Squirrel Eyes (5 page)

Finally remembering my mission, I brought my hand up, the
Chiquita
sticker clinging to the tip of my index finger. Gingerly, I reached out, arm extending with deliberate and controlled speed above this foreign terrain. I delicately placed the sticker on Suzie's bare butt, quickly glancing up at her face. She still slept, blissfully unaware of my evil misdeeds. I lifted my hand, leaving the sticker in place, then slowly, carefully, brought my finger down again to secure the gummy label. 

As I pressed downward, I became acutely aware of the pleasant give of Suzie's bottom. The sensation made me lightheaded, flushed. In a sort of trance, no longer thinking in any rational way, I simply continued to languidly press and release the sticker, overwhelmed by the soft resiliency of Suzie's flesh. 

      After some time, my gaze drifted up to Suzie's face. 

My breath caught. Her eyes were open and looking directly at me. The motion of my finger stopped. We stared at each other for a moment, her expression oddly glazed, like that of a dog being scratched in a place it can't reach. Then, spellbound, I resumed softly prodding her rear end, eyes still locked on hers.

      "Alvin," Monk whispered from the doorway. 

Disoriented, I turned towards my forgotten friend. Monk stood in silhouette, a wounded specter, then turned and went back to his room. With one last look at Suzie – who was still staring at me with that puzzling expression – I followed, my mind a muddle.

      Monk and I never spoke to each other again. 

A little over a month later, I met Taylor Merritt.

7

"I've got to hand it to you, Alvin," Taylor said, violently twisting a can opener around the top of a can of Spaghetti-Os. "You're the one constant in an ever-changing world." 

Fed up with the stubborn can, he stuck a fork in the jagged slot he'd managed to cut and pried the top of the can up slightly. He scooped a soggy forkful of Spaghetti-Os into his mouth, chewing like a hamster. "I mean, you're just as fucking stupid as you always were."

      I hadn't seen Taylor for almost four years, since shortly after we had met a couple girls at a midnight showing of
The Killer.
Out for coffee afterwards, I stumbled into a rip-roaring argument with my girl, who went off on a preposterous tirade about the lack of merit in the films of John Wayne – in particular,
Rio Bravo
. Now, first off,
nobody
talks that way about
Rio Bravo
. Secondly, this little half-wit was one of those self-appointed defenders of the oppressed who love to spout meaningful nonsense they've overheard somewhere, and the minute I mentioned that John Woo's manlove/loyalty/brotherhood-saturated films were heavily influenced by John Wayne movies, she tore into the Duke, even whipping that dead horse about "the irony of The American Icon being a racist and an Indian-killer." How she managed to single out
Rio Bravo
was beyond me, considering there's not an Indian to be had in that flick. 

I went home alone and furious. Taylor
married
his girl. 

It was one of those isn't-it-cool-we-both-hate-mocha-lattes-and-the-people-who-drink-them relationships, topped off by what I understand was some fairly astounding sex. She was a college student/nudie-booth dancer with aspirations of becoming an editor for
Spin
magazine. In pursuit of this goal, she convinced Taylor that they should move to New Zealand, which seemed rather ill advised to me, since
Spin
's headquarters were in New York. As it turned out, an ex-boyfriend of hers was spending that summer in Auckland, and it was only a matter of days before Taylor caught the two going at it in the bushes outside their house during a party. Taylor and his wife immediately called it quits, but lacking the money to return to America – and his parents could've paid his way but thought this might be a nice lesson – Taylor found himself stranded. We lost touch soon afterwards, partly because I had met Alison, and pretty much everything else went out the window once that happened.

Taylor made it back to the States – and Albuquerque – about three years later, just after Alison and I had moved to LA. He settled into his parents' basement, landed a job on the graveyard shift stocking shelves at Gregory Alan Books (the largest bookstore in New Mexico), and more-or-less gave up on humanity, love, and any hope for the future.

      Yet, here he was, eating cold Spaghetti-Os out of the can while his elfin mother stomped around above our heads singing
He's Funny That Way
to her cats, and he's telling me
I'm
stupid. But what else would you call a guy who just told you he's going to change his life – rebuild his past and correct the path of his future – by having sex with the girl he never made?

      "What if she's fat?" Taylor asked, mouth full. He chewed those pasta ringlets thoughtfully, eyes narrowing as if he had just found the flaw in the Boston Strangler's alibi. "You haven't laid eyes on her in fourteen years – what if she's big and fat? Or married? Or both?"

      "Come on,
Kelli?
I protested, certain that such a fate – at least the
fat
part – could not possibly have befallen that incredible example of the species female. 

      Taylor set the can of Spaghetti-Os down on the counter, devoting all his attention to poking holes in my scheme. "How do you even know she still lives in Albuquerque?"

      I was starting to feel like he had already given this more thought than I had. "I'll call her parents," I said smugly.

      "And how do you know
they
still live here – or that they aren't dead?"

      "Hey, quit crunching my buzz," I demanded. "I'll track her down somehow."

      Holes poked, he retrieved his can of Spaghetti-Os and began eating again. "Okay," he muttered, a trickle of bright orange sauce running down his chin, "so assuming you manage to track her down, and assuming she isn't fat or married or a lesbian" — I started to argue, but he held up his fork, cutting me off — "exactly
how
is your life going to be changed forever because you finally fuck Kelli Jean Dayton?"

      That was the dicey part. Especially since I didn't quite understand the mechanics of it myself. 

"Because it was meant to happen and it didn't," I said, actually believing it as I heard the words leave my mouth. "It would have made me a different man, altered the course of my life." 

      "You would've had to have been a different man to have done it in the first place," Taylor said, continuing his crushing assault. "You didn't have sex with her because that's who you were."

      "Look, I'll admit this made more sense when I was drunk, but you're missing my point." I struggled for a second to find that point amidst the clutter, coming up with ... well, not much, actually. "I would've had to have been a different man to have had sex with Farrah Fawcett or that chick from
Battlestar Galactica
or something. With Kelli, we're talking about an opportunity that was readily available to me and simply not taken advantage of, for whatever reason."

      Taylor shook his head wildly. "You didn't take advantage of it because you were a frightened little nerd-boy. What I'm saying is that you would've had to have
already
been on this new path you're trying to stumble onto – fourteen years – hell,
twenty
years – too late, I might add – for the sex to have happened in the first place."

      Did I mention that I used to be terribly jealous when we were kids because I had a chipmunk name and Taylor had a cool
Planet of the Apes
name? I think it's colored our entire friendship.

      "And you know," Taylor said, unstoppable now, "we haven't even begun to discuss how, just ...
foul
this whole idea is."

      In my defense, I must say that Taylor once told me he could fuck every woman in the world but one and still be mad because there was one he hadn't fucked. 

      "I'm not talking about hanging around outside a high school waiting for unsuspecting teeny-boppers to wander by – this is a – what is she now? – a thirty-two-year-old woman who, at one time, found me desirable. I'm just going to ...
rekindle
that." 

      Taylor shoveled the last of the Spaghetti-Os into his mouth. "That was a long time ago," he said, punctuating it with a
clunk
as he flung the empty can into the wastebasket. "I need more food."

      We wound up at the Frontier. The sprawling restaurant occupied half a city block across the street from the University of New Mexico and was a haven for people-watchers, college students, ne'er-do-wells, skaterkids, and of course, pretty girls. Paintings of cowboys and Indians (with a heavy emphasis on portraits of John Wayne) covered every wall, most of them spattered with ketchup and other condiments. We sat under the one made entirely of nails (possibly Wayne; I'd never been able to decide for sure), Taylor wolfing down a fat breakfast burrito while I ate the huevos rancheros. We both had sweet rolls, a must at the Frontier. 

I had spent the last fifteen minutes trying further to make my plan understood, to no avail, and I was beginning to wish I had just kept it to myself. Pointing out the nearest painting of the Duke, I jokingly reminded Taylor about the argument I'd had with his ex-wife's pal (I couldn't even remember the girl's name) in an attempt to steer the conversation in some other direction, but Taylor's tenacity was astonishing.

"Listen, Alvin, I'm all for getting you laid – you need it more than anybody I can think of – but you're putting way too much faith in the power of this particular pussy."

"You're right – I've changed my mind about the whole thing," I said.

"You know what you
oughta
do," he plunged ahead obliviously. "You should look up that girl Augusta. Remember her? She was nuts, man – she wanted to buy you presents and shit."

"Somehow you're just not getting it," I said. Swirling my tortilla through a puddle of egg yolk and green chili sauce, I searched desperately for a way to get my point across. "This isn't about scoring on some former flame for the sake of laying down some wool – this is about making the wrong things right."

"We've been over this a million times," Taylor groused.

"I feel your pain," I said. 

We ate in silence for a few minutes, both pissed off at the other's inability to grasp a simple concept. A group of "modern primitive" types (or whatever they call themselves) seated near us began comparing surgical implants – three of them actually had
horns
to go along with all the other metallic junk crammed through every available flap of skin. I once met a guy who told me he had so many piercings in his dick that it spouted like a lawn sprinkler when he took a leak, so he had to perform the function sitting down. Coolness aside, I prefer to stand, thanks.

      I could tell Taylor was building to something – his chewing was reaching prairie-dog speed. "You've been dumped plenty of times," he finally blurted, taking a new approach. "Why has it got you in such a twist this time around? It's not quite mid-life crisis time, is it?"

      "It's hard to explain," I said, not really wanting to explain it at all. "You never met Alison, so you don't know how it was between us."

      "Chicks, guys – I been there," Taylor shrugged, accidentally dislodging a bite of sweet roll from his fork. "It never lasts." He speared the loose tidbit of pastry and stuck it in his mouth. "You know how you deal with it? Think of shit she used to do that just drove you nuts. Get good and mad at her – then you'll be thanking Jesus that she's gone." He grinned in a way that made me want to punch him right in the face. 

      "She never did anything that made me mad."

      "You're a lying sack," Taylor said, making an accusatory fork-thrust in my direction.

      "I'm telling you, being with Alison wasn't like any relationship I've ever had. She was ... absolutely cool. We never had a single argument – not a
real
argument – the whole time we were together."

      Taylor laughed. "So that was what, about a week?"

      "Two years," I said, suddenly realizing I'd gone from pissed-off to sad as hell.

      "Come on, there had to be something oppressive about her," he prodded.

      I shook my head. "She even liked to watch porno movies." 

Taylor looked as if he'd just seen a flying saucer land and the little green occupants had trundled over to him with a wheelbarrow full of candy bars. "That's pretty cool," he muttered.

There was another period of silence while Taylor digested this information and shoveled the last of his sweet roll down his gullet. The last of the chewing done, he looked up at me, eyes narrow with doubt. "Don't you have any complaints about this girl?" 

      "Yeah. She left me."

      He stared intently at me for a long moment, then released an earnest little sigh.
Earnest
and
Taylor
were two things I had never associated before and it was somewhat disturbing to have it happen right here in front of me. 

"If all this is true," he said, "Then you should be trying to get back together with
her
instead of devoting all your energy to fucking a girl you haven't seen since you were a kid – and who might be fat."

      "Too late," I said, slightly uneasy about this heretofore-unseen tender side of Taylor. "She's traded up – some guy named Flacco or Chang-Shah or something." God damn it, what was that guy's
name?
 

      "Well, you know my motto," he smiled. He was really giving me the creeps now. "
It never lasts
. You'll get your shot." 

I couldn't tell you where this stuff was coming from. In fact, I sort of suspected he was being nice simply to put an end to the discussion. I didn't bother to tell him I was planning to give up the filmmaking thing, even though that one was a hell of a lot easier to explain.