Futureproof (4 page)

“What does Richard have to do with any of this?! No matter what
Victor
puts us through”—I'm raging now—“it is somehow always better than anything Richard ever did. Victor is a goddamned angel compared to Richard. I never saw Richard beat the shit out of you. But I do distinctly remember Victor trying to strangle you when you were eight months pregnant with Aaron. Do you remember that, Ma? I do. I was nine years old.”

She is silent.

“How do you think that felt to me? How do you think it felt to Jonas?”

“I know, Luke, I know.” She's really bawling now. She always gets all snotty when she cries. “But I couldn't be alone again. Can't you understand that?”

 

Victor drops my mother off at the Pizza Hut in his p.o.s. Cadillac. It's like twenty years old and looks like every other ghetto hooptie: dented fenders and rust spots all over it, torn headliner. Victor likes owning it because he can tell people he has a Cadillac.

My mouth and left eye begin throbbing again. Dave stands beside me decked out in his full skinhead regalia. I
want
Victor to start something so Dave'll kill him. Dave wants an excuse, he says.

My mom steps from the Cadillac and Victor accelerates out of the parking lot, cutting the wheel hard right so the tires will screech. Mom runs over. Her mascara is smeared. She puts her arms around me and I return the hug limply.

“I love you, Luke,” she says, pulling back, her arms on my shoulders, looking me in the eye.

I turn to Dave, introduce them. Mom tries to wipe her eyes without creating a bigger mess.

“Listen, man,” Dave says, “are you sure you want to do this? Going back to live with that guy?”

“I have to. It's my mom, man.”

Dave extends his tattooed hand. “You have my number. You call me if you need anything, OK?”

“Thanks, man.”

As I walk to the car, my mother's arm around my waist, I feel the dread of return. Starting over again. A dog chasing its tail.

Dave watches us pull out of the parking lot, his arms folded, confident. He knows where he's going.

Back at the house, I slip into the half bath. My left eye is almost completely closed, my mouth and nose black and blue.

I jerk off into the toilet.

April

It's at
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
where the girl of my dreams is literally dropped into my lap. I'm watching the movie for the fifty thousandth time when this big dude, Jaeger (named after the shitty liquor whose t-shirt he wears religiously), places her right on top of me, legs on one arm, head on the other, her ass squarely nestled against my crotch.

Her name is Michelle. She sports a close-cropped pixie haircut and wears ten-hole Doc Martens with black-and-white-striped socks that come up to her knees.

“Do I know you?” I ask, attempting nonchalance.

“No,” she says, sizing me up, “but I've been admiring you all night.”

“Really?” I try not to sound surprised.

“Is that OK?”

She makes great eye contact, brims with self-confidence.

“You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,” I offer, finally. Real smooth. Understated.

She looks away, puts her hand to her mouth, flutters her eyelashes. “Oh, you charmer! You want to sit with me and hold hands?”

We don't talk for the next hour and a half. And for the first time ever the movie ends too soon. As the theater empties for the requisite post-
Rocky
trip to Waffle House, she hands me a blue slip of paper, carefully folded over twice.

“Call me tomorrow, OK?”

“OK. Yes. I mean, of course. Yes. Of course I will.” I don't know where to put my hands.

As she turns to leave I stop her.

“Hey, Michelle?” She turns back to me, expectant-like. “Why were you admiring me? I mean, I know that's a weird question, but what was it about me that you liked?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's because you were only here to meet me. A forlorn lover without anyone to love.”

She blows me a kiss and disappears into the lobby.

I see her every Friday and Saturday night at
Rocky
. By our third weekend we've moved from hand-holds to full-blown making out, though I still can't muster a hand under the bra.

And then I know what I want. I'm not afraid. Michelle is the missing piece. She fills in the shallow spots and the empty areas, levels out the playing field of me.

“I feel like I'm falling in love with you,” I say.

She readjusts in her seat, pulls away. “You're falling in love with me?”

“You
know
me, Michelle. I mean, I told you about my childhood bedwetting problem, not to mention the recurrence of said affliction in ninth grade, for God's sake.”

“I'm just not used to guys putting labels on relationships. It's
like they're afraid of not having a convenient way out. Maybe I've learned to feel that way, too.”

“I didn't mean to push. Or label you.”

She pauses. She looks at me. I love how she looks at me.

“But you're different, Luke,” she says, finally. Yes! I'm
different
! “You're like this raw nerve of passion and naivete and that's what attracted me to you in the first place.”

Her eyes are the best eyes God ever crafted. There is a softness in them, a genuineness that unfolds around me like velvet.

“I want to be your girlfriend, Luke. I want to love you…”

“But…” I continue her sentence for her.

“No but.”

She is smiling now. “I just don't ever want to cause you any pain.”

“There won't ever be pain between us, Michelle. I love you too much to ever be mad at you.”

She kisses me, slow and deep. I melt again.

 

The next week goes by in slow motion. Tabitha is screwing 8-Ball now, her worst asshole to date. Yeah, he seemed all right at first but now has proven himself to be a total jerkoff. He harasses the hapless waitresses at Waffle House and expects everyone to laugh with him for doing it. Most of them do. And Tab spends her every free moment with him. She skips school to be with him, and we haven't spoken more than a couple of sentences in weeks.

All I have to tide me over until my next Michelle fix is my mother's wine stash and a new smoking habit I picked up with some guys from drama. We hotbox a couple Marlboros in the bathroom until the cherry is an inch long, then make for the theater, running down the hill whooping, our heads floating on a nicotine buzz.

 

On Friday night Michelle and I decide to skip
Rocky
and meet at Squirrelly's party. Squirrelly's apartment can only be accurately described as squalor. The carpet is stained with wax from long-dead candles, cigarette burns everywhere. Even the walls are dirty, handprints visible around every doorknob. Full-page photographs from magazines are taped to the kitchen cabinets, the walls, the sliding glass door.

Squirrelly, yelling into the phone something about hers being the
last
apartment on the left, you dumbass, not the first, hands me a pipe and encourages me through charades to take a hit. I get higher than hell this time and then stumble around the living room, laughing at dumb shit.

This guy Flick shows up with a rum-punch concoction. He hands me a plastic cup and splashes some in, saying, “Take it easy with this. It's harder than it tastes. It'll kill you so fast you won't even know you're dead.” And that's how Flick convinces everybody to drink his World Famous brew. It's his calling card.

Squirrelly asks me for a kiss.

I laugh at the suggestion, more stoned than truly objecting, and drink, drink some more. Half a mouthful of punch escapes the cup, dribbles down my chin. Nobody notices.

“I'm serious,” she laughs back. “You're the only guy in this room I've never made out with.”

“Or girl, for that matter,” Michelle interjects.

“Come on, it's just a kiss,” Squirrelly says, fluttering her false eyelashes at me.

I look at Michelle and she nudges me toward Squirrelly.

She's a damn good kisser, warm and slow, suggestive of far more than just a kiss. As she lets go of the back of my head, I can feel myself spinning out.

“And if you think that was good,” she adds, “you should try my blow jobs.”

I laugh and look around to gauge the reaction from the rest of the room, their faces swimming past in a whirl of color, and they all concur, nodding and laughing.
Oh yeah, that's true, she can totally give great head.
Squirrelly's boyfriend Fred says, as serious as a news anchor, “It is true, man. She could suck a watermelon through twenty feet of garden hose.”

Michelle is leaning back on the couch with a slight smile, her eyes half closed in her drunk/stoned euphoria.

“I've gotta take a piss,” I say, already halfway to the bathroom door.

There's a girl passed out in the tub. I try to maintain balance, urinate as quietly as possible so as not to wake her.

8-Ball is in the living room, obnoxious as ever, when I get back from the toilet.

“You call that weed? Check this shit out!”

He hoists two fifths of gin and a huge bag of herb. “
This
is weed,” he proclaims. “Moroccan kind bud.” Moroccan kind. Sure it is. 8-Ball is so full of shit. Tabitha has admitted to me that his real name is Brad, of all things. And contrary to my first impression of him that night I went to
Rocky
and got devirginized, I've learned that he's the biggest bullshitter this side of my stepdad. 8-Ball—
Brad
—has spent a good amount of time and effort creating his own legend. He's always telling the story about how he used to be a Marine and was dishonorably discharged for spitting in a drill sergeant's face before taking a tank AWOL in Kuwait. And everybody buys that crap like it's on sale.

And then there's his toadie, Kyle. Kyle, like 8-Ball, wants everybody to call him by his military nickname. Kyle's nickname is “Rat,” and it fits him well. He's only like five feet tall and has beady little
eyes. He's always fruitlessly trying to pick up women by lecturing about military operations and weaponry. Of course, he's just over-compensating for his miniature dick, with his combat boots and his crewcut. People with crewcuts can't
stand
when somebody has long hair. I've been growing my hair out, trying to achieve a new look, and Kyle—
Rat
—always has to make some kind of smart-ass remark about how I look like Bozo or Krusty the Clown. As soon as he sees me stumble out of the bathroom, all stoned and stupid-grinning, he starts in on me.

“Check it out, 8-Ball,” Rat yells, like a good sidekick. “It's Krusty!”

“Krusty has green hair, dumbass,” I say, more a knee-jerk reaction than an attempt at direct confrontation. Rat turns a slight hue of red.

“What did you say to me, motherfucker?” He gets right in my face. Looking up into it, anyway.

Was that out loud? I can't believe I said it myself. The line between interior monologue and actual speech has been blurred and now nothing can keep the liquor from talking. I laugh in my own defense.
It was only a joke, guy.
But Rat isn't having it.

“I asked you what you
said
, clown.”

“Leave him alone, Rat,” Michelle says.

“You don't need to be getting all bent outta shape, Michelle baby. I'm not gonna ruin your little boyfriend's precious face, but I am about to kick him in his fucking dick. You don't know how to use it anyway, do you Bozo?”

“Fuck you, Rat,” I hear myself say.

It's 8-Ball's laugh, I think, from behind me, that punctuates my brazenness. This pisses Rat off even more. He's red as my head. My red fucking hair.
I'd rather be dead than red on the head.

And then all eyes shift from the confrontation in the middle of the living room, among the crumpled chip bags and empty plastic
cups, to Squirrelly emerging from the bedroom wearing only a long t-shirt. Fred follows close behind, zipping his pants.

“What the hell are you screaming about, Rat?” Squirrelly demands to know. “I have fucking neighbors.”

Rat looks at Michelle, who is standing beside me, touching my arm. He points his chin toward her. “Why'd you bring this little bitch?”

“Don't call my girlfriend a bitch, dickhead,” I say flatly.

“I wasn't talking to you, you dumb fuck.
You're
the bitch. Though I bet you'd just love to suck on it, wouldn't you, Michelle?” he says, grabbing his cock for emphasis.

“I'll kill you!” I'm screaming now and don't care if he has military training or not. Like my man Emo Phillips says, you might mop the floor with me but you'll have trouble getting into the corners. At least there's that.

8-Ball and Fred get between us. It feels good to nearly get into a fight. Especially with this asshole. And with quasi-chivalry on the line at that.

“You both need to leave,” Squirrelly declares.

“But he didn't do anything,” Michelle says. “Rat said he looked like a clown.”

“Am I wrong?” Rat says.

“Look, just leave, man,” Fred says to him.

“Look at his hair! It's goddam orange and girl-curly and sticks out in every direction!”

“Please, Rat.” Squirrelly touches his shoulder.

He stares at her in astonishment.

“Fine. But I'm gonna get you, Bozo.” He points at me, then turns around and goes to the door. He turns again as he walks out and points at me a second time. I give him a finger of my own. The door slams.

“Who wants to do some coke?” 8-Ball asks, breaking the silence.

 

Although this is the first time I've actually seen coke, I've watched enough reruns of
Miami Vice
with Victor to know it on sight. Michelle is first up to get her line. She sucks it up her nose like a pro with a rolled-up twenty-dollar bill, then sits back on the couch with her head cocked at a ninety-degree angle so as not to let any powder escape. After Squirrelly, Fred, 8-Ball, and some other girl have each snorted a line, 8-Ball tosses the baggie at me.

My head shakes of its own accord. “I don't mess with the hard shit, man. No offense.”

“None taken,” says 8-Ball, his bony face contorting with the high. “More for me. But don't say I never tried giving you nothin'.” He laughs, then sticks two fingers in a glass of water and sucks the liquid up each nostril.

“Are you sure you don't want to try any, honey?” Michelle asks.

“Yeah, I'm sure.” I turn to 8-Ball, who's hunched over the table cutting out more lines. “Do you care if I get into that gin, man?” I ask him.

“Go ahead. But you gotta get me a glass.”

As I make our drinks, I yell from the kitchen, “Why isn't Tab with you tonight?”

“She had to go to bed early so she could go to a modeling agency in the morning with her mom or some shit.”

“Better there than being with you,” I mutter. I contemplate hocking up a loog for his drink but decide against it. He isn't half as bad when his little toadie bitch isn't around and he's not trying to ram his tongue down Tabitha's throat.

Michelle is back on her knees snorting another line when I return from the kitchen. I sit on the couch and slug my drink, get up and make another. Michelle doesn't so much as look at me. She never
stops talking. Everyone is talking. I can't think for all the goddam talking. I keep drinking.

An hour later Squirrelly and Fred have retired to their bedroom once again and I am more drunk, stoned, and in all other ways fucked up than I've ever been. The room is spinning, my head is spinning. A half-full glass of gin slips out of my hand and falls to the carpet. I have to lie down. There's a perfect empty space in the darkened hallway.

Michelle and 8-Ball are still talking gibberish and loudly sucking up lines of white powder as my consciousness fades.

I sleep in blackness, one of those sleeps that has no dreams tethered to it. I don't know how long I'm out before the black is interrupted by vigorous shaking. I feel my head rocking back and forth, bumping into the baseboard of the wall.