The Parallel Apartments (29 page)

“Huh?”

“How about a Canada Dry? Old people like ginger ale.”

Murphy froze. Only eighteen minutes into a new friendship and already conflict stood rampant, ready to disembowel him and scatter his tripe like grain. His real mother was considered peculiar, and lived in a booby hatch in San Angelo, where she tended a turnip patch and forbade visits.
Granny
was his real mother, but no one at school knew.

“Yeah,” said Murphy. “Ginger ale. Momma likes that.”

Renée opened her can and took a great gulp before they even got to the register. She bought all three drinks with a ten-dollar bill.

When they got to Murphy's, Granny was, mercifully, taking a nap. Murphy and Renée watched
The Flintstones
with the sound down low.

“Do you have Atari?” said Renée.

“No, but I'm getting it, really soon, next week or tomorrow,” said Murphy, a lie.

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

“You know that little kid Quince, in first?”

“Uh-huh.”

The gods could be so unkind.

“His big brother Travis has a Harley-Davidson hog
and
Atari.”

From Granny's room Murphy heard the signature
plinkch
of a Zippo. The lighter's naphthalene perfume and Granny herself wafted into the den.

“Why, who is this young lady in my house?” she said.

“That's my momma, hi, Momma, this is Renée, Momma, from Ms. Santangelica's class. That's my momma.”

“Well.”

“Hi, Mrs. Crockett.”

“Hmm.”

“Murphy bought you a Canada Dry.”

“Why, thank you. Son.”

So magnificent, the sweet smiles of the gods!

Granny invited Renée over for turkey the next day. Through Renée, Granny extended the same invitation to Mr. Tuttle, but he was on Green Beret shark-wrestling duty in the Gulf, and was unable to attend. After dinner, Granny said she'd give Renée a ride home so she could stay later and not have to worry about walking home in the dark.

The next morning Murphy woke up and went downstairs to find the women in his life sitting Indian-style on the den floor before the TV set, on which a white blip whizzed and caromed against a supernaturally black background.

“Your mom went out and bought you Atari this morning!” Renée shouted.

Over the next few weeks Murphy and Renée played
Pong,
fired off match
rockets, watched after-school TV, and waited every day for Granny to get home from Austin Community College, where she taught math, to make them Elvis sandwiches and virgin margaritas. When Christmas vacation started, Renée would come over early in the morning, and Granny would fry eggs and bacon for the three of them.

“You know, sugar,” Granny said to Renée on the morning of Christmas Eve Eve as the three of them sat around the Christmas tree they'd all decorated with matchboxes and three-decades-old popcorn strings, “your daddy's welcome over here too.”

“Uh,” said Renée, “thank you, Mrs. Crockett.”

“You can have other friends, too, both of you. Like your little friend Quince. Would you like to have him over, too?”

“No way,” said Murphy.

“Okay,” said Renée.

Two days after Christmas, Murphy and Renée were at 7-Eleven buying Mentos and Dr Peppers when a voice behind them said:

“Hi, Murphy.”

Renée and Murphy turned around.

“Oh,” said Murphy. “Hi, Quince.”

“Hi,” said Quince. “Your grandma invited me over to your house today.”

“Grandma?” said Renée.

“Shut up,” said Murphy. “Where's Travis?”

“Jail still,” said Quince, biting hard into a Chunky he had yet to pay for.

“Good.”

“You sound funny, like a donkey,” said Quince.

“Well, you look funny, like a donkey.”

“You still smell like tinkle, too,” said Quince, who looked like he might cry.

“I don't either!”

“Why'd your grandma call him?”

“Because his mommy's crazy and lives at a bootie hatch.”

“So who's that at your house?”

“That's his grandma.”

A brief silence, largely occupied by a fierce staredown between Quince and Murphy, was broken by the 7-Eleven cash-register lady. “You kids pay for them treats first, then go outside and bicker.”

Outside, Renée said, “What's Travis doing in a jail?”

“I don't know,” said Quince, keeping close to Renée. “Mommy won't tell me.”

“I hope I never go to jail,” said Renée.

“I'd break you out,” said Quince.

“Really?” said Renée, without a quaver of patronization.

“Yeah.”

Murphy felt like shooting matches at Quince's hair.
Phoom!
Bald.

Renée pulled the tab off her can of Dr Pepper with one smooth movement, like an adult: no hesitation, no hitch, no labor. Then she dropped the curling petal of aluminum inside the can.

“What if you swallow that?” said Murphy.

“I won't. It sinks.”

Both Quince and Murphy tried to pull the tabs off their cans in like fashion. Quince yanked hard, but the pull-tab did not uncouple; he flung his Coke backward into the open passenger window of a Wagoneer parked by the ice shed. Murphy ripped at his tab, but only the ring part came away: the soda inside was to be trapped forever.

Renée ran over to the big vehicle, opened the door, grabbed the Coke, slammed the door.

“Hey, you little turds,” said an old man emerging from the store, presumably the Wagoneer's pilot. He wore a dirty felt cowboy hat and was missing a hand. Quince and Murphy and Renée ran.

They stopped in front of Murphy's house.

“I gotta go,” he said. “Renée, you coming in?”

“I don't know.”

“His house smells like tinkle 'cause he wets the bed,” said Quince.

“I got Atari, nyah,” said Murphy.

“I got Intellivision, nyaaaahh,” Quince said.

“I thought you had Atari,” said Renée.

“Atari's gay. Now I have Intellivision that I got for Christmas.”

“No way. Golf?”

“Sea Battle.
”

“I gotta go on inside,” Murphy said again. He
did
sound a little like a donkey.

“Any other cartridges?” said Renée.

“No, but I'm gonna get them all.”

“Let's go play.”

“Renée, come on in,” said Murphy.

“Should we get more Dr Peppers first?” Renée said to Quince, ignoring Murphy. “I have fifty cents.”

“Yeah,” said Quince. “I have forty-four cents. We could go to Lucky's instead of 7-Eleven so we don't run into that one-hand man again.”

Renée and Quince started down the street, examining each other's pool of coin. Murphy watched them go.

Granny wasn't home yet. He got a handful of matchbooks out of the metal suitcase, a couple of coat hangers, Granny's yellow and blue plastic squeeze-bottle of Ronsonol, went out into the backyard, fashioned a kind of raised cradle out of the hanger, placed the Dr Pepper can with its inaccessible contents in the cradle, assembled a pyre underneath, squirted accelerant over the entire assemblage, then shot a match at it. Murphy ran and crouched behind Granny's big terra-cotta jardiniere and waited for the can to explode.

It did not. It merely turned black about its underside. Murphy kicked it into the ivy by the fence bordering the alley. Then, with adrenal rage, he leaned against the jardiniere, which had sat in the side yard for as long as he could remember, stagnating, nourishing mosquitoes by the cloud, and pushed.

A brackish fan of foamy water as dark as cuttlefish ink spread through the grass and immediately got drunk up by the dry soil, leaving above ground only a supersaturated balsa-wood toy airplane, hundreds of wooden matches, and two cue-ball-sized toads that at first appeared inert but soon began to hop away in opposite directions—one toward the alley fence, the other toward the porch.

Murphy got behind the toppled jardiniere and pushed and heaved until it finally began to roll. It crushed the porch-bound toad.

“Quince,” said Murphy.

He then ran after the other toad, who had just about gotten to the fence. Murphy soaked the animal in Ronsonol and set it on fire. It hopped four more times, then stopped. Its skin bubbled. Its mouth opened. It shrank. It hopped once more.

“Renée.”

He stomped on it. An orange finger of flame leapt from the frog's head;
Murphy stomped again. After all, he didn't want to burn down the whole neighborhood.

* * *

January. Renée had neither called nor dropped by since the Day of the Toads. She didn't play with Murphy at recess, she didn't pair up with him for science experiments, she didn't even flick paper footballs at the back of his head or put ice cubes down his shirt. She didn't wait for Murphy in the hallway after school, but instead went outside to find Quince, who was always waiting by the bike rack. They walked from school to Renée's house every day, something Murphy knew because he followed them every day, taking extra care to ensure he wasn't seen. Murphy would hide inside the abandoned house across from Renée's and watch for movement inside the Tuttles'. During his sentinels he would experiment with matches and a quantity of Ronsonol he carried with him in a twelve-dram prescription bottle that once held pills for Granny's flatulence, and wait for Quince to go home.

Every time he left Renée's, Quince seemed a bit larger, a bit taller. By Cinco de Mayo, Murphy noticed that the pair were the same height. Murphy was at least half a foot shorter.

One afternoon, as Murphy sat in his secret spot testing a contrivance of matches whose heads were tightly wrapped in tinfoil, heated until ignition, causing the contrivance to rocket in a satisfying but wholly unpredictable way, he heard a car start.

It was Mr. Tuttle, backing out of the driveway in his old Chevette. He drove off in the direction of Mueller Airport.

They were alone. Renée and Quince were
by themselves.

A sudden wind blew the day's heat and gel-like humidity away. The gust was followed by a rolling tide of gray clouds lit from within by bright branches of lightning tinted red.

A yellowy light went on in one of the windows of the Tuttles', illuminating a ceiling fan. From beyond the frame of the window a hand appeared. It pulled a chain on the fan, which accelerated to a leisurely wobble. The light went off. Presently, a low, greenish-blue light filled the window.

The treetops waved. Twigs and leaves fell. It got cool and dry. The sky grew darker.

Knees bent, head down low, Murphy gritted his incisors, took a plumb, dizzying breath that made his scarred windpipe tickle, and crawled toward the Tuttles' like infantry.

He crouched under the window, his back to the nearly paintless wall. He listened, but the rustling trees, like thousands of sparklers, swallowed up every noise but the thunder.

He squeezed his matchboxes, felt the aliphatic chill of the prescription vial of Ronsonol in his pocket, then stood and peeked inside the house.

Renée and Quince were lying on the shag-carpeted floor with a black corduroy armchair pillow behind each of their heads while before them a small color TV played the
Brady Bunch
episode where Marcia gets kissed by Davy Jones. Murphy would never again watch
The Brady Bunch.
He would kill off each Brady in his mind until the archive in his brain was empty of that particular show.

The show ended in a commercial for Brawny. Quince pulled out from under the TV stand a flat brown and black box with many cords snaking from it: Intellivision. He plugged in the
Major League Baseball
cartridge. Breathtaking! Atari held no cards against the royal flush of colors, movement, and sharpness of Intellivision.

Murphy watched them play, one inning, two, three; he watched them grow more animated and shrieky, until the fifth inning, when Quince tripled off of a wobbly curveball, scoring three runs. Renée paused, then reached over and pulled Quince's shirt over his head. He responded by yanking off one of her blue Keds. By the time they were tied at six in the bottom of the ninth, both wore nothing but underwear, their shirts and shoes and socks and pants scattered here and there.

Renée appeared to be pitching, the winning run on second. She threw a couple of pert strikes. She squealed after each one; Quince groaned.

In real life Quince bore zero aptitude for any sport, especially baseball, but he had a built a reputation on his skills with the joystick. He knocked Renée's next split-fingered out of the park. Quince arched with victorious laughter. Renée covered her mouth with one hand, then rolled backward, kicking and shaking her head. She rolled onto her knees, grabbed an armchair pillow, and buried her head and shoulders underneath it. Quince stood up, grinning, jumping from one foot to the other, his fingers peace signs stabbing at the ceiling.