The New and Improved Romie Futch (22 page)

The Japanese maples planted along Main Street wore their blighted autumnal cloaks. The shop fronts displayed quaint harvest themes. But the world was still half green. Mosquitoes still patrolled the humid air. I felt hot and overdressed in my pseudovelvets. I'd cut myself shaving. My mouth tasted weird, as though I'd swallowed a penny.

But when I slipped the boar mask over my head, I felt calmed by the musky tinge of hide—a cozy animal odor that I associated
with childhood. I felt a rascally grin overtake me as Lord Tusky pocketed his keys and exited his vehicle. I had a plan.

Lord Tusky would stroll around creepily, nodding greetings to people but never speaking. Hand on chin, Lord Tusky would consider the art. With impeccable posture, Lord Tusky would pose in various corners, steeped in an otherworldly je ne sais quoi. No one would guess Lord Tusky's true identity, except for perhaps one damsel, a lady of a certain age who'd known him in his youth, who understood his deepest passions, his frailest hopes and darkest fears.

Lord Tusky was unnerved by his lack of peripheral vision as he entered the crowded room. He saw a trio of Lady Gagas giggling over a sumo wrestler's inflated physique. Saw a gorilla putting the moves on a Playboy Bunny. Saw Sarah Palin flirting allegorically with a skeleton and a king. Sensing a whir of whispers in his wake, he strode toward the refreshments and obtained a Sierra Nevada from a young barmaid wearing plastic devil horns. He repaired to a corner, retrieved his straw from an inner pocket of his frock coat, and slurped his beverage as he scoped the room.

Although he did not recognize his old beloved among the throng of revelers, he kept hearing her iconic laugh emerging from the mouth holes of plastic masks: a sexy kitten (no way Helen would dress as a kitten), a zombie pirate (too fat), the Bride of Frankenstein (wrong skin tone). But then he spotted her, dressed as a blue squid in a pointy hat and a skirt of wavering tentacles—a store-bought costume, yes, but at least it was weird. At least it didn't reek of desperate sexiness, of middle-aged flesh jacked up in corsetry and decorated with fluffy animal parts. But his heart sank when he saw Boykin beside her, decked out as a fisherman and holding an expensive spinning rod.

Lord Tusky took several fierce slurps of beer through his straw. He turned toward the art. Relieved to see that it sucked,
he snorted. There was some good photography out there—even haughty
Lord Tusky, who possessed imaginary galleries of fine oil paintings, would admit that—but this was pretty dreary stuff. The digital photos were displayed on wall-mounted flat-panel computer monitors. The images consisted of hip youths in various states of undress, lolling on rumpled beds and moldy-looking couches while sulkily holding up twee handwritten signs that said shit like WHAT WOULD THE HONEY BADGER DO? or FREE MUSTACHE RIDES! or DREAM CATS FOR SALE. Upon reading the artist's bio on a flier, Lord Tusky discovered that Adam Nicholas Hagman was a recent graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. Lord Tusky was wondering how such vapid hipster froth had found its way into the backwater of Hampton when he felt a tug upon his velvet sleeve.

There stood Helen, her face scrunched in quizzical bemusement beneath her squid hat. “Romie?” Her frown made it apparent that she had not intended to invite Lord Tusky, but she quickly recovered.

“Oh my God, Romie.”

She laughed, a rich snigger that reminded Lord Tusky of better days.

Lord Tusky took the fair lady's hand. Pressed it to his lips. Made a smacking noise.

Helen peered into his eyeholes. “How are you, Romie?”

Lord Tusky bowed, almost sweeping the floor with his fingertips.

“
Oka-a-ay
. Well, then. How do you like the art?”

Rubbing his left tusk noncommittally, Lord Tusky took a slurp of beer through his straw.

“The artist is pretty young,” said Helen. “Boykin's nephew, actually. Would you like to meet him?”

Lord Tusky nodded theatrically. And Helen led him to a corner where a slouching dude with meticulously mussed platinum hair and jumbo horn-rims tapped at his phone.

“Adam,” said Helen, “I'd like for you to meet an old friend of mine.”

“Whoa,” said Adam. “That mask is sick. Did you make it yourself?”

Lord Tusky nodded.

“This pig doesn't speak very much,” said Helen.

“That's the best costume I've seen all night,” said Adam. “Kind of steampunk but still cool.”

“Adam isn't wearing a costume,” said Helen, “even though it looks like he is.”

“We all wear costumes every day.” Adam tweaked his oversize yellow bow tie, which matched his pleated, peg-legged pants. The boy reminded Lord Tusky of someone, but he couldn't quite figure out who.

“Adam is crashing with his Uncle Boykin for a while,” teased Helen. “Starving artist.”

“Only until I figure out where I want to go to film school.” The boy pouted.

“He's got his eye on NYU,” said Helen.

“Tisch is pretty rad, but New York winters are a bitch. So I'm thinking CalArts.”

“We're lucky to display his photographs before he becomes rich and famous.” Helen winked coquettishly. “Tell Mr. Pig how you got the idea for this series.”

“It's kind of stream of consciousness.” Adam fingered his phone. “Postmodern Dada minimalism, you know. I like to push boundaries. Each image captures a spontaneous moment of self-expression, my subjects in states of, like, vulnerability, their
deepest desires on display like raw wounds. I'm really into the French new wave.”

Lord Tusky snorted. Adam looked up from his gadget and stared into the pig's eyeholes.

“Are you an artist?” he asked.

“Taxidermist,” Helen said tightly, her voice lilting into a strange hiccup. “If Mr. Pig is who I think he is, I mean.”

And then it came to me: Boykin's pip-squeak nephew reminded me of Adrian, the art student Helen had dated at USC. During our first year of college I'd kept chaste, waiting for her summer return. When April exploded with its riot of azaleas and bees, she called me one warm ruttish night, broke down and confessed that she was “seeing someone.” The way she put it sounded self-consciously adult.

“Who?”

“Just this guy. An art student.”

I was a wannabe artist studying graphic design at Trident Tech, and her words stung me to the quick. Idiot that I was, I nursed the hope that when Helen came home for summer, she'd look into my eyes with repentant sorrow and forget all about this art student. But she moved into a duplex in Columbia, a ramshackle millhouse in the Olympia neighborhood, with two other girls. Adrian occupied the other half all by his lonesome, courtesy of his banker dad. In their backyard, spray-painted mannequins relaxed in retro wheelchairs and milled about among pokeweeds. When I visited, unannounced, one June Saturday, Helen and I had sat awkwardly in wheelchairs, emotionally crippled, out in the jungle of pokeweeds, while Adrian glared at us from an upstairs window.

“He's really intense,” Helen said.

She explained that Adrian spatter-painted found objects and placed them in random public settings. Adrian was into guerrilla
art. Adrian had a spiky Duran Duran hairdo. Adrian wore pointy Beatle boots. Perpetually sported the same model of black jeans and always, rain or shine, hot or cold, a vintage leather jacket that smelled like the corpse of Joey Ramone. I finally met the brilliant asshole one July night when I ran into Helen and her paramour at the Hampton Waffle House. Sweating in his skunky leather jacket, he smirked with superiority at my King Crimson T-shirt. I walked off into the shrieking summer night. Called Crystal Flemming. Got drunk beside the railroad tracks and wept into her lush bosom.

Even after Helen's dad died and Adrian “was not there for her,” even after we got back together, she continued to think of him as a moody, adorable genius.

Now she was making goo-goo eyes at her boyfriend's fey nephew, gushing over a privileged brat's crappy “art.” Why was she so susceptible to the pretentious conceptual drivel of talentless hacks? Why did she have such a weak spot for skinny pretty boys in tight pants? I was almost relieved when I saw old possum-faced Boykin navigating his way through the sea of people, struggling with his spinner rod and two plastic cups of red wine, his paunch thrust forth like the prow of a ship.

“Thanks, hon.” Taking her drink, Helen kissed Boykin on his sagging cheek, probably to reassure him.

And it did look like he needed reassuring. He'd gained weight. His eye bags looked more voluptuous than usual. His hairline had crept back.

“Boykin,” said Helen, “you remember Romie, don't you?”

“He didn't look so hairy last time.” Boykin smiled. “But I do remember him.”

Gamely, Boykin set down his rod and offered me his hand. I felt a little foolish maintaining my air of lofty silence, but a plan is a
plan. I shook his hand, nodded, cocked my head in what I hoped was an open, friendly manner.

“Apparently, silence is part of his costume,” said Helen.

“I like it,” said Adam. “Very John Cage.”

“Adam,” said Boykin, “did you get a chance to talk to Annabelle, the owner?”

“She scares me.” The boy shrugged.

“But she was kind enough to give you this show.”

“So sue me,” quipped Adam. “Mr. Lawyerman.”

Helen giggled. As she and Adam exchanged conspiratorial smiles, Boykin took a tense sip of wine.

“If you sell any of your work,” said Boykin. “You'll have her to thank.”

“Money, money, money,” said Adam. “That's all you and my parents ever talk about. The revolution will not be commodified.”

I wondered who'd financed Adam's dope outfit, his Oracle6 phone, his expensive-looking clown shoes. I wondered if he dyed his own hair or hired a coiffeur. I knew instinctively that Adam expected to be paid lavishly for a flexible “creative” job in some awesome city, to live in a chicly shabby apartment with outlandish rent, and to purchase whatever tech gadgets, cool duds, and artisanal brunches tickled his fancy—all while identifying with antiestablishment ideologies. I actually felt a little sorry for Boykin (even as I relished his discomfort) and longed to break Adam's delicate jaw.

I wondered, now that the cougar meme had reached its full flower in our culture, if it was possible that Helen could be fucking this little prick. I thought of Colette, who'd begun an affair with her sixteen-year-old stepson at age forty-six. I imagined that Adam, whose feeble, digitized sexuality had sprouted during the golden era of Internet porn, would have plenty of aging-woman
presets available in his sorry skull—WILFs, MILFs, GILFs, and cougars—cartoonish vixens preening and duck-facing, catering to his solipsistic pleasures.

“There's Annabelle.” Helen pointed at the socialite, who was dressed as the Goddess of Love, complete with a Styrofoam Cupid nestled in her elaborate hairdo. In the throes of some anecdote, she contorted her Frankensteinian face and waved her skinny arms.

“I don't think she's human,” said Adam.

“Don't worry. I'll protect you.” Helen looped an arm through Adam's and tugged the boy toward Venus. Adam pretended to struggle. Helen scolded him with mock maternal sternness.

I could tell she knew that the boy thought her attractive. Knew that the weasel wanted to get his paws into her pants. And this knowledge made her glow.

“So,” said Boykin. His smile was shy, his ears tipped with crimson. “Did you make that mask?”

I nodded.

“Very creative. I'm a big admirer of creativity.” Boykin sighed as he watched Helen introduce Adam to Annabelle Tewksbury DeBris. And then, in a very small voice, my ex-wife's lover unburdened himself of a secret dream: “I always wanted to write a novel.”

It was a good thing I was wearing a mask. It was a good thing my outraged sneer was concealed within the humid darkness of my fake head. Why wasn't Boykin content to devote himself to tedium for status and a fat paycheck? Why did he have to dabble in the arts?

“Kafka was a lawyer,” Boykin said wistfully.

“He worked in an insurance office,” I burbled, breaking my vow of silence. “And he loathed it. Though his career proved to be good fodder for his absurdist novel
The Trial
, which is the best companion piece to Foucault's
Discipline and Punish
I've ever read.”

“I haven't read much Kafka,” said Boykin. “Just that one story about the cockroach.”

“It was a beetle,” I snapped. “As Nabokov, who was an entomologist, argued in his lecture on
The Metamorphosis
, the convexity of the insect's back, in combo with its mandibles and antennae, suggest that Kafka's fabled vermin belongs to the order Coleoptera.”

As my ex-wife's lover peered into my eyeholes and smiled like a sheep, I felt ashamed of my pedantic outburst.

“You're the taxidermist, right?” Boykin looked confused, exhausted. He looked older than I'd thought him to be, at least fifty-eight. And then I realized that he was extremely drunk. His eyes were vein webbed. His mouth slack, his lower lip glazed with spittle. I realized that the poor man was not worth hating. I lay down my imaginary sword. Feeling the fight draining from my body, I sighed.

We were two aging men standing on the sidelines together, wallflowers with depleted testosterone levels. Shadows of men, we watched a beautiful woman flirt with a downy ephebe.

We looked at each other and shrugged when we saw Annabelle Tewksbury DeBris reach into her gold lamé handbag, snatch a fistful of glitter, and sprinkle it upon the heads of Helen and Adam, anointing their dalliance with magical dust. Helen giggled. As Adam took a sneak peek of her still-marvelous boobs, his young face lit up with a smile of infinite entitlement. The world belonged to him.

I could picture the little turd lolling in the guest room of Boykin's McMansion, looking down his nose at the provincial décor while enjoying bagels in bed. I could see him soaking in Boykin's Jacuzzi, whacking off to a mumblecore montage of erotica, incorporating sly references to
The Graduate
as a parade of mature hotties held their own amid his Solomonic harem of sexbots. I could see him mounting the diving board of Boykin's pool, smooth and pale as
a marble statue of Adonis, looking much better with his stupid glasses off.