Rats Saw God (13 page)

• B
UY PIZZA-SIZED MUM WITH
“Steve and Wanda”
SPELLED IN GLUE AND GLITTER DOWN THE HANGING STREAMERS.

• S
IPHON GASOLINE TO “NOT QUITE ENOUGH TO GET HOME” LEVEL.

• G
ET HAIR “DONE.”

Soon I had the list pared down to the bare necessities.

• W
AKE UP
D
OUG AND GIVE HIM SHIT.

• L
IE TO ASTRONAUT.

• G
ET OFF WORK.

• A
VOID DANCE FLOOR.

• S
QUEEZE ZITS.

I figured I'd give Doug a reprieve and start with item two. I wrapped a bathrobe around me, depressed a bit by the olympic-ring-sized loops left after tying the belt. I padded downstairs. The astronaut sat in the stage-right chair. His feet were on the glass coffee table and the
Houston Chronicle
was on the rug beside the chair in neatly folded sections. On the screen, two Ivy League schools simulated a football game.
The astronaut was dressed in his Saturday play clothes: khaki slacks, black knit golf shirt, brown Top-Siders. He was, naturally, showered and dressed for the day. He didn't look surprised to see me, though he did glance at his watch.

“Are you planning to go to the game tonight?” the astronaut asked, and I don't think I'm mistaken in adding the adverb
hopefully.

“Which game?” I asked, genuinely confused. I pulled wet bangs out of my eyes.

“Grace and Memorial… your homecoming game,” the astronaut said before switching his attention back to the set. He began flipping through the channels that might be carrying meaningful contests.

“Oh, that's right,” I said, trying to sound interested. “I can't. I've got to work.” I walked over and occupied the other chair. I also kept my attention on the television. “Do you think I can borrow the Lincoln tonight? My car is making some funky noise.”

“If you could have waited until you got back to Texas, we could have found you something more reliable,” the astronaut said.

I knew I would be subjecting myself to this lecture, but I also figured that, while gloating, his mood would be such that he would relent enough to loan me his supertanker. We sat there for a few minutes, silently playing a patience game. Finally he instructed me to fill the Lincoln with gas before I brought it home. I thanked him, then counted to one hundred before excusing myself and leaving him alone in front of the television.

I spent the next hour in front of my bathroom mirror on a blackhead search and destroy mission. The assignment was treacherous. Squeeze one before it's properly aged and you end up with a pinball stuck just inside your cheek. Allow one to fester and you learn on a midnight trip to the men's room that your face resembles Pompeii. Concluding the job with a Q-Tip and alcohol rubdown, I skipped the standard intermission for the red pinchy marks on my face to return to uniform paleness, confident I would run into neither Winona Ryder nor Dub before I regained an unscourged look.

Next I rummaged through my closet, eventually emerging with a tweed, elbow-patched sports coat bought either before I had a say in clothing or under a mistaken impression that girls went for academics. I tried it on nevertheless. My forearms emerged like loaves of French bread from the sleeves—passable if I wanted to sing for a slightly bookish rockabilly band. Sighing, I examined my assembled footwear: one size nine purple Chuck Taylor, one green size ten (Doug had a pair just like it), my Docs, and a stiff pair of Mom-purchased Hush Puppies. I heard the phone ring but decided to let the astronaut answer it. The only person I could imagine calling me was comatose. Moving from shoes to shirts, I perused the three-item collection of long-sleeved pin-striped dress shirts. All had been bought predivorce. The astronaut and I didn't go malling together very often. Just then, the old man barked.

“Steve,” he shouted as if addressing a private. He made my name seem shorter than its lone syllable.

“I'll get it up here,” I yelled back. I picked up the body of
the phone in my left hand and held the receiver to my mouth with my right still posing in the mirror.

“So what are you going to wear?” It was my sister, the psychic.

“How'd you know?” I began, though it was a stupid question.

“I just got off the phone with her. You really shocked her last night. She didn't think you would ever come around. Not a very romantic way to—”

“Wait a minute,” I said. There had been a considerable delay between the time the phone rang and the time I was told to pick it up. “You didn't tell the astronaut about the dance, did you?”

“No, but what's wrong with telling him? It would make his whole month. He probably thinks you're gay.”

I thought about that for a second.
The Astronaut and His Gay Son
—I liked the sound of it. If I could get my hands on some blatantly deviant skin mags,
Bone Homme
or something like that, leave them poorly hidden around the house, I just might earn that disinheritance.

“Let him fret. I'm not sure introducing him to Dub would change his mind, anyway.”

“Okay, back to the original question: What are you going to wear?”

“I've got some ideas, nothing definite,” I said semitruthfully. This was Sarah's cue. She instructed me to get a pen and paper and proceeded to tell me exactly what to buy and at which stores.

“Where are all these places?” I asked.

“In the mall… where you work… where
everything
is in Clear Lake… where Grace returns to spawn….”

“Oh.” I had only entered Clear Lake Mall through the outdoor access of the Cineplex. “Is this your idea or did Dub tell you to call me? Is she afraid I might show up in a loincloth?”

“What
were
you considering wearing?” Sarah asked, a bit peeved. I scrutinized my Hanes and tweed ensemble in the mirror.

“It doesn't matter. I'll go shopping.”

After receiving some final accessorizing tips as well as a mini-dating/etiquette lesson, I clicked the phone's flash button and got a new dial tone. This would be the one part of the morning I would enjoy. After seven rings, Doug answered.

“Stewart Copeland residence,” he exhaled into the phone.

I could hear the irregular thwacking of a novice drummer coming from behind him. “Mornin', Sunshine,” I intoned. “You hanging a bit?”

“This is not a joke. I will pay you one million dollars to terminate my brother. Let me repeat, just so you don't misunderstand: This
is
solicitation for murder. You will receive payment in small bills, some coins, and pool cleaning equipment when I see the body.”

I answered in a Marlon-Brando-as-Godfather-marbles-in-cheeks accent. “I will do this for you, but one day I will ask from you a favor.”

I could almost hear him smile. “Tell me everything I did
last night. Was I charming? Amusing? Did I puke on anyone?”

“Oh, it was a night of love for we young GODs,” I began. “I watched our nicknamed comrades Zipper and Veg play footsie right in front of me. My spurned lady threw herself at wee Matt. Oh, yeah, and I asked Dub to the homecoming dance.”

I sat at my desk, sorting through the day's bounty of letters from schools entreating recently recognized swami Steven Richard York to grace their “campi.” (Had I mentioned my middle name reflects the astronaut's endorsement of a certain president who had resigned?) I separated them according to their proximity to the Pacific Ocean. Any school more than fifty miles away from a beach was tossed. I held on to the Harvard application on a lark.

“Steve?” Sarah tapped on my door.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

I hadn't received many visitors in my chambers, but I gave my sister permission to enter. Reflexively I scanned the room for drug paraphernalia, soiled underwear, stray condoms. (This was a completely gratuitous search, but I'm sure I'm not the only eighteen-year-old who can't help himself.) Sarah sat on my made bed, her only option save the floor and the chair I was sitting in.

“Mother is insane.”

It wasn't a claim I necessarily agreed with, but I thought I should concur. We were in new territory here. Historically, we
had only discussed my assorted neuroses. Sarah had never come to me with her problems. Hell, I never thought she had any. “She has moments of temporary insanity. She usually gets over it.”

“I'm going to go see Pearl Jam whether she lets me or not.” I didn't believe this for a second. Sarah bent down and began thumbing through my collegiate discard pile. “You're trashing Columbia… Cornell… ?”

“Anything that begins with
C,
” I said quickly.

“Dartmouth?”

“I don't own a winter coat. Have you been to New Hampshire in January?”

“Will you talk to Mom for me?”

“She's pretty pissed—mainly about what you said to Chuck. You were pretty hard on him.”

“Remind me to tell you a story about Chuck someday. I don't really care what Chuck thinks is proper. Besides, on the short list of those who shouldn't talk about being hard on people…”

I think she was referring to me.

“I'll talk to Mom.”

“Thanks, Bro.” She walked to the door but turned before leaving. “I'm sorry for dragging you into the battle the other night. You seem like you're doing a lot better lately.”

I left home at four o'clock dressed in my ridiculous work uniform, made a show of saying good-bye to the old man still camped in front of the television, then wished I hadn't. My
acknowledgment of his presence was an anomaly that I hoped wouldn't give me away. I had surreptitiously phoned Dub from my bedroom an hour earlier. Our call had included zero frivolity. Watches were synchronized, plans drawn. No observer would have accused us of flirting. Honestly, I was relieved she remembered we were going out.

I zoomed to Doug's, not out of anxiety, but because I was unable to master the Lincoln's innate horsepower. Grazing the accelerator with my toe created a g force I felt certain was mussing up my exhaustively styled hair. The Lincoln seemed ideal for an important date. Given the vastness of the interior, however, witch doctors sacrificing chickens in the backseat would have gone unnoticed.

I was greeted at the Chappell residence by Doug's good-natured mother, Frieda. She told me Doug was upstairs practicing. I could already hear him drumming, but the way she said “practicing” made it sound like he would be auditioning for the Met the following week. I found Doug on his trap set wearing headphones. On his bedstand I counted four empty packets of Alka-Seltzer. He stopped when he saw me. He put down his sticks and took off his headphones.

“I'll say this for you, Lippy, you go to the dance dressed like that, and you've got more balls than me.”

I had to leave my house early to convince the astronaut I was heading to work, but even with a shopping trip to break up the monotony, the five-hour intermission prior to picking up Dub was excruciatingly slow in passing. Doug found a copy of
This Is Spinal Tap
in the debris winning the battle for the closet doorway. He slipped it into the VCR in his room. We both had the dialogue memorized, but my fidgeting and pacing kept us from enjoying it
one more time. After my eleventh pilgrimage to the window to check on the Lincoln, Doug paused the movie with the remote control, got off his bed, and staggered into the bathroom he shared with Stan. He motioned me to follow. There he lifted the top off the commode and withdrew a dripping Red Stripe. He held it away from his body with his thumb and index finger, not quite ready, himself, for the hair of the dog.

“Take this and calm down. Be a man.”

I drank a pair, and by the time I got dressed, I was sufficiently composed. I had stashed my new dress clothes, all $211 worth, at Doug's place. I needed five attempts to get my $40—Sarah had insisted on silk—tie from obscuring my crotch or exposing my belly à la
Carpet Salesman's Quarterly,
but upon successful completion, I confess to feeling a bit splashy.