The Parallel Apartments (26 page)

“I just don't get it!” Troy shouted, over Dolly Parton's “Jolene.” “Am I grosser than Dick? You had sex with him on your first date.”

“It wasn't a date.”

Troy threw up his hands, banging a knuckle on the dome light.

“Ow. Not a date? You just plain had sex with him?”

“Why are you always thinking about sex when I'm extremely upset? I'm upset, you know. My granddaddy and my… Dot are doing something stupid and dangerous and I can't help them, because I need your help, but you're just a big waving boner.”

Troy turned off the radio.

“I like that song!”

“
I'm
always
thinking about sex, so it stands to reason that I'd be thinking about it when you get upset.”

“You're so immature.”

“I'm a virgin. What do you expect? Look, I'll be good. I've been reading up.”

“On what?”

“Sexual themes.”

“Where? Like in
Penthouse
?”

“No, a book. I got it at Crammed Shelf.
The Master Lover's Operator's Manual,
by Mellow. The only thing I ever borrowed without paying for, except that stale vanilla Charleston Chew I stole from a Toot'n Totum in Amarillo when I was three.”

“Oh, Troy.”

“I'm going to put it back. I read it twice, and I now know everything there is to know about pleasing a woman.”

“I mean…”

“Justine, we're so close. Why not?”

“We're not that close, Troy.”

“We can fart in front of each other. That's closeness. That's intimacy. I bet you couldn't fart in front of Dick.”

Troy farted modestly.

“Roll down your window, now, asshole.”

Troy shut his stamp album and rolled down the window.

“You should be sweeter to me, Justine.”

On the Lamar bridge Justine tailgated a moped piloted by a large man in a business suit.

“Don't tailgate, please, it's illegal and dangerous. The legal distance you should keep away from the car ahead of you is d ≥ vc/10, where v equals velocity and c equals one car length.”

Justine crept up closer to the moped.

“Hey,” said Troy, “how about if we just drop the sex thing altogether and be friends?”

Justine knew Troy well enough now to recognize the primitive form of reverse psychology that he occasionally used in an attempt to manipulate her. He'd grown up without siblings or a mother and so had had virtually no remedial instruction in the art of control, let alone an opportunity to field-test the basics. Justine, on the other hand, was essentially postdoctoral. Usually she found his gambits innocent and endearing, soft, round bunnies of manipulation. But not today.

“
Good
,” said Justine, swerving into the parking lot of the Thundercloud Subs kiosk on South Lamar and slamming on the brakes just in time to avoid hitting some clown staring at the sky with a pair of binoculars.

“Okay, good, me too,” said Troy. “No more talk of that. So, can you get me at, like, nine?”

“Keep your stupid shitbox car.”

Justine climbed out of the Aspen and slammed the door. A side-view mirror disengaged and fell to the tarmac with a rusty crunch. She turned her back on Troy, then began to walk north toward home.

* * *

Troy called late that night.

“What?” said Justine, who had been lying on her bed snipping visually compelling bits out of
Grunion Beat
and
Expectant Bride
and
Cigar Twee
and pasting them to a large sheet of watercolor paper for a work in five-point perspective whose theme was lustmord. Downstairs, Dot was asleep on the divan. Lou was out, somewhere.

“Hi. I'm calling to apologize?”

“What for?”

From a TV-dinner ad in
Mess,
Justine clipped a picture of a Salisbury steak whose mashed-potato area suggested the open mouth of a person screaming in ecstatic sexual pain.

“For nagging you about tailgating and sex.”

Justine pasted the TV dinner next to a truffle pig.

“And for not paying attention to you about your bad day. But I had a bad day, too, you know, with the #112 and Rogers…”

“It's okay, I gotta go, homework,
Heart of Darkness.
”

“Just rent
Apocalypse Now.
”

“Don't they chop off a water buffalo's head?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I don't want to see that.”

“You watched
Faces of Death.
”

“And I still have nightmares. That
monkey.
”

“That was awesome. So. I'm sorry about not being there for you today. What happened?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Come on. I'm listening. No stamp talk. I put the collection away in the refrigerator for the night.”

“What? Refrigerator?”

“That's where I store it. Low humidity; the stamps' gum won't activate.”

“Oh.”

“Some of my older specimens smell a little like luncheon meat, though, especially the imperforate National Parks series.”

“Isn't this stamp talk?”

“Oh. So what happened?”

Justine took a breath.

“Well, this guy, Sherpa, is a paranoiac and con man, and he's lying to Lou and Dot about how he's gonna cure her.”

“How do you know he can't?”

Justine sighed. “He can't, that's all.”

“Maybe he's a prodigy of medicine, like Vesalius or Jonas Salk.”

“He's not, okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

“He should be dead. If I wasn't afraid of jail and getting interrogated by a corrupt detective and being put on the witness stand and rudely cross-examined, I'd shoot him.”

Justine didn't really wish him dead, but her hatred felt pretty lethal. She wished she knew Rogers a little better.

“And,” continued Justine, “he's scary, but weirdly attractive, like a really evil cult leader. He forced me to take two muscle relaxants or something, and did some kind of strange vivisection on a little raccoon that involved transfusing its blood back into its own body after running it through these weird ‘fields.'”

“Jeez.”

Justine snipped a picture of a high-tech quiver from an article on bow-hunting accessories in
Buckfeller
and inserted it into an X-ACTO-knife slit she'd made between the buttocks of a very suggestive peach she'd clipped from a schnapps ad.

“I knew a guy at ASH like him,” she said. “He was, like, forty but looked seventy-five. He thought that the Smithsonian Institution was shooting fossil beams at him in order to age him faster. So he made parabolic mirrors out of Big Red gum-wrapper foil that he pointed in the general direction of Washington, DC, to gather the beams and refocus them into a single spot where they would slowly ‘transgeal' into a mass that, when large enough, could be safely disposed of. And, once a week, using a forceps made of two Popsicle sticks, he would give the ‘transjelly'—actually a small, hard ball of Play Doh—to Dawna, the head nurse.”

“I can't think of anything to say.”

“Johnny Ipolyte. He was harmless, and he really believed in what he was doing. But this guy, Sherpa, he's a mean asshole, just as nuts as Johnny, but cruel, too.”

“So what do your granddad and Dot see in him?” said Troy.

“He manipulates. He's a psycho megalomaniac like Jim Jones. He makes them think he's their last chance. Dot says she's heard he's cured all kinds of people, that people've traveled from everywhere just to see him.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I don't know.”

“Let's go out to his place and cream him.”

“You sound suspiciously eager. Why?”

“I want to help.”

Justine said nothing.

Downstairs, Dot moaned quietly. Dartmouth whined. It was nearly one in the morning.

“We can go right after school if you want. Justine?”

Cutting the little slit in the peach had made Justine horny, a condition that always inspired thoughts of Gracie Yin, with whom Justine happened to have an appointment tomorrow to talk about her college plans.

“I gotta go.”

“Look, Justine, I'm really not doing this to make you give it up. I just want to help, and be friends again. I miss you.”

“Gimme a break.”

“
You
give
me
a break. I'm not such a perv as all that, jeez.”

Justine sat up.

“All right. You'll come with me?”

“Sure. We'll get together after school and lay our best plans. I'll do anything you want. I hafta watch Garry Shandling at nine, though.”

“Maybe you can meet Dot and Lou. Maybe you and I together can convince them that this guy's bananas.”

“Okay.”

Justine was excited. Tomorrow: Troy, the way she liked him. An adventure. Maybe a rescue.

And Gracie Yin.

IX

1978–1982

Murphy Lee Crockett was six and a half when he realized he had no purpose.

He and his best friend, Quince Waelder, had been riding the ill-greased Tarlton Park merry-go-round, trying without success to get it to spin faster by using old tennis rackets as oars, when Quince's brother, Travis, who was thirteen, emerged from the mesquite at the park's perimeter on his mini-bike, shirtless, shoeless, strong, squinty, mean, his face punctured with a mouth that could make a slur of any word. He skidded to a stop, sending a wave of gravelly dirt over Murphy and Quince.

“What're you two gays doing?” he said, revving his bike, which made an oval of sheet metal, emblazoned with the number
69
and fastened to the chassis, chatter like a high hat.

Murphy ignored him. Quince chirped, “Shut up” and took a swipe at his brother with his warped, slack-strung Wilson racket. It was a symbolic swipe; Travis was several yards away.

Travis shut off his bike.

All became quiet, except for the medieval Catherine-wheel creak of the decelerating merry-go-round.

Murphy and Quince scooted backward toward the center, where centripetal force was weaker and the median distance from Travis was greater.

“Chickens,” said Travis. “Gay chickens.
Bok bok bok bgok. Bok bok. Bgawwk.
”

“Shut your trap,” said Quince.

Murphy knew that if he jumped off first and ran for home, Travis would dog him on his bike, tackle him, and steal his shorts as a trophy. And that would give Quince a chance to run to his own house, where his mother would shelter him from his brother, at least until seven, when it was time for her to go play bezique at cousin Coretta's in Bastrop. Then Quince would be alone with Travis once again.

Similarly, if Quince took off first, Murphy could make it home unmolested.

“Quince, run,” Murphy whispered into the back of Quince's neck.

“No way José,” said Quince. “You run.”

“No way José.”

And so nobody moved.

“Hey, you guys,” said Travis, “I know a way to make that go really fast.”

There was a tone to Travis's voice, high and melodic, that Murphy did not recognize. It was
conspiratorial.

Travis looked around, as though making sure they weren't being watched by thieves who might steal all the coming fun, then got off his bike and let it down gently to the ground. He grabbed a bar on the merry-go-round and let it drag him till they both stopped.

“Get off.”

Murphy held his breath.

“C'mon, I'm not gonna get you, Jesus.”

Murphy thought Travis sounded sincere. Murphy elbowed Quince, and they both carefully climbed off, being sure to stay opposite Travis.

Travis picked up his bike and walked it over to the merry-go-round. He positioned the rear tire tangential to the curve.

“Gimme a hand.”

It did seem that Travis was contriving something that had nothing to do with capturing Murphy's shorts, so after a moment's consideration, Murphy
elbowed Quince again. With bottom-of-the-food-chain caution, they made their way around the edge of the merry-go-round.

“Okay, Murph, grab the seat from underneath. Quince, grab the other side of the seat. Don't burn your knees on the exhaust pipe.”

As far as Murphy could remember, Travis had never called him by his name. Maybe they were going to be friends. Have a club. Race bikes. Smoke marijuana joints and beat up Quince together. Steal shorts from big kids. From
girls
!