Grasshopper Jungle (5 page)

We stood, looking directly across Kimber Drive at the yellowed plastic lens that fronted the long fluorescent tubes illuminating the lettered sign for Stan's Pizza.

Someone had painted an
A
between the
S
and
T
, so the sign read:
Satan's Pizza

People were always doing that to Stan.

They did it so many times that Stan simply gave up on cleaning the paint, and allowed the sign to say what the good people of Ealing wanted it to say:

Satan's Pizza

People from Ealing had a good sense of humor, too.

“I have seen Pastor Roland Duff eating there,” I said.

“Did he order a
Satanpreme
?”

It was difficult to find our shoes and skateboards up on the roof at night. As I had originally theorized, there was plenty of cool shit up there, so Robby and I kept getting distracted. It didn't matter much, since Shann had fallen asleep, anyway.

We found a plastic flamingo with a long metal spike descending from its ass, so you could stick it in your lawn and fool passersby into thinking that flamingos were indigenous to Iowa.

Robby discovered two bottles of screw-top wine, full and sealed, and he placed them on the roof beside the top of the ladder.

We theorized that maybe back in the days when Ollie was thinner, he may have climbed up here to get drunk and talk to the flamingo. Ollie Jungfrau weighed more than four hundred pounds now.

Satan's delivered to
Tipsy Cricket Liquors
.

“Have you ever been drunk, Porcupine?” Robby said.

“No.”

“One of these days, let's get drunk together.”

“Okay,” I said.

Like considering most things that were against some well-intended list of rules, thinking about getting drunk for the first time with Robby made me feel horny.

We found two round aluminum canisters that had reels of 16 mm film in them. Nobody watched 16 mm movies anymore. There was an old projector at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy, but we decided not to take the films, just in case they were pornos or something.

We did want to take the flamingo, though.

Robby placed the plastic pink flamingo next to the bottles of wine.

“One of us can climb down first, then the other can toss down the bird and the wine,” Robby said.

Robby also found a Halloween mask. It was covered in fur and looked like the face of a grimacing lemur. It was the face a lemur in an electric chair would make. That had to come home with us, too, we decided.

“If you ever want to get shot in Ealing, walk through someone's backyard at night with a lemur mask on,” Robby said.

WE FINALLY FOUND
our shoes and put them on.

I was embarrassed to admit it, but it was kind of emotional for us being reunited with our stuff after that very long day.

I could see how Robby felt the same.

We put our skateboards down with the rest of the things we'd gathered, and then we sat beside the rooftop air ventilation unit to relax and have another cigarette.

“It feels good to have my shoes back,” Robby said.

“If we didn't find them, I was going to let you have those Adidas of mine.”

“Thanks.”

We both exhaled smoke at the same time.

“Austin?”

“What?”

“Do you realize that today we got beaten up for being queers?”

“I know.”

“But you're not a queer,” Robby offered.

“I don't think so.”

“Well, I apologize.”

“You didn't do anything, Rob.”

Sometimes, I called him Rob.

“I've never done anything,” he said. “I've never even been kissed or anything, but I still get beaten up.”

“Shann kisses you all the time.”

“That isn't what I mean.”

“I know.”

“Well, if I'm going to get beat up for being queer, at least I'd like to know one time what it feels like to be kissed.”

“Um. I guess you deserve that. You know. Everyone deserves to not feel alone.”

“Can I kiss you, Austin?”

The air suddenly became unbreathably thin.

I thought about it. I shook my head.

“That would be too weird.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't be.”

We sat there, smoking.

Everything was shitty and confusing.

Robby felt terrible.

I said, “I guess I would kiss you, Robby.”

“Don't feel like you
have
to.”

“I don't feel that way.”

So Robby Brees, my best friend, and the guy who taught me how to dance so I could set into motion Shann Collins's falling in love with me, scooted around with his shoulders turned toward mine.

He was nervous.

I was terrified.

I watched him swallow a couple times.

Then Robby placed his cigarette carefully down on the gravel beside his foot. He put his hand behind my neck and kissed me.

He kissed me the way I kiss Shann, but it felt different, intense, scary.

Robby's tongue tasted like cigarettes when he slid it inside my mouth. I liked the taste, but it made me more confused. Our teeth bumped together. It made a sound like chimes in my head. I never bumped teeth with Shann when I kissed her.

When we finished kissing, Robby pulled his face away and I watched him lick his lips and swallow.

Robby's eyes were wet, like he was going to cry or something.

He looked away and wiped his eyes.

Robby said, “I'm sorry.”

“No. It's okay. I said you could. I said let's do it.”

“Is it okay?”

“I said so, Robby. It was weird. Really. Are you okay?”

“I think that was the best moment of time in my entire life, Austin.” Robby wiped his eyes and said, “Thank you. I've wanted to ask you to do that forever.”

“You could have asked me.”

“I didn't want you to hate me.”

“How could I hate you?”

“For wanting to do that to you.”

“Oh. Well. I am sorry if it was clumsy. I didn't know if I was supposed to act like the man or the woman.”

Robby picked up his cigarette.

“You weren't supposed to
act
at all.”

“Good. Because I'm pretty sure I was just being . . . um . . . Porcupine.”

Robby puffed.

“You know what, Robby?”

“What?”

“If you ever want to get shot in Ealing, do
that
in someone's yard at night.”

WE SAT THERE
without saying anything else until we'd smoked our cigarettes down.

I tried not to think about what Robby and I did.

What Robby and I just did was the only thing I
could
think about.

If I was confused and torn before going up on the roof with Robby, I was pulp, ready to be spit out by history, after we spent a few minutes there.

I tried to think like we didn't actually do it, but I could still taste Robby's mouth in mine. I tried to listen for Shann moving around below us in Grasshopper Jungle, so I wouldn't hear my mind telling me how it would be all right if Robby asked if he could kiss me again sometime.

It would be thrilling and daring.

After midnight, Ealing is quieter than a stone coffin.

Robby could tell I was confused—tripping out, we would say.

“Are you mad at me?” he said.

“Shit. I'm not mad.”

“Okay. Look.”

I hadn't been looking at Robby. Until he'd said that, I didn't even notice that I was staring at my shoelaces, tracing the zigzag path of them up, down, back, forth with the tip of my finger, like a train on a white switchback track, from one shoe to the other, over and over.

Around the loop, crossover, back and forth.

I raised my eyes.

Robby scooted through the gravel away from me.

He had lifted a square metal door in the roof, propped it open. I hadn't even realized it was there.

“Roof access ladder,” Robby said. “It goes down into the secondhand store.”

“It was left unlocked?” I said.

“Nobody ever comes up here.”

“
Up here
has a watch-flamingo, and a lemur head.”

“No one wants to mess with shit like that.”

Robby lowered his face down below the rim of the trapdoor.

He said, “Do you want to go down there?”

I had already done something with Robby I never believed I would do. Climbing down inside Johnny McKeon's secondhand store in the middle of the night was meaningless shit in comparison.

I said, “That would be cool.”

When I stood up, I was dizzy.

I was like the tip of my finger, zigging and zagging from eye to eye, following a string, making history.

Robby watched me get up. I caught his eyes looking at me. I knew we'd never look at each other the same, and I didn't know how I felt about that. I caught him trying to see if I had an erection. I tried to pull my T-shirt down to cover it.

The basketball shorts and boxers I'd been wearing that day revealed yet another strategic flaw for the history books.

History shows that erections happen at the worst possible times, and they stick around until someone else notices them. Often, it is either a librarian or an English teacher, like Mrs. Edith Mitchell.

I went to the edge of the roof, to the top of the small ladder we'd used to get up there.

“Shann,” I said. “I just want to make sure she's okay.”

Robby didn't answer.

Words like
okay
can mean all kinds of things.

Robby knew enough that saying anything might nail down a definition of
okay
that wasn't what either one of us wanted to hear.

The Explorer was dark and quiet.

Shann was still asleep.

We hadn't been gone for more than twenty minutes, even if time seemed to slow to a crawl now.

Across the street,
Satan's Pizza
winked. The fluorescent tubes inside the sign made an audible hiss like a dying wasp when it went dark.

Robby climbed down the trapdoor.

I followed him.

ON WEEKENDS AND
over the summers I earned money doing jobs for Johnny McKeon at his
From Attic to Seller Consignment Store
. Johnny felt obligated to me because I was Shann's boyfriend.

Usually, the jobs required cleaning the store.

Secondhand stores are like vacuum cleaners to the world: They suck in everybody's shit.

History shows that, like Ealing, when towns are dying, the last things to catch the plague are the secondhand and liquor stores.

Johnny McKeon was on top of the world.

Sometimes, Johnny would receive new consignments out in Grasshopper Jungle, and then leave me to go through and sort boxes, unroll and sweep off rugs, and clean out the drawers in dressers and nightstands.

I found a lot of condoms and Bibles in them.

Johnny told me I could do whatever I wanted with those things.

I threw the Bibles in the dumpster.

Robby and I climbed down the ladder. It deposited us, like visiting aliens, into a common back room that connected
Tipsy Cricket Liquors
with
From Attic to Seller
.

The ladder was attached by metal brackets to a plasterboard wall where the electrical panel box for the store was located. I'd seen the ladder there plenty of times. I had even noticed the Roof Access
sign posted on the wall with an arrow pointing up, as though you might not know where a roof could be, direction-wise.

I never thought about going up on the roof of the mall before I went there with Robby.

On the other side of the wall was the shop's toilet. It was such a small space that you would be looking straight across at your own face in the mirror, and could reach the soap and paper towel dispensers and wash your hands in the sink while you were sitting on the toilet.

Ollie Jungfrau could never take a shit in there.

There was a sign on the door that said:
No Public Restroom

Everyone knew the public restroom was at the launderette, or between the dumpster and the couch in Grasshopper Jungle if you couldn't hold it that far.

There was a homeless guy who'd come riding through on his rickety old bicycle about once per week or so. His bicycle was always teetering, precisely and ridiculously balanced with huge bundles and bags strapped to any available rusted crossbar. Robby and I called him Hungry Jack, but we never asked him his name.

Hungry Jack didn't have any front teeth.

Hungry Jack fought in Vietnam.

When he came through, Hungry Jack would stop and climb into the dumpster, dig around for things.

Robby and I caught him taking a shit one time, between the dumpster and the couch.

I have read that the human memory for smells is one of the most powerful bits of data that can be etched into our brains. Although it seemed so foreign to me, being inside
From Attic to Seller
in the middle of the night, the smell of the place was entirely familiar. The shop had this constant, perfumed odor of sorrow, death, abandonment, condoms, and Bible verses; that was like nothing I'd ever smelled anywhere else.