King Dork (28 page)

cided to suspend my disbelief about the whole Skoo-macker

thing. She was the Schumacher expert around here. “This is she,” the voice was saying with charm-school precision.

“Who, may I ask, is calling?”

“Oh. This is, um um Tom Tom Henderson.” The “um

um” is where I momentarily forgot who I was. I was starting to say, though with perhaps a bit less suavity than I had

planned, that we had met at a party in Clearview Heights last month, when she broke in:

“Tom-Tom?” she said. “Is that Moe Henderson? Chi-Mo

Henderson?”

That about covered it. So she
had
known who I was. Not surprising, if she knew Susye Teneb.

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“Oh. Yes. We met at a party—”

“How nice to hear from you. What can I do for you,

Tom-Tom?”

“Oh. Well, we met at a party—”

“What?” She was determined not to let me deliver the

rest of my suave “we met at a party” speech. She was quite the conversationalist.

I decided to ignore her interruptions and charge ahead,

so I explained that we-met-at-a-party-in-Clearview-Heights-last-month, and tried to make it quick so it would fit in the brief space before she burst out with another interruption. I just about managed it, too, and I think the information finally penetrated, because her next question was quite to the point.

“And?”

Well, that was a tough one. So many different things

could follow that “and.”
And,
I don’t know if you remember, but we made out on the couch when a telekinesis experiment went awry.
And
you wouldn’t let me go down your pants, going “my tits, my tits” instead, and I was wondering whether that was because of ladies’ week or was there some other reason?
And
you asked about my band’s gigs, and, well, it just so happens that we’re playing at the Festival of Lights in a few weeks, maybe you’d like to cut class at IHA and come?
And
I look fondly upon the special moments your left breast and I spent together, and I’d welcome the chance to pick up

where we left off and get to know the rest of you better.
And,
though I doubt it’s something people generally say about just anybody whose nipple they happen to maul in a dark room

at this or that fake mod stoner party, I have this dream where we’re imaginary boyfriend-girlfriend in a Sex Alliance Against Society. . . .

None of those answers to “And?” would have fit into one

of Deanna-Fiona’s pauses, I knew that, and most of them

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would have come off weird over the phone. So I said, as

quickly as I could:

“I think we have some some matters to discuss, but I’d

rather not do it over the phone. Maybe we could get together some time at your convenience if that would be be copasetic.”

Devil-head. Boy, did I ever feel like an idiot.

“You’re so
professional,
” she said, giggling. I’m not sure what she meant, exactly, though it sounded sarcastic. I guess she wasn’t stoned enough to be quite as amused by my virtu-oso devil-headedness as she had been at the party. Then she said: “Are you asking me out, Tom-Tom?”

Was I? “Oh,” I said. “Oh. Um. Well. I mean . . .”

“You know, I have a boyfriend.”

“Right. Dave.”

“Tim.”

“Tim?”

“Tim.”

“Really?”

“Really. I think I would know.”

I could sense that this fascinating conversation was draw -

ing to a close, and I was trying to figure out a way to slip in a quick “well, nice talking to you, bye now,” to make her

hanging up on me seem a bit less embarrassing, when she

said, to my astonishment:

“Well, maybe you’d better come over, then.”

WHAT HAP P E N S WH E N YOU N E E D TO

G ET TO S LUT H EAVE N AS QU IC KLY AS

P OS S I B LE B UT YOU CAN’T DR IVE YET

Deanna Skoo-macker’s directions to her house had been

from the freeway, so she had assumed I’d be driving. I wish.

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Salthaven is several towns away, near the bay, clear on the other side of Rancho Sans Souci. I figured I should give myself at least an hour to get there on my bike, just in case I got lost or something. So I said I had some things I had to do first, but that I could probably make it by around nine.

“Okay,” she had said, “but I turn into a pumpkin at ten-

fifteen.”

Right. These modern girls and their mysterious ways.

Best not to ask. They’re either going to explain things or they’re not, is how I look at it.

Since the whole “Thinking of Suicide?” debacle, I was

supposed to tell Little Big Tom and Carol where I was going every time I left the house. Maybe they thought I’d slip up and say “well, Mom, I’m off to jump off the Golden Gate

Bridge—oops! I mean . . . ,” and then they’d know to withhold their permission and avert a great American tragedy. In fact, though, I was finding that playing D and D at Sam Hellerman’s house was all the excuse I ever needed.

“Slay an orc with a lightning bolt for me!” said Little Big Tom as I headed out the door.

Now, you’re going to think I’m nuts, but I spent quite a bit of time during the ride over to Salthaven thinking about

Timothy J. Anderson and Tit. I mean, I was wild with anticipation over the reunion with the elusive fake Fiona; and I was still reeling from the surprising conclusion to my inept attempt at telephone communication. “You’d better come over, then.” Sounded pretty fucking promising. Great song title, too.

But while one part of my mind was picturing Deanna

Schumacher naked, seminaked, outfitted in fake mod and

schoolgirl fetish gear, tied to a pole, sitting on a motorcycle, and so forth, another part of my mind was trying to figure out why
The Seven Storey Mountain,
CEH 1963, had contained a 214

funeral memorial card for a funeral that didn’t appear to have occurred, for a person who didn’t appear to have existed.

If the card wasn’t a funeral card, I couldn’t think what else it might have been for. It was very much like the card for my dad’s funeral, except that it contained a lot less information and no photo. There was a cross on one side; the quotation, date, and location were centered on the other. It didn’t seem like very good printing, and the amateurishness was one of the reasons it looked so creepy and disturbing. But assuming it
was
for a funeral, why had there been nothing about it in the newspaper? The church would probably have a record of

it somewhere, as would the city or county. I’m sure it was possible to track it down, if I had the energy and inclination.

Did I? I was starting to realize that Tit’s code and the mystery of Timothy J. Anderson, as exciting as it had seemed at first, had been distracting me from what I really hoped to learn from all this. I found I didn’t really care all that much about Timothy J. Anderson. What I really wanted was to get an idea of who my dad had been, the kinds of thoughts he had had, the kind of world he had inhabited, things that were still dark to me. I had started out with a simplistic, unquestioned caricature of my dad, the Charles Evan Henderson I had known as an

eight-year-old. Now I didn’t even have that. Tit and Timothy J.

Anderson had crowded my dad out of the picture. I realized I had been looking at the memorial card as a kind of sign from beyond, which was pretty nutty. What had I been thinking?

Maybe there was no real message: kids do bizarre things

and construct elaborate games to drive away the boredom.

Tit could very well have been playing some nonsensical game with no relation to actual reality, and I was just falling for it decades later, very much like how Little Big Tom misread the Talons of Rage fantasy blades, or how my mom had misread

215

“Thinking of Suicide?” It was weird to think that I was playing the role of the Clueless Adult from the Future, but maybe I kind of was.

The whole thing left me with an empty, lonely feeling. I

did know one thing, however: I didn’t much like Tit. There was something nasty about his note and about the fact that he had taken such care to encipher part of it, and had a sort of—what? Gleeful? Yeah, a gleeful, flippant attitude, when the subject matter was pretty somber. And including the ramoning boast in the same breath as the reference to the funeral and to being tied up and whipped—well, this Tit was clearly a weird guy.

Then again, there was Deanna-Fiona’s sexy stomach and

her “maybe you’d better come over, then” to look forward to and be nervous about. Why was I obsessing over Timothy J.

Anderson? Under the circumstances, it was a crazy thing to do. I got a bit lost in the (devil-head) labyrinth of plazas, ter-races, caminos, lanes, vistas, circles, and courts, but I finally made it to North del Norte Plaza Circle in Salthaven with

nearly an hour to spare before Deanna/Fiona’s pumpkin me-

ter was set to run out at ten-fifteen.

As directed, I “parked” before I reached the Schumacher

residence (hiding my bike in some bushes a couple of houses down) and walked as quietly as I could down a path running alongside the house. When I reached the side door, I tapped lightly. And I was pretty freaked out by what I saw when the door opened.

F OX ON TH E RU N

I was in a kind of daze as I followed Deanna Schumacher

through the door, down a dark hall and some stairs, and into 216

a basement bedroom. Because as soon as I saw her, I knew

that this was not, in fact, the Fiona of the fake-mod party. She was much shorter, and kind of chunky, though not chunky in a bad way—she was actually pretty sexy and curvy, to be honest. My Fiona had been taller and much skinnier. Even allowing for the headiness of the moment and the mists of

memory, there was just no way you would find anything like the Fiona stomach underneath Deanna Schumacher’s loose,

untucked blouse. No way.

I just stood there in Deanna Schumacher’s room, not

knowing what to say. Now, I feel safe in assuming that that’s what I would have done in any case. But if I had had my

Fiona standing in front of me, it would have been a different type of speechlessness. How had this mistake, if mistake it had been, come about? Somehow all roads led to Sam

Hellerman in that line of inquiry, and for some reason I

wasn’t really in the mood for thinking about Sam Hellerman at the moment. So I examined Deanna Schumacher and tried

to shift gears, in a dilemma I never imagined I’d have: what do you say to a girl you have never made out with at a party while she was in a fake-mod costume but who has neverthe-less invited you to a secret tryst in her bedroom without realizing that you thought she was someone else? We had not, as it turned out, met at a party. And we did not, accordingly, have any matters to discuss, like I had said. Not really.

She wasn’t wearing a school uniform like I had expected,

but she did have on a pretty short skirt over bare legs and the loose blouse I mentioned. She was actually quite pretty, in a mousy/nerdy way (which I found I really liked). The glasses were sexy, and she somehow managed to keep her mouth

slightly open at practically all times. It was just naturally that way, I guess. Naturally hot.

“Take off your coat and stay a while,” she said.

217

I threw my army coat on the floor, and then felt a bit em-

barrassed when she immediately scooped it up and put it on a chair.

She asked how my mom and Amanda were doing. The

fact that she knew so much about me and my family would

have been pretty spooky coming from the real fake Fiona, but coming from the fake fake Fiona it didn’t have the same effect. And while I had been walking in and planning my dia-

logue and checking out her legs and so forth, I had also put two and two together and realized that not only must she

have known Susye Teneb, but also that there had been a Didi a grade ahead of me at McKinley Intermediate, and that this was probably her. She must have gone on to Immaculate

Heart Academy rather than public high school, which hap-

pened sometimes, especially with delinquent or troubled

girls. So her knowledge of the Henderson family and my

nickname wasn’t all that surprising.

“I never got to say,” she said, suddenly very serious, “how sorry I was to hear about your father.” I was stunned, both by the unexpected condolences and by the even more unexpected grace with which she offered them. “My father was

with the Santa Carla coroner’s office, and he speaks very

highly of him.” Stunned. Again.

I still hadn’t said a word. She motioned me over to sit

next to her on the ruffly, frilly bed.

“Thank you,” I said, meaning thanks for being sorry to

hear about my dad, and also for letting me sit on her bed next to her. The silence that followed could be seen as respectful, excruciating, peaceful, tortured, uncomfortable, exciting, tense, or divine, depending on how you looked at it.

“What have you been up to, Tom-Tom?” she eventually said.

“I’m in a . . . band,” I said. “A band.” And even though the current band name, Balls Deep, had been fixed at least till af-218

ter the Festival of Lights, the habit of a lifetime asserted itself.

“Super Mega Plus,” I added. Me on guitar/vox; Sam Hell on

bass, prevarication, and procuring young girls under false pretenses; Brain-Dead Panchowski on irregular timekeeping;

first album
A Woman Knows.
But I didn’t say that last part.

“We’re playing at lunch lunch at Hillmont in a few weeks.”

“Lunch-lunch?” I was getting a little tired of that joke, to be honest. Then she said: “Tom-Tom the rock star. Look at

you.” I’d rather you didn’t, actually. Then, I kid you not, she said: “You’re so cool.” Well, I mean: certainly not. I couldn’t sort out the sarcasm from the politeness from the sincerity.

There was a tiny bit of sincerity, I thought, wasn’t there?

Maybe not. Maybe it was all politeness. She was a very, very polite young thing. Even her mockery was kind of polite.