Going Bovine (25 page)

“What if it’s lost for real?” he wheezes. “Or stolen. Shit. Call nine-one-one, man. Call nine-one-one!”

I keep pawing through his bag. “I’m not calling nine-one-one. Calm down.”

“Dude, I can’t breathe!”

“You’re yelling! If you can yell, you can breathe, all right? We call 911 and it’s game over. We go back and I die in a diaper listening to instrumental light rock and the world goes poof and that is not gonna happen, so just get a grip.”

The neon light from the parking lot falls across Gonzo’s face like a strobe effect. His eyes are wide and he’s clutching his chest.

“Please. Dude. This could be game over. Call nine-one-one stat! Tell them to bring a nebulizer!”

I grab his shoulders hard and shake him. “Gonzo! I am not going to let you die. Okay? I’m not your mom! I am not rushing you into an early grave so I can get on with my life. Okay? Okay?”

I’m waiting for him to go medieval on my ass for talking about his mom that way, but surprisingly, he just nods, letting me get back to his bag. This time, I find the L-shaped metal canister. “Here,” I say.

Gonzo grabs it with both hands, shakes it hard, then positions it at his mouth like a tiny pistol and fires away. His eyes close as he holds his breath, waiting for the medicine to do its work. Exactly thirty seconds later, he takes another hit, holds his breath again until he can’t anymore, and it all comes rushing out of him in a whoosh. There’s a lot of coughing. In another minute, the color returns to his face. The air conditioner clicks on. It pushes the orange balloon back and forth in the artificial breeze.

“You okay?” I ask.

He shrugs. He can’t really commit to being okay. It might kill him.

“That wasn’t cool, what you said about my mom,” he says quietly.

“Okay, sorry,” I say, because I don’t have any fight left in me. “Let’s just crash.”

I turn off the lamp and lie down. The room is tomb dark. Only hotel rooms ever get this dark, like they know it’s their function to close you off from the world. When my eyes adjust to the lack of light, though, I can still make out Gonzo sitting on the edge of his bed, not moving.

I sigh. “Gonz, you’re not, like, having heart palpitations over there or anything, are you?”

“No. I was just thinking.” His voice sounds weird in the dark. Hollow and detached, like he’s as full of air as the orange balloon. “You ever have, like, these totally random memories sometimes?”

“I guess.”

“I was thinking about this one time when I was a kid. I was, like, I don’t know, five? Six, maybe? It wasn’t too long after my old man took off. The kids next door had this new swing set. It was ridiculously tricked out: swings, clubhouse, slide, monkey bars. The whole bolo, man. Way cool. To a little kid, anyway.”

He pauses, and I wonder where this little trip down memory lane is taking us. My pillow’s heating up under my head. I flip it over, settle my head against the cool cotton.

“Anyway, they told me if I wanted to be in the club, I had to be able to cross the monkey bars without falling. Dude, those bars looked like they were about four thousand feet high. But it was the first time they’d asked me over, so I didn’t want to mess it up. One of the boys gave me a boost and I started making my way across. I was totally sweating it. But I got to the second one and then the third one. By the time I got to the fourth rung, they started cheering for me, telling me to keep going. It was this freakin’ amazing feeling, like … I don’t know how to describe it. I was doing it, you know? I was making it, muchacho. Two more to go and I’d be home free.”

I can hear him playing with his inhaler; it makes a soft rattle.

“I was about to reach for the next one when I heard my mom scream my name. She was standing in our yard with this look of terror on her face. I could tell she was ready to run for me—she didn’t trust, you know what I’m saying? When I looked back at that next rung, it seemed about a million miles away. I didn’t feel so sure anymore. I reached for it, but sorta half-assed, you know? And I missed. Fell down and broke my arm and a rib and started crying. The kids thought I was a weenie, and their moms said I couldn’t come over anymore because they didn’t want me getting hurt in their yards. I spent a few days in the hospital and my mom bought me a bunch of Fast Wheels cars that I told her I loved and then I buried them in the backyard later and told her I lost them and she acted all hurt and said I took things for granted just like my dad.”

He makes a funny sound that at first I think is a hiccup. But then I realize he’s crying. “That was the first time … the first time I got that feeling … that … the only thing keeping me alive … was my mom. And I hated her for it.”

Outside, somebody’s getting ice. The machine thunks against the wall like a dying man’s cough. It mixes with Gonzo’s strangled, silent crying.

“So …,” I start. “So, you know, what did you have against the Fast Wheels?”

The sniffling slows down. Gonzo shifts on the bed in the deep motel black. “Huh?”

“I know you hated your mom. Shit, I don’t blame you. But what did those little toy cars ever do to you to deserve such a fate? Buried alive. Dude, that’s harsh.”

Gonzo goes totally silent—not even a sniffle. For all I know, I’ve pissed him off so completely, he’s about to risk another asthma attack just to kick my ass. I position my pillow as a shield just in case I have to ward off forty-two inches of the Gonzman pounding at me in Little People fury. And then I hear it in the dark—a bubbling laugh through tears.

“My friend,” he says with a snort. “I am the Ayatollah of Harsh. Do not fuck with the little people. We will lay waste to your souls!”

“Oooh,” I say. “Now you got me scared, dude. Terrified.”

“I put a freakin’ fatwa out on those cars.” He’s laughing so hard he sounds totally manic, but hey, whatever it takes to keep him up.

I put the pillow back behind my head. “Well, they didn’t deserve to live. They were tools of the infidels.”

“Goddamn right,” he says, his voice less tight. He flops down on the bed.

It’s quiet for another minute, and I try to get my body to relax. My legs really ache, and I hope it’s just regular, tired aching from the long walk.

“Cameron?”

“Yeah?”

Gonzo turns on his side, facing me. I can make out the silhouette of him, my shadow friend. “You ever think about it?”

“Think about what?” I say.

“Dying.”

Do I ever think about it? What does he want to hear? That lately I think about how my mom’s face looks when she’s drinking her coffee in the morning, staring at her crossword puzzle like she just might beat it today. I think about driving with my dad to the lake the day before he and Mom bought the new house when I was eleven, him singing along to the radio and looking like all he wanted to do was keep driving and singing. I think about the Jenna who made me a Christmas ornament out of macaroni when she was six, and the current Jenna, Jenna of the dance team, Jenna who can’t stand me, Jenna who will miss me when I’m gone, even if it’s just because I’m not there to make her look so much better to the world. I think about the fact that I will probably never bone Staci Johnson, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I think about dying every day, because I can’t stop thinking about the living.

I fake a yawn. “Oh, man, I’m wiped out, okay?”

Gonzo shifts onto his back. “Oh, sure. No prob. Good night.”

“Yeah. Night.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Which Treats of My Visit to a Keg Party and of My Chance Encounter with the World’s Grumpiest Yard Gnome

Within thirty seconds, Gonz is snoring lightly. It’s 12:20, and I’m wired. I can’t turn on the TV, so I put on my shoes and pad out to the Mister Motel’s parking lot with its magnificent view of I-10. A big semi roars past, followed by another. All those trucks carrying things that people think they can’t live without—new sofas and light-up sneakers, ponchos and twelve different kinds of processed cheese in cubes, strings, squares, or shred pouches.

I trip along the access road to the blinking yellow lights of the underpass. On the other side of the freeway, there’s a Gas-It-N-Git all lit up like a fluorescent mirage.

There’s only one car in the lot and no people except the guy behind the counter, who’s watching a little TV he’s got by the register. I’ve got three dollars in change in my pocket and I slide it all into the pay phone. My fingers are stiff. I keep dropping coins that I have to pry off the pavement.

The phone rings a few times. Dad picks up. “Hello?” he says in a barely awake voice. For a second, I don’t say anything. I just listen to his sleep-heavy breathing on the other end of the line.

“Dad?”

“Cameron? Is that you? Are you … Say something. Please.”

His voice sounds different to me coming from so far away over thousands of miles of thin wire. It doesn’t sound pissed off and controlled. I hear other notes in it. Fatigue. Hope. Sadness.

“Cameron?” he whispers. “I know you can hear me. I don’t care where you are right this second. I just want you to know you are my boy. You’re a part of me and I’m a part of you. Always.”

“Dad?”

“Cameron?”

“Love you,” I say, just as a big semi roars past on the highway, taking more stuff to more people to pack around the empty spaces of their lives.

Mom’s waking up. I hear her asking Dad what’s going on, who’s he talking to, did the doctor come in? Dad tells her it’s nothing, go back to sleep.

“Cameron?” Dad whispers. “Can you hear me, pal?”

A recorded operator voice politely asks me to deposit more change, but I don’t have any more, so I hang up. It feels like there’s a walrus sitting on my chest, and my eyes sting. I’d give anything to get high right now, to get good and numb.

There’s a girl at the other end of the Gas-It-N-Git standing around like she’s waiting for something. She’s got on shorts and a fake fur jacket, even though it’s muggy and my T-shirt’s sticking to my chest in places, leaving those little pellets of sweat, like a giant connect-the-dots. I nod to her on the way in, and she ignores me, which is fine, really.

The unnaturally bright lights hit me like a punch. That and the rancid nacho cheese smell from the big dripper beside the counter is working me over pretty good. The speakers administer a muzak dosage of a Copenhagen Interpretation song. The DJ’s soporific voice follows the end notes. “And that was ‘Words for Snow’ by the Copenhagen Interpretation, from the Wonder Whatever Happened to Them files. …”

I move toward the back, stopping to pull the porn magazines out of their protective plastic coverings. The guy behind the counter’s watching me in the convex We See You So Don’t Even Think of Shoplifting Here mirror. Shit, there’s no way this guy’s gonna let me buy beer. I waste time picking up stuff I have no intention of purchasing: Cheap toy guns. Disposable razors. Cans of beans. Couple of snow globes. Jumbo packs of AlmostReal Fruit Leathers. Finally, I open the cooler, letting the frigid air wash over me, and grab a Rad Xtra Energy drink. If I’m going to be wired, I might as well go all the way. When I go for a bag of Corny Doodles, my coordination goes haywire. My muscles stiffen up; I grab hold of the wire display for support and send the whole row of chips to the ground.

“What do you think you are doing?” the clerk shouts in very precise English, like he’s been practicing. His name tag reads EMPLOYEE #12, and I wonder if he’s got a name or if his bosses just don’t give a shit what it is.

He’s yelling at me. “You think this is funny? You think this is a funny joke? Go on. Get out of here!” he shouts, pushing me through the front doors. “You are on drugs. Get going before I call the cops.”

Back in the parking lot under the hazy lights, I gulp in the air, trying to calm my body. My E-ticket meter flares, then fades, and when I look, Frontierland has been completely erased. I’m down two health bars, as Gonzo would say. I wish I had my soda. The chick in the fur vest is still standing there, a lollipop in her mouth. Underneath all that makeup, she’s not so old. Maybe fifteen. Sixteen. It’s hard to tell with girls.

“Whadjoodo?” she asks.

“I beat his high score on Captain Carnage. He’s pissed.”

She doesn’t laugh, and it depresses me.

She takes the lollipop out of her mouth. “If you wanna take something you have to put something on the counter first. Like you put a few candy bars there and ask if you can keep them on the counter while you get the rest of your stuff. They always say sure and then they think you won’t rip them off. They stop watching you.”

I’m not real sure on the etiquette for advice on shoplifting so I just say, “Cool. Thanks.”

Some guy drives up in a tricked-out SUV. “Tara, where the hell you been?” he shouts through the open passenger window.

Taking the lollipop out of her mouth, she yells back, “None of your fucking business!”

“Why you gotta talk that way? Let’s go to the party.”

Tara tosses the lollipop into the parking lot. “I’m out of cigarettes.”

“I got cigs. Who’s this?” he asks, nodding in my direction.

Great. Just what I need.

“Whaddyou care,” she says. “Maybe he’s my new boyfriend.”

“I just came here for a soda,” I say.

“Yeah? Where is it, then?” the guy in the SUV taunts.

If this were a movie, I would bust a secret move so fierce the entire place would be razed to the ground. I’d finish with something snappy like “And don’t forget my soda, punk” while I strolled off into the night. But it’s not a movie, and I just stuff my twitching hands into my pockets like the big mad-cow-disease-afflicted chickenshit that I am.

“You’re not the boss of me!” Tara shouts to the guy in the SUV. “I can do whatever I want. In case you forgot, we are broken up, Jus-tin!” She gives it a head swivel for added effect and puts her arm around my waist, which is basically like painting a target on my chest.

“I should be getting back,” I say, stepping away from her.

Jus-tin! turns on his inside car light. I can see he’s wearing a blue trucker hat and an oversized football jersey, and a huge diamond stud in his right ear. He’s got a scruffy brown beard. “Aw, come on, Tara. You don’t mean that, baby.”