Tomato Red (3 page)

I suppose I had a sad need to fit in socially with those trailer-park bums, since I imagined they were the only crowd
that would have me, because when that first chunk of wood merely bounced from the glass door and skidded across the patio I became bulldog-determined to get the job done for my new friends, and damn the effort or obvious risk.

The logs hit with a bang. Two, three, four times I chucked firewood at that glass and never heard anything close to the sound of a shatter. I sidled up in the mist and skimmed my fingers over the door and felt, I think, the start of some tiny hairline fractures, but there were no big, hopeful splits.

The glass of that door surely had some special qualities that must’ve been expensive to come by, but worth it, I’d have to say, judging from the wimpy way those logs merely bounced and failed to bust me in there. But I kept pitchin’, and bangs kept bangin’ out across that neighborhood of mist, until my pitches became tired and wild and I whipped a firewood chunk three or four yards off-line and into a small square window to the flank of the door, and that glass thankfully was of a typical lower order and flew all to pieces.

The glass shatter seemed like a sincere burst of applause, a sincere burst of applause that would come across as alarming and requiring a look-see to any ears open out there in the mist. I went motionless, tried to be a shadow. Pretty quick I heard a derisive shout from shoe-peg mouth, something that might’ve hurt my feelings to hear clear, then tires squealed and carried my social circle away, leaving me to do the mansion solo.

I stayed a still shadow for a bit, but my mind, such as it was at the moment, was made up and determined: I needed friends, and friendship is this slow awkward process you’ve got to angle through, and I could yet maybe find what we looked for, return to the trailer park on foot as both a hero and the sudden life of the party.

When no alarm was raised, I came out of my shadow imitation and went to the broken window. The mist felt like a tongue I kept walking into, and my skin and clothes seemed slobbered on. The world aped a harmless watchdog, puttin’ big licks all over my face.

The window was set too high to spring through, and the glass was not perfectly broken out. There were jaggedy places with long points. I got up on tiptoes and reached my arm through, extra careful, but couldn’t reach a latch or doorknob or anything worthwhile.

The batch of flung logs had scattered about and lay underfoot, and the third or fourth time I stumbled on one this thought jumped me. The thought called for a ladder of firewood chunks, and I went to work building this theory that had jumped me from below. That mist made any effort seem sweaty and sweat made me feel employed and that made me start expectin’ a foreman to come along and, because of the part in my hair or the attitude of my slouch, fire my ass on a whim, as per usual. But the ladder got built and came to reach the height it needed to.

I think I thought this ladder invention meant I was thinkin’ straight.

Atop the ladder I wrapped my T-shirt around my fist and punched the jagged parts loose until there was a clean frame that could be wriggled through without gettin’ carved along the flanks.

I slithered inside, uncut, and tumbled among the riches.

My distance perception had gone tilt in my head and that floor reared up and swatted me awful quick. The floor felt like a clean street, a street of that marble stuff, I reckon, maybe Mexican tile, only it was in the kitchen area and mighty stern to land on, especially with that tilt factor in my head, as I barely raised my arms to brace before skidding
across it. I’d judged I had further to fall, but huh-uh, and the pain jangle spanned from my elbows and knees to my shoulders and toes. I squealed and rolled and chop-blocked a highback chair in the dark there and sent it tumbling.

You might think I should’ve quit on the burglary right then, but I just love people, I guess, and didn’t.

I became a shadow again, splayed on that imported floor, listening to the mansion. It was supposed to be empty, but newspapers get so many things wrong. Best not to trust them overmuch. The mansion had a slight glow going on inside there, and I got it that they had left a couple of lamps burning in a distant room. The lamps were likely set on a timer and meant to warn away such as I so such as this wouldn’t happen.

These burglar lights helped my eyes to focus.

Standing again, finally I slid my shirt on and rubbed my sore spots, then let my feet aim me toward the glowing room. The crank comedown was settin’ in, I think, from the way my feet got heavy and weaved and stomped. This mansion smelled of big achievements and handbags from Rome and unknown treats, which were better scents than I was used to. The walls even seemed special, kind of, as my fingertips skipped along them feeling how fine and costly they felt. My mind, I’d say, stumbled along two or three steps behind my body. More like a waiter than a chef.

When I wobbled inside that lit-up room the wind jumped from my chest. I gasped, groaned, mewed. My legs folded beneath me and I fell face first to a soft carpet that smelled sweeter than my ex-wife’s hair and brought to mind sheep in a flowery meadow high in the Alps or Japan or Vermont or some similar postcard spot from out there in the world where the dear goods I’ll never own are made.

The sight and smell of all this shook me.

I know I trembled and breathed shallow.

The mansion was the way I’d always feared a mansion would be, only more so. In my fear I’d never managed to conjure the spectacular astounding details. A quick inventory of only this one room made me hate myself. Made me hate myself and all my type that came before me. This mansion was sixteen levels higher than any place I’d ever been among.

As I stared about—gawked, probably—I likely blushed pink to go along with those trembles.

I’d say what such things as I saw in that room were, if I knew the proper names of such things, though I’d bet heavy I’ve never heard those names spoken. I’m sure such things
have
personal names—those special moody lampshades made of beadwork, and a chair and footstool put together with, like, weaved leather hung on frames of curled iron or polished rare bones, maybe, and end tables that had designs stabbed into them and stuffed with gold leaf or something precious, a small and swank desk over by the far wall, and a bookshelf so old our Revolution must’ve happened off to the sides of it, carved up with fine points and nicely shined, with a display of tiny statues and dolls arranged just so all across it.

Pretty soon I crawled away from the light, back to the dark parts of the mansion. That sinking feeling set in. Truly, I felt scared, embarrassed for the poorly decorated life I was born to.

This mansion is not but about a rifle shot distant from the trailer park, but it seemed like I’d undergone interplanetary travel. I’d never collided with this world before.

I collected myself in the kitchen. Shuffled my parts back together. My breaths deepened to normal. That splendor had stunned me and then sickened me with a mess of recognitions.

You see the insides of a classier world like that and it sets your own to spinning off-balance, and a tireless gnawing discontent gets to snacking on your guts and spirit. This caliber of a place makes you want to discriminate against yourself, basically, as it reveals you as such a loser. A tiny mote of
nothin’ much
just here to muss up the planet these worthies lived so grandly on and wished they could keep clean of you and yours.

I ain’t shit! I ain’t shit!
shouts your brain, and this place proves the point.

Oh, hell yes, this mansion was a regular theme park of fancy fuckin’ stuff I never had, never will, hadn’t ever truly even seen in person.

Naturally there’s some urge to just start smashing amuck in the mansion, whacking all those glamorous baubles and doodads as if these objects had personally tossed you a key ring and told you to fetch their car. That urge is there, to see things shatter, dent, sag with ruin. That urge is always there, usually in shadow though never far away.

But I don’t need to want that anymore, or at least lately, so instead I decided to eat.

That mist had gotten bunchy and milled up against the kitchen windows like a rubbernecking crowd peeking in on a private moment. A few wisps shoved in through the busted window and gave me the sense of long fingers slowly pointing.

There was a button on the wall beside the stove, and I punched it and got light. The light pushed the crowd back, slapped away those pointing fingers. This kitchen came near to the size of a decent trailer home. There were, close as I could figure, two stoves or three, or just one giant with a dozen burners. Cabinets ran to the ceiling, made of some blond wood from Oriental lands, I’d guess, and the ceiling was yea tall, so there was a cute li’l stepladder on a runner
that slid from cabinet to cabinet so you could see into the upper shelves. A pretty dapper rendition of woodwork, in my opinion. The fridge resembled a bank vault, a big dull metal thing with heavy doors.

The funny thing about these swell folks is they don’t leave much food to scrounge. I did a run-through of the fridge and found that all the familiar items were frozen. It disappointed me that there were no exotic leftovers. In the freezer part I turned up a booze bottle that belonged on the pricey shelf at the Liquor Barn. The label on the bottle resembled an eye-test chart, Russian or one of those names, but after a few chugs I could testify it was vodka, for certain, and a quality version of it too.

I began to thrash through the cabinets hunting for peanut butter because I’d seen mayonnaise in the fridge, and peanut butter and mayonnaise meant I could sleep. I could let the crank go bye-bye and sleep. I can’t sleep without food nearby. I can’t sleep anywhere until I know I’ll get to eat again if I need to. I don’t have to eat, yet I can’t rest without bein’ positive sure there’s food at hand, but these folks apparently didn’t stoop to peanut butter ’cause there wasn’t any. Peanut butter is the prescribed hunger medicine for poor folks, and there’s always a scraping or so left in the bottom of the jar, somewhere way back in the cupboard. I’ve been to bed hungry plenty and my tummy whimpered and whimpered and those whimpers are forever on tape in my head.

The vodka at least gave my gut growls instead of whimpers.

Some cheese turned up in the fridge. It’s a nice round hunk, but it’s not yellow. It’s some nearly white kind that smells too gourmet for me, but the hunk was silky smooth and plump as a newborn’s rump and I had the sensation of sinkin’ my teeth into a pampered baby’s butt for a taste.

The flavor was odd but okay, and I knew then I could rest.

The vodka and me and the baby butt of cheese wandered down a dim hall. When crank dies out, a big sudden tired hits, and I could feel it windin’ up to smite me. You sleep where you land. I got to a room that echoed as I walked and sounded big, until I bumped my shin on a chair, then fell into it, and threw my head back and raised my feet to the stool out front.

My collapse had been into a calfskin wingback chair, and I just folded into it, tucked myself away secretly there like a French tickler in a gentleman’s leather wallet.

The dreams that made the scene inside my skull weren’t dreamy dreams, but rather more like long news clips from kangaroo court sessions convened on me in a gaudy plush holding cell, and the entire jury was made up of loved ones I’d sorely disappointed since they were buried and whiskery perverts who took a shine to me just the way I was.

I slept for over a full day, as you know, but I won’t say I rested.

I FELL DEEP down in there, until this bright light raised me from sleep. Coming out of a pit such as that, you think the bright light could be God or a cop on patrol; then your brain wakes up to where you think you are and there’s a train light bearing down on you; then my eyes got right and it was just a candle held in front of my face by a girl in a black gown with jewelry twinkling here and there and a young fella in a tuxedo that swallowed him, smoking a heavy white pipe with a face design sculpted around the bowl.

“Are you dangerous?” the girl asked. “You look dangerous.”

I went to rub my face, slap myself wide awake, but my arms didn’t work, and I looked down and saw straps of silver tape wedding me to that chair. There wasn’t much wiggle room.

“I went without sleep too long, that’s all.”

This girl stood about five foot flat in spike heels and didn’t weigh much more than an ancient one-armed butler could carry. In that candlelight she came across as tiny, but hard and fluttery too.

“We’re interested in dangerous types.”

“I probably need to shave and whatnot. Hit the showers.”

The fella had my wallet in his hands and was helping himself to my personal papers. That pipe clenched in his teeth went
boing-boing
like a diving board. He didn’t draw much smoke, I noted. The face on that pipe was lean and
goateed and maybe satanic, a face you hope to not see in a detox situation. I thought I recalled that pipe from the bookshelf in the lighted room.

“You look awfully like the man,” she said, “we were starting to think about looking for.”

“He would make that appearance with less beard,” the fella said. “Or, mayhaps, a good deal
more
beard.”

She reached over and flicked a lamp on. I appeared to be in a den. The ceiling was way up there for a house, eighteen or twenty feet at least. Dead things had left their heads on the walls. Across the room I saw a pale stone fireplace you could walk into without slouching hardly.

“Are you frightened?” she asked.

“I haven’t peed my pants yet,” I said. “But then, it’s been a while between beers.”

“He just might do,” the fella said. “He’s got that ‘born to lose and lose violently’ air about him. That’s good.”

The two of them made a sight. I hate to fall back on
weird
to describe them, but
goofy
is too weak, and
strange
sounds too sensible.