One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy (22 page)

“Yes,” Bruegel answered with a grin.

A woman who smelled like fermented old wine held the aluminum door open for them as they entered. Hieronymus gave her a coin.

“They call me Mad Meg! Mad Meg! Can you say it?” she cried at the both of them as they entered.

“Mad Meg!” said Bruegel cheerfully as he also gave her some money. “I can say it better than you can! Mad Meg! Mad Meg!”

O’Looney’s itself lacked the usual presence of neon lights. Instead, light bulbs cast their bland gray light here, as they always had. Hieronymus thought of the strange amusement park at LEM Zone One. It too, like O’Looney’s, was a land of light bulbs. Here, several hung by their wires from the ceiling, a system of illumination considered quaint and very old fashioned.

When the boys entered the café section of the shop, they noticed no one was sitting at the counter, where Chahz O’Looney, the proprietor, stood sorting through some utensils. He looked up and acknowledged the arrival of his two young customers and immediately began preparing their usual—a mug of fedderkoppen for Hieronymus, and a bottle of zag-zag for Bruegel. The boys paid, then went over to the section just in front of the grocery aisles where some ancient vinyl booths were set up. They had to be careful where they sat, because often a drunken customer could be found sleeping in one. The last time they visited O’Looney’s, Bruegel almost sat in a puddle of vomit that had been left behind by an anonymous, inebriated patron. Chahz O’Looney shrugged his shoulders when Bruegel told him, in his pseudo linguistic way,
Excuse me, Mr. O’Looney, but one of your perpendiculatrix consumertedders has decided to blofigate upon your trixelliphon!
The proprietor was used to Bruegel’s pretentious way of talking, and when he peered over at the mess, only said something to the effect of
best to let it dry— I’ll brush of the fakes later.

The walls were painted a muddy yellow, and whenever one glanced at the groceries, only alcoholic beverages and junk food could be seen on the shelves. Hieronymus never told his father he frequented this place—O’Looney’s was a thoroughly depressing experience on so many different levels that he knew his father would be worried as to why his sixteen-year-old son chose a place where old alcoholic men and woman loitered with change in their hands, trying to decide if they had enough pennies for the vilest pint of factory vodmoonka…

A hummingbird, trapped inside, circled one of the hanging lighbulbs.

“Listen,” Hieronymous began as Bruegel sat in front of him. “I might be in a lot of trouble.”

Bruegel’s grin got wider.

“With that girl?”

“Yes, well, sort of.”

“Hieronymus, I would be very disappointed in you if you were not worried about being in trouble after walking away with that incredibly hot-looking young foxentrotter…”

Hieronymus looked around for a couple of seconds. What was good about O’Looney’s was the simple fact it was discreet. “I let that girl take my goggles off. She saw my eye color.”

Bruegel drew a complete blank. As if he was waiting to hear something interesting.

“And?” he finally asked.

“And? Is that all you can say?”

Bruegel was already distracted by other things in the shop. Like the fact that O’Looney’s had a special sale on completely generic brands of beer.

“Look at that!” he exclaimed. “Generic beer! Isn’t that funny? Plain cans with just the word Beer on their white labels! My mother would love that! She always told me about generic beer brands like that when she lived in Collinsberg. It’s so funny! I don’t know why it’s funny, but it just is! Hey look, Hieronymus! Just next to the beer—they have cans of dog food! Same cans! Totally same labels! Except one says Beer and the other says Dog FooD! Isn’t that hilarious! What, is there some kind of factory where they get the same cans for everything and some guy just shovels dog food into one can and pours beer into the other? Hey, O’Looney! Mr. O’Looney! Where does this B
EER
and this D
OG
F
OOD
come from! THEY ARE BOTH THE SAME CANS? ARE THEY FROM THE SAME FACTORY?”

Hieronymous sighed.

“You want to quiet down?” shouted Chahz O’Looney. “I’ll toss you out of here!”

Bruegel rushed over and picked up one can of beer with one hand, and a can of dog food with the other.

“LOOK! Same can! What kind of factory do these come from? Is it just a big white building with the word Factory written on the side?”

O’Looney usually tolerated Bruegel because the boy never stole and he always purchased a lot of beer for himself and his mother, but sometimes, whenever he got excessively loud and excited over the most mundane things, even he had to get tossed out—which is exactly what Chahz O’Looney was about to do.

There was another rude interruption.

An old man stumbled into O’Looney’s. He was from the group outside. He shuffled past Hieronymus and then nearly bumped into Bruegel, who was still holding the identical cans. The newcomer walked three more steps into the beer aisle and picked up a forty-ounce bottle of yellow ale. He walked in an almost lopsided way to the counter.

“Chop-chop on the blundering pig-pie fock!” he sang out loud.

“And I see a pig-pie sucking on a tarstick!” remarked Bruegel just as loud.

Two elderly men standing by the counter got excited when they saw the fellow with the forty-ounce bottle approach, and at once, began to call him names and shout at him. Apparently, there was some unfinished business among these old hobos as several filthy red hands grabbed the beer bottle. Insults and curses were violently expressed, and all three started fighting as the bottle fell to the hard linoleum floor, shattering and splashing the malty-smelling fermentation in every direction. The fight grew. Hieronymus had never seen old men go at it like this before. Chahz O’Looney himself was a little surprised at the confagration before him, and it wasn’t until the third forty-ounce bottle was smashed over one of the gentlemen’s heads that he began the tiresome effort to throw them out. O’Looney’s dog, a large creature with matted dirty gray hair and bad breath, was already barking at the noisy customers.

“Get out of here before I call the police!” O’Looney wrestled with one of the boozers, who was himself caught in a biting death grip with one of the others. “Out! Out, you old bastards, and never come back!” Expelling the violent, geriatric hoodlums was proving a difficult and excruciating task.

Staring at this circus of clashing fists and mumbled screams and shattered bottles, Bruegel, who had stood in the exact same spot holding the two cans, calmly put down his generic products, casually walked over to the three fighting men, and in one seamless gesture, disengaged them from one another and tossed them out the front door as if they were three old piles of soggy newspapers. He hardly noticed that all three men landed hard on their faces, injuring themselves. He then walked back and sat down opposite Hieronymus, picking up where their conversation had broken of, behaving as if he had never interrupted himself in the first place.

“So, what were you telling me again? That girl took your goggles off, or something like that?”

Hieronymus realized what a complete waste of time it was to explain any of these details to Bruegel. Anytime he tried to explain what lunarcroptic ocular symbolanosis was, or why he had to wear the goggles, or why he was restricted to a lifetime on the Moon, all of these things were met with a friendly, blank indifference. Bruegel could not follow the complicated explanation, and even if he could, something would enter his field of vision and completely distract him. As far as he was concerned, there was no reason at all why Hieronymus wore goggles. And that was that.

But Hieronymus was not there to discuss LOS with his friend from the Loopie class. He needed a distinct favor.

“Listen. You have your driver’s license, don’t you?”

“Indeed I do.”

“How about borrowing your mother’s car and driving me out to LEM Zone One tonight.”

“LEM Zone One? What are you talking about? You were just there last night.”

“That is true. And I need to go back.”

“I’m assuming this has to do with the girl we all saw you walking of with. What, she comes from around there? Is she a LEM Zonian foxentrotter?”

“She’s from Earth.”

Bruegel’s eyebrows fexed upward so high on his forehead that, for a brief moment, Hieronymus thought that his large friend’s skull had imploded.

“Earth?”

“That’s what I said.”

“An Earth girl, same age as us, was just wandering around LEM Zone One?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it.”

“Well, what happened? Did you and her do any kind of pleasure particulars of the rumdangle oxmolitrex?”

“Stop throwing your fake words at me. I don’t fall for that.”

“Did you touch her with your lips?”

Hieronymus sighed.

“If you mean did we kiss, yes.”

“Did you make out with her? Tongues?”

“Bruegel, you know I hate questions like that.”

“Sorry. I forgot how uptight you are.”

“I’m not uptight. What are you talking about?”

“Clellen told everybody that you were uptight.”

“Clellen? What does Clellen have to do with any of this?”

“Clellen told everyone in class that you were the most uptight guy she ever made out with.”

“She’s a liar. I never made out with her.”

“That’s not what she says. She said that you were a good kisser but a lousy maker-outer.”

“I think Clellen is a little confused—about a lot of things.”

“So you never kissed her?”

“I kissed her, but I never made out with her.”

“Well, what’s the difference?”

“Big difference, you stupid idiot.
Just kissing
is when you do
just
that. Kissing. And just a few times. Under ten minutes. Making out is rolling around in addition to kissing. It’s pretty straight-forward.”

“Clellen said you made out with her for hours at Maggie-Mag’s party last month, and I know others who saw the both of you going at it and…”

“Oh, so what, Breugel, who cares! Everyone was drunk on Zhengo at that party…”

“Clellen’s pretty hot.”

“She is, but I think she’s totally insane.”

“Well, she might be insane, but I would sniff Jessker’s silver box for a month just to get my tongue between her teeth! I’ve tried a hundred times to make out with her, but she always pushes me away as if I’m some kind of a Racker-Stang! But you’ve had her, man! You made out with her and everybody knows it!”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about her. Are you going to drive me out to LEM Zone One tonight?”

“Who am I, your chaufeur? Your foot valet? Your Crinx-Balfour? You are assuming my mother is not driving her car tonight…”

“Your mother never uses that car. You told me that.”

“Sometimes she does.”

“Well, let’s buy her a case of beer and she’ll have no reason to go anywhere tonight, and you just take the keys and of we go.”

“You know, I should dislocate your jaw from your face for just saying such a thing.”

“Stop it. Just agree. We are going out to LEM Zone One.”

Bruegel stared straight ahead.

“This girl from Earth. What is her name?”

“Windows Falling On Sparrows.”

“How does that work? Is ’Windows’ her first name, ’Falling On’ her middle name, and ’Sparrows’ her last name?”

“No. The whole sentence is her first name. I have no idea what her last name is.”

“When a woman looks like that, I guess it doesn’t matter what the Crack her name is. Does she have a friend or a sister? I’m not into this if there’s no foxentrotter action for me. You can just zag out on the train all by yourself if you think I’m going to be the towel-holding man while you get your tongue all knotted up in that Earthling whirlpool juice.”

Jesus and Pixie!
fumed Hieronymus.
He is such a damned stupid crater-head!

“Something tells me,” continued Bruegel after taking a long and noisy gulp of zag-zag. “that you have no way of getting in touch with this young toaster from the Motherworld, yes?”

“All I have with her is a rendezvous point. At the Ferris wheel. In the amusement park. Eight o’clock. But something happened last night that I might be in a lot of trouble for, so I can’t call her hotel.”

“Well, have a good time. I’m not driving you. I hate LEM Zone One. And I am not going if there is not an additional set of overies for me to match up with my set of…”

“Okay! Stop! Listen. How’s this? Let’s give Clellen a call. You said that you like Clellen, right? Let’s invite her along. We get to LEM Zone One, I’ll meet the girl from Earth, and then we just pair of, and you see if you can get something happening with Clellen, okay?

Bruegel listened to this proposal, which Hieronymus thought was pretty damn clever, and after a quick contemplative moment, burst out laughing.

“Clellen! Oh, once again we return to Clellen! Hieronymus, I appreciate your ofer to set me up with the Queen of Gel-Fantastique, but I have it on very good authority—actually, from Clellen herself—that she will be unavailable tonight!”