Joyland (20 page)

“Yeah, man. Fucken A, fucken A.” Kenny sounded like a parrot going through a voice change. Behind square silver-framed lenses, beady eyes skipped with excitement.

“Blame it on Marc.” David tossed his hair back off his shoulder.

J.P. shook his head. “That’d be worse.”

“Backyard okay?” Kenny was eager as a puppy to please. Only Chris knew Kenny still had issues of
Mad Magazine
in his closet, and that he secretly loved Transformers, the half-human half-car figures
(autobots in disguise)
, and was — in all likelihood — already eagerly gearing up for
Voltron
, the cartoon series which would premiere that fall. Things Chris could tell, but didn’t.

J.P. put the records down and followed them out, left Chris with his half-finished second beer. Chris used it to salute when J.P. glanced back. It was one of those moments Chris would consider long after. He sat there sipping in silence with the girls.

When he considered his early grade-school years, playing at Kenny’s house, Chris’s throat constricted. Kenny laser-shot through rooms of purple velvet wallpaper and yellow linoleum. A phaser-voiced only child. His basement was full of
Star Wars
figures; his bedroom brimmed with chemistry experiments; birthdays and Christmases telescoped into something larger than life. In glass beakers, Kenny distilled essences, hydrogen-peroxide frothy, showed Chris the lighter he had stolen from his father for his “experiments.” In the bathroom, Kenny once showed him the pink and orange pages of blue magazines whose titles remained disconnected to the orb-like images they bore (
Playboy
, though it featured
girls, Penthouse
, though setting was obviously irrelevent). And other things, Kenny showed him quietly, hushed tone, excited embarrassment fading easy once a thing had been exposed.

Nothing was more mercurial than a yes-man. If they had kept hanging out the way they did, they would have become Dungeons & Dragons guys like the other grade-grubbers in their class, but the overnight desertion didn’t make Chris respect Kenny any more. Seventh grade would have sealed their futures, made them halflings in a dark universe of ever-expanding social circles, constantly waiting for ambush. In retrospect, the repercussions would have been gi-normous to the point of celestial. Chris would have been Short Fry, and Kenny would have been Four Eyes forever.

Still. Kenny had become the little dog from the Warner Bros. cartoon, constantly yipping at David’s heels, “Where we going, boss? Where we going?” To think that Kenny had once won Science Fair at so many levels, he had gone all the way to Toronto! On the day it was announced, Mr. Keele had come to the school and stood — with his cracked marble eyes — in the back of the auditorium during the assembly, his wide, blue-stripe tie gathered into a tight triangle under his Adam’s apple, which bobbed ceremoniously as he wept. He was so happy. Chris could still recall the exact shape of Mr. Keele’s hands grasping Kenny’s shoulders. He stood behind Kenny in a constant back-clap, as if showing him off to all congratulators to come. Mr. Keele’s meaty pink thumbs clutched, pressed joyously right down to bones, as if all of the energy in his body had fled to concentrate in his fingertips —

Amazing, the way there was no shame to his emotion, how, even afterward, no one said a word against the display. Grade Six. Two years.

Chris tore the label off his beer in one abrupt motion.

“Hey Smart Guy, that means you’re a virgin,” one of the girls called from the appropriated stereo.

Chris looked down at the intact, damp document in his palm. Glaring at her, he wadded the label up. The wet papery peel flecked away white between his fingertips.

Skin friction-viscous, red with rubbing. Memory had a way of uncurling at inappropriate moments. Smart Guy was the nickname J.P. had given him to replace Short Fry. Earlier that year, everyone in their class had made homemade tattoos on lunch hour, used protractors, and sealed the scratches with Liquid Paper. Chris was the only one who wouldn’t do it. That day they called him sissy, fag, and nerd — the girls too. A week later, Smart Guy sprang from their lips with the regularity of a cuckoo popping out of a clock. They all had infected wrists and biceps. Flesh swelled fluorescent around the white, flaking letters. They were forced to show their mothers, and their mothers were forced to buy prescription salves from the drug store. It really pissed them off that Chris had known better.

Chris and Laurel locked eyes. He made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, pinged the remnant of the balled label across the room at Debbie’s back. Laurel’s lips inched sideways toward home plate, a smile.

In addition to the stereo — instantly seized and subjected to the crotch-grabbing squeals of Michael Jackson — the girls took control of the air hockey table. Its sleek white surface breathed, held the thin puck, hovering, expectant. Slam jam. She shoots, she scores! The air hockey table was one of the big draws to hanging out at J.P.’s. It also didn’t hurt that Mr. and Mrs. Breton had gone on vacation, and naively left him in the care of Marc for four days. Sheila and Debbie assaulted the table ends, their bracelets and giggles obstructing the slots. They plunged around the chrome corners indelicately, the asses of their shorts jutting with each sudden jab or block. Julie designated herself some kind of referee; her only real job was to drop the puck for the first play, and act during subsequent disputes, as when it launched off and landed atop the big, brown vinyl bar dinging among the beer bottles. Laurel was sitting alone on the couch, digging her hands into her jacket pockets, even though it was at least seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit in the house.

Chris knew that if he didn’t speak to her now, he would only wind up interviewing his Christie Brinkley poster later.

Five Qs for Christie Brinkley

Chris Lane has been sent to interview America’s top model — in bed. She’s about to reveal her deepest secrets to him. The glamour girl smiles and leans forward. One nimble thumb circles her own nipple.

CHRIS LANE: What makes a woman like you hot? Tell us, what does THE Christie Brinkley think about at night?

CHRISTIE BRINKLEY: Mmm, if video games were played on vinyl records, you could make them skip. . . . You could play them backwards. . . . (Head tilting with pleasure, thumb and forefinger caressing.) Jump between boards as if they were musical tracks.

CL: Oh yeah, bitchin’. (Continues to stroke self.)

CB: Analog is but an imitation of the world — an imitation of the thing as it is recorded. The game is digital. A mathematics of programming, of circuitry. (Inserting finger into mouth, withdraws glistening.) The game is perfection. There are no skips.

CL: Why am I such a cretin?

CB: I can help you.

CL: I’ll bet. . . .

CB: Easy, just relax. (Tosses hair, cups breasts fully in her palms, drawing them up to her chin.) The machine is preprogrammed. It will always continue.

CL: Shall I . . . ?

CB: Oh yes!

CL: Yeaaaahhhh. Oh baby . . .

CB: I’m not your baby, Chris. You’re not even real. I’m real. You’re a dot on the screen.

CL: Christie? Christie?

CB: Sorry, Chris, I have to turn you off now.

CL: Just one more question?

CB: Sorry, Chris, no more questions.

(Reluctantly CL falls asleep, concluding the interview.)

Under the coffee table, Chris balled his toes into fists.

“Don’t you want to play?” He tipped back the rest of his beer and tried to seem too cool for words.

Laurel shrugged.

“Do they have games?” she asked, and he felt an immediate affinity, as though they were operating on the same level.

The Atari was in Marc’s room, and normally J.P. and Chris had to ask permission to use it, though Marc played once every two weeks to their daily habit. But Marc had gone out. Chris pushed open the door to Deep Purple. The one and only song Marc had taught them to play on his guitar, “Smoke on the Water” seemed the unnamed anthem of that room. “It’s about a
bong
, man,” Marc had hissed, whisper thick with giggles, while J.P. and Chris fought over who had better mastered the opening chords.

Black and blue waves ridged the folds of the closed curtains, lending the room a Sears-brand psychedelia Mrs. Breton could not have intended. Chris switched on the overhead. It emerged instantly, pale and globular, like a bulging parental eye between the layers of Marc’s chaos. Forty-watt light filtered through the room like old smoke. It hung between the blue shag and the rock flags which cloaked the ceiling in elongated cloth bubbles, their edges thumbtacked into plaster. Narrow rivers of white stucco separated Black Sabbath from Van Halen, and Ozzy from Def Leppard. Against the dark wood panel on the far wall, the classics held court. The Stones. The Doors. Floyd. Chris stood aside for Laurel to go first into a room steeped in otherworldliness, the aroma of older-brotherness: Brut cologne, transuded cannabis sativa, and thick, sandalwood incense burned to cover both the illegal and the human smells. Laurel entered, then Chris, breath meshing with that small and stagnant space of awe.

Chris closed the door, hesitated, left it open just a crack to avoid seeming bold. Laurel’s eyes travelled the walls and littered floor. She ignored the only place in the room to sit down, the dishevelled bed. She ran her thumb over the remnant of a Chewbacca sticker, torn diagonally, gummed and worn into the veneer of the top dresser drawer. Chris felt uncomfortable suddenly, as if all of it were his, because, of course, he had brought her there.

“Wanna see something?” Chris reached across the dresser with what he hoped was authority. He picked up an intricately carved wooden box. Flipping up its lid, Chris exposed the proud leaden object. Its oblong shape consumed the length of the box. Chris picked it up, separating it from its home of green felt. The metal was cold to his grip, its series of sturdy silver ridges. He passed it to Laurel, the glass eye and detailing face up. She handled it with contrasting delicacy.

“It’s heavy.”

“Join the dark side, Luke,” Chris said, eyes never leaving Laurel’s hands as they traced the contours of the swordless handle, the handcrafted light sabre minus the light.

She straightened her arms, held it at waist level, then quickly ripped it through the air, palpitating a tone deep in her throat.
HmmmWhooooosh.
The imitation was impressive but her face twitched with embarrassment and she passed the
Star Wars
replica back to Chris.

“J.P.’s brother made it. In shop class. That’s why it’s a little rough. He’s also got throwing stars from a ninja catalogue. But he hides them.” Chris rolled the sabre in his shirt to erase the fingerprints. He placed it back in its box, not worrying about the way his T-shirt rode up over his chest as he continued its use as a rubbing cloth.

When he turned back around, Laurel had settled with an understandable amount of hesitation on the edge of the bed.

“What do you want to play?” she asked, leaning forward, nervously, toward the twelve-inch TV on the pop-can-covered desk.

“Your choice,” Chris said.

Laurel reached for the open shoebox where the games were kept. She ran one finger down their spines: Video Pinball, Pac-Man, Yars’ Revenge, Journey, Missile Command, Warlords, Breakout, Frogger, Defender, Vanguard, Pele’s Soccer, Golf, Bowling, Space Invaders, Centipede, and the bitterly disappointing E.T. Their names jumped out in green, yellow, and red as Chris followed her path. She skimmed the black and bone-coloured cartridges, flicking them forward and back against each other, quietly rattling. Her bracelets trailed, falling together on her wrist,
click click.
What would she pick?

“No kung-fu?”

Laurel took off her jacket to play. It lay on the pillows at the head of the bed like a white, lifeless version of her. The shoulder pads hunched the neck up, the sleeves still bunched at the forearms and crossed across the missing chest. She moved the bracelets from her right wrist to her left, so they didn’t click while she played. Now Chris knew why the other girls didn’t bother playing. Too much prep time.

She’d chosen Venture. She cleared the three rooms on the first board before losing her player in the Serpent Dungeon, partly on account of having entered through the wrong door and having faced three snakes instead of two. Still, she was passable, and Chris respected her for picking Venture. If not the hardest, it was definitely the game with the most obstacles. It fell into that category where — with so many elements in motion — watching other players was key to developing strategy.