Going Nowhere Faster (4 page)

Me: “Hilarious. Believe it or not, Cleft Chin, I’ve never heard that one before.”

Typical Soccer Moron: (before punch) “What did you say?

Me: “Nothing.” (then) “Ouch.”

So, as you might imagine, we’d bonded over this likeness, during our one (1) wonderful, precious, life affirming conversation, the day she came into Happy Video with her father and they walked around while I stared, stared, stared, pretending to listen to Keith tell yet another (incredibly loud) story about either scoring the winning touchdown or preventing the other team from scoring the winning touchdown (his two variations on hero-dom). For some reason, just watching her, just talking about dumb and meaningless things, for the first time I felt like I’d connected with someone. Someone female. It wasn’t like with girls at school, blond and giggling and beautiful across the room, sitting in the cool row of desks, which might as well have been in Moscow for all the chance I had. It wasn’t like models or commercials or magazines or videos. For once it didn’t feel plastic. There was something
there,
and I knew it was true because even Keith couldn’t ruin it. Especially when he tried to show me off.

“Stan knows where every movie in the place is, don’t you Stan?”

I shrugged, turning red.

“Watch!” Keith said, winking.
“Bull Durham.”

I closed my eyes for a second. “Third shelf. Far wall. Fourth from the end.”

Mr. Rigby looked. It was there. “Wow,” he said. Ellen stared at me.

“Free Willy!”
Keith yelled.

There was a joke there, involving his belly, but I let it go. “Second cubicle on right.” Ellen was looking at me like I was a bug. “Bottom shelf. Between
101 Dalmatians
and
Freaky Friday.
”

Mr. Rigby checked again. “That’s amazing!”

“I have a lot of free time on my hands,” I admitted.

“Hey, Stan!” Keith called. “Movies with the word ‘bridge’ in them!”

I reeled them off in a low monotone.
“A Bridge Too Far. Bridge on the River Kwai. Across the Bridge. Graffiti Bridge. Girl on the Bridge. Bridges of Madison . . .”

Keith was giddy. He stuffed an Almond Joy into his mouth and blurted, “Movies with ‘pink’ in the title!”

Ellen shook her head sadly, but somehow I couldn’t not answer.

“Pretty in Pink. Pinky. Pink Flamingos.
All sixty-eight Pink Panther films.
Pink Narcissus, Pink Cadillac —”

“Purple!”

“Purple Rain, Purple Rose of Cairo —”

“Bill Murray!”

“Ghostbusters, Ed Wood, Meatballs —”

“Murray alphabetical!”

“Caddyshack, Charlie’s Angels, Coffee and Cigarettes . . .”

“That’s some noodle you’ve got there, son,” Mr. Rigby said, poking his temple with one long index finger. “So, have you picked out a college yet?”

“Dad!”
Ellen said.

“What?” her father asked, confused.

Ellen pulled him by the sleeve and they talked in low voices for a while behind the
Teen Comedy
section. I pulled myself by the sleeve and went in back and wiped my forehead with an adult video catalogue. In the end, Ellen rented
Casablanca
(what a fabulous and lovable choice) while her father (with his pipe and his sleeve patches and corduroys) chose
Bio-Dome
with Pauly Shore (typical, despicable).

“Hey, Mr. Movie Guy,” Mr. Rigby called, “I have a question for you. Why didn’t they ever make
Bio-Dome II
?”

“DAD!”

“Sorry about that,” Ellen said, waiting at the counter to pay.

“What are you sorry for?”

So we talked about what we were embarrassed about.

“Umm . . . Keith?”

“Umm . . . my dad?”

And discussed our various names.

“Like the
sneaker
?”

“Like the
song
?”

And talked about our favorite actor.

“Duh? Bogart?”

“Duh, me too!”

And she smiled shyly from underneath her little black bob haircut, with her pale, pale cheeks and delicate hands, and I actually added her total
incorrectly
(two times $2.99 . . . think . . .
Think!
), which Keith gave me crap about for weeks, and then I floated, absolutely
floated,
the entire rest of the shift just remembering the feel of her index finger as our hands touched, as I handed her the (incorrect) change and then she walked away, out of the store, out of my sight, away from me, forever.

Until tonight.

“Warm,” I said, to the showerhead. Nothing happened. “On,” I said again. Nothing happened. So I washed out of the sink and shaved out of the sink. (I didn’t need to shave, since I had no facial hair, but managed to cut my chin anyway.) “Flush,” I told the toilet, and it did, which was some kind of victory.

Treatment for the feature-length film titled

GOING NOWHERE FASTER
^©

Written by Stan “Sweet Memphis” Smith

Danny Green is a tough young kid from the wrong side of the tracks who wants to escape his life of crime and violence and make it as a musician. He’s been playing banjo for years and is really, really good at it. So good, it’s only a matter of time before he’s discovered and offered a three-album deal. The problem is his evil brother Denny, who is jealous of Danny’s talent and will do anything to sabotage his leaving town. Including talking Danny into robbing a store, Denny pretending he needs the money for his girlfriend’s operation. But then Denny peels away in the escape car and leaves Danny holding the bag as dozens of police cars come flying over the old wooden bridge that metaphorically leads to the wrong side of town. Thinking quickly, Danny hides inside his banjo case, and then escapes on the back of a garbage truck, but is now on the run from both the cops and his conscience, with only the hauntingly beautiful tones of his banjo to lull him to sleep at night, and also the free cable channels at the motel.

Will Danny seek revenge on Denny? Will the cops find him? Is his music career ruined? Does . . .

God, this is stupid. This is really stupid, right?

CHAPTER FIVE

SUNSET is a bad time to be caught on the BOULEVARD of broken dreams

I hid my bike under the rusty struts of the old bridge, which not a drop of water had trickled under since they’d built an Enormo-Mart three towns up. My mother (towering over the picket signs) led the “No Blood for Enormo!” petition drive, not to mention the protests and the blowing of whistles and yelling of slogans outside the construction site. Prarash sat in the path of the bulldozers in a yoga position and
absolutely, under any circumstances
refused to move, until the bulldozers got close and revved their engines, at which point he moved. None of it did any good. Enormoco still dammed the stream and all the fish died and all the frogs and newts died, but, on the plus side, once the inaugural Enormo doors opened, people for miles around were suddenly free to buy one-hundred-quart cans of corn niblets and pallet-sized lots of irregular diapers and jars of ketchup bigger than mailboxes. If you factored in the savings, it was probably worth it.

Miles was, of course, late. It was also pitch black. I was suddenly positive Chad Chilton was going to come rushing out of the darkness and knee me in the spine, so I picked up a rock. It was heavy and sharp and hurt my palm. It was also stupid, so I put it back down.

Miles, like anyone named Miles invariably would be, was one of the few guys I knew who not only had his driver’s license, but also a
car,
and not just any car, but a cool car; an old souped-up Toyota with no muffler that sounded like a Sherman tank and had carpet on the dashboard and incense sticks poking out of the air vents and a cooler full of beer in the trunk, which he sold for two bucks apiece, and he was always flush with cash and never asked you for gas money and was always willing to pay for Slim Jims and sodas, all the things I never had the cash for myself.

Where’s all that Happy Video money?
you might ask. Where’s the huge Keith paycheck (which he tended to “forget,” at least once a month, to cut for me)? Well, given the relative state of Smith’s Natural Foods and Gifts, not to mention the fact that neither of my parents had ever had a real job, or at least one that would require they be
beholden to the Man,
all family money coming in, including a certain minimum-wage-video-clerk’s minimum wage, was earmarked for family usage. Yes, I was expected to pull my weight. Especially since we barely had a car ourselves, at least one that worked. For ten years my father had been retrofitting an ancient diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. Every once in a while he’d get it working and my mom would fold herself into the front seat and we’d all go out for a family trip, which was huge fun all around, except that we’d have to stop every twenty miles or so at a Burger King or KFC and then sit in the car while my father went in to ask the managers for their used french fry grease, and I would nearly die of embarrassment. Being embarrassed didn’t seem to bother my mother too much.

FIVE THINGS LESS EMBARRASSING THAN THE FRY MOBILE:

1. Naked at church

2. Solo contestant on The Newlywed Game

3. Caught in chat room for Hasselhoff enthusiasts

4. Fall down at Oscars, break Pacino’s nose with flying head of statuette

5. Named Stan on purpose

“It doesn’t matter what other people think, honey, you know that.”

I didn’t know that. It really
did
matter.

“We’re all God’s people, and she has a plan for every one of us.”

“She?”

My mother would reach back her nine-foot arm and playfully rub my hair, which I’d long since learned was her signal for
I’m through explaining unless you’re ready for an hour-long lecture.

And what made it even worse, since we were already there, was that I wasn’t allowed to eat any of the food.

“Hamburgers are poison,” Mom would say happily, a paper sack in the trunk filled with the tofu pups and beet salad she had prepared for our picnic lunch. “You’ll find that out when you study biology. In college.”

College?

“Okay, what about cheeseburgers?”

“Those too, silly.”

“If they’re poison, then how come it’s okay to use their oil?”

“That’s different, Stanley.”

“But how?”

“It just
is,
” she’d say, reaching back and ruffling my hair again, this time without even turning, with an arm that just kept coming. “Ask your father.”

“I can’t.” I’d point to the plate glass window behind which my father would be shaking hands with a skinny man in an orange jumpsuit. “He’s in
there.
”

“True,” my mother would (oh so rarely) admit, and then my father would back the Mercedes (faded yellow with gray primer spots) up to the kitchen door, and all the cooks and dishwashers would laugh and shake their heads and watch with amazement as we siphoned off the rancid dregs of their Fry-O-Lator, first into the gas tank, and then into a fifty-gallon drum welded to our roof, and then we’d drive away smelling like the world’s largest onion ring.

“Mom! Everyone’s staring!”

“Shush . . . they’re just jealous.”

“They’re not
jealous,
they’re
laughing
!” I’d wail, as car after car that actually used gas would roar past us (the Mercedes’s top speed, when it was working at maximum crispy-chicken efficiency, was forty mph), their occupants holding their stomachs and pointing and howling with laughter.

A dribble of oil would begin to run down the window.

“Mom! We’re
leaking
!”

“We are not. Have some beet salad.”

I replayed that scenario, with some variations, for about an hour, until Miles finally roared up in his Toyota, spraying gravel all over my sneakers, and held open the door.

“You’re late.”

“Yeah, sorry, had to stock up on provisions.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, briefly hating him for making me relive the McHorror.

“So, are you gonna get in, Duckfoot, or what?”

I spit in the dirt and then got in. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry, Rumsfeld,” he laughed, and then peeled away.

“Duckfoot” had been my nickname in seventh grade, ever since my mother had bought me a pair of Superman sneakers. They actually had ol’ Clark Kent, arm outstretched, flying away from the laces in his stupid blue tights. Of course, I refused to wear them. In second grade, they would have been great. In seventh grade they were a guaranteed disaster.

“Mom, I’m
way
too old for these.”

“Nonsense. They’re fine.”

She’d gotten them on sale somewhere. It was time for stronger tactics.

“But isn’t Superman just a pawn of the corporate power elite?”

“That’s an excellent question, Stan, but, the answer is no.”

“Yes he is!” I said. “He’s a polluter! There’s huge chunks of kryptonite all over the place! It’s ruining the water supply!”

“Now, Stan . . .”

“I am not, no way, no how,
ever
wearing them.”

“That’s okay,” she said, from way up in the clouds, her voice booming, “you can go barefoot. I did when I was your age.”

“But . . . ,” I said (how do you compete with that?), “but . . .”

Somehow my father intervened, and a compromise was struck. I would still have to wear the sneakers, but my mother would dye them blue. So she tossed them into a saucepan with some RIT dye and a few days later gave them back to me. They were even worse. You could still see Superman, except now he was a sickly green and looked like a flying corpse. Also, every time I wore the sneakers, my socks would turn blue. Then my ankles would turn blue. I looked diseased from the shins down.

FIVE PREFERABLE PIECES OF FOOTWEAR:

1. Nike “Air Broken Glass” high-tops

2. Crown of Thorns sole-wrap

3. Barefoot in Cow Field inter-toe squish

4. Oliver Twist brand dirty/wet rag bundle

5. Scorch Puppies briquette-lined loafers

“Perfect! They look great! Now, that wasn’t so bad after all, was it?”

After the second day of school, when I’d absorbed an astonishing amount of ridicule (“Hey look! Egghead’s got Superfag on his sneakers!”), I started to hide my father’s work boots in my backpack and then change in homeroom. Of course, the boots were about five sizes too large, but they were still an improvement and sometimes even went unnoticed, despite the shuffling limp I used to compensate for five extra inches of toe. The real problem came in gym class. With shorts on, the boots were absurdly large, and I was immediately, and for the rest of the year, dubbed “Duckfoot.” I was also punched before and after kickball (Hey, those boots are
cheating
!), until Miles intervened, just walked up with his hands in his pockets and said something like: