The Orchid Eater (21 page)

“No,” Ryan
said. “I’m going to Dirk’s house anyway.”

“Oh . . .”
Edgar smiled. “So your boyfriend can protect you, huh?”

Ryan lashed
a kick at Edgar’s shins, which meant more than it might have since he was
wearing soccer cleats.

“Oh ho!”
Edgar cried, leaping back.

“I’m not a
faggot, you faggot! You ortho diplo!” Ryan lurched at him, knocking down a pot
as he did. The orchid hit the deck and the pot cracked, spilling bark chips and
gravel.

“Shit!” Mike
cried. “Stop it! Mom’s orchids!”

Ryan and
Edgar stopped abruptly. The three of them knelt, sweeping up the potting soil
and dumping it into the pot. Despite the sound of its fall, the pot was only
chipped. They tried to rebalance the plant—a flowerless clump of broad
leaves—and set it back on its post.

“Let’s get
out of here,” Mike said, brushing the last of the soil across the deck so it
fell through the boards onto Ryan’s deck below. “You’re lucky you didn’t hurt
the orchid, Ryan.”

“You’re
lucky I didn’t hurt you!” Ryan shouted at Edgar, who was at least a foot
taller, but not quite as muscular. “You quay diplo-docus!”

“Come on,
Mike, I don’t have time for this pipsqueak.”

Ryan stomped
out of the room and down the stairs.

“So what do
you want to do tonight?” Mike asked.

Edgar looked
at him for a guarded moment, as if considering something interesting. Then the
look went away, and he shook his head slightly.

“What?” Mike
said.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? My
mom left me money for dinner. You want to go down to Taco Bell?”

“
Taco Bell?
Awlriiiiight!
”

17

“Don’t look
now,” Edgar whispered, “but I think we’re being followed.”

Mike went
cold. “Followed?”

“Look in
this window, you can check out the reflection.”

They were
passing a real estate office whose display showed nothing of any possible interest
to two teenage boys. Mike feigned enthusiasm for floor plans. Meanwhile, in the
dark glass, he could see a large van cruising slowly down the street behind
them. It was inky black, streetlights sliding slick upon it.

“Sal,” Edgar
whispered.

Mike choked,
wishing he could crouch down and vanish, drip away into the gutters and through
the storm drains, into invisibility. Sal, whose wall he had smeared with
avocado, whose brother had the key, stalking him . . .

The van
pulled to a stop, rumbling right behind them. Mike grabbed Edgar’s arm.

“If we run
downhill, it’ll have to make a U-turn,” he said. “Then we can cut between
houses, hide in bushes.”

“I’ll count
to three,” Edgar said, in instant agreement.

At that
moment, he heard the side door opening. In the window he saw figures stepping
down, coming toward them. White faces swam in the black glass.

“Forget
about counting,” Mike whispered. “Just run!”

As they
turned to make their escape, feet rushed toward them, slapping on the pavement.
Mike darted sideways as a hand snagged on his sleeve.

He screamed
and hurled himself down the street, desperately trying to remember every
shortcut, every driveway, any little niche where he could crawl and hide.
Behind him, insane laughter. He glanced back because he couldn’t hear Edgar at
his heels. Had they caught him?

Up the
block, a cluster of people stood on the sidewalk by the realtor’s office. Edgar
was among them, waving. “Mike, wait up! I was joking!”

“Chicken-shit!”
came another voice, also familiar, followed by the high-pitched, hysterical
laughter of Mad-Dog.

“Jeez.” He
thudded to a stop and swung around, panting. Mildly humiliated, he headed
slowly up the hill. He was glad they couldn’t see him blushing in the dark. The
van looked just like Sal’s.

“Come on,”
Edgar said, urging him in, “let’s go for a ride.”

“I don’t
know,” Mike said, trying to see into the van. It was tomb-dark inside. “I
haven’t been to church since I was seven.”

“No, Hawk’s
not here. It’s Dusty’s van.”

“Oh . . .”

Mike climbed
in after Edgar, and pulled the door shut. Inside, it was crowded and dark.
Bodies cut off most of the light coming through the windshield. The air was
full of pungent smoke that made him cough; it smelled like burning
lawn-trimmings. There weren’t any seats. He tripped over something soft but
bony, stumbling against a carpeted wall. “Get off my leg,” said a girl’s voice.

Mike
recoiled, wishing he could see. A girl! There were no windows, though, on the
sides or at the rear. When his eyes adjusted a little bit, he saw the back of
Dusty’s head. He was driving. Edgar climbed up between the two front seats and
started rummaging through a box of eight-track tapes. There was a thin pale
woman with bleached white hair sitting in the passenger seat. In profile, her
eyes looked like crystal balls with streetlight beams bending through them. A
small, twisted cigarette fumed in her fingers. He suddenly realized what he
must be smelling.

“All right,
Dusty!” Edgar said, and shoved a tape into the player. Music boomed through the
van, heavy bass and drums, a shrieking flute. Edgar grinned at Mike. “He loves
to drive when he’s dusted.”

“This ain’t
strictly a joy-ride,” Dusty said. “Tonight we’re
gonna
find Stoner. Just like the
dude to go out for a shit and never come back.”

The van hit
a bump, hurling Mike backward. He landed among bodies; Mad-Dog shoved him away,
snarling. He lay where he had fallen, anonymous in the darkness, melting into
it. He felt almost ecstatic to be so hidden.

“Come on,
baby,” said a voice in the corner nearest him. It had to be Kurtis Tyre. “Come
on.” He heard a girl’s muffled laugh, choked noises. Kurtis said, “Mm-hm.
Yeah.” They were kissing, he thought, though it seemed too loud for that.
Slurping sounds. “Yeah, man,” Kurtis said. “Yeah.” There was nothing in
his
mouth.

“Here, have
a drink.” Edgar was suddenly next to Mike, silhouetted against the windshield,
his extended arm a faint blur. The bottle was shiny and half full.

He took the
bottle without thinking, as if the earlier ESP exercises had finally taken
hold. As he uncapped the bottle, the vapors stung his nose; his tongue seemed
to swell and plug his throat. He’d stolen swigs of liquor from Jack’s bottles
and it had never hurt him before.

“Don’t let
him drink that,” Mad-Dog said in his raspy little voice, putting his hand on
the bottle. “He’s a wimp. He’ll puke on everything.”

“You only
want it all for yourself,” Edgar said defensively. “Mike’s tough. He won’t
barf.”

Mike managed
to wrestle the bottle away from Mad-Dog, and after winning the half-hearted
struggle there was no question of refusing the drink. While the first swallow
was eating its way through his guts like Liquid-Plumr, he chased it with another.
The liquor left lumps on his tongue, like balls of lint or wet paper. He washed
away the residue with a third swallow.

“Give it,”
Mad-Dog said, jerking on the neck of the bottle.

“Wait!”

“Yeah, Mike,
not too much,” said Edgar. “That’s powerful stuff.”

“It’s not
the whiskey that’ll get you,” said a voice Mike recognized as Howard’s. “It’s
the acid.”

“Acid?” Mike
let go of the bottle. “What do you mean, acid?”

“As in
lysergic,” said Edgar.

“Isn’t that
. . . LSD?”

“It’s spiked
all right!” Howard whooped. At that instant, someone started making strangling
noises in the corner; Kurtis was going, “Oh, yeaaaaah.”

“If he
spews, Edgar, you’re cleaning it up,” Mad-Dog said.

“Spewin’
sputum!” someone sang.

“How—how
much did I take?”

“No way to
tell,” said Edgar. “Kurtis makes it pretty strong.”

“Soaked a
quarter sheet of blotter in there till it fell apart,” Kurtis said. “Hey, don’t
kiss me with jizz in your mouth, baby. Think I’m a faggot, I wanna taste that?
Fuckin’
rinse
first.”

Mike
swallowed and swallowed again, flexing his tongue, feeling the paper shreds
coagulating in the deep folds of his mouth, behind the molars. Acid. LSD. What
was it anyway? Was it the stuff that replaced bone tissue so you had to have
constant doses to stay alive, or was that heroin? His knowledge of drugs came
mainly from a film he’d seen during a school field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in L.A. All he remembered of the movie was needles going into
wormlike festering veins, followed by pictures of scary sugar cubes and
whirling spirals with grinning skulls zooming past in a storm of black and
white pills and capsules, against a background of insane laughter something
like what Mad-Dog was doing now. He also remembered a skinny kid puking in a
wastebasket, a miserable image which had obliterated any desire to experience
the exciting, Halloween-like thrills of spirals and skulls. LSD was the
hallucination drug, responsible for acid trips, psychedelic art, and hippies.

Psychedelic
art, he thought. Wow . . . like the Yellow Submarine!

I might have
a hallucination! I might see things that don’t exist, with my eyes wide open.
Is it like dreaming when you’re awake?

I’m going to
find out.

He could
feel his heart pounding harder than ever, keeping time with the thoughts
ripping through him. He listened carefully, straining his eyes in the dimness.
There was very little to see so far. He supposed that almost anything might
appear in the darkness, and it wouldn’t be as impressive as hallucinations in
broad daylight. He hoped it would be something better than skulls and needles.
He liked skulls well enough, and drew them all the time, but needles were
another matter. Maybe he would see something he could draw or paint. He’d never
done much in color, or with paint, but this could be the thing that sparked
him. He could be the next Peter Max! A whole line of Day-Glo posters and
notebooks and decals and lunchboxes unreeled before his eyes. Maybe he should
ask Dusty to drive by his house so he could pick up a tablet and a pen. But it
was too dark in here, and jostling. He couldn’t possibly draw. What was he
thinking?

He wished
again that Scott were here. This was the sort of thing they should have done
together, in case it got too weird. He wasn’t sure exactly how much he trusted
Edgar.

On the other
hand, if Scott had been here, they might have talked each other out of
drinking; together, they might have dared less. Then he probably never would
have tried LSD. Scott’s ridicule of drugs was ceaseless. So maybe it was just
as well he was on his own. It gave him a sense of freedom that swept aside his
fears and anxieties. He couldn’t wait, now, to see what the night would bring.

Outside the
van, he distinctly heard hooves galloping over cobblestones. It took him a few
seconds to figure out that he had put his palms over his ears to blot out the
voices around him. He lifted his hands and heard a gruff, urgent little voice:
“How’s it feel, man? You losing it yet?”

“Shut up,
Mad-Dog,” Edgar said. “What’re you trying to do, push him over the edge? Ignore
him, Mike, it doesn’t come on that fast.”

“I think I
feel something. I’m not sure.”

“Yeah? Maybe
you’re hypersensitive. That’s good for the ESP, you know. That was fucking
amazing tonight, you drawing that tire. Hey, guys, Mike and I had some
telepathy going!”

“You told
him about the risk of permanent damage, right?” Kurtis said.

“Lay off,”
Edgar said.

“I mean, me,
I don’t care. I don’t want kids, but if you were planning on it, well . . . I
hope you like flippers.”

Mike
realized, with a huge and superior amusement, that Kurtis was teasing him. He
felt a stately warmth toward him—towards all of them. It seemed he could see
them clearly in the dark, through a process of echolocation such as bats relied
upon.

“Don’t tell
him shit like that,” said Edgar, his guide and protector in this exotic new
world.

“Fair
warning, James, that’s all. I mean, some people don’t mind a little brain
damage for the chance of seeing God.”

GOD

. . . god . . .

The word
echoed in the van. He could hear the creak of every spring, the rattle of every
bolt in the metal shell that carried them; and all the parts picked up the word
god
and repeated it over and over again endlessly, each in its own
peculiar, particular voice.

Suddenly
Mad-Dog shouted, even louder than the inanimate choir, “Stop the van! Stop it!”

“He’s gonna
blow, Dusty!”

They lurched
forward as the brakes screamed. The door flew open. Mike watched with remote
amusement as Mad-Dog threw himself toward a storefront with a thorny hedge
whose waxy pointed leaves glowed and crawled under the streetlights. Mad-Dog
pushed his face into the thorns and proceeded to vomit with exquisite grace, as
if he were a dancer, one arm thrust out behind him, the fingers curling like
the fresh baby creepers of a newborn plant. Mad-Dog growled and barked and
shook his head, flinging ropes of saliva. Everyone laughed. It all took
forever. Mike gulped huge drafts of fresh air. In the new light, he saw into
the corner where Kurtis sat with his arms around a dark-haired girl; he didn’t
know her name but her face was familiar from the Alt-School. Mad-Dog heaved
again and curled up on the pavement like a pillbug.

Dusty said,
“Someone go check he’s not choking on his tongue or something.”

“Yeah,
Mad-Dog! Do a Jimi!”

Edgar
stepped out onto the street. Mike felt suddenly afraid for him. Here it was
solid, cagelike, secure; but beyond the safe black confines of the van,
anything might happen. As Edgar approached Mad-Dog, Mike’s vague nagging
feeling of dread grew stronger, more definite. He felt certain that he would
soon see it clearly.