Extreme Elvin (6 page)

Frank booted to the front. The bus driver groaned. “Every time, with these dances, there’s always one of ya can’t get enough. No public displays, man, or I gotta report ya. You got one minute.” And he threw the door open.

I watched—everybody on the bus watched, in fact—as Frank had a brief, intense powwow with June. The chiefs of our respective tribes. Conferring. Consulting.

Cracking up.

They broke, and Franko came bounding back onto the bus. We were rolling again. I had a bad feeling—ah, welcome home, old bad feeling—as Frank came my way staring and grinning. I looked back out the window where Sally was waving broadly and bravely, just like in a war movie.

I turned as Frank deliberately took the seat
across
the aisle from me.

“What?” I asked when he refused to say anything.

“Come on, Frank,” Mikie said. “Cough it up. Don’t torture the poor guy.”

“Okay, Elvin. I think you need to add an extra C.”

“Huh?”

“To your list. Clothes, charisma, and creeping crud. Man, all this time you been holding hands with a girl who’s got scabies.”

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

That’s what I said inside.

This is what I said outside.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

Everybody shoved to the back and the front of the bus, sitting five to a bench to stay away from me.

Except my Mike.

I
KIND OF THOUGHT
her hands were too rough and scaly. Damn. Damn. Shoulda listened to myself.

But who knew? How should I know anyway? I mean where’s my frame of reference? I just figured girls’ hands were supposed to be scaly.

“Yes, Mother, I had a
swell
time at the dance, despite your sabotage.”

“Don’t say swell to me, Mr. Bishop.”

“Okay, I had a... smutty time.”

“Well, that’s a start anyway. Meet any nice girls?”

I shifted in my seat. That hurt. I shifted back the other way.

“So, we’re back to that again,” she said, pointing at the seat of my chair.

The last thing I wanted at this moment, sitting at the kitchen table in the bosom of my family...

“Why do you do that, Elvin? There are only the two of us here, and you’re always calling it the bosom of your family. Like it’s some kind of misty philosophical dream family you have, and not me.”

“Well I
tried
telling people how much I like coming home to the bosom of my mother, but the guys at school started to make... remarks.”

She thought about that. “I could see where they would, yes.”

Anyhoo. I just wanted to chill out, which I could do in my still-sweaty fine duds, with a quick quart of Haagen-Dazs in my lap, and she had to bring up my old affliction, which seems to jump out magically when anybody mentions it, like a lion through a flaming hoop.

A flaming, flaming, vicious red crackling flaming hoop.

“And what’s with the gloves?” she pressed.

See, she drinks herbal tea, while I eat ice cream. That’s why she’s the way she is. How can you reason with such a person?

“I’m cold, okay.”

She sipped. “I see. You’re cold. That’s why you’re sitting on one cheek, in wet clothes, with a carton of ice cream in your lap, with my white gloves on.”

There aren’t a million and a half responses to a question like that.

“You got it, sister,” I said.

The sister reference made me flinch. Whole new dimension to that now. Can’t call the mother sister anymore. Tough enough to get used to dancing with the sisters.

“I think it’s a great idea that you have a sister school,” she said.

Just can’t let it go, can ya lady.

She waited. I wasn’t giving.

“Oh please. Come on, Elvin. Don’t make me beg. I can tell by the way you’ve been slithering around that something happened. It’s a girl, right? Isn’t it a girl? Oh Lester, he’s gotten himself a girl. I can come join you now. I can let go....”

You remember Lester, my dead father?

“Ya, wiseguy?” I said, standing to tower over her ominously. “You think this is funny? You want to go join Lester? I’ll give you something to join Lester about.”

Ya? So? I hate it when I do this. I can’t shock this woman. And even if I do, she’d probably just top me, send me scurrying to my room red-faced, covering my ears and humming “If I Could Talk to the Animals” real loud.

No more. I was a man now. Time for a wake-up call for the old lady.

I pointed a white-gloved finger at her. “She gave me a sexually transmitted venereal disease, how do you like that?”

Where the hell...? I was already humming and covering my ears when I realized the words had come out of
me.

Right off the chair. I’m not kidding. She fell right off the chair.

“Get back up in the chair, Ma. I want to do that again.”

It wasn’t a real fall or anything, just something she does when she wants to express big-time dramatic surprise. When I grew my mustache, she fell on the floor. She couldn’t actually
see
the mustache, but she took my word for it and bang she went.

I liked the way that felt. Manly.

The second thing she does, when it really is serious, is she goes to the phone and calls Mikie’s mother to see if I’m lying.

See, there she goes now.

“What?” I said, just like I always say. “You don’t believe your own son? You have to ask some strangers about me?”

She went on dialing as if I wasn’t there. Mikie, the rat, is incapable of lying, and the whole world counts on that.

“What’s the big deal, anyway?” I asked, kicking back again with my ice cream, with my dogs right up on the table now.

Sex makes a guy this way. It’s all true.

“I
thought
you’d be proud of me,” I said, sounding very disappointed in her.

“... And please, call me as soon as you get in, okay? I’m getting nowhere over here.”

“Try Frankie’s house now, why don’tcha,” I said. Boldness like you read about. Fear, virility, satisfaction, achievement, stabbing rectal pain, all combining to cause wild personality disorder. I was losing it more by the minute. Thrilling, actually.

It was Ma’s turn to do some sharp finger-pointing. “Ya, Frankie. Don’t think this whole situation doesn’t reek of
that
walking gland.”

What I wouldn’t give, to be known as the walking gland...

The phone rang.

“Now you’ll see,” I said. “And I want it known that Frankie had nothing to do with this. I contracted my VD all on my own, no help from anybody.”

She picked up. “Ya ya. Ya ya ya ya. No! Yes? Oh my god. Disgusting. No, he’s proud. Well what else
can
I do? I’m going to boil him, of course.”

She glared at me.

Gulp.

She hung up and marched toward me. “That is
not
a venereal disease, Bishop.”

“Hey, now, calling me by my last name, now
that’s
depersonalizing.”

“This is no joke, Elvin. I want you to take this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously. This is a high-prestige disease I got here. I’m the first one in my class to catch something from a girl. Come on, Ma. Let’s go out to dinner.”

“No. Take off those gloves and show me your hands.”

I leaned back in my chair, tossed the ice cream carton onto the table, and tucked my gloved hands up under my armpits. “I see,” I said coolly. “Jealous?”

She gritted her teeth, and started counting to ten out loud. But it was all for show. My ma has no temper at all.

“Come on, lady, you can’t go on living your life through me. You are going to have to get on with your own existence. You can keep all the framed pictures of me, keep my swing set up in the yard if you need to, play the tapes I made you... but really, it’s empty-nest time for you, babe. You can’t compete with other girls for me anymore...”

“That’s it,” she said, miming the act of washing her hands, then shaking them to dry. “It’s therapy for you, little boy. And I’m not changing my mind this time.”

My cool flew right out the window. Even the VD didn’t make me braver. It’s not that I don’t think, maybe, there might be some
stuff
in my head that should be looked at. I just don’t want to look at it, thanks. I bolted from the chair, ran up the stairs, and barricaded myself into my room.

Just like every time she mentions the T word. When she finally does decide to get me repaired, they’re going to have to send a SWAT team of shrinks to come in and get me out.

“Is she really going to do it?” Mikie asked, very concerned. “’Cause
I’d pay
to sit in on that.” Okay, maybe not
very
concerned.

But I should explain the mystery of Mikie. You may think, What does Mikie get out of this relationship, in exchange for wisdom, understanding, support and all that other ultracool stuff he does for me?

Well, I provide laughs. You have to admit that.

But there’s something more. It’s like the old “What do you give the person who has everything?”

Needy. I provide needy. Honest, it’s like the thing I can do better than anyone, and that Mike can’t do at all. So he gets that from me. I can feel it, that when I am in need there is something almost happy that happens to him. And when I’m not... well that situation is rare enough that I suspect neither of us knows quite how to act.

So really he doesn’t worry when Ma starts talking about shrinking my head. He knows that’s where he comes in.

“Every time I start getting manly,” I said, “she threatens to call in the mental health authorities.”

We were headed for CVS. I had a note in my pocket for some kind of scabies ointment the doctor turned her on to over the phone.

“Does it itch?” Mike asked.

I thought about it. The way you do when you figure you’re supposed to be feeling some kind of sensation but you’re not, so you try to drum it up. I even scratched the back of my hand a couple of times.

“No, actually. But I’m hoping to soon enough. By the time Monday comes, everybody’ll have forgotten my triumph if I don’t have the evidence.”

“Triumph,” he repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “El, maybe you don’t want to keep fighting the therapy idea... most people would see scabies as a kind of negative experience.”

“Scoff if you will.”

“I will.”

We walked a couple blocks silently before he picked it up again.

“Do you know what scabies even are?”

“Of course I do. You’re not the only guy in the world who knows anything, Mike. Sheesh.”

He waited. The rat always knows when I’m bluffing.

“Ya?” he prompted.

“It’s... like an allergy. Makes your hands itch. Hives, like.”

“Bugs,
like,” he said.

“Get outta town, ya ghoul.”

“I’m serious, Elvin. Scabies are disgusting creepy little insects that burrow under your skin and lay eggs there. Then their babies are born—inside you—and the babies dig all kinds of tunnels under there for like weeks and weeks.”

I was stopped right there on the sidewalk. My hands were straight out from my sides to keep them away from the healthier parts of me. “Oh my god,” I gasped. “It sounded so cute. Scabies. Scabies. Come here, little scabies. Hey wanna pet my scabie?”

“Ya, really cute. And it’s the most infectious thing in the world, and it can go on forever spreading from one part of your body to another if you don’t get it wiped out properly. Now for the big question.”

It took him an hour and a half to ask me the big question.

“Elvin, in the time since you spent time with this girl... have your hands been socializing with any other parts of your body?”

I did not dignify that question with a verbal response.

Not for several seconds anyway.

“Oh my god!” Nononononononononononononono-noooo! It’s so unfair. It’s never even been out anyplace. Noooooo!”

“Oh Jesus Elvin don’t start that. Crying isn’t going to help.”

“I am not crying,” I insisted as I started jogging, trotting, running, in the direction of CVS.

He caught up. “No? If you’re not crying what are those running down your face?”

“Bugs,
probably,” I answered, speeding up.

Mikie caught up quickly, grabbed me and stopped me.

And took my hand.

He grabbed hold of my pus-filled, insect-riddled, corroding hand and pulled me to a stop.

“What are you, nuts? Is this going to be one of those suicide pacts where you want to decay along with me?”

“You don’t got scabies, man,” he said sadly.

“What? I do so. See, I knew this was going to happen. Everybody’s going to wake up and say it was all a dream. No foxy girl held fat Bishop’s hand. Well no way—”

“She didn’t have scabies. She had psoriasis.”

I stared at him dubiously.

“June told Frankie. It was just a joke.”

It was just a joke.

It was just a joke.

“It was a sucky joke, Mike.”

He sighed. “It was, El.”

I went back to walking. “What part did you like best?” I asked, steaming. “The part where I thought the girl liked me? Was that the best part, Mike? Or was it the part where I was ready to peel my own skin off when I realized what I had?”

I did not remember ever scolding Mike before, ever. It was weird, like I was getting angry at a part of myself—like I was one of those people who injure themselves on purpose.

“Never mind,” I said. “Forget it anyway.”

“Well,” he said, “no, we shouldn’t probably. You might, y’know, maybe have a point.”

No, really, I did not want this. I was so off-balance, hearing Mike stumble and apologize. I’d rather be wrong. I’d rather have him back the way he was. I
needed
him back the way he usually was.

Oh. Just like he needed me?

“She really did like you, El,” he said, reading my thoughts for the hundred millionth time. “The joke was bad, but I think really, she did like you anyway. You were doing great at the dance. Better than I ever would have thought...” His voice trailed down and away there.

“And we don’t need to go to CVS anymore,” I said, staring at the CVS dead ahead.

“Yes we do,” he said, looking me up and down as we walked.

Which caused me to look myself up and down as we walked. I was now traveling with a nearly completely sideways gait. Like a football drill where the coach makes everybody follow his hand like dummies, left right back left right, cut this way, cut back.