Bullettime (7 page)

D
ave isn’t surprised to find himself bleeding again. He is prepared even, and seals shut the pen-made wound in his belly with his handy tube of Krazy Glue. Dave had never even seen the kid in school before, but he had heard that he was somebody’s cousin or something, from Newark, where the shit that happened was always a lot fucking heavier than in Jersey City.

“Shit shit shit shit shit,” he seethes through cable-tight teeth. He pinches the flab—Dave was a skinny kid with a paunch, the worst of both worlds—with his blood-smeared left hand and applied the glue with the right, then held the wound shut. He doesn’t need stitches—he wouldn’t
get
stitches anyway. Half a roll of toilet paper is just enough blotter for his injury, his hands, the streaks and drips around the bowl, and the walls of the far stall in the second floor boy’s room, all of which he’d managed to get pretty sticky when he ran in here, book bag and windbreaker flying. The toilet is jammed tight with crumpled red and purple toilet tissue; they float like a mass of abstract origami flowers.

Dave sits still as he can, breathing through his mouth—the floor smells like piss and Ajax—and waits for the glue to set. A comically oversized cock and balls, fireworks shooting forth from the tip, decorates the stall door. “Well,” Dave says to himself, “fuck.”

Outside the stall, a pair of boots, black with thick and useless buckles on the side, march up to and stop before the door. The dusty leather of a trench coat drags behind them. Dave cringes.

“Hail!” says a voice, half-strangled between adolescence and the deep baritone of adult blowhards, on the other side of the door.

“
Occupado
, Tigger,” Dave says.

“I know that,” Oleg says. “Why would I greet an empty bathroom stall?”

“Because you’re crazy? I dunno. Look, I don’t want to talk right now.”

“I couldn’t help but notice a suspicious-looking trail of blood leading right to the door here—”

“Yeah yeah, I know, listen, I’m fine—”

Oleg wasn’t the sort to allow himself to be interrupted; in fact Dave knew he was just the sort of asshole who’d simply start over again even if his question had already been answered, and he did: “I couldn’t help but notice a suspicious-looking trail of blood leading right to the door here—” Dave sighs, but lets him finish, “and I was wondering if you might be in need of any assistance.”

“I said I was fine, didn’t I?” Dave says.

“Indeed you did, but I have evidence that you’re not actually fine.”

The glue sets. Dave reaches up, shifts the bolt of the little lock, and gingerly pushes open the door. Oleg grins widely, like he had just turned to the centrefold in some porno mag. Dave wishes he could kick high enough to knock the fedora off Oleg’s mop of frazzled hair.

“So, you think you can help?” Dave says, nasty like his mother. That edge in the voice.

“Actually,” Oleg says, punching each syllable—ack chew ah lee—like the word was new to him, “I believe that I can.” He snaps the rim of his trench coat and squats to meet Dave’s glassy eyes. “I think it’s past time we taught some of the dirtbags in this school a lesson.”

Dave laughs and laughs. “Oh gawd. What are you going to do? Teach me to kill people with mind bullets?”

Oleg folds his arms over his chest and scowls, trying to look intimidating in his long coat, but he barely manages rumpled. “I’m not the one bleeding,” he says. “Maybe I have resources you lack.”

Dave brings the glue stick to his nose and inhales deeply, then mocks: “Maybe I have resources you lack,” he says, his chin against his collarbone, his voice an octave deeper than usual. Dave props himself up with his elbow and the rim of the toilet, winces, and falls again. Oleg reaches down to help Dave to his feet.

“Thank you, Tigger,” Oleg says.

“Thank you, Tigger,” Dave repeats.

The door to the boy’s room bangs open and the whooping and howling begins. “Hey, they’re in the stall together!” Lee announces to nobody, his smile wide like a horse’s. “Suckin’ cock, no doubt.” Dave steps out of the stall and stands next to Oleg, his mouth a scribbled line. “Damn, you’re bleeding again, guy,” Lee tells him.

Dave walks up to Lee, beelining for the door, almost hoping for a standoff, but Lee steps out of the way and raises his hands. “Uh oh, AIDS blood comin’ through,” he says as Dave strides tall into the hallway. The door closes, Dave’s knees buckle, his hands move to his wound, and around the corner comes Vice Principal Fusco. In the muffled distance, Oleg squeals, “Hey quit it!” and Lee laughs. The fedora rolls on its sharp edge out of the bathroom and into the hall. For a moment, all is a blur.

“. . . and this time, I was just,” Dave says, “poked.”

“Poked?” Fusco is a small mountain behind his overburdened desk. Dave doesn’t know many men with beards, he realizes. Fusco’s white whiskers suggest Santa Claus and the precision of some laser-guided razor available only via late-night TV infomercials at the same time. “With what?”

“A shiv.”

“What do you mean, ‘a shiv’?” Fusco’s hands are up, his fingers twitching around the word.

“A pen.”

Fusco takes a note: “A penknife.”

“No, just a pen.”

“Just a pen. First you bit your tongue, then you were stabbed—”

“Poked.”

“—with a pen.”

“Yes.”

Fusco says, “It’s not been a very good year for you so far, Mr. Holbrook, has it?”

Dave shrugs.

“Who is—” Fusco glances down at some notes, “‘Tigger’?” The hands shoot up again. Dave swallows a chuckle and winces from the glued stitch in his side.

“Oleg Broukian.”

“Is Tigger some sort of gang name?”

Dave can’t help but laugh at that, but shudders from the pain. “Heh, no. He calls himself Tigger because the wonderful thing about tiggers is that he’s the only one.”

“What on Earth is that supposed to mean, Mr. Holbrook?” Fusco asks, a volcano rumbling.

“Honestly, I have no idea. But I’ve met, like, three Tiggers online, and they all say that they’re the only one.”

“So,” Fusco says, “you spend a lot of time ‘surfing the web,’ do you?” His fingers go up and the conversation descends into hell. Parents are called, and in my old home Ann sleeps through fifty-seven rings. She always hated answering machines. Oleg’s folks actually show up, looking like fire plugs that had eaten other fire plugs, and hustle their son away. His hair waved in strands on the breeze as he was pushed by meaty shoulders and clasping hands into a grey beater Volvo. Nurse Alvarez comes and frowns at the Krazy Glue holding together the slice of skin on Dave’s stomach, while Fusco in the other room harrumphs at the district attorney over the phone.

“He should go to the hospital,” the nurse tells Fusco.

“I’m not going,” Dave says.

“Yes you are.”

“No he’s not,” Fusco calls out from the interior of his office. “We can’t send him anywhere without parental permission.” He walks out and looks at Alvarez. “Except home. Which we will—” he turns as if he had been practicing with a mirror in the other room “—for one week. You’re suspended, Mr. Holbrook.”

Dave starts, then winces again. Alvarez puts a hand on his shoulder. Tamed, Dave asks as calmly as he can (though his hands are clenched into fists; he hopes the stance will pass as pain and not rage). “Why am I being suspended? What did I do? What about the guy who stabbed me?”

Fusco raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said you were poked.”

“Either way, I’m the victim,” Dave says, teeth clenched.

“You’re a victim in one sense,” Fusco says, “but not in every sense. We have rules, insurance liability, standards of behaviour. Plus, we don’t know who attacked you. ‘Italian-looking African-American’ . . . I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean—” here went the fingers again, “—‘someone’s cousin,’ doesn’t really cut it. We do know, however, that you brought contraband, the Krazy Glue, which might be an inhalant, into the school, and then used it inappropriately.”

Alvarez rises from her crooked posture and says, “Damnit, just take the week off. It’s a vacation. I can use a week’s vacation too.”

“I left a message with your parents. Three, in fact. When do they come home?”

Dave stands. “My mother’s probably already home. Do I get a police escort or an ambulance ride too?”

“If you can’t walk, I’ll drive you home, Holbrook.”

Dave can walk. Dave walks out of the main office, down two flights of wide marbled steps and into the early autumn afternoon. The street is bare of the usual bustle of classmates that accompany lunch or dismissal. Dave almost feels like a real live human being for a moment, the sort of person who can go into a store and buy something, or look at a tree and appreciate it as he strolls by. Then like a breeze Erin appears beside him, takes the crook of his arm in hand, and without saying a thing leads him away from school, away from home, and down Newark Ave. Under their feet a Conrail train pulling a dozen tanker cars rumbles past and sends pigeons flying by the swarm.

E
ven back in the days of swilling cough medicine, I’d tell myself that at least I wasn’t going to end up being one of those guys who peaked in high school. That’s probably why the version of Dave I found most interesting was the one who did just that. His life was like watching a glacier melt. He was also one of the only ones who kept in contact with Ann instead of running, screaming, away from her. Actually, he still lived with her, in Bergen County. Jeremy died of an early heart attack, thanks to a congenital condition. Nothing so melodramatic as an insane alcoholic wife and a failure of a son took him down.

I never got used to my mother. She changed. When I was a kid, she was a dreamy drunk. A murmurer and forgetter. But something had turned, even before Dad’s death. The wine in her had fermented into a sour vinegar. And she couldn’t take care of herself, so I had to take her in. I’d stay out late after work, and she’d shriek at me till the neighbours called the police. Or I could come right home after work, but that would just mean a slower boil and an earlier climax. I tended to split the difference, rolling in around eight.

I liked the video store near my home. It had parking in the back—I always imagined it was for porno fans who didn’t know how to use the Internet—and the employees were always happy to see me. They were contractually obligated to smile and make conversation. Not like those Starbucks bitches, who marched us customers through the line like we were prisoners being deloused.

I wasn’t the sort of person so desperate for human attention that I flirted with every female retail employee I encounter.
Hey, Mindy! Heh heh, yeah, you have a nametag. I guess we’re on a first-name basis. . . .
Mindy really was very into movies. She kept good ones in reserve for me. Netflix can’t do that. Not nearly as well, anyway. She was a mousy girl. Mid-20s. No college for her because her folks were poor and she was unenthusiastic in school. Small boobs, like someone who used to be an athlete. Good smile, okay teeth. Doable, but . . .

I was sure she had a similar summary of me—chubby guy with glasses. Jewish nose. Works for the state. Doesn’t know how to make a machine spit out a winning lottery ticket. Lives with his mother, but only because she’s crazy, or so he says. Not doable.

Thus my but.

“Dave!” Mindy was excited to see me. I always tense when people call my name in public. After all these years, I still worry that someone will overhear my name, then follow me around and shout it at me. But the store was empty save for Mindy and a pair of teens looking over the videogames, and me. She reached under the counter and produced a DVD. “This is the one. Wong kar-wai’s
2046
.”

“Sci-fi?”

“Uhm . . . kinda.” Mindy got quiet. She didn’t want to be known as the type of girl who watches sci-fi films. “I mean, there are different timelines and stuff. There’s a sci-fi story wrapped up in the other stuff. And it’s non-chronological.”

“Hmm, sounds good.” I picked up the DVD case and made a show of considering it. I really just wanted to ask Mindy to come home with me and watch it on my couch. But my mother would be on the couch, silently stewing. “Is this subtitled?” Subtitles put my mother to sleep, which is half the reason why I became a cinephile.

“Yeah, of course,” Mindy said.

“So,” I said, “not a good movie to have on while making out on the couch, right?”

Mindy blushed. “Well . . .” Then her face changed. “Don’t you live with your mother? Ha ha, you’d better not be making out on the couch, right?”

“Yeah, right.” If only the whole world and everyone in it would die, right now. A gigantic solar flare would be sufficient. My own spine was already boiling. “Can’t have that. Uhm, I’ll take it. But I want to look around first too.”

“Sure, okay,” Mindy said. “I’ll be here.”

I’ll be here
. What did that mean? It was flirty, certainly. Now I had to find another DVD, and one that would impress Mindy. Not another foreign film though—that would be too obvious. Indie, but not too recent. Anything with Parker Posey in it was disqualified. Then I found it—
Ghost Dog
. Masculine, yet thoughtful. Everyone with half a brain loves Jarmusch. And it was filmed in Jersey City, so I had another conversational gambit in hand when I got back to checkout.

“You like this movie, eh?” Mindy said.

“Sure, don’t you?”

She tapped the screen with a fingernail. She kept them long, but they weren’t ridiculously so, and she didn’t paint her nails. Just feminine enough. I liked that. “You’ve rented it three times. We have used copies if you want to own it.”

“Nah, that’s all right. So . . .”

“Hmm?”

“Well?”

“Hmm-hmm?” She raised an eyebrow and smiled at me.

“Do you like
Ghost Dog
?”

“I’m more of a
Night on Earth
girl,” she said.

“Winona Ryder!”

Mindy said, “And those Helsinki guys.”

We’d run out of steam so I blurted out, “Part of why I like
Ghost Dog
is because it was shot in Jersey City. I grew up there.”

“Cool.”