King Dork (22 page)

probably don’t have to mention that everybody has to wear

the tiny George Michael shorts while this is all going on. It’s your basic nightmare.

While the boys are doing boxing, the girls are over on the other side of the lanai doing Rape Prevention, but they’ll always come over to watch if there’s an interesting matchup, making the whole thing even more embarrassing. There’s

this pretense, never verbalized without a snicker, that they 163

have boxing to “teach you how to defend yourself.” But in reality, it’s just a way for a certain type of guy to be able to beat up on a certain other type of guy during class time as well as before and after school.

They’re required to stop the festivities at “first blood” (I kid you not, that’s the phrase they use). So your best strategy is to try to get hit in the nose and start bleeding as soon as you can and thus spare yourself the rest of the state-mandated beating. Sure, the PE teacher will then lead the

class in a rousing chant of “pussy, pussy, pussy” at you, but they’re always saying that. Beats getting beat.

Sam Hellerman’s special boxing talent was that he got

nosebleeds all the time. He was so good at it that he could pretty much start bleeding at will, through the power of his mind. Mr. Donnelly would put him in the ring and roar: “I’m warning you, Hellerman! If you start bleeding before you’re hit, there will be hell to pay!” But little Sam Hellerman would just stand there with an angelic look, bleeding away. Mr.

Donnelly would glower and yell and turn twenty-three

shades of red, but he couldn’t touch Sam Hellerman because that would probably have been good for about three or four million dollars, by a conservative estimate. Sam Hellerman’s dad is a lawyer, as he makes sure to inform every PE teacher on the first day of class.

The best part, though, is when he leaves the ring to go to the nurse’s office and tries to get as much of his blood on as many PE goons and their stuff as he can. I’ll say it again: that Sam Hellerman is a genius.

Cutting class wasn’t so smart, really, as we’d pay for it

later. But sometimes you need a mental health day.

I settled into my side of the booth and looked at Sam

Hellerman expectantly. He was cagey, and only seemed to

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want to talk about trivial matters rather than this big important thing about which he had called the meeting. Finally, I just came out and said, “What’s the story, Hellerman?”

Now, you have to understand: my day-to-day life was

kind of weird at that time. I was constantly in this frantic, anxious state, all wound up. I was doing the ear thing more often than not, and I was hardly sleeping at all. I was spending most of my time thinking furiously about real or imagined mysteries, many of which, I suspected, could well have no solution. I spent a couple of hours every night working on the
Catcher
code when I was supposed to be doing homework. It would always end in failure, and with my throwing some object across the room in frustration.

Meanwhile, I was having no better luck with the CEH

reading list.
Brighton Rock
was beyond doubt the best book I had ever read, but I sure didn’t know what to make of
The
Journal of Albion Moonlight.
I spent a lot of time “reading” it, but I never seemed to get anywhere. I couldn’t tell you what it was about or what happened in it if my life depended on it. It’s like this thing was written by a crazy person. Even the printing was crazy, sometimes tiny, sometimes huge, and sometimes the

sentences and even the words themselves were all out of order.

There was almost half a page with nothing but the word

“look!” repeated over and over again. I don’t know anything about the guy, but whoever he was, I hope he got help.

I was also struggling with the songs for the new band (the Nancy Wheelers, me on guitar, Sam Hellerman on bass and

Ouija board, first album:
Margaret? It’s God. Please Shut Up.
) I could never get the songs to come out how I wanted. I’d have a great idea for this brilliant tune where the lyrics and the melody and the sounds and the arrangement would all complement each other and resolve into a perfect three-minute encapsulation of a true experience that would play with the 165

listeners’ emotions while simultaneously crushing their skulls.

I would start speculating about how it was only a matter of time before they awarded me the Nobel Prize for Rock and

Roll, once word of it got round to Sweden. But then I’d actually try to play it or write down the lyrics and it would totally suck.

Finally, there was the Fiona Deal. Fiona seemed more

and more distant. I’d spent quite a bit of time riding my bike around various neighborhoods and school areas, scanning all the girls for any who looked even vaguely Fiona-esque. I got nowhere. Eventually, I just dropped it.

I still thought about “giving her the time,” of course. But she
had
faded into the background, almost to the point where she was more or less equivalent to all the other imaginary girls whose images I used as masturbatory props. She was as distant as a movie star. Fiona Schmiona. Maybe she

went to OMH, maybe she had known who I was, maybe she

had been a real fake drama mod, maybe not. Maybe every-

thing she had said was a lie. Maybe I had imagined her. Or maybe she was madly in love with me, and was wandering

the earth pining away but could never reveal herself because the Illuminati had kidnapped her parents and had sworn to

kill them and detonate a nuclear device they had hidden at Disneyland if she ever made herself known. She was doing it for the children. All of these scenarios were equally plausible.

And I have to say I was starting to think I didn’t really care too much anymore. That was my attitude.

In view of this, I was floored by what Sam Hellerman

said when he finally got to the point.

“I found Fiona.”

I dropped my coffee cup.

* * *

“She gave you a phony name,” said Sam Hellerman, once

I had regained my (devil-head) composure and he had

stopped laughing—for which I couldn’t blame him: I hadn’t

planned it that way, but the momentary failure of my cup-

holding abilities had asserted itself with near-perfect comedic timing.

“Her real name is Deanna,” he continued. “And she’s a lit-

tle weird.”

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a large red

book, which turned out to be last year’s yearbook from

Immaculate Heart Academy in Salthaven Vista. He opened it

to a folded-over page and pointed to a black-and-white picture. There she was: Deanna Schumacher. As I was silently

kicking myself for not having considered the Catholic school option as a possible Fiona habitat, he told me what he knew.

Deanna Schumacher was the girlfriend of this guy named

Dave, who
was
a CHS fake mod. She had probably made out with me to make him jealous, which was something she was

known for doing. She was not a fake mod herself, but rather a generic Catholic schoolgirl, though she was in drama at

IHA-SV. She was a little bit psycho and was always doing

head trips on her friends and boyfriend. Oh yeah, and by the way: this Dave guy was looking for me and wanted to kick

my ass.

She was no longer even in the area. She had moved to

Miami with her family just the week before, when her father had suddenly and mysteriously been transferred.

“Miami,” I said dubiously. “Florida.”

“Or near there,” said Sam Hellerman.

I looked at the black-and-white yearbook photo of a

dark-haired girl with glasses. She did look a little psycho. The glasses looked about right, though they weren’t exactly the 167

same—but people can have different glasses, of course, from year to year. All things considered, she looked quite a bit like the Fiona I remembered, though I don’t know if I’d have recognized her if she hadn’t been pointed out. My memory of

Fiona was idealized and faulty, shaped by the fake fake mod costume and my own fantasies, as I had to acknowledge. In a Catholic schoolgirl uniform she wouldn’t, in a sense, have been the same girl. I felt as though I would have been able to pick her belly out of a lineup and to identify what Sam

Hellerman would have called her left boobie by touch alone, but maybe not. Girls all have the same parts, basically, and so much of how they look depends on the attitude, expecta-tions, and obsessions of those who are looking at them.

The moving away to Florida part sounded very fake, of

course. Maybe Sam Hellerman was just trying to help me “let go” with a little white lie that removed all doubt about her lack of availability. And I appreciated it, I guess. Fiona wasn’t real. Whatever. Like I could keep track of all the imaginary girls in my life.

But, see, the truth is, I couldn’t quite let go of the idea of Fiona even now that I knew she was fake. Even fake Fiona

had a hold on me. I kind of lied about how it was all pure imaginary sex, and how I had stopped daydreaming about a

Sex Alliance Against Society with her, even though she was now even more imaginary than she had been before Sam

Hellerman showed me the IHA-SV yearbook.

I didn’t believe that Miami story for one second, of

course. That was just Sam Hellerman trying to be clever and stage-manage my pain, like he does from time to time. He’s a born facilitator.

She still lived in Salthaven or Salthaven Vista and went to 168

Immaculate Heart Academy, Slut Heaven. Of course she did.

Except her name was Deanna now instead of Fiona.

Okay. Could there be a future for Deanna Schumacher

and me? Well, no. But was it worth continuing to obsess over her anyway? Why the hell not? You know, I could track her

down and she would fall for me and break up with her boy-

friend and we could go away together. Deanna Schumacher

and me, I mean, not me and the boyfriend. And maybe she

could even dress up as Fiona for me from time to time. When you think about it, it wouldn’t be too different from how

grown-up wives dress up in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms for their husbands, except in Deanna Schumacher’s case she’d be in her Catholic schoolgirl uniform to begin with and would have to take it off in order to put on the Fiona costume and then put it on again when we were done pleasing each other.

Or maybe I could just develop the school uniform fetish myself, so she wouldn’t even have to do the fake Fiona thing. I’m sure she’d appreciate that, with her busy schedule and so

forth. And you know, once I articulated that thought, I was pretty sure I already
had
started to develop the school uniform fetish. This was promising.

I M B EC I LE!

Knowing her true identity and where she went to school put the whole Fiona Deal, which had now become the Deanna

Schumacher Deal, in a new light. Instead of blindly obsessing and trying to spot her at random, I now knew where to start looking, and it felt like waking up in a new and better world.

Sam Hellerman had said I could keep the IHA-SV yearbook—

one of his CHS friends had stolen it from an older sister who 169

went there, and didn’t care too much about getting it back.

I made a note of the name, Wendee Foot, etched in gold lettering on the cover, just in case I needed to contact her for further information. The messages this girl’s friends had

scribbled in it were pretty hilarious, and that was diverting for at least a while, but other than the photo Sam Hellerman had pointed out, I couldn’t find any information on Deanna

Schumacher in the yearbook. She wasn’t on any teams or in

any clubs, not even drama, as Sam Hellerman had indicated.

Well, she could have joined this year, I supposed. She didn’t even appear to have been in the group class picture—at least, I didn’t recognize her if she was.

Once I was back home, just to see, I looked up

“Schumacher” in the phone book. No listing. Well, that

would have been too easy. I clipped out the little black-and-white photo and put it on my desk, trying to decide if it

would be too sad to start carrying it in my wallet. I know, I suck. But you have to give me a break. It was all I had.

I spent the Saturday after the Linda’s Pancakes on

Broadway meeting staring at Deanna Schumacher’s photo,

moping, and playing the guitar. The next day was Halloween, and I spent that day doing pretty much the same thing.

When it began to get dark, I broke down and dialed up

Sam Hellerman, but he was out. Maybe he was at another

CHS party and hadn’t invited me this time because he didn’t want to risk another Fiona-Deanna fiasco? In fact, I didn’t actually believe that Sam Hellerman had gone to a Halloween

party, though it was funny to speculate on what kind of

goofy-ass costume he would have worn. A month before, I’d

have said it was weird that Sam Hellerman hadn’t been

home, that he was always at home when he wasn’t here, but

170

now I just didn’t know. At this point it was weird no matter where Sam Hellerman was.

Amanda was out trick-or-treating with her friends. It was

a transitional time for her, the last year when trick-or-treating was appropriate, and the first year when all the girls switched from being cats or pumpkins to dressing up as hookers or

French maids or slutty celebrities. Little Big Tom had been freaked out by her hoochie mama costume. “Everyone’s a ho

for Halloween!” she had shouted, and then she had stormed

out, slamming the door. Now, that, I thought, is one hell of a song title. I was looking forward to eavesdropping on the

family discussion where LBT tried to explain how her

Halloween costume was all about disrespect for women and

Vietnam, but I knew I would have to wait.

I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I retreated to my room and turned the TV on. Channel two was playing