The Next Queen of Heaven-SA (6 page)

“When I’m on my deathbed I’ll have Father Mike in for a highball and a Gitane. I’ll renounce the world and transfer my assets into the heavenly portfolio. No need to rush things, though.”

Sean drew heavily on the coffee stirrer. It was amazing he still needed his fix, since his lung lining had been described as quilted. How did his system process the smoke?

“Anyway, Sister Alice is nice enough. So is Father Mike. They’ll help if they can. I was sort of hoping that we’d have some choices. Didn’t anyone else come up with anything?”

“I do remember the Scales family.” Sean sat up a little straighter. “Kirk Scales. He was in my brother’s school play last year. He was the dead kid in
Our Town.
What a little godsend
that
one is!”

“Do tell,” said Marty. “Start with his toes and work up.”

“Guys,” said Jeremy. “We’ve got a problem to solve here. We haven’t found any other available piano? It’s hard to believe.”

“Look,” said Sean. “Let’s take care of business and get out of here, okay? I don’t like the clientele tonight. Sitting across from the walking dead. They don’t like sitting across from us either, by the look of things. Call me superstitious, but it creeps me out.”

“I think you’ll have to come back,” said Jeremy in a softer voice. “Svetty Boyle can’t slip away unnoticed. This place isn’t going to get busy enough for Bozo Joe to shift his behind away from his throne back there and help her.”

“Fuck,” said Sean.

“Hey, leave it to me.” Marty zipped up his jacket with a flourish and arranged the collar to stand at attention, emphasizing his strong chin. Jeremy gritted his teeth. “If I can get Bozo to come over, you skedaddle back to the bathroom hall. Svetty Boyle will see you. You have the cash, Sean?”

“Actually I’m a little short. I need to borrow twenty.”

Marty shrugged. Jeremy shook his head and handed over his last twenty. “You’re not going to—I hope you don’t—” he said.

“Get moving,” said Marty. Sean stood, caught Svetlana’s eye, and began to meander toward the men’s room. Marty reached out and grabbed Jeremy’s wrist before he could withdraw it. Marty gave out a falsetto squeal that turned all heads except Sean’s.

“Jesus, don’t,” begged Jeremy. Marty used his chest voice in a credible imitation of Dusty Springfield doing “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me.”

“No, no, no.” Jeremy tried to pull his hand away but Marty had both hands around Jeremy’s wrist now.

“Believe me,” he sang, letting out a little tremolo. The vampires giggled and hissed. He put on the volume. “Believe me.” The diva belt. Oh God. Oh God.

“Shut up, you fag,” said one of the vampires.

“It’s a Halloween act, how’s he doing?” said Jeremy to them. Here comes Bozo Joe.

“What the hell you think you’re doing?” said the owner. But Marty’s eyes were closed now and he was swaying, swept away by love. “You pay the bill and get out if you wanna sing.

You’re disturbing the customers.”

Svetlana was off the floor, out doing the deal. It wouldn’t take long. Marty began the second verse. “You want I should call the cops?” said Bozo Joe. “As if they don’t have enough trouble on Halloween?”

“Sorry about this, he gets this way,” said Jeremy between clenched teeth. “Marty, please!”

Then Sean was back, dropping into his seat, and Marty stopped as if unplugged. He blinked two or three times at the owner and said, as if waking up, “Oh, something just comes over me, this feeling I just can’t hide. Inappropriate. I know.”

“Svetlana,” called Joe, “get the check. This table’s done.”

Sean patted his chest to show he had gotten the grass. Svetlana appeared in no special hurry, grumpy as ever. The Vampires had decided to retaliate with a performance of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” only they weren’t being nice about it.

“Let’s get out of here before this turns into the story of Matthew Shepard,” said Sean.

In the parking lot, Jeremy got into the backseat of Babs so they could finish the conversation. He rolled a joint but didn’t smoke. Communion once a day was enough. Marty and Sean passed the roach back and forth. “Do you think Bozo Joe is calling the cops because we’re still here?” asked Marty a few moments later.

“Nah. We make the place look popular if someone drives by,” said Jeremy.

“Anyway this is medicinal pot,” said Sean.

There was a moment of peace. The car began to fill with blue-brown fog; in the fading sunlight through the windshield, the Off Nights sang a little. If they could only do concerts in automobiles, they’d be bigger than the Backstreet Boys. Bigger than Monica (“Angel of Mine”) and R. Kelly and Celine Dion (“I’m Your Angel”) and Sarah McLachlan (“Angel”) put together.

They were angels in the smoke. Jeremy was getting a sympathetic buzz just from the fug. Bigger even than Mariah Carey (“I Still Believe”). A girl could hope.

Silence after the sound.

“Put another way,” said Marty, “those folks on Egypt Air last night didn’t have a chance to smoke a last joint.”

“I’m going,” said Jeremy. “You owe me twenty, Sean.” He bumped his head as he got out.

He sauntered to the edge of the parking lot, where the sidewalk crept by, to clear his head. Breathed the real air deeply, feeling the giddiness ebb and return. Along came a pint-size Mr. Potato Head and a skeleton who was wearing his full-face mask backward so he could see where he was going. The skeleton said “Trick or treat?” in a perfunctory way, just in case.

“Sorry, I’m, uh, not supplied.”

They passed without comment, looking for sweeter pastures. The Frankenstein face grinned its plastic rictus at Jeremy as the kids walked away. Jeremy found himself thinking, maybe Bozo Joe had something ripe enough for them. Or Svetty Boyle.

TABITHA SURPRISED HER brothers by choosing to go to school without being nagged into it. “Anyone ever needs proof that your circuits are fried, this is it,” said Hogan, watching her dress. “Look: Kommandant Mom is off duty on account of a concussion, and for once she’s not stationed at the bottom of the stairs with her arms folded and her foot tapping. And here you are like, like a bobby-soxer, all ponytails and kneesocks. Your tits are so prompt they’re going to get to school ahead of you and erase the blackboard for which loser teacher? Is it Hess in science lab?”

“Don’t be vulgar. I failed science lab last year and Hess won’t let me back.”

“You’re
being
Mom. That’s it. I get it. Why? Guilty conscience? I know you didn’t push her down the stairs that day. You were home sleeping it off.”

“Are you crazy? I’m just making the best of a bad situation. What if I’m not there, and some social worker snoops in at school? Mr. Reeves might say I’m playing hookey. The bad apple. Maybe they’ll take Mom away to a rehab resettlement camp somewhere.”

“Works for me. Works wonders for me.”

“Right. Then they’ll notice we’re minors and you go to a foster home, Hog. Or given you’re sixteen, to some sort of school more like a jail.”

“They have juvenile delinquent girls in this jail you describe? Paradise.”

“No. Only guys. Jerk-off smelly bullying morons.”

Hogan glanced through the hall doorway into the kitchen, where Kirk was cleaning out the fridge and humming something from Mom’s LP of
South Pacific.
“Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.” Hogan’s voice lowered. “They’d have an awful lot of fun with My Little Pony in there.”

“Exactly. So off I go to school.” She added, “You gonna drive me or what?”

“Where’s Caleb, your Mister Motorcycle Man?”

Tabitha pursed her lips, tamping her lipstick the way her mother always did. “Mmmm,” she said, a beat too long. “Well, let’s go, Hog.”

Nice of Hogan not to press the issue, she thought. But where
was
Caleb Briggs? Had she been so very hot the night before Halloween that she had scared him off? Her mind went back to the time she’d seen his bike in the Ames parking lot—the time her mother had started cussing like a streetwalker who has run out of sidewalk. Tabitha hadn’t caught sight of Caleb in the store that day. And those louts lounging around near the soda cans mounded by the front windows—she’d hurried past them in shame and mortification, without giving them a sideways look. But were they Caleb’s friends? And if so, where was he? Not hiding behind shelving to avoid her, the way she had done to avoid Hannah and Solange?

It was all too confusing. Here she thought she’d convinced Caleb she was sexually provocative enough to last out a set of marriage vows, give good value for money, no prim virginal dope, and she’d quite possibly scared him off with her vigor and, um, imagination.

Maybe that business with the chocolate-covered cherries and the jumper cables had been a bit too knowing.

She fingered her white collar into a more belligerent pertness. Hogan was wrong about her strategy. She missed Caleb, and he wasn’t answering her phone calls. So she hoped at least to get some sympathy from someone. Some grown-up to crow, “Your mom has gone temporarily brain dead and here you are, just carrying on! You brave dear!” She imagined the words. She had practiced how she might drop her gaze to the floor and twist her hands together, maybe murmur and blush a little if she could manage it. The problem was that she couldn’t imagine who would address her with such concern. Nobody liked her. Hess had thrown her out of the lab last year when her own personal breakage costs had topped two hundred bucks. That cow McTavish hated her guts. Mr. Abbott didn’t know who she was since he was old enough to be senile and she’d only gone to Civilization Survey, like, twice.

And her so-called
classmates.
They were stuck living the lie that was high school. The boys all did sports as if they were NFL material. Except the nerds whom nobody bothered with, including themselves. And the girls were like Solange and Hannah. Guarded, that was the word.

Guarded, because Tabitha was lusty and liberated and wore her reputation as a free girl the way others wore their alligator logos or the letter jackets of their boyfriends.

Thebes was so lame it might as well be amputated.

Tabitha wasn’t going to make her mother’s mistake and get stuck here. She and Caleb would light out for someplace better. But not until Tabitha had seen Mom safely home. And if that meant sucking up big time, well then, Hello there, Mrs. Prendergast, you’re looking less smarmy than usual in that French-cut skirt—did you inherit it from your sister in Toronto after she died of liver failure? Hi, Mr. Hess! Remember me? Little Miss Crash-Crazy-Oopsy-Daisy?

Morning, Mr. Reeves.
Principal
Reeves. Love the sideburns. I admire the man who can wear furry twin outlines of Florida below his ears. No, really.

“You’re up to no good, I can smell it,” said Hogan as he arrived at the curb of the high school.

“Coming in?” Her voice was sweet.

“Shit. Left my geometry homework on the kitchen table. And I pulled an all-nighter to finish it.” Pausing. “Hell no.”

“Right. Well, later.”

Hogan started to ease away. Kirk was only halfway out of the car and he fell on the sidewalk, ripping a hole in his trouser knee. Hogan’s laughter trailed out into the drop-off traffic.

“What?” Nice Kirk was nearly spitting. “He forgot I was in the backseat?”

“I have to admit, Kirk,” ventured his sister, “you’re
such
a spaz. Hog probably just couldn’t help himself.”

“I spent fifteen minutes pressing these trousers.”

“Maybe today you’ll meet someone who can press them for you. Maybe, Kirk, today is your big day for
love.”
Oooh, she could be so mean. Good to know she hadn’t lost it.

Kirk didn’t reply. He just limped off. Tabitha considered saying a prayer for strength, but then thought, fuck it, and she marched into the fray.

SCHOOL NOT HAVING worked out quite as well as she would have liked, Tabitha found herself somewhat relieved, if that was the word, to show up with Hogan and Kirk at the clinic for visiting hours at four so they could see their mother, decay and all.

They were huddled in the hallway, which smelled of disinfectant and pea soup. “Tell us what you know, über-nurse,” said Hogan.

Nurse Marilee Gompers smiled hatefully and observed that Mrs. Scales could sit up, brush her own hair, attend to her own toilet, and as of today when they took it away from her, walk without the aid of a walker. Her blood pressure was good, her vital signs what they should be. She looked brightly and with focus at whoever came in the room. None of the tests had shown signs of hemorrhaging. No evidence of a subdural hematoma. The staff could think of no reason to keep her under observation. Since their mother didn’t have a regular physician with whom they could consult, the Scales kids took the nurse at her word when she said that the patient was fine.

“She can talk?” asked Tabitha.

“Go in and see for yourself. She’s a great one for talking, a regular Chatty Cathy.” They loitered until Nurse Gompers pushed them through the door. “I’ll shut this. For privacy,” she said, with a wink.

Leontina Scales was sitting up in an ugly metal chair with one rectangular biscuit-colored cushion creased into the middle to provide both a seat and a back. Her spine sagged, her chin jutted forward, and she glowered at her children. “Outa here,” she groused. “Now. Outa here.”