Boys of Life (27 page)
"IHd you knew any alt
She laughed tins big deep man's laugh.
"I me home girls who came pretty close, the way they
Ir nevei ma to me how Verbena goi from there to
lu- told me
"It u.ts around the veal 1^62," she Mid "I ninemhet I w.is ►Id I w •! horn
dnii. Win through •« sti.iu I remembt
rl\. ho* a nh two othei o( my girlfriends, ind then
is thin white boy wh down from up North with
iul they •
lally i| whit< ■' 11 111 • n
B O Y S O F L I F E □
black shirt buttoned right up to the collar, and the sleeves rolled down
even though it was the middle o( the summer. He said he was looking
tor volunteers—he was asking ih what we could do to Help out with the cause, and I was being very haughty so 1 said, I can conjure the lizard right out of an ailing person's belly. 1 remember he looked right at me and you know what he said. 7 I just had to laugh. He was so serious. He said to me—Well, there's a lizard stuck in the belly or this country of OUTS, and it vou can conjure it out then why don't you get down here and help me do it?"
Verbena hooted, she still thought it was so funny. I felt sorry tor Carlos there in his silly black shirt with the collar all buttoned up. "My girlfriends just laughed and laughed," Verbena went on. "He was a talker, see, and he just won. He put me right down. You should've seen him—he was only maybe a year older than me, all goofy and dead serious, and wanting to stay up all night and talk about anything instead of going to sleep. He was afraid to go to sleep, he was afraid he was going to miss out on something.
"And believe in stuff! I never saw anybody believe so much stuff as him. It he thought it was going to help to go conjuring some lizard out ot America, then he was going to believe we could do it. He'd make me stay up all night with him trying to figure out how to do it."
"1962," I said. "I was probably just being born right then. Probably that exact same night. It's been a long time since then."
"It's been a long hard time," Verbena agreed. "Lots of things went wrong—got all twisted up." She shook her head. "Sometimes it kills me," she said, "just to think about."
"Do you think he's ..." I trailed off because I didn't know exactly what it was I wanted to ask her. Still doing whatever he was doing, I guess is what I wanted to say. It was so strange to think oi Carlos coming all that way to here from where he used to be —that goofy kid out of college.
"Oh, he's still conjuring," she said. It wasn't what I expected her • his back right up against that wall, and he's losing but he's still fighting. He knows he's losing but as long as he doesn't stop huhtin^ they can't tear him apart."
I remember it scared me. I remember thinking about all those movies he'd made, like they were newspapei sheets pasted Up On the wall.
BOYSOFLIFE □
are in his pockets. Sometimes he's wearing a yellow shirt, and sometimes he's bare-chested. There're these white marks on his chest, like somebody drew lines where his ribs are.
He doesn't come any closer to the house than where he is, he just stands there. But he's watching me.
Sometimes I remember that crazy old man with the golf club, from back in New York. But it isn't him. I don't know who it is, and I don't know what he wants—though in the dream I know I have something that's his, it's in the trailer somewhere and he wants it back. It's something I found out in the woods and took home with me, but it was a long time ago and now I've forgotten what it was. I'd give it to him if I knew, but I don't. So he just stands there.
It's some terrible disease that's done this to his face, made it all white and bloated up and puffy. He's come to show me what it's done to him—somehow it's because of that thing of his I have, that I don't know what it is. And I'm afraid to look at myself in the mirror, because when I look at my hands they're all chalky like his face is, and what if my face looks like his, a mask but it's really my face?
It's so vivid, sometimes I wake up and I think there must be a window to my cell where in the middle of the night I've actually gotten up to look out, and I've seen him waiting out there.
I don't know why I've been afraid to tell that dream. It's just a dream, one more bad dream for somebody who's always had bad dreams. They're just part of the night for me. But I've never had a dream that kept leaving its mark on me, the way when you get chalk on your hand, everywhere you touch you leave fingerprints. Maybe I'm afraid that's what I've been doing for the last ten years, leaving marks everywhere I touched, and now it's coming back to haunt me.
B O Y S O F L I F E □
i bunch ot jerk-ofl footage o( runaway kids, only Carlos as usual managed to rake something dumb like that And turn it into something unforgettable by this process oi tinting the him, which was complicated
dnd you had to do it by hand—hut it meant th.it nor every detail in the movie was m hlack-and-w hire. Some things had rhis pale warcrcolor
look to them—maybe a ray oi sun or the tiles on the floor or a flower.
And it kept changing, so you were sure that flower had heen yellow a minute a
where really there hadn't heen anything there all along except black and white. This ir was always hrrle derails you wouldn't otherwise nonce—and that was the real action ot the movie, not the jerking off, which became just another part ot the scenery.
Carlos had found this abandoned Catholic church out in the South Bronx—one ot those neighborhoods even the priests and nuns had to call it quits on. It was this great building, dark and cool inside, with pigeons in the ratters and big pools o\ water on the floor, and off the Sides ot the aisle there were these little chapels. Of course they didn't have alrars in them anymore—anything that could've heen taken out ot that church had heen carried off a long time ago. But Verbena, with her totally amazing eye tor that sort of thing, went and outfitted those chapeh with flowers and candles and masks, so they looked like a C1 between some voodoo shrine and a window at Macy's. Carlos filmed hoys jerking oft like they were statues of saints—or maybe just department store mannequins—that'd come to life.
I wasn't in on any of that, really. My job was to hang around Port Authority and nab runaway kids right when they got off the bus from New Jersey or wherever, and before they knew what hit them I'd have them over in the South Bronx. Most of the rime they wenl along with it—they were too dazed to ^.l) anything else. Though ever\ once in a while I'd get Some kid who'd totally freak when we got our there and he saw what was up. Whenever rhar happened ir was my job to rake him nut ot the neighborhood and drop him somewhere. Anywhere.
It you want me to say I feel had about .ill that —1 don't. If didn't do any harm, they were back in Manhattan in tour hours with some
in their pocket. Plus, all they did was jerk off—they weren't going et AIDS from jerking off in front ot a camera. It most oi them going to get AIDS, it was probably from shooting Up somewhere and in some deserted Catholic church.
But I was trying to rell you about Monica. It's perfect, the way talking
□ PAULRUSSELL
about her leads right back to Carlos and his movies—even though Carlos and Monica never once even laid eyes on each other, and in tact she'd never even heard of Carlos Reichart before she read about things in the newspaper. And he never in his life heard about her.
I was playing pinball the way I always did, with a nice cold Rolling Rock set down there beside me to swig every once in a while—and suddenly there was this girl leaning over my shoulder to watch. I remember it completely: even though it was a hundred degrees outside. she was wearing a blue flannel shirt and tight jeans and cowboy boots. She had these high hard cheekbones, almost like there was Indian blood in her somewhere, though I don't actually think there was, and she had this long very limp blond hair that came down past her shoulders. You could say she was kind of tough-looking, more like a boy than a girl—but from the first instant I saw her, I liked that. There was something sassy about this girl who—except for her long white-blond hair, and maybe even that too—looked like she could be a boy.
She asked me, Was I was planning ever to get off the machine or did I usually play all day on a quarter? I don't want to brag, because 1 know being good at pinball doesn't mean a thing, but I have to lay, 1 was a great pinball player. Always had been, from back m Owen when Wallace and I'd play the machines in that hole-in-the-wall arcade on Main Street. Wallace taught me all his tricks, and then 1 went and unproved on rhem rill I could plav tor hours on a tingle ball. Something in me'd ^o on automatic pilot when I got in front ot a machine—my
brain would completely rum off, and thai automatic thing In me would just • ting like lightning to the little silver ball Over the course
oi the spring and lummei 1983 I must've upped the top scon oi thai machine In flu- V Bar by about six million points.
ii arant to play?' 1 I asked her, Sipping the ball Into one mora
"I'm done. I h realU didn't matter
,11 the rime. So it somebody else wanted to use the
'line, which in the V Bar w. isn't all that frequent, I nevct had ,in\ problem with that
:it tO pla\ ," she told RMS It WUt\*\ unttiendU 01 ! w lust been uanhin
"A prettj lot
M that RUM hlH
vhilelwa o I was get
BOYS OF LIFE CI
a little annoyed There'd been a couple oi dose calls since she came over, hut I'd managed ro save them. Nor that I could go on doing that forever. "Well. I was watching you tor a pretty long time," the laid. "My
name's Monica, by the wa\."
"Tony, and I ^or my hands full in case you hadn't noticed." The instant I said that, the Hall that'd been aping wild in the outfield suddenly shot riL:hr down the gulch and was gone.
"Shit/ 1 I said. Monica laughed. "So what's funny?"
she said. "I had a her that it 1 talked to you I could
hi to lose "
"Yeah. 1 For how much?" "Twenty-five bucks." She looked around. It was her rurn ro say, "Shit."
a what?" I asked. "They ran our on me. I can't believe it—they just left."
"Who.'"
"The guy who was going to pay me twenty-five dollars."
"Do you know who he was?"
"I jusr met him. We were jusr talking, and he pointed you out." we both lose," I told her. "That'll teach you." Though I wondered who the guy could've been—if he knew me.
"Nothing teaches me anything," she said. She sort of gave her head this proud shake. "That's why I'm still me. Hey, you want .mother beer.' I'll bus you another one. Sorry for wrecking your game."
"It's not like it was my last chance or anything."
We sat in a booth and drank Rolling Rocks.
"Where*re you from?" I asked her.
"Guess," she said.
'*! can't guess. I'm no ^hk\ at guessing anything."
"Well, then—Tennessee. And I think you are too."
Ir sort ot took me bv surprise that she said that.
"Kentucky," I told her.
"Same thing. It's nice to hear—you sound like home." It was probably tour years since I'd talked to somebody from Kentucky, or even Tennessee tor rhar marrer. Ir hadn't ever occurred to me to miss rhe way people talked there, but now that she said ir, she did sound familiar. She sort ot brouuhr things back.
"So what're you doing up here.'" I asked her. I'd soften it into my he,id that, except tor people like me and Verbena, nobod) got OUl ot rhe South, especially not to end up in rhe alphah
□ PAUL RUSSELL
"I could ask you the same thing," she said. "And I probably will. But it you want to know—I came here to he a singer."
"I thought people went to Nashville to do that."
"I can't stand country music," she told me. "All that whining and garbage. I want to he a rock star."
It made me laugh. She didn't look much like a rock star.
"So what's funny. 1 I'm down on my luck. It happens to everybody—' it takes time, and then you get a hreak and after that you're on youi wa\."
"I don't think it happens that way."
"I don't either much anymore," she admitted. "Now my ambition is—be a waitress the rest of my lite. That's my new career goal." 1 liked the way she didn't take herself all th.it seriously. It made me teel comfortable with her.
"So how's the new career going?" 1 asked.
"I got tired last week. But I'm starting this new job on Monday, a place called Veselka."
"I know Veselka," I said. It was where Carlos and 1 went when
he did that interview tor American Film.
"How do you know Veselka?" she asked me. like it mattered ,m\.
Suddenly I didn't know what to say. Not tor any reason i think »«t even now, 1 couldn't bring myseli to mention Carlos's name. I just couldn't <.l^ it. And when that happened, a whole area ot in\ lite
suddenly closed >>tt and Monica was never going to know about ii least j tune.
All I said was, "Oh. 1 |iist know Veselka because it's In the neigh
od."
l . ell, that ! work now/' MonU a said, "so an\ mm
nd me, I'll In- there. 1 Ihtil I gel bred from d "Who'd tin- you from a place like that'" 1 asked Veselka was
Ing but I of
! All these places, soonei »>t latei the) warn
uiul I knew
it, 1 t, and walked
li Min foi yoursell youi
I m .i mi me, there're |usi lots ,.t things I don'i do I
I Its all
"I b tf I
B O Y S O F L I F E D
"Yeah," the said, "around here, you probably know how it is as much as I do. It's sickening. Somebody's got to do something."