Battle of the Network Zombies (25 page)

His mother picked up on the second ring.

“Hello, Stanford residence?” Her voice was as cold and priggish as I’d remembered.

“Is Geoff at home?”

“He’s at home, yes. But his name is Geoffrey.” She paused, an audible sigh leaking out of her like gas. “Who’s this?”

“Amanda.”

“Well…Amanda. How do you know our Geoffrey?”

Jesus Christ, I thought. Was the bitch writing a book? I almost asked, too, but figured she’d hang up and immediately get in touch with the phone company to report me as a terrorist or some shit. Probably had the cops on speed dial or chained in her basement.

Mothers.

Downstairs, Ethel was having it out with the stove or the microwave or something. Her screams echoed through the bare halls, decidedly “décor-free” on the upper levels. Ethel went through periods and in those days, she had a subscription to
Architectural Digest
and minimalism suited her budget just fine. So you wouldn’t find a painting or a color on any wall, unless it resulted from a shattered bottle of ketchup, thrown at a would-be suitor stupid enough to question Ethel’s opinion. She had quite a few of those.

“I said, how do you know Geoffrey?”

“We met at school.” Time to pull out the charm for the tight-ass. “He’s told me so much about you I feel like I know you.”

“Oh well, that’s lovely to hear.”

Hooked. I suppressed a giggle.

A soft scruff came through the phone. Mrs. Stanford must have been holding her hand over the receiver, politely, I was sure. If it had been the 50s she’d have removed her button earring and put it in a small china dish for safekeeping during the call. The dish, no doubt, sitting next to the Stanford family Bible, lovingly engraved and gilded and barely worn, an heirloom. “Geoffrey, dear. You have a phone call.”

“I know.” His voice piping up creepily nearly simultaneously.

“Oh. I see.”

“You can hang up now.” His voice cracked with sleep, or maybe the char of too much pot.

“That’s fine, dear. Don’t stay on the phone long, I’ve got your favorite meal tonight. Sloppy Joes.” I imagined her staring blankly into her living room, eyes lighting on the glints of light reflecting off the plastic sofa cover, a bland smile plastered on her lips like a mannequin.

“Whatever,” he said and we both listened for her phone to hang up.

I suddenly felt nauseous.
¹¹²
Why had I even dialed this kid? It’s not like he possessed even an ounce of charisma. He wasn’t even all that cute with his Luke Perry sideburns and those dimples could have been pockmarks for all I knew. It was unlikely he bathed, guys like that always have some hygiene issue. Probably stunk.

“I knew you’d call.”

“Do you always listen in on phone calls? ’Cause I gotta say that’s kind of creepy.”

“You’re right. It is.”

“So you admit to being creepy.”

“I do.”

“Do you suppose it makes you mysterious and thus somehow magically desirable?”

“You tell me. You’re the one that called.”

I didn’t like where this was headed. Now, back then I wasn’t nearly the confident and forward Amanda you know (and love), but I was working on it. This guy had me beat in that department. Beat by a mile.

“I just figured I’d find out what you wanted.”

“I suspect you know.” I heard some banging around on his end, then a background assault of grunge. Screaming Trees, I thought, or Mother Love Bone, some amalgam of flannel-wearing second-string rockers with dirty guitars and even filthier hair. I countered with the Pixies. Velouria.

Take
that,
trend hopper.

“In fact, I
don’t
know, smart ass. That’s why I called.”

“I figured maybe you wanted to meet up and maybe go to a movie or something.” Something changed in his voice about halfway through the sentence, a slight quiver, like he’d brushed up against some wool and caught a shock.

Sounded like weakness to me. If Ethel was good for anything it was teaching how to spot prey. I had no choice, did I? I pounced.

“Was that your voice shaking just then?”

“Uh.”

“Oh wow. Sounded like nerves for a moment.”

Next comes the defensive posture. Like clockwork.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Oh no, Geoffrey?” I think I pronounced it “Joffrey” and lingered on it, so he’d get my point.

“No.”

“Okay then. Let’s plan on a movie. But I get to pick, I’m not watching anything with Mel Gibson or Danny Glover, or buddies that save the day.”

“Uh…okay.” He’d traded up to Soundgarden. Chris Cornell may have been the only one of those Seattle guys that actually owned a bottle of shampoo, so I was almost hesitant to crank up The Sugarcubes and let Bjork massacre him with quirky vocals.

Almost.

“So, when’s it going to be, lover?” I wished I could have reigned in that last word. My mother used it with nearly every man she ever met, like normal people use “sweetheart” to refer to all girls, or “slugger” for boys they hoped didn’t end up wearing high heels and jizz on their blouses. For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard it. But the pause was just a few seconds too long.

“Lover?” he asked.

“Shut up and hang on. I’m going to get the newspaper.”

“Well, we could skip the movie.”

I let the phone drop on my nightstand the second he spoke, hoping it would cause a loud squelch on his end rather than just a squatty thud, though with my luck, I’d probably broken the phone. Ethel would put me through the ringer for a new one. I reached for it instinctively, checking for cracks and hazarded a pert blow into the mouthpiece. It echoed. A second later, Geoff sighed on the other end, but not the irritated kind. Bile rose in my throat.

Geoff slouched on a bench in front of the Orange Julius, one foot rocking back and forth on a crushed Coke can. The loud crinkling bought him all sorts of sneers from the blue-haired mall-walking set, who couldn’t catch a break on their quiet pretzel eating. Not today. The boy wore a faded Nirvana tour shirt and some faded jeans, torn at the knees and tucked into a pair of scuffed Doc Marten boots. His hair fell in a touseled mangle of waves. When he spotted me he curled the sides behind his ears, smirked and kicked the can off into the main mall hallway, where it caught up in the plastic wheels of a stroller. The infuriated mother mouthed an exaggerated “Fuck you.”

“Torturing passers-by?” I asked, sinking onto the bench beside him, but clearly leaving enough room for his attitudes.

He grinned, scooted a little closer to me. “One of my favorite pastimes.”

“Listen.” I threw him a bone and patted his shoulder. “I’m not gonna blow you or anything. What exactly are you expecting here?”

“Hey. You called me, remember? I was just thinking movie.” He sucked at his teeth, much like Gil does now when he spots a tap.

“My intentions are just to pick your brain.”

He scowled, followed a youngish mother of two as she led her jelly-smeared toddlers to the kid corral, her ass jiggling out from underneath a pair of Daisy Dukes like a couple of bald prison escapees.

“My mother just found out she’s pregnant,” he mumbled.

I cleared my throat. “Interesting you should say that. Remember that guy we were with at the teriyaki place?”

“Teppanyaki.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, I remember. He was pretty cool.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to pretend you just had a seizure and forget that you said that. Anyways. I caught him skewering his condoms in the bathroom.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah, he’d have to be crazy to want children with Ethel, the only reason for her to squeeze out another one would be to eat it.”

Geoffrey chuckled a bit, eyes crinkling at the corner in this odd way that made me laugh too. He reached over and put his arm around my shoulder, started leaning in.

I grabbed his hand and tossed his arm away. “Too soon.”

He pouted.

“Now. There’s no question I’ve got to get rid of the guy and, frankly, if my mother found out he was trying to implant her with his little Burt Friendlies, she’d yank out her own tubes.”

“Well, then that’s it,” he said, licking the end of a cigarette and sticking it to his lower lip to dangle.

“What’s it?”

“She’s got to find out. Why don’t you tell her?”

“She’d never believe me, she knows I hate him. I hate all her boyfriends. It’s kind of a rule.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re going to have to frame him.”

I thought about it a moment and, as I’m me, came up with a hideous plot to expose Burt Friendly as the sick father fantasist he was and cause both pain and suffering to Ethel in the process. It was really a win-win situation.

So excited about the possibility of ridding my life of Burt Friendly, I leaned over and planted a kiss on Geoffrey’s cheek. He blushed a bit and then threw his arms around me, pulling me back toward his lazily puckered lips.

“Ew, no. That was an accident.”

“It felt on purpose to me. Look.” He gestured to the bulge in his jeans. “You made me hard.”

I balled up my hand into a fist, making like I’d punch him in the balls. “And I can make you soft.”

His hands rushed to cover himself, even as he twisted away.

“So, I’m gonna need your help. It’s not going to be easy or clean, but I’ll make it worth your while.” I was thinking of making out with him. But…

“If you fuck me.”

“I’m not fucking you. I’m a virgin for Christ’s sake. Can’t you smell the purity?” I smirked. “It rolls off of me in fucking waves.”

He snorted, licked his lips. “Yeah, I can.”

“How about a handjob,” I offered.

He glanced down at his crotch, domed and zipper exposed. “Blowjob.”

“Deal.”

We stopped by the little drug store by the food court—you know the one, prices jacked up on things like Pepto and Maxi-Pads, those items you inevitably forget until you’re in a public place and start spraying out of one hole or another—and picked up the supplies: a Ball jar, a lightweight and clear plastic bowl, a bottle of syrup of ipecac and a key chain, the kind that looks like an “O” with a hinge that opens it up like a vise.

I put the plan into effect the following morning.

Ethel woke up promptly at 8:30, like clockwork—that way she could avoid me entirely as I’d have just left for school. Never one to be accused of being slovenly, she’d start her day with a brisk walk around the neighborhood, a tepid shower—her blood was ice-cold anyway—and close out the morning with a nice bowl of oatmeal with a quarter of a cup of half and half, no more, no less.

I wasn’t sure how much ipecac would have the desired effect so I opted for half the bottle. I began hearing the complaints that very night.

“I think it’s the stomach flu,” Burt answered flatly.

“It’s food poisoning. I’m certain.”

The next morning was Saturday and so I had the distinct pleasure of being home to hear Ethel heaving her oatmeal into the toilet. I stood behind my bedroom door, ear to the wood veneer, and tried not to giggle.

By Sunday, the topic finally came up.

“Do you think it could be morning sickness?” Burt’s tone was light and hopeful.

I made the corner of the open doorframe just in time to see my mother’s head spin toward him, vomit flapping from her lips as she yelled. “It better not be!”

“Mother. I’ll go get you a home pregnancy test. Don’t worry about a thing.” I crouched next to her and rubbed her back. It did quiver a bit from the unnatural sensation of tenderness between daughter and mother, but she acquiesced.

“Fine.” She pushed away from the spattered toilet and glowered at Burt. “You. Stay away, at least till we figure this shit out.”

I got on the phone to Geoffrey and gave him the prearranged code word, his idea. “Blowjob,” I whispered into the receiver.

“I have it right here.”

“Meet me in five minutes at Wilson Park.” He paused a moment and then spoke again, suddenly breathless. “And wear something sexy.”

“Shut up,” I spat and hung up, forcing the paper bag with the home pregnancy test into my purse.

The “Cram Shack” sat atop a wooded hill in the forest on the far side of the park, appropriately “crammed” between a large boulder and an odd evergreen tree that mangled together in growth like a morbidly undivided set of conjoined Chinese twins. The piece of corrugated metal everyone used as a door was askew, so I knew Geoffrey was already inside. What I didn’t know was that he’d already gotten started.