Chapter XXXXIV: Every Time You Go Away
Chapter Forty-Four: Every Time You Go Away
When Piper came back he asked, “Did you hook up with Lace? Don't lie.”
“She came over and played the violin. You should hear her.”
“She fiddled with something else, I'll bet,” scoffed Piper.
“Nothing. I'm death with girls.”
“Oggy, what happened?”
“It wasn't meant to be. Silly me, I tried to save the world and smoke pot at the same time. I should be committed, like. Dig one hole at a time. I'm such a loser.”
“Why are you getting excited?”
“Am I getting excited? I can't tell. My personalities must be changing faster than my socks. I'm just crazy. You know people like me who no one likes in High School. I'm just the Red Sox kid. Who wold like a bootblack like me?”
Then Piper nodded and grinned.
“You heard us talking, didn't you? I knew it. These walls are so thin, I figured you were either dead or spying on us in the bathroom. Look--You're my friend, Oggy. Maybe you didn't like what I said, but I never said I wanted you to change. We're all going to grow up in the Nineties.”
“But I don't want to grow up. I like 1986.”
“That was six years ago, man. You're being a slacker in the wrong decade.”
“It was long ago and it was far away, but it was so much better than it is today,” I said in tribute to Meatloaf.
“So,” said Piper, “you would've hooked up with Lace in '86? Back when you tucked those checkered Chess King pants into your tube socks? Back when you ran around in the forest playing guns?”
He had a good point.
“Think about it, Oggy. You're at the top of your game right now. 1986 was never this good.”
So, I'd missed my chance to liberate Lacy. She was gone, and I was alone again with my 1986 Red Sox team photo. Phase one of my plan to reinvent myself in Mexico was down the crapper. The Druids didn't encounter as many problems as me. Here I thought that the Fates would smile on me for trying to break out of the Red Sox rut I'd been in for six years by allowing me a sliver of happiness. If Lacy agrees to come to Mexico then all my troubles are over. I could accept that a Red Sox victory in 1986 is now highly improbable, but, with Lacy at my side, my shine box would rise above the muck and mud. Now that Lacy was on waivers, my future was again uncertain. I was on my own with the width of the United States in between me and security. And I didn't even have Darcy's sock to comfort me.
After a tearless goodbye, Piper left for work the next morning. I found reasons to keep going back into his apartment after checking Poncho's fluid levels. I didn't know anyone between Connecticut and Mexico, so it would be a long time before I could open a door on a room with a bed. Now, the driver's seat was as comfortable as any hotel room I could afford, so there was no point in wasting money on one. For the next few months, Poncho would be home. Lacy was right, I would sleep in Truck Stops and eat at Taco Bell until my money ran out. By then I hoped to be in Mexico.
By the time I had packed, scrounged for food in Piper's refrigerator, played with my self, and other morning essentials, it was almost noon. If I didn't leave soon Piper would return for lunch giving me another excuse to postpone my departure. I made sure I had my violin, my three-sectional staff, and some leftover chili Piper had donated to my cause. Then I solemnly closed the apartment door and proceeded to sit in Poncho with the engine running, poised between what was and what will be. Even Cat Stevens couldn't console me. I had blown my chance to get Lacy to go south with me and though she had asked me to stay, I was still leaving. Why? Because of Ray Knight, of course. If Knight doesn't get that hit then I could have lived my High School life as a winner. I'd have the confidence that Darcy desired and the smooth social moves Lacy wanted. I would have been the king of Bone Harbor, maybe get on the City Council, run the school board, donate to the police auction, volunteer at BHHS baseball games, visit Fenway Park for the treasured memories from 1986 when Dewey kept his promise.
Instead of sitting alone in a chugging $75 car as I prepared to drive into exile, I could have been applying for classes at UCONN, establishing my drug connections, picking out new pants with Lacy. That was the life I wanted but there was no way I could have it. I belonged in Mexico with the ghosts of Poncho Villa and Neal Cassidy. Maybe this adventure would give me enough fuel for the Youthfires. Maybe...
Just then a car drove into the parking lot from the other end and parked near Piper's apartment. After a moment, Lacy stepped out. Lacy? What was she doing here? She knew I'd left. I was sure I had explained that the longer I stayed in New England the more risk I ran of being arrested for skipping out on a court date. But there she was closing the door of her car and walking up the footpath. I reached for my door handle, but stopped. Then I felt a sickness gurgle in my stomach as I realized she must be here to rendezvous with Piper, to sleep with him during his lunch break, like they probably had planned on doing yesterday. Of course! She was actually sleeping with him while leading me to believe she wanted to date me. The Jezebel! Piper was probably on his way back from work with a hard on and Lacy was carrying a basket full of massage lotions and sex toys.
Wait. The basket she was carrying was definitely not full of massage lotions and sex toys. I could see a banana and an apple. Were the perverts involved in some kind of food fetish? I watched as Lacy carried the basket up the stairs, hurrying along the narrow porch in her sexy Heidi boots to Piper's door. She had entered the parking lot far enough away from where I was parked so even with the neon green graffiti on Poncho she hadn't noticed I was still here. She checked the basket and made sure it was arranged according to some feminine logic I would never in a million years understand. She knocked on the door repeatedly. Again, a frantic knock. Then I realized she wasn't carrying a basket of fruit to Piper, a carnivore who put ground beef on his waffles. She had come here this morning--expecting me to have dressed at the crack of noon--to give me a food basket.
Lacy confirmed my suspicions by walking away from Piper's door with her shoulders low. If she was awaiting Piper's arrival she would not have looked so sad. The apartment had been empty, cold, dark and she now realized that I had left earlier than she'd expected. She walked down the stairs and then sat down with her face in her hands. No one was around during the dry cold morning, Winter Break was still keeping students at their parent's homes or the Ski Resorts up north or else catching up on the sleep they had missed all semester. Lacy was alone and began to cry into her mittens on the steps with the fruit basket beside her. There was no mistaking her defeated sobs even when I couldn't hear them.
She sat there for no more than two minutes. Maybe she was hoping I was out pissing in the woods and would limp up the steps, or else I'd been taking another shower (Ha!) and couldn't hear her. But when she was through with her grief she stood up and started to walk away. She then remembered to pick the fruit basket up and went back to get it. Now she didn't rearrange it with nurturing tucks and touches, but instead swung it along as she marched to her car.
Though freezing wind swept past the carpet and into my eyes I was sweating and my heart was thumping. I only a moment left, a span of time less than a Roger Clemens fastball, to decide what to do. Swearing, I got out of the car and slammed the door. So many complications for a simple hand job. And people wondered why I beat off so much!
Lacy heard the car door slam and it must have been like some scene from one of those Romantic Comedies chicks like so much because for the first time, and from fifty feet away, I saw Lacy's teeth.
“Oggy?”
“Who else, babe?”
She turned quickly in my direction and instantly tripped over a curb. The basket went up. Bananas, apples, bagels, a jar of peanut butter, a package of my favorite crackers, enough food to last me ten months, went flying. Lacy fell on her knees and started to put it back in the basket.
“Look what you did, Oggy. Ya fahk. Ya come and ya leave and ya come and ya leave. Make up your fahking mind. Fahk!”
“Whose vulgar now?” I asked as I stopped a bagel rolling by me. Poppyseed. I took a bite.
“Don't eat that after it fell on the ground. A dog would have more sense, you animal.”
“That's all I am. What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like? I'm bringing you food so you won't starve. I'm not gonna pick up the paper and read about some corpse found in a Truck Stop. I worked in fast food, you know. They put rat poison in the dumpsters. You're gonna pick up a half eaten bean burrito and it's gonna do more than just make you fart. Your stomach will fall out!”
“I'll burn that bridge when I come to it, sweetheart,” I said with a shrug. “Oooh! A pear.”
“You need to wash that first, Oggy.” Then she clenched her fists. “Why do I bother? Eat it. Do whatever. You’re hopeless.”
“You brought all this food for me? You drove from Lebanon on your vacation to bring me food?”
“Don't rub it in. I couldn't sleep last night. I kept seeing you passed out on the side of the road, bleeding from your mouth, or lying on some coroner's slab in Louisiana all skeletal and pale.”
Not exactly the sex fantasy I'd been hoping for, but at least she was thinking about me while she was in her silk pajamas.
“I told my mother you were going to die of starvation somewhere and she said I should bring you a travel basket. I tried to talk myself out of it but every piece of food I looked at I thought might be the difference between you and that slab.”
“Enough about the slab. I'm not going to starve to death. I'm not going to end up on a slab in Louisiana. According to my buddy Vance I'm going to end up shuffling through the supermarket with an armful of TV dinners. According to my father I'm never going to leave the house. According my grandmother I'll end up in jail or in an asylum. Everyone has some opinion about where I'm going to end up. I can't predict what's going to come out my ass let alone where I'll live or die. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a real fan of planning. I didn't even know I was going through Louisiana.”
“That's why you'll end up on the slab.”
Lacy had gathered most of the fruit and packages. She was tearing up a bagel and throwing it to hungry birds. A squirrel came down a tree and put a piece of bagel the size of his head into his mouth and ran back up the tree.
“Let me show you why I'm not going to end up on the slab. Come on. Bring the basket.”
“Back in the Apartment? Wait. Just because I brought you a selection of apples doesn't mean I want to have your kid.” Lacy's voice had reverted from her concerned girlfriend tone to her frustrated guidance counselor tone.
“Not back in the apartment. No. Let me show you something.”
I started walking back to Poncho. If ever there was a sign that Lacy secretly wanted to go to Mexico, her delivery of a basket of fruit was it. A neon sign wouldn't have been clearer. Why hadn't she just asked, silly girl. Like a gentleman, I opened the passenger door and waited for Lacy to reluctantly get in.
“You aren't going to show me anything weird, are you? Nothing like a collection of snakes or an old retainer.”
“Nothing like that,” I said cheerfully. “All set? Watch your fingers.”
I slid behind the wheel and since the engine was already warm it started right up. I grinned my “See? There's nothing to worry about” grin and backed out. Lacy looked at the interior of my chariot.
“You're right, Oggy, you won't die in Louisiana. This car won't make it to Pennsylvania.”
“Ho. Ho. We'll see.”
“What's that?” she asked about the carpet covering the windshield gap.
“A temproary solution,” I said. I then told her to enjoy the scenery. It would be the last time in a while that she would have to witness the ugly leafless trees and the dirty snow at the sides of the road. There were no snowplows in Mexico, no salt trucks, no bottom of the tenth inning comebacks. Where else could I start over again with Lacy at my side, us against the world?
“So where are we going,” asked Lacy as we drove through campus. “I think the tape is coming loose.”
The tape holding the carpet over the gap between the windshield and the roof had indeed come loose. I tried to press it back into place but the stickum wouldn't stick because it was so cold. I handed Lacy a thumbtack and told her to do what she could do.
“Every girl's dream,” she mocked as she pushed the tack into the soft roof. “What hippie music are you listening to?”
“That hippie is Cat Stevens, my mentor. Pay close attention to these words, my dear. He sings about changes and learning to accept life. You accept life, don't you? You understand that things change when you least expect them to.”
“Please turn it off. Put something else in.”
“You'll have to become acquainted with my music library sooner or later. Why don't you choose.”
“You're talking kind of weird, Oggy. Let's see.”
She dug around in a cardboard box of tapes I had borrowed from my father. She would pull out one tape, comment on it, and then toss it back into the box.
“Billy Squier? Blondie? Bananarama? Come on.”
“They're not bad. I heard Bananarama was going to tour next year. You want a real treat? Put in the Twisted Sister tape. I wanna rock!” I pumped my fist and snapped my neck back and forth.
“Please. Englebert Humperdinck? My mom might like this,” she said derisively.
“That's my dad's. Feel free to throw it out the window.”
“Eric Carmen? Styx? The Soundtrack to Grease. Not bad. U.T.F.O, Kurtis Blow and The Fat Boys? What the fahk? Air Supply? This is horrible music, Oggy.”
“I strenuously disagree. If Kurtis Blow isn't considered one of the masters of pre-gangster rap, then I'll eat my hat. And Eric Carmen has forgotten more about music than most clowns know today.”
“What about Sinead O'Connor? Wilson Phillips? Mariah Carey? Michael Bolton?”
“Artistic abortions, all of them,” I said dismissively
“What about...Oh, no...Supertramp? Supertramp? Oggy, my sister listens to Supertramp.”
I said that her sister has good taste, which I didn't think was a disputable comment when you take into account Supertramp's diverse output over the years. Sure they'd hit a dry spell but they would pull out of it.
“Are you kidding? My sister's prom was at a roller rink. She had a pair of pants with twenty-inch bell bottoms. She's still got a poster of John Travolta wearing an all white suit in her room. She still listens to records. She doesn't even own a CD.”
“All honorable traditions and preferences. Noble.”
“She likes that crazy movie Xanadu.”
“Really? I love that movie. In fact, you're just like Kira.”
“Kira?”
“Olivia Newton-John's character.”
“I'm just like Kira? How? I wear a flowing white dress and ride around on roller-skates? Oh, yeah. That is exactly like me. Why couldn't I see it?”
“No. You're a muse. Kira was one of the nine muses in Greek mythology. She inspired the artist, Sonny, to help design Xanadu, the disco roller bar, with Gene Kelly, the clarinetist slash developer, who was her previous project. See? You do that for me. You make me see things more clearly and that's why you're coming to Mexico.”
“Xanadu was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, Oggy,” said Lacy quickly. “It makes no sense.”
“Oh, and The Sound of Music makes sense?” I asked sarcasticaly. “A single father with the Brady Bunch as kids decides to sacrifice his career as an Austrian submarine captain to run off to Switzerland with a renounced singing nun whom he just met? That is so believable. Xanadu is pure reality compared to The Sound of Music.”
“The Sound of Music is based on a true story, Oggy,” said Lacy. “Maria Von Trapp lived in Vermont with the captain and six kids. It actually happened.”
“Sure, and St. Elmo's Fire was a good movie.”
“I don't know about that, but there is a fifteen minute scene in Xanadu where a Forties big band blends with an Eighties New Wave rock band. I thought that was a little hard to believe.”
She had named one of my favorite parts of the movie, a dramatic musical manage where Sonny and Gene Kelly see their separate visions of the disco roller bar. Kelly imagines it will be like his old New York club with bopping Zoot suiters and jitterbugging couples and a swingin' jazz combo while Sonny sees a New Wave rock band in orange jumpsuits and spiked hair and dancers slapping each other's painted cheeks. At the scene's climax, the two separate songs from forty years apart actually overlap as the stages merge and the two bands unite, symbolizing a harmonious marriage of the old and the new. Dynamite cinema in my opinion.
“Oh, yes. 'Dancin' Round and Round.' Awesome song. That scene is almost as good as the animated love sequence where Kira and Sonny dance around as humans, swim around as fish and then fly around as birds while ELO plays 'Don't Walk Away'. What more can you ask for? Xanadu is the best. I wish I had the soundtrack. My brother beat me up once and I missed my chance to tape the title song from the radio. Maybe we could go to your house and pick it up before we go south.”
“We aren't picking up Xanadu. My psycho sister probably wouldn't even let you take it. Just buy it if you want it. There must be a crummy copy in some thrift store somewhere. You...”
Lacy was speaking casually, almost enjoying herself, and trying to keep the carpet from falling down below the windshield when all at once she paused. Her eyes narrowed and she turned slowly to look at me. The carpet dropped a little so I turned up the heater.
“Wait...Wait, Oggy. Stop the car. What the fahk did you just say? Did you just say that I'm your muse and that's why we're going to Mexico? Before we go south? We?”
I had anticipated a little resistance, but I knew exactly what to say to calm Lacy down. I spoke like an architect talking to a small child who needs the simplest structural design explained.
“Listen,” I said calmly. “Kira got together with Sonny at the end of Xanadu. It's destiny. Even Zeus agreed when Sonny broke into the neon mythology dimension. See? Silly girl, there was nothing to worry your pretty little head about. Right? So now that I've cleared up our little misunderstanding could you keep your hand on that carpet? I can barely see.”
Now that I'd explained myself, Lacy could relax and help me navigate. I wasn't sure where we were in relationship to the highway. I didn't have a map, but I figured if I kept driving south and west then I'd find it. Next stop: Cancun.
“Zeus my ass, Oggy. We are not going to Mexico. Where did you get the idea you could kidnap me and take me to Mexico? Are you insane? Are you high? Did you smoke crack this morning instead taking of a multi-vitamin?”
“Settle down, Kira, I mean Lace.”
“Settle down? Stop the car! Let me out.”
She punched me in the arm.
“That isn't necessary, Lace. Violence begets violence. Let's talk about this. Zeus argued at first too, but...”
She punched me in the arm harder and yelled for me to stop. It was natural to expect misgivings about such a big move, but after a few miles I figured her previous life would be like a distant dream, an opium vision. She would embrace the new reality, the new Xanadu. She hit me again on the arm and then gave me a quick jab to the ear.
“Listen! Fahk. Ow! Your rings hurt. Damn! My back hurts enough already without you punching me in my head. Stop it. Listen, Dwight Evans promised me that he would win the World Series, see?”
Despite a continuing rain of blows on my head and shoulders, and even being hit with an apple, I managed to pull the team photo out of my back pocket.
“This is Dewey. See? This is Schiraldi. This is Bill Buckner. This is Bob Stanley. When the Sox lost they called all the bets off. I can do what I want now. See? I'm a winner. I can win. I'm not a fahking bootblack like Sticky. I'm a winner like Dewey and Gordy Clutcher and I can do things you can't even dream about.”
“Let! Me! Out!”
With each word Lacy punched me in the arm. Then she tore the carpet off the front of the windshield and kicked the glass. A long crack now ran horizontally across the windshield. My main concern, though, was removing the carpet remainder from in front of my face before I plunged the car into a river.
As I tried to steer and defend myself, Lacy picked up the first tape she found, Falco 3 by Falco. The tape was in tough shape. I'd long ago lost the case and liner notes. In fact, it made a horrible squeaking sound whenever I played side one, but it was vintage '86 and precious to me. I thought she had chosen an interesting time to listen to “Rock me Amadeus” when suddenly she threw the cassette out the window and onto the road. A car behind us ran over it and honked.
“Jesus! Stop! Throw the Humperdinck out if you want to travel light. That was Falco. Do you understand? It sounded like shit but it was Falco.”
Lacy silently grabbed my Word Up tape by Cameo, complete with paper insert and color photo, a treasure-chest of mid-eighties funk. She pushed it half way into the now six-inch wide gap between the windshield and roof.
“No. You wouldn't. No. Not Cameo. Think about what you're doing. Please stop.”
“I will if you let me out.”
“Just wait. Be careful with that tape, Lacy. That may be the last remaining Word Up tape in existence.”
“Then now it's extinct,” she said as she threw it out the gap and into oncoming traffic. I watched helplessly as a pick-up truck reduced it to splinters. She then picked up my worn, almost inaudible, but nonetheless beloved Thriller tape by the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. The tape was unquestionably the only thing of value I had brought from Bone Harbor. The opening guitar riff from “Beat it” is my all-time favorite.
“Ah! Stop! Can't you see that I'm liberating you. Think about Mexico. Think about a never ending adventure. I need you, Lacy. I can't make it alone. At the end of this highway is the beginning of a new life in a place full of warmth and possibilities and love. A place like Xanadu. Open your eyes and see it, Lacy. We could name our first kid Xanadu. We could be winners.”
With a horrible sound, the car came to a sudden halt and the engine died. This is what happens when someone puts the transmission into Park while traveling at forty-miles an hour. After I peeled my face off of the steering wheel, I saw that Lace had left me and was walking in the opposite direction.
What now? A car was honking at me from behind. I waved it past me. I turned the ignition a few times until the engine started again. Tenderly, I put the car into Drive. There was a revving sound. I hit the accelerator and nothing happened except some coughing. Then the transmission caught and I leaped forward about ten feet and slowed down. Then the transmission caught again and I leaped forward and slowed down. At this rate, the Earth's oil supply would run out before I got to Mexico. The road was deserted so I decided to turn around and go back to Storrs. I found that if I kept a very light pressure on the accelerator it would minimize the sudden jumps and halts and stalls.
After about five minutes, I caught up with Lacy. She was walking just a little slower than the car was moving so we were neck and neck for about a minute. I rolled down the window and looked at her. She wouldn't look at me. The engine died and she kept walking while I turned the ignition a couple of times. Finally, the engine started again and I caught up with Lacy again. I was driving halfway in the breakdown lane to allow cars to pass. When I passed the spot where Lacy had thrown my Word Up tape onto the pavement I stopped and parked the car. I tried to collect all the pieces but the truck had pulverized the case and each passing car did further damage. I found the paper insert and was able to gather most of the tape itself, which had unspooled when the cassette was crushed, and bring it back to Poncho’s hood. What else could I do except try to put it back together, this one piece of broken memorabilia from 1986, this magnetic link to the year when everything had unraveled. I stood and tried to wind the tape into a circle again and put it between the two sides of the cassette, but the wind kept blowing the little pieces of plastic onto the ground and my fingers were getting too cold to feel the smaller fragments. My nose was running onto my mustache and then onto the car hood. If I could just get the pieces lined up then the spool would fit, if the tape would just stay on the spool, if the spool had just not been smashed, if Lacy had just not thrown the tape out of Poncho, if I hadn't tried to kidnap Lacy, if I didn't need to go to Mexico to get away from the court case, if those girls hadn't tested me and mocked my Red Sox hat, if the Red Sox hadn't lost in 1986 and forced me to defend them, if Dewey hadn't broken his promise...then everything would be alright.
“Oggy?”
I expected Bonigan to tell me how I had messed up again and now had a great story it would make for the Youthfire. Sure, I didn't get to Mexico, but I could just say I went to Mexico. Wasn't it the same thing when it came to fuel for the fire? The important thing was that something was sacrificed on the cold nights so the Tribe wouldn't have to go into the Land of Nostalgia. All of this, I expected to hear, but instead saw Lacy standing beside me looking at the tape in my red fingers.
“Why, Lace?”
“Because you tried to kidnap me. I've got class. I like school. I like the dorm. I'm not like you.”
“No, why did the Sox have to lose in 1986?”
“I have no idea. I don't even know what game you're talking about. I was fifteen then. You think I had more to worry about than a baseball game? Teams lose.”
“But Dewey promised. He promised they'd win and now he's gone and all I've got left is this tape and now it's destroyed.”
“I'll get you a new one.”
“A new one? I got this one at a yard sale a year after it was released. You could find an honest man in the White House before you find a new Word Up tape.”
“You shouldn't have tried to take me to Mexico.”
“I know. I tried to resist. I did. I almost got away and then you brought that fruit basket and I thought you wanted to go. I thought you loved me.”
“Maybe I do, in some freaky way,” said Lacy, “but not enough to abandon my mother and my dogs and my life at school to go pick aluminum out of the trash in Mexico.”
“That was only one suggestion. They probably have factories there. I could get work. You could hunt or something.”
“No,” said Lacy shaking her head, “I'm not Kira. I'm not Cyndi Lauper. I'm not Donna Reed. I'm Lacy. I'm a student at UCONN. Hi.”
I sighed and wiped the snot from my mustache. My eyes were watering. I was having trouble seeing the tape in the long shadows from the forest. I started to mumble that I couldn't put the cassette back together, that nothing would ever be the same. Lacy took the pile of plastic and tangled, torn ribbon and threw it off the side of the road into a drainage ditch. I didn't protest. Then, as I was too dazed and drained to act on my own, she took my arms and put them over her shoulders. How long we held each other, I don't know. I only know that I watched the river below the road and listened to it's song, a New England song of past winter, recycled snow and magnificence, stately glaciers, Elk in throbbing herds. On October 26th 1986 the clouds demonstrated their disregard for Baseball. It rained hard enough to postpone Game Seven. This allowed Bruce Hurst to start his third World Series game though Schiraldi would later get the loss, as he had done in Game Six. The October rain that fell on New England six years earlier was still out there in the Connecticut River and would dissolve my Word Up tape as they had carved a great valley.
“Does your car still run?”
“It moves. It might make it back to Bone Harbor.”
“Is that where you're going?”
“Yes.”
“Will you give me a ride back to my car without trying to take me to Mexico or Bone Harbor?”
“Lace, I'm sorry about that. The way you look at me sometimes makes me think crazy things. I'm just lonely. You let me kiss you and I thought that meant something. I thought you liked Xanadu.”
“That's the trouble with kissing. You only know what it means after you do it. Can we get out of the cold?”
I got the engine to start up on the third try. There wasn't much traffic and I hadn't actually driven very far from Storrs so we made it back in under an hour.
“Sorry about the car. That's what you get for trying to kidnap me.”
“It cost me seventy-five dollars, you know.”
In the parking lot, Lacy told me I could keep the basket of fruit even if I wasn't going to Mexico. She told me to tell her how it all worked out with the court case and suggested that I pay the girl all the money or else give her Poncho. Some lawyer she'd make. Both of these options had occurred to me, but I didn't have the money and the car was now worth less than a pack of gum. I promised her to fly straight and shoot right from now on. Then she was gone in her own car and I walked back into Piper's Apartment. He was home and not at all surprised to see me.
“Oggy? Just in time for some macaroni and cheese. I'll make you a bowl without meat.”
“I'm done,” I muttered as I collapsed into a bean bag chair. “I tried to kidnap Lacy and take her to Mexico and she destroyed Poncho and then she threw my Word Up tape and a truck ran over it.”
Piper said nothing so I added, “And she hates Xanadu. How can you hate Xanadu?”
“Do you want butter with your roll? Salad dressing?”
“Both.”
Piper laid out the food. I pulled out some crackers from the basket Lacy had given me. There was some weird Pesto spread in there too and I put it on a bagel. It wasn't bad. For desert we had a box of cookies that Lacy had included. Piper laid back and rubbed his belly while speaking though a mouth full of crumbs.
“You are telling me that Lacy Kirschinbaum, a girl who doesn't give the time of day to most guys on campus, drove over here on the morning you were going to Mexico to give you a basket full of bagels and fruit and spreads and cookies?”
“Yes.”
“And you still won't admit to giving her oral sex for ten hours?”
I shook the bean.
“So she did this just to be nice? Just because she's a swell egg?”
Piper was incredulous.
“Just as a gesture of kindness,” I said as I popped an after-dinner chocolate into my mouth.
“Amazing! Unprecedented! And, as thanks, you tried to kidnap her?”
I tried to think of more delicate way to phrase the recent events, a way that didn't sound like a prosecuting attorney's words, but couldn't.
“Listen, we're mixing apples and oranges here. Speaking of which, do you want one?”
“I'm stuffed. I don't think we're talking semantics, Og. You tried to bring Lacy to Mexico against her will. That's kidnapping in my book. You should know the definition of kidnapping.”
Just because I graduate High School I should know the dictionary inside and out? Am I Mr. Encyclopedia now? Hardly. When I had a job alphabetizing 10,000 video tapes, I had to write the alphabet on my forearm to reference. No, I did not know the definition of kidnapping. I didn't know a lot of things.
“Well, it didn't work. I got about three miles away when she pulled the rip chord. So I attempted to kidnap her, but I didn't succeed. I thought she wanted to go. I thought I was liberating her, helping her take the plunge. Would you blame a father for pushing a kid who can't swim into a pond?”
“Yes.”
“Would you criticize a mother who forced her kid to eat spinach?”
“Yes.”
“Would you blame a coach who made the team do ten extra laps?”
“Yes.”
I was out of analogies so I gave up. Piper just had higher standards than me. What a surprise.
“Well, I was trying to do what I thought was right for her. That's noble enough.”
“No you weren't. You were trying to do something that was right for YOU. And that's the only noble thing you can do. Just like my boy John Galt. Keep it up.”
Piper patted me on the shoulder and went to wash some dishes. He was genuinely impressed that I had tried to make my life a little better by taking his dorm-mate to Mexico with me against her will.
“That's right,” I said after a moment of sober reflection. “I was taking her because I loved her and I wanted her to be with me. I feel better about myself when she's around and I wanted to keep her. She should be flattered! That kidnapping was the most romantic thing I've ever done.”
Piper tapped his head with a dirty wooden spoon.
“Now you're using the lemon.”
“I should go kidnap Darcy right now. She would just right out of her pants and into my arms.”
“Wait. Back up.”
I told Piper I was just kidding, sort of. I had to accept that Darcy was in Florida and I was stranded in Connecticut. Even if I managed to kidnap her, I'd only take her a few miles away to the beach. It would hardly be worth it. Besides, Lacy was far prettier.
We ignored the question of my future, Piper because it wasn't his future, me because it was, and talked about J. Steinbeck until it was time for Piper to put his body to rest. I would be leaving in the morning, back to Bone Harbor to get the car fixed or else to jump off the Memorial Bridge. At the very least I could pick up Darcy's sock, which I had forgotten in my haste to escape prosecution. Who knows? I never said I knew what I was doing.
When Piper came back he asked, “Did you hook up with Lace? Don't lie.”
“She came over and played the violin. You should hear her.”
“She fiddled with something else, I'll bet,” scoffed Piper.
“Nothing. I'm death with girls.”
“Oggy, what happened?”
“It wasn't meant to be. Silly me, I tried to save the world and smoke pot at the same time. I should be committed, like. Dig one hole at a time. I'm such a loser.”
“Why are you getting excited?”
“Am I getting excited? I can't tell. My personalities must be changing faster than my socks. I'm just crazy. You know people like me who no one likes in High School. I'm just the Red Sox kid. Who wold like a bootblack like me?”
Then Piper nodded and grinned.
“You heard us talking, didn't you? I knew it. These walls are so thin, I figured you were either dead or spying on us in the bathroom. Look--You're my friend, Oggy. Maybe you didn't like what I said, but I never said I wanted you to change. We're all going to grow up in the Nineties.”
“But I don't want to grow up. I like 1986.”
“That was six years ago, man. You're being a slacker in the wrong decade.”
“It was long ago and it was far away, but it was so much better than it is today,” I said in tribute to Meatloaf.
“So,” said Piper, “you would've hooked up with Lace in '86? Back when you tucked those checkered Chess King pants into your tube socks? Back when you ran around in the forest playing guns?”
He had a good point.
“Think about it, Oggy. You're at the top of your game right now. 1986 was never this good.”
So, I'd missed my chance to liberate Lacy. She was gone, and I was alone again with my 1986 Red Sox team photo. Phase one of my plan to reinvent myself in Mexico was down the crapper. The Druids didn't encounter as many problems as me. Here I thought that the Fates would smile on me for trying to break out of the Red Sox rut I'd been in for six years by allowing me a sliver of happiness. If Lacy agrees to come to Mexico then all my troubles are over. I could accept that a Red Sox victory in 1986 is now highly improbable, but, with Lacy at my side, my shine box would rise above the muck and mud. Now that Lacy was on waivers, my future was again uncertain. I was on my own with the width of the United States in between me and security. And I didn't even have Darcy's sock to comfort me.
After a tearless goodbye, Piper left for work the next morning. I found reasons to keep going back into his apartment after checking Poncho's fluid levels. I didn't know anyone between Connecticut and Mexico, so it would be a long time before I could open a door on a room with a bed. Now, the driver's seat was as comfortable as any hotel room I could afford, so there was no point in wasting money on one. For the next few months, Poncho would be home. Lacy was right, I would sleep in Truck Stops and eat at Taco Bell until my money ran out. By then I hoped to be in Mexico.
By the time I had packed, scrounged for food in Piper's refrigerator, played with my self, and other morning essentials, it was almost noon. If I didn't leave soon Piper would return for lunch giving me another excuse to postpone my departure. I made sure I had my violin, my three-sectional staff, and some leftover chili Piper had donated to my cause. Then I solemnly closed the apartment door and proceeded to sit in Poncho with the engine running, poised between what was and what will be. Even Cat Stevens couldn't console me. I had blown my chance to get Lacy to go south with me and though she had asked me to stay, I was still leaving. Why? Because of Ray Knight, of course. If Knight doesn't get that hit then I could have lived my High School life as a winner. I'd have the confidence that Darcy desired and the smooth social moves Lacy wanted. I would have been the king of Bone Harbor, maybe get on the City Council, run the school board, donate to the police auction, volunteer at BHHS baseball games, visit Fenway Park for the treasured memories from 1986 when Dewey kept his promise.
Instead of sitting alone in a chugging $75 car as I prepared to drive into exile, I could have been applying for classes at UCONN, establishing my drug connections, picking out new pants with Lacy. That was the life I wanted but there was no way I could have it. I belonged in Mexico with the ghosts of Poncho Villa and Neal Cassidy. Maybe this adventure would give me enough fuel for the Youthfires. Maybe...
Just then a car drove into the parking lot from the other end and parked near Piper's apartment. After a moment, Lacy stepped out. Lacy? What was she doing here? She knew I'd left. I was sure I had explained that the longer I stayed in New England the more risk I ran of being arrested for skipping out on a court date. But there she was closing the door of her car and walking up the footpath. I reached for my door handle, but stopped. Then I felt a sickness gurgle in my stomach as I realized she must be here to rendezvous with Piper, to sleep with him during his lunch break, like they probably had planned on doing yesterday. Of course! She was actually sleeping with him while leading me to believe she wanted to date me. The Jezebel! Piper was probably on his way back from work with a hard on and Lacy was carrying a basket full of massage lotions and sex toys.
Wait. The basket she was carrying was definitely not full of massage lotions and sex toys. I could see a banana and an apple. Were the perverts involved in some kind of food fetish? I watched as Lacy carried the basket up the stairs, hurrying along the narrow porch in her sexy Heidi boots to Piper's door. She had entered the parking lot far enough away from where I was parked so even with the neon green graffiti on Poncho she hadn't noticed I was still here. She checked the basket and made sure it was arranged according to some feminine logic I would never in a million years understand. She knocked on the door repeatedly. Again, a frantic knock. Then I realized she wasn't carrying a basket of fruit to Piper, a carnivore who put ground beef on his waffles. She had come here this morning--expecting me to have dressed at the crack of noon--to give me a food basket.
Lacy confirmed my suspicions by walking away from Piper's door with her shoulders low. If she was awaiting Piper's arrival she would not have looked so sad. The apartment had been empty, cold, dark and she now realized that I had left earlier than she'd expected. She walked down the stairs and then sat down with her face in her hands. No one was around during the dry cold morning, Winter Break was still keeping students at their parent's homes or the Ski Resorts up north or else catching up on the sleep they had missed all semester. Lacy was alone and began to cry into her mittens on the steps with the fruit basket beside her. There was no mistaking her defeated sobs even when I couldn't hear them.
She sat there for no more than two minutes. Maybe she was hoping I was out pissing in the woods and would limp up the steps, or else I'd been taking another shower (Ha!) and couldn't hear her. But when she was through with her grief she stood up and started to walk away. She then remembered to pick the fruit basket up and went back to get it. Now she didn't rearrange it with nurturing tucks and touches, but instead swung it along as she marched to her car.
Though freezing wind swept past the carpet and into my eyes I was sweating and my heart was thumping. I only a moment left, a span of time less than a Roger Clemens fastball, to decide what to do. Swearing, I got out of the car and slammed the door. So many complications for a simple hand job. And people wondered why I beat off so much!
Lacy heard the car door slam and it must have been like some scene from one of those Romantic Comedies chicks like so much because for the first time, and from fifty feet away, I saw Lacy's teeth.
“Oggy?”
“Who else, babe?”
She turned quickly in my direction and instantly tripped over a curb. The basket went up. Bananas, apples, bagels, a jar of peanut butter, a package of my favorite crackers, enough food to last me ten months, went flying. Lacy fell on her knees and started to put it back in the basket.
“Look what you did, Oggy. Ya fahk. Ya come and ya leave and ya come and ya leave. Make up your fahking mind. Fahk!”
“Whose vulgar now?” I asked as I stopped a bagel rolling by me. Poppyseed. I took a bite.
“Don't eat that after it fell on the ground. A dog would have more sense, you animal.”
“That's all I am. What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like? I'm bringing you food so you won't starve. I'm not gonna pick up the paper and read about some corpse found in a Truck Stop. I worked in fast food, you know. They put rat poison in the dumpsters. You're gonna pick up a half eaten bean burrito and it's gonna do more than just make you fart. Your stomach will fall out!”
“I'll burn that bridge when I come to it, sweetheart,” I said with a shrug. “Oooh! A pear.”
“You need to wash that first, Oggy.” Then she clenched her fists. “Why do I bother? Eat it. Do whatever. You’re hopeless.”
“You brought all this food for me? You drove from Lebanon on your vacation to bring me food?”
“Don't rub it in. I couldn't sleep last night. I kept seeing you passed out on the side of the road, bleeding from your mouth, or lying on some coroner's slab in Louisiana all skeletal and pale.”
Not exactly the sex fantasy I'd been hoping for, but at least she was thinking about me while she was in her silk pajamas.
“I told my mother you were going to die of starvation somewhere and she said I should bring you a travel basket. I tried to talk myself out of it but every piece of food I looked at I thought might be the difference between you and that slab.”
“Enough about the slab. I'm not going to starve to death. I'm not going to end up on a slab in Louisiana. According to my buddy Vance I'm going to end up shuffling through the supermarket with an armful of TV dinners. According to my father I'm never going to leave the house. According my grandmother I'll end up in jail or in an asylum. Everyone has some opinion about where I'm going to end up. I can't predict what's going to come out my ass let alone where I'll live or die. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a real fan of planning. I didn't even know I was going through Louisiana.”
“That's why you'll end up on the slab.”
Lacy had gathered most of the fruit and packages. She was tearing up a bagel and throwing it to hungry birds. A squirrel came down a tree and put a piece of bagel the size of his head into his mouth and ran back up the tree.
“Let me show you why I'm not going to end up on the slab. Come on. Bring the basket.”
“Back in the Apartment? Wait. Just because I brought you a selection of apples doesn't mean I want to have your kid.” Lacy's voice had reverted from her concerned girlfriend tone to her frustrated guidance counselor tone.
“Not back in the apartment. No. Let me show you something.”
I started walking back to Poncho. If ever there was a sign that Lacy secretly wanted to go to Mexico, her delivery of a basket of fruit was it. A neon sign wouldn't have been clearer. Why hadn't she just asked, silly girl. Like a gentleman, I opened the passenger door and waited for Lacy to reluctantly get in.
“You aren't going to show me anything weird, are you? Nothing like a collection of snakes or an old retainer.”
“Nothing like that,” I said cheerfully. “All set? Watch your fingers.”
I slid behind the wheel and since the engine was already warm it started right up. I grinned my “See? There's nothing to worry about” grin and backed out. Lacy looked at the interior of my chariot.
“You're right, Oggy, you won't die in Louisiana. This car won't make it to Pennsylvania.”
“Ho. Ho. We'll see.”
“What's that?” she asked about the carpet covering the windshield gap.
“A temproary solution,” I said. I then told her to enjoy the scenery. It would be the last time in a while that she would have to witness the ugly leafless trees and the dirty snow at the sides of the road. There were no snowplows in Mexico, no salt trucks, no bottom of the tenth inning comebacks. Where else could I start over again with Lacy at my side, us against the world?
“So where are we going,” asked Lacy as we drove through campus. “I think the tape is coming loose.”
The tape holding the carpet over the gap between the windshield and the roof had indeed come loose. I tried to press it back into place but the stickum wouldn't stick because it was so cold. I handed Lacy a thumbtack and told her to do what she could do.
“Every girl's dream,” she mocked as she pushed the tack into the soft roof. “What hippie music are you listening to?”
“That hippie is Cat Stevens, my mentor. Pay close attention to these words, my dear. He sings about changes and learning to accept life. You accept life, don't you? You understand that things change when you least expect them to.”
“Please turn it off. Put something else in.”
“You'll have to become acquainted with my music library sooner or later. Why don't you choose.”
“You're talking kind of weird, Oggy. Let's see.”
She dug around in a cardboard box of tapes I had borrowed from my father. She would pull out one tape, comment on it, and then toss it back into the box.
“Billy Squier? Blondie? Bananarama? Come on.”
“They're not bad. I heard Bananarama was going to tour next year. You want a real treat? Put in the Twisted Sister tape. I wanna rock!” I pumped my fist and snapped my neck back and forth.
“Please. Englebert Humperdinck? My mom might like this,” she said derisively.
“That's my dad's. Feel free to throw it out the window.”
“Eric Carmen? Styx? The Soundtrack to Grease. Not bad. U.T.F.O, Kurtis Blow and The Fat Boys? What the fahk? Air Supply? This is horrible music, Oggy.”
“I strenuously disagree. If Kurtis Blow isn't considered one of the masters of pre-gangster rap, then I'll eat my hat. And Eric Carmen has forgotten more about music than most clowns know today.”
“What about Sinead O'Connor? Wilson Phillips? Mariah Carey? Michael Bolton?”
“Artistic abortions, all of them,” I said dismissively
“What about...Oh, no...Supertramp? Supertramp? Oggy, my sister listens to Supertramp.”
I said that her sister has good taste, which I didn't think was a disputable comment when you take into account Supertramp's diverse output over the years. Sure they'd hit a dry spell but they would pull out of it.
“Are you kidding? My sister's prom was at a roller rink. She had a pair of pants with twenty-inch bell bottoms. She's still got a poster of John Travolta wearing an all white suit in her room. She still listens to records. She doesn't even own a CD.”
“All honorable traditions and preferences. Noble.”
“She likes that crazy movie Xanadu.”
“Really? I love that movie. In fact, you're just like Kira.”
“Kira?”
“Olivia Newton-John's character.”
“I'm just like Kira? How? I wear a flowing white dress and ride around on roller-skates? Oh, yeah. That is exactly like me. Why couldn't I see it?”
“No. You're a muse. Kira was one of the nine muses in Greek mythology. She inspired the artist, Sonny, to help design Xanadu, the disco roller bar, with Gene Kelly, the clarinetist slash developer, who was her previous project. See? You do that for me. You make me see things more clearly and that's why you're coming to Mexico.”
“Xanadu was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, Oggy,” said Lacy quickly. “It makes no sense.”
“Oh, and The Sound of Music makes sense?” I asked sarcasticaly. “A single father with the Brady Bunch as kids decides to sacrifice his career as an Austrian submarine captain to run off to Switzerland with a renounced singing nun whom he just met? That is so believable. Xanadu is pure reality compared to The Sound of Music.”
“The Sound of Music is based on a true story, Oggy,” said Lacy. “Maria Von Trapp lived in Vermont with the captain and six kids. It actually happened.”
“Sure, and St. Elmo's Fire was a good movie.”
“I don't know about that, but there is a fifteen minute scene in Xanadu where a Forties big band blends with an Eighties New Wave rock band. I thought that was a little hard to believe.”
She had named one of my favorite parts of the movie, a dramatic musical manage where Sonny and Gene Kelly see their separate visions of the disco roller bar. Kelly imagines it will be like his old New York club with bopping Zoot suiters and jitterbugging couples and a swingin' jazz combo while Sonny sees a New Wave rock band in orange jumpsuits and spiked hair and dancers slapping each other's painted cheeks. At the scene's climax, the two separate songs from forty years apart actually overlap as the stages merge and the two bands unite, symbolizing a harmonious marriage of the old and the new. Dynamite cinema in my opinion.
“Oh, yes. 'Dancin' Round and Round.' Awesome song. That scene is almost as good as the animated love sequence where Kira and Sonny dance around as humans, swim around as fish and then fly around as birds while ELO plays 'Don't Walk Away'. What more can you ask for? Xanadu is the best. I wish I had the soundtrack. My brother beat me up once and I missed my chance to tape the title song from the radio. Maybe we could go to your house and pick it up before we go south.”
“We aren't picking up Xanadu. My psycho sister probably wouldn't even let you take it. Just buy it if you want it. There must be a crummy copy in some thrift store somewhere. You...”
Lacy was speaking casually, almost enjoying herself, and trying to keep the carpet from falling down below the windshield when all at once she paused. Her eyes narrowed and she turned slowly to look at me. The carpet dropped a little so I turned up the heater.
“Wait...Wait, Oggy. Stop the car. What the fahk did you just say? Did you just say that I'm your muse and that's why we're going to Mexico? Before we go south? We?”
I had anticipated a little resistance, but I knew exactly what to say to calm Lacy down. I spoke like an architect talking to a small child who needs the simplest structural design explained.
“Listen,” I said calmly. “Kira got together with Sonny at the end of Xanadu. It's destiny. Even Zeus agreed when Sonny broke into the neon mythology dimension. See? Silly girl, there was nothing to worry your pretty little head about. Right? So now that I've cleared up our little misunderstanding could you keep your hand on that carpet? I can barely see.”
Now that I'd explained myself, Lacy could relax and help me navigate. I wasn't sure where we were in relationship to the highway. I didn't have a map, but I figured if I kept driving south and west then I'd find it. Next stop: Cancun.
“Zeus my ass, Oggy. We are not going to Mexico. Where did you get the idea you could kidnap me and take me to Mexico? Are you insane? Are you high? Did you smoke crack this morning instead taking of a multi-vitamin?”
“Settle down, Kira, I mean Lace.”
“Settle down? Stop the car! Let me out.”
She punched me in the arm.
“That isn't necessary, Lace. Violence begets violence. Let's talk about this. Zeus argued at first too, but...”
She punched me in the arm harder and yelled for me to stop. It was natural to expect misgivings about such a big move, but after a few miles I figured her previous life would be like a distant dream, an opium vision. She would embrace the new reality, the new Xanadu. She hit me again on the arm and then gave me a quick jab to the ear.
“Listen! Fahk. Ow! Your rings hurt. Damn! My back hurts enough already without you punching me in my head. Stop it. Listen, Dwight Evans promised me that he would win the World Series, see?”
Despite a continuing rain of blows on my head and shoulders, and even being hit with an apple, I managed to pull the team photo out of my back pocket.
“This is Dewey. See? This is Schiraldi. This is Bill Buckner. This is Bob Stanley. When the Sox lost they called all the bets off. I can do what I want now. See? I'm a winner. I can win. I'm not a fahking bootblack like Sticky. I'm a winner like Dewey and Gordy Clutcher and I can do things you can't even dream about.”
“Let! Me! Out!”
With each word Lacy punched me in the arm. Then she tore the carpet off the front of the windshield and kicked the glass. A long crack now ran horizontally across the windshield. My main concern, though, was removing the carpet remainder from in front of my face before I plunged the car into a river.
As I tried to steer and defend myself, Lacy picked up the first tape she found, Falco 3 by Falco. The tape was in tough shape. I'd long ago lost the case and liner notes. In fact, it made a horrible squeaking sound whenever I played side one, but it was vintage '86 and precious to me. I thought she had chosen an interesting time to listen to “Rock me Amadeus” when suddenly she threw the cassette out the window and onto the road. A car behind us ran over it and honked.
“Jesus! Stop! Throw the Humperdinck out if you want to travel light. That was Falco. Do you understand? It sounded like shit but it was Falco.”
Lacy silently grabbed my Word Up tape by Cameo, complete with paper insert and color photo, a treasure-chest of mid-eighties funk. She pushed it half way into the now six-inch wide gap between the windshield and roof.
“No. You wouldn't. No. Not Cameo. Think about what you're doing. Please stop.”
“I will if you let me out.”
“Just wait. Be careful with that tape, Lacy. That may be the last remaining Word Up tape in existence.”
“Then now it's extinct,” she said as she threw it out the gap and into oncoming traffic. I watched helplessly as a pick-up truck reduced it to splinters. She then picked up my worn, almost inaudible, but nonetheless beloved Thriller tape by the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. The tape was unquestionably the only thing of value I had brought from Bone Harbor. The opening guitar riff from “Beat it” is my all-time favorite.
“Ah! Stop! Can't you see that I'm liberating you. Think about Mexico. Think about a never ending adventure. I need you, Lacy. I can't make it alone. At the end of this highway is the beginning of a new life in a place full of warmth and possibilities and love. A place like Xanadu. Open your eyes and see it, Lacy. We could name our first kid Xanadu. We could be winners.”
With a horrible sound, the car came to a sudden halt and the engine died. This is what happens when someone puts the transmission into Park while traveling at forty-miles an hour. After I peeled my face off of the steering wheel, I saw that Lace had left me and was walking in the opposite direction.
What now? A car was honking at me from behind. I waved it past me. I turned the ignition a few times until the engine started again. Tenderly, I put the car into Drive. There was a revving sound. I hit the accelerator and nothing happened except some coughing. Then the transmission caught and I leaped forward about ten feet and slowed down. Then the transmission caught again and I leaped forward and slowed down. At this rate, the Earth's oil supply would run out before I got to Mexico. The road was deserted so I decided to turn around and go back to Storrs. I found that if I kept a very light pressure on the accelerator it would minimize the sudden jumps and halts and stalls.
After about five minutes, I caught up with Lacy. She was walking just a little slower than the car was moving so we were neck and neck for about a minute. I rolled down the window and looked at her. She wouldn't look at me. The engine died and she kept walking while I turned the ignition a couple of times. Finally, the engine started again and I caught up with Lacy again. I was driving halfway in the breakdown lane to allow cars to pass. When I passed the spot where Lacy had thrown my Word Up tape onto the pavement I stopped and parked the car. I tried to collect all the pieces but the truck had pulverized the case and each passing car did further damage. I found the paper insert and was able to gather most of the tape itself, which had unspooled when the cassette was crushed, and bring it back to Poncho’s hood. What else could I do except try to put it back together, this one piece of broken memorabilia from 1986, this magnetic link to the year when everything had unraveled. I stood and tried to wind the tape into a circle again and put it between the two sides of the cassette, but the wind kept blowing the little pieces of plastic onto the ground and my fingers were getting too cold to feel the smaller fragments. My nose was running onto my mustache and then onto the car hood. If I could just get the pieces lined up then the spool would fit, if the tape would just stay on the spool, if the spool had just not been smashed, if Lacy had just not thrown the tape out of Poncho, if I hadn't tried to kidnap Lacy, if I didn't need to go to Mexico to get away from the court case, if those girls hadn't tested me and mocked my Red Sox hat, if the Red Sox hadn't lost in 1986 and forced me to defend them, if Dewey hadn't broken his promise...then everything would be alright.
“Oggy?”
I expected Bonigan to tell me how I had messed up again and now had a great story it would make for the Youthfire. Sure, I didn't get to Mexico, but I could just say I went to Mexico. Wasn't it the same thing when it came to fuel for the fire? The important thing was that something was sacrificed on the cold nights so the Tribe wouldn't have to go into the Land of Nostalgia. All of this, I expected to hear, but instead saw Lacy standing beside me looking at the tape in my red fingers.
“Why, Lace?”
“Because you tried to kidnap me. I've got class. I like school. I like the dorm. I'm not like you.”
“No, why did the Sox have to lose in 1986?”
“I have no idea. I don't even know what game you're talking about. I was fifteen then. You think I had more to worry about than a baseball game? Teams lose.”
“But Dewey promised. He promised they'd win and now he's gone and all I've got left is this tape and now it's destroyed.”
“I'll get you a new one.”
“A new one? I got this one at a yard sale a year after it was released. You could find an honest man in the White House before you find a new Word Up tape.”
“You shouldn't have tried to take me to Mexico.”
“I know. I tried to resist. I did. I almost got away and then you brought that fruit basket and I thought you wanted to go. I thought you loved me.”
“Maybe I do, in some freaky way,” said Lacy, “but not enough to abandon my mother and my dogs and my life at school to go pick aluminum out of the trash in Mexico.”
“That was only one suggestion. They probably have factories there. I could get work. You could hunt or something.”
“No,” said Lacy shaking her head, “I'm not Kira. I'm not Cyndi Lauper. I'm not Donna Reed. I'm Lacy. I'm a student at UCONN. Hi.”
I sighed and wiped the snot from my mustache. My eyes were watering. I was having trouble seeing the tape in the long shadows from the forest. I started to mumble that I couldn't put the cassette back together, that nothing would ever be the same. Lacy took the pile of plastic and tangled, torn ribbon and threw it off the side of the road into a drainage ditch. I didn't protest. Then, as I was too dazed and drained to act on my own, she took my arms and put them over her shoulders. How long we held each other, I don't know. I only know that I watched the river below the road and listened to it's song, a New England song of past winter, recycled snow and magnificence, stately glaciers, Elk in throbbing herds. On October 26th 1986 the clouds demonstrated their disregard for Baseball. It rained hard enough to postpone Game Seven. This allowed Bruce Hurst to start his third World Series game though Schiraldi would later get the loss, as he had done in Game Six. The October rain that fell on New England six years earlier was still out there in the Connecticut River and would dissolve my Word Up tape as they had carved a great valley.
“Does your car still run?”
“It moves. It might make it back to Bone Harbor.”
“Is that where you're going?”
“Yes.”
“Will you give me a ride back to my car without trying to take me to Mexico or Bone Harbor?”
“Lace, I'm sorry about that. The way you look at me sometimes makes me think crazy things. I'm just lonely. You let me kiss you and I thought that meant something. I thought you liked Xanadu.”
“That's the trouble with kissing. You only know what it means after you do it. Can we get out of the cold?”
I got the engine to start up on the third try. There wasn't much traffic and I hadn't actually driven very far from Storrs so we made it back in under an hour.
“Sorry about the car. That's what you get for trying to kidnap me.”
“It cost me seventy-five dollars, you know.”
In the parking lot, Lacy told me I could keep the basket of fruit even if I wasn't going to Mexico. She told me to tell her how it all worked out with the court case and suggested that I pay the girl all the money or else give her Poncho. Some lawyer she'd make. Both of these options had occurred to me, but I didn't have the money and the car was now worth less than a pack of gum. I promised her to fly straight and shoot right from now on. Then she was gone in her own car and I walked back into Piper's Apartment. He was home and not at all surprised to see me.
“Oggy? Just in time for some macaroni and cheese. I'll make you a bowl without meat.”
“I'm done,” I muttered as I collapsed into a bean bag chair. “I tried to kidnap Lacy and take her to Mexico and she destroyed Poncho and then she threw my Word Up tape and a truck ran over it.”
Piper said nothing so I added, “And she hates Xanadu. How can you hate Xanadu?”
“Do you want butter with your roll? Salad dressing?”
“Both.”
Piper laid out the food. I pulled out some crackers from the basket Lacy had given me. There was some weird Pesto spread in there too and I put it on a bagel. It wasn't bad. For desert we had a box of cookies that Lacy had included. Piper laid back and rubbed his belly while speaking though a mouth full of crumbs.
“You are telling me that Lacy Kirschinbaum, a girl who doesn't give the time of day to most guys on campus, drove over here on the morning you were going to Mexico to give you a basket full of bagels and fruit and spreads and cookies?”
“Yes.”
“And you still won't admit to giving her oral sex for ten hours?”
I shook the bean.
“So she did this just to be nice? Just because she's a swell egg?”
Piper was incredulous.
“Just as a gesture of kindness,” I said as I popped an after-dinner chocolate into my mouth.
“Amazing! Unprecedented! And, as thanks, you tried to kidnap her?”
I tried to think of more delicate way to phrase the recent events, a way that didn't sound like a prosecuting attorney's words, but couldn't.
“Listen, we're mixing apples and oranges here. Speaking of which, do you want one?”
“I'm stuffed. I don't think we're talking semantics, Og. You tried to bring Lacy to Mexico against her will. That's kidnapping in my book. You should know the definition of kidnapping.”
Just because I graduate High School I should know the dictionary inside and out? Am I Mr. Encyclopedia now? Hardly. When I had a job alphabetizing 10,000 video tapes, I had to write the alphabet on my forearm to reference. No, I did not know the definition of kidnapping. I didn't know a lot of things.
“Well, it didn't work. I got about three miles away when she pulled the rip chord. So I attempted to kidnap her, but I didn't succeed. I thought she wanted to go. I thought I was liberating her, helping her take the plunge. Would you blame a father for pushing a kid who can't swim into a pond?”
“Yes.”
“Would you criticize a mother who forced her kid to eat spinach?”
“Yes.”
“Would you blame a coach who made the team do ten extra laps?”
“Yes.”
I was out of analogies so I gave up. Piper just had higher standards than me. What a surprise.
“Well, I was trying to do what I thought was right for her. That's noble enough.”
“No you weren't. You were trying to do something that was right for YOU. And that's the only noble thing you can do. Just like my boy John Galt. Keep it up.”
Piper patted me on the shoulder and went to wash some dishes. He was genuinely impressed that I had tried to make my life a little better by taking his dorm-mate to Mexico with me against her will.
“That's right,” I said after a moment of sober reflection. “I was taking her because I loved her and I wanted her to be with me. I feel better about myself when she's around and I wanted to keep her. She should be flattered! That kidnapping was the most romantic thing I've ever done.”
Piper tapped his head with a dirty wooden spoon.
“Now you're using the lemon.”
“I should go kidnap Darcy right now. She would just right out of her pants and into my arms.”
“Wait. Back up.”
I told Piper I was just kidding, sort of. I had to accept that Darcy was in Florida and I was stranded in Connecticut. Even if I managed to kidnap her, I'd only take her a few miles away to the beach. It would hardly be worth it. Besides, Lacy was far prettier.
We ignored the question of my future, Piper because it wasn't his future, me because it was, and talked about J. Steinbeck until it was time for Piper to put his body to rest. I would be leaving in the morning, back to Bone Harbor to get the car fixed or else to jump off the Memorial Bridge. At the very least I could pick up Darcy's sock, which I had forgotten in my haste to escape prosecution. Who knows? I never said I knew what I was doing.
posted by Oggy Bleacher | 8:27 PM
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