The Instructions (18 page)

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

the pretty-glittered eyes of our Sandy speak of better wages and genuine possibility? No fiscal exposure?”

I said, I wish I could sit next to you, too, Main Man.

“Do you see the glitter around Sandy’s eyes?” Scott said.

It’s pretty, I said.

“Thank you for saying so,” Scott said.

Call-Me-Sandy said, “Thank you, Gurion.”

I nodded = No problem, Call-Me.

She wanted me to take a seat, but she wouldn’t say so. She was good at not saying things. My mom taught me about it, that it is what you learn at schools for psychotherapy. You learn to use the invisible power in a quiet room to get other people to do what you want. But it all depends on the arrangement, so it is cheap. The power was not really Call-Me’s power because it is not a person’s power, even though it looks like a person’s power: I wanted to sit down because it was Group and in Group you sit down. Everyone who was in there was already sitting in the circle, so if I sat down, then it would not be because Call-Me-Sandy used invisible powers, even if that’s what it looked like. It would be because of the arrangement. The arrangement had the power. It was harder to stand in the Group Therapy arrangement than it was to sit down.

While I was standing there, everyone but Scott and Leevon got nervous. Mangey made dry noises by scratching under her sock where her skin was flaky, and Ronrico and the Janitor, who would not look at me, switched between looking at the ground and looking up at Sandy to try to get her to tell me to sit down.

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Vincie Portite kept moving his right hand to cover his eye and then putting it back in his lap. Vincie used to be one of the best fighters in the Cage, but then just after Sukkot he developed his debilitating tick. How it happened was he used to like calligraphy, so he got fountain pens with many interchangeable nibs and inks for his birthday, and there was a radiator in the Cage that Vincie dropped an ink-cartridge into the spaces of the vent of, and the ink cartridge fell into the fan of the radiator and the blades of the fan exploded the ink cartridge with a sudden cutting force. Cartridge ink shot fast from the vent into Vincie’s right eye and Vincie held his hand over his eye and said, “Oh no,” just like that, just once, in a crying voice, non-exclamatorily and without any cursing, and Botha said “Not brilliant, Portite”

and sent Vincie to the nurse and Vincie had to wear an eyepatch for two weeks until the eye healed. He showed me what the eye looked like under the patch. It was red where it should have been white and the iris looked like someone had dripped milk in it. I felt bad making Vincie nervous, but I think it was good for him because it was like training him to be a great fighter again and lately he was doing better than before. I could tell he was doing better because while I was standing there, the hand went up at least five times, but Vincie didn’t let it go all the way to the eye.

It would start lifting up, but it never even got to his chin before he’d put it back on his lap. The highest the hand got was his windpipe. I was keeping my eyes on Vincie so I wouldn’t look at Jelly Rothstein. Jelly was waiting for me to look at her, and 167

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if I did look at her she would tell me to sit down, and I already wanted to sit down, and if she told me to do it, it would be like Botha telling me to give him my pass. I decided I would sit down in exactly seven seconds as long as I didn’t get told to.

I counted off the seconds in my head so no one would see. As soon as I got to seven, I sat down next to Jelly. When she didn’t bite, it was good to sit next to Jelly. She could be very funny.

“Idiot,” she said to me. When Jelly said I was an idiot during Group, there was friendliness in it because it was the beginning of a game where we alternated calling each other names. There were two ways to lose the game. The first way was if you ran out of names or repeated yourself. The second way was if Call-Me-Sandy, who would keep leaning forward to put a stop to the game but because of her therapist algorithms couldn’t interrupt while someone was talking, got a word in between us. If Call-Me-Sandy got a word in, then the last one who’d said a name would win.

Dentist, I said. “Dolt,” Jelly said. Leopold. “Klebold.”

Monorail. “Blister.” Flag. “Patio.” Falsified document.

“I call bullshit on
falsified document
,” Jelly said. “That’s like
big
stupid dumbass
or something. You sound like a first-grader.”

Fine, I said. Firmament.

“I call bullshit on
firmament
. There’s no such thing as
firmament
.”

There is, though, I said. I said, It’s in Torah.

“What’s it mean, then?”

I said, No one really knows what it means. In Hebrew, it’s the 168

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place where Adonai resides, but it’s a bad translation. It’s really more like
border
—it’s confusing.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” she said. “If you don’t know what it means, you can’t use it.”

That’s your rule, I said. I said, That’s not my rule.

“Whatever. That’s the rule of the game.”

I said, Fine, I call bullshit on
patio
, then.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “They can’t pour the patio til the rain lets up. The patio is slow getting there. Mamzer.”

I said, No foreign languages, Jelly.

“Whatever. That’s not my rule, you schlep.” You vildachaya.

“Schlub.” Chainik-hocker.

“What’s a chainik-hocker?” Call-Me-Sandy said. She made a curious face.

“Gurion made it up,” Jelly said. “It’s like
hocking me in chainik
which means ‘banging a tea kettle’ which is what you’re doing when you nag your mom and she’s Jewish. But no one ever calls anyone a
chainik-hocker
but I didn’t argue because I’m not a schleppy dolt mamzer like Gurion.”

It was hard to tell who won. Call-Me-Sandy jumped in after I said
chainik-hocker
, which could mean that I won, but then Jelly got to say
shleppy dolt mamzer
after Call-Me-Sandy jumped in, which never happened before because it was always that once Call-Me-Sandy jumped in, we stopped calling each other names.

And then, also,
schleppy dolt mamzer
was a combination of names that we already used, so in a way it was a repetition, but the 169

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combination might have made it count as a new name, and it was hard to tell if Jelly was cheating or just being very skillful when she called me a schleppy dolt mamzer. It could have been a tie.

Call-Me said, “Before we start today, has everyone heard Scott’s big news?”

“What?” Scott said.

“About what you’re doing on Friday?”

“It’s a secret,” Scott said.

“What’s said in Group stays in Group,” the Janitor said.

Scott stuck his lower lip out at me. He wanted to know if he should tell his secret. I didn’t know his secret, so I didn’t know if he should tell it, but what the Janitor said was true. As little as I liked him, especially when he recited the rules verbatim off the tear-away pad like a robot, the one thing everyone in Group—

everyone in the Cage, really—was good at, was keeping their mouths shut. That a kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid went without saying among us.

To Main Man, I said: If you want to tell us, you should—no one’s gonna repeat what you say.

“Okay,” said Scott. “Okay. On Friday, I’m singing.”

“Who cares if you’re singing. You’re always singing,” Ronrico said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Vincie said to Ronrico. “You never listen.

If you listened then sometimes you might say something that didn’t make you sound like such a fuckface.”

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“What’s rule number one?” Sandy said to Vincie.

“Are you really asking me that?” Vincie said. “Because I think you know the answer.”

“I’m really asking, Vincenzo.”

Vincie turned around to read from the tear-away pad on the easel behind him. “‘Rule number one: Always be respectful,’” he said. “But that doesn’t matter, Sandy, because first of all, Asparagus wasn’t being respectful, and secondly, those are rules for Group.

Group didn’t start yet.”

“If we’re all in the room,” Sandy said, “Group has started.”

“But you said ‘before we start,’ which means we didn’t start.”

“And we were all in the room when you said it, Sandy,” said Jelly.

“We should
always
be respectful,” Call-Me-Sandy said.

“That’s not true,” Vincie said. “You’re changing the rules. Am I wrong, Gurion?”

I said, I don’t know. It says ‘Rules for Group’ over rule number one. And Call-Me did say ‘before we start,’ and then she asked you what rule number one was, which sounds like she’s saying you broke it, but then even if you didn’t break it, maybe she’s saying you should be respectful anyway, even when it’s to a bancer like Asparagus who I kicked the ass of because he gave me a charleyhorse, but then I think it’s useless to have Rules for Group if they’re the same as rules for everywhere else. The main thing—

“A kid who tells is a dead kid,” Ronrico interrupted.

Telling stuff to Sandy doesn’t count, I said, because every-171

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thing in Group is confidential, so don’t talk out of your depth, you shmendrick.

To Vincie, I said, The main thing is that it makes Sandy uncomfortable when we’re angry at each other. So she talks about rules.

“It doesn’t make me—” she started saying.

“See?” Vincie said to her. “The rule doesn’t matter. Even Gurion says. And I think it’s unfair fighting to start in on me about the rules before Group starts. I think it’s an abuse. It’s abusive. You said it because you can’t sit with our anger, Sandy.”

“That’s very disappointing to me,” said Jelly to Call-Me. “I feel dis-appointed in you.”

“I need you to be able to do that for me, Sandy. If you can’t sit with my anger, who will?” Jenny Mangey said. “I feel helpless now.”

Scott said, “I love you, Sandy. I’m not angry.”

Ronrico clapped his hand against his knee.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

Ronrico said “Flinch,” and laughed in Vincie’s face. He laughed so hard he started coughing. Then he chucked the Janitor on the shoulder with the fist he’d coughed on.

The Janitor wiped his shoulder with his hand and wiped his hand on the thigh of his pants and stared at the thigh of his pants, scared out of his mind.

Ronrico said “Flinch,” to Vincie again.

Leevon said nothing.

I said, I made Boystar get all cry-faced.

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“Did you smash him?” Jelly said. “I hate him.”

“I think he’s a rapist,” Mangey said.

Scott said, “We’re gonna sing together at the Aptakisic Pep Rally on Friday! Me and the Boystar. He’s famous! I will stand in the spotlight with him and sing a duet from the new unit,
Promotionalize
. There’s stickers.”

No one knew what to say about that. The Janitor was still staring at his thigh. He said, “Sandy, can I have a tissue?”

“How do you feel right now?” Sandy said to the Janitor. “Do you feel threatened?”

“I feel infected,” the Janitor said. He was leaning back to get as far away from the germs on his thigh as possible.

Mangey said, “Boystar is like the guy in the date-rape movie who gives girls knockout drugs without them knowing. And then he takes their clothes off when they’re asleep and he date-rapes them.”

“Infected. Can you be more specific, Mikey?”

Ronrico said, “Flinch,” to Vincie again.

Vincie started crying, but just wet eyes and his face got red.

If it was four weeks before, Vincie would have laid him out, no hesitation.

I said, No one’s gonna call him ‘Flinch,’ Ronrico, no matter how many times you say it.

“Gurion,” said Jelly, “how’d you make Boystar cry-faced? You smash him or what? You smash him in the gob?”

The gob? I said. What’s a gob?

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“Can you please just hand me a tissue?” said the Janitor. He started crying with his throat.

Sandy said, “Scott, how do you think Mikey feels right now?”

“I don’t know,” said Main Man, “but everything is very scary.”

I said, We’ll be fine, Scott.

“Please!” shouted the Janitor, reaching in the air for a tissue that wasn’t there.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

Jelly said, “You’ve really lost control of the room, Sandy. I mean, even more than usual.”

Mangey said, “Boystar threatened to beat me up once, Gurion.

He shoved into me in the hall and I said ‘Excuse you’ and he said he’d kick my ass.”

He’s all talk, I said. I said, I slapped his neck and he hid behind his dad.

“Flinch!” Ronrico said to Vincie.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

I stood up fast and Ronrico fell out of his chair.

“Gurion!” Call-Me-Sandy said.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

I said to Call-Me-Sandy, I’m not hurting anyone.

I stood over Ronrico. I said to him, Now who’s the flinch?

Ronrico was biting his lip.

I said, You’re just like Botha, but shorter and dumber.

Call-Me-Sandy said, “Please, Gurion.”

I said, I’m not hurting anyone.

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“I am not like Botha,” Ronrico said.

I said, Why are you picking on Vincie, then? I said, You’re gonna be Botha in a few years. Ronrico Botha. That’s your new name. You’re Ronrico Botha.

“I’m not like Botha,” he said.

Not exactly, I said. You’re more scared. I said, I’d have to actually hit Botha to put him down.

Call-Me-Sandy said, “Gurion, this isn’t productive. Please sit.”

I sat. What I want to know, I said to Call-Me-Sandy, is why the Janitor isn’t helping Ronrico up. Because Ronrico is the Janitor’s best friend. Ronrico got his ass kicked in the locker-room for the Janitor. I know that because I’m the one who kicked it. And it was very easy for me, but shouldn’t the Janitor help him up, Sandy? Don’t you think that’s right?