Troublemakers (2 page)

   
Not
all
“young people,” just the lames who bust
your
chops. Yeah, all of ‘em...they should itch forever with no scratch available. They should break a leg or two.

   
When I was your age, they were on me, too.

   
That’s
who this guy snarling at you claims to be. The kid who was there, same place as you, before you got here. And I’ve got this book of stories that definitely won’t save your life, or get you
off
crystal-meth, or turn your academic slide into a climb back up, or even clear up your acne.

   
It’s a book about some of the kinds of trouble we all get into. The stuff that seems to be a good idea at the time, but turns out to be six months in rehab or a beef in the juvie hall of your choice. Trouble has been my middle name since I was two-three years old. Yeah, that far back, I was the one they always swore was gonna wind up in jailor lying in a gutter with UPS trucks splashing garbage and mud on my wretched carcass. Well, it didn’t happen. I’ve got fame and money, and skill and a great wife, and a boss home. And now they ask me to put together a book for youse guys.

   
Well, imagine my surprise. Not to mention my nervousness. I do a lot of high school and college lecturing, and it’s not at all like what it was, hell, even
ten
years ago. Today, when I confront an audience of “young people” I get more mood ‘n’ tude than a serial killer trying to cop a plea. So, like a jerk, I get really honked at them and start insulting the audience.

   
And here’s what
really
fries my frijoles... They
take
it!

   
They don’t learn from it, they don’t get openly upset by it, they just sit there and pout like babies. And so, I’ve packed it in, pretty much. Not like it was when I did colleges in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when everyone was questioning and smart about what was happening in this country, when “young people” really had things to rebel against, instead of being upset that they’re not allowed to play their Gameboy in class.

   
So here’s this book of weird little stories, something like a modern-day version of Aesop’s Fables, except not really. A book of warnings, what we call “gardyloos.” With lessons to be learned that come out of my own corrupt and devilish adolescence.

   
Careful, though. Gardyloo! I am nobody’s hero, and I am as fu- well, you know what I mean, I’m as messed up as you. So read the stories for pleasure, and if they make you grin or scare you a little, and you turn out okay as an adult, and you get rich...send me some money.

   
Because I’m just a poor old guy trying to make a sparse living in a world full of “young people” who are smarter than I, cleverer than I, faster than I; and I’m just about on the verge of becoming like y’know a “bag lady” kind of guy, gnawing the heads off rats, peeing in doorways, begging from door to door. So, when these stories make you rich and famous, and they’ve just completely like y’know
altered
your life, send me a couple of bucks.

   
Because I love you folks, you know that, doncha?

   
I just love ya.

   
(And while we’re at it, I’d like to sell you some shares in the Panda Farm I’ve got growing in my butt. Very reasonable.)

   
Yr. pal, Harlan.

HARLAN ELLISON

Sherman Oaks, California

H
ere’s one of the few Secret Truths I’ve learned for certain, having been “on the road” since I was thirteen and ran away. (Had nothing to do with my folks; they didn’t beat me; I was a restless kid, wanted to see the world.) The Truth is this: most of the reasons we give for having done something or other, usually something that got us yelled at or grounded or busted, most of the reasons we dream up are horse-puckey. (I’d use the B-word, but libraries are going to be stocking this book.) All those reasons and excuses are just lame rationalizations, and they only tick off the people yelling at you. So shine ‘em on. Forget them. The only reason that makes any sense is “It
seemed
like a good idea at the time.” Lame though it may be, it’s the Truth. “Why did you bust that window?” It
seemed
like a good idea at the time. “Why did you get hung up on that guy/girl when you knew it was a destructive hookup?” It
seemed
like a good idea at the time. “Why did you do that lump of crack?” It
seemed..
. well, you get it. Too bad the guy in this first story didn’t get it, because the True Answer to why you fell in love with someone who ranked & hurt you is...it
seemed
like...

“In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.”

-
French proverb

I knew she was a virgin because she was able to
ruffle
the silken mane of my unicorn. Named Lizette, she was a Grecian temple in which no sacrifice had ever been made. Vestal virgin of New Orleans, found walking without shadow in the thankgod coolness of cockroach-crawling Louisiana night. My unicorn whinnied, inclined his head, and she stroked the ivory spiral of his horn.

   
Much of this took place in what is called the Irish Channel, a strip of street in old New Orleans where the lace curtain micks had settled decades before; now the Irish were gone and the Cubans had taken over the Channel. Now the Cubans were sleeping, recovering from the muggy today that held within its hours the
déjà vu
of muggy yesterday, the
déjà rêvé
of intolerable tomorrow. Now the crippled bricks of side streets off Magazine had given up their nightly ghosts, and one such phantom had come to me, calling my unicorn to her-thus, clearly, a virgin-and I stood waiting.

   
Had it been Sutton Place, had it been a Manhattan evening, and had we met, she would have kneeled to pet my dog. And I would have waited. Had it been Puerto Vallarta, had it been 20” 36’ N, 105” 13’ W, and had we met, she would have crouched to run her fingertips over the oil-slick hide of my iguana. And I would have waited. Meeting in streets requires ritual. One must wait and not breathe too loud, if one is to enjoy the congress of the nightly ghosts.

   
She looked across the fine head of my unicorn and smiled at me. Her eyes were a shade of gray between onyx and miscalculation. “Is it a bit chilly for you?” I asked.

   
“When I was thirteen,” she said, linking my arm, taking a tentative two steps that led me with her, up the street, “or perhaps I was twelve, well no matter, when I was that approximate age, I had a marvelous shawl of Belgian lace. I could look through it and see the mysteries of the sun and the other stars unriddled. I’m sure someone important and very nice has purchased that shawl from an antique dealer, and paid handsomely for it.”

   
It seemed not a terribly responsive reply to a simple question.

   
“A queen of the Mardi Gras Ball doesn’t get chilly,” she added, unasked. I walked along beside her, the cool evasiveness of her arm binding us, my mind a welter of answer choices, none satisfactory.

   
Behind us, my unicorn followed silently. Well, not entirely silently. His platinum hoofs clattered on the bricks. I’m afraid I felt a straight pin of jealousy. Perfection does that to me.

   
“When were you queen of the Ball?”

   
The date she gave me was one hundred and thirteen years before.

   
It must have been brutally cold down there in the stones.

   
There is a little book they sell, a guide to manners and dining in New Orleans: I’ve looked: nowhere in the book do they indicate the proper responses to a ghost. But then, it says nothing about the wonderful cemeteries of New Orleans’ West Bank, or Metairie. Or the gourmet dining at such locations. One seeks, in vain, through the mutable, mercurial universe, for the compleat guide. To everything. And, failing in the search, one makes do the best one can. And suffers the frustration, suffers the ennui.

   
Perfection does that to me.

   
We walked for some time, and grew to know each other, as best we’d allow. These are some of the high points. They lack continuity. I don’t apologize, I merely pointed it out, adding with some truth, I feel, that
most
liaisons lack continuity. We find ourselves in odd places at various times, and for a brief span we link our lives to others-even as Lizette had linked her arm with mine-and then, our time elapsed, we move apart. Through a haze of pain occasionally; usually through a veil of memory that clings, then passes; sometimes as though we have never touched.

   
“My name is Paul Ordahl,” I told her. “And the most awful thing that ever happened to me was my first wife, Bernice. I don’t know how else to put it-even if it sounds melodramatic, it’s simply what happened-she went insane, and I divorced her, and her mother had her committed to a private mental home. “

   
“When I was eighteen,” Lizette said, “my family gave me my coming-out party. We were living in the Garden District, on Prytania Street. The house was a lovely white Plantation-they call them antebellum now-with Grecian pillars. We had a persimmon-green gazebo in the rear gardens, directly beside a weeping willow. It was six-sided. Octagonal. Or is that hexagonal? It was the loveliest party. And while it was going on, I sneaked away with a boy...I don’t remember his name...and we went into the gazebo, and I let him touch my breasts. I don’t remember his name.”

   
We were on Decatur Street, walking toward the French Quarter; the Mississippi was on our right, dark but making its presence known.

   
“Her mother was the one had her committed, you see. I only heard from them twice after the divorce. It had been four stinking years and I really didn’t want any more of it. Once, after I’d started making some money, the mother called and said Bernice had to be put in the state asylum. There wasn’t enough money to pay for the private home any more. I sent a little; not much. I suppose I could have sent more, but I was remarried, there was a child from her previous marriage. I didn’t want to send any more. I told the mother not to call me again. There was only once after that...it was the most terrible thing that ever happened to me.”

   
We walked around Jackson Square, looking in at the very black grass, reading the plaques bolted to the spear-topped fence, plaques telling how New Orleans had once belonged to the French. We sat on one of the benches in the street. The street had been closed to traffic, and we sat on one of the benches.

   
“Our name was Charbonnet. Can you say that?”

   
I said it, with a good accent.

   
“I married a very wealthy man. He was in real estate. At one time he owned the entire block where the
Vieux Carré
now stands, on Bourbon Street. He admired me greatly. He came and sought my hand, and my
maman
had to strike the bargain because my father was too weak to do it; he drank. I can admit that now. But it didn’t matter, I’d already found out how my suitor was set financially. He wasn’t common, but he wasn’t quality, either. But he was wealthy and I married him. He gave me presents. I did what I had to do. But I refused to let him make love to me after he became friends with that awful Jew who built the Metairie Cemetery over the race track because they wouldn’t let him race his Jew horses. My husband’s name was Dunbar. Claude Dunbar, you may have heard the name? Our parties were
de rigueur.”

   
“Would you like some coffee and
beignets
at Du Monde?”

   
She stared at me for a moment, as though she wanted me to say something more, then she nodded and smiled.

   
We walked around the Square. My unicorn was waiting at the curb. I scratched his rainbow flank and he struck a spark off the cobblestones with his right front hoof. “I know,” I said to him, “we’ll soon start the downhill side. But not just yet. Be patient. I won’t forget you.”