Mad Boys (20 page)

“Thanks,” I said, then hung up and sunk back down into the bathwater. I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew the water had cooled and I was all wrinkled up. The TV screen was blank.

I stood, lathered up, and showered. Clean, I shut off the water, stepped out of the tub, and toweled off. I was so tired I never reached my bed. I curled up on the bathroom mat and was unconscious in an instant. No dreams, no sudden wakings from noise or horror—just sweet sleep.

When I woke up it was morning, and the TV was still on. The prettiest lady I had ever seen was exercising. Her name was Cynthia Kerluk. I pretended she was Mother. I joined in on the exercises, going twice as fast as I was supposed to. At about the end of the session, I realized I was naked. I felt bashful, so I shut the TV set off.

My clothes smelled so bad that even I couldn’t get near them. When you’re filthy, you love your own stink; when you’re clean, you hate it.

I punched in Royal’s number on the phone.

“Yaygo,” answered Royal.

“Aygit’s mayge, Waygeb. I’m hungry and I need some clothes, too.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.” And he hung up. I tore off the bed sheet, draped my body in it, and wrapped a towel around my head until I made a pretty fair imitation of the turban cowboy I’d seen at the OPEC convention.

Royal arrived with a waiter pushing a cart loaded with plates of ham, eggs, home fries, toast, a gallon of milk, a quart of orange juice, and a change of clothes for me.

“Nice outfit.” Royal whipped out a miniature camera with flash. I posed, and he took my picture.

Royal said to the waiter, “Take his dirty clothes, put them in a plastic bag, and file them in the hotel safe under archival objects.”

The waiter bowed and left.

I changed into the new outfit, and we ate like starving pigs let loose in a Dunkin’ Donuts. Afterward, Royal gave me the one item to make the meal complete, a cigarette. I lit up, took a long drag, while Royal got a real serious look on his face.

“Web, do you know the price of greatness?”

“No, but you’re going to tell me.”

He heard the sarcasm in my voice, and cuffed me on the side of the head. I fell off my chair. On the floor, I grabbed his legs and pulled him down. We wrestled. He toyed with me for a few minutes, then flipped me over on my back and pinned me. I had to give.

He jumped up and started pacing around the room. “The price of greatness is the pain the great one feels for his not-so-great subjects. Web, I’m taking off, leaving the country for a while on business. When I come back, I’ll be ready to change the world.” I was about to say something, but he stopped me by muffling my mouth with his hand. “I’ve discovered the ticket to untold wealth and power. It’s being the middleman. An end can’t stand being an end. An end wants to join the other end. It’s the middle that makes the connection. Don’t expect to understand me. Your IQ is not as high as mine. I’ve been tested. I’m the smartest human being in the United States, maybe the world. That’s why I feel this awesome responsibility to put my talents to use.”

I gawked at him with stars in my eyes, waiting to hear his explanation.

“I plan to blackmail my father’s former business associates, all of whom committed white-collar crimes. So I’ll be pretty busy. While I’m away.”—he reached into his shirt pocket and gave me the picture of a man with a carrot-colored beard and a hunched back—“the Director is going to be in charge.”

“He’s one of my demons,” I said.

“He’s more or less real. He’s the Director of VRN, that’s Virtual Reality Network, the company my father started and that I’m in the process of taking over.”

“I’m saw him on television last night.”

“That’s right. He was inspecting the site of our entertainment center.”

“What’s that?”

“A shopping mall, gambling casino, and amusement park that’s going to make Disney attractions look as small-time as pinball machines in a pizza joint. We don’t have a name for it, but something tells me I can find one just by going back over my Web notes.”

I was confused, and, as if to soothe me, an image appeared in my mind, a picture of someone who looked like me as a girl. “I wish Siena was here,” I said.

“You’re in love with her,” Royal said.

“Am not.”

“You’ve got the heart feeling without the groin feeling. Right?”

“What if I do?”

“Shows how sick you are inside,” Royal said.

“Sick? You sent her off to war.”

“I unleashed her rage, and she is fulfilling herself. When I unleash your rage, you will fulfill yourself.” Royal changed the tone of his voice, from cruel to kind. “Web, VRN and I are going to transform the entertainment industry all over the world. I need your help, but right now you’re too immature.”

“Look who’s talking,” I sneered. “You’re no more than I am, a runaway.”

“Not exactly, Web. You’re a runaway, I’m a throwaway. My father killed himself, and my step-mother remarried to a no-good bastard and they didn’t want me. They made me tough. You, you’re not tough.”

“Am so!” I shouted, stung.

“Let me ask you a question. Do you hate your mother?”

I almost broke down and cried when he said that.

“See, Web, you’re about ready to blubber all over the place. You got too much baby love in you. Until a boy can learn to hate his mother, he can’t become a man.”

“Not true.” I fought back the tears.

“Is true. Says so in the psychiatry books.”

“You’re lying to me again. You never read any psychiatry books.”

“Of course I didn’t read any stupid books. I saw the tapes. I don’t need a father or a mother or any kind of parent. I just need flunkies. And they’re always around.”

“You’ll get your feelings hurt one day,” I said.

That stumped him for a second before he answered. He fingered the rings on his hands. “As long as there’s ‘more’ I’ll never have trouble with feelings. More money. More real estate. More admiration. More control. More to get and more ahead. I’ll never look back. It’s looking back where less is.”

At that point, there was a knock on the door. Royal let in his two goons and the waiter, who wheeled in a birthday cake with fourteen lighted candles. Royal, the waiter, and the goons sang Happy Birthday to me.

“Blow the candles out,” Royal said.

I blew. The candles went out, then flared up. I blew. Out went the candles, only to fire up again. I blew. Same deal as before. I looked at Royal, and he burst into laughter.

“Trick candles, I should have known,” I said.

I had eaten about a quarter of the cake along with some candle wax mixed in with the frosting before it occurred me to ask Royal the obvious question. “How did you know it was my birthday?”

“You talk in your sleep.”

“Marla—she squeezed it out of me under hypnosis, didn’t she?” I said.

Royal never changed his expression of malicious mirth.

“You know all about me, don’t you? Please,” I begged, “Tell me.”

“Things have to happen first, uncanny things,” he said. “Meanwhile, relax. I have a present for you to celebrate your birthday.”

“For me? What is it?” I said.

“Not an ‘it,’ a ‘he.’
” Royal turned to the goons. “Go get him.”

They left and reappeared a minute later with the Autodidact. It took a few seconds before I recognized him. Black-white fuzz had grown in on his head, and the mustache was gone. The eyes were the same, except for one thing. They burned with hatred for me.

“John LeFauve—excuse me, Jim Clements,” Royal said, “is going to be your guardian.”

“But he hates me for ruining his life. He wants to kill me,” I said.

“True, true—he does want to kill you. And for good reasons,” Royal said. “But I like the idea that the problem is the solution. Especially if I can make an adult suffer. Jim’s going to look after you while I’m gone. He understands that if he doesn’t take care of you, I will turn him over to the police for the murder of Dirty Joe. In other words, it’s apparent to him that he should be a parent to you.”

Under orders from Royal, the Autodidact, now Jim Clements, and I headed for the Clements homestead in the town of Valley of Fires, New Mexico. Royal thought the country life would be a good environment for me. He guessed that Jim Clements would be welcomed as the returning prodigal son by the inhabitants of the homestead. Whoever they were, Royal wouldn’t say, or maybe he didn’t know.

Another thing that Royal insisted upon: from here on in, the Autodidact and I were to pretend we were father and son. He was to instruct me and to provide for me. He was not allowed to beat me, lock me up, starve me, or hurt me in any way. I was to obey him. We were to treat each other with love and respect, even if we had to fake it.

To replace the Cadillac that the Autodidact had stolen, Royal had given us the new vehicle, a three-year-old Ford pickup truck, because it would fit right in with the country folk. We drove in silence for a long time. The Autodidact and I had nothing to say to each other. He wanted to kill me, but was prevented from doing so. As for myself, I wanted to escape, but I had to stay with the Autodidact because of my loyalty to Royal. I busied my eyes by looking at the view.

I liked everything about New Mexico right away: the desert, the bright clean blue of the sky, the clay-colored rivers, the green, irrigated fruit groves, the red rocks, and the distant, purple mountains which always seemed to be far away no matter how long you drove. Another reason I liked New Mexico was the possibility that my mother was here. I had it in the back of my mind that I would stumble upon some information that would lead me to her.

“Hey, what’s that?” I said, looking out at desert sand so white it was like flour.

The Autodidact frowned, as if he hated the sound of my voice, and he drawled, “I believe that’s the White Sands National Monument.” I kept looking and looking and looking, and at about the time that the view, like glare from the black-dime eyes of my former guardian angel, Langdon, was going to disappear, the Autodidact hit the brakes. “Let’s stop in for a closer look,” he said. We did a U-turn in the middle of the road, and motored to the visitor center.

We viewed the displays, listened to the audios, read the explanatory material. The Autodidact stopped brooding as he got interested in the information. The sand was made of gypsum. Wind whipped up deposits many miles away, and it collected in dunes in this locale. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered even pretending to show interest, but the Autodidact was so energized by learning something new that his enthusiasm rubbed off on me, and I paid attention.

Outside, we drove a loop through the dunes. I pretended we were in the Sahara Desert. The Autodidact stopped so I could play in the dunes, and I climbed the biggest one I could see and pranced through the sand like the Sheik of Araby. I had to come down in a few minutes, because the sun was so bright reflecting off the sand that it hurt my eyes. I wished I’d had Royal’s sunglasses.

Back on the highway, the Autodidact was silent and glum again. He played the radio, listening to classical music. The first town we hit was Alamogordo, which runs beside a railroad track. I saw all kinds of different people—cowboys, Indians, Mexicans, regular people, and rocket scientists. The Autodidact said the government tested missiles in this area. Not only that, but the first atomic bomb was blown up many years ago on the federal missile range not far from here.

“Look at the map,” the Autodidact said. “Note how close the town of Valley of Fires is to the bomb site. Only about fifteen miles. What’s the problem, kid?”

I guess the look on my face told him that something was wrong. The truth was I was thinking about my mother again, but I wasn’t about to say anything about that.

“I want to go to a town called Sorrows, New Mexico,” I said.

“We’ll look at the map, and if it’s nearby we’ll stop in,” he said.

“I checked. It’s not on the map,” I said. A minute went by. I sat there stiff-backed, determined not to cry.

“It’s obvious that this place has great meaning for you,” the Autodidact said.

“So what?”

“So what, sir.”

“Sorry. So what, sir?”

“I have an idea,” the Autodidact said. “It’s a long shot, but let’s give it a try.”

We went to the Alamogordo library and looked up Sorrows, New Mexico, in a state history book. No such place had ever existed. I couldn’t help it, I cried.

We left Alamogordo, turning off the desert valley and starting on a road that twisted upward like a snake climbing up the pant leg of an ostrich. Pretty soon we were at an elevation of over eight thousand feet in Cloudcroft. No more desert. The temperature was cool, and the land was covered with tall pines.

Half an hour later, on a secondary but paved road, we entered the Mescalero Apache Indian lands, high up in the Sierra Blanca Mountain range, rugged and green. We didn’t speak. I could see that the Autodidact was busy thinking. He didn’t seem angry anymore, just occupied with deep, dark thoughts. Most of this country was rural, with occasional Indian ranch houses with full-sized pickup trucks parked in the yard. I’d hoped for tepees and horses.

On the other side of the mountains, the Autodidact took a little side trip to the town of Lincoln. It was a historical place, he said. He stopped at every historical marker. I was discovering that he couldn’t resist anything that had anything to do with learning. Lincoln was in some dry hills along the Hondo River, which was blocked off here and there to irrigate fields. The green of the fields contrasted nicely with the beige hills. Lincoln was a pretty town, but very small and everything was geared for Billy the Kid, who’d had some adventures there. There was a museum and a make-believe general store from the nineteen-hundreds. Billy the Kid, an Easterner from New York, had killed twenty-one people, more or less, and they’d written books about him and made movies and did up this town in his honor. The moral was clear enough: if you want to be noticed, kill somebody, the more the better. I filed away that idea.

The Autodidact wasn’t too interested in the displays or the guide talks about Billy the Kid, but he did browse in the books lying around, which were not only about Billy but about Indians (who were constantly getting themselves conquered by Spanish soldiers), priests (who always seemed to be getting themselves tortured by the Indians), and Smokey Bear (who had survived a fire in the Lincoln National Forest). Which was quite remarkable, because as near as I could see in Lincoln there was no forest to burn.