The Monkeyface Chronicles (4 page)

London has Big Ben, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Empire State Building and Toronto has the CN Tower. Faireville has a few abandoned wells that ran out of natural gas thirty years ago.

So long, Faireville, you Tourist Mecca! Keep on rockin' the natural gas industry.

I've passed the Eastern Subdivisions, which are known by the more highfalutin locals as “Cardboard Acres.” The Downtown Business District is marked by special Millennium streetlights, erected by the aforementioned Town Council. The frosted-glass fixtures, shaped like candle flames, were made at a scandalously high cost by a now-abandoned glassware factory in the East End. They were supposed to symbolize the blue flame that natural gas makes when burned, to remind everyone yet again of the First Natural Gas Well in North America that put Faireville on the map. Unfortunately, at night the special blue light bulbs made the downtown core look like a creepy black-and-white German Expressionist film, so, after an emotional debate in the Town Council Chambers, ordinary white lights were put inside the fixtures. So much for symbolism.

The slate-grey December clouds have thickened overhead, tricking some of the Millennium streetlights into lighting up early. Many of them buzz to life just as I pass underneath, which is quite unnerving. I want to float through the shadows of Faireville like a phantom, not by running out from under spotlights like a prison escapee.

I've already slipped past Jackie Snackie's with no sign of Dennis, so I am extra wary as I approach The Sergeant-at-Arms. I cross to the opposite side of the street, just in case, and . . .
shit!
The scraggly hair, the slouching lope, the battered leather jacket and the drooping, size-too-big jeans — it's him! I freeze, hoping he's drunk enough to miss me. I stand motionless behind a Millennium streetlight, snowflakes tickling my nose, melting on my cheeks.
Don't see me, don't see me, don't
see me . . .

Then I see the guy's three-day growth of white beard; Dennis can't produce more than a few wispy threads on the end of his chin. The guy also has a large, dark stain on the front of his pants. Although Dennis frequently gets drunk enough to piss off my parents and grandfather, he would never get so loaded that he'd piss his pants. I start breathing again and continue walking, wishing that Faireville's Teen Rebel and Town Drunk didn't dress so much alike.

Goodbye, Sergeant-at-Arms. Goodbye, pissy old drunk. Goodbye, Dennis; if you're in there, have a drink for me.

As I reach the only stoplights in town, at the intersection of Faireville Street and Gas Line Avenue, I take a detour a couple of blocks north to say goodbye to Church Square. Three of the corners have churches on them: one Catholic, one Anglican, one Baptist. On the fourth corner stands the King George Playhouse. All four buildings are enormous, made of brick and stone, with arched wooden doorways and stained glass windows, their spires reaching up higher than anything else in town, and all four were constructed with donations from Jeremiah Faire, the town's founder, first mayor, and wealthiest gas property speculator. A larger-than-life statue of Faire stands in the middle of the cemetery at Church Square, saluting the four splendid buildings, the only monuments to Faireville's boomtown past that aren't crumbling into dust.

What's wrong with me?
“Splendid buildings?” “Monuments
to the boomtown past?”
It sounds like I'm trying to invent a new slogan for the stupid town sign. What am I getting all sentimental about? I hate this town. I'm halfway home, halfway from leaving Faireville forever. No time for detours.

I stride past The Goode Faith Gift Shoppe, The Tea Cozy, and Lynette's Little Edibles, the “olde-fashioned” shops occupying the three most painstakingly-restored storefronts in Faireville. The three shops are owned by Faith Green, Lynette Lavender, and Mary Ellen Black, inseparable friends who were in the same school year as my mother. These “Bestest Friends Forever” (a yearbook quote) were known collectively during their school days as “The Colour Girls,” and they all kept their own last names after marriage, not as any kind of bold feminist statement, but so they could carry their
Colour Girls
moniker to the grave.

The Colour Girls have gone so far as to paint their respective storefronts green, lavender, and black (with stars and planets, in the latter case), and they are each other's best customers. Lynette Lavender's shop is festooned with expensive, fragile dust-collectors from Faith Green's gift shop, and Faith serves imported chocolates and exquisite marmalades in tiny little jars from Lynette's. Twice a day, Lynette and Faith step next door into Mary Ellen Black's tea room, so the three of them can be served exotic teas in antique china cups by the single mother Mary Ellen employs part-time for minimum wage.

Maybe it was over tea one day that the three Bestest Friends simultaneously felt the Call of Motherhood, for each gave birth to a perfect baby girl. Lara, Carrie and Caitlin were born in the same month of the same year Michael and I were born, and are known as The
Little
Colour Girls. Ah, small town tradition.

I hesitate for a moment in front of Lynette's Little Edibles when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the shop window. My lips are fattened and lopsided, rimmed with purple. My left eye is swollen nearly shut, surrounded by a misshapen mass of blue and brown. My cheeks are covered in cobwebs of dried blood. If my face is merely ugly on an ordinary day, it is horrifying in its current state.

Shit!
Lynette Lavender is right there on the other side of the glass, sitting on a vintage soda-fountain stool behind an antique cash register. If she sees me, she'll call my parents for sure. She'll call my parents, then the school, then the police, then Faith and Mary Ellen. I'd better run.

Maybe Lynette is too engrossed in listening to the police scanner beside the cash register to pay any attention to me. Lynette Lavender is an Old Weller, so she's got enough old money in her bank account that her business doesn't have to be profitable. “Old Weller” is the local nickname for descendents of the lucky speculators who got rich by rushing to claim the land under which Faireville's natural gas pocket was discovered. Lynette Lavender and Faith Green are both Old Wellers, but Mary Ellen Black moved to town when she was five years old, so she can't technically be one. She was smart enough to marry an Old Weller, though, so at least her daughter Caitlin can claim the title. Mary Ellen also insisted that her daughter would go by
her
last name rather than her husband's, so Caitlin could be a Little Colour Girl, too. I guess Mary Ellen's husband got tired of all of this, for he left town shortly after Caitlin was born.

Although my dad was born and raised in Faireville, he isn't an Old Weller. “Our ancestors
worked
for a living,” is how my father put it. Those people in Faireville without the advantage of inherited old gas money — Newbies, mostly — refer to the Old Wellers as “Old Gassers” or “Old Flamers,” but usually not to their faces. Newbies don't tend to succeed here in Faireville, nor do they often stay for long. My mother's an exception; she's a newbie who stayed.

I plod onward. So long, Old Wellers!
Adieu
, Colour Girls!

The row of Millennium streetlights abruptly ends right beside The Incredible Bulk. I'm hungry now, and I'm tempted to stop in for a handful of trail mix, but I'm pretty sure that Mr. Bundy would take one look at my face and call my parents, too. Mr. Bundy is the punch line of many jokes in Faireville, and not just because he shares the same name as a notorious serial killer.

As a young man, quiet, rotund Mr. Bundy inherited the building that had housed the local Co-Op farm supply store, which his late father had run for over forty years. Seeing no future in the farm equipment business, he converted the building into a shop that sold collectible superhero comic books, which happened to be Mr. Bundy's personal obsession. He spent the entire modest monetary portion of his inheritance on display shelves, a life-sized plastic Superman, and a huge, hand-painted sign he commissioned from a real comicbook artist. Soon, a towering image of the giant green-skinned superhero, The Incredible Hulk, towered over the west end of Faireville Street. Since the store was not technically within the jurisdiction of the Faireville Downtown Business District Historical Committee, nobody could do anything about the sign except cringe or laugh.

Of course, in a town with our population, it's difficult to sell enough rare comic books to make a living. Being also rather passionate about trail mix, banana chips, and chocolate-covered raisins, Ted Bundy decided to cut his losses and open a store with more potential for profit: a bulk food outlet. He would have to change the sign, though, so he placed a tall wooden ladder up against the building, and, with a can of paint in hand, he climbed up to the top rung, which snapped under his considerable weight. Several months later, after all of his broken bones had healed, he climbed up there again (this time on some rented steel scaffolding), changed the “H” on the sign to a “B,” and The Incredible Bulk Food Emporium was born.

Of course, every time someone climbs a ladder in Faireville, a joke is made at Mr. Bundy's expense. Whenever a Newbie comes to town to open a new business, the Old Wellers shake their heads and mutter, “Another Incredible Hulk.” People openly address Mr. Bundy as The Incredible Bulk, and if he reminds anyone that his name is Ted Bundy, the response is usually something like, “Whoa! Don't
murder
me, Ted Bundy!” The less charitable kids at school not only tease his son Cecil about his n'er-do-well father, but they also call him Baby Bulk and make nasty comments about his ill-fitting second-hand clothes. It's no wonder Cecil stutters and lisps when he talks.

Goodbye, Incredible Bulk. I'll miss that trail mix. Goodbye, Cecil. You should get the hell out of Faireville, too.