Chapter XXXXV: The Heat is On

Part 4: Lore
Chapter Forty-Five: The Heat Is On

My father's first attack on my shine box came before Poncho's engine had cooled. “I'll bet you're happy to be home,” were his exact words, and while this would have been true if I were a toaster oven being returned to the store, it missed--wide right--in summing up my current worldview.
“Overjoyed, Dad. I'm doing flips. Look,” I said with a plastic grin that exposed my glazed snappers.
I was camped on the couch, naturally, watching commercials for lemon fresh floors and berry scented bathrooms. Food was infused into everything from lip gloss to panty liners. I could barely categorize products anymore. Was it edible? Did it involve my bathroom? Did a celebrity endorse it? The only items I understood were microwaveable dinners. Speaking of M.D.s, I'd done some soul searching on the return trip from Connecticut and came to the conclusion that I didn't mind a fate that brought me face to face with TV dinners each night. Why should I mind? They prepare themselves, taste pretty good, and, if you aren't a brand name loyalist, are often on sale. They were the perfect food. There were worse fates than to be old and alone in a supermarket with an armful of TV dinners. At least I would have a TV. I scratched out a note on a scrap of paper: “To Vance-I'll have TV when old.”
My father's weak laugh at my mockery was his last gesture to my fragile condition. I suppose if I was making gobs of money and he could count on me to kick some down to him in his golden age, then he would address me with a little more sympathy. As it was, I got the basic bootblack treatment.
“Another adventure under the belt? What? This one didn't last very long, Ogden. Why was that?”
I've seen X-Wing fighters less loaded than those questions. I chose a diversion strategy.
“Can I have some peace? Can I? I just drove back from Connecticut in a car that moved slower than a Mookie Wilson ground ball.”
It had actually taken several days to travel the several hundred miles. Poncho stalled at the slightest hill forcing me to back track around three mountain grades. I had to hug the shoulder to let other cars pass me. Then, in pure desperation, I visited Jack Kerouac's grave in Lowell to ask for guidance. He led me back to Ironbury, my 2nd and 3rd grade haunts west of Boston. I visited the old Carr School and found deluxe condominiums. The playground where Chuckie and Tony D'Amato and the others had played Zipper Tag and traded baseball cards was now a parking lot. The quarter I hid under a stone in 1979? Gone. Now, I don't expect everything to stay the same for the duration of my trial, but Jeez! How many people's 2nd grade playgrounds were turned into parking lots?
“Do you know how many people honked at me, Dad? Millions. I'm feeling a little bit vulnerable right now. So...”
“Vulnerable? Why is that, Ogden? Is it because you are a criminal? Is it because I got your IRS form back and it looks like you earned about twenty-seven dollars in 1991? Or is it possibly because you dropped out of college after one semester to clean toilets and live as a beach bum in Florida?”
See, that's what I'm talking about. It's getting harder and harder to live in this country. I made 27 dollars in 1991, but I was broke by January 1992. A dollar just doesn't go as far as it used to.
“I'm boycotting work until the war is over. I told you that before. We must bring the government to its knees.”
“First you have to have some skill to withhold. Remember Atlas Shrugged.”
He was right, of course. The whole idea of Atlas Shrugged was that John Galt had some valuable skill he refused to sell. There isn't much demand for bootblacks these days. I could have started the whole “Principles, Dad.” thread, but chose another approach.
“It must be nice to have all the answers,” I yawned. “You sit on your velvet throne and just wave your hand around, decreeing stuff. Everything must fit so nicely in your world.”
“I don't have all the answers, Ogden. But I do...”
“Oh? Well, you talk like someone who has all the answers. Take your psycho-philosophizing elsewhere. I have a game to watch. Today is the day Schiraldi whiffs that bum.”
My Pop shook his bean like he always does. I wasn't even going to bother to show him the '86 team photo. Why waste my time?
“You're chasing a White Whale, Ogden. You are hunting the White Whale.”
I sniffed, “Ha! Now who's crazy? Do I look like I'm in any condition to fish? It takes me twenty minutes to tie my shoes!”
“No. You are pursuing that which will destroy you.”
Too much book knowledge had clearly warped my father's brain. He had tossed out another disposable analysis for no ones benefit.
“The only person who is going to be destroyed is Ray Knight. That is, if you will leave me alone for ten seconds. I can win! I played Whiffle Ball with Clutch.”
“You only have one life, Ogden,” said my father as he picked up a glass I was finished with. “You act like you'll live forever. You just float along in the breeze without a care for the future.”
“Me? Look at you. You drive your middle class car, live in your middle class house, go to your middle class job, fund your middle class war, muddle along in your middle class funk. When was the last time you did anything for yourself? Huh, Mr. Drone?”
“Why don't you calm down,” said my father backing away.
“This is calm, Dad. You should see me when I get angry. Which one of us is gonna look back on their lives and be satisfied? You? All you did was fly from flower to flower getting sugar for the queen Bee. I live like I'm gonna die tomorrow. You're the one who lives like he's got a million years to grind the stone down.”
“You have one life, Ogden, and spending it in front of the television watching reruns of Hogans Heroes and The Jetsons and the 1986 World Series, is not very productive. I may be a worker Bee, but at least I work. You're one of the Bees that gets kicked out of the hive.”
“Let me do you a favor, Dad. You know that big To-do list in your head? Well, take my name off of it. I'm done. This is what I do now. I watch Game Six, and when Dewey wins then I'll be done.”
“That isn't good enough, Ogden. When you are laying on your death bed with your family around you, will you cling to memories of this...this idleness?”
The F. jutted his hands in my direction like he was performing some rice ritual that would appease the gods of sloth. I sneezed again since Twain hair was everywhere and a good sample was currently lodged in m nose. Another tissue was added to the growing pile on the carpet.
“Haven't we had this conversation before? Yes, Dr. Freud. I'm a failure. Happy?”
“No, Ogden. Being a failure doesn't mean you're excused from responsibility. If you continue to act out you will suffer.”
“So I've been told. Everyone has an opinion about how I'll die. You think I'll be some bum who deeply regrets my idle youth. Vance thinks I'll be an old man shuffling in the supermarket. Lacy thinks I'll end up on a coroner's slab in Louisiana. There should be an 800 number. People could call and press #1 if they think I'll end regretting my life and #2 if I'll be a befuddled old man. It'll be cool.”
I was tired of having my fate projected by people who couldn't even tell me how many home runs Don Baylor hit in 1986. There ought to be a set standard to bust my shine box.
“More mockery? Well, at least you had fun on your latest little trip. At least you got one more little adventure out of your system. Maybe you can grow up now.”
I chewed cud and surfed a few channels on the television while the Pater stood between me and the screen. It was hard not to get back into Poncho and drive south again, starting the whole cycle over, but there was the whole matter of the transmission and lack of money. All the monkey wrenches and hacksaws in the world weren't going to put those dogs to sleep. Like E.T. was to Earth, I was in the dip.
“Are you done, Drone? Are you? Because you can go back to your velvet throne any time now. Go on. Shoo. You are dismissed. When I feel my self-esteem climb above the 'Scum Beneath The Sink' level, I'll call you. I wouldn't want to consider myself a success. No, not this shine boy.”
My father nodded in that knowing, priestly way that was supposed to cast fear and doubt into my heart.
“I just thought you might like to know, Mr. Sarcastic, that your court case is tomorrow morning at eleven. Is your legal council ready?”
Any sudden movement aggravates my back injury; thus, the gymnastics I did when I heard the court case was in less than twenty four hours nearly split me in half.
“What! Already? How? I never sent in the thing, the slip.”
“I found the summons in your room,” the Drone said proudly. “It said you needed to return it. I guess you forgot about that before you went traipsing off on your little adventure to Connecticut. While you were having fun, I returned it. While you were playing around, the state set a court date. Your end is nigh.”
“No. How? I was going to Mexico.”
“I knew you'd be back. You always come back.”
There it was: My death sentence.
“So you broke my shine box once again? Et Tu Brutus? I'm out there doing my best, keeping my shine box out of the mud, and when I come back I learn you have stabbed me in the back? You stuck a shiv in my liver? You really did it this time. Congratulations.”
“That's the sum of your defense? I thought you said that you studied law when you were in California.”
Ernesto and I had researched the extent to which you can challenge the constitution when a President loses his mind and begins to drop bombs on capital cities.
“No. I'll tell you what I'm gonna say. I was abused as a child. Yeah. I was sexually abused as a child by my demented father. Brooklyn will back me up on that. Years of sexual abuse caused me to go crazy that night. I could say that Rachel was wearing a perfume that reminded me of the perfume you used to wear when you chained me up in the basement and whipped my naked adolescent body.”
My father wasn't amused, or even horrified. The power of my trademark hyperbole had waned. Something was indeed nigh, and it wasn't lunch.
“That will go over real well in a small claims court. Try that and they'll put you in jail for false accusations and contempt faster than your friend Charlie Manson.”
Why was Manson suddenly my friend? Just because you start a High School fan club for a guy doesn't me we're best pals, snapping off a “How-R-You” every chance we get. On the contrary, Charlie had failed to keep up his end of the hellos. By 1989, I was forced to turn my back on him just like every other significant person in his life. I wasn't concerned since, as far as serial killers go, Manson ranked up there with Eisenhower and Nixon; he wasn't much more than a crazed conspirator who got himself in a position where his orders to kill were followed. It probably surprised him more than anyone. Sad really, but I had other veggie fish sticks to fry.
“I will win that case, Dad. And when I win it I will vindicate the wrongfully imprisoned Manson. Just watch. Manson will be proud of me.”
From the fake fireplace mantle, my father picked up a picture of me and my brother in 1985. We were smiling, laughing in the summer before I entered High School. Brooklyn had his arm around me and I was pretending to punch him. My braces flashed in the sun and a hint of a mustache was on my lips. My Red Sox cap was bright blue and red, hardly five years old..
“You used to be normal. What happened? No, let me guess. The Red Sox lost. Ray Knight got a hit. Stanley threw a wild pitch. Buckner let a ball go through his legs. Blah, blah, blah. What happened to this boy, the boy who did his homework, who shaved, who took out the trash when I asked him to?”
“That's the whole problem, Dad. He hasn't gone anywhere. I still want the Sox to win. That's all. Now that you have killed me, will you at least let me watch the game.”
I had the Game Six tape in but was waiting to be alone before I started it. There was still a chance that I could channel all my frustrations, my failed trip to Mexico, my inability to capture Lacy, the grievous loss of my Word Up tape into Schiraldi's 0-2 pitch to Knight, thus negating the need to go to court. A little more outside and low and Knight would wave at the pitch. Dewey could have his celebration. I could have mine. But my father was like those leeches in Stand By Me.
“How do you plan to pay off the settlement?” asked the leech. “Maybe Grandma will give you a loan. Or you could work at the Pic-n-Pay.”
I would rob Pic-n-Pay before I ever worked there, but this was a point not worth mentioning.
“Good idea, Dad. Maybe I could shine shoes, too. Sure. I'll set my shine box up downtown and be a bootblack. Would that make you proud, seeing me under the North Church shining shoes in the rain? Huh? I might be able to sell single cigarettes too. You son, the cigarette selling bootblack. In the summer I could pick cotton. How cool would that be?”
This new life plan actually didn't seem too bad at the moment. Not only would it make for interesting conversations at class reunions, it was also very close to what I had planned to do in Mexico. When no one needed their shoes shined I could play violin for quarters. And how hard could cotton picking be? Still, the point was to be sarcastic, not actually come up with alternative life goals. One thing at a time.
“I know you like to judge me out of hand. I realize you love to predict the worst for me, but at least wait until I'm being led away in chains before you hang your head and notch up another failure for your curse family.”
“I won't have long to wait,” quipped the Drone.
“I haven't lost yet, thank you very much. I thought this was a free country. I thought I was innocent until proven guilty.”
“It is, but I seem to remember you relinquishing your American Citizenship two years ago. I remember you writing a certain letter to the editor that went something like, “I can no longer accept the privileges of a nation that destroys cultures and over-consumes resources as a matter of government policy. I hearby...”
Though this had been some of my finer writing, inspired by the revolutionary giants, Thoreau, Paine, and Black Sabbath, I was in no mood to hear it recited by my old man.
“Thank you for that reminder, Mr. Store-Up-Emotional-Ammunition-On-His-Sons. Are you going to stand there and recite all of the proclamations I've made since I could speak?”
“No. I only remember the ones you typed out, copied, and stapled to half to telephone poles in Bone Harbor, Ogden.”
See, that was my point. If this is such a “free” country why did the police have such an issue with my freedom of speech? Was it so bad that I posted my political convictions on a telephone pole? Were they worried I might be right? Then they fined me because I wouldn't remove the flyers. I was treated like a shine boy.
“They made me a martyr, Dad. It was just like Gandhi when he burned his ID card in South Africa. They might as well have hung me in Market Square. There would have been no difference at all. Right? So, Dad, since you admit the Government is a fascist regime, can you explain why they bother with fines that criminalize my speech and uses the poor as ammunition? Why don't they just shoot me? Can you explain that, Mr. Thurgood Marshall? What are they afraid of on their velvet thrones?”
“Why do I try?”
More importantly, I didn't know why I tried. I could hear the words spill out of my mouth like I was a spiritual medium for Malcolm X, but I had no idea what I was saying. I had said all of this before, countless times. My father had asked, “Why do I try?” countless times in the past five years. My normal response was, “Because the Government has corrupted your free will and is using you to destroy mine.” But after the Lacy incident and nearly dying on my return trip to Bone Harbor, I was too tired to say it. My father stood like an actor on stage waiting for a cue I couldn't supply.
“Please, Dad. Give me some peace. You were right. I can have no impact in this world. None. I'm obviously at its mercy. Are you happy?”
“I never said that, Ogden.”
“Sure you did. Last Christmas. You said, 'Ogden, you can have no impact in this world.'“
“...By standing naked under the North Church with a sign that says 'Capitalist exploiters repent!' You can have no impact in this world standing in naked protest to a war. That is what I said.”
My naked protest had been well conceived but poorly executed. The fliers strictly forbade the use of alcohol. I thought that implied any narcotic or inebriate. Still, charging me with drunken insurrection and providing controlled substances to a minor were blatant political targeting.
“I'm not gonna split hairs with you. Same difference. I lost. That is what it comes down to. They won and I lost. Happy? Can I watch the game now? Dewey is waiting.”
“It isn't about you, Ogden. It is bigger than you,” my father proclaimed from the kitchen.
“It's never about me,” I said as I prepared to concentrate on Schiraldi's 0-2 pitch to Knight. Outside and Low. Outside and Low. Knight swings...Gedman picks it up...Sox win! Just as the crucial moment came, just as I felt I had a chance to push that ball past Knight's bat, my father called to me from the kitchen.
“Your car is parked behind mine. Come move it!”
Parked? No, that was where it rolled to a stop after some neighborhood kids had helped me push it down Elwyn Avenue. I tried to explain this and at the same time maintain the spiritual bridge I'd built to Calvin Schiraldi, but it was too much. The pitch. The swing. Carter scores. Again and again. Then the phone rang. Another complication?
“Ogden's shoeshine service,” I said into the receiver. “How may I help you?”
“So you try to kill Rachel and then you try to kidnap Lacy? You're doin' real good, Oggy.”
It was Cristo. He'd called Piper and learned where I'd been and what had happened to make me turn around. Once again, I was the bootblack.
“So what? So I'm back. Carter scored again. Just a curveball in the dirt, Sticky. Maybe high heat. Anything but that fastball over the plate. There was just no need to throw that pitch. At least give him a ball outside first. Even if Gedman misses it he still strikes out because Mitchell is on first. See? It kills me every time. Why can't Sambito come in and pitch? Why?”
“At least ya came back. Ya belong here, buddy. Let's go get a grilled cheese at Gillies, a slice of pie. I got my mom's car,” Cristo said casually. “We'll go out to the Mall and you can dig through the Girl's Pre-Teen underwear department like the good old days. Moony and Roddy are having a big party tonight. They cleaned up last weekend in football. I lost a dime.”
For all I cared, Cristo could have been reciting Shakespeare. After fourteen years together, longer than many marriages, his words, and probably mine, were so much static. If he said anything important, he would probably repeat it eventually.
“If only I knew someone like Doc Brown from Back to the Future then I could just return to 1986 and warn McNamara that Schiraldi was going to get hit in the bottom of the tenth. It would be simple.”
Nick called something in his house a Malaka and then said, “If you had a time machine all you would do is warn McNamara about Schiraldi?”
I didn't like Cristo's tone of voice. It sounded like more than one person was in possession of a velvet throne.
“Well, come to think of it, I'd punch that Mets fan, the bitch who did that rally thing with her arms behind the plate. Remember? I'd punch her in the head just as the Sox won. And I'd warn myself about following Cindy into the swimming pool that one time with the police. Oh, and I could get my Word Up tape back. And Falco 3. And remember that time I tore up Don Mattingly's baseball car because he hit that grand-slam off Nipper? Well, I'd keep that card. Come to think of it, I guess there's a lot I could do if I had a time machine.”
Anyone who's seen Back to The Future has pondered what would happen if they visited their parents' high school, helped their own father meet their mother, pretended to write songs by Prince and Hall & Oates, and introduced New Wave pop to kids in the Fifties. But what I really wanted to do--after replacing my tragically lost cassettes--was run onto the field at Shea Stadium and convince Schiraldi to hand the ball to Stanley before starting the inning. Even better, I could convince McNamara to pinch hit Don Baylor in the top of the inning. That would break the chain of events and thus ensure a Sox victory. Sure, I would be in jail for the celebration, but I could just tell the cops that I was from the future and I had returned on a mission to save myself from a lifetime of torment. I know my rights.
The only problem with that strategy was that I didn't know if my consciousness would switch over to my 15 year-old self, thus allowing me to enjoy the celebration. See? Time travel is a tricky thing. Sure, the Red Sox would have won the World Series and my 15 year-old self would celebrate in Bone Harbor, but what about the 21 year-old self in a New York jail? What about him? I couldn't share a consciousness even with myself. Would he just start his life over again as a time refugee? Would he go visit his 15 year-old counterpart in Bone Harbor and warn him about driving without a license and goofing off too much in Chemistry class? Or would he disappear from existence because his 15 year-old self was able to do something that would prevent his future encounter with a time machine? If so, what would happen to my collection of Bazooka Joe bonus points? There were a lot of questions. I didn't want to go back in time and not be able to enjoy the celebration.
What I really needed was the chance to go back to October, 1986, to erase everything that had happened and start over with the Red Sox as World Champions. That was the ticket. Even though I was currently trying to concentrate on making Bob Stanley strike Mookie Wilson out, I still knew that no matter what I couldn't start over in October, 1986. I could celebrate in 1992, eat Gillies grilled cheese sandwiches, have my own victory celebration at Fenway Park, make banners for my house and enjoy other victor's spoils, but it wouldn't be the same as if I was able to return, body and mind, to when I was fifteen and the world lay before me like a Chinese buffet. But Bonigan claimed I would be able to enjoy the celebration. He's made that promise at every Youthfire. My job was to protect the past, his job was to help me relive it. Why else would I be clinging to these scratched vinyl memories of JJ Newberrys, Mack Wynter, Gordy Clutcher and Dwight Evans? Why else would I wear this smelly 11 year-old cotton practice hat?
But the question remained: How would I be able to enjoy the celebration if I was the only one who cared?
Cristo was naturally oblivious to my musings.
“You're fahking pathetic, Oggy. You get a time machine and you buy Falco 3? What's wrong with you? You know what? I don't even want to go to the Mall with you. You disgust me. Why did you even come back? You should've stayed in Connecticut with your butt buddy Skinski. Use a time machine to win a baseball game? Are you nuts? If I had a time machine I'd go back to 1986 and punch you in the face.”
Cristo had hung up on me in the past. It was his way of asserting what little power he possessed in the world. He would call back, but not before the Drone herded me into the car and drove me to Queensland to visit my grandmother.

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.

Chapter XXXXIII: Purple Rain

Chapter Forty-Three: Purple Rain

To my delight, Lacy was waiting for me at Piper's door wearing a white dress shirt and a pair of pinstripe jeans that hugged her delicious tail like a second denim skin.
“Lace! You're here for me,” I beamed. “Finally! Someone came to see me.”
I reached to hug her and she lamely put her arms around me.
“Where the fahk have you been, Oggy?”
Not the romance reception I’d looked forward to, but she cared enough to ask.
“I got lost. I'm freezing. Come here.”
“What the hell? I've had better hugs from a starfish. What did I do?”
“I wasted all my time waiting for you. Now I can only stay a few minutes, Oggy.”
We entered Piper's apartment and I turned on the heat.
“Usually I would still be in bed right now. I get my best work done at night. I'm like an owl.”
“You stink like an owl. Go take a shower. Look at you. I'll bet the neighbors are calling the police right now. Your clothes are falling off of you, your hair is all over the place, your chewing on your mustache. You look like a vagrant.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing.”
“It is a bad thing, Oggy. It is bad. Go wash yourself and put some of Piper's clothes on. Clean ones.”
“But...”
“Go or I'll leave.”
I explained that I had no interest in taking a shower.
“Oggy, you need a girlfriend to make you shower. You should wake up every morning and shower. It is no big deal. Go!”
“Come with me then. I get lonely in there. I'll wash your back and you wash mine. Please!”
It was worth a try.
“No. I'm not taking a shower with you. What's wrong with you? Weren't you just talking about how much of an obstacle I was to your purity?
“I'm not gonna split hairs with you, Lace. Fahk purity. You look foxy. Goddamn, Lace. You are just crazy sexy. Still smell like lilacs?”
I stepped closer to her and reached for her hair. She swatted my hand away.
“You would too if you showered more than once a year. Now go.”
“I'll take one later. After.”
“After what? After I leave? After I kick your ass? Five...four...three...”
“Fine. Shit. You're like Blair from Family Ties.”
“Facts of Life.”
My television trivia was slipping, a sure sign of an impending breakdown.
“Whatever. Could you see if this violin is broken while I shower. Listen.”
I scratched at the strings of my fiddle and moved my fingers around on the fingerboard. Lacy put her hands over her ears.
“See? It's broken. You said you played a little. Show me.”
“Ok, but only if you shower.”
Why couldn't I chase girls with short attention spans, like Vanna White?
I ran to the shower, my least favorite place to be, and washed my underarms with some toilet paper. I came out two minutes later as Lacy was tuning the violin.
“Oggy, you didn't wash your hair! You didn't even take your hat off.”
Take my hat off? Had she forgotten to take her psychotropic medicine this morning? Roger Clemens couldn't get me to take my hat off for the National Anthem. No girl was going to just snap her fingers and...
“Oggy! Go.”
“It wasn't dirty.”
“Like hell. My car's oil filter is cleaner. You haven't taken that hat off once since I met you. You probably haven't taken a shower since 1990.”
Close. 1986. October.
“Did you even get undressed?
“Silly question. What for?”
“Go back in and wash you hair, you can't take a shower without washing your hair. Who raised you? Pig Pen?”
I saw no reason to take a shower unless I had rubbed myself down with vegetable oil and humped my father's couch. I was just going to get dirty again. I decided against divulging this detail and said, “You know, Lace, if you let me nurse off of you for twenty months, then moved to Ecuador and changed your name, I could call you 'mom', but until then...”
“...Until then I'm just a friend who wants you to wash your hair.”
Lighting quick wit, this girl.
“There's a drought on and I heard over-washing hair was bad for it.
“Bye!”
“Alright. I'll go. Is that thing working?”
“Go!”
I ran back into the bathroom and placed my hat within easy reach of the tub, lest someone creep in and attempt to steal it. In order to shampoo my hair I had to read the directions on the bottle. One benefit of the shower was that I learned the stuff growing on my chest wasn't hair.
As I was drying my head I heard a strange sound, a high, legato melody, waltzing seamlessly from the other room. I recognized the melody from The Sound of Music, but couldn't name it. I sat on the toilet with the door slightly ajar and listened. The walls were so thin I could hear the guy two apartments away light his crack pipe. As I was about to go and take Lacy in my arms and ask her to marry me or at least sleep with me, Piper opened the door. Great. Leave it to the leading man to wreck the supporting actor's scene.
“Lacy K.! I always knew I'd come home and find you waiting for me.”
“Cans!”
Lacy's voice was jubilant, like Piper was her long lost son and she hadn't seen him in twenty years. The fahk! Her vulgar nickname for him was because he collected cans at the UCONN campus. There was no justice. He'd made a fortune and became a beloved campus character, while the Virginia police had sprayed me with mace for doing the exact same thing.
“Where's Oggy?”
“He's taking a shower. I made him.”
“No, you didn't. He's taking a shower? Did you define shower for him? In ninth grade he sprayed water on himself from a water fountain and called it a shower so he could pass gym class.”
“I told him to wash his hair.”
I heard Piper slap his forehead. For a better view I crawled to the corner of the door and looked through the crack at the edge of the frame. Piper was in his baggy jeans and his flannel shirt. His glasses and John Denver hair cut made him look like a dignified cowboy. Bastard! He was a cowboy and I was a fahking bootblack. Lacy was holding the violin and was all smiles. The only time I had seen her teeth was when she told me to fahk off but now she looked like a toothpaste commercial. Piper turned toward the bathroom and yelled for me. I decided I would just hide and listen to what these two chums had to say about me. Would they honor me or would they bust my shine box?
“Maybe he melted,” sniped Lacy.
“Maybe he likes it,” offered Piper before quickly adding, “No way.”
That didn't take long. Disloyal bastards! They both had a good laugh at the sharecropper's expense. Some states celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, other states just sit around and bust my shine box. It's fun for them.
“I've got ten minutes to grab something to eat and get back to the greenhouse. You leaving today or tomorrow?”
“Leaving?”
“Oggy said you wanted to go to Mexico with him.”
I didn't expect these two to swap gossip so soon. I thought I had time to plan Lacy's liberation, but now I might have to take both of them to Mexico. Through the crack I could see Lacy's smile wilt.
“I wouldn't go food shopping with that freak, let alone to Mexico. When did he say this?”
“Yesterday. After he got back from your apartment. You two hook up?”
Lacy laughed as though he had just asked her to go to tonight's Culture Club concert. Hooking up with me was beyond impossible, it was unfathomable.
“Please. It's Oggy.”
Once again, simply my name was enough to imply both repulsiveness and a general reputation of a bootblack. Maybe if I went back to being called 'Ogden' things would change.
Piper walked out of sight and searched the refrigerator. Lacy put my violin down, forgetting my request that she tune it. But I was just a shoeshine boy, a filthy bootblack, after all. What more could I expect?
“Was he always this crazy? Did Oggy always live in some alternate universe where girls he'd known for a month would go to Mexico with him?”
“Probably. I only got to know him when he went to Alaska. He wrote all these letters to me about living in the forest, eating rabbit, hitchhiking. Then I saw him in Virginia.”
Piper whistled and I imagined him rolling his eyes to sum up my appearance in Virginia.
“What about when he was younger.”
“Through grade school he was just the Red Sox kid. Nameless. Anonymous. Sat alone at lunch. He'd lost his mind in our Sophomore year in high school. Never was the same.”
With a social resume like that it was no wonder I didn't get elected to the student council.
“He did perform in the lip-sync contest,” Piper added to my surprise. “He mimed 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light.' It was quite a marathon with a crazy cardboard car. His friend Sticky played the girl. Maybe they did it on a bet. It was a shit storm.”
A shit storm? And Piper's lackluster rendition of 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap' deserved an Emmy? Hardly. My performance had been done on no bet; it was my tribute to Meatloaf and to having sex in parked cars, an experience I'd been forbidden to enter.
“Did he go crazy about that baseball thing?”
That baseball thing'? Did 0-2 fastball down the middle ring a bell? Still, I was impressed the slattern remembered at all.
“The Sox. They lost and he flipped out. Maybe he was looking for an excuse to withdraw from society.”
OK, Dr. Freud, I wanted to shout. As if any high school student growing up with Ronald Reagan as President needed another excuse to withdraw from society. Idiot.
“But was he always so flaky? Such a space cadet?”
“He wasn't a good student. Even before the Sox lost he just played baseball and embarrassed himself around girls. He had no rap. He spoke gibberish when he got around girls. He only cared about baseball, but he wasn't very good.”
This was almost too much to bear. The sissy had played soccer and run Track. Track? He wore spandex like David Lee Roth yet had the nerve to say I wasn't very good at a man's sport? 'Look at me, my name is Piper Skinski and I run in circles and pass a vibrator to other men in spandex. Oooh. I'm a big sissy.' And Lacy was into this new fad called Aerobics, another sissy sport. I could strike out either one of them. I giggled silently at the image of Lacy swinging a baseball bat, but remained hidden. Better to listen to their complete conversation Maybe they'd have sex and I could watch.
“I'll bet you had a good rap,” said Lacy. “Those high school girls must've loved you.”
Oh, they did. I once watched Piper walk Chrissy Jenkins home from the Little League park when it was clearly my job. Why else had I attached myself to her book bag?
“I was just honest. I didn't try to outsmart girls in High School. Still don't. Oggy thought they were Rubik's Cubes and if you could solve the puzzle then you got laid.”
They weren't? You didn't?
“Why can't you tell him to be himself, shave, shower, go back to college? Why did he drop out?”
“He said that Bone Harbor needed him. He said our graduating class was dying. I can't say it made sense. He lived out in the woods for a summer, out by the town dump in this run-down shack he'd built. In High School he had a few parties and I guess he thought they shouldn't end. Maybe Fairbanks wasn't a party school.”
While Lacy agreed, I steamed behind the door. They thought my return to Bone Harbor was as simple as that? I just wanted to party at Ogden's Point? Fools. I was sacrificing my whole adult life for the good of my Youthtribe and they thought I wanted to party? I'd been searching for Mack Wynter's grave for seven years as a party? I praised Gordy Clutcher's Leary Field home run because Alaska wasn't a party school? Bah! A UAF party wasn't complete without smoking pot from the barrel of a loaded shotgun. After I puked on the girl's bathroom wall, I was taken into the snow, stripped naked, and beaten with frozen salmon. Not a party school? A subdued party at UAF was when only one room reconstructed a snow storm by throwing steaming water out the window into the negative 40 degree night. An average party was when an Eskimo student almost drowned in a tub of watermelon and grain alcohol. A crazy party ended with a gunfight on the second floor and a mortality. Not a party school? UAF janitors partied harder than UCONN freshman. Our cafeteria had a sign, “CHECK YOUR WEAPONS.” I had to navigate a ski jump to get to the Library!
Piper's ignorance was limitless, but once again I was just a bootblack who could do nothing right. Why not make fun of me, judge me, criticize me behind my back? It was fun for them.
“He needs a girlfriend,” said Lacy, the first sensible comment I'd heard all day. “He can't dress himself. Those pants he's wearing were fashionable in 1984.”
Excuse me? My Bugle Boy cargo pocket pants with the drawstring belt were fashionable well into the Tone Loc/ Taylor Dane era. They almost made it to Nirvana's mainstream debut. And I'd heard they were making a comeback.
“And that Red Sox sweatshirt looks like it would ignite if he got too close to an open flame.”
“Help him out. He likes you. Give him some advice.”
“He doesn't listen to me. I'm surprised he took a shower. He gets defensive. It's like when we were talking about the Gulf War in the dorm. He insisted that everyone had to stop driving or else we were killing Iraqis. Last I checked they invaded Kuwait. And they bomb Israel every month. I've got relatives in Israel.”
First she criticizes my fashion and now my political ideology? What the hell? Had peace gone out of style too?
“I found him in the library once,” Lacy went on. “He was copying down The War Prayer by Mark Twain. He wasn't using the copy machine. He was writing down every word in his journal.”
This was true. I meant to conserve paper and thought that in a time of war to use a copy machine to copy The War Prayer would've been beyond hypocritical. The idea was to boycott capitalism and crush militarism, not save myself ten minutes of hand cramps.
Piper was chewing something, leftover chili perhaps. He sat in a chair just on the edge of my limited field of vision.
“That's funny because only two weeks earlier I got a postcard saying I should drop out of college to sail around the Florida Keys. Oggy said he was going to Tobago or Trinidad to make hemp clothes. Maybe he's on medication. He changes his personality more than his underwear.”
They had a good laugh over this insult while I chewed on the door paneling. Curse them! A guy can't experiment with drugs, maybe put his shine box down for a month or two, without being judged a hypocrite and a psychotic? It must be nice to expose other people's flaws when they aren't around to defend themselves. It must be fun to sit on their velvet thrones and piss in my milk bowl.
“You saw how much pot he smoked. And he said he did acid and peyote too.”
I wouldn't say I smoked lots of pot, compared to say, Bob Marley, but the acid part was true...as far as I knew. I couldn't say for sure because after you do acid or peyote or eat too many crunchy tacos at Jack In The Box, you tend to question what is and is not reality. My one Peyote experience left me clinging to a tree stump so I wouldn't be carried away by a flock of butterflies. My one Acid experience at a Halloween party in the swamps near Melbourne was no different. One second I was allowing a man dressed as the Pope to put something in my mouth and the next second I was hiding in an orange grove yelling, “I'm lost. Can someone help me find my way back to the drum circle,” at the surreal shadows. In a random taste test, four out of five drug users prefer Peyote over the other leading psychedelic. Still, I had mixed feelings about drugs; while they had not expanded my consciousness, my experiences did give me something to talk about as we passed a bong in circles.
“See,” said Lacy. “I don't want to get mixed up with a drug addict.”
Addict? I wasn't sure if I should get mad or else thank her. I had smoked pot twice in the past twenty years, maybe three times if you count that rainy day when everyone was smoking in the port-o-potty and I couldn't help but get stoned. So, three times at the most, and that made me an addict? OK. By that reasoning I was also a workaholic based on the four hours I spent raking the lawn last fall. And since I got an A on a Geometry test in 1985, did that mean I was a mathematical genius? If it meant my father would stop giving me shit about working or going back to school, I could live with those titles.
“Maybe he'll change in Mexico,” offered Piper.
“Change what? His socks?”
Keep it up, I thought. Just have your fun. Have your laughs. Who'll be laughing when we're swimming in the Gulf of Mexico? Who'll be wearing socks then? Not this sharecropper.
“He has to grow up eventually. I should get back to work. Tell him I'll be back around five or six.”
Cans hugged Lacy and then walked out the door. I was sure Lacy watched his ass as he left. Maybe I was stuffing socks down the wrong side of my underwear. After Piper left Lacy picked the violin up again and tucked it under her chin. She then tuned the strings using just one hand, a procedure I later found physically impossible, and started to play the same melody as before.
I put Piper's clothes back on without drying my skin and ran into the living room. I tried not to reveal that I had been listening.
“So, you think I'm a space cadet? I'm a freak? I'll show you who's the freak.”
Lacy looked me up and down.
“You look like a rat who just crawled out of the sewer.”
“Pretty sexy?”
“Hardly. You were listening? You spied on us?”
Lacy was noticeably embarrassed and fiddled with the violin as a diversion.
“I couldn't help it! I'm a crazy drug addict. Addicts lose their mind sometimes. Look at me, I'm crazy.”
I waved my arms over my head in a crazy manner. Lacy wasn't impressed so I told her that it must be nice to sit in her velvet throne and judge me.
“Judge you? We're trying to help you figure out your life, ya fak.”
“Yeah? Well save your help for the blind lady who needs to cross the street or the kitten in a tree. I'm doing fine. I couldn't be better. I'm a winner.”
I walked into the kitchen. My wet feet slipped on the tile and I collapsed near the stove.
“Look what you did!” I screamed.
When Lacy had stopped laughing she started to play again.
“You actually play the violin,” I said as I gingerly used the refrigerator door to pull myself from the kitchen floor. A piece of chili was on my shoulder blade.
“I took lessons. You can't learn on your own. It's too hard.”
“Does anyone at the dorms know you can play.”
“I have secrets too.”
“What song is that? Teach it to me. Give me a lesson.”
Lacy gracefully brought the bow to the strings, as if that too were part of the music. The long notes emerged from her hands and her eyes and her fingers. It was impossible to tell where the source of the music was. It was a song of arriving and a song of going, a song of sacrifice and selfishness.
“'Edelweiss',” I announced when I remembered the title. “It's from the final concert when the Von Trapps have to leave Austria. Teach it to me.”
“You need a lot of lessons. Years of lessons. Do you have a book?”
“No. Just give me one lesson. It's all I need. I fixed my brakes without any help at all.”
“You fixed the brakes on you car?”
“It's a long story. What about the violin?”
“Do you know how to tune it?”
I hadn't a clue.
“Play the biggest string with your finger.”
Lacy handed the instrument to me and showed me how to hold it. I plucked the big string.
“That is a G note. Say G”
“G.”
“The next string below it is the D string. Say D”
“D.”
“The musical alphabet...Oggy, your hair is dripping on the violin.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
“I told you I shouldn't have washed my hair.”
“Sit down,” she said.
I sat in the chair in the middle of the room, cradling the violin. She took the towel that I was using to cover my flabby belly and, with a sigh, started to dry my hair. Showering suddenly had appeal.
“The last time I was this happy Hendu had just tattooed the Newsday sign at Shea Stadium.”
“Don't get used to it, ya fak.”
“If you dried my hair every time I showered I would shower every twenty minutes. I'd be the Kevin Bacon of showering. If there was a shower, I'd be in it.”
“The musical alphabet,” she continued, “is A through G. Then it repeats itself. Say A through G.”
I was lost in the feeling of having my hair dried like a ten dollar Korean massage.
“Oggy?”
I sighed. “Maybe I will stay. Fahk Mexico. Fahk Ray Knight.”
“A through G. Say it.”
“A through G.”
“There are five notes from G and D. Right? G, A, B, C, and D. Those two notes are a perfect fifth apart. Say a perfect fifth apart.”
“Fifth,” I mumbled without any comprehension. I was falling asleep. Five hours of consecutive consciousness was my limit. I forgave Lacy and Piper for everything but the Cargo Pants comment. Cargo pockets could be very practical when collection aluminum or shoplifting.
“Perfect. A little to the left.”
“A perfect fifth is an interval. Are you listening? Interval. This interval happens to be the first two notes of 'Fools Rush In' by Elvis. Do you know that song?”
“Lace, I am the fool in that song. I can't help...”
“Shush. Not that part of the song. Play the G and the D strings one at a time.”
Lacy continued to dry my hair though it didn't feel wet anymore. I forgave the Cargo Pocket comment. People make mistakes.
“The G and the D strings sound like the first two notes of the Elvis song. See? Wise. G. Men. D.”
“A perfect Fifth. G and D. Got it. What about the other strings.”
“The same. All the strings should be the same...remember what the word is?”
“Fifth?”
“That's the size of this term.”
“Perfect?”
“That's the quality of this term. There's only one word left, Oggy. Come on.”
“I'm not in college you know. Interval?”
“Good. The next string is five letters up from D. What is five letters up from D?”
“H?”
“No, the musical alphabet wraps around at G.:
I started at D and found my way to A. Edelweiss couldn't be this hard to learn.
“Right. The D and the A are a fifth apart. The last string is what?”
“E. A fifth up from A. This is simple. I'm a regular Beethoven.”
“OK, Ludwig. All these strings need to sound a Perfect fifth above the next lower string. Then it is in tune. And you can play. Do you want to see how the notes line up on the fingerboard?”
I put the violin on the floor and looked back at Lacy. I touched her hand.
“No, Lace. I don't want to see how the notes line up on the fingerboard. Come here.”
“Don't be queer, Oggy. This isn't an afternoon special. I can't stay long,” she whispered as she walked in front of me and looked down at my hair, combing it with her fingers.
“Thanks for drying my hair, Lace.”
“You need help, Oggy. You look nice now. If you shaved and showered regularly you wouldn't look too bad. You looked better when you got back from Florida. Your face had color and you weren't so thin.”
Lacy stood over my right leg, close enough to smell. She tried again to style my hair with her fingers, combing it back and to the side but it was too long and kept falling over my eyes.
“You aren't staying, Oggy. I know. I can see it in your eyes. You never stay. My dad never stays either. Men are all the same.”
I slid my hands up her legs to her hips. Her shirt was not tucked into her jeans so I slid my hands under the shirt on both sides and felt her waist. I could almost touch my fingers together.
“What's wrong, Oggy?”
“Its just sad, Lace. I want us to happen.”
“You won't stay in one place long enough to let it happen.”
“I love you.”
“How are you sure?”
“Because I think about you all the time. I thought about you in Bone Harbor. I thought about you on the drive here. I think about you all the time, like Ray Knight except in a good way.”
“So what?”
“Well, that is love.”
“No, Oggy. It means you're treating me like, I don't know, like one of those brainteasers, those mind puzzles you like. I'm not a puzzle, Oggy. There is no solution.”
“I know.”
“So don't sit around trying to figure me out. You'll never figure me out. You'll never get it all right. I'm not that simple.”
“That's fair.”
“I've got secrets too, Oggy. I feel things too. Maybe I don't sit around and try to figure out the world but I can think too.”
“You're right. I know.”
“What's wrong, Oggy?”
“Nothing. I'm fine.”
“No you're not. You're sad. I've never seen you so sad. You'll never be satisfied. One second you want purity and the next second your hands are up my shirt. Which is it gonna be, Oggy?”
Continuing to feel her waist, I nodded. What would Dewey do?
“You're right, I'm sad. But I'm going to leave and I have no idea where I'm going except south and you might be the last stable person I talk to. The road has no love, Lace. You have to pack it all with you. I have to carry everything. Clothes and equipment are nothing. It's the hate and the love and pain and regret that weigh me down. I carry it all. I think I bring suffering with me so I remember I can feel at all. It shouldn't be this complicated. Just come to Mexico with me. No debate. Get in Poncho and come to Mexico.”
“You are so messed up.”
“This means so much to me, Lace. It is like the Gods looked down and...”
“I can't hear you talk anymore, Oggy.”
Lacy was short enough that she just had to lean over a little to kiss my mouth and shut me up. Without unbuttoning her shirt I touched her neck gently. I placed one of her hands on my chest where it softly brushed my skin. It was the kind of scene that takes place in a PG-13 movie, the kind that is supposed to mean, “These two people really love each other, it isn't just about sex”
Of course I wanted to undress Lacy and turn the movie into at least an R rated love scene where intercourse is insinuated by hands clutching the sheets tightly or fingers grasping at a naked back or a rocket blasting off, but I knew it wasn't going to happen, so I got as close as possible by feeling the inside of Lacy's leg, slowly, up and down but never all the way up, and hooking my fingers inside her jeans but never pulling them all the way down. My heart was beating fast enough to power a small city.
“Lace, I'm so turned on I'm going to have a stroke.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Ha!”
I pulled her closer and pushed my head into her belly. The button of her jeans was close enough to bite. I licked it secretly. Though I knew it didn't matter, I whined, “Please.”
“What, Oggy?”
Lacy did not even look excited. She was as composed as though we were at the intermission of a bad opera. I, however, was on the verge of tears, as the wolf in my pants was slowly winning a war against the Monk in my head. Siddhartha hadn't encountered temptations like Lacy. Flesh and soul, Purity and impurity, War and Peace, Tastes Great, Less Filling. So many choices. I held onto the waistline of her jeans like a life preserver.
“Please come to bed with me. I'll do anything.”
“You'll not go to Mexico?”
I sagged as the wolf took a hard blow to the nose. I weighed my options again, but the freedom that Mexico promised was just too attractive. IT was life away from the Red Sox and away from Bonigan and Ray Knight and the court case. The wolf shrank into his den. I looked into Lacy's dark eyes. Life was so unfair. Everyone in America was getting a hand job but me.
“Lace, I would do almost anything to sleep with you, but I have to leave. I can't be a prisoner. It was like Custer's last stand in Bone Harbor. Arrows were thick in the sky, I swear. I am a wanted criminal now.”
Lacy took my hands gently out of the top of her jeans and placed them in my lap. Then she backed up.
“Then I guess you had better go.”
I collapsed onto the floor and moaned, clawing at the rug.
“I'll come back for you. I swear.”
“Sure. And I'll be waiting by the phone. I swear.”
“It could be so good, Lace.”
This was an absurd suggestion. If I slept with Lacy, I'd either shoot my bullets in nine seconds or go into shock. Either way, my chamber would be empty and I'd be asleep before Lacy was done untying her shoe laces.
“You don't even know what making love means.”
“You're the virgin!”
I was on my knees with my arms outstretched. It was rotten to bring up her virginity, I know, but it was like Bob Stanley preaching about pitching control.
“Alright, so what would you do, Oggy? You've slept with one person. What have you learned? How to put a rubber on, I hope.”
I thought back to Nancy in Ecuador and winced. What had I learned? That sex was like wrestling except there were no illegal holds. That the moments leading up to sex were terrifying and the moments after sex were funereal. That advanced trigonometry was easier than finding the clitoris. That farting was not considered foreplay. That the word 'Anti-contraceptivo' translates into, “That which will fail to provide contraception” But was there anything Lacy would want to hear?
“More than that, Lace. Plenty more than that. I'm like the Ted Williams of love.”
Lacy rolled her eyes.
“See, Oggy. You think it is some kind of magical kiss that turns the toad into a princess. Is that it Oggy? Is that what it would be like?”
“Yes. It would be magic. We would live happily ever after. Give me a chance.”
“Fine then tell me how it would be. Let's have phone sex.”
This was a suggestion I heard about as much as 'Have you been working out?'
“But we aren't on the phone. The whole idea is being anonymous, so I've heard.”
“Use your imagination, Don Juan.”
My interest perking up. While other kids were memorizing the periodic table, I'd been memorizing “Pillow talk” I let sling with some pretty juicy stuff.
If I transcribed my speech exactly, I’d have to change the rating of the book, so I’ll let you imagine what I said. I included the usual kinky instruments in our fantasy affair, a bicycle chain, a Dwight Evans baseball card, a fuzzy stuffed bear from Homestead, and a Whiffle ball to turn Lacy on. She responded with obvious passion, but what really made her candle flicker was how I closed.
“I'd kiss you until you could feel me kissing you forever,” I said as her eyebrows raised, “until your lips became my lips and you kissed yourself. Then I would kiss down your throat to your chest, and while I held you in my hands I would kiss you until no memory remained of a time I hadn't kissed you, until you only knew what it felt like to be kissed by me, until there was no me or you, until your mind took over and you would be kissing yourself with my lips, until your mind multiplied my lips and sent them across your soft skin to every curve and plain, until your skin was alive with my love, touching you and you could not remember life any other way, until all you had ever known and all you would ever know was my touch, until our bodies merged and our memories merged and the only substance left was purity.”
Lacy closed her mouth and smoothed out her shirt from where I had wrinkled it.
“I'm going to call my mother to see if it's snowing there,” she said before walking to the phone and tripping on the carpet.
“I could go on, Lace. I haven’t even told you what I would do with the 1986 Red Sox team photo.”
She held up a finger and spoke into the phone, “Hi ma! I'm in lips, I mean Storrs. No, not yet. Yeah, he's here. He's fine. We're just talking...”
I sat back down and relaxed. If I were a smoker I would have had a cigarette. It was almost as good as a hand job.
Lacy hung up the phone and brushed her shirt flat again.
“It's going to start snowing soon. I should go.”
“I'm not done.”
“I am. We all have somewhere to go, Oggy.”
“You'll be safe here.”
“That isn't what I'm worried about. Maybe it's a good thing you're going to Mexico. You go have fun being a farmer. Go have kids and live in a mud hut. Have a good time in the Stone Age.”
Where did she get this Stone Age idea. I was living in 1986, like, twenty thousand years after the Stone Age.
“I want you to come with me. You can teach me to play violin.”
“Have a good time Oggy,” she said and picked up her coat.
“Have I told you how beautiful you are Lace?”
“You've done more than that.”
“But it didn't help, did it?”
Lacy paused before she walked out the door.
“Do you want me to say I'll dream about you tonight and hold my pillow to my chest and imagine it's you? Do you want me to say I'll kiss my arms and imagine your lips are doing it, until I don't remember a time when I wasn't kissed by you? Do you want me to tell you that I'll lie awake at night and dream of making love to you, of being your wife, of living with you?”
“Well, yes. Of course. I'd pay good money to hear that. Will five bucks cover it?”
“Stop making jokes, Oggy! I'm going to go home and take a nap and bake some bread with my mother. I'm going to pet my dogs and talk to my parrots and my hamsters. Then I'll listen to some music and call my friend in Hartford. Then I'll go to sleep and dream about a time I never had to worry if your brakes were going to fail in the middle of Mexico and cause you to crash or if you're going to starve to death in a rest stop. That is what I'm going to dream about. I don't want to have to worry about you, Oggy, but you make it so hard.”
It's hard to know how to act in these situations. Her eyes said, 'Take me.' While her words said, 'I hate you.' Some books would recommend I take her in my arms and stare into her eyes until she wilted. Other books would advocate a more casual, nonchalant approach. I took the path of the bootblack and said I was sorry.
“That doesn't help, Oggy. You'll still leave!” Lace ran a hand up the buttons of her blouse to make sure I hadn't managed to unbutton one. “I don't want to feel like this, ya fak. This is the worst!”
I wanted to ask her to come with me to Mexico again but just nodded and put my head down. Lacy opened the door. I was silent.
“Bye!” she said again a little louder. She stood by the open door looking at me, maybe giving me one more chance to do something right. I looked at her and tried to make my eyes say, “I love you, but it is better if I leave.” Her eyes said, “Ya fak! Why did you ever come to UCONN in the first place?” I walked over to her and held her close, smelling her lilac hair.
“No one can know about this, Oggy.”
I could still taste the sweet bubble gum on my lips as I stood in the middle of the porch in the cold wind. A few small flakes of snow had begun to fall around my bare feet. Lacy turned and walked down the porch toward the parking lot.
“Hey, Lace. If the phone doesn't ring, it's my court-appointed lawyer calling to say I miss you.”
Lacy probably made a face as she kept walking. She turned around at the top of the stairs and looked back at me. I wanted to think she was admiring me, but she was probably making sure I wasn't following her. I bowed deeply and when I came up she was gone.
Snowflakes fell on the leaves. The snow made a sound on the dry leaves that was like television static. Snow would fall in Bone Harbor tonight. I could not remember a time when it hadn't been snowing. A car door slammed and a car engine started up, some gears shifted and the sound moved into the distance. Then it was silent for good. Before the screen door had closed, I was already unzipping my pants and heading for the bathroom.

Chapter XXXXII: I Wanna Go Back

Chapter Forty-Two: I Wanna Go Back

Piper went to work early the next the morning. The sun had hardly risen above the trees and he was getting dressed.
“Don't tell me you get up every day at this hour,” I said with a pillow over my head.
“Work is work,” Piper responded as he tugged his shoes on. “I produce so I can consume.”
“There should be law,” I groaned. “No one should get up before noon.”
“There's a reason the clock has all those numbers on it, Oggy.”
“Right. So I can count the hours I’ve been asleep.”
Piper started to say something fatherly, but stopped himself and tucked his pants into his socks so the bike chain wouldn’t catch it. I shook my head under the pillow.
“I can't believe you've joined the Dark Side, Piper. When do they let you take the leash off?”
“It isn't a leash, Oggy. Just because I work doesn't mean I'm a slave.”
This revelation got me to peek from beneath the pillow with one shadowed eye.
“Back up, Piper. Slaves worked. You work. Ergo...”
“Ergo I get paid and I buy pizza and guitar strings and books,” He said. “Do I look like I'm being whipped?”
“It isn't even nine o'clock, Piper. How can you get up now? You must be whipped. Are you on work release?”
Piper then pulled out the big guns.
“What would John Galt say? Would John Galt sleep in until noon every day?”
John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, was Piper's answer to everything. Galt's accomplishment was inventing an engine that ran on static energy absorbed from the air. But he had abandoned the engine rather than allow scum like me to benefit from it. Believe me, it was very heavy stuff and made the fact that I read the book between smoking joints and playing Hacky Sack with the Hedonizers one of those life ironies you look back on and laugh at. The mistake I made was telling him that I read the book when I was in Florida. Of course he had already read it and some lively discussions ensued. But now he was using it against me, clearly as an agent of the state.
“John Galt had something to do everyday. That's the difference between me and John Galt. He could do things, make shit, invent machines. I'm the John Galt of leisure. What do I do?”
“You tell me.”
“I try to win the '86 Series. I draw. I listen to music. See? All that can wait until noon.”
“Then sleep. I'm not saying you should get up.”
It was too late. I was awake.
“Look what you did. I'm up and awake and I can't do anything. I don't even have the Game Six tape. God, what I wouldn't do to watch that game right now. Piper, Keith Hernandez was so upset when he made the second out. Because he knew he had lost. He knew the dream was over. That was my dream and he was giving it to me. Here, Oggy, enjoy. That's what he said, but Carter got a hit. Why didn't Sambito pitch to Hernandez?”
“Ask Sticky. I'm gone.”
“But what can I do? I haven't been up this early since I slept in a bus station.”
“Go for a walk. Wear my coat and go across the street. There's a forest with trails. Take my bike. Enjoy.”
Piper was right; I needed to start my trip with a different mental direction, a new outlook on baseball and music. If that meant something as radical as getting out of bed--or off an inflatable pad on the floor--then I was ready. So I found myself walking through the forest and fantasizing about Mexico. Lacy would learn to like it. I was, after all, the John Galt of leisure.
The Birch trees had all lost their leaves, but the big storms appeared to have missed Storrs since there was no snow on the ground. I shuffled through a crunchy carpet of audio memories. Bone Harbor may be the busiest nest of landmarks, but nearly everything can set me off. On this morning I heard a host of moments in the leaves, the sound of Fall 1978, the year I moved to Boston to live with my mother was also here. On weekends my father had taken Brooklyn and I on excursions through Lexington, Mass. This was also the sound of 1980, the year we moved back to Bone Harbor where my father had purchased a three-story house. I met Kurt and Cristo again and we stole Pic and Pay shopping carts to ride down the leafy hospital hill. It was the sound of 1981, the Strike year, when we had to play mid-season games ourselves in the Whiffle Ball courts in a 26 team tournament that lasted into October. We brought brooms to sweep out the leaves that blew in from the giant Willow tree by the Junior High School. It was the sound of Halloween 1982 when everyone dressed up like Michael Jackson with sparkle gloves and red leather jackets. Mack Wynter stumbled in the ancient leaf bed near our secret ring of trees on his way to Trick or Treat. His ankle-weak legs flopped for footing in slick leaves before he fell to one knee. Leaves heavy with mud and slicked by sneakers flew toward Cristo and me on the close edge of the circle. Cristo was dressed like E.T. and I wore #8 in tribute to Yaz. It was the sound of 1983 and walking West to school down Elwyn and between Leary field and the Mill Pond Basketball courts. Old Maple trees rained their leaves on my Red Sox hat. The sound of my shuffling feet made it hard to sneak by Chuck and Kevin in their cigarette gloom. It was the sound of 1984 when I went to search for Mack's grave at the South Street Cemetery. A group of younger kids had passed me on the gravel road carrying carved wooden guns, faces covered with paint, aglow with freedom and soldierly heroics. They tromped across the graves and dove over burial plot bars. They were on their way to the woods by the Jones Ave. dump. Did they know that the Jones Road dump had been fenced in and blockaded due to high toxic content? Stupid kids. Dumb kids. Should I tell them or let them find out on their own? They were gone before I could decide. It was the sound of 1985 as I walked south toward High school, past the Edgewood Old Age Home, past the quacking duck pond, through the dense woods where Druggies smoked their joints before school. They jeered as I made my hustle way to Homeroom in new school clothes with sharpened pencils poking from my bag, terrified of the squeak my new sneakers made on the strange hallway tile, blushing at the tall girls with big breasts. It was the sound of 1986. I ran through the same woods past a different set of Druggies dropping acid and drinking whiskey. I was late for homeroom and that would mean I would miss Darcy's grand entrance, but the Red Sox were in the World Series so I didn't care. I waved my giant Red Sox banner before the west facing windows of the school until the Vice-Principal came to get me. October 1986. Full moon over Leary field. Early ice on the South Millpond and fallen leaves. Dwight Evans in his last World Series game.

I limped tiredly through the Connecticut leaves. The weather had turned cold on the shoulders of a wind from the North. I was wearing Piper's coat and hat but felt unprepared for a trip to the market, let alone to Mexico. Because I had envisioned myself in Mexico, I had only brought clothes suitable for the tropical climate. The only cold weather item I had was a Jimmy Buffett tape.
The forest was stripped of all the fluff of summer and fall, bare and fragile, but this made the visibility better and I could see the trail easily. It was characteristic of Piper to suggest a walk through the naked forest, he liked nature at her barest. He liked unfinished woodworking and house frames and wooden figures without function. How could he tolerate me, I wondered? Didn't I have something hidden beneath my Mexican Serape? Wasn't Poncho covered with the absent colors? I suppose he treated me like I treated Cristo; I was one of a few chums from BHHS that still called on him and as long as it was in his interests he would welcome me. Eventually, that would change. I didn't hear High School friends call my father, so why did I think I would be different? Time had worn down mightier mountains than my friendship. Commitments would be made, bigger jobs would be taken. The country was too big and transportation too easy. My trip to Mexico was proof that family and community were held together by a half a gallon of gas. A full tank would put me in a place where no one knew my name. Two or three tanks of gas would put me in a place like Mexico. What of community then?
The white sun of morning blinked between the trees as I walked. I figured I had a seven hours left of daylight. There was still time to abandon my plan to liberate Lacy. I could hitchhike to Florida and hang out on the old India Beach with the other hobos. There was enough time to get a few miles closer to Florida. My stuff? Who cared about it? I could get another violin in Miami. My car was a death trap anyway. How much longer would those brakes last? I'd used glue to keep the piston from falling out of the caliper. I put the sun on my right and started walking south.
Immediately, I was relieved. I felt a great burden lift from my shoulders like when the Berlin Wall was torn down or when The Culture Club released their second album. My important possessions, the only ones I needed were my 1986 Red Sox team photo and my harmonica key chain. John Muir hadn't had much more when he walked the width of America. Thoreau lived like a king with less. I would travel light like Gandhi. I could start over in Florida with Sunny O'Neil as my Queen. All I needed was my health and a few Madonna albums.
“Where are you going, Oggy?”
Toddy Bonigan leaned against a paper birch tree looking under his eyebrows at me. He was whittling a stick with slow motions of a sharp knife. I backed away from him.
“I'm going to Florida. They loved me there. They didn't pick on me. We smoked pot and slept a lot and that was fine. I didn't have to defend myself there. They like me as I am. They even listened to Hall and Oates.”
“We made a deal, Oggy, and where I come from a man doesn't go back on his word.”
“You and I come from different places, Bullwhip.”
“Do we? We both know Pirates Cove. We both know the salt piles on the harbor. We know the taste of Gillies hot dogs, the combination to our gym lockers, the pride of a Championship. We hit the same baseballs. We walked arm in arm on the same crooked streets. How are we different, Oggy?”
I started to tell Bonigan to let me alone to follow my own destiny but the light caught the trees just like it did at Oggy's point. A tree branch knocked my hat off my head and when I picked it up I heard quick children feet scamper through the leaves to play Capture The Flag. I could smell the Fenway Park bleachers and the infield dirt at Leary Field. Echoes of BHHS basketball games returned along with the cries of Shea Stadium.
“All they need is one more strike, Oggy. I was there. You slipped. You were weak.”
“I wasn't. I was never strong. I did all I could do. I gave everything.”
“You were weak and you know it. You wanted them to lose. You wanted them to lose and now you want to run away from your responsibility. We had a deal. I don't know why I have to keep reminding you. Haven't you got what you wanted? Respect? Adventure? You earned it, Oggy, and now you want to throw it away. Don't you know that this is going to be the biggest adventure yet? You aren't ready to come back to Oggy's point for another Youthfire. We're counting on you to come back with something new.”
“ What do you care about truth? I can make it all up like all the other songs.”
I could no longer tell which direction south was. There seemed to be two suns. Bonigan towered over me as tall as a tree and his words bit.
“I saw you slumped in that wicker chair with your pants around your ankles. Bone Harbor is dead for you. You are dead for Bone Harbor. The adventure is in Mexico.”
“Florida is close enough. If I can figure out which direction is south.”
You'll never make it without a car. You'll just end up back in Bone Harbor. You've tasted the stale beer before. Right? You've smelled the salt on the roads and felt the wind off the jetty at Fort Stark. You're the only one keeping it alive, but you need new songs. Look at George Bailey. He dried up because he didn't have any new songs.”
“But George got married to Mary. Who do I have? Faded pictures of Darcy and Rose? Lace will never come back to Bone Harbor with me. She thinks I'm Grizzly Adams living out at Oggy's point. She thinks I'm insane. Mary loved George right from the graduation dance. Lace won't even let me see her naked. All I have is Sticky.”
This realization came as a shock. Cristo was my friend? How had I let it come to this?
“ Don't forget where you come from, Oggy. Don't you feel the sadness when the wind hits your face like it did when you waited in line for a sundae at the Ice House in Break Island? Doesn't the sound of a video game remind you of the Dream Machine and Fun-O-Rama? You can have all that as long as you keep your hat and take my advice. We're a good team. Don't forget your roots. History doesn't teach itself.”
Not sure whether to run or hide, I held my Sox cap in my hands. Bonigan threw a stick at me.
“You don't trust yourself. You choke like Schiraldi. You can't get that last strike. But you're respected in Bone Harbor. You're a legend there as long as you don't kill the golden goose. Don't blow it in the bottom of the tenth inning. You want your stuffed animals in one place, Oggy? Just be patient. Find a girl settle down. One day you will get to watch Knight strike out.”
Bonigan was right. I had earned that respect from Erin and Huggy and Cristo. Sometimes the cook at Gillies would let me have a free hot dog at closing time. And once I played pool at the Bowl-o-Rama for two hours and the cashier only charged me a dollar. Of course, I could play as many arcade games as I wanted when the Fun-o-Rama opened in June. That was respect. Who was I to shun that much praise? I had craved it for so many years, slithered through so many halls, pissed in so many aluminum troughs, begged so many girls to watch Footloose with me, and now I had their attention. There was no need to run from Piper or Lacy. There was no need to abandon my plan to go to Mexico. The weather in Florida wasn't that great anyway. It was humid in the summer and rained in the winter.
“Just do the right thing and get back to your car, Oggy. There is no need to suffer anymore than you have. You own a car now. Go in style. Take Lace. She'll thank you for it later.”
I knew when to stop fighting. It was like the old ninja master said, “If you want to dig a well, don't dig many shallow holes. Dig one hole until it hits water.” I turned around and aimed the beak for Piper's apartment.