Man Descending (11 page)

“Well?” I says after a bit. I was waiting for Gene to get out first.

“Well what?”

“Well, maybe we should go get them?”

Gene didn’t answer. He leans across me and plays “Shave and a haircut, two bits” on the horn.

“You’re a geek,” I tell him. He don’t care.

We wait. No girls. Gene gives a couple of long, long blasts on the hooter. I was wishing he wouldn’t. This time somebody pulls open the living-room drapes. There stands this character in suspenders, for chrissakes, and a pair of pants stops about two inches shy of his armpits. He looked like somebody’s father and what you’d call belligerent.

“I think he wants us to come to the door.”

“He can want all he likes. Jesus Murphy, it’s snowing out there. I got no rubbers.”

“Oh, Christ,” I says. “I’ll go get them, Gene. It’s such a big deal.”

Easier said than done. I practically had to present a medical certificate. By the time Nancy’s father got through with me I was starting to sound like that meatball Chip on
My Three Sons
. Yes sir. No sir. He wasn’t too impressed with the horn-blowing episode, let me tell you. And then Nancy’s old lady totes out a Kodak to get some “snaps” for Nancy’s scrapbook. I didn’t say nothing but I felt maybe they were getting evidence for the trial in case they had to slap a charge on me later. You’d have had to see it to believe it. Here I was standing with Nancy and her cousin, grinning like I was in my right mind, flash bulbs going off in my face, nodding away to the old man, who was running a safe-driving clinic for yours truly on the sidelines. Gene, I says to myself, Gene, you’re going to pay.

At last, after practically swearing a blood oath to get his precious girls home,
undamaged
, by twelve-thirty, I chase the women out the door. And while they run through the snow, giggling, Stirling Moss delays me on the doorstep, in this blizzard, showing me for about the thousandth time how to pull a car out of a skid on ice. I kid you not.

From that point on everything goes rapidly downhill.

Don’t get me wrong. I got no complaints against the girls. Doreen, the cousin, wasn’t going to break no mirrors, and she sure was a lot more lively than I expected. Case in point. When I finally get to the car, fucking near frozen, what do I see? Old Doreen hauling up about a yard of her skirt, which she rolled around her waist like the spare tire on a fat guy. Then she pulled her sweater down to hide it. You bet I was staring.

“Uncle Bob wouldn’t let me wear my mini,” she says. “Got a smoke? I haven’t had one for days.”

It seems she wasn’t the only one had a bit of a problem with the dress code that night. In the back seat I could hear Nancy apologizing to Gene for the outfit her mother had made her special for the dance. Of course, I thought Nancy looked quite nice. But with her frame she couldn’t help, even though she was got up a bit peculiar. What I mean is, she had on this dress made out of the same kind of shiny material my mother wanted for drapes. But the old man said she couldn’t have it because it was too heavy. It’d pull the curtain rods off the wall.

I could tell poor old Nancy Williams sure was nervous. She just got finished apologizing for how she looked and then she started in suckholing to Gene to please excuse her because she wasn’t the world’s best dancer. As a matter of fact this was her first dance ever. Thank heavens for Doreen, who was such a good sport. She’d been teaching her to dance all week. But it takes lots and lots of practice to get the hang of it. She hoped she didn’t break his toes stepping on them. Ha ha ha. Just remember, she was still learning.

Gene said he’d be glad to teach her anything he figured she needed to know.

Nancy didn’t catch on because she doesn’t have that kind of mind. “That would be sweet of you, Gene,” she says.

The band didn’t show because of the storm. An act of God they call it. I’ll say. So I drove around this dump for about an hour while Gene tried to molest Nancy. She put up a fair-to-middling struggle from what I could hear. The stuff her dress was made of was so stiff it crackled when she moved. Sort of like tin foil. Anyway, the two of them had it snapping and crackling like a bonfire there in the back seat while they fought a pitched battle over her body. She wasn’t having none of that first time out of the chute.

“Gene!”

“Well for chrissakes, relax!”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t swear.”

“Who’s swearing?”

“Don’t snag my nylons, Gene. Gene, what in the world are you … 
Gene!”

“Some people don’t know when they’re having a good time,” says Doreen. I think she was a little pissed I hadn’t parked and give her some action. But Lord knows what might’ve happened to Nancy if I’d done that.

Then, all of a sudden, Nancy calls out, sounding what you’d call desperate, “Hey, everybody, who wants a Coke!”

“Nobody wants a Coke,” mumbles Gene, sort of through his teeth.

“Well, maybe we could go some place?” Meaning somewhere well-lit where this octopus will lay off for five seconds.

“I’ll take you some place,” Gene mutters. “You want to go somewhere, we’ll go to Zipper’s. Hey Billy, let’s take them to Zipper’s.”

“I don’t know, Gene …”

The way I said that perked Doreen up right away. As far as she was concerned, anything was better than driving around with a dope, looking at a snowstorm. “Hey,” she hollers, “that sounds like
fun!”
Fun like a mental farm.

That clinched it though. “Sure,” says Gene, “we’ll check out Zipper’s.”

What could I say?

Don’t get me wrong. Like everybody else I go to Zipper’s and do stuff you can’t do any place else in town. That’s not it. But I wouldn’t take anybody nice there on purpose. And I’m not trying to say that Zipper and his mother are bad people neither. It’s just that so many shitty things have happened to those two that they’ve become kind of unpredictable. If you aren’t used to that it can seem pretty weird.

I mean, look at Zipper. This guy is a not entirely normal human being who tries to tattoo himself with geometry dividers and India ink. He has this home poke on his arm which he claims is an American bald eagle but looks like a demented turkey or something. He did it himself, and the worst is he doesn’t know how homely that bird is. The dumb prick shows it to people to admire.

Also, I should say a year ago he quits school to teach himself to be a drummer. That’s all. He doesn’t get a job or nothing, just sits at home and drums, and his mother, who’s a widow and doesn’t know any better, lets him. I guess that that’s not any big surprise. She’s a pretty hopeless drunk who’s been taking her orders from Zipper since he was six. That’s when his old man got electrocuted out at the mine.

Still, I’m not saying that the way Zipper is is entirely his fault. Though he can be a real creep all right. Like once when he was about ten years old Momma Zipper gets a jag on and passes out naked in the bedroom, and he lets any of his friends look at his mother with no clothes on for chrissakes, if they pay him a dime. His own mother, mind you.

But in his defence I’d say he’s seen a lot of “uncles” come and go in his time, some of which figured they’d make like the man of the house and tune him in. For a while there when he was eleven, twelve maybe, half the time he was coming to school with a black eye.

Now you take Gene, he figures Zipper’s house is heaven on earth. No rules. Gene figures that’s the way life ought to be. No rules. Of course, nothing’s entirely free. At Zipper’s you got to bring a bottle or a case of beer and give Mrs. Zipper a few snorts, then everything is hunky-dory. Gene had a bottle of Five Star stashed under the back seat for the big Christmas Dance, so we were okay in that department.

But that night the lady of the house didn’t seem to be around, or mobile anyway. Zipper himself came to the door, sweating like a pig in a filthy T-shirt. He’d been drumming along to the radio.

“What do you guys want?” says Zipper.

Gene holds up the bottle. “Party time.”

“I’m practising,” says Zipper.

“So you’re practising. What’s that to us?”

“My old lady’s sleeping on the sofa,” says Zipper, opening the door wide. “You want to fuck around here you do it in the basement.” Which means his old lady’d passed out. Nobody sleeps through Zipper on the drums.

“Gene.”
Nancy was looking a bit shy, believe me.

My brother didn’t let on he’d even heard her. “Do I look particular? You know me, Zip.”

Zipper looked like maybe he had to think about that one. To tell the truth, he didn’t seem quite all there. At last he says, “Sure. Sure, I know you. Keep a cool tool.” And then, just like that, he wanders off to his drums, and leaves us standing there.

Gene laughs and shakes his head. “What a meatball.”

It makes me feel empty lots of times when I see Zipper. He’s so skinny and yellow and his eyes are always weepy-looking. They say there’s something gone wrong with his kidneys from all the gas and glue he sniffed when he was in elementary school.

Boy, he loves his drums though. Zipper’s really what you’d call dedicated. The sad thing is that the poor guy’s got no talent. He just makes a big fucking racket and he don’t know any better. You see, Zipper really thinks he’s going to make himself somebody with those drums, he really does. Who’d tell him any different?

Gene found some dirty coffee cups in the kitchen sink and started rinsing them out. While he did that I watched Nancy Williams. She hadn’t taken her coat off, in fact she was hugging it tight to her chest like she figured somebody was going to tear it off of her. I hadn’t noticed before she had on a little bit of lipstick. But now her face had gone so pale it made her mouth look bright and red and pinched like somebody had just slapped it, hard.

Zipper commenced slamming away just as the four of us got into the basement. Down there it sounded as if we were right inside a great big drum and Zipper was beating the skin directly over our heads.

And boy, did it
stink
in that place. Like the sewer had maybe backed up. But then there were piles of dirty laundry humped up on the floor all around an old wringer washing machine, so that could’ve been the smell too.

It was cold and sour down there and we had nothing to sit on but a couple of lawn chairs and a chesterfield that was all split and stained with what I think was you know what. Nancy looked like she wished she had a newspaper to spread out over it before she sat down. As I said before, you shouldn’t never take anybody nice to Zipper’s.

Gene poured rye into the coffee mugs he’d washed out and passed them around. Nancy didn’t want hers. “No thank you,” she told him.

“You’re embarrassing me, Nancy,” says Doreen. The way my date was sitting in the lawn chair beside me in her make-do mini I knew why Gene was all scrunched down on that wrecked chesterfield.

“You know I don’t drink, Doreen.” Let me explain that when Nancy said that it didn’t sound snotty. Just quiet and well-mannered like when a polite person passes up the parsnips. Nobody in their right minds holds it against them.

“You don’t do much, do you?” That was Gene’s two bits’ worth.

“I’ll say,” chips in Doreen.

Nancy doesn’t answer. I could hear old Zipper crashing and banging away like a madman upstairs.

“You don’t do much,
do you?”
Gene’s much louder this time.

“I suppose not.” I can barely hear her answer because her head’s down. She’s checking out the backs of her hands.

“Somebody in your position ought to try harder,” Doreen pipes up. “You don’t make yourself too popular when you go spoiling parties.”

Gene shoves the coffee mug at Nancy again. “Have a drink.”

She won’t take it. Principles.

“Have a drink!”

“Whyn’t you lay off her?”

Gene’s pissed off because he can’t make Nancy Williams do what he says, so he jumps off the chesterfield and starts yelling at me. “Who’s going to make me?” he hollers. “You? You going to make me?”

I can’t do nothing but get up too. I never won a fight with my brother yet, but that don’t mean I got to lay down and die for him. “You better take that sweater off,” I says, pointing, “it’s mine and I don’t want blood on it.” He always wears my clothes.

That’s when the cousin Doreen slides in between us. She’s the kind of girl loves fights. They put her centre stage. That is, if she can wriggle herself in and get involved breaking them up. Fights give her a chance to act all emotional and hysterical like she can’t stand all the violence. Because she’s so sensitive. Blessed are the peacemakers.

“Don’t fight! Please, don’t fight! Come on, Gene,” she cries, latching on to his arm, “don’t fight over her. Come away and cool down. I got to go to the bathroom. You show me where the bathroom is, Gene. Okay?”

“Don’t give me that. You can find the bathroom yourself.” Old Gene has still got his eyes fixed on me. He’s acting the role. Both of them are nuts.

“Come on, Gene, I’m scared to go upstairs with that Zipper person there! He’s so strange. I don’t know what he might get it in his head to do. Come on, take me upstairs.” Meanwhile this Doreen, who is as strong as your average sensitive ox, is sort of dragging my brother in the direction of the stairs. Him pretending he don’t really want to go and have a fuss made over him, because he’s got this strong urge to murder me or cripple me or something.

“You wait,” is all he says to me.

“Ah, quit it or I’ll die of shock,” I tell him.

“Please, Gene. That Zipper person is
weird.”

At last he goes with her. I hear Gene on the stairs. “Zipper ain’t much,” he says, “I know lots of guys crazier than him.”

I look over to Nancy sitting quietly on that grungy chesterfield, feet together, hands turned palms up on her lap. Her dress kind of sticks out from under the hem of her coat all stiff and shiny and funny-looking.

“I shouldn’t have let her make me this dress,” she says, angry. “We ought to have gone downtown and bought a proper one. But she had this
material.”
She stops, pulls at the buttons of her coat and opens it. “Look at this thing. No wonder Gene doesn’t like it, I bet.”