Smiths' Meat is Murder (10 page)

During our only phone conversation, Paul had said there was no need for me to rush getting there since he spent his Sundays at home like he spent practically every other day: playing guitar, listening to music, reading or doing not much of anything. It didn’t sound all that different from my life, except instead of reading I watched TV and jerked off. And to the best of my knowledge, I wasn’t dying. He sounded pretty sick and told me he’d had a pretty close call during a night the previous week. The next day he’d decided to call me. He was embarrassed to admit it had taken him nearly a week to get up the nerve to finally dial the phone.

“I know how that is,” I told him. “I’ve been in love with this girl for months now, and I can’t do jack shit about it. I’ve talked more with her mother than with her. I thought you were her calling me back,” I laughed.

“Who? Allison? Allison from school?” his voice climbed in question. I felt a surprising pang of jealousy stick it to me and was sorry I’d revealed anything about a girl worthy of my complete devotion.

“No. Not that Allison. Just this girl from my old school.”

I got up from the bench, reading my flowered paper napkin with the directions and a crude map scribbled in pen. I walked along the main street (may I be struck
dead if it was not called Main Street) which ran parallel to the waterline. At least a hundred yards of private, high-tide-buttressed beach kept the road from veering too close to the action. When immediately outside of the green, shaded town common, I began to sweat like a pig. The spongy foam that covered my earphones would have to be wrung out soon, and I was too self-conscious to do it in front of anyone who might see. For the second time that day, I regretted my choice of outfit.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and face with the bottom of my green shirt. The perspiration turned the cotton blend material so dark that it looked greasy and dirty. I ducked out of the heat, and into a high end “country store” for something to drink. I still had my walkman up high, so I musn’t have heard the owner telling me to put my smoke out. As I sized up coolers full of fresh squeezed juices and racks of hot baked goods and gourmet potato chips, I was startled by a boney, arthritic hand patting me on the shoulder. I slid the earphones off my ears and let them hang, still buzzing, around my neck.

I always enjoyed pegging the volume when I listened to headphones in public. I liked depriving one of my senses of the mundane and force-feeding it something altogether different. There’s no question that doing so offered a kind of crude, blunt buzz. And that’s what I
needed. The squeal of the slaughterhouse saw in ‘Meat is Murder” against the backdrop of that country store was something of a welcome mindfuck.

“Don’t pump that thing in here, sonny,” the storekeeper said, reaching for the smoke without seeming to fear the burning end. He looked so gaunt, it was shocking, like the last days of Bing Crosby. I thought he might be terminally ill, so I apologized as if he was.

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “Really.” Then I flicked the weed out the door which was held open by a racist ceramic lawn jockey figurine. I was feeling like shit on so many levels.

“And how about rescheduling the rock concert?” the old man added, pointing ever so slightly with his chin in the direction of my walkman. “These folks didn’t come here on a Sunday to hear that racket.”

At that point I said nothing, put the cold, sweaty headphones back to my ears and walked out of the place into the scorching sunlight. I started to trace the smell of smoke back to its source, hoping to find what was left of my cigarette. I looked back toward the store to see his silhouette pass slowly—like in an old western—from the darkened doorway into daylight. There his face took on human features. He was saying something I wouldn’t hear and using his hands to emphasize the point.

Morrissey sang about how neither life nor death particularly appealed to him. Catching a glimpse of that sickly shopkeeper flailing his arms while the cattle bled to death in my ears was not doing much to keep me from choosing one or the other.

And that’s when I saw it, diagonally across the street: the Super Drug where Denise and her three friends died. A section of bricks about the size of a garage door was a brighter red than the rest of the wall. A small tree surrounded by what appeared to be a fence of four white crosses had been planted in a plot jackhammered from the sidewalk. My legs started to feel like jelly as I walked toward the memorial. Four people my own age—one of whom I’d sort of known—had died right there, and not on TV. I felt a chill I knew could not possibly be real.

I was squinting to help bring the scene into focus, and as I got closer I could make out melted candles, dried flowers, photographs, ribbons and other mementos collected around the sapling’s fine wrist. There were two laminated pencil drawing portraits of Denise leaning against the tree: one done by her hand, and the other—a sincere replica—done by her younger sister. I tried to remember what her voice sounded like, but I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t remember Danny’s voice. I just remembered that it was kind. I touched the new
bricks and started to choke up but fought it back. They must have been scared to die. It must have hurt, even if it was over quickly. There was no longer anything the slightest bit funny about the phony suicide note stuck to Denise’s locker. I felt like shit for ever having thought otherwise.

There was also an eight by ten photograph of our high school class taken from the roof of the school. It must have been our first or second year. Everyone was wearing a blue T-shirt, and we were arranged in the shape of a giant number eighty-five. Someone had circled Denise’s head with a red pen, but she still looked like every other smudge without a face or gender. I had seen that photograph before and I knew Ray and I were down at the base of the number eight. He was so much taller than me that, side by side, we stuck out. I traced over the other faces with my finger, trying to find Allison’s, but it was useless. It would have felt good to see her then, even in a blurry aerial photo.

I sat down on the curb next to the tree and smoked another cigarette. I was feeling kind of shaky, like I didn’t have a lot of control over what I might say or do next. I’ve had that feeling a hundred times since. I found ‘That Joke isn’t Funny Anymore’ on the tape and broke down and cried while I listened to it at full volume. During the pause before ‘How Soon is Now’, I noticed that my crying and the squawking of a few gulls were
the only sounds that accompanied the waves in the distance. It was an otherwise peaceful scene. I stopped crying on a dime and looked across the street at the storekeeper, standing in front of his shop with his hands on his hips, watching me.

I felt another wave of tears coming on, and all of a sudden wanted to get the hell out of there. There was absolutely no way I could show up at Paul’s house now and talk about music and pretend to treat him like a child prodigy instead of what he really was, a genuine tragedy, a dying stranger. I needed to find a telephone. And my mouth was so dry from crying and smoking and the heat. I went into the Super Drug, grabbed a bottle of water and used the payphone to call Ray. I was pretty sure he’d be home watching the Sox game, so maybe I could convince him to drive out and get me.

“Hey, man, it’s me. What’s going on?”

“Just the man I wanted to talk to,” he said, like a used car salesman. “You, my friend are the proud owner of two, and I repeat, two tickets—one for you and one for the little lady of your choice, though we both know who that would be—to
thee
most anticipated show of
thee
summer. Yes,
Thee
Smiths.”

“That’s cool, man. Thanks,” I said, noticing how hot the black receiver felt against my ear.

“‘That’s cool, man. Thanks?’
Is that all I get? I was out until three in
thee
morning Friday night with Snow
Whitest making promises my boy,
prom-misses,”
Ray shot back teasingly. “I think I deserve a little more than
‘That’s cool, man. Thanks.’ ”

“You’re right, man. Sorry. Hey, can you get away right now?” I asked. “I could really use a lift.”

“No can do, mon ami. The surviving seventy-five percent of my grandparents—possessing barely forty-five percent of their faculties—is here for Sunday dinner. And there’s a turkey in the oven nearing the end of its third trimester. I mean, who the fuck cooks a turkey in this heat? I’m sweating my balls off here.” It felt pretty good to hear his voice. He almost always made me laugh. “Why? What’s up?” he asked.

“Ah, it’s nothing. No big deal,“ I said. I was quiet while I lit up a smoke right there in the foyer of the Super Drug. “Hey, look man, after I hang up, I’m going to trespass on a private beach, listen to the greatest album ever made one more time, have a smoke and then drown myself in the ocean. I won’t be needing those tickets where I’m going.”

Ray laughed, “Sounds like a good time. I’m jealous.” He seemed to weigh it up in his head for a few seconds then added, “Fuck the turkey!”