Obviously, you don’t have to work the shift, if you don’t want to. You might want to spend quality time with your old classmates.”
“Fuck them.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “I got my license back.”
“Hazel would have been proud. She always said you would drive a car someday.”
“It’s her birthday, you know.”
“I know, Lewis.”
“I’ve been thinking about her today, that’s all.”
“You’re a good boy, Lewis.”
“Are you proud of me?”
“I didn’t say that. I said you were a good boy.”
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER was a horse thief in the Ukraine. So his son could run numbers in the Bronx. So his son could go legit with liquor stores in Queens. So his son could build bars, catering halls, in New Jersey So his son could be a busboy for his father? Was there supposed to be a glorious continuum to all of this striving? I guess somebody had to break the glorious continuum chain. Even at twelve, thirteen, sitting in my bedroom, imagining myself a man, a man sitting fierce and lonesome at a strip joint at last call, I knew that somebody would be me.
Not to say I never had any plans. I had plans. I could picture myself in various places. But I was never doing anything in these pictures, these places. I was just sort of standing there, being congratulated for something. Sometimes I had a glass of punch in my hand. It was important I finish my punch, not just swish it around in my mouth. The parade was about to begin.
Teabag Day is a big deal around here.
HOLLIS WOFFORD was telling us about his narcissism.
“I’m a fucking narcissist,” he said. “But I’m in serious awareness about it.”
He squeezed his balls, sucked his teeth.
I’d come over to the Retractor Pad to tell Gary about the Togethering
moving to the Moonbeam. Hollis had answered the door, his eyes tracking the slope of my skull.
moving to the Moonbeam. Hollis had answered the door, his eyes tracking the slope of my skull.
“Larry’s here,” said Hollis.
“I can come back later,” I said.
“Sit down,” he said.
There was something in the air, Catamounts, contrails of evil talk.
“Hollis and I were just discussing secrets,” said Gary.
“We’re only as sick as our secrets,” Hollis said. “Secrets are what destroy us. That and blowcaine. My secrets consume me. Almost as much as my hatred for Larry’s cocksucking buddy Fontana.”
“Hey, Hollis,” said Gary. “I thought we were doing step work, here. I think you’ve gone off message.”
“It’s all one message,” said Hollis. “Many paths leading to one truth.”
“Lewis,” said Gary, “how’s the day treating you?”
I felt funny talking with Hollis in the room, but he seemed to have sunk into his own harm-happy stew. He was huffing on his sunglasses, wiping them down with his shirttails. I told Gary about Don Berlin’s Party Garden burning down, which he knew about, and the Togethering now being a Moonbeam affair, which he didn’t.
“Will Fontana be there?” said Hollis.
“I doubt it,” I said.
“Well, I can’t go anyway. In case you haven’t heard, I’m a wanted man. But Fontana better steer clear of me. I’ve got nothing to lose now. Crimes of passion are where I’ve drawn the line over the years, but my chalk is getting down to the nub.”
I wondered if Gary was hurt by the word nub. Maybe Gary didn’t know he had a nub.
“Listen,” said Hollis. “You better not tell anyone you saw me. I can trust Gary here because we are bonded by our recovery. But you’re an active. You’re in denial. People in denial do stupid things. I can assure you our mutual friend Pete will undertake more than
eviction procedures on your sorry ass if you speak word one. Is this dug with appropriate depth?”
eviction procedures on your sorry ass if you speak word one. Is this dug with appropriate depth?”
“I guess so.”
“This is no age for guesswork,” said Hollis, stood, turned back to Gary. “And as for you, Slippy Slipperton. Renaldo Relapse, Esquire. I know what kind of game you’ve been running. It’s a punk’s game. I’m no Mother Teresa. I’m no Venerable Fucking Bede, either, but I’ve heard your shares in the meetings lately and I just sit there in my folding chair with my little Styrofoam cup and think to myself, ‘Hollis, that boy is making a damn fool of himself. His step work is shit and he’s surrendered to nothing. Even now, as he rambles incoherently about his higher power and one-day-at-a-time and easy-does-it, that motherfucking ship is going down.’ Easy will do you, my friend. And I’ll do you, too. I know I’m partly to blame because I keep selling you the stuff, but you’re not being cool about it. You’re besmirching my reputation in the fellowship. Don’t you understand, when you come to me as a buyer I have to sell to you? I’m a dealer, it’s who I am. But it breaks my heart every time. It breaks my heart as your sponsor, and as your friend. And to have to sit there and pretend to everybody that you’re clean! All those chips and coins and key chains! There are starving kids in Somalia who’ve been sober their entire lives! They don’t get a fucking chip, and you do? Shame, brother. Shame, shame. Keep it up and we’ll have it out once and for all, you and me. I’ll dance on your teeth in my stiletto heels. My fuck-you pumps. Adios amigos.”
When Hollis was gone Gary took his bong out from under the sofa, packed a pungent bowl.
“He’s right about my step work,” he said.
“Maybe it’s time for a new sponsor,” I said. “People grow, change. Don’t they?”
“He’d kill me.”
“He’d get over it.”
“After he killed me.”
We smoked up, popped some beers.
I tried to lighten the moment by breaking Gary’s heart. I told him about Bob Price and Mira. He seemed grateful for the opportunity to worry a lesser wound.
“That bitch,” he said. “And that bastard, too. I read that book you gave me. What a load. Well, I liked the softball story. But in the great scheme of things it was still a steaming load. Who are these people? Come to our town, think they can steal our women just because we sit on our asses all day. We should go kick his grin in.”
Seemed like everybody wanted to have it out with everybody, Catamounts. There weren’t enough goodies to go around. What is this thing life that keeps batting our hands away, our hooks, even? Harried grabbers, all of us, even the slack. Feign torpor, you still want the groovy stuff. Torpor itself is a kind of greed.
For time, maybe.
Or that pitiful grail: the absence of pain.
I left Gary to his lesser and greater wounds, went walking in the night. A peel of moon over Cassens Pack. Pole lights over it, too, oblong bulbs fitted to the ends of swanning steel. A race of giant grays from Galamere Five. Night watch, cyclopean. Eyes on the nubiles.
This park had a lot of memories, Catamounts, and not just of hot dogs, incontinence.
Witness tiny Lewis, spidering around the monkey bars, or gouging the dirt with a stick.
Later there’s Claudine, the dentist’s daughter. Her bony hips poke out from beneath her canvas running shorts. She’s twelve, has laid her body out like a succulent corpse on the painted slide.
“You can touch around it,” she says.
This is happiness, relief. He wants with all his heart to touch precisely what’s around it.
Others gather for games. Smear-the-Queer. Kill-the-Guy-with-Ball. They are the same game, really. The first name is forbidden in Hazel’s house. The second makes him tremble with the beginnings
of knowledge. Even if you get the ball, especially if you get the ball, they will kill you. Why bother getting the ball?
of knowledge. Even if you get the ball, especially if you get the ball, they will kill you. Why bother getting the ball?
The Goldschmidtt brothers throw coins at his feet, say, “Pick it up, kike.” Gary says they do it because they’re called Goldschmidtt. They worry people won’t know the difference.
Years on, boys huddle beneath the birches. A place of congress when the Pitch-n-Putt’s narcked up. Car trunks full of tallboys, funnels, tubes. Junior scientists on the verge of invention. A major breakthrough in shitfaced. Girls arrive later to gauge the damage. One night Jazz Jasmine holds Lewis’ head in her lap while he dribbles Hazel’s casserole between her legs. He thinks it could be the start of something, but she never really talks to him again.
It’s Cassens Park, Catamounts, need I go on? It’s the great green field in your hearts!
I WALKED to the plaza, to the pay phone near Eastern Valley Video. I wanted to call Roni, watch her pull up in her dented sedan, sit with her in cream leather singed with her mother’s cigarettes. She was off tonight. I’d studied the schedule. I wondered if she’d even come. Maybe it was better to leave whatever we had in the Moonbeam stockroom.
A Dumpster stood nearby with its lid half-loose from its hinges, some kind of troop ship, blasted, beached. I could picture a baby-faced Auggie Tabor rumbling out of it with his rifle, chunks of pavement flying up around him. The great plaza landing. Years in the planning. Now the invasion was over. The bodies had been collected, or paved over, the sidewalks, speed bumps, scrubbed of blood.
“It gets eerie here,” said a voice.
The Kid leaned up on a lamppost, his pants unzipped, tugged idly on himself.
“You should see it crowded,” I said. “In sunlight.”
THAT MORNING I’d risen early for my new fitness regimen. Five push-ups, five sit-ups, no excuses. I brewed some coffee in Hazel’s Silex, a bowel-blazer of a pot, awaited thick exodus from tube town. I had new toilet reading lined up, too, a dense, glossy bird guide. No more howls and shrieks from the dark crevices of experience, no more histories of Barbary pirate slaughter, monographs on bubonic plague. Those were the porcelain comforts of the old Teabag.
Now I’d have the dope on my beaked buddies twittering on the AC.
Tonight’s Togethering, though, there was still that to endure. What the hell had I been thinking, Catamounts? Bussing flatware for you, my former classmates, had seemed a gesture of brusque defiance when I’d demanded the shift on the telephone. This morning I knew it for what it was: the dumbest idea I’d ever had in a wretched and ceaseless cavalcade of them.
“Suit yourself,” my father had said.
What I think he meant, Valley Cats, was that we never really suit ourselves. We suit a notion of what we dream we could be in the eyes of others, when in the eyes of others we are at best a blur, at worst a sty, or corneal abrasion.
How do Daddy Miners have so much wisdom? How do they hide it so well?
It was too late to switch my shift, but at least Roni would be working. I was looking forward to some napkin retrieval.
I SPENT SOME HOURS padding my resume. It’s strange to see your life laid out cold on a page. There are all these tricks the resume people teach you to account for the gaps. I had a good amount of gaps. I figured instead of fudging them I should make the gaps a selling point. I’d tell interviewers to judge my employment history like a piece of music. It’s all about the space between the jobs.
For references I listed Penny Bettis, Salvatore Fontana, the undeniable and ever-anarchic beauty of true punk rock and a strangely delectable concoction Moonbeam Rick had introduced me to: bacon-wrapped prunes. I figured the first two would suffice.
I nearly got derailed cruising for some yarn porn, Catamounts, but I’m delighted to report that though I failed to manage complete abstinence, I did embrace some tantric notions of stricture. My leashed load assumed the properties of a distinct life force as the day progressed. Civilizations rose and fell. City-states emerged. Later, nations. There were holy wars, followed by feverish periods of reason worship. Then more holy wars. So much creation and destruction and partial rebirth, and all because I hadn’t blown my wad into a quilted sheet of paper towel.
It would be the first of many revelations that day.
AROUND NOON I walked over to the Bean Counter. Mira was out front on her break, sipping from a can of mango juice, leafing through a leather journal.
“Hey, Tea,” she said.
“What’s that, your diary?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you have anything in it about how you screwed over Gary?”
“Why don’t you just marry him, Tea?”
“It would ruin our sex life.”
“Look, I’m on break. Donna can get you something if you want.”
“I’m sorry, Mira. It’s not your fault. People grow, change.”
“Tell me about it. Bob split. Took off.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said he was done with his research. He was going up to some house he owns in the woods to write the book.”
“Didn’t invite you, huh?”
“Did you know he was married?”
“No.”
“She’s an investment banker. He’s been trying to keep it under wraps.”
“I’m sorry, Mira.”
“You said that already.”
“So, is that really your diary?”
“I found it in back, under some sacks of Kona. It must be Craig’s.”
“The Colette Man? Can I see?”
Mira pushed the journal across the table. I read a few stray passages, jotted them down on a napkin:
In Joe Picarcik’s epic fumble there is an exquisiteness, a grace, a nobility no touchdown bomb, delicately threaded upfield strike or even deftly prosecuted handoff can emulate …
There was a time, a better time, when from beneath the helmets of these gladiators flowed the long locks of Apollonian vanity. These boys weren’t just faceless football jocks pounding the bejesus out of each other. They were beautiful young men with beautiful hair—blondes, brunettes, redheads, or else members of the negroid vanguard with Afros efflorescing out the reenforced plastic edges of their Bikebrand helms. They all possessed the aspect of giant armored schoolgirls, full of spite and power and play. Possibility was in the air. But then came retrenchment, supply-side economics, the resuscitation of the buzz-saw haircut …
“Nutty stuff,” said Mira.
“Nutty how?” I said.
I CALLED GARY from the street. Nobody answered. He’d vowed to avoid the party but I needed a little pep talk. Maybe it was better nobody answered. Gary wasn’t much good for pep these days. He wasn’t much good for anything, really, save painful pauses and bad coughing fits, not since Doc Felix had hexed him with uncertainty. There’d been a dinner at Clara and Ben’s. He’d gotten his Life Saver cake, and when he’d finished his slice Clara announced he could consider himself a probationary son. They’d hugged, Gary told me, and then he’d gone home and dreamed of goats.
Parked outside the Moonbeam was a huge silver bus,
Spacklefinger
painted on the side panel, a U-Haul, unhitched, behind it. Some anemic-looking teen roadies unloaded amplifiers, drums. Another fellow, lanky, his dyed hair falling over a folded bandanna, stood off beneath the eaves of the Moonbeam, smoked a cigarette.
Spacklefinger
painted on the side panel, a U-Haul, unhitched, behind it. Some anemic-looking teen roadies unloaded amplifiers, drums. Another fellow, lanky, his dyed hair falling over a folded bandanna, stood off beneath the eaves of the Moonbeam, smoked a cigarette.
“Glave,” I said.
“Hey, buddy, how are you?”
“Glave Wilkerson,” I said.
“Sorry, man, we’re about to set up inside. I can’t do the autograph thing right now. Check me later.”
“Still got that sunburst?” I said. “The Les Paul?”
“Do I know you?”
“No, I just work here.”
“Oh, cool.”
“You guys going to play ‘Nothing Man’ tonight?”
“Our pop song? Yeah, I guess we have to. For the chicks.”
“They’re all pop songs, you idiot,” I said, whipped past him into the Moonbeam.
“Envy’s a sin!” Glave called after me.
I FOUND DADDY MINER in the banquet hall, stooped down near the buffet table, testing the base of a soup tureen.
“Looks great in here,” I said.
It’s my fervent hope most Valley Cats noted the decor that night, those gold balloons and silver service trays, the high-end linen, the fresh roses in cut-glass vases. It’s not only the devil who resides in the details. Quality catering lives there, too.
“Thanks,” said my father. “I just figured, why not go for broke? These Yups like my style I could have bookings for years to come. No more Rotary dinners. No more third-rate shamans smoking powdered beets, crapping their pants. You missed it last week. They were all on the floor having seizures, visiting ancient civilizations. What a mess. You’re early. You’d better not be bailing out. I gave you a chance. I need you now. We’re thin tonight. Rick’s in a snit, too. I wouldn’t let him put his cannibal angel painting in the dining hall.”
“I’m good to go.”
Some roadies lugged a kick drum past us. Glave jogged in after them.
“Be careful with our gear! You know how much debt we’re in since our record hit?”
“Rock stars,” said Daddy Miner.
Rick was in the kitchen with some new prep chefs I’d never met, jumpy, pimply kids in hounds-tooth check motor caps. One hacked at slabs of uncooked chicken breast. Another slaughtered celery. Their projects were in imminent danger of overlapping as they hopped around with their jumbo knives.
Rick wore a paper chef’s hat, carried a clipboard in the crook of his arm.
“No go on the angels, huh?”
“I don’t care about that,” said Rick. “This is a nightmare. I’ve got these raver clowns prepping and your old man up my ass. Plus some fucking griefer spread syphilis all through my brothel this morning. Tried to blow up my copper mine, too. Then he gets the villagers riled up about independence from the Rick hegemon.”
“I’m sorry, come again?”
“Oh, you don’t play Imperium Online? Doesn’t matter.”
Roni came in with a stack of blank name tags, winked.
“Has anyone seen my Magic Marker? Lewis, maybe it’s in the stockroom. Will you help me look?”
We fell together under the tomato cans, the powder tubs, did as much as we could do in a few minutes, a sort of tasting menu.
“There’s more where that came from,” said Roni, guided her breasts back into their gauzy cups.
“How much more?” I said.
“I have no idea. I’m not thinking this one out. Let’s just take it one burst of horniness at a time.”
“Why do you like me, Roni?”
“You remind me of this doll I once had, Mr. Gollington. I loved him very much, even after I pulled off his arms and legs. I knew he loved me, too. Then I ripped his eyes off and I wasn’t sure if he loved me or not. His head was just this piece of stuffed corduroy with two pale spots where his eyes had been.”
“That didn’t really answer my question,” I said.
“I didn’t like the question.”
OUT IN THE DINING HALL I watched Spacklefinger sound check. Glave kept stopping the song. Not enough Glave in the monitor. The drummer rolled his eyes, twirled his sticks in the manner of a drummer who once worshipped and now disdained drummers who twirled their sticks. The lead guitarist squatted in his tangle of cords. The bassist stood off reading what appeared to be an investment brochure. I’d heard he doubled as their manager. Probably he’d be the one to steal all their money, or what was left of it.
Stardom, I guess, does have a price, with actual numbers. Seeing them here in the Moonbeam softened me. They were old, had taken one last shot, hit big, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I guess you reach a certain age and you start rooting for your peers indiscriminately, even sworn foes.
SOME OF YOU CATAMOUNTS arrived early to tailgate in your sports coats and dresses, guzzle carbonated tequila in the late autumn light. I watched you all from the shade of the gazebo in my short-waisted jacket and bolo tie: Bethany Applebaum filling the parking lot with her false, infectious giggles, Stacy Ryson striking sexpot poses on the hood of Philly’s Lexus, Lee Nygaard waddling from one unreconstructed clique to the next, handing out business cards. When that sloop-sized Humvee swerved into the drive, I heard the cheers go up from you twilight toasters.
“Mikey!”
“It’s Saladin!”
Mikey stepped out to the macadam, bronzed, absurd, his old varsity number shaved into his head. I shuddered for the Colette Man, who’d made such poetry from the locks of the mighty. Philly Douglas bulled over for a hug and Saladin clasped the forearms of his old buddy with what looked like affectionate dread.
Amidst the hullabaloo you probably didn’t notice Fontana’s rustshot
Datsun veer past Mikey’s Humvee, pull up near the Moonbeam door.
Datsun veer past Mikey’s Humvee, pull up near the Moonbeam door.
Fontana peeled himself out from behind the wheel, tugged at his wilted tux, crushed velvet. I trotted down from the gazebo to greet him. There was something crushed about his person, too. He’d done a real carve job shaving, stank of bourbon, breath mints.
“Miner,” he said. “What the fuck are you wearing?”
“My busboy uniform.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I like your vines, too.”
“I think I got married in this suit once. Fits, too. Bought it when I still ate food.”
“Are you going to be okay tonight?”
“Piece of cake. I’ve got about ten minutes on my recent colonoscopy. Then another five on how men and women are different. See, for starters, they have completely different sexual organs. Did you know that, Miner?”
“You can still cancel.”
“What are you talking about? I’m going to kill. Where’s my dressing room?”
“Follow me,” I said.
I led Fontana across the banquet hall into my father’s office. Daddy Miner was thumbing through some invoices.
“Hey, you remember Sal Fontana. Used to be principal at Eastern Valley?”
“Nice to see you again,” said my father. “Do you need anything?”
“A blowjob, maybe. I’m not picky. Two lips and wet inside is what I ask. Or how about a gun to blow my brains all over these good people tonight?”
Daddy Miner looked up from his paperwork, his props. Roni did the bills around here, but the way he clicked his ballpoint pen, shuffled slips thick with numbers on his desk, you’d think his only joy was algebra.
“How about some coffee?”
“That’ll be fine.”
“What kind of educator are you, anyway? What kind of example do you provide?”
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