Chicken (11 page)

It's like looking at a wounded animal bleeding in the middle of the road. You have to stop the car and get out and help. Don't you?

‘Are you sure you don't want—'

‘Just go!
GO!
'

Her shriek curdles my blood, and bolts me down the hall. But even now, I need my money. That's how empty I am. So I jam into the den and open a fancy-looking box on the desk, where a wad of cash stares at me. Gotta be five hundred bucks there. My first impulse is to clean her out. Hey, I earned it. But I can't. I take fifty, put the rest back, and with my C and a half I steamroll down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door.

Oh God.

 

I
FINGER
my pager. It's become my antitalisman bad-luck charm. I'm having a lot of trouble rolling that big huge rock up that big huge mountain this morning, sitting in Existentialism, trying to focus on Sister Tiffany and the meaning of life. Her mouth is moving but, unfortunately, I can't hear a word she's saying. Usually I spend quality Existentialism time staring at Kristy, dreaming about the sweet little life we're gonna have together.

Not today.

‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?'

That voice keeps ringing in the bell tower of my head. I see myself in the Hawaiian shirt and khakis looking at myself in the mirror next to the picture of Braddy in the Hawaiian shirt and khakis. Dad blowing his brains out with a shotgun, Braddy all boozed up driving head-on into a bus, Mommy washing that shirt over and over until all her dead son's blood is gone.

‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?'

I thought about trying to call Kristy after I left the Palisades. I actually had the phone in my hand, but I couldn't pull the trigger. I felt mean. Wanted to pick a fight. So I went out and bought my day-old birthday cake and my tub of ice cream, and I ate it all up. But still I felt hungry enough to have sex with a horse. I tried to sleep, but that was a complete joke.

So I went to Sunny's. Three-D was business as usual. The Dixie Chickens fighting and French-kissing. Cruella and Sunny doing the Temptations. People I never saw before and would never see again. Jade was not in attendance. I was sad about that. Sunny hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks N'Awlins style, and tried to cop a feel.

‘Hoo-ie, boy, if you ain't a sight for sore eyes. How's the job tonight, baby? Uh-oh, one of them, huh? Well, lemme getcha some Jack and a Jill.'

He got me a shot of Jack Daniel's and then introduced me to a sweety-looking girl he'd christened Buttercup. When she wandered into the restaurant that afternoon, Sunny'd sprinkled some magic fairy dust on her, and
poof!
Here she was in 3-D, hanging out with a smoking bong, giggling with a gaggle of freaks. She could be thirteen, could be fifteen, but she's certainly no more than sixteen. She's medium-size blondish cornfed gaptooth bangs and ponytail cute. She couldn't really keep up with the lightning-fast 3-D banter, but the girl now called Buttercup was totally adorable in her little Daisy Duke cutoffs, duffel bag, and ruffly dorky mall shirt.

Sunny whispered that he wants me to break her in. She's my perk for doing a bang-up job. So after hanging awhile I took her back to my hovel. Ironic, I'm a one-boy sex factory, but I've never had a woman in my carpetwalled hellhole. Then again, I don't wanna shit where I live.

Buttercup is the essence of sweet, but there's definitely a
FOR RENT
sign in her eyes. Someone has clearly stuck a monkey wrench in Buttercup's gears. I wasn't sure whether she'd ever had sex, but Sunny put me in charge of making a chicken out of her, and I was taking my responsibility seriously.

I don't allow myself to consider that I might be doing a disservice to Buttercup by being her sexwork facilitator. I couldn't. I was sure I was doing her a favor transforming her from a noskills runaway to a breadwinning chicken, getting her off the streets, where she was sure to get the shit repeatedly kicked out of her.

I laid out the whole thing, soup to nuts, for the girl now called Buttercup. Guess what the first lesson was?

GET THE MONEY UP FRONT

After I briefed her on the ins and outs of independent sex contracting, we moved to the hands-on section of the tutorial. She was an
enthusiastic student, and her learning curve steep, especially in her oral exam, which she passed with flying colors. More important, she had that eager-to-please, turned-off turned-on quality that's crucial in the making of a first-class whore. Plus, of course, she was dead broke, hungry, had no resources, no home, no family to take care of her, and nowhere in the whole world to go, which helps.

Then I was swimming in the river with the girl now called Buttercup, endorphin dolphins frolicking beside me, and when the spray of the waterfall hit my face, everything seemed right with the world.

But here, now, the day after, in Existentialism class, I can't stop fingering my pager.

‘Does Braddy love Mommy?'

The top of my head feels like it's about to pop off.

Finally, mercifully, class is over, and I bolt fast. I hope Kristy's following me. I need Kristy to follow me. I decide if Kristy's following me, the gods are on my side. As I walk down the hill overlooking Hollywood onto the immaculate lawn, the air rejuvenates and the sun revives me. It's a clean day, cuz it's windy, and you can see all the way to the ocean. I deepbreathe, smell the warm grass, and wait for Kristy, trying to look like a normal Joe College guy enjoying his existential sun-drenched afternoon, instead of a chicken on his day off waiting for a girl like his life depends upon it.

But there's no Kristy.

I'm used to craving the normal of her, but today the craving's consuming me. I realize now I need to take her out to lunch, talk about nuns, drink a few beers, maybe even have some old-fashioned American apple-pie sex. I wait and wait, barely able to contain myself, ants multiplying in my pants every second.

Finally, when I've stood all I can stand, I go hunting for Kristy. Back in class Sister Tiffany gabs with a few stragglers. I chainsaw down to the library. Nothing. Back to the lawn. Nothing. As I walk into the cafeteria, I bump into someone. My fist has a life of its own, and it clenches without authorization from
upper management. Luckily I stop it before it can rise up in anger. Then my polite British schoolboy takes over, and I'm an apologizing machine, saying sorry so often the apologizee looks at me like I escaped from Bedlam. I turn off the sorry button and scan the lunchroom. No Kristy, no Kristy, no Kristy. Jam back up the hill. Check the lawn. No Kristy. Some serious snark is clogging my pipes. I want to smash a mirror with a five-iron, crack a skull with a brick, smash my hand through a TV screen. If I don't find this girl I can't stand to be around for more than a night at a clip, I am seriously gonna do something very bad.

My mom and dad buy a Winnebago trailer when I'm ten, hitch it to the back of the faux-wood-paneled station wagon, and off we go to look for America.

The Grand Canyon invites us into Mother Earth. Old Faithful is a holy explosion from the blowhole of the planet, one you can set your watch by. We redwood forest and Gulf Stream water. Glacial ice creeps down a mountain slower than time. We gather driftwood like old sailors' bones and make a bonfire where spirits of Chippewa shaman dance. We see bears, meeses, and now and then a beaver.

My mom and dad embrace America more fully than any born-and-bred Americans I've ever seen. They show us the nooks and crannies of warm sweet lakes, a Petrified Forest, and the Great White Way.

And I never thanked them for that.

Kristy.

She's standing in a shaft of golden California sunlight, looking like Madonna, Mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, writing a note by my motorcycle.

Kristy, Kristy, Kristy!!!

I'm way too happy to see this girl.

I sneak up behind her and wrap my fingers around her eyes. After a flinch reflex she realizes it's me, and when she relaxes back into my arms, everything in Chickenville suddenly seems A-Okay on this sunny day.

‘Sister Tiffany?' says Kristy.

‘You didn't tell anybody about us, did you?' I ask.

‘Hell, no,' she says.

‘You swear to God?' I ask.

‘I swear to God, Sister—'

I spin Kristy around, and she's all shocked surprise—

‘I mean, David, um … how's it hangin'?'

‘So, you and Sister Tiffany?' I smile.

‘You don't mind?' She bats eyelashes.

I always forget how funny Kristy is.

‘No, I always wanted to have a three-way with a nun,' I say. ‘Wanna go for a ride?'

‘Where?'

‘Your place.'

I kiss her lips, which are once again not too thin at all.

‘Are you serious?' she asks.

‘Sure.'

This is turning out so much better than I imagined.

‘Well, I was supposed to go to the library, but … okay, sure, why not …' she says, very Holly Golightly.

But again the gods toy with me, for just as I've finally forgotten all about it, my pager goes off.

At the dinner table when I'm eight, my immigrant father slurpsucks translucent fat globules off pickled pig's feet as my brother and sisters and I take turns telling what great American things we did that day.

My six-year-old runty logicdriven towheaded mathgenius brother loathes peas with a searing passion, and tonight he's decided he will eat no more of them. My mom speaks to him about
his peas. He ignores her. Finally, when she presses, he announces in a grown-up voice, ‘I'm not going to eat any more peas.'

My mother makes a show of consternation, but you can tell her heart's not in it, and the whole thing's going to blow over in a moment.

Except a burr's in the bug up my dad's ass.

‘Eat yer bluddy peas,' spits my father.

This is odd. He never interferes with the raising of his children. So I assume my little brother will just cave and eat his peas.

To my shock and amazement, he stares my dad down.

This is getting fun.

My pager going off sends shots of sex and fear and dread and money slamming into my solar plexus, and I snap shut without even being aware I'm snapping shut.

And I do it right in front of Kristy.

‘Is everything all right?' She drags me back from my torture chamber.

‘No, I'm fine. Sure, yeah … I'm fine, everything's fine.'

But the more I say how fine everything is, the less fine it seems.

‘Is there anything I can do?' Kristy's all genuine concern.

‘No, it's a work thing. I gotta make a call …' I give her a thin gruel of a smile, trying to stay loose when I feel tighter than a bodybuilder's ass.

‘You want me to come with you?' Kristy's full of care.

‘No!' I say, too loud and harsh, and I want the word back even before it even leaves my mouth.

Can we do a second take on that?

Kristy sighs. Suddenly I've gone from sweet boyfriend to harsh freak.

‘David, what is it? What's the matter?' Kristy stands there and asks.

And I love her for that.

The scary silence is back at the dining-room table, like in one of those westerns when some feller accuses some other feller of cheatin' and everybody's waitin' fer the first gun to be drawn.

‘Eat those bluddy peas or I'll stot summink off yer bluddy heed,' my father barks.

‘Stot' is bounce. ‘Heed' is head. Clearly he means business. But my runty brother will not be moved.

‘You will sit in that bluddy chair till you finish those bluddy peas.' My father's head reddens and his veins bulge as I picture myself loosening a valve on the back of his head and watching the steam blow out his ears like an old-fashioned cartoon work whistle.

In slow motion my brother forks one pea, painfully places it in his mouth, and with strained face forces the poison pellet down his gullet.

Silence. More silence. Crazy straining silence.

After three more excruciating peas go down, everyone resumes their happy banter. Except my dad. He says nothing. I'm laughing my ass off inside. My little genius brother's twisting our father on his own rack.

‘Hey, I'm sorry, I really am. My boss, he's … got it in for me, he's been riding my ass. But I'm really sorry …'

I backpedal and shadowbox for all I'm worth.

‘I'm confused. What do you … do exactly?'

‘Deliveries … packages, envelopes, scripts, you know. I go to Malibu, or Beverly Hills, or the Valley, and if I work at night, or do emergency jobs, it's really good money. And since my parents cut me off, I gotta make money. It's a great job, except for my asshole boss …' I lean in confidentially. ‘He wants to, you know … seduce me.'

‘Oh my God, that's illegal. Do you want me to tell my dad, cuz he could maybe—'

Obviously I don't want Daddy in my beeswax.

‘No, that's okay, I talked to the owner. He's on my side. And I don't wanna lose my job.'

‘Sure, absolutely. Well, I'm sorry. If there's anything I can do, just ask, okay?'

Just ask. The way she says it, it seems like the easiest thing in the world.

‘Lemme go make this call, and … I'll be right back …' I move in now, all denial and survival. ‘And I'm really sorry. Will you forgive me?'

‘Of course,' says Kristy. ‘I'm just glad you felt you could trust me enough to tell me the truth.'

‘Yeah …' I nod.

I almost believe it all myself.

My dad takes out his fury on the innocent plates and dishes, and even as I'm putting the last bit of roast beef in my mouth, he's snatching, jerking, and cleaning my plate. He flings knives and forks into the dishwater
zing zing zing
, wrestles with the pots and pans, cleansing and purging them faster than humanly possible, slamming them back into the cupboards
twang bang clang
. Then he roars off to the couch, rams on the big TV, and snores in a feverish rhythm.

Years later I'll read the Edgar Allan Poe story about a guy who kills some old codger, buries him under the house, then goes insane when he hears the dead man's heart pounding louder and louder, until he can't stand it anymore and confesses to the cops.