The Traveling Vampire Show (10 page)

“Nope. They were fine.”

“They didn’t reopen?”

“Huh-uh.”

From what he said, I might just as well have stayed on the roof with them. It would’ve saved a lot of wear and tear on my nerves.

“Where did our shirts end up?” I asked.

“Slim has ‘em. They’re ruined anyway. She wore ’em home.”

“Where’d her T-shirt end up?”

“Still on the ground, I guess. Did you see it when you were there?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t seen Slim’s T-shirt or any sign of the dog or the sneakers....

“Wait,” I said.

He suddenly looked worried.

“How’d you get your sneakers back?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“What’d you do, run halfway across Janks Field when the hearse and bus were already there and ... ?”

“Heck no. We jumped off the back of the shack.”

“Then how’d you get your shoes?”

“My shoes?” He looked down at his sneakered feet. “Oh!” He gave out a laugh and shook his head as if relieved. “You thought I threw my shoes at the dog!”

“I saw you throw them.”

“Not my shoes. Those were Slim’s.”

“Slim’s shoes?”

“Sure.”

“Jeez, man. Why didn’t you throw your own?”

“It was her idea.”

“Real nice.”

“Don’t blame me, she tossed me hers and told me to throw ’em, so I did.”

“So then she had to go through the woods and all the way home barefoot?”

“No big deal. She was fine. Anyway, I offered her mine but she wouldn’t take ’em.”

“Not that they’d fit her anyway,” I said, a little annoyed.

I had sure misjudged Rusty, giving him credit for what turned out to be mostly Slim’s doing.

At least Rusty had done the throwing.

“Well,” said Lee, “glad you both made it out of there all right. We had our doubts.”

“We got out fine,” Rusty said, smiling and bobbing his head. “In fact,” he added, “Slim’s coming over here as soon as she’s gotten herself all bandaged and cleaned up.”

“Good deal,” said Lee. Then she turned to me. “I think I’ll head on home, now. When Slim gets here, why don’t the three of you talk things over and decide what to do about tonight?”

Rusty raised his eyebrows.

“Lee got us tickets for the show,” I explained.

“No shit?” he blurted. Then he quickly added, “Excuse me, Mrs. Thompson.”

“No problem, Rusty.”

“Just slipped out.”

“Tickets for all of us,” I explained.

“Oh, man, this is too cool.”

“I’ll hang on to the tickets,” Lee said, “and drive us out there tonight.”

“Oh, wow....”

“But you’ll have to work things out, yourselves, with your parents. Handle them however you want. I won’t tell on you, but I don’t want to have a hand in any deceptions you decide to use.”

“We’ll figure something,” I said.

“If we’re going,” Lee said, “we should probably leave from my place by about ten-thirty. We’ll want to get there early enough to beat the crowd—if there is a crowd. And find ourselves a parking place.”

“That’ll be great,” I said. “Your house by ten-thirty.”

“And you’re welcome to come over earlier. Always better not to wait till the last moment.”

“We’ll come over as early as we can make it,” I told her.

Then she nodded, said, “See you later then,” and headed for her truck.

Rusty and I watched her drive away.

“Your brother,” he said, “is one lucky son of a bitch.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Shit. What I wouldn’t give...” He shook his head and sighed.

“Well, we’re the ones going to the Vampire Show with her.”

“Yeah! Fantastic! She got four tickets?”

“Bought ’em,” I said. “They cost her forty bucks.”

“She forked over forty bucks?”

“Well, not cash. She used a check.”

“Do we have to pay her back?”

“She didn’t say anything about it. I think she’s treating us.”

“Wow!”

“It didn’t even matter that we’re underage. The guy knew it, but he didn’t care. Julian? He’s the owner. He’s the one we talked to when we went looking for you guys. He sort of warned Lee that it’s an adults only show....”

“What’d he say?”

“He said the show can be real gory. And clothes get ripped off.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah. But Lee didn’t seem to mind. She said she wanted the tickets anyway, so the guy went ahead and sold them to her. But only on the condition that she goes to the show with us. We can’t, like, go without her.”

“Ah. I bet he’s got the hots for her.”

“You know what else? If we stick around after the show, he’ll introduce us to Valeria.”

Rusty moaned almost as if in pain. “We get to meet her face to face?”

“If Julian keeps his word.”

“Ohhhhh, man. This is gonna be some night, huh?”

“I’ll say,” I said. “If we can go.”

“We’re going. Man, we’re going—I don’t care what.”

“Maybe I can finish mowing the lawn before Slim gets here.”

Rusty sat on the porch stairs of my house and watched me finish mowing the front lawn. Then he stood around while I did the back yard and both sides. I was sweaty and out of breath by the time I’d finished. He came with me when I put the mower away in the garage.

Just as we were leaving the garage, Mom drove up. She parked in the driveway and climbed out of her car. She was dressed in her tennis whites—a good clue as to where she’d been.

“I was afraid you’d given up on the yard,” she said.

“No. I just took a little break.”

“Hello, Russell.”

“Hi, Mrs. Thompson.”

“How’s everything?” she asked him.

“Just fine, thank you.”

After a quick glance around, she asked us, “Where’s d’ Artagnan?”

She could only mean Slim.

“On her way over,” I said, though I was starting to wonder why she hadn’t shown up yet.

“She had to stop by her house,” Rusty explained.

To deflect a possible interrogation, I asked Mom, “How was the tennis?”

She beamed. “I trounced Lucy.”

“Good going,” Rusty said.

“Shouldn’t you have let her win?” I asked.

I asked that because Lucy Armstrong was the principal of Grandville High—where Mom taught English and where Rusty, Slim and I were students.

“She wins often enough with no help from me. It’s high time I got the upper hand. I beat her in three straight sets and she had to pay for our lunch. Just wasn’t her day, I guess.” Mom looked us over for a moment, then said, “Have you fellows had lunch yet?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you come inside the house and I’ll make you some sandwiches?”

She trotted up the porch stairs ahead of us, her tiny white skirt flouncing. I guess she was in pretty good shape for a person her age, but personally I wished her skirt could’ve been a little longer—like maybe long enough to cover her underwear?

Not that Rusty seemed to mind the view.

Inside the house, I said, “If you’d rather do something else, I can go ahead and make our sandwiches. No problem.”

“Sounds good. Any time I can get out of making a meal....” She smiled. “I’ll just go ahead and take my bath.”

Did she have to say that in front of Rusty? He was probably already imagining her in the tub. That’s the kind of guy he was. I know, because that’s also the kind of guy I was. Except not about my own mother. Not about Rusty’s mother, either, you wouldn’t want to imagine her naked. But Slim’s mom was another matter. She looked a lot like Slim, only taller and curvier. Whenever she was around, I had a hard time taking my eyes off her. Slim noticed, too, and seemed to think it was funny.

Rusty watched my mother climb the stairs. If she’d been Slim’s mom in a tiny skirt like that, I would’ve been doing the same thing, so I tried not to let it annoy me.

“We might take a walk into town or something after we eat,” I called up the stairs.

She stopped climbing, turned with one foot on the next stair, and looked down at me. I bet Rusty liked that view.

“So if we’re not here ...” I said, and shrugged.

“Just be back in time for supper.”

“What’re we having?” I asked.

“Hamburgers on the grill.” Smiling, she added, “There’ll be enough for your friends if they’d like to join us.”

“That might be neat,” I said.

Rusty, looking embarrassed, shrugged and said, “Thank you. I’ll have to check with my folks, though.”

“We can go over to your place and ask,” I threw in.

“Good idea,” Rusty said.

“I’ll just go ahead and count on the three of you for burgers,” Mom said. “If somebody doesn’t show up, more for the rest of us.”

“Great,” I said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Thompson,” Rusty said.

Around adults, he was always excessively polite. Not unlike Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver, even though he looked more like a teenaged, overweight version of the Beave.

“Come on,” I told him, and led the way into our kitchen. I walked straight to the refrigerator. “Lemonade or Pepsi?” I asked.

“You kidding me? Pepsi.”

I opened the door, pulled out a can and handed it to him.

“Aren’t you having one?” he asked.

“I had a Coke over at Lee’s house.”

He snapped off the ring tab and dropped it into his Pepsi the way he always did. I figured someday he would swallow one of those ring-tabs and choke on it, but I didn’t say anything. I’d already warned him about it often enough so that I suspected he kept on dropping the rings into his cans just to annoy me.

Acting as if I hadn’t even seen him do it, I stepped over to the wall phone.

“What’re you doing?”

“Gonna call Slim, see why she isn’t here yet.”

“Good idea.”

I dialed her house.

As I listened to the ringing, Rusty took a drink of his Pepsi, then went over to the kitchen table and sat on a chair. He looked at me. He raised his eyebrows.

I shook my head.

So far, the phone had jangled seven or eight times. I let it continue to ring in case she was at the other end of her house, or something. I knew the ringing wouldn’t disturb anyone, because nobody lived there except Slim and her mother. And the mother was probably away at work.

After about fifteen rings, I hung up.

“Not home,” I said.

“She’s probably already on her way over....”

Just then came a thump of plumbing, followed by the shhhhh sound of water rushing through the pipes of the house. Mom had started to run her bath water.

Rusty lifted his gaze toward the ceiling—as if hoping to see her.

“Hey,” I said.

He grinned at me. “Maybe Slim’s taking a bath. Has the water running. Can’t hear the phone.”

“Maybe.”

After gulping down some more Pepsi, he suggested, “How about we give her five minutes, then try again?”

“If she’s running bath water, she’ll be in the tub five minutes from now.”

“But she’ll hear the phone,” he explained.

“Not if she’s taking a shower.”

“Girls don’t take showers.”

“Sure they do.”

Leering, Rusty said, “Nah. They just love to lounge in a tub full of sudsy hot water. They do it for hours. By candle light. Sliding a bar of perfumed soap over their bodies.”

“Right,” I said.

“Hey! Just thought of something! How would you like to be Slim’s bar of soap?”

“Get outa here,” I said.

“No, really. Think about it.”

“Shut up.”

“Or would you rather be Lee’s soap? Sliding all over her. Just think of all the places....”

“Knock it off, okay?”

“You’re blushing!”

I turned away from him, picked up the phone and dialed Slim’s number again. This time, I only let it ring twelve times before hanging up.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Where to?”

“Slim’s house.”

“Want to catch her in the tub?”

“I want to make sure she’s all right.”

“She’s fine.”

“She should’ve been here by now. She’s not taking any bath, not with all those cuts on her back. Maybe a quick shower, but she would’ve been done with that a long time ago and it only takes five minutes to walk here. So where is she?”

“What about our sandwiches?”

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “And you ate a Ding-Dong in the woods.”

“That was hours ago.”

“We’ll get something later. Come on.”

“Shit,” Rusty muttered. He polished off his Pepsi, then scooted back his chair and stood up.

On our way to the front door, I said, “Slim did make it home, didn’t she? You stuck with her the whole way?”

“Almost. We split up at the comer.”

“At the corner?”

“The comer of her block.”

“Great,” I muttered, throwing open the screen door.

Rusty followed me onto the porch and down the stairs.

“So you don’t really know she made it home?”

“Her house was right there.”

“You should’ve walked her to the door.”

“Oh, sure.”

“And even if she made it into her house,” I said, “nobody was there to take care of her. Maybe she got inside and passed out, or something.”

“What was I supposed to do, go in with her? Then you’d be riding my ass for being alone in the house with her.”

I guess he was right about that.

“You could’ve at least made sure she was all right,” I muttered. “That’s all.”

Speaking slowly, in a clipped voice that sounded as if he might be running short of patience, Rusty said, “She told me she’d be fine. She said she didn’t want any help. She told me to go over to your place and she’d be along as soon as she got done bandaging herself up.”

“How was she supposed to put bandages on?” I asked. “The cuts are on her back.”

“Don’t ask me. I’m just telling you what she said.”

I said, “Damn it.” My throat felt tight and achy.

“Don’t worry, Dwight.” He sounded a little concerned, himself. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

Even though Slim didn’t have a father and her mother worked as a waitress at Steerman’s Steak House, she lived in a better neighborhood than mine and in a better house.

That’s because they inherited the house and some money from Slim’s grandparents.

Slim’s mother, Louise, had grown up in the house and continued to live there even after she got married. This was because she and her husband, a low-life shit named Jimmy Drake, couldn’t afford to move out. At the time of the wedding, she was already pregnant with Frances (Slim), and Jimmy had a lousy job working as a clerk in a shoe store. After Slim was born, Jimmy wouldn’t allow Louise to have a job.