Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality (10 page)

His forehead is getting a little sweaty, the way it does when he gets excited, like when he's talking about
Dexter's Laboratory
or Cookie Puss. So now, I'm thinking this concert is totally going to be Holy Grail Point-worthy!

Because: Necro? Really bumming me out. Really riding the tip with me. I blew through a whole tank of gas driving past Applebee's to try to find him last night, past Gitsi's, Media Play, the Wegmans parking lot, past Chad Rector's house on the off chance, the Spice Man Tower, and even the corner on Monroe where two guys, about to fight, kept yelling to each other: “This ain't no pickupsticks!”

But as soon as me and Real Dad walk into the Bug Jar, which is my first time ever to the Bug Jar, my shoulder nerves hum. Look, already, at the dim lighting and the giant papier-mâché fly, about the size of a tote bag, attached to a blade of the ceiling fan—with that alone, you and your flame-paintings can suck it, Necro. And even better, in the room next to the bar, Necro? A whole upside-down living room set, bolted to the ceiling. Recliner; books glued to the coffee table.

We take a seat in the one large booth in the corner. Real Dad's picking the label off his beer bottle, looking at the door, one-wording it whenever I ask him something. He rubs some rash cream on his hands and puts the tube back in his pocket. People trickle in. This boulder-shaped guy with a white buzz cut and maroon boots walks in.

“That's Sverg,” Real Dad says. “He's crazy, that guy, crazy
like wild boars. The stories—he fell out the back of the stage door into a snow bank one time, crazy.”

Real Dad gives me the One-Minute index finger and walks over to the guy.

“Sverg!” Real Dad goes. “Svergie!” squeezing Sverg's shoulder. Then he says, in this hairy, over-tanned Long Island accent: “How you doing today can I take ya aside for a drink and a hardcore mastibation session? Mastibation, mastibation, mastibation.”

Which I, at least, think is funny—Real Dad's accent. But look at how Sverg looks at Real Dad, eyelids getting heavier.

“Remember? Last month?” Real Dad says, eyes open wide, doglike and gentle. “That guy, with the accent? Standing right behind you, talking through Arab on Radar? Some Twelfth Man in a Giants jacket?”

Sverg's chin drifts upward, voice reclined and half-asleep on the couch. “Standing—”

“Forget it, forget it,” Real Dad says, waving his hands in front of his chest.

Sverg suddenly deadlocks eyes with Real Dad. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Not at all, my friend,” Real Dad says, jamming his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth. “Just looking forward to some live music.”

“Well, good to see you, okay?” Sverg says slowly, looking past Real Dad toward the room where the stage is.

Since I already hate this Sverg guy, I go and stand in the bathroom. It's dark but with high ceilings, overlapping band stickers of The Priests and Nerve Circus and Pengo crowding
the sink mirror. When I walk out, I feel a hand on my shoulder, a hand that immediately feels like more success and heated driveways than I'll ever have.

“Nate?” the hand says.

I turn around. And, sweep the floors, change your shirt: It's Garrett Alfieri.

“Nathan Gray,” he says. “Your mom took us to Chuck E. Cheese. In Gauntlet you were always the elf—Questor Nate.”

Garrett Alfieri. The one friend Mom liked, the one who escaped, who stopped calling us after his mom found out he got a B. The one who volunteered at the SSJ nursing home during his lunch breaks junior year and wouldn't let us copy his homework. Look at him now—actually shaving, wearing khakis, a shiny blue shirt. His hair is bright-blond enough to almost produce a halo-like glow cloud. When here I am, flannel shirt, nylon running pants, and the world's itchiest five-day beard.

“Garrett. Wow,” I say. “It has been long.”

So, we stand there, nodding, praying that one of us will think of a subject. Because, when you run into someone you know but haven't seen in five years, you feel like you have to give them more than a typical Small-Talk Life Story. But if I do more than give him the Small-Talk Life Story, it will become clear I have nothing to say, have been up to nothing, and it'll end up being the Taco Bell of Conversations.

“I finished up at Alfred in six semesters,” he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot when he talks. “I did this internship in Bausch & Lomb. They had an open, full-time financial analyst gig. So I took it.”

“Jesus loves somebody,” I say.

“There you go!” he says. “Speaking of Jesus, I run a youth group downtown—all low-income. I tell everyone at Group: four-year private universities only exist to allow time for the partiers to get their homework done. I tell them: Load up on AP credits. Know what you want to do by age eighteen. Pick something. Two years in at MCC, follow that up with a SUNY, six semesters later, it's: What's up,” he points to the ceiling, “Throw down,” he points downward, “Closing time.” He waves his hand sideways, slamming an imaginary door.

“Holy Grail Points to you, then.”

“Holy Grail Points,” he holds the steadiest eye contact when he talks, which makes me realize how fidgety I've become. “Man, we said some stupid things. Uncle Frankstache!, right?”

“Colonel Hellstache,” I say.

“Say again?”

“Nothing.”

“Anyway, my fiancée and I just moved into an apartment in the horseshoe on Griffith Street, by the highway.”

“Your own place!”

“It's pretty solid. Nice demographic mix, helps with outreach. The city shut off streetlights to save money, and we still draw our shades and remove our window-sill decorations at night, but, otherwise.”

The crowd gets loud enough to have to yell over, and thick enough so I have to stand on my toes to see Real Dad gesturing wildly—like he's twirling circus streamers—to Sverg. Garrett Alfieri turns around once, and puts his hand
on my shoulder and leans toward me. His deodorant smells like a ballroom.

“Sometimes, I peek out my window at night anyway,” he says into my ear. “Do you still keep in touch with Andrea—or, Necro? Does he live in the city somewhere?”

Which I ignore, for obvious reasons, before the anger can pop out of one of my back teeth. An opening band plays a song with boogery garage-rock chords and a drum part that sounds like a man falling down the stairs. I let a few seconds pass to let the subject change.

“How's your mom?” Garrett Alfieri yells over the band. “Is that your dad over there?”

Since Garrett Alfieri is someone who'll want to talk about family and your family's history—when everyone in Rochester is Italians—I lead him through the crowd of sideburn kids and Fonzies to Real Dad. Who, still, is with his Colonel Hellstache friends Sverg, and, now, Carl from the Bop Shop, who has hockey hair and wears an untucked T-shirt under an open, short-sleeve dress-shirt.

So, I try to ninja in a word, to say Dad! Look! Garrett Alfieri!

But, here Real Dad is, holding open his wallet, nudging his elbow toward the bar counter, eyebrows raised with kindness. “Pints, guys? Refills?” he says.

Sverg and Bop-Shop Carl, these two mung-huts, squint and shrug at each other.

“What? Like I'd rape-drug your drinks?” Real Dad goes. “Am I that much of a dog, gentlemen? Like I'm going to come up to you and comb my mustache and ask you, ‘Have our
paths intertwined previously, perhaps, in cyberspace, in the bestiality newsgroups?'”

Me, I want to crack up at that completely: Real Dad's had that joke for years. But the look on Bop-Shop Carl? Pissing his pants slowly with his face.

“Sorry my dad's not paying attention,” I actually say to Garrett Alfieri.

Garrett Alfieri nods, but he smirks like he knows something.

Which makes me know something for sure: I am a terrible middleman. My neck is sweating. My back is, too: the Melting Backsickle. Garrett Alfieri: throwing me off. Necro: throwing me off. Sverg, Bop Shop Carl: throwing me off.

I'm still thrown off when we all follow Sverg and Bop-Shop Carl down into the Bug Jar basement to hang out with Squeezebeagler. Bop-Shop Carl looks at Sverg and narrows his eyebrows hard at the back of Real Dad's head. The basement walls, gangrene-colored, have stickers and logos everywhere. There are also slit-up leather recliners with upholstery pushing out, and a lamp with no lampshade. For whatever reason, on the TV sitting on a turned-over garbage can,
Dances with Wolves
is playing. My first thought is: this place? File Under Scabies. It smells sharp as gourmet trash, like Poached Death murdered a creature made of garbage.

But I stop myself from officially thinking that, because Real Dad doesn't just like things for no reason. After all, I was completely wrong about not liking that
Schizopolis
movie Real Dad took me to at the Little, and Real Dad totally called me out for dieting only on ninety-minute microwavable
Hollywood bullshit, so I thought about it, and I guess I like
Schizopolis
now.

Except Squeezebeagler isn't even down here. Just me, Real Dad, Sverg, Bop-Shop Carl, Garrett—who's keeping his hands in his pockets, dying for some hand sanitizer—and some guy sleeping in one of the chairs.

“It'll be great to see Tam again,” Real Dad says. “You're lucky to be friends with him—he's a really great guy. I played lacrosse with Tam in high school, killed cockroaches with him.”

When, wait. Wasn't it Real Dad's Blockhustler boss that played lacrosse with Tam?

“Didn't think I'd be learning this much about you tonight, Dale,” Bop Shop Carl says.

“We've hung out, a few times,” Real Dad says. “I mean, I, I, I've been down here in the basement before, before he's performed—”

“Interesting!” Sverg says, in this cocktail-party way. “We've never seen you down here. We must have missed you in this”—he bends his knees a little and makes a slow, broad, backhand gesture—“confined space.”

And then, slow motion, I hear footfalls down the basement steps; the staircase cracking its knuckles. It's Squeezebeagler Tam, Rocker of a Million Faces.

Tam has dark, well-parted hair, workboots and wool socks, shorts with a belt, and a button-down short-sleeve shirt, as if he's there to deliver a package. Even though he hasn't played, there's a sweat-darkened area on his shorts above his crotch, like he wet his pants with his navel. He makes a devil sign and finds the cooler.

“Tam,” Sverg says. “Listen, do you know Dale? He's an old friend of yours.”

You look at Real Dad, and the room's getting dizzy with him. His lower lip moves. He makes a gun out of his fingers and presses the imaginary barrel into his chinfat.

“He knows you, Tam, knows you real well,” Bop-Shop Carl says. “You guys used to play lacrosse, or kill cockroaches. This guy hung out with you all the time.”

Expression flinches out of Squeezebeagler Tam's face. “Which one are you?” he says.

You can feel stadiums in Real Dad's brain collapsing, his eyes getting shinier, like there's an Oh Shit coming big enough to explode the Bible. But listen to what Real Dad says, only this once, because no way am I ever bringing this up again:

“Listen, guys, Tam, Sverg, Carl, it's. What I meant was, sometimes, your voice; you just end up saying ‘I,' and what you mean is, it was your boss, or whoever it may be, in a given situation, and, and, and, but you just start saying ‘I,' instead of whoever's actually—and it's just—and I'm only being honest, here, because at this point what can you even expect to—there's no point in, you know—you cut out the middleman! I believe: I am a person who believes: that the world should be entertaining, that regardless of, you know, you look at, I knew a guy at Griffiss; he's doing flyovers in Iraq—and, and, the world, the dreamscape; the alchemy—it, it's all, just—life! Storytelling!”

Sverg and Bop-Shop Carl look at each other, almost concerned now.

“I'm gonna take off,” Garrett Alfieri says.

“No, wait, no!” I go.

“It was good to see you, though,” Garrett Alfieri says. “Colonel Hellstache? ‘Never change.' I wrote that in your yearbook, man. You kept your word. We need more of that out there in the big world. Throw-down-closing-time; that's what it's all about.”

I shake his hand out of reflex.

If that weren't enough to morph you to your bed permanently and turn you into a Bed Centaur, here, still, is Real Dad:

“Dale,” Bop-Shop Carl says, standing chest to chest with Real Dad now, pupils narrowing. “How about I ask you something?”

Real Dad pretends to laugh, still friends. “Okay, what's that.”

“How about, we don't know you,” Bop-Shop Carl says. “How about, a guy came to see a show last week at a place down the street. Nobody knew him, and he was, like you, following everybody the fuck around. That guy stabbed a friend of ours in the bathroom,” he slashes his leg with his index finger. “Femoral artery. All next morning: mopping up the stall.”

Real Dad raises his palms, padding the air. “Look: on a better day, friend, I swear: You and I would be toasting to live music and friendship.”