Bullettime (18 page)

No Erin in school. Dave isn’t surprised. What is surprising is another assembly, right after homeroom.

“There’s gonna be a week of this shit,” Lee tells Dave. It was an awkward rush to the auditorium today, so Dave just squeezed in anywhere, and Lee surprised him by plopping down next to him. “No homo,” Lee says.

Dave’s so used to it, he ignores the insult and carries on with the conversation. “How do you know?”

“My auntie’s on the district school board,” he says. “I’m gonna have to fly right. That’s why I’m sitting here with you, instead of my crew. If Hamilton don’t straighten up, they gonna bring in a bunch of crazy Vietnam vets to be the teachers and make us wear uniforms like Catholic schools do.”

“Is that even legal?” Dave asks, but the lights dim and Lee decides to concentrate on the stage rather than answer.

This time the assembly is by the JCPD. Detective Giovanni stalks the stage like a TV preacher, bellowing into a microphone, promising swift vengeance and hinting at a decade of daily prison rape should anyone engage in gang activities or bullying. “It’s
assault
!” he shouts. “Assault and battery!” There are no Hollywood movie clips or dance numbers, but there is a brief scare film about a young girl whose brother was shot and killed, and how much she misses him. Some grainy photos of the boy are flashed on the screen—he’s an obvious acolyte of the Cult of the Shell Necklace. The black and Latino kids chuckle and hiss, and even Dave smirks.

“That guy looks like a total asshole,” he whispers to Lee, but Lee ignores him. Instead, Lee says, “I don’t know why I’m here. Black people don’t shoot up schools. They could have put us all in the cafeteria again and shown your white ass this movie.”

Dave realizes that if he does bring the gun to school, he might have to shoot Lee first. And Malik. That George guy as well. Just because he foolishly asked them if they knew where to get guns.

The assembly is short enough, but afterward Vice Principal Fusco takes to the stage and announces that there will be assemblies every day for the rest of the week. Tomorrow, Wednesday, will be on sexual harassment. Fusco bellows the word
sexual
as though daring the students to hoot or giggle. Thursday will be on the new dress code. “Not uniforms, but a dress code. Proper, professional dress. No more baggy pants or midriff-bearing blouses or gang colours . . . like blue or red.” That summons up some murmurs of protest. It’s pretty hard to avoid blue. Then there’s Friday’s assembly, which will involve the mayor, and a “famous rap star”—more buzzing, now positive—and “lots of media and security.”

Friday will be too intense. Thursday it will be. He cuts class after the assembly in the usual manner of leaving school for lunch and then just continues to walk. Nobody’s home, but now the answering machine is full of messages. The first is from Ann, obviously inebriated and a little giggly, insisting that Jeremy take a leave of absence from his job to “care for poor Davey.” The next is from Jeremy, demanding that Ann call him at work to demonstrate that she is “ready to be a mother, if not a wife.” Neither of Dave’s parents are clever enough to actually check their messages from afar, even though Dave has drilled them on how to do it a million times. Ann left three messages in a row after Jeremy’s—the first two are increasingly angry, and in the third she’s calm again, as if having been reset. Jeremy’s last two messages are short. The last is just him saying, “Call me! Now!” as best he can through clenched teeth.

Dave waits on the couch, thinking. Barge in blasting, or hide the gun in the basement. He has two—he can do both, or either. He only has four magazines, so it might be best to keep the guns separated so he doesn’t blow all his ammo doing a
Scarface
routine. He barely even notices that the plan has shifted from
waving the guns around with Erin
to
actually shooting people
. And he wants to live. Running out of ammo and letting the cops shoot him is not an option. He could run, or surrender, or just not do it.

No, there is no
just not do it
anywhere in Dave’s head. Early-onset schizophrenia, maybe. Stress from both his parents leaving him, perhaps. The influence of the goddess of discord seducing Jeremy and fucking him right on the couch, the couch that is still stained with something, that still smells like her, that last and final betrayal.

His nose still hurts. It’s hard to breathe. There won’t be much running on Thursday. Around 4 p.m., he reaches over to the phone and makes a call.

“Tigger,” he says when Oleg answers.

“Cutting again, eh?” Oleg says. “Slippin’ Erin the ol’ baloney pony?”

“Wait . . . what?!”

“What what?”

“If I were doing that, why would I call you right after?”

“That was going to be my next question!”

“Anyway,” Dave says. “Remember that time you found me bleeding in the bathroom?”

“A mother always remembers her daughter’s first period, David.”

“Be serious. You said something about teaching those dirtbags a lesson. I wonder if—”

“Yes!” Oleg says. “I’m all for it. My brother Aram got Photoshop. I say we start a website and stick the heads of our tormentors on some gay porn pics.”

“Where are you going to get gay porn?”

“Google. What, you mean you’ve never even peeked?”

“Uhm . . . anyway, I have a better idea.” It’s not a better idea. Dave says he needs a kilt, and needs to borrow Oleg’s duster in order to better reveal it at the right moment. Oleg says he’ll leave it on Dave’s stoop, secret agent-style. Dave doesn’t bother to explain that secret agents don’t leave thing on stoops.

“Shave your legs too!” Oleg says.

Nobody came home that night. Dave’s choices were to moon over Erin, to gnash his teeth and chew on his fingers and chant “Cunt! Cunt Cunt!” through clenched teeth—just like his father spoke to his mother—till his lips bled, or to think about Hamilton, and what he could do with those Uzis.

Maybe Erin will show up. Maybe she fucked Dad just to gain entry to my room and leave me the guns. Like Mata Hari or La Femme Nikita
. . . he thinks, but then it’s back to slapping his palms against his temples, then back to reading up on school shootings.

He could just shoot Erin, he supposes. If not at school, then on the way to school. Drop by her apartment and plug her. Her fat obnoxious father too. Maybe go to the city and visit Washington Place Diner and Restaurant and put a bullet in “Uncle Bill”—who did look just like the guy who had stabbed him with a pen.

Revenge is hard work. Dave knew the old saying,
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves
. He had lots to dig, and he didn’t want any of them to be his. In ten different timestreams, he is killed, and in six of those he’s killed before he even manages to shoot anyone. In one world, the gun falls to the steps with a clatter, and he runs and doesn’t stop when a cop demands that he does, and he’s shot in the back. In another, he gets scared in the dark storage area and shouts at a shadow to stop moving and fires upon it and a bullet punctures a heating pipe and high-pressure steam takes off his face. In another, he gets to the loading dock, looks around at the mannequins in school uniforms being prepped for the stage, blows them to splinters and then shoots himself in the head. In yet another, he leaves the statues unmolested, but stands close to them when he puts a bullet in his brain in the hope of an artful splatter.

What’s the difference between one Holbrook and the next? I’m as young as Dave, though I’ve lived until my late thirties in some contexts, and I have no clue. The only thing I know is that Erin trapped me here in the Ylem, to live and relive every possibility, and they all end poorly.

Dave can’t afford to practise with his Uzis. He has to get in close, keep his finger from just squeezing and freezing. Decisions are made, and with every decision a new world is born. With every decision carried out, that is.

Dave skips school again on Wednesday. He’s very hungry, so he buys three cheeseburgers at the old-fashioned white-tile McDonald’s close to Hamilton, and eats them by the window.
You’re officially casing a joint, Mr. Holbrook
, he thinks. Or I think it to him. It’s hard to tell. Mostly he has his eyes out for Erin. But she’s not anywhere near school anymore. Not in that body, anyway. She’s wherever chthonic goddesses go, deep underground, between manifestations. One of the two Uzis is in an oversized satchel at Dave’s feet.

The Wednesday assembly involves a number of black and Latino actors and dancers in matching tracksuits. Dave’s so horrified at the idea of a hip-hop breakdancing anti-bullying spectacle that he’s almost upset that he’s going to miss the show. When the lights dim, he slips in via the loading dock—which is kept open for fire safety reasons during assemblies—and then opens the trapdoor by what used to be the orchestra pit and heads down to the basement. The rapping is terrible, a cloying riff on “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check” by Busta Rhymes. Something about putting bullies in check before they wreck and it’s all about respec’ so let’s break it down on this here deck—that sort of nonsense. Admirable sentiments all around. In the basement, all Dave hears is the thumping of the bass, and his own racing heart. He’s relieved to be free of the gun, but he’s sweating so much that he’s sure the police could find his DNA on the satchel if they were to discover this hidey-hole and locate the gun.
Which is impossible
! he reminds himself, except that it isn’t impossible. Entropy decreasing is impossible. Order forming out of chaos is impossible. The destruction of energy rather than its transformation is impossible. Someone finding the Uzi before tomorrow and calling the cops, and the cops figuring out that the gun belongs to Dave is just very unlikely. Except for the
belongs to Dave
part. Who else is wandering around Hamilton with a broken nose, a broken home, and a constant hydrocodone high?

Scratch the broken nose and there were plenty of possible suspects. Dave still doesn’t feel safe.

A
nn is home and ranting to herself in the master bedroom when Dave comes home from school. Her clothes are in disarray all over the floor and the unmade double bed. For a moment Dave pictures Erin straddling his father there too, naked save for little girl socks with pink ruffles, raising her hips twice a second like a machine.

“You!” Ann says to Dave. It’s a blast furnace of a phoneme. Dave nearly bursts into tears and admits everything. He stole the money, the purse, has a submachine gun in his room.
Let’s put one end of the hose in the exhaust and the other in the car and commit suicide instead
! But Ann is fast. “Pack a bag! We’re leaving tonight!”

“What? Why?”

“Because your pedophile rapist father is coming home tonight, and if I have to see him again, I’ll kill him.”

“You knew . . .”

“Oh, did
you
know?” Ann drops what she’s holding and gets right up in Dave’s face. She’s not been drinking. Her breath smells like ash and shit instead of sweet wine. “Was that little bitch one of your classmates?”

“Uhm . . . it’s a big school,” Dave says. “I just mean, how did you know?”

“They were going at it in front of the window. I hollered at them, even threw a rock, but they ignored me. Your fucking father ignored me while fucking a teenager on my couch. I sit on that couch every night.” She has more to say, but no more breath with which to say it. Instead she just huffs and gasps for air in front of Dave for several long seconds. “I should burn this fucking place down,” she says. “Let him come home to ruins. That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? But I won’t. Pack a bag.”

“Where are we going?” Dave says.

“A hotel. The Doubletree by the ShopRite. The motel by the Holland Tunnel, whatchamacallit? Any place but here. Good thing I don’t have a gun, David. I know he’s your father and you don’t understand, but if I see his face, I’ll kill him.” She would. Dave knows the feelings. Is that where it came from, somewhere in mom’s genome?

“Well, what will we do next?” Dave says. “After the hotel.”
Keep her talking, Mr. Holbrook
. “We need to sit down and talk this out. Not with Dad I mean, but just—”

“David, you are a child. There’s nothing to discuss.”

“Well, go downstairs and think it over. I’ll order pizza. Have a drink and try to relax. Then we can really think of something. Call a lawyer. I bet you could get the house in your name, or a restraining order, or something.”

Ann looks skeptical. But she licks her lips. “I need to call my sister. Maybe Julia too, talk this out. But pack your bags.”

“I have a test tomorrow,” Dave says. “With Mr. McCann.”

“So? We’re not going to Egypt. Pack. A. Bag.”

Dave goes to his room, unplugs the phone line from the modem, and calls his father’s cell phone. It goes to voicemail, but Dave leaves a message. “Mom’s superdrunk and unconscious on the couch. Please come get me.” Then he tips the bureau over again, finds his emergency Robitussin and drinks half the bottle and gets into bed. His stomach roils and he cuddles his Uzi like a teddy bear, not caring if his father comes in and kicks the door to pieces. By the time Jeremy comes home to Ann, who is only half-unconscious, the screaming argument is like nothing but a half-remembered dream. It’s not a good night’s sleep, but it is a long night’s sleep. Dave is leaving for school early in the morning, after all. He dreams of Erin and behind her, a great black thing taller and wider than his range of vision. It is black, and scaly, and writhes with dozens of coiling limbs and necks. He is Typhon, and his hundred dragon heads scrape the stars.

D
ave wakes up early to the sound of his parents fucking. They were shouting like teenagers, and the whole upper floor of the house seemed to quake with each thrust and thump.

Well, Mr. Holbrook, it’s time to ruin someone’s day.

Dave is hungry, and a little nauseated. He decides to keep it that way. He likes the edge, the taste of saliva and nothing else in his mouth. He doesn’t have a kilt, but that’ll be fine. Tigger won’t be doing much complaining once he sees the gun. Oleg’s a good kid. Dave will send him home.