Flatscreen (5 page)

She snored lightly, like a woman who can’t whistle trying to whistle. I removed her glasses, placed them carefully on the coffee table. Long time since I’d touched another body. Hers was cold, curled—a private space. Part of me hoped she’d half-wake at my touch, reach for my hanging hand like a nightmare-ridden newborn seeking sleepy solace. I stroked her hair, pulled the blanket to her shoulder.

In bed, watched an indie flick about some sad sack writer, failed in New York, returning to his childhood home. He had a successful brother who encouraged him to pack it in, join the family business. Scene played out like the one I’d had with Benjy earlier. “I talked to Dad today,” the older brother said.

Couldn’t sleep. Figured Benjy had one hand on Erin Kahn’s stomach, his fingers inching their way under her shirt as he nibbled the skin behind her ear. Got out of bed, went online. Jennifer Estes smiled seductively, like she didn’t know we were separated by glass, and she was made purely of pixels.

“Dear Jennifer,” I wrote, “I saw you at temple, glowing in neon like a false god. Coffee?”

Erased it just as quickly, navigated to a site where Latina women said naughty things with accents.

Imagined Dialogue:

Dan was my dealer, lived around the corner. Convenient because of my driving handicap. Inconvenient because he sold overpriced, skimpy bags.

Dan’s dad owned a liquid hand soap manufacturing wholesaler; he’d grown up dirt poor in Roxbury, wartime baby, made his first million by twenty-five, never looked back. Dan’s mom was Dan’s dad’s second wife. She lived in a condo on the north side. Wife Three lived in the house with Dad, though neither seemed particularly interested in Dan or the import/export warehouse he operated out of their basement.

Dan’s dad was a sleaze, but he must have been smart or smart enough. Pulled up by his bootstraps, this was his reward: succession of wives, each younger, more silicone-cyborg than the last. He’d grown hefty through the years, gut expanding with bank account. Now, on his throne, Soprano-esque—larger than life, king of the castle, comfortably gluttonous. But maybe, like Tony, he too had secrets and guilt, saw a shrink on the sly, complained of fuckup son, unreliable tumescence.

He opened the door wearing golf pants, cleats. There were both putting green and practice net in the house.
Wanted to ask why he felt the need for proper attire; surely Wife Three didn’t enforce a dress code. But I liked the fact that he allowed himself the fantasy. Not embarrassed to play make-believe. Or he understood it was all make-believe: house, silicone wives, Phil Mickelson impersonation.

A red carpet flowed down the stairs. The chandelier—all sparkles and bling—was blinding. Out front were ten-foot bronze lion statues that matched the trim on the windows.

“Dan’s downstairs.”

“Okay.”

Walked through the foyer into the kitchen, where the maid scrubbed an oven pan and Wife Three sat at the table in black silk robe, reading catalogs.

“Hi,” she said.

Didn’t know each other’s names, but we passed by often. Felt a faint air of conspiracy between us; neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing there. I was almost her age, but she looked so much older, the way she dressed, the perm in her hair that reminded me of Mom’s. Wondered if she missed being young, fucking guys her own age—she must have had her pick—staying up late drinking cans of Bud Light, waiting for the light in the room to fall soft.

“Hi,” I said, walked down to the basement.

Dan’s basement bedroom was different from mine. Five times as big, filled with toys: 60-inch Pioneer PureVision HD plasma, surround sound, walls of DVDs, CDs, stereo equipment, old-school arcade games, pinball, Ping-Pong, air hockey; all that shit.

Dan sat on his bed, shirtless in oversized B-ball shorts, bong ripping, relaxed as always. He wasn’t tense like other dealers. Born rich, felt untouchable the same way teenagers think they’re immortal because they’ve yet to feel death’s first
twitches. I’d only begun to feel the twitches myself. Maybe, because of the newness of these sensations—chronic throat-tickle, morning chest-tightness, unmitigated afternoon headaches, occasional numbness in left big toe, rib pressure after walking more than a block, smoker’s black mucus, hairy ears, penile post-ejaculation pain, shoulder soreness, bony-butt-despite-chubby-gut-so-sitting-for-long-periods-sucks syndrome, etc.—they felt entirely overwhelming. They say you start dying on the day you’re born, but I think it’s later than that. I think it happens when all the other kids are at college and the toxins in the air have nowhere to replicate but your body.

Dan was watching
Dazed and Confused
. I sat on the recliner, let the film evoke false nostalgia for a high school experience I hadn’t had but pretended to remember having. Dan passed me the bong.

“This is new,” I said. “Indoor?”

“Yeah. Captain Crunch. You taste that hint of blackberry?”

Dan was a marijuana connoisseur, like a wine taster, holding the smoke in his mouth, moving it through his teeth to extract the subtle flavorings, finally exhaling through his nose like a cartoon rhino.

“Not bad,” I said.

“How much you interested in?”

“Quarter.”

Dan tossed me a Ziploc.

“Word.”

Handed over two fifties, the remains of my Daddy Guilt Fund stash. I was like the housewives—living off alimony, cooking alone in stainless steel solitude. Not for long. This was my last hundred, though I was planning to sell half to Kahn, earn a little profit. Beyond that, hadn’t considered.

“Saw Jennifer Estes at temple.”

“She’s not Jewish.”

“She parks the cars.”

“Fuckin’ A. That’s what I love about these high school girls: I get older, they stay the same age.”

He was quoting from the movie we were presently watching.

“She’s only a year younger than me.”

“Hot?”

“Yeah.”

“True.”

Dan had no interest in girls—strange for a dealer. Always thought they dealt so they could hook up with stoner chicks.

“Why do you sell weed?”

“Beats working.”

“Can’t you just get money from your dad? That’s what I do.”

“There’s no dignity there. What I do is important, man. I perform a service. I contribute to society. I’m great for the economy—all I do is spend money.”

Walking out I could hear Dan’s dad in the golf room, “Mickelson on the tee…” Wanted to walk in, politely clap; myself, a willing spectator of imagined reality, binoculars in hand, watching that drive fly.

As I was going up the stairs, someone else was coming down. At first I thought it was Wife Three, but this girl had face-obscuring, slanted bangs, pale/pimpled skin, and a slim frame drowned in wannabe-black-man bagginess. She pushed the hair from her eyes. Alison Ghee. Jeremy Shaw’s girlfriend, the one whose infidelity had supposedly led to his suicide. Another of Dan’s customers. Must have been legions of us: numb-seekers, still in town.

Alison walked slowly, like it was hard to stay balanced with a body that weighed so little. Thought she hadn’t even noticed me, but after I stepped aside so we wouldn’t collide, she turned her neck, looked back, pointed her eyes right into mine, smiled, closed-mouthed. Imagined our lives moved in perpendicular lines as we wandered Quinosset, passing just once on these carpeted stairs. By the time I realized I should smile back, she’d made it to the bottom, disappeared into Dan’s room.

Top of the stairs: looked out the window at the backyard pool. Black tarp over it was covered in leaves. Easy to spread my arms, fall through the tarp, drop to concrete. Eight feet isn’t enough, though.

Wife Three was on the phone.

“I’m sick of it,” she said. “It’s like I’m married to Tiger fucking Woods.”

American Dream:

Alison Ghee was waiting for me, leaned up against the black gates that separated the Dan Clan from Quinosset’s manicured claws. She puffed a cigarette undramatically: deep, quick inhales, incessant ashing. What I mean is she didn’t look cool: no knock-kneed sexy feigned innocence, or lips-of-lust cigarette-as-phallus ring-blowing. I looked less cool than Alison. I was wearing sweatpants.

“How’d you beat me out here? Didn’t you just go inside?”

“I’m everywhere. I’m a ghost.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve been standing there spacing out for like fifteen minutes.”

“I have?”

“Let’s go,” she said.

Walked up Faber Street, then left on Wilson toward the north side. Houses were older, less ugly, equally expensive. Halloween decorations already up: hanging rubber skeletons strung from second-story verandas, crudely carved pumpkins staring through windows like judging shut-ins.

“Where are we going?”

Said it because I was stoned, wanted to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Not because I cared where we were going.

“Not that I care. I just go with the flow … that kinda guy. Just a flow-goer. That’s me. Eli.”

Sensed I was about to start talking stupidly, so I shut up.

A few minutes later, Alison said, “You’re funny.”

Tried to make a funny face.

“Now you just look retarded.”

We arrived.

Door in the ground led directly to the basement. Knew about these doors, the girls who used them. They were the sassy lovers who didn’t love me. Snuck out at night, walked alone in lamplight, cut through yards, arrived at entrances, let themselves in, let themselves be entered. Most people called these girls sluts.

Maybe the problem was basements. Me, Dan, Alison, Jeremy, cut off from sunlight, subterranean suffocating. Damp floors when it rains. Ugly boom boom of a broken clothes-dryer. We were humans, not worms. Needed clean air, overheard birdcalls, windows.

“I live in a basement too,” I said. “We’re bottom-dwellers, I guess. Maybe that’s why we’re such losers.”

“We’re losers?”

“Buried alive.”

“Speak for yourself. And who said I live here, anyway?”

“Do you live here?”

“Yeah.”

No pics of Jeremy, no shrines. I’d expected a mausoleum: framed diary entries, cut-up yearbook photos collaged on cardboard, obituaries, rosary-strung crosses. Wanted the room to feel like mourning, to wear its sadness on its paint-chipped walls.

Clothes on the floor and on the bed. Computer, empty beers, couple old paperbacks. Open guitar case next to the bed.

“You play?”

“It’s Jeremy’s.”

Could picture it: Jeremy: ignored troubadour, gentle songsmith. Quinosset bard unheard beneath the din of SUV engines, MP3s, electric toothbrushes; sensitive Jeremy complete with archived, estate-approved suicide recordings. We could listen, cry, put them on Myspace, make a posthumous documentary, hold candlelight acoustic vigils.