Rose of No Man's Land (24 page)

Me and Rose climbed the fence by the dinosaur ’cause it seemed like the easiest way to do it and we were weighed down by the six-pack of drinks Paulie bought us, that brand-new mixture of vodka and energy drink all swirled up together in big bottles. The bottles clanked around in
my backpack with everything else. Naked pictures, drugs. I was kind of nervous about it and thought, oh yeah great, so now if we get busted I’m the one holding everything and I get to go to jail or whatever and Rose could just skip away, back to the oily recesses of Clown in the Box, never to be seen again. But that was just one mind. My other mind was psyched to be entrusted with the wad of bills, damp with the sweat of spending an eight-hour shift at the Clown stuffed down Rose’s shiny underpants. Psyched to be entrusted with the care of the top-secret one-of-a-kind Polaroid of Rose, Rose’s crumpled pack of cigarettes, a book of matches jammed into the cellophane. Just happy to help out Rose, Rose in her nightgown-dress, filmy with weird, bunched-up flowers stuck around the neckline. Rose with her duct-taped sneakers, looking and smelling so different outside her Clown uniform, after her post-Clown shower. When she hauled herself up the fence in front of me I could catch a stink-cloud of baby powder and the smell of it made me feel dreamy. Unclean thoughts like Monster Paulie and Old Harry Chester could not survive a blast of baby powder off a girl like Rose, I thought. I should dust myself down with some baby powder after a shower too. Why not? I resolved to have it be my new thing. Rose shimmied down the neck of the dinosaur — looking, for one weird and excellent moment, like the air freshener Donnie had dangling from the Maverick’s rearview, not a drooling tittie-girl but a chick who looks like a witchy Viking straddling a giant lizard — and stood on the Astroturf with her skinny arms extended to catch my pack. I looked down at her suspiciously.

Are You Sure? I asked. What if it squashed her. She looked like a twiggy bug there on the ground. What if all the Yikes bottles busted open and soaked the stolen money and turned the drugs into a paste and ruined her cigarettes?

C’mon, man
, she shook her arms impatiently.
I’m strong, come on.
I was at the top of the fence, my flip-flops jammed into the chain links. I leaned forward and carefully shimmied the heavy clanking pack from my back. Behind me cars honked on Route 1. I could feel them honking at me.
C’mon, before someone calls the cops
, Rose barked from the dark below. Her pale arms gleamed with a glow-in-the-dark sheen. I lowered the pack by its straps until I was bent way over the fence. Rose’s grasping fingers almost reached it. I let it fall and she caught it in her arms, fell backward with it onto the fake grass.

I loved climbing onto the dinosaur. I can’t tell you how many times I’d daydreamed about it, cruising by on the highway below. It seemed, for all its ferocity, aching to be climbed. As I hugged its neck and heaved my legs around its strong but wobbly body, it felt oddly living to me, helpful. I Love This Dinosaur, I hollered down at Rose. I sort of slid backward down its body, then leaped beside her. She was rifling through the pack, pulled out a bottle.

We’ll share
, she said. She wrapped her little fingers in the fluffy nightgown-dress and yanked the cap free. The bottlecap’s tiny teeth tore at the fabric but she didn’t seem to give a shit.
C’mon
, she said, and started marching deeper into the golf course, leaving the pack on the ground for me to grab.

This was a dream, being in the shut-down, nighttime
golf course. The freeway beyond buzzed and flashed with endless cars, but the course was its own pocket of quiet. The planks of the windmill were still, the frog fountain dry. Spotlights lit the walkways and shone into the creepily staring faces of the gnomes clustered throughout the place. I followed Rose to a backlit hippo painted the same neon orange as the T-Rex. Its goofy mouth was wide and filled with round teeth. Have You Ever Played Here? I asked Rose. She took the pack from me and nodded, fumbled around on the inside, digging for cigarettes and crystal. She held the tiny bag above the spotlight, squinting into the brightness.

Shit
, she said.
Do you have, like, an ATM card or something?

I shook my head. I Don’t Have A Bank Account, I shrugged. I Don’t have Any Money.

Do you have a driver’s license, something to crush this up with?
I peered around the hippo at the baglet. The stuff inside was chunky, like pebbly dust from split geodes. We went to the Museum of Science on a field trip once and I really liked the geodes, that there could be fancy-ass crumbs of jewels hidden inside just your regular no-big-whoop rock.

Does It Come From Rocks? I asked. This Stuff?

Rose shook her head.
No, it comes from, like battery acid I think. Like from car batteries? That and nasal spray.

Nasal Spray? I didn’t understand how anything could come from Nasal Spray, let alone these beautiful little chips. The battery acid thing sort of scared me. Maybe Rose was fucking with me. She wasn’t a fucker, though. I was glad about that. Rose was pretty straight-up, serious.
You could tell that she wasn’t one of those girls who do things like slap you and say, “Fuck Off” and then when you get upset say, “Ohmygod, I’m just joking with you!” so then you have to laugh and pretend that you think it’s fun to be slapped and told to fuck off. I had a feeling that if Rose ever told me to fuck off it would be because she really wanted me to fuck off, and there’s something real safe and relaxing about being around a person like that.

Because Rose told me to find a golf ball I walked around the course, peeking behind the gnomes and the various statuary plonked along the paths. I couldn’t find any balls. I wandered around the frog fountain and bravely poked my hand into the hole at the base. My hand bonked something and I drew it out, quick. It’s fucking scary to shove your hand into a dark hole. When nothing ran out from the little cave I slid my hand back in and wrapped it around the pocked golf ball. I brought it back to Rose like I’d just, I don’t know, done something really great and won a prize. I had a huge smile on my face.
Yeah!
Rose hooted. She put the drugs on the hippo’s back and rolled the golf ball over it again and again. With the floodlight beaming up at her, shadowing her face and lighting the curve of her head, her bird-skull with its cap of flat, black hair, Rose looked supernatural. She looked like she was casting a spell, her face bent over her repetitive movements, the skidding sound of the ball rocking.

Suddenly I wanted a cigarette. I don’t know how to explain it. Watching Rose do her weird little drug thing like I wasn’t even there, focused and breathing through her thin mouth, it filled me up with a sensation I could only call
compulsive. It was like I wanted something enormous, wanted a meteor to crash down at the T-Rex miniature golf course, crushing us to death and setting the world on fire. I felt an antsy, liquid energy running through my body. Can I Have A Cigarette? I asked her. She looked up from her work.
Sure
, she said.
You want to give it another try? You know where they are.

The match flared fast in the night air. There was no wind, just this great air that pooled around us, perfect air that rose into the night sky. Slightly damp air that smelled like powdery flowers, like clean babies, like Rose. I held the match and crackled my cigarette to life, fuming away all the good smells with my toxic smoke. My mind lit on Old Harry, wasting away in his exhaled haze. I shook the image from my head. Would I have to think about Old Harry Chester every time I saw a cigarette now, for the entire rest of my life? It seemed like it would possibly be worthwhile to take up smoking simply to give my impressionable brain a series of new cigarette associations.

Rose was gently knocking the crushed crystals onto the back of the hippo. With the matchbook she shaped them into sparkling sugar snail trails. My cigarette burned like a flaming planet in the dark. This time the choke was smaller and I held it in, my eyes watering in the dark. Then I felt my head empty out and balloon up, up and away. I leaned dizzy into the hippo. I Never Knew Cigarettes Got You High, I told Rose. I Would Have Probably Tried Them Earlier.

They only get you high the first time
, she said, pulling the cash from my pack and tugging a bill from the roll.
So
enjoy it.
She grinned at me.
This is going to really get you high, though. Are you ready?

For The Battery Acid? I asked. I looked at the twin piles on the hippo’s back. I dunked my finger into one, gentle, and held my finger, tipped in sparkle, in the light. Surely this couldn’t be battery acid, it was too pretty. It looked like really expensive eye shadow or something. Like glitter. I reached out and dabbed it onto Rose’s cheeks and her laugh was the call of some exotic animal, a rain forest cry. She swatted away my hand.
Lick your finger, don’t waste it
, she told me, brushing the stuff from her face and then slurping her palms. She twisted a twenty into a tight paper straw and with one end poked into her nose she leaned over the drugs and inhaled them. She tilted her head way back, in the spotlight beaming up from the turf I could see her pale scalp, the tiny pores her thick hair sprung from. Rose was futzing with her nose, rubbing it and snorting and sniffling.
Whoa
, she said and reached for the Yikes. She plunged her finger into the neck of the bottle and flicked the stuff up her nose. Did snorting this stuff make you then want to snort everything, I wondered. I watched Rose for visible evidence of the drug’s effects. Her face had new color in it, flushed like when she was at work, hustling around the fryers. Her eyes sparkled. The sparkle of the drug had dripped into her eyes and made them hard and shiny. She held out the twenty.
Do it
, she ordered.
Listen, though, don’t breathe out, breathe in, hard.

Duh, I said.

Seriously
, she said, swatting at her nose some more. Her voice sounded stuffy and clogged.
The first time I did
this, I don’t know, I just blew out and I sprayed the stuff everywhere.

When Was The First Time You Did It? I asked.

At work. In the bathroom. Marty, one of the cooks, had a bunch and he shared it with me. We did it in the bathroom. And then we did it in the bathroom.
She laughed.

I bent my head over the shimmering tuft. Rose did it with Marty the cook. Who was Marty the cook? Would I want to do it with him too? I handed off my cigarette to Rose who took a greedy drag and then a chug off the bottle. With the twenty stuck into my nostril I inhaled like my wind would douse the fire that was burning up my chest. It shot like a bullet through my nose and then clung, stinging, to the back of my throat. Oh My God, I gasped. My nose felt seared. I touched it and felt for blood, but it was dry.

Here here here
, Rose thrust the bottle at me.
Put some up your nose
, she said, but it was my throat that felt awful, like it was shriveling into itself, collapsing, the twinkling powder corroding it. Now I understood how it could be battery acid. How it could be nasal spray, medicine someone played mad scientist with until something meant to open up your sinuses instead collapsed them. I dumped the Yikes down my throat, swallowing what was left. Rose was ready with a new one. I liked this division of labor. Sure I was having to haul the illegal shit around, but Rose had fixed up the drugs on the hippo’s back and was now taking care of me, ready with a vodka drink. I felt a surge of immense gratitude.

You Are So Nice, I told her. You Are Really, Really…Caring. I Hope That Doesn’t Sound Gay. I Mean, Not Gay. I
Know, Your Mom’s Gay. That Must Be Kind Of Cool, Having A Gay Mom? Is It? Or Is It Hard? My Mom Isn’t Gay, She’s Got This Boyfriend I Totally Hate. If She Was Gay At Least, You Know, He Wouldn’t Be Around, You Know? So That At Least Must Be A Good Part Of Having A Gay Mom.

I could feel my heart shaking and convulsing in my chest. Was I going to die? I felt great, but these great feelings were being interfered with by the thought that I might die. From a drug overdose, at T-Rex Miniature Golf. Maybe I’d always been attracted to it because I knew, psychically, that it was the place I would die. That I would die a druggie’s death, by the orange hippo with a black-haired girl named Rose. Am I Going To Die? I asked her. She thought that was funny. She shot her hand out and placed it atop my Weight Watchers T-shirt, over the place where my heart bucked and rocked inside my rib cage.

It’s your heart
, she said, feeling it kicking like a baby in a pregnant woman’s stomach. No shit, I wanted to say, but all my words were piled up somewhere behind the car crash that was my primary organ. I couldn’t speak. I felt just deranged with what were the best and the worst feelings I ever felt, duking it out inside my body. And now Rose was leaned in to me, one hand holding my cigarette elegantly. Like a flapper, I thought. And I said, I managed to creak out, You’re Like A Flapper, and she smiled at that and closed her eyes in the dark and became sealed inside her own experience of the drug, one hand holding smoke, the other flat above my heart, which was maybe starting to slow or maybe I was acclimating to its new style of beating, and Rose leaned in to me then and she kissed me.

And the real purpose of the drug became clear, the kiss banished the bad feeling of racing panic, was some sort of friendly violence I’d never experienced before. Rose’s mouth chewed into mine and she tossed the cigarette to the Astroturf and I did not even care that it would maybe burst into flame. I thought that would be fine, really, and that this was the meteor I’d been craving and it had landed here on my body, was pushing me back onto the scraggy fake ground and scrambling all over me like a spider, or a sci-fi crab-girl from another planet. Rose’s teeth bit into me and I swear, a new talent bloomed inside me, kissing. This was the best ever and I was good at it, I took right to it, amazing, all this time in my room and I could have been kissing someone, kissing Rose. My hands clutched a slippery bundle of her hair and held her face to mine. We bit each others’ tongues and it was sloppy and spectacular and her hand slid below my heart to where my boobs were and she touched them and it was fine that she did this, totally okay with me, and I realized my body was on fire, my body was finally happening, it had arrived and Rose could have it. I thought I should touch her boobs too since she had touched mine so I did, I slid my hand under the gaping neck of her nightgown-dress and felt them hot and cold, I touched them and it made her mouth open wider and her warm breath blew into me like weather and I felt like mush, like a ruined planet, and with her bony fingers she was pinching me and it hurt and I wanted it to hurt more. It was like I felt everything and yet was numb, my body suddenly superhuman, feeling sensation so intensely that only the most intense sensations registered, the plunge of
Rose’s tongue and the pinch of my lip between her teeth, her claw at the skin beneath my shirt. She lifted off of me and took a frantic drink from the glass bottle and dove back into me, her hands around my neck, she pulled me into a roll and I was on top of her and she squirmed beneath me, her nightgown-dress hiked in a tangle, I saw her underwear, I saw the holes around the elastic and their dingy color glowed at the edge of the hippo’s floodlight. I saw her underwear and I touched them and she gasped, she affixed her mouth to my ear and filled it with tickles. I touched her again and then again and again and realized I could touch her as much as I wanted to and I felt like the king then of some Super-Lotto-jackpot island, thought that this was our land here, a land of plastic glass and staring gnomes and helpful dinosaurs, this was our special land and I was its king, feeling the place change as I touched it, feeling it shift behind the cloth, and I admit that though I felt like its king, I was scared to move the fabric and touch beneath it, I was scared to even though I knew she did it with some guy named Marty, or maybe I was scared because of some guy named Marty, but either way I was scared to do more than just touch and touch and touch it more, so that’s what I did and that seemed fine with Rose.