Revival House (10 page)

“Well, I mean,” she continues, still sitting at my side, “it’s okay if you are. I just, I’m not sure why you asked me out on a date the other night, you know?”

Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen...

One more try before something terrible really happens.

My head throbs. Rage still roars through my body.

“You know, because I thought, well,” she half laughs, “I thought maybe you and Four were, like, you know.” She laughs.

Aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium, calcium... Ugh.

She lays her ringed fingers on my arm. I recoil as if it burns like hell fire. I stand up and straighten my tie with shaking hands. I walk northwest, across Franklin Square.

“Hey,” she yells after me, “wait, I didn’t mean...”

I am so angry and humiliated that I have tears sliding down my cheeks. Rage courses through my veins, affecting my eyesight. A black circle floats on the periphery of my vision. I cut across Congress Street, nearly getting hit by a passing car, and pound through the door of The Rail Pub. I walk past the infamous donkey with the circle-slash painted on it, lean on the crowded bar and ask for a Long Island iced tea, the drink of the month. The first one burns my gullet— way too much rum, but the others taste almost virgin. I stand across the bar from the ‘medicines’ sign which hangs above rows of colorful bottles. I watch guys get their hearts squashed, I watch women being felt up, and I watch the bartender sprout a lizard head from his shoulder as he pours shots. How could he not notice that? How could anyone in the place not notice? And doesn’t that hurt? The lights flicker for a second, distracting me from the emerging reptile. I wonder if the place is haunted, as many in town believe. Who cares? I’m sure Scarlet would care. My head throbs with the thought of her name.

After downing about four or five drinks, I walk up to this beautiful blond girl in a tank top and micro-skirt and ask if I may buy her a drink. The young man behind her, wearing a rugby shirt with the number nine on it (indicating his position as hooker, which I have always thought hilarious, but not so much now) overhears me and spins around.

“What do you want, Lurch?” He wraps his arm around the girl’s waist and her hand goes to his chest.

“I just asked if I could buy her a drink.”

“She’s with me.” He steps toward me throws his hostile mug in my placid face.

“I see.” I smooth my tie and tilt my chin toward Mr. Hooker. “Would you care to continue this conversation outside?”

He looks at his friends, the crowd of similarly dressed ruggers surrounding him. They all burst with laughter.

“That’s all right, buddy,” Hooker says, laughing, showing his girlfriend what a gentleman he is. “Honest mistake, right? Hey, can I buy you a beer?”

Outside my body, I’m on auto pilot once again. There’s no time for the elements.

My brain’s motor cortex sends a message down my ulnar nerve, my palmaris longus contracts, the interosseous muscles in my palm tighten, and my perfect fist flies straight into Hooker’s wide-open and astonished left eye. He falls back into his teammates’ heavily muscled arms.

They take me outside and pull me into the back alley. The rugby team forms a rough circle around me. They exchange glances. One player steps forward and punches me in the nose. The crushing pain that breaks my nose for the second (third, fourth?) time expands the black holes in my vision. A kick to the crotch sends me to the ground, breathless, and crying. I flash back to a beating I withstood in the BC locker room, years ago. Someone kicks at my head and misses, grazing my shoulder.

Hydrogen.

I jump to my feet, fueled by alcohol, Seroquel, and pure wrath. I assume a crouched fighting position, my balled fists in front of my face. They all laugh at me. I know they’re thinking I don’t stand a chance. That’s when I unleash the beast, as they say.

My right foot flashes out at Hooker’s square head and connects with his square jaw, dislocating the temporal joint, his mouth spraying blood and teeth. I spin and backfist a teammate, cracking his nose. His blood paints my already stained white shirt. The rest of the team stands in shock, their faces slack and disbelieving. I whip my tie from my collar and loop it around someone’s neck. I twist it until his face goes pink, red, purple.

“Stop,” the girl screams, cradling Hooker’s head in her lap. Her eyes track to his ruined jaw and I know she’ll never date him again. Ha. I probably saved her from a life of domestic abuse.

Three players descend on me, one holding my arms behind my back as another slams his fist into my stomach. My breath escapes in an ‘uh.’ The one behind my back holds me up so I can’t double over. The third guy runs at me and plants an awkward kick just below my sternum. Somewhere in my brain, I am grateful they are not wearing cleats.

Ten minutes after they go back inside, I still sit on the curb, feeling fresh bruises mottling my flesh. My silk Hermes handkerchief covers my broken nose and I close my eyes. I hear thumping footsteps. I open my eyes and gaze into the gutter. All I see are the shoes.

Cherry red Doc Martens.

I was hoping for a hooker, not of the rugby variety.

“Wow,” Scarlet says, crouching next to me. “What the fuck happened to you?”

I spit a tablespoon of blood onto the street, probing with my tongue the empty socket where my incisor should be. I taste the coppery sludge from the back of my nasal cavity working its way down my throat. I bare my teeth at her, squeezing blood through the spaces between my teeth.

“Listen, I just took a walk and thought about our conversation,” Scarlet says, taking the handkerchief from me. She wears an expression of pathetic concern. “I’m really. I just really didn’t know, you know? I mean, I know Four’s, like, a male slut, but I didn’t know if he was maybe bi or something. I mean, you two are always together.”

I don’t want her pity. Nor an explanation.

My lower lip is split and throbbing. But, for once, my head doesn’t hurt. It feels good. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. Or the serotonin. I don’t know much about the brain.

“So, um, I know guys hate it when chicks say this, but do you think we could still be friends?”

No, Scarlet, we can’t be friends. Why? Because I want you more than anything in the world and you just shit all over me.

I’m sorry for your loss.

Chapter 14 – Sterling

When liabilities exceed assets, you have debt.

The power company wants money, the telephone/cable TV/computer Internet company wants money, the garbage and biohazard guys want money. And the bank, of course.

When you have this much debt, you don’t waste your time on hope.

The boy walked in about half-an-hour ago, looking like he’d been hit by a bus. Again. That boy has been prone to fighting ever since we sent him to that ridiculous military school. But, as tradition dictated, Benedictine was where he belonged. Wasn’t my fault if he looked like one of those homosexuals and could not get along with the normal boys. Didn’t care if he fought then, don’t care if he fights now. Idiot. If he had wanted to fit in over at BC, he should have played football just like I did, like his daddy did. Maybe cutting off his visits to the shrink was the right thing to do. As far as I can tell, all she did was coddle him and encourage his sissy behavior, telling him it was okay to have ‘feelings’ and such.

I click off my computer monitor as he walks past, but he doesn’t even bother to glance at the screen. I know he’s worried about the business closing down, losing his birthright and such. He’s got other problems, I know— those headaches, that awful girl— things he only mentions in passing on the rare occasions I feel like talking to him. Uncertainty breeds anxiety.

That uncertainty he feels will disappear with time. He’ll find out what’s going to happen to this place.

Who knows, maybe he’ll surprise the bejesus out of everyone and make something happen himself. Maybe he’ll get a job working for the coroner’s office or something. He’ll land on his feet, I’m sure. Never said the boy lacked initiative.

Who knows, maybe his hare-brained photography-video thing will work out. I doubt it, but I am of a different generation, a throw-back to a more genteel Savannah, a Savannah where the good have a nice respectable service, and then go to rest out at beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery.

I punch the button that turns my computer screen back on and look at the Forever Hollywood Cemetery website. The sample videos do look good. My eyes go to the post-mortem photographs on the wall near the boy’s desk.

There’s no longer any place for me in this new world.

Chapter 15 – Caleb

Two sad moss-encrusted alligators crouch in the half-submerged chicken wire pen. They lay motionless in the mud of the bank of the creek, baking in the sun.

“You know this place used to be, like, a research hospital?” She looks up into my face for a reaction. She doesn’t get one. “Yeah, they used to do all kinds of crazy shit up in that building.” Scarlet points to the huge brick colonial building that sits in a nearby clearing. We can barely see it through the Spanish moss that hangs from the live oaks.

She probably can’t tell me anything I don’t already know, but I let her continue anyway, enjoying the sound of her raspy voice. Her magenta hair sparkles in the dappled sunlight and I want to touch it. The only reason we came out to Oatland Island is that she wants to be friends like we’d been for two years, like nothing ever happened. She acts like she’s out of danger. She’s not.

“Did you know that the CDC used to bury pesticides and radioactive shit out here? People who live on the island can’t drink the water because it’s all fucked up. They have to, like, dig their own wells, really deep ones, and even those have some kind of contaminants in them. But, you know, they give that fucked up water to these poor animals. Fucking bastards.”

What she is telling me is only partly true. The CDC had everything pretty much cleared up by 2004. I want to slap her for lying but I’m sure it is just plain ignorance. After all, she is not from here. The big two-story brick building had actually started out as a retirement home for railroad workers, then it became a hospital, then a CDC research facility.

“How do you know all of that?”

“I read a book about it in the local history section of the library at school.” She gives me a smug smile that makes me want to bite her cheek.

She doesn’t know anything.

We walk out of the alligator pen and down the gravel path toward the leopards. I inch my hand close to hers. She picks up on it and lifts that hand to twist her plethora of earrings on the near side of her head. She smiles at me, though. A nice friendly smile. I show her my teeth through my still-split lips. It is less of a smile than a show of aggression. Like an animal. I could rip her throat out right here. I wonder if anyone would hear; I’ve only seen one employee today, and she was in the gift shop on the other side of the park.

“Speaking of school,” I say, “what are you going to do after graduation? Did you get that job out in Los Angeles?”

Her doughy face slumps, as do her fat milky shoulders. She squints up at the trees where a squirrel skitters along a branch. I wonder why we never see squirrel droppings or have them fall on our heads or anything. Scarlet glances at me. “I got a letter yesterday.” She swallows hard, tears shining in her cloudy blue eyes. “They’re not making the movie, so the production company’s not hiring.”

Heh heh heh.

I’m sorry for your loss.

I want to smile for real this time but my lips would bleed and I don’t feel like bleeding right now. I clear my throat instead.

“I’m so sorry, Scarlet.” I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her against me. I’m surprised that she doesn’t pull away. She feels soft and pillowy, like holding a cloud. As close to Heaven as I should ever hope to get.

We walk along the trail in silence for a minute or two getting bitten all to hell by the gnats and mosquitoes. I left the bug spray in the car.

“Hey,” I say, “I have an idea.” I try not to show too much enthusiasm.

She turns her full-moon face toward me. I bask in the glow of her sparkly blue eye shadow, her gold-frosted lips.

“You know, I could use some help at the funeral home.” I steal a glance at her. Her face sours. Her cloudy eyes challenge mine. “With the make-up and setting up the parlors. That’s kind of like set dressing, isn’t it?” She just stares at me. “What?”

“Dude, that is just so, like...” She shakes her head.

I want to turn her head so hard her neck pops and her head lolls like someone spiked her beer with ketamine.

“So, like, what?” I ask.

“I can’t do that. I mean, like, work with dead people.”

I know she’s insulted, thinking I’m a monster for suggesting the possibility.

“And you think that’s like set design?” She huffs. Her brows scrunch together, the ring through one of them slanting at an extreme angle.

I want to rip that ring right out. She’s making fun of me.

She starts walking away, toward the parking lot.