Somebody Up There Hates You (6 page)

“No problem,” I say.

The girl reaches into her shopping bag and drags out a bag of Skittles. “Here, mister cripple-man king with the no-good legs,” she says. She drops the bag into my lap and then runs off, her mother following a few yards behind.

I open the bag and pour some Skittles into my hand. I toss them into my mouth, and that great sweet-sour, crunchy-chewy flavor just explodes in there. It's so good— it's like a rush of pure childhood. I can't stop eating them.

Phil comes out of the alley and laughs. “Hey, man. You scored some candy already? Fast mover.” Then he grabs the bag out of my hand and empties the whole thing into his mouth.

6

I
COULD HAVE STAYED
on those three blocks all night, kids running around yelling and happy. But not Phil. I can see that he's getting bored after just pushing me around for about twenty minutes. I'm munching a Snickers when he says, “Okay, kid. Enough of this baby stuff. I got better plans for your Halloween than this.”

And off we go. Like I said, Hudson is all downhill, right to the river. So Phil's really moving, and me, I'm rolling faster than I think, strictly, is safe. A couple times, Phil lets go of the handles and lets gravity take over. Then he trots along next to me, laughing. Once, I get going faster than he can run. That's scary, but also sort of amazing. I mean, the wind off the river is right in my face, and my mouth is, like, streaming full of real air. I hold on to my crown and I can feel that my cheeks are getting all red in that cold wind. Healthy, I think. I bet I look perfectly healthy. I sort of want to just keep going, just take off and fly down to the river itself. But then, and I can picture this clear as day, I won't be able to stop, and this chair will carry me right into the water, wheels flashing and spinning. And the currents in the river, they're fierce. I spent my whole life listening to my mom go on and on about how I better not even think of fooling around down there, not even on the bank. She seemed to think that the river could reach out, like a big wet hand or something, and scoop me in. I'd go with the currents, all the way to New York City, and then out to sea. And she'd never see me again. I used to think about that, sitting on the windowsill at the end of the hall in the hospital in New York: I could see the river running right along the edge of the city, five times wider than it is up here, and I could imagine being in it, dead. A little speck of junk, moving on down. You'd think that would depress a kid in the hospital. Not so—it cheered me up, for some reason. Remember when that airplane landed in the Hudson, with all those people on the wings? I was there. I mean, I couldn't see it from my room, too far upstream, but we all kept crowding around the windows, pointing, thinking, Jeez, man, they were all okay, every one of them, saved. That pilot, he's a superhero. I kept thinking: saved. Those people were saved. Everyone got out alive. Every single one.

Anyway, I get scared of the rush of air in my face and the feeling that I can't stop and I reach down with both hands and jam on the brakes. It's still a few seconds before they really catch, and the whole chair kind of skids and slides, laying rubber out behind it. And that's way cool. People in the 200 block, where I land, are cheering, I swear. Laughing and pointing and cheering. Down here, where there's no more antique stores, only a whole lot of bars and a couple corner stores, people hang in the streets, and they like it when there's a little drama, I guess. A good fight. A crazy kid in a wheelchair, racing along like some kind of Evel Knievel knockoff in a cape and crown. I grin and take a little bow. But to tell the truth, all the candy I've just pounded down is up in my throat, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to puke.

Phil catches up and he sees that I'm kind of swallowing hard, and maybe I look a little green or something. Because he swings me into an alley and I hold my head over the side of the chair and bring it all up. Phil holds my cape out of the way and keeps my crown on my head. It's pretty messy, I got to say. All that good sweetness, turned sour and nasty, streaked with blood. Leaves a foul puddle on the ground, but that doesn't bother Phil a bit. He just backs up my chair and says, “Not to worry, Richard. People been tossing their cookies in this alley for centuries. Archaeologists come along, they're going to find ancient bits of whale-blubber puke or something. Sailors from the olden days, Hudson was their favorite port town, you know? Famous for booze and whores and some very nice opium, I read somewhere. That's what the sailors found in Hudson.”

He gets me back onto the street, heading for a bar three doors down. Funky sign over the door says
FAT FRED FEATHERS
and there's a picture of a dove or something landing on a fat man's shoulder. “Great,” Phil says. “The old FFF is still around. Very cool.” There's lots of loud music and people spilling out the door, some of them in masks and capes and all sorts of stuff. Women in sexy vampire makeup and fishnet stockings. One girl all dressed up in this pink gown, huge skirt and tight-laced top, boobs falling out the front, and a white-wigged head under her arm. Guy in full firefighter gear. Mad scene. “Hasn't changed a bit,” Phil says. “Thank the Lord.” And he starts to shout, “Make way, peasants. Make way for King Richard in his royal chariot, coming through. The king is thirsty, long live the king.” The crowd laughs and they actually do make a big wide space, and my chair just fits through the doorway. Even the bouncer, huge dude in a Darth Vader mask, kind of shrugs and lets us through.

I have to admit, I've never been inside a bar. My mom doesn't drink, and my high school friends and I, we just didn't come even close to looking old enough to stroll on in and order ourselves a beer. So this is a whole new experience, and it's making me kind of nervous. It's dark, for one thing. And it smells. Lots of hot sweaty people and lots of spilled beer, I'm guessing. What I once heard a Brit exchange student call a real pong. Always liked that word. People are about five deep at the bar and standing everywhere else. Lots in costume. A big green frog next to Osama bin Laden. Witch drinking with a nun. That kind of neat weirdness, all around. Everybody yelling above the music. So loud my head is pounding, and for a minute I feel like I'm going to puke again. But then the girl in the pink gown is bending down and my face is, like, right up against those breasts spilling out of that dress, and I can smell perfume instead of pong, and right away, I feel better.

Until she plunks a head into my lap. It's got red goop all over the neck and blue blank eyes, and its white wig is falling off. I take a deep breath. The girl is laughing. I don't want to seem dumb or wimpy or anything. So I poke my finger into one of the blue eyes and I say, cool as can be, “Marie Antoinette, I presume?”

And the girl puts both hands on her hips and then she dips down into a curtsy kind of bow, then wobbles back up. “
Mais oui,
my lord,” she yells. “You really are royalty, I can tell. None of the other bozos here got my costume. And I worked for days on it.”

I look into her real face. It's round and plain, but she's got her hair all spiked up, dyed pink to match the dress, and she's wearing this necklace—a silver chain with a little miniature guillotine hanging down—and I've got to admire her creativity. And her chest. She's short and she's chubby and she's friendly and she seems sort of smart and she's talking to
me
? That about says it all.

Phil comes over, elbowing people out of his way. He's got two bottles of beer in his hands and he's grinning all over his face, looking at me and this sweet pink chick talking. He hands me one of the bottles—Blue Moon—and bows. “My liege,” he says. “I leave you to your conquest.” And then, with an even deeper bow, he hands the other bottle to the girl. “Mademoiselle,” he says, “compliments of His Royal Highness.”

She takes the bottle and curtsies at him. Then he disappears back into the crowd, backward, bowing all the way.

The bottle is dripping and cold. The label is very cool—a blue moon and a round orange pumpkin—and at first I just sit there like an idiot, holding it and looking at the moon. Then there's a clink and the girl in pink is saying, “Cheers, then,” and she's tipping the bottle into her mouth.

So I do the same. It's so cold and nice on my raw throat that I just chug it. She's watching me, grinning, and so I've got to smile. “Thirsty work, being king,” I say.

I don't know, maybe the beer plus the patch plus that one hit of Phil's joint, maybe all of that is a bit much. Or maybe my eyesight's more impaired than usual, by the mask and all. Because things get real fuzzy after I drink my first Blue Moon. There are others, too. Phil shows up every once in a while with another bottle and then bows his way out of sight. Last two times, he's got a pretty girl hanging off his side, arms around his waist. I think she's dressed as a leaf—can't remember why, I just picture leafiness in this haze.

The girl in pink—she says to just call her Marie—she sticks around. We talk—no clue about what—and laugh a lot. And at some point, she climbs into the chair with me, pushing her ass right into my lap. And I'm pretty sure I have a hard-on, although I'm kind of numb everywhere else. Because she giggles and kind of scootches herself around on there until there's a nice place for my hard-on to fit and she's moving her hips and humming a sweet little song in my ear. And then she whispers, “My lord, your willing servant would be most pleased to . . .” She licks my ear, all long and slow and wet. “If you'd like to step—um, roll—into my chamber.”

I can't say a word, of course. I'm so dizzy and horny and, like, completely surprised that anyone, anyone at all, would offer to—whatever she's offering. So I just sort of grunt. But apparently, I've also got both hands on her breasts, so she takes that as a yes. She slides out of my lap—and, man, then I
know
I've got a major boner, cause ole Bingo is suddenly very cold and very lonely, sticking up into the air, until she sets the bloody head over it. She gets behind my chair and yells into the crowd, “Make way for the king. Make way, vassals.” When people are a little slow to get out of our way, she just screams, “Move it.”

Outside, the air is much colder, and I go to wrap my blanket-cape around my arms. But it's gone. Fell off somewhere. And for a second, I think of how Mom brought that blanket to every hospital, every single time, and it was always—always—waiting for me in my room after every torture and every operation, dark blue and starry and soft and warm and smelling like home, and I think I'm going to start to bawl. But then we're in, like, some sort of dark quiet place and Marie is kneeling in front of me.

“My sweet lord,” she says. Then she takes the head off my lap and I manage to unzip my jeans and, whammo, my boy is right out there in the chilly air. It's looking sort of desperate, I got to say. And we both stare at it for a minute, and then she giggles and grabs it, and it's pretty obvious she hasn't got a clue what to do next, but she's trying and that's what counts. And there's a girl's hand on there and, really, that's all I need. I slide down and my head goes back against the back of the chair and I feel my crown drop away. Mask is still hanging on, though. Doesn't matter. Nothing matters except that she's still touching me, and then I'm, like, just shaking. Gasping. Moaning. She jumps back and loses her grip, and I think I'll die if she leaves me out there in the cold, but she doesn't: she leans in and holds me right between those round breasts. I must almost pass out, I swear, because next thing I know, she's standing up and wiping her chest with a Kleenex. Looking sort of surprised, but also kind of pleased with herself—and maybe with me. She smiles at me, anyway. I reach down and tuck my shriveled, happy little Bingo back into my jeans and zip up.

She rolls me out of the alley, and I'm a melted puddle of gratitude and can't say a thing—like my throat's been paralyzed. We hit the street and suddenly it's all noise and people pushing and yelling, and I don't know if she's taking me back to the bar or somewhere else, and I don't care because she can take me to hell itself at this point and I'll be happy. I just close my eyes and go with it.

Then we stop. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Not hers. Much too big and heavy to be hers. I open my eyes. We're in the light from the open doorway of the bar and there's someone leaning over me, breathing smoke and booze into my face. Holy shit. I've been caught by the devil himself.

“Well, well. What have we here?” Sylvie's father is standing over me, swaying and red-eyed and giving off heat like a chimney. He reaches down and tears my mask off. His spittle sprays onto my face. “Could it be? Our little wise-ass punk? Out of the hospital? Not so sick, after all? You lying fake.”

I shake my head. “Just out on leave, sir,” I croak out.

Marie bends over my head and tries to push the man's big hairy hand off my shoulder. “Leave him alone,” she says.

He shifts his focus onto Marie, and I feel his hand tighten. “And who is this?” He breathes fire all over us and then he gives one horrible laugh that turns into a kind of sob. “Little bitch. Out here, your tits hanging out.” He turns his eyes back to me. “You forget about my baby, Richard? You out here fucking around with whores while she—”

Marie's smack makes a bright red mark on his face. “Get out of our way,” she says.

Sylvie's father grabs at her arm and she shrieks, and I make a grab for him, too, shoving both hands into his chest and pushing as hard as I can. But the man is immovable. He's crying and spraying spit everywhere and he's almost, I can hardly describe it, he's
howling.

And then, I don't know, there's a million people coming toward us, and Phil's in the lead. He leaps on Sylvie's father's back and they go down, and then I can't see a thing except for a whole bunch of feet and rolling backs. Marie pulls my chair out of the way and she sits down, hard, on the curb and sighs. “Nice friends you have,” she says. And then she stands up and puts one hand on my head. Her hand runs along my bald scalp, feeling the bones of my skull. She bends down and looks, real close, at my eyes.

I can feel it, her staring. There's no mask now. And I know that I got no eyebrows and no eyelashes and that I look like a reptile. And I know she'll be completely disgusted and she'll never, ever put her mouth or her hands on me again.

Marie reaches down and touches one finger to my wrist. My hospital bracelet is right there, out of hiding. She's real quiet, and then she says, in this scared kind of voice I never want to hear again, “Jesus. Tell me it's not AIDS, okay? Just tell me that.”