Chapter 1 #15
Lloyd’s “broad hand” on my back, and “alarm” goes off, set to “country station” (“WJJD,” our “favorite”), and Lloyd “springs up” all cheerful and “hopping on one foot,” gets “pants on” (coins “jingle” in the pockets) and for a moment in the “half-light” stands “shirtless,” hair a mess, raring to go, and says aloud, “David Houston,” which is: name of the man now singing.
Ack, no.
I must not—
Such as:
April, “Stanley, Indiana,” “rental house” of Ada and Todd Sinclair (“real dump” on edge of “FarmHill Estates”), all of us “medium-soused” and the men “cook up” the “bright idea” of slicing up, with “box cutters,” the “cardboard crate” from the Sinclairs’ “new fridge,” to use to “sled” down “mudhill” behind “rental,” and after “first run,” Lloyd takes “shot of Cuervo” and makes “playful grab” for me, Jill “Doll” Blaine, and honestly?
I just drop into his arms and fleck/flick at his ear with my tongue, because, to me?
Lloyd being so handsome and all? It was (swear to God) like Christmas morning whenever he’d flirt with me, especially here, in front of this crowd, because of me being a former big nobody and Lloyd being seen, in Stanley, by these popular gals, as this, like, I don’t know, big catch or something?
And that was, I gotta tell you, dynamite.
Dy-no-mite.
Oh gosh.
“Dy-no-mite” was, I recalled, “from TV.”
TV, goodness, “TV,” “television,” wow, yes: the bright-colored, balloon-lettered Marcus-Welby-Bandstand-Laugh--In-Flip-Wilson-Bob-Hope-Shindig thrill of it all! Ours (our TV, our “set”), in my childhood, sat “just so” on a “cute Asian table” Dad’d brought back “duty-free” from “Manila.”
So cool and all.
Hey, hello, the old lady said. You in there?
Yes, I said.
I remembered that second thing I’m to ask, she said.
On Sunday nights: three TV dinners on three TV trays just in time for “Bonanza.”
Your old feller dead yet? she said. Up yonder?
No, I said. Still alive.
There you go, missy! she said. That weren’t so hard, was it?
In that case, that foreign feller’ll be here shortly.
With a guest in tow. A real doozy. Who’ll get the job done.
No use them coming if your feller’s done kicked it already.
Y’all have been serving weak tea. So that foreign fellow said.
When what’s needed is: hard whiskey. As he hopes you done figured out by now: this one’s a tough nut.
Who’s gotta get cracked open. Stand back, now. I’m a-going.
The chair began to vibrate and disintegrated beneath her and she was remade into a young woman: lithe, almost liquid, hair hanging down long: a country girl about to hit the town, because Joe, cruel Joe, was gone for a spell, up to Little Rock, and so: happy days.
She dashed up the steps to meet her friends down to the Pines Hotel, they’d be waiting for her under the overhang, as it was supposed to rain like the dickens.
I stood there, far beneath the surface of the earth, recalling Lloyd:
“Tattoo of boat” on one arm.
Slight “touch of gray” on “sideburns” though “not yet thirty.”
Girl, careful, I counseled myself.
The more I indulged in such recollections, I knew, the more inclined I would be to indulge in other such recollections, until indulging would come to seem not like indulging at all but, rather, like a simple, joyful return to who I really was.
Do you know what I mean? A return to the person I had been, the person I was most comfortable being, the person it had always been so natural and easy and (hey, guess what?) fun to be:
Jill “Doll” Blaine.
And we mustn’t have that.
Using my arms like a surface-seeking swimmer, I shot up past a severed length of ancient sewer pipe and a bright green sliver of a child’s swimming pool from fifty years prior.
—
And exploded up into the narrow passageway between the jasmine-covered fence and my charge’s house.
Here were the Mels, fast asleep in each other’s arms.
Ugh, still here, said G., startling awake.
Tired of waiting, said R.
For him, said G.
Who always disrespected us, said R.
Even as he depended upon us, said G.
Pompous ass, said R.
Arrogant prick, said G.
Language, friend, said R. to G. Lady present.
Language, friend, said G. to R. Lady present.
Speaking of which, said R.
Don’t you have a roast to cook? G. said to me.
A car to start? said R.
And kaboom? said G.
Body parts fly across the yard? said R.
Of your trashy little duplex? said G.
Which was, in a world full of mansions and villas, said R.
All you two lovebirds ever got? said G.
Poor thing, said R. Briefest of marriage, zero kids, lived in a hovel.
Not even a slight mark on dear old Earth did you leave, said G.
Although, rumor has it, said R. Bun in your oven.
I stepped over, gave R. a kick, a hard kick, then G., harder still, as hard as I could, and then, to even things up, went back and gave R. a supplementary kick.
Oh, but we are inevitable, G. said whiningly. Inevitable occurrences. Aren’t we?
Who else could we have been but who we are? said R.
So why would you kick us? said G.
Why assault us so, when we are lavishly jailed? said R.
Nice elevation, sis, said G.
You look funny, said R.
Like you’ve got one foot in the former world, said G.
Like you’ve been doing too much recalling, said R.
It happens, said G.
Happens even to us, said R.
I sometimes recall my childhood bike, said G.
I sometimes recall my childhood bike, said R.
Which one are you now, dear girl? said G.
Jill or not-Jill? said R.
Trending toward Jill, I think, said G.
Merely Jill, said R.
Poor dead, said G.
Plain old, said R.
Oh, shut it, I said.
Anyway, no hard feelings, said R. Go on, shoot back up there, do your thing, hon.
Flail away, said G.
We’ve got him, said R.
He’s ours, said G.
Got him good, said R.
He’s pigheaded, said G.
Pigheaded, with an astonishingly limited capacity for self-examination, said R.
Everything you and your French pal have tried? said G.
Has come to naught, said R.
Only hardened his resolve, said G.
Caused him to retrench more energetically, said R.
That’s how it is with us, said G.
Our kind, said R.
We doers, said G.
Who accomplish, said R.
Who bend the world to our will, said G.
Bash us, we roll up in an impenetrable ball, said R.
Criticize us, we put our fingers in our ears, said G.
Kick us, we kick back harder, said R.
Speaking of kicking, said G. Earlier, you kicked us.
We have a dim memory of that, said R.
Then they seemed to smell something on the wind.
Uh-oh, said G.
Nearly time, said R.
Hustle back upstairs, girlie, said G.
His wee body teeters at the edge, said R.
Of his mud-black forever-pit, said G.
Soon will come that special thunk made by: inert load, dropping, said R.
After which, devoid of its former vitality, his sad former-person-bearing meatlump will begin to rot, said G.
From the window of my charge’s room a light-rectangle, longing for the wedding, landed instead on the redwood fence, where it manifested as a frustrated, malformed polygon.
Up I shot, bent hard to the left, and was in.
In with him again.
My poor doomed charge.
—
He lay as before, as ever (eyes closed, one hand under the covers, the other above). In his mind he stood at the window of his New York office, thirty-eighth floor, gazing down at an angry mob swirling around below.
How had those morons gotten here, anyway, from all over the country? With their filthy clothes, their swear-word-laced posters, these supposed nature lovers heedlessly trampling thirty grand’s worth of planters, berms, and flower beds into a mudfield like something out of goddamn Verdun?
Did they walk?
Ride horses?
Don’t be funny.
I joined him at the window.
Were you down there? he said. That day?
No, I said.
Is Dell down there? he said.
I don’t believe so, I said gently.
He thinks poorly of me, he said.
He moved away from the window. And was, strangely, nowhere at all.
Just in some space of great blankness, with me there beside him.
See me? he said.
Yes, I said.
Who am I? he said.
K. J. Boone, I said.
The son of a bitch who destroyed the planet, he said.
Maybe rest a bit, I said.
So say the cretins, he said.
Well, I said.
In a pig’s ass, he said.
He turned to me and drew in close, uncomfortably so.
You didn’t have to go through any of this, did you? he said. The long death. Lucky you. Just blew right up. Bang: gone.
Lucky me, I said dryly.
There in our shared mental space, he tilted his head.
What? I said.
Your pal’s nearby, he said. Frenchie. I can feel him.
You can feel him, I said.
Bringing some new turd up here, he said. Some new dead turd. To spook me.
If he was able to sense the Frenchman’s proximity, his end must be very soon indeed.
His father had been here. His mother had been here (albeit only in his mind). When his mother came for real, his time would be short; mother and father would unite, and all would be done.
Have you considered that matter? I said. That matter we discussed?
He seemed to be drawing a blank.
Elevation? I reminded him gently.
Hooey, he said.
—
At that moment the Frenchman strode in, looking elated and windblown, white rose in the pocket of his glaringly white jacket, wearing white trousers, white leather boots, and a white scarf.
He was almost too radiant to look at.
At last I have found it, he said. The perfect means by which to set this fellow on the path to repentance.
I’m lying right here, you bastard, my charge said.
Greetings, the Frenchman said. Mr. Bhuti, if you please.
In came a gaunt, dark-skinned fellow wearing a beautiful orange silk jacket and a pair of wide, flared pants that appeared Eastern in origin.
I am a recent arrival in that room where no one is content, he said. Do you know it, madam? With its bent-down flowers? And all there is to eat are stale bread crusts?