Elliot Allagash (18 page)

It was my first trip to Elliot’s house in nearly two weeks. I
wasn’t avoiding him, exactly. I just didn’t need his help as much as I had before. It was hard work, perpetuating the strange identity that Elliot had constructed for me, but I had a handle on it. And besides, I wouldn’t have to keep things up for much longer. There were only ninety-four days until college, where I would begin a new life as an anonymous freshman, free of my Glendale persona and all the pressure that came with it. As soon as I set foot on campus, I would put the past few years behind me and go back to being myself.

“Mr. Hendricks never said anything about the tutoring,” I said. “So that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about.”

Elliot ignored me.

“Steak tartare?” he said. “Clams Casino?”

I shook my head.

“James said you needed to tell me something? Something important?”

Elliot giggled.

The bags under his eyes had acquired a dark, bluish tint, and I could see the veins in his forehead, like strands of red thread.

“A new scheme,” he said.

I shook my head.

“I don’t have time.”

“Okay,” Elliot said.

I coughed, somewhat startled by his acquiescence.

“Okay,” I said. “Then I guess…I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

I grabbed my coat, buttoned up, and headed for the door.

“What was it?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“What was what?”

“The scheme?”

“Oh,” Elliot said. “Nothing big.”

“A school thing?”

“Nah,” he said. “Just something with Jessica.”

I stepped back inside.

“About…the tutoring thing?”

“No,” Elliot said. “Unrelated.”

He smirked.

“She’s yours,” he said. “If you want her.”

I swallowed.

“What do you mean?”

“I think you know what I mean.”

My heart was beating so fast, I felt like it might get dislocated. It was a sensation I hadn’t experienced since the eighth grade, when Elliot had first shown up and offered me the world.

“What would I have to do?”

Elliot grinned.

“You should know by now,” he said.
“Everything I say.”

• • •

I followed Elliot down the hall and into his creaky gated elevator. He jerked the hand crank and we lurched upstairs, to the very top floor of his ten-story home.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been up here,” I said.

“You haven’t.”

The gate swung open, revealing a long, narrow hallway. There
were no lamps, but the moon shone brightly through skylights in the ceiling. The walls were lined with dozens of portraits. Some of the paintings were so old, the surfaces had cracked. I could tell by the clothes each figure wore that the paintings were arranged chronologically. And their proud smirks gave away that they were Allagashes.

I walked over to the first portrait, of an ancient, scowling king with a jet-black beard. He held a sword in his right hand; in his left, a bushel of grapes. A small bronze plaque listed the date as 1254.

“Is this the first Allagash?” I asked.

Elliot shook his head.

“It’s fake,” he said.

“You mean, this isn’t a real portrait?”

“No,” Elliot said. “This isn’t a real person. None of these people existed.”

He led me down the hall, past Renaissance and Victorian Allagashes.

“Terry had them all commissioned a few months ago. To trick some visiting countess into doing God knows what.”

“Why did she care so much about his family?” I asked.

“Because she’s a woman,” Elliot said. “And women are easily confused. Jessica is no exception.”

It was strange to hear Elliot refer to Jessica as a “woman.” In my head, she was very much a girl. The only time I could remember using the word “woman” myself was in history class, when talking about the suffrage movement.

“Women’s minds are often muddled,” Elliot continued. “They think they’re attracted to honor, or talent, or lineage, when in fact they’re always attracted to the same thing: money.”

We had sat down on a mahogany bench across from an armored medieval Allagash. He was bleeding from a wound in his chest and waving some kind of flag.

“I don’t know, Elliot,” I said. “There have to be
some
girls—or, you know, women—who care about other things. Besides money.”

“Of course there are,” he said. “Women value all sorts of commodities: fame, knowledge, glory, manners, looks, power, skill. But these are the lesser currencies of the world—the rubles, francs, and shekels! They can all be purchased with hard American cash.”

He stared at me with an intensity that foretold a lengthy lecture.

“Women are on the same mental level as birds. They see shiny substances and they want them—but they’re incapable of understanding why. Some women, for example, think they like diamonds. But diamonds are just rocks! Women are actually attracted to the money those diamonds are worth.”

I thought, with some embarrassment, of my mom. My dad had given her a diamond necklace for one of her birthdays and her hands had shaken so much from the excitement that she needed help fastening the buckle.

“Women will refer to men as ‘sophisticated,’ or ‘intelligent’ or ‘confident,’” Elliot said. “But they mean ‘rich.’”

I thought about Lance. He was wealthy, but not as wealthy as some of the other guys in our class. Jessica liked Lance for other, more important reasons.

“What about being good at an instrument?” I said. “That’s not something you can just
buy
. You have to be born with it.”

Elliot smiled condescendingly.

“Ah,” he said. “Talent!”

He stood up and began to pace.

“Lance was able to buy a guitar, an amplifier, and enough lessons to become proficient. His talent couldn’t have cost his parents more than five thousand dollars. Think about the talent
I
could buy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lance is just a flash in the pan,” he said. “Your album’s going to be a critical and commercial sensation.”

“What album?”

Elliot reached into his pocket and handed me a disc.

“I had James compose the tracks last night,” he said. “It’s called
The Seymour Herson Project.”

“Elliot, I don’t even know any instruments!”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I had no choice but to cast you as an experimental genius.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“The album’s mostly sound effects. And spoken-word poetry.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “That sounds awful.”

“The lyrics are in French.”

“What?
Why?
”

“So no one can tell whether or not they’re profound. If anyone asks what they mean, by the way, you’re to say they’re ‘existential.’”

He shook his head.

“It’s pathetic we have to stoop to this,” he muttered. “In ancient Rome, the only people who played music were
slaves
—and emperors who had gone mad.”

“Elliot, I
really
don’t think this is going to work. I mean, who would want to listen to music like this?”

Elliot rolled his eyes.

“If Joe Kennedy could make his syphilitic son a bestselling author and then president of the United States, I think I can turn you into some avant-garde artist.”

I laid the disc down on the bench.

“I don’t think I want to do this,” I said. “It’s too much. The school stuff is fine…I’m going to be out of there soon. But this is the kind of thing that could really screw up my life.”

“Two things,” Elliot said. “One: It’s too late. I’ve already mass-mailed your demo to every trendsetter in Williamsburg.”

“Oh my God.”

“Two: It’s going to work.”

He opened the elevator gate and yanked me inside.

“Do you trust me?”

I didn’t respond.

“Seymour, everything I’ve ever done has been to your advantage.”

He leaned in so close that our faces were practically touching.

“Do you trust me or not?”

I nodded slightly.

“All right,” he said, catching his breath. “Okay.”

He jerked on the hand crank and the elevator went into motion.

“Going down.”

• • •

I hurried silently through my living room, narrowly avoiding eye contact with my parents. Then I locked my door, put on my headphones, and fearfully slid Elliot’s disc into my stereo.

I had known Elliot Allagash for more than four years. I was still as frightened of him as ever. But I liked to think I had grown used to him, that he had lost the ability to shock me. I liked to think I had already seen his madness at its worst.

I took a deep breath and pressed play.

The Seymour Herson Project
began with a lengthy stretch of ambient sound. About forty seconds in, a siren started wailing, accompanied by gunshots. These noises were interrupted by the sound of a child laughing and, for some reason, the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Eventually, a computerized voice took over, reciting a lightning fast monologue in French. The song, according to the track listing, was called “Rape.”

The demo was humiliating. But when I took off the headphones, I actually felt somewhat relieved. It didn’t matter how many demos Elliot sent out; there was no way music that ridiculous could find listeners. Jessica would never learn of its existence, Elliot would forget about the scheme, and life would go back to some semblance of normalcy.

By this point, I really should have known better.

• • •

“I heard your song on the radio,” Lance said. “It’s pretty cool, I guess.”

“He didn’t get that it was an allegory,” Jessica said.

“Yes I did,” Lance said, glaring at her. “I was about to say that’s what it was, before that critic guy jumped in.”

“Sure,”
Jessica said.

Lance clenched his jaw and shuffled out of the cafeteria.

“He didn’t get it,” Jessica said, smiling mischievously at me.

“But I did.”

She was wearing dangerously low-hanging sweatpants. I tried not to stare as she pulled up her waistband, barely concealing the grooves of her hip bones.

“The guy on the radio said the song was existential,” she said. “Is that true?”

There was a fairly long pause.

“Yes,” I said, finally.

Jessica pursed her lips and nodded, as if reflecting upon my response.

“Well I better go,” she said, rolling her eyes in Lance’s direction.

There was a Glendale lion stitched onto her upper thigh. And when she walked away, I noticed that the word
ROAR
was emblazoned on the seat of her pants, two letters per buttock.

It was probably a good time to call Elliot.

I took a deep breath, dialed him up and addressed him as calmly as I could.

“What the fuck is going on?” I said. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“Relax,” he said. “It’s just a college radio show! I bribed a local DJ.”

“Jessica and Lance
heard
it!”

“Of course they did. You took Lance’s regular slot.”

“This is insane! Jessica thinks I’m some kind of
artist
. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Elliot laughed.

“I don’t know, Casanova.
You’re
the one who ordered her. I’m just the delivery man.”

I sat down on a stoop.

“I guess James could give you some pointers,” he said, “if you’re really lost in that department.”

“I have to go.”

“Seymour, I must say! You sound less
exhilarated
than I would expect, given the circumstances. Isn’t this something you wanted?”

“Yes! But—it’s just happening a little
fast.”

“Fast? You’ve been chasing this nymphet for the better part of a decade. And now, just as she’s about to pay dividends, you’re ready to
sell?”

“That’s not it,” I said. “I just feel weird about this whole thing.”

Elliot sighed heavily.

“Terry and I flew to China five years ago,” he said, “because they were about to outlaw the consumption of monkey brains. We drove straight from the airstrip to the Manchu Imperial and ordered a king-size portion. But when they placed the giant,
screaming monkey in the center of the table and started to peel back his scalp, Terry lost his appetite. You haven’t lost your appetite, have you, Seymour? Because monkey brains are expensive.”

“I have to go,” I said.

“Seymour—”

“I have to
go
.”

I shut my phone and walked four laps around the block. What the hell was wrong with me? Elliot was absolutely right—I should be feeling ecstatic. But the only emotion I could identify was a vague and pressing dread.

For the first time in years, I found myself thinking about video games.

Before I met Elliot, I owned a game called Ninja Streets. The game followed the adventures of Mack, a mustachioed vigilante, as he made his way through a city that, for reasons unknown, had become positively
overrun
with ninjas. It wasn’t a challenging game. The ninjas always screamed as they approached, which took away any element of surprise. And they only attacked from the right side of the screen, so you never had to move. My strategy was to punch the air and wait for the ninjas to walk into my moving fist.

Ninja Streets was more an endurance test than anything else. The ninjas Mack faced weren’t talented; they were just numerous. Each level contained 128 ninjas. And if you stopped punching the air for even two seconds—to respond to one of your mother’s questions about dinner, say, or take off your sweatshirt—you were finished.

According to a chat room I frequented at the time, Ninja Streets had 256 levels. All the levels were identical, except for the last one. Apparently, if you somehow made it to level 256, the game broke down. No one in the chat room could tell me what this breakdown entailed, but everyone insisted it was real.

I often daydreamed about what it would be like to reach the end of Ninja Streets. (Would Mack run for mayor? Would he leave the city and move to a more reasonable community?) But I knew that victory was impossible. I had played the game every day for months and I had never even gotten to level 100 without losing focus. One day, though, I read an online post, and everything changed.