Revoltingly Young (22 page)

For dinner Señora Garonne made delicious enchiladas from yesterday’s roast pork. It’s now Nipsie’s daily job to warm the tortillas over the gas flame. She says she thinks it’s very sweet that Nipsie spends so much time with his sister.

Yes, I agreed, we’re quite a loving family.

FRIDAY, August 19 – Less than two weeks until school starts. If I had a secure place to stay and a steady income, I’d think about enrolling in high school here. It would be nice to make some friends and not feel so isolated up on this hill. I wonder if I’d fit in better in a Los Angeles high school, or would wind up orbiting on the social fringe like I did in Winnemucca. Veeva, of course, goes to a fancy private school, where she is one of the supreme mandarins of her class. All bow before her beauty, smarts, style, and wealth–or so she would have me believe.

Unsettling breakfast reading today on the front page of the
Times
: A boxed letter to the editor from a noted fugitive. It read (with the spelling corrected):

Hey, you jerks,

Get with the program! UPT means Uptowners not Uptight! We’re the m----------g Uptowners Gang!

I like your city (except for the cops), so I’ll be hanging here a while. All you cute sisters out there should look me up. I’m the hottest dude around.

UPT forever!

Carlyle “Jamal” Bogy.

A caption noted that the letter had been authenticated by the police from details it contained that the newspaper chose not to print.

I find it amazing that Jamal is still at large. The guy is not that slippery. After every suspicious fire back in Winnemucca, he was always in handcuffs within ten minutes.

Feeling nostalgic for my home town, I phoned Stoney Holt after breakfast for an update. She hadn’t heard from Jamal, but I gave her my new cell phone number and asked her to call me immediately with his location if he checks in. Stoney reported that my grandmother is most upset that I ran away.

“
Well, her son was screaming at me to get out,” I replied. “Not to mention threatening my life.”

“
Yeah, so I heard. She says Lance is an even bigger blowhard than his dad. She wants you to call her.”

“
Well, I’ll think about it, Stoney. But what if the cops are tapping her phone line?”

“
Jesus, Noel, you’re sounding kinda paranoid. Where are you anyway?”

I told her I was holed up in a cabin by a lake outside Buffalo, Wyoming. I’m not sure that chick’s entirely to be trusted. Detective Moroni might be putting the screws to her as well. She advised me to rustle up a warm coat as winter arrives early in Wyoming. Stoney hasn’t had a date yet with Scott Chandler, but she’s been running into him frequently at the swim center.

“
I thought you were grounded, Stoney?”

“
I am, but my idiot parents realized I wasn’t likely to be asked out unless I went to a place where there were actual guys. I hope you don’t mind, but I told Scott that you nailed Uma.”

“
What!?”

“
Well, you told me that you practically did.”

“
But why did you blab about it to Scott?”

“
I wanted him to know your bitch goddess was a slut, so he’d dump her and go out with me.”

“
But Uma will think it was me who told you about us.”

“
Which, of course, it was, Noel. Anyway, why do you care what that bitch thinks? She dumped you, remember?”

“
So what did Scott say?”

“
He said Uma would never be interested in a dorky creep like you. So I told him to ask around who took Uma to Mary Glasgow’s party. He said he would. God, Scott looks so sexy when he skips shaving for a few days. I wish I could grow stubble like that.”

I reminded her that she was neither a guy nor a dyke and asked her to keep me posted if she saw Scott and Uma together anywhere.

So Scott thinks I’m a creep, huh? Another enemy to add to my list for terrible retribution.

6:17 p.m. Veeva came over this afternoon in a fever of excitement. No, she wasn’t jonesing for my bod. She had just heard from Tyler. He reported that he had been doing more research on the Web on Alfredo Nunez, the clown. Tyler found out that Sheeni’s dwarfish ex-boyfriend is engaged this summer with a circus touring the western provinces of Canada.

“
It’s the Hercules Circus,” noted Veeva. “It’s owned by Greeks and they have one ring under canvas, whatever that means.”

“
You guys should go up there and check him out,” I suggested.

“
Well, one of us must, Noel. Tyler, of course, is consumed with football mania. And I have to get ready for the start of school.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“
Well, I can’t go crossing the Canadian border, Veeva. I’m a fucking fugitive. I’d get nailed by the cops for sure.”

“
You don’t have to cross any borders, Noel. According to their website, the tour dips down into Washington state next week. They open in Spokane on Wednesday.”

“
I can’t go to Spokane, Veeva. I don’t have any money.”

Veeva agreed that was a problem. Like most Americans, she has access to loads of credit, but can lay hands on precious little ready cash. She’s promised to see what she can do though. I don’t see why I’m the sucker who has to go trooping all over the country to track down my brother’s missing kid. Somehow, though, Veeva was making it all seem fairly logical in my bedroom this afternoon.

9:42 p.m. I see from
L.A. Weekly
that the Pickled Punks are appearing again tonight in Hollywood. I’d love to go, but it’s a long bike ride from here, plus I can’t afford the cover charge. Car-free poverty really sucks–especially when you’re surrounded by the faded trappings of great wealth. Despite the Krusinowski millions, there is only one working television in this dump–which Señora Garonne keeps resolutely tuned to bizarre Spanish-language soap operas and game shows. No, Nipsie is not even to think of touching the remote. So to pass the time, I’ve been swiping books from old man Krusinowski’s dusty library. I’m now reading
The Viking Book of Poetry of the English Speaking World
. Rather pretentious title for a bunch of dry old poems by long-dead white guys (and a few poetical chicks). I did like these lines by Robert Browning:

I send my heart up to thee, all my heart

In this my singing.

For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;

The very night is clinging

Closer to Venice’ streets to leave one space

Above me, whence thy face

May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

So I send my heart up to thee, Uma, that you may glance up at some starry Nevada sky and perhaps think of me.

SATURDAY, August 20 – Disaster! While I was picking my way through a steaming bowl of tripe soup (Señora Garonne is into exotic breakfast eats), a gigantic motorhome rumbled up the driveway.

“
Señora Krusinowski
esta aqui
!” exclaimed the flustered housekeeper.

While she hurried out the front door to greet her arriving employer, I was gathering up my stuff as best I could and running out the back door. I’ve placed an emergency call to Veeva and am holed up temporarily in the jungle by the dead pool. Veeva says it’s unlikely anyone will come down here, but if they do, I should hide in the cabana cave. Easy for her to say. There’s enough musty mold spores in that crypt to kill an entire ward of asthmatics.

1:26 p.m. Now I wish I’d downed a bit more of that repulsive tripe. I’m beyond famished.

I’ve been spying on the house from some well-placed bushes. A one-armed bald guy covered with tattoos (Dogo?) leveled the motorhome and slid out its many ancillary rooms. Looks like they’re not just stopping by to pick up fresh socks. The most lavish land yacht I’ve ever seen, it’s styled like a boat, with fancy gilt letters on its stern spelling out “
Spring Forth
- Phoenix, Ariz.” After plugging a cable into an outlet by the garage and adjusting a satellite dish on the
Spring Forth’s
roof, the man sprung four yapping Chihuahuas from the interior and took them for a walk. Somehow with just one hand he was able to keep all four leashes from tangling.

Meanwhile, Veeva had arrived by taxi and disappeared inside the house. God knows what she told her grandmother about young “Nipsie’s” presence there and his abrupt departure. Then, about a half-hour ago, she exited with the fabled matriarch herself, a gaunt old lady with blondish hair (a wig?). Just think, if my father had played his cards right, I might be addressing her as “Granny” myself, instead of lurking in her shrubbery like some undernourished Peeping Tom. I might even have gotten to ride somewhere in their fancy RV.

They piled into this little boat-shaped car that was towed in behind the motorhome and drove off (to police headquarters? to the FBI?) with Dogo behind the wheel. Mrs. Krusinowski didn’t appear obviously pissed, so I’m hoping they just went someplace for lunch. The name on the back of the nautical car was “
Plock II
,” whatever that means. Perhaps the sign painter misspelled “pluck.”

1:48 p.m. Veeva just called from the ladies’ room of a restaurant in Westwood. I’m to clear out the rest of my stuff and meet her in the parking lot of a convenience store on Beverly Glen Boulevard. That’s a long way to lug all my stuff, but at least I can look forward to a hotdog and slurpie when I get there.

5:38 p.m. I had to cool my heels in the parking lot for nearly an hour before Veeva showed up. And they pipe out this irritating classical music to discourage that sort of loitering. While cabbing to our next destination, Veeva explained how she had dealt with the crisis.

“
I told my grandmother you were Pedro, Benecia’s nephew, who was there to look after Benecia’s mother. So Señora Garonne wouldn’t think she was being watched over, we let her believe that Pedro was my brother Nipsie.”

“
And why did Pedro run out the back door?”

“
Skittish Pedro feared he might be turned over to the INS.”

“
OK, and why was Veeva spending so much time in Pedro’s room with the door closed?”

“
In the first place, Noel, I don’t think Señora Garonne is likely to mention that fact. If she does, I’ll just tell Grandmother that I was helping him with his English.”

“
You’re a genius, Veeva. A goddam fucking genius!”

“
No, I’m just really smart and rather manipulative. I did my best to get Grandmother to say how long she planned to stay, but she’s always cagey about such details. We’ll just have to play it by ear.”

“
Why is her car named
Plock II
?”

“
Well, her big land yacht used to be called the
Plock
. That’s a city in Poland where her husband’s family was from. Grandmother’s Polish too, but her side mostly came from Krakow. So after her husband ditched her for a younger babe and then croaked, she decided the old name had to go.”

“
Why
Spring Forth
?”

“
Easy. With her cheating ex-husband now planted in Forest Lawn, the lively widow was ready to do just that. Plus, it’s kind of an in-joke, since Grandfather made all his money manufacturing truck springs. She kept the old name on the little boat car to remind her deceased husband exactly who was now leading whom down the highway of life.”

“
You chicks don’t take any prisoners do you?”

“
Not typically, Noel. Now here’s some things you should know about my friend Maddy: Number one, she may try to seduce you. Number two, she has the biggest mouth in town, so I’ll find out in a hurry if you betray me.”

“
OK, OK. So why are Maddy’s parents letting some kid they don’t even know stay in their guestroom for a few days?”

“
Well, we’ve had to tell one small white lie.”

“
OK, lay it on me.”

“
Both your parents were killed this morning in a car wreck on the 405 Freeway.”

“
What!?”

“
So remember to look sad and grief-stricken. And keep your hands off Maddy.”

Maddy Dockweiler lives with her parents and older brother in a Tudor mansion in Beverly Hills that’s almost as swanky as Veeva’s. Her dad is a big accounting cheese at Paramount. He helps make sure that none of their movies ever shows an actual profit. Her mother is a well-known therapist to the stars. Maddy has her mother’s olive complexion, long black hair, and personality gearshift stuck permanently at “In Your Face.”

The painful introductions were made in their grand Old English foyer. It had all the period accouterments except two knights dueling with swords. Everyone was doing their best to be gracious and consoling toward newly orphaned Jake Darko, who was certainly nervous if not emotionally devastated. Mrs. Dockweiler gave me a fierce hug and said she was available for grief counseling 24/7. I thanked her and said I’d probably do OK on my own for now. Somehow I made it to the lower-level guestroom with my stuff, but Maddy pushed her way in before I could shut the door.

“
God, from Veeva’s description I thought you’d be much cuter.”