The New and Improved Romie Futch (2 page)

I didn't feel the pain until they'd danced off into the night. I imagined them hopping into a convertible Jaguar or some other pimpin' geezer ride. Lee was right behind me, saying, “Let me buy you a drink, buddy.” The office ladies had skedaddled. Some other party had settled into the VIP room. So Lee and I sat at the bar doing tequila shots—I can't remember how many—until the whole joint glowed darkly like a video-game dungeon. The black lights were doing freaky things with Lee's freckles. He grinned like a ghoulish Opie Taylor and offered me another shot. Like a fool, I took it, longing for fresh air, longing for those lazy summer nights Helen and I'd once spent on our front porch, chilling in fold-out lounge chairs, watching clouds skim over the moon. One night she told me that shadows were darker on the moon than on Earth, yet another fascinating factoid she'd pulled from the Internet, and we got lost in endless speculation, sipping Millers, our hands moving into the one-foot space between our chairs to touch idly, to punctuate the wonder we felt—for the moon and the universe and the endless casual mystery of our love.

“You got to give it a rest, Romie,” said Lee.

“What?”

“Helen.” He whispered her name.

“I thought you meant the shots.” I choked out a laugh.

“That too.”

I was about to call it a night when in walked a girl with a panda face and a heart of gold—a sweet, maternal, somewhat flaky, slightly pudgy girl who'd once saved my ass.

Crystal Flemming was a mess. Her fake snakeskin purse rattled with pill bottles. Her bleach job had not been maintained,
and dark roots sprouted from her scalp. She smoked Marlboro Reds, guzzled gin like it was Dasani, dipped generously into God-knows-what kind of pharmaceutical helpers, but somehow looked half-decent. Haggard, yes, with crow's-feet and lines around her mouth. But her lips were still luscious, her eyes still big and dreamy and shiny as crystals. She could still rock a pair of jeans from the juniors department, despite her muffin top and bubble butt, an inch or two south of where it used to be.

I know I sound like a sexist ass. But actually, Crystal's imperfections were what comforted me, making me less self-conscious about my potbelly and thinning hair, which I refused to cut and which I gathered into a pathetic snake of a ponytail and fastened with a cheap rubber band.

“Roman Morrison Futch,” she said, using the full name that only relatives and ex-girlfriends were in on, wagging her finger like a grandma while licking pink gloss from her lips. “What you been up to?”

“Same old, same old.”

I ordered a bourbon on the rocks. Lee flashed me a thumbs-up and stumbled out into the night. Within thirty minutes, Crystal Flemming and I were right back where we used to be: me thinking about Helen as Crystal shit-talked her ex, Chad Hutto, a former fullback nicknamed Chewbacca who had recently struck gold in the life insurance racket.

“Of course he was running around on me,” Crystal said. “You remember Chris Gooding's little sister Carla? Dumb as mud but thinks she's hot to trot? I used to babysit her. Changed her diaper. One night after I put her to bed, Chewy and me were making out on the couch and suddenly she was just standing there, hugging her Care Bear and watching. I think she's had a thing for him ever since.”

“Warped,” I said.

“And if that ain't bad enough, State Farm's got a billboard with his face on it, right behind Kmart, which is on my way to the unemployment office. Thank you, Universe. Just in case I forget that bastard for one second, there he is, larger than life and grinning at me.”

I'd recently spotted the billboard in question on my way back from Yoda's Toyota Salvage Yard, noting the
Star Wars
–themed coincidence at the time. I was hungover as usual, and the sight of Chewbacca Hutto's puffy orange face rising like the sun over Kmart was too much to take. A fringe of chest hair peeked from his collar, hinting at the sweaty Wookiee hidden under the starched dress shirt. His green eyes still had that wolf-man glow.

“Are you friends with him on E-Live?” I asked.

“Hell no,” said Crystal. “You friends with Helen?”

“I'm a dumb-ass,” I said, and Crystal Flemming did not disagree.

•  •

I woke in a panic attack, naked and tangled in sweaty sheets. A foot above my head, crystal unicorns frolicked on a particleboard shelf. Crystal suncatchers shimmered in every window. Assorted new age crystals were set out in mystical arrangements on the dresser, right under a framed
Excalibur
poster. And Crystal herself, looking like Stevie Nicks in a whispery robe with batwing sleeves, fluttered into the room, an amethyst amulet dangling between her boobs. Her eyes were huge and glossy and bloodshot. She kissed my forehead and placed a Xanax on my tongue. I eased back down into a pile of satin pillows and waited for the pill to calm me.

“I had a weird feeling when I drove up to the Power Bar last night,” she said. “I was wondering what the old universe had in store. I walk in, and who do I see? Roman Morrison Futch.”

“Last night was off the chain,” I said, accepting the goblet of spiked orange juice that had magically appeared in her hand, straining to remember what, exactly, had happened.

I vaguely recalled Crystal veering into the parking lot of Druid Forest, an apartment complex on Highway 21. Vaguely recalled stumbling through a dark studio apartment that smelled of Nag Champa, crashing onto the bed, falling off several times due to an insane number of tiny, slippery pillows. And then I was washed in purple light, hunched over a three-foot Day-Glo bong, Pink Floyd on the stereo. Crystal was naked, wreathed in cigarette smoke. I had a raging erection. And then I didn't. I think there was some rolling around at some point in between these two states.

“And I had a dream about you last week, Romie,” she said. “Dreamed we were doing acid like we did twenty years ago, except we were in a hot-air balloon, floating over the mall. Your hair looked just like Robert Plant's, except not as blond.”

“Robert Plant now or Robert Plant way back?”

“Way back.” Crystal smiled, that small, slightly sad bending of the lips that made her look like a panda, especially when she'd gobbed on too much eye shadow. “And Helen had moved to Mexico. What do you think the universe is trying to say with that one?”

Crystal shot me a smirk. Then she grabbed a glass pipe from her wicker nightstand, stuffed a fat bud into it, took a long hit, and handed it to me.

“It's too early for the bong.” She winked.

“What time is it?”

“Twelve thirty.”

I took the pipe.

The Xanax was working its magic. My mad-dog heart began to chill. Shame over the general failure of my life and feelings of nameless dread melted away as Fleetwood Mac flowed from dusty
stereo speakers and Crystal poured me another mimosa. Sunlight gushed through the sliding glass doors that led out to her tiny balcony, which boasted a dying geranium and overlooked the back of Patriot Self-Storage.

Three drinks and two bong hits later, I found myself entwined with her on the bed, breathing in the familiar swimming-pool smell of her hair and the Poison perfume she'd worn back in 1994, when Helen left me for an art student named Adrian and sweet Crystal had saved my life.

•  •

Crystal's son, Sam, was off at a Surf City time-share with his daddy, so I camped at Crystal's place, not setting foot out of her magical cave for a solid week. We smoked weed, drank booze, popped Adderall at midnight, and took Morpheus to sleep. We buffered our hangovers with Crystal's precious Xanax, which she fed me as a mother would Skittles to a diabetic child. And then we'd repeat the whole deal the next day, starting around one.

Bands sometimes practiced down at Patriot Self-Storage. Our favorite was a cover band whose half-decent “Stairway to Heaven,” along with a half tab of Soma, soothed our stoned brains. We'd kiss, grope, stumble to her bed, with its avalanche of accent pillows. We'd fuck so lazily that sometimes I'd pass out on top of her, then I'd wake up, go to town like a jackrabbit on crank, feel myself go numb, and lose myself in a dream of Helen, at which point I'd surge back to life. I'd charge forward with tears dripping down my cheeks.

Each day at four, just as her second beer began to melt her angst about her employment situation, Crystal spoke to Sam on the phone. She'd be quiet for a spell after she hung up. Then we'd pack
the bong, switch from beer to liquor, and stream something trippy on Netflix—
A Clockwork Orange
,
The Wall
.

“It's different,” Crystal would say. “What do you think the universe is trying to tell us?”

“I can't exactly describe it.”

“Me neither, but I know it's something important.”

She'd look at me with those eyes. I'd note a little flower of feeling that was sweet enough, but then I'd remember Helen. Sometimes the memory would be dramatic: Helen renting a hotel room for our tenth anniversary and filling it with wisteria. But mostly I'd recall everyday moments: Helen squatting over a flower bed, yelling at me to come check out this weird beetle she'd found, smiling slyly, treasuring the brilliant blue creature like a jewel in the bowl of her palms. Just like in the old days, my feelings for Crystal would shrivel. By the time her son was due back from Surf City, I was ready to go home. I was not prepared to face life—lapsed mortgage, Visa bills, failing taxidermy business—but I did need a break from the constant partying, the hangovers that grew more bottomless each day, each trap door leading to another trap door, and so on, over and over, until my brain was free-falling at the speed of light.

So I went home, stripped the dingy sheets off my bed, and passed out on the naked mattress. With the help of two Morpheuses, I slept for twenty hours straight, the last stretch spotted with nightmares involving my mother during her final days, shrunk down to seventy-five pounds, her body wreathed in the plastic tubing that kept it going. I woke up with cotton mouth and tremors, only six pills left in my stockpile, a departing care package from sweet Crystal.

•  •

I allowed myself a half Xanax to survive that first morning, fortifying myself for a slew of voice-mail messages from the irate customers I'd ignored during my stay at Druid Forest. Timmy Dennis wanted to know where the fuck his mallards were (slumped in the fridge, skin rancidity threatening their plumage quality). Duval Elliott had finally taken his kill, a prize buck with a Boone and Crockett antler spread of 143.6, “elsewheres.” Ben Horton didn't want to pester me much but thought he should check on the status of his coon. Though I'd finally got that sucker in just the right pose, playfully pawing the air where a varnished bream would soon be gasping for its life, I hadn't stuffed the fish—didn't remember what I'd done with the carcass, in fact—plus the raccoon itself had no eyes.

I made some calls, cleaned Timmy's birds, and picked out a set of rotating glass eyeballs for Ben Horton's coon. By the time I finished up, it was 6:00
PM
. My stomach was growling. So I microwaved a burrito, sat down in front of my laptop, and settled back into the slump of my bachelor ways. I checked my e-mail (more static from irate customers), checked E-Live (twenty-seven notifications and all of them bullshit), and, idling over Helen's profile out of mindless compulsion, nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the words IN A RELATIONSHIP.

This sent me straight to the liquor store, where I bought a pint of Jack, a forty-ounce bottle of vodka, and two cases of Schlitz with ginseng and ginkgo biloba.

By midnight I was wasted, had gobbled half my precious Xanax reserve, had wrung myself dry over YouPorn. At 1:00
AM
I was still staring at the screen—eyeballs dry, dick sore, face radiation-burned. I'd hunkered down to watch “She Blinded Me with Science” on YouTube, a nostalgic jolt from my middle-school era, when I noticed an ad in the upper-right-hand corner of my screen, that spot where Google dangled bait generated by my own e-mail
content and pathetic surfing habits, taunting me with taxidermy-supply sales, penis-enlargement pills, and memberships to cut-rate gyms. But this was something different.

HAVE YOU EVER DREAMED OF BEING A GENIUS?

I could almost hear Crystal's husky voice whispering into my ear:
What's the universe trying to tell you, Romie?

I clicked and read with a crazy sense of fate:

Males between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, without course-work or degrees from four-year colleges or universities, are invited to participate in an intelligence enhancement study at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, GA. Testing period starts on June 30 and ends on August 15. Subjects will undergo a series of pedagogical dow
nloads via direct brain–computer interface. Subjects will receive $6,000 compensation—$4,000 upon finishing a series of bioengineered artificial intelligence transmissions and $2,000 upon completing follow-up tests. Travel expenses paid. Room and board provided. Serious inquiries only. Contact Matthew Morrow, MD, PhD, 404.879.4857, [email protected]
.

TWO

Four days later, I was standing in the lobby of the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, a fuckup among fuckups, because, apparently, I was the only one arriving way past the official check-in time. The sun was setting beyond the row of sickly palmettos that fringed the mostly empty parking lot. The floor-to-ceiling windows were all fired up from the setting sun. Light beams bounced on the shiny white floor tiles and ricocheted off the metallic walls, right through my aviators and into my bloodshot eyes. The receptionist, in the process of packing up glossy pocket folders, turned with a huff. She was tall and skinny and middle-aged pretty, like a woman in a detergent commercial, the kind of down-to-business babe who's serious about stain control.

“You almost missed me,” she said, patting her bobbed hair. “You've got five minutes to look over the paperwork, which I presume you've already perused.”