Chapter 44
“H
e looks like a glow-in-the-dark cockatoo,” Dinah says after seeing the Grabadook's new IntegriDrone commercial. She's sitting next to Clint on the couch. “This is our territory. He can take his little dog dick and sprinkle his scent on someone else's hustle.”
“Parasite,” Clint says.
“The government could be watching people through those drones. I wouldn't be surprised if he has some backdoor deal with the feds.”
Clint raises his vape pen in agreement, then sticks it in his mouth. “Exactly! Who knows what kind of tricks these guys have in their boots. And there's something real shady about that Star Wars fella.”
Dinah turns impatiently toward my bedroom. “WADE!”
“I'm right next to you,” I say.
“Oh! Well, don't be so silent next time. We need to plan an aggressive social media counterstrike on these assholes. Convince consumers they don't have their best interests at heart,” she says. “I need you to come up with something that could hit them hard.”
“I don't want to stir up more drama with a group of gun-toting tech gods,” I tell her.
“They started it! They never asked us if they could be involved in this,” she says.
“They're powerful people and they can hit you back even harder.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oooh, I'm so scared of the roid-raging bail bondsman and his army of call center geeks.”
“I have an even better idea. The Xtreme Wrestling Xtravaganza is tonight in Houston. That's exactly the crowd of people we should be marketing to. It's sold out, but we could sneak in as vendors and sell Plutonium Cactus.”
“Hmm,” Clint says, twirling his vape pen in one hand and resting the other on the arm of the sofa.
“We're not doing guerrilla marketing. We are a self-respecting business with a brand now,” Dinah says.
I swallow every ounce of my pride and look to Clint.
“Besides, I've been thinking about what you said about being the male role model I need in life. It took me a while to admit to myself that you were right. I've felt myself change for the better ever since you moved in, and we should do more things together and stuff.”
Dinah eyes me suspiciously. Clint, almost teary-eyed, stares at me, mouth agape.
“That is,” he says with a small pause, “the greatest thing anybody has ever said to me.”
Dinah pokes him. “They should be inviting us! We shouldn't have to sneak in.”
“You heard the boy, my dear! The thrill of the hunt is exactly what he needs, and with a man who can teach him, no less!”
He sets his vape pen down on the coffee table and stands up while motioning me over with his hand.
“Come here,” he says.
I take slow, little steps toward him, knowing the inevitable has finally arrived: This smelly asshole is going to hug me.
“Come heeeeeere,” he coos to me like I'm his toddler who is learning how to walk.
He throws his arms around me and squeezes me.
My blood is curdling and my neurons are kamikaze-diving into each other.
I try not to gag as my face is pressed against the pouf of chest hair sticking out of his collar and his putrid body odor burns my nose and eyes.
“You make me feel like such an alpha!” he says with a proud giggle. “I'm the wolf pack daddy! Awooooooooooooooo!”
He releases me from his death grip and pushes his fingers into my cheeks, giving me fish lips.
“Howl with me! Awooooooooooooo!”
Really, I have no choice in the matter at this point. When you live in a clown world, sometimes you have to put on the makeup and do a clown dance.
I take a deep breath. “Awooooooooooooo!”
“Louder!” Clint pats me hard on the back and throws back his head. “AWOOOOOOOOO!”
“AWOOOOOOOOOOO!” I howl again. He laughs and squeezes me in his arms a second time.
“You and I have more in common than you realize, you know? I lost my parents like you. My dad drowned.”
“You saw it happen?”
“No, he was beaver-peeping in the tank of a porta-john at the Oyster Pit High volleyball tournament, but he was so drunk that he passed out.
That's all it took. Then my mom ran off with some lesbian and they started an alpaca farm in New Mexico.
Anyway, that's all in the past. Now all we have is each other. I love you, man!”
I gulp. “I love you, too.”
I am going to need an acid bath after this.
___________
Clint drives us on the freeway to get downtown. Before we exit, there's a text of graffiti on an overpass train track. It says BE SOMEONE.
“Yessiree, I will. Pecos!” Clint says to himself. “You ever hear of the Great Man theory, Wade? Capital G. M.”
“Is that like a sports thing?” I ask. He shakes his head.
“The courage and genius of certain men are the locomotive of our glorious civilization.
Movers and shakers, thought leaders, visionaries, philosophers.
Julius Caesar. Galileo. The Enlightenment thinkers.
Matthew McConaughey. All the gifted White men.
Our species would still be chiseling stones for fire without them.
It's a burden they're called to. I'm out there chasing that burden every day,” he rambles.
“The question, Wade, is do you feel the chase?”
“I don't like exercise,” I say.
He pulls into the grid of streets downtown. Homeless people are sleeping everywhere. At a red light, a bearded man with only one leg hobbles toward Clint's window with crutches, barely holding on to a plastic cup full of pennies and dollars.
Dinah gazes outside the truck with wonder. “Look at all the creeps and weirdos downtown! This is so Adventures in Babysitting!”
“Gross,” Clint says, staring at the man's missing limb. He shakes his head adamantly, waving the man off. “Get that peg leg outta my face. No free lunches here, my man. Get a job.” The light turns green and he speeds off, leaving the man in a cloud of exhaust.
“Someone's gotta clean up these streets. Extripate all this garbage,” Clint says.
“You mean ex-tir-pate?” Dinah asks.
“Dinah, I think I know the language of my ancestors.”
I look out my window and spot Darren Lam waiting in line to go into a club. Somebody's got their arm around him. I squint to see who.
If my eyes aren't playing games with me, I see he's with Carsten Selesky, of all people. Without Byron.
They lock lips. I gasp. Darren screams out, “Screwston, Texas, baby!”
I wonder if Byron knows about this. If not, this could be priceless intelligence. I snap a photo of them so I can look at it later.
We have to park in some lot half a mile away from the Toyota Center.
It takes Clint three minutes to back his truck into two spots despite the line of cars behind him honking.
Getting through is easier than I expected.
At the vendor entrance, there's a girl my age checking people in.
Dinah distracts her while Clint steals the vendor list. When she can't find the list, Dinah grills her so much that she starts crying and finally lets us in.
Dinah calls her a scared little mouse and tells her to be more professional next time.
The stadium is chilly and smells like funnel cakes. As we set up our standee next to an open table in the concourse, a giant of a man marches toward us with a clipboard. He's got an eye patch and looks like he's been through some shit. I duck under the table to let Dinah deal with it.
“Ma'am, my daughter out there said y'all were being a mite bit rough with her when she was checking you in. I've got my copy of the list here. Can you tell me which vendor you're representing?”
Clint cuts in, his face stoic. “We're selling health supplements.”
The man looks over his clipboard. “There ain't no health supplements on here. Are you pulling my leg?” He rips the bags out of Dinah's hand and looks inside one. “Plutonium Cactus? Wait—are you Clint? Clint Holtz?”
Clint remains expressionless for a second, then bursts into a smile. “It is I, fellow man!”
“Boy, do I love your show, I tell you what!”
Dinah flips around so fast that her hair looks like rotating helicopter blades for a split second.
The man calls to a group of husky men at the corner of the concourse. “Fellas, come down here! The guy with the Plutonium Cactus show is here!”
The group crowds around Clint and fangirl over him, leaving Dinah and me out of the circle.
“You're our favorite thought leader!”
“We take PC every day!” They show Clint the bottoms of their brown-stained blue jeans.
“Can you say ‘Pecos' for us?”
“Can I get your autograph?”
“You ain't on the list, but since you're doing such good work, you can stay. Enjoy the evening!” The man turns to Dinah with a “ma'am” and doffs his cap.
Clint elbows Dinah. “Did you see that? They called me a thought leader!”
Dinah's jaw is clenched so tight she just might crush her teeth into powder.
We pick up where we left off, the lights go dark in the stadium, and the crowd goes wild. A barrage of multicolored fireworks light up the arena, then shrill whistles followed by explosions, which startle Dinah.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I say, then run across the concourse until I find the ringside entrance.
I stumble down an endless concrete stairway, holding on to the railing so the constant blackouts don't cause me to trip.
On both sides, grown men with a few little boys and even fewer women emit a thunderous roar of boos as the first wrestler strides out of the entrance in a suit, waving an American flag.
He's wearing a tie made out of dollar bills.
“Introducing the Congressman!” the emcee announces.
All the booing feels like it's for me as I get closer to the ringside seats. I follow a path to the front-row seats and kneel behind the barricade. The wrestler slips into the ring and thrashes the air with the flag. Red, white, and blue fireballs shoot out of the tops of the ring posts.
“Hey! You're in our way,” a man sitting behind me with a large cup of beer says.
“I'm, uh, with the press,” I say, but he laughs insincerely.
I try to find Roland or Felix, but the damn lights go out again and the crowd screams. Grungy guitar music plays and everything turns bloodred.
The audience switches from booing to cheering.
An enormous beefcake of a man scuttles out in a vest made entirely of bullets, carrying a rifle over his shoulder.
“Weighing two hundred and seventy pounds, introducing Mr. Gun and the Gun Bunnies!” He's joined on both sides by scantily clad models holding their own rifles.
He climbs into the ring and aims his rifle at the ceiling of the arena, letting loose a spray of bullets, which the crowd seems to love.
The bell rings three times, signaling the start of the match, and Mr. Gun pummels the Congressman into the ground.
Now that the lights are back to normal, I scan all sides of the ring to look for Felix and find him right across from me.
He's next to Roland, who's in his wrestling shirt. It's just the two of them.
It's official: Felix totally lied to me to hang out with somebody else.
I know that he feels stood up after last night, but that wasn't my fault.
Felix whispers something into Roland's ear, and Roland laughs and elbows Felix's arm. Felix does the thing where he smirks and his lips purse, hiding his teeth. He's so beautiful.
There's no bullshitting myself. They're together. And they're happy together.
And then, when Roland is watching the match, Felix stares at him adoringly right before diving in for a peck on the cheek. Roland looks back at him and smiles. My hands start to hurt because I'm squeezing the metal barricade bars without realizing it.
“No!”
The guy behind me nudges my leg with his foot. “It's fine, my dude. It's all fake. Why are you up in here crying like this?”
In the ring, the Congressman is wobbling like a bowling pin that's about to fall while Mr. Gun pulls out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. He wafts them in the face of the Congressman, who looks intoxicated by the scent.
“He's got that sweet, sweet moolah!” the guy behind me yells.
I fan my tears like my eyes are on fire. I'm hyperventilating. Now I know why the Phantom of the Opera dropped that chandelier after watching the love of his life give her heart to another man. I know the gasping pain of true love.
SLAM.
The Congressman splats on the ground outside the ring and in front of the barricade, inches away from me.
His chest pumps up and down. If they take their fight to my space, Felix might see me.
Mr. Gun still stands in the ring, wiggling his fingers.
The cheers are ear-splitting. He climbs the ring post at a sloth's pace, and when he's at the top he dives onto the Congressman, knocking the barricade over.
The guy is so big that I can't see Felix anymore.
“No, no, no, no,” I say, almost hyperventilating as I cry. “Go away. Not here!”
Mr. Gun breathes heavily as he studies me.
“Go somewhere else, dammit!” I say.
He steps over the barricade, which crunches under the immense power of his feet, and yanks me up by the collar of my shirt, much to the delight of the audience around me.
He carries me through the crowd and up to a street exit, which two security guards open for him.
With all two hundred and seventy of his pounds, Mr. Gun throws me out of the Toyota Center, and I roll like a marble across the parking lot while pedestrians stare.
I hit a steel garbage can with a rain hood and play possum in case he wants to continue the match in the parking lot.
Fortunately, the one throw was probably sufficient.
So, I got my answer. The guy I've been trying to help is repaying me by going out with the guy he knows I love.
I can't trust anybody ever. Clint and Dinah don't answer their phones, so I just sprawl out on the ground and hope maybe somebody will run me over or kidnap me and take me away forever.
Instead, a scraggly man in worn-out rags approaches me, probably to ask for money, and as soon as he takes one look at my face, he screams and runs in the other direction.