Turtleface and Beyond (13 page)

“Don't go home,” said Wendy. She put her arm around me in an awkward, proprietary way.

“I've got to get going,” said Mort.

I tried to object, but Wendy kissed him goodbye on the cheek and together we watched his hulking figure stroll away.

*   *   *

Several months down the road things cooled off considerably between Wendy and me. We still saw each other from time to time but that initial spark had fizzled. This was okay by both of us, I believe. Wendy began taking up with some director fellow whom I considered a first-rate douchebag, but I couldn't really complain. He wore an ascot sometimes though, and this really drove me nuts. Who does that?

Anyway, I also found a new gal, a spunky editor's assistant named Priscilla, and we started going out occasionally. Priscilla liked to drink after work so sometimes we'd end up in these strange midtown bars getting sauced until one of us invited the other one home. She was straight out of a librarian fantasy, this Priscilla. She wore glasses and everything, but was really quite sexy when she cut loose. She had no breasts, just little nubs, but she loved to have those nubs played with, even in public. One time I had my hand down her shirt in this midtown cocktail bar when I saw Mort staring at me from across the room. I yanked my hand out and, with nothing better to do, waved it sheepishly to him. He nodded and frowned at us.

“Let's go,” I said to Priscilla. “Let's get out of here.”

“Okay,” she said.

She got up to go to the bathroom first and I gathered my stuff. Suddenly I felt a heavy paw of a hand slap down on my shoulder. I spun around and found Mort glaring at me, bleary-eyed and drunk.

“You little skunk,” he said to me.

“We broke up,” I said. “Wendy and I broke up. She likes someone else now.”

Mort was weaving a little bit. I could smell his liquor breath waft over me.

“You skunk,” he said.

“She's going out with a director,” I said, hoping that would somehow help.

“He's a prick,” said Mort. “That kid's a bigger jackass than you, even.”

“You're right,” I said. “Wendy deserves better.”

“She does,” said Mort. He placed his hand on my shoulder again, this time in a slightly friendly way.

“I want you to do me a favor,” he said. “Get that prick away from her.”

“I can't do that.”

“I know,” said Mort, shaking his head. “I know.”

Priscilla came back from the bathroom and I introduced her to Mort. He held her hand for a long time after he shook it and smiled down at her. I thought he might try to kiss her.

Instead he said, “You take care of this guy.” And then he slapped me on the back and stumbled away.

“Who was that?” asked Priscilla.

“He won the Heisman Trophy,” I said.

We went back to her place and for some reason I kept drinking. I poured several stiff drinks into myself, which isn't my usual practice, and soon I was too drunk to perform any kind of sexual function. I kept passing out on top of Priscilla and then insisting I could go on. She was unimpressed and asked me to leave.

I stumbled outside and wandered downtown. At first I had no direction, but then I found myself heading toward Wendy's place. It was about twenty-five blocks south and I walked the whole way, weaving around the sidewalk like an ass. Wendy lived in a fourth-floor walk-up and I waited on the stoop until someone came out of the building and opened the front door for me. Then I charged up the stairs and pushed on her apartment door. It was unlocked. Inside I found Wendy in bed with that ascot-wearing director. They were lying there together naked with candles burning around them.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked me.

The director stood up with a sheet wrapped around him and got between us. It was a protective gesture, though I could tell he wasn't ready to fight.

I had only a vague plan at this point and the director was messing it up, standing between us like that. I was going to get down on my knees and tell Wendy how great she was and how she could do better than those pretentious plays and even though Mort was kind of gruff I knew he loved her. I really knew that. But that director dipshit was there and in the way. So I stepped forward and poked his skinny chest with my finger.

“You,” I said, “don't deserve her.”

“Well,” he said, letting out a pompous chuckle.

“Where's your ascot, dickface?” I said.

“Get out of here,” Wendy said to me. “Please.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I want you to know I came here at Mort's request.”

“What?”

“I did this for Mort.”

With that I took a roundhouse swing at the director fellow, but he ducked and I fell to the floor.

To his credit, he didn't kick me or hit me then. He could have done that and been justified. Instead he just said, “I think you should leave now.”

Which I did. I turned around and stormed out the door and proceeded to trip headfirst down the stairs so that I cut my forehead on the railing and had to yell back up to them, “It's okay! Don't worry! I'm fine! I'm okay.”

My forehead was bleeding, but it wasn't so bad. Sometimes it feels good to cut yourself and bleed a little, so long as it isn't too serious. At least that's the way I felt about it just then. I got to the bottom of the stairs and yelled back up there before I left.

“I did it for Mort!” I yelled to them.

I yelled over and over again. I kept yelling it louder and louder because I was afraid she couldn't hear me.

 

THE LSD AND THE BABY

 

I fell in with an older fellow named Richard who lived with his elderly aunt and manufactured high-grade LSD in her basement. Richard was forty-five and preferred to hang around with people half his age. I was twenty-four and worked as a hotel clerk on the night shift, from 11:00 p.m. until 7:00 in the morning. It was an inexpensive hotel and sometimes couples came in and rented a room for the night but only stayed a few hours. Richard would occasionally bring his dates back there and convince me to allow them into one of the unused rooms without any charge. It was a risky thing for me to do and I told him it made me uncomfortable.

“I'll make it up to you,” he said to me. “I've got a plan.”

He didn't explain to me what this plan was until one Saturday morning when he showed up at my apartment, waking me up.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“Today is the day,” he told me.

“The day for what?”

“My plan has come to fruition.”

Richard's plan was that we would drive out to the state forest and sample a batch of LSD he had recently completed. Together we would enjoy the sunny day and expand our minds underneath the big trees.

“I don't know about that,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I just went to bed a few hours ago. I'm still sleeping.”

“You're not sleeping,” said Richard. “You're standing up.”

“I'm tired,” I said.

“We'll get you some coffee. Come on, it's a beautiful day. I told you I had something planned for us. I want to show my appreciation.”

He was making me feel guilty for not allowing him to pay back the favors I'd done him. It was a good ploy.

“All right,” I said. “Let me get dressed.”

“Excellent,” said Richard, rubbing his hands together. “I'll be outside.”

I put on some clothes and when I walked out to Richard's car I saw that there was a plump young woman named Sabrina sitting in the front passenger seat.

“Hey, Georgie,” she said to me.

“Hi, Sabrina,” I said.

I'd only met Sabrina a few times before, once at a friend's house where she'd been sleeping on the floor, and another time at a barbeque where she had danced too close to the fire and her long skirt went up in flames. It had taken her a while to notice the fire and several people tackled her to the ground and smothered the burning skirt, averting a more serious incident.

“Is she coming with us?” I asked Richard.

“Sure,” said Richard, “if that's all right.”

“It's fine,” I said, and I got into the backseat of the car.

Sabrina looked back at me and smiled. She was an earthy sort of girl, with long, unkempt hair, large eyes, and a silver ring through her left nostril. Her breasts spilled out the sides of her thin cotton shirt.

Richard stopped at the gas station to get me some coffee and before he handed the cup to me he said, “You want sugar in it?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

He dropped a sugar cube in there anyway. As I drank the coffee I watched Richard pop another sugar cube into his mouth and then Sabrina stuck out her tongue and he placed one there also. There was LSD in those cubes.

At the edge of town we pulled up to a low-slung brick house with an overgrown lawn and Sabrina said, “I'll be right back.”

She trotted inside the house, leaving me and Richard alone.

“Is this where she lives?” I asked him.

“Her grandmother lives here,” said Richard.

He tapped his fingers on the wheel of his car and stared out at the weeds in the lawn. Richard was a good-looking man, for his age. He had a full head of hair and a set of light blue eyes that girls inevitably commented upon. I often thought those eyes were his downfall. They allowed him to succeed in a world most of his peers had long ago abandoned.

There was country music playing on the car radio.

“You want to hear different music?” Richard asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “Something better.”

Richard changed the station and then Sabrina walked out carrying a half-dressed infant on her hip.

“What's that?” I asked.

“It's her son,” said Richard. “She has a son.”

“A baby?”

Richard said, “Don't sweat it, Georgie,” and Sabrina got into the car.

“His name is Aiden,” she told us.

He was wearing only a diaper and a felt hat. His chest was wet with drool. A baby! Sabrina sat him on her lap and we sped away from the town, out toward the state forest.

“Are we dropping that kid off somewhere?” I asked. “Is he coming with us?”

“Yes,” said Sabrina.

“Yes, what?”

“He's coming with us,” said Richard.

The boy fell asleep on Sabrina's lap, lulled into complacency by the vibrations of the car. Richard had been right about the day. The weather was beautiful. The coffee he'd bought for me tasted like rusty tin, and Sabrina and her child cast an uncertain hue on things, but there was no denying the splendor of the sun and the sky that morning. When we reached the state forest Richard pulled onto a dirt road and drove along until it got too rough to proceed.

“We'll park it here,” he said.

As soon as the engine stopped the baby woke up. Sabrina stepped out and nursed him while sitting on a stump. I watched this happen and began to feel Richard's LSD take effect. Things moved by in stuttering frames and my tongue grew larger in my mouth. I wasn't sure if I could be around that kid any longer. He had a somewhat mashed-in face and his eyes were bulbous and glassy, like a frog's.

Richard stretched out his arms and said, “Ah, yessiree.”

I thought of a medical question. I asked Sabrina, “Is that baby going to get high from your milk? Is the acid going to get passed through you?”

“No, I doubt it,” she said.

“It's pure, no additives,” said Richard, as if that explained everything. He took off his shirt and said, “Let's take a walk.”

Sabrina hoisted her son onto her hip and joined Richard along the path, one milky breast still hanging out of her shirt. I followed them into the woods.

“These trees are incredible!” shouted Richard. “Look at them! Look!”

Sabrina nodded her head and we walked for nearly a mile before coming to a small creek. There was steam rising from the surface of one of the pools.

“This is it,” said Richard. “Hot springs.”

He removed all of his clothes and slipped into the water with a relaxed sigh. Sabrina set her son down on a patch of moss and did the same thing. I felt a little awkward then and paced about in a circle, gazing up at the trees.

“Get in, Georgie,” said Richard. “It's rejuvenating.”

The baby kept making these grunting noises. I said to Sabrina, “I think your baby shit his pants.”

Sabrina emerged from the creek like a sea creature, water running in tiny rivers down her belly and over her fuzzy legs.

“Oh, Aiden,” she said.

She removed his diaper, rolled it up, and tossed it into the woods. Then she washed him off in the creek and put him back down on the moss. She rejoined Richard in their hot pool and the baby began sticking bits of moss in his mouth.

“Is it okay if he eats that?” I asked.

“Relax,” said Richard. “Get in the water.”

So finally I got undressed as well and entered the creek. It was only lukewarm, not hot, but it did feel good. Our presence there had stirred up the brown algae that grew on the rocks below, so the water was murky. Richard began to rub Sabrina's shoulders and she shut her eyes, leaning against him.

“I think I'm going to shave my head,” she told us.

“Don't do that,” said Richard.

I tried to picture Sabrina with a shaved head and couldn't quite do it. She'd look like an alien, or some enlarged version of that curious infant crawling around in the moss. Several minutes passed in uncomfortable silence and then Sabrina said, “I've got to pee.”

For a moment I thought she was just telling us this and was now going to relieve herself in our pool, but then she hopped out and went off to find a spot in the woods. Richard and I watched her dimpled ass bounce away.

“You want me to leave you two alone?” I asked him.

“No. No, of course not,” he said to me.