Bullettime (8 page)

“Ever been?” I asked.

“To Jersey City?” Mindy said. “Well, no. I mean, except on my way to the Holland Tunnel.”

“Haha, that was the local joke. ‘What is there to do in Jersey City?’ ‘Go to New York.’”

“Do you spend a lot of time in New York?”

“Not as much as I’d like, Mindy.”
Say her name
, I thought.
Use the name
. “Do you? Do you ever go to the Film Forum or stuff like that?”

“Not as often as I’d like to.” She smiled again.

“Yeah, well I bet working here till 10 p.m. most nights puts a real crimp on social activities, eh?” I practically saw the words hanging in the air between us, like a small cloud of pollution. I’m an idiot.

“Yeah,” Mindy said, her voice flatlined.

“Well, see you,” I said. What was that line from that short story?
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger
. Except instead of darkness it was a well-lit parking lot.

Mother wasn’t interested in movies, or in much of anything. She never asked me how my day went, or what I was up to. Instead, there was a monologue. “On
Wheel of Fortune
tonight, the phrase was ‘Clam Digger’ and the only letter missing was the ‘D.’ And the dopey contestant guessed, ‘N.’ Can you believe that? Pat Sajak looked about ready to shit himself,” she began as I walked in.

“Wow, that’s messed up. Hi, Mom,” I said, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t follow me into the kitchen or even raise her voice or anything like that. I’m not the type of man to drink beer or wine after work, not with the negative example of Ann on the living room couch every day, but I found three Oreos and poured myself a glass of water.

“—fourteen-point air-conditioning system. And you know I hate when the phone rings, it just drives me up the wall.”

“You can always turn the ringer off,” I said as she kept talking.

“So I asked what the fourteen points were. All fourteen. I said, ‘Go on, list them for me.’ And then I had a question about each one of them. I kept him on the phone for seventy-five minutes before telling him that I rent—”

“That
I rent
. You mean
I
rent.”

“And, I have to say, the kid was real professional. I could barely hear him gritting his teeth.” Then mom was nearly done. “Oh, I’m so tired. Davey, baby, could you . . .” She trailed off, but looked longingly over to the box of wine on the dining room table we never used. Her glass was in her hand, empty, and she raised her arm like a dying silent movie star. Of course, I gave her her refill.

“We’ll need more later. It’s almost empty.”

“We have another in the pantry.”

“No, I don’t think we do . . .” Then, “Shhh,
Dateline NBC
is on.”

“God, that show’s always on.”

“We don’t have any more in the pantry. You think I don’t know what’s in my own pantry?” She gulped wine. I ate two cookies whole and went to my room to watch the DVD on my TV. It was good, though I admit to being bored enough and horny enough to get on the Internet and trawl one of the bondage servers on IRC. I’m not a freak or anything, but it’s where older guys can talk to college girls who like taking cameraphone shots of themselves in nothing but thongs. Or maybe collegeslut420 really is an older guy who once got a teen girl to strip, and he’s just spreading the joy in disguise. LOL, as they say, lol. The trick is to keep from getting wrapped up in conversations with fifty-five-year-old “BBW”s looking to escape into the world of sensual spankings.

Mindy, Jesus. That’s who I jerk off to, despite the oceans of porn.

E
rin has a knack for first aid. “I had to sew my father up once,” she explains, a needle in her mouth. “Crazy guy wanted to take the cash register, and he had a machete.” They’re in the apartment Erin lives in with her parents. It’s a ramshackle railroad apartment, but Erin has her own entrance and a shoebox-sized room. It’s the first girl’s room Dave’s ever been in. He’s surprised—no posters, no stuffed animals. Piles of clothes everywhere. “Papa has the huge slash in his arm. Totally brutally mangled,” she says.

“Really?” Dave is shocked. Erin pinches his skin hard and he writhes under her grip. There’s pain now.

“No, not really. I’m a friggin’ pathological liar,” Erin says. “Aren’t you glad I’m doing minor surgery on you?”

Dave thinks the glue was fine and says so. Erin snorts. “Not if I molest you, it isn’t.”

“Are you going to molest me?” Dave asks. Then he adds, “Or are you a pathological liar!?” He scores a point, he thinks, but then Erin tugs on the thread. “Geez, ow!”

“It’ll get worse before it gets better,” Erin says, then she dabs the wound with hydrogen peroxide again. There are tears in Dave’s eyes. He looks away from her, at the wall. “See?”

“I’m not in the mood for molestation now, I have to say.”

“Give it a few minutes.” For once, Erin seems to run out of things to say. But ten seconds later. “Who stabbed you?”

“I don’t know. Some black kid.”

“Figures,” Erin says.

“Hey, that’s not fair!” Dave says.

“You’re the one who got stabbed,” Erin says.

“Don’t be racist. White people stab people too,” Dave says. “And there are plenty of nice black people.”

“Yeah, you’re white. You ever stab anyone? Have any black friends?”

Dave almost names Lee and Malik, though he hardly knows them at all. “I’ve been bullied by white people too. This guy even looked half-Italian,” he says.

“What does that even mean?”

“You’re very ignorant.”

“I’m just a stupid girl, eh?”

“Look, I didn’t say that.” Dave bites his lip. “Why are you picking a fight with me! All you do is needle me and upset me.”

Erin tilts her head to the side. “Don’t you like me? I’m just teasing you. It’s a joke. Really. Listen, I’m sorry.” She touches his face. Tiny little fingers on his cheek. Dave has never felt anything like that. Her eyes are glistening. “You know, I was homeschooled for a long time. We’re new in town. We used to live in the city, in Astoria.”

“What brought you out to Jersey City?”

Erin shrugs. “One of my second cousins owns the building, and the little luncheonette on the bottom floor. So we got this cheap. Things aren’t going well at Washington Square. You know, little bratty teenagers keep walking in and then just leaving without buying anything.”

“I’m sorry, I was—”

“Not even an order of fries.”

“C’mon, I didn’t want—”

“The McDonald’s is only half a block down, sure,” Erin says, “but do you know what they put in those burgers? Fifty percent hooves, thirty percent veins, twenty percent ammonia derivatives. Believe it!”

“I said I was sorry,” Dave says. Even in the Ylem, where my own life is nothing but a half-remembered film, I’m riveted, because I remember what happens next. Dave blinks back a tear; he’s sure he’s done everything wrong. Then Erin grabs his shirt in both her little fists and pulls him in for a kiss. She’s aggressive, hungry like a grown woman. She’s all tongue to Dave, and he barely knows how to breathe. He keeps his hands at his sides, stunned. Finally, Erin pulls away, a thin string of drool connecting her lips to Dave’s. It’s the kiss I should have gotten in my own room, when she initiated me into the Ylem.

“You taste like cough syrup,” she says, “and kiss like a fag,” and without a word Dave dives in for a kiss, but misses her mouth and gets a face full of hair. Erin takes his arms and puts them around her waist and says, “Like this, stupid.” They kiss some more. Dave can only smell cloves, and his own sweat. He wants to move his hands up and down her back, into her curls, but he’s terrified. The kisses are working—he can barely feel his suture. He wants to push forward, or lean back, but the blood is pumping everywhere. Something’s going to burst. Then Erin pulls away.

“My father’s coming home now. Don’t ask me how I know.”

“How do you know . . .” Dave says. “Uh, that I was going to ask that.”

“You have to leave, right now!” Erin says. “Just out the door. You don’t want him catching you in the hallway, or on the staircase. You’ll really end up in the hospital if you do.”

Dave opens his mouth to say something. Erin kisses his bottom lip quickly, then stands and pulls him from the bed. “Go!” she practically howls. Her fingernails dig into the flesh of his shoulder. She opens the door and pushes him out into the hallway. Dave runs, swallowing a whoop, then clutches his side and limps, leaning against the balustrade to the steps.

And there the big man is. Though Mr. Zevgolis isn’t all that large. He’s a squat man, and he filled up the staircase like an awkwardly shaped couch abandoned by lackadaisical movers. His eyebrows are like the wings of a great crow, and he smelled of grease even from the bottom of the stairwell.

“Who’re you?”

“Uhm . . .” Dave says.

“Your shirt is bloody. You all right? How you get in here?” With every question, he climbs three steps. “You on drugs?” he says, and he’s face to face with Dave. He’s a short man, Mr. Zevgolis, but as wide as he is tall. A nasty scar runs down one redwood forearm.
So Erin
wasn’t lying about that
. Unless it was something else that cut her father so badly. The scar looks only half-healed. Dave feels his own suture burning.

“No,” Dave says. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Maybe I call police, eh?”

“Can I go home, please?”

“Don’t you never come back, you understand?” Zevgolis says. Even his teeth seem supernaturally huge, each one like a jetty.

Dave tries to squeak out an
okay
but he just exhales and bumps into Zevgolis. The man shoves past him and walks up to the near entrance of the railroad apartment. Dave runs down the steps as best he is able.

In the Journal Square neighbourhood where Erin lives, there are a number of cheap and dusty stores. The Rite Aid workers are trained to hassle kids when they want a little medicine. And they have cameras everywhere. Why Dave thinks of cameras now, he doesn’t know, but it’s because I was staring at him so intently from the Ylem. No cameras in 99 Cent Dreams right across the street. And they carry the Mexican cough syrup. He drinks deep as he takes the long way back home.

The police are waiting in the living room. Ann is there too, half-sober, her back straight. “David!” she cries as Dave walks in. “My baby!” She runs, as best she can, to hug him. Dave peers over her shoulder at the police—one guy in a uniform and one plainclothesman. They could be extras from
The Sopranos
, or Mr. Zevgolis’s cousins. And they knew mom was faking the funk.

“The prodigal son returns,” the uniformed officer says to nobody in particular. Dave squirms out of his mother’s grip, and she gives it up too easily.

“They’re here about a poking!” Ann stage-whispers. Dave realizes that he wishes he had a sane woman in his life. Here in the Ylem, I can see the futures branching forth from this point. There are plenty of sane women in Dave’s life. They throw themselves at us in college, at the workplace, they’re just an email or telephone call or kind word away, but I ignore them all to seek out this same dynamic over and over again—a woman whose modes and behaviours are beyond predicting, who are concerned with appearances, and who have some sort of wound that won’t ever heal, no matter what mad actions they took to salve it. If they really like me, even for a moment, or were kind and not cutting or oblivious, I win. If I lose, well, I try and try again, across every potential future. I liked that hug, though it was as contrived as the one Dave had gotten by the cute redhead whose name we had both forgotten as part of the school play in sixth grade. He had fit in the leprechaun costume, so got the role.

The uniform murmurs something about the poking. Dave raises his shirt and shows off his homebrew suture. “It’s fine,” he says, unconvinced and dreamy. He coughs twice, so he’ll have an explanation for the cough syrup in his book bag, for his lateness, for what he’s sure are the subtle changes in his aura thanks to his first real make-out session.

“Who did that?” the detective asks.

“Uhm . . . I did it myself,” Dave says.

“Not a bad job,” he says, convincingly enough for Ann.

“What did the person who stabbed you look like?” the uniformed officer asks. He has a pad out.

“Black guy,” Dave says. “He looked a little older, I guess.” He smiles. The cough syrup is making him feel pretty good, like he’s in a theme park, chatting with costumed characters. Cop Man and the Fat Detective. They’re his favourites. “He’s not a student.”

“What makes you think he wasn’t a student?” Ann asks. “I mean, do you know every black kid in school?” She spits out the words
black kid
.

“Uhm.” Dave wobbles on his feet. The uniform takes him by the shoulder and sits him down on an ottoman. “Where’s dad?” he asks. “Shouldn’t he be here? I’m hot. I want my dad, and a lawyer.”

“You don’t need a lawyer, son,” the uniform says. “You’re the victim here, remember?” The detective is studying the photos on the walls. There aren’t many of them, none of recent vintage. Dave is ten years old in the newest, the smile flashing his last few milk teeth.

“I go to Hamilton,” Dave says. “It’s a bad school.”

“We’re not Catholic,” Ann says. The cops turn to look at her. “I didn’t want to send him to Catholic school. That’s why he’s in public school.” She mutters again, “We’re not Catholic.”

“When is your husband due home, ma’am?” the detective asks.

“Oh, he works late,” Ann says. “He’s in IT, you know.”

“He’s in
it
!” Dave says, and giggles. Ann guffaws.

“I’m about ready to call child protective services,” the detective says, and it’s like a cold wind tore through the room. “Listen, ma’am, get your kid to the precinct first thing tomorrow morning, and I want a note from an ER doctor about those stitches. If I don’t see him at my desk by noon, I’m going to come here and pick you up, then drive you to Hamilton and pick him up”—the detective’s fat finger is seemingly pointing everywhere at once; at Ann, at Dave, at his own chest, in the direction of the school—“and then I’ll bring you both back for questioning before me, a social worker, and whatever foster parents they can dig up on an hour’s notice.” The uniformed officer works his tongue over his teeth. Neither Ann nor Dave have the chance to say anything before they stomp out.