Venus Drive (5 page)

They pile out, girl after girl, stringy hair, parkas and hats, bundled, fevery sweetnesses who believe what I believe.

Here comes Tina with her deathmarch boots and mansion-colored hair, a deep-tongued angel like a painting from before Mister Marx was born. Sometimes when I see her I worry our cause is real, that we will die in low rooms with buckets and wires and sponges. State men will spaz me with volts, goad me into informancy. I have a low treachery threshold. Then the hummer days will be a faraway dream.

There are some new boys here, too, the kind who read French in the original and trick you into thinking their hearts are pure. These types prey like mantises on the kind and curious. There is one named Floyd I have seen doing deep stares at my Tina. It may be time for a cadre-to-cadre chat.

Lucy feeds the fire with our busy scraps. We lean into the light and say our names.

“Greetings from the campus branch,” says one boy, so gallant with a zit-scorched chin. I raise my beer to him.

“Smash the state!” calls a sweetness, and giggles, as though goosed by the dark.

“Welcome all,” says Martin. “Tonight is a special night for me. It is exactly ten years since I came to the conclusion that human life makes sense only insofar as it is lived in servitude to the infinite. You may ask what I mean by that. Look around you. See the moon? The outline of the trees against the night? Is that what I mean by infinite? Well, I could cut those trees down tomorrow. I probably will. I could detonate the moon. That's not what I mean by infinite. Certainly we are not infinite. We are flesh and blood, minds full of the rot of capitalism. Born dead, really. No, comrades, what I mean by infinite is…”

Now comes a tender kind of animal squeal from off behind the woodpile. I know it, that sound, know it too well, and my heart frogs up. I find her there with that boy, Floyd. She is doing what she is doing as though it were some kind of contest where you have to be quick and cannot spill.

“Traitor!” I say.

“You don't own me,” says Tina, “I belong to history, you dumb fuck.”

“Hello, comrade,” grins pinned Floyd.

My hook is up, hooked in the moon, but I cannot move, cannot take my eyes off the kid's majestic thing. It's like the first time I read Nietzsche, and Martin had to talk me down.

Now Martin talks me down once more. My hook, too.

“It's okay,” he says, “it's okay. Go back to the house. Go back to the house, man.”

Now I must be shouting. Martin's hand is on my mouth. Now I must be biting. His knee on my neck.

 

That night I dream of sirens, the deep, womby wail of them slicing over trees, Lucy screaming, “Barricades! Barricades!”

It's a two-pronged attack, what they call a pince-nez in tactical circles. Cherrytops roll off the pond road onto the compound, crunching ice. That kulak bitch trails them in her jeep, calling out the window, “Get those communists! Get those junkie creeps!”

“We are not communists!” I call out in my world-historical dream-world voice, which is deep and resonates with the inexorable.

Through the flames of the bonfire I see forms of men come through the birch line. They hop stumps and scrapwood, sweatshirts and facepaint caught in the hack of headlight beams. They have baseball bats and compound bows. Pistols squawk in the graveyard and the far-off woods. Rape shrieks come down from the prayer rock. The flower of our nation lies in puppet mounds around the fire pit.

There is Martin in a bloom of ruin among them.

 

I awake, peek out the attic window. The bonfire is an ash disk on the lawn.

I listen to Martin and Lucy, their Saturday morning coffee talk, or what slivers of it slat through my floor.

“I'm just worried that he's really crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that. That something's really off.”

“I know.”

“We should call his folks. Or maybe contact the psychiatric community, problematic as that may be.”

“Is this all the cream?”

“Take mine.”

“You know, I love you in that robe.”

“We're not done talking about this, Martin. I'm going to call his folks. I think he's snapped. He tried to kill Floyd.”

“He seems a little wiggy. I shouldn't have given him that hook.”

“He smokes all of our pot.”

“He doesn't really do much for international socialism.”

“Those things I said, I was angry.”

“I've been selfish.”

“Come here.”

Lucy hands me a stack of newspapers on the way out to my father's car.

“Onward, upward,” she says.

We drive down the pond road.

“Well,” says my father, “I hope your little adventure in social unrest is over.”

“Guess so,” I say.

“When the freaks turn you out, then it's time to re-evaluate things. Wouldn't you agree?”

“You have a point.”

We pass the kulak's house, turn onto the country road, go by White Power Pizza one last time.

“Hungry?” says my father.

“I'll eat tomorrow,” I say.

Home is so fabricked and glowing. I had almost forgotten the softness of the world. Here's my little room, the bed, the desk, the lamp, and my little mother in it, folding towels for me.

I am down in the valley now.

I eat many tomorrows away. I miss Martin's cuisine. Everything here comes in plastic with a scissor line. I watch the men on TV in their good, dark suits, their free-market starch. Lucy would be laughing, Martin cursing, but I can only stare.

My mother and father say they see a leap for the good in me. I am quiet and take my boots off at the door.

I think of Tina often. I think of her in several fixed positions, with slight rotation.

Someday, I shit you not, the order will come down. Someone will surely be sending the orders down then. There will be a knock on the door, an old comrade in the glittering tracksuit of the new regime, chin pimples gone to grave divots. The state, he will explain, the new, glorious state, requires assistance with a certain hero of the people who has lost himself to rogue notions. We need a man, he will tell me, a man who can get in close, a man who is maybe a bit soft in the head but with a terrible hardness to him from all his short-term memory loss.

This order will come down and I will slip my hook in a grip for the road. I will take a slow bus up to the hills. We'll sit there up on the prayer rock, Martin and me, talk of our victory, recall old struggles, laugh about the sandy sons. It will be a meeting of dearest friends and I will fill his bong for him from my private government stock. We will weep for Lucy, slain at the Battle of the Malls. We will mourn Floyd, him of huge heart and member, executed live via satellite, purged by fiends. We will rue those dark forces of counter-revolution and counter-counter-revolution that maneuver as we speak. We will sigh, admire the layers of light in the sky from the sunset behind us, build a fire for the cold coming night. I will hoist my hook from the grip, kept all these years, a memento of exile, of sacrifice.

“Hey,” Martin will say, “I've been looking all over for that fucking thing.”

“Forgive me, Bronsteins!” I will shout, hook my hook in my hero's eye, drag him by the brow bone to his pyre.

Gary gets to pick a park. A nice gesture on the part of the state. Or is it the city? Gary studies the list, picks one far from home. Last thing he needs is a neighbor, a friend, family even, seeing him in some kind of get-up, coveralls, a neoprene vest, poking around with one of those trash-poke sticks.

The kids from the school, say, with their frisbees, their dogs.

It would get around.

It's hard enough this woman at the desk knows what he's done. Maybe she's from a bootstrap family, foreign. Here's Gary, lucky to be born a citizen, wasting his good fortune. All he can do now is try to set things straight.

He'll start with the park.

 

He has some days before he's supposed to report. He stays home, drinks O'Doul's, shoots cocaine, watches the tube. It's non-alcoholic, the O'Doul's. Gary bought a case of it by mistake. They don't mark things properly anymore. Still, it'd be wrong to pour it down the sink.

They have a tournament on TV, football, the other kind, countries, flags. He finds a team to follow, a side, Cameroon. So far, a Cinderella story, the color man says. But how does Cinderella end? Does she win? Gary hopes so. Something will happen to him if Cameroon loses. Maybe it's stupid, reminds him of all the stupid people he always thought himself positioned against, but here he is: a rooter. It is not a good epoch for position-taking. How long is an epoch? Maybe he can wait it out.

 

He goes out at sundown, after the games, buys some bagels, cigarettes. This morning's bagels marked down. A man stands near the bagel store. His legs are in leggings. Blanket strips? He's bleeding from the mouth.

“They took my teeth!” the man says.

“They're just getting started,” says Gary, gives the man a buck.

At the bank machine, Gary doesn't check his balance. Better to leave it to the gods. Someday the machine will shun him. Why know when?

 

Gary had a band back when that was a good idea, toured the basements of Europe in a bus. The Dutch dug it best. The Dutch got the put-on underneath the hurt, the howl. Gary's not sure he would get it himself anymore. This was years ago, before the whole thing got big, and small again. Now it's gone. The tradition is gone. The kids at the school, they hardly even know that really famous group, the one with the singer who killed himself. The singer in Gary's band killed himself, too.

The drummer quit, went to divinity school.

Now Gary likes to tell people at parties how he works with kids. It explains him, his shoes, his age. The only parties he goes to are those his mother gives. He talks to the children of his mother's friends, younger people, yoga, the big new job, no stains on their teeth. He doesn't really work with kids, either. He works near them, odd jobs, errands, the elevator, recess guard. The kids wave, say his name. Kids are precious, priceless.

Gary has a price.

He just lowers it a lot.

The thing is, all Gary did was try to stick up for the cart guy. Sweet guy, cart outside the synagogue, always the freshest stuff: squash, cucumbers, fruit. The older cop was hassling him, the rookie hanging back.

“Officer,” said Gary to the rookie, “what's this about? A permit?”

“Fuck off.”

Gary was uptown to meet someone, a buyer. A tiny deal, a taste, a favor, bagel money while school was out. The buyer was nowhere.

“I pay your salary, officer,” said Gary.

“I doubt it, pal.”

The older cop banged the cart guy down on a tomato crate. The cart guy was talking in a bootstrap tongue.

“Hey, Turkey, you from Turkey?” said the older cop. Gary eyed the gun on his hip.

Maybe it was a test from God, see if Gary would stick up for the cart guy.

Maybe it was that Gary once played a little football, American. Tactics, crackback, spear.

He put his hand on the shoulder of the older cop.

“Lay off of him,” said Gary.

Clothesline, clip.

Gary was on his belly, cuffed. The rookie was in his pockets. “Well, well, what have we got here, Mr. Solid-Fucking-Tax-Paying-Salary-Payer Prick?”

 

Lock-up was winos unzipping, pissing on the walls. A boy Gary knew from a bulletproof bodega crawled under a bench and slept. There were dozens of them there in one cell. Hands cuffed at their bellies, they filed out for bologna on bread. He befriended a French kid, a student, busted in some club, a ketamine sweep. The French kid was here on a grant to study business. Catch you with K in Tokyo, the French kid said, and they do a number on you with a sword. Or maybe it was Malaysia. Either way, it was no time to be a student.

One guy, he went for a fit, a seizure, right there on the cell floor. The rest of them stood around, hands clasped together like a prayer meet. Smart guy, thought Gary. Get yourself a bed, warm food. The guards figured him for a fake, though. They were not dumb men, not for here. They kicked the faker in the buttocks, the back. The French kid nudged Gary, said something in French.

They got juice, more sandwiches. Gary gave the French kid a look. He was sorry about the cheese, American cheese, jail cheese, the whole thing.

“How did I ever get here?” said Gary.

“A big van,” someone called out.

They led him through some corridors, took him before the judge. It felt like early evening but there was little in the way of evidence. There was a box painted on the courtroom tiles. “Defendant Stand Here” was painted in the box. A short man, maybe hoping to pass his dark sneakers off as shoes, pinched Gary's arm.

“Just tell me, did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“That's what I thought.”

The defender faced the judge, said something in English. Felonies, misdemeanors, mitigations. The prosecutor, handsome in a good tan suit, spoke the same words in a different order. Gary tried to follow the exchange but he was beat. He could smell the stink coming up from his boots.

The judge rubbed his gavel.

The bailiff buried his key in Gary's cuffs.

A woman at a window handed Gary a carbon receipt. It listed what the cops had taken from him at the station house, laces, a lighter, some lip balm, a pen. He waited for her to slide his things across the counter in a big envelope. Probably manila. He had a constitutional right to his lip balm back. He waited a while.

“Get out of here,” she said.

 

Fucking Cameroon. Why can't they concentrate? They pound the ball upfield, get an open net, shoot wide into the stands. Their captain looks much older, slaps them around. It does no good. Their coach, a Croatian, walks the sideline in a windbreaker. Gary gets out his atlas, looks up Cameroon. Symbols for goods and resources, coffee, oil, lumber.

The Cameroon captain goes up for a header. The ball slants in for a goal.

“The glass slipper continues to fit!” the color man says.

But wouldn't the glass shatter with the girl's first step?

Gary goes to the kitchen for another O'Doul's. When the O'Doul's runs out, he'll get some real beer, but right now there's a principle at stake.

Gary's mother calls Gary.

“Are you coming to my thing on Saturday, Saturday afternoon? It's for Mrs. Lily's daughter, Lorraine. She just got her masters in social work. It's a little gathering. You two will have a lot to talk about with your job and all. Oh, and her mother says Lorraine's a big fan of your music.”

“I don't make music anymore,” says Gary.

“You know what I mean. How are you, honey? You sound a little blue. Are you blue? Did you find any summer work?”

“Maybe. It might start Saturday.”

“Really? Saturday? Doing what?”

“A city job, with kids.”

“Great, Gary. That's great. But please try to get out of it for Saturday. I'll give you the day's pay. I really want you to come to my party. I really want you to say hi to Lorraine.”

“I'll try,” says Gary.

“Try and make it more than try,” says his mother.

 

Gary had a feeling his best friend was going to blow his head off, but what are you going to do? The guy had always said that suicide was the plan. He said it the way some people mention the possibility of law school, vague and determined at the same time. Those people usually did go to law school. They saw themselves as lawyers all along. This guy just happened to see himself as dead.

Divinity school, though, that surprised him. It wasn't that the drummer seemed godless, just kind of vapid, dumb. Gary got offers from other bands, but only the minor, imitative ones. It would have been like playing in his own tribute group.

Gary figures he'll be fine when he gets over the idea of devotion. There was that morning in Rotterdam a man and a woman got down on their knees in the street. They took him up to their room, gave him dope to smoke, played his music for him as though this time he would hear it anew. The man pulled tablature of Gary's songs from a cold oven, his file drawer.

“Your band is one of those bands,” the man said, “in a few years, forget it. Legends. People will see, separate the wheat from the chafe.”

“What about now?” said Gary. “And you mean chaff.”

“Now is different story,” the man said. “There is still a lot of chafe.”

Besides, he's sick of rock. He likes kids. He's shooting a lot of cocaine, sure, but that's just because he's off for the summer. This bust, though, it bothers him. Community service? What community? The cop and the cart guy? The man with no teeth? This city is just a lot of brickwork and stonework and people bearing down on nothing at all.

He remembers the last time he saw Lorraine Lily, a few winters ago. A tag-along, sweet, with tits. Maybe he could knock off the death trip, get clean, get clear, with Lorraine. Benefit from her training.

“Last licks,” he says out loud, pulls the plunger back, eases the needle home.

Neuron, axon, penalty kick.

Now the Africans are leaping into each others' arms, sobbing, falling to the field, grabbing the turf.

“This carriage isn't going to turn into a pumpkin anytime soon, I'll tell you that,” the color man says. “In years to come we're going to look back on this. This moment will become legend.”

“What I hope,” says another announcer, “is that moments like this will help promote international brotherhood through the majesty of the athletic endeavor.”

“Well put,” says the color man, “and well-hoped. But let us not forget that this is just a game.”

“But a hell of a game!”

“The beautiful game. You can see why from the slums of the far-away slums to the war-torn fields of warring lands, this is the world at play.”

“So simple, yet so complex.”

“A dance and a battle in one.”

“You fucking idiots!” Gary says to the screen, but it feels forced, as though he is just some man watching TV.

Maybe Lorraine is religious, thinks Gary, the inner roar of his ears on the wane. I could learn the words. I could sing of God.

There is one last O'Doul's.

 

One day Gary chaperoned a field trip to the city's science library. The kids unpacked their knapsacks and set to work. Gary loitered in the stacks, found a book about barbed wire. It had sketches of every variety, maybe named for the rancher who first knotted it that way. Scutt's Clip. Corsicana Clip. Brotherton Barb. He thought he could do something with this, something creative, but he didn't know what. Maybe a song with all the names of barbed wire in it. It would be good not to explain.

There was one boy in his charge they said might be trouble. It was a private school, so no one ever put it quite like that. What they said was that Vernon was a genius.

Now the boy sat alone at a silver table.

“Hey, man,” said Gary. “What's wrong?”

“My homework,” said Vernon. “My fucking homework. I don't want to do it right now.”

“I know where you're coming from,” said Gary.

“Sure,” said Vernon.

“No, really,” said Gary.

“I bet you couldn't even do my homework.”

“It's not about whether I can do your homework. It's about a feeling.”

“What a pile. Look at you. You're not even a real teacher. What happened to you? I bet you're over twenty.”

“I'm thirty-one.”

“See,” said Vernon. “If I'm anything like you at your age I'm going to kill myself. What do you think of that?”

“I think you ought to save yourself the hassle and do it now,” said Gary. “I was at a faculty meeting and your name came up. Turns out you're not a genius, after all.”

“Liar,” said Vernon, but his voice wavered, and in a moment he was crying. Gary went back to his book. He felt terrible but harbored a secret hope that this moment would count for the genius as a minor scar. Someday Vernon would be accepting a prize at some institute and self-doubt would flare up in the guise of Gary, leering.

 

They are waiting for him at the park station uptown. He sees the trash sticks leaned up in a bucket. A woman ranger in a tight uniform leads him to a bench where some others sit. There are reams of flyers and boxes of envelopes piled on the floor. The flyers announce a summer program for kids, nature walks, rollerblading, marine biology by the lake.

“Are you still hiring for this?” says Gary, holding the flyer up.

“Oh, good,” says the ranger, “I was worried we wouldn't have a comedian today.”

“No, really,” says Gary, “I'm qualified.”

“Fold,” says the ranger.

The others are younger than Gary, not white. Kids from nearby.

“You got a car?” says one of them, who has announced himself as Junebug.

“No,” says Gary.

“Well, if you did, what car would you get? A Lexus, right?”

“A Gremlin,” says Gary.

“A what?”

“It's a cool car,” says Gary. “Like in a fucked-up way.”