Twelve (3 page)

Chapter Ten

JESSICA STARES INTO
the mirror. She doesn't wear much makeup. She is not flawless, like Sara Ludlow, but she is pretty. The nose job helped. Creamy skin, long brown hair, big brown eyes. A guy once thought he was mad funny when, teasing one of her admirers, he cupped his hands in front of his nipples and said Jessica had big brown eyes. And she does have nice breasts. And thin lips, a cruel mouth sort of, but nobody would ever say “cruel mouth.” Tonight she wears dark pants, slung just below her hips to reveal the band of her panties that say Calvin Klein. Her ribbed sweater shows off her body but no skin, except when she stretches and you can see her navel as her sweater lifts. She is not fat, but she is not skinny. She is healthy-looking. She is a jock: soccer, swimming.

This was Jessica on the phone a few hours ago with one of her admirers, another guy who has heard she is wild:

“I'm really comfortable with my body,” she says.

“Meaning you're hot?”

“Like, thighs are a big deal, you can't have big thighs, but me . . .”

“So what kind of thighs do you have?”

“Strong thighs. Swimming makes them that way.”

In the spring Jessica runs track and good for her, but tonight, right now, she has not gone into the bathroom to relieve herself. She has gone into the bathroom to do some coke before that drunk boy comes back. Everyone else smokes weed and drinks. They think it's crazy to do coke except on special occasions, like proms. Not Jessica. So out comes the little Baggie filled with white powder. A chemist would have found the contents of this bag interesting. It is not cocaine. It is something else—
number twelve
, the boy called it when he handed it to her and said to save it for them for later—and as soon as Jessica takes her first hit, everything changes.

Her fine eyebrows arch up above her eyes and her mouth opens. She sits down heavily on the toilet and leans back. She feels that tingling. Chills down the spine. Maybe like when you first read that part of the Gettysburg Address. Maybe. Yes, Jessica is a very good student, yes, early decision from Wesleyan next year. The Gettysburg Address. She read all about Lincoln in her advanced-placement American history class. Read about Lincoln and even felt that shot up her spine when she read those words to herself, late one night, memorizing the speech for homework. She liked it better than anybody. The Gettysburg Address:
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last fall measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
...

But not really. Jessica does another hit, and the tingling gets fuller and goes from her spine into the back of her head.

. . . But, in a larger sense
...

She locks her knees and tightens her buttocks and rests the back of her head on the top of the tank.

...
we cannot dedicate
...

A huge grin breaks out over her face, and the colors of the bathroom dance in her vision.

...
we cannot consecrate
...

Jessica giggles and flows off of the toilet, her face sliding easily against the porcelain and leaving a trail of sweat.

...
we cannot hallow—this ground
.

White Mike stood up and buttoned his blazer and walked to the head of the class. He said in a clear voice that his report was about Abraham Lincoln because he was so tall. The class laughed, even the teacher, because he knew White Mike was joking and it would be an excellent report. White Mike started reading. Abraham Lincoln became a martyr, he said, the same way that JFK would become one. In his conclusion, White Mike said that death does not vindicate. It might have been good for the country, but it wasn't good for Abraham, and it wasn't good for Jack
. And it wasn't good for me,
thought White Mike, whose mother had died the day before. White Mike's father said he didn't have to go to school, and White Mike said
, What will that do?

Chapter Eleven

SARA LUDLOW HAS
been at Chris's party for an hour now, and she is not impressed. She doesn't want a joint or a beer, and she is especially bored by the story Chris tells her about how his brother got his first blow job at a bat mitzvah. She says it's time for her to leave.

“Where's your boyfriend?” Chris asks.

Sara looks at him for a moment. He might be useful. “Driving in from East Hampton,” she says. “Where's your brother?”

Chapter Twelve

CHRIS'S BROTHER, CLAUDE
, walks down Mulberry Street in his dark green North Face parka. In his pockets he is carrying: one clear plastic prism filled with weed, one Coach wallet containing $965, one fake ID (repeating hologram of the Ohio state flag, the buckeye, his picture, and a fake name, laminated, purchased from a card shop on Bleecker Street; the guy who sold it said, “Never fails, forty dollars”), one school ID, one Citibank ATM card, one American Express Platinum card, one naked picture of drunk ex-girlfriend whom he fingered while they watched the Blue Man Group with a bunch of other kids, two MetroCards, and one Nokia cell phone that says “Pussy monger!” when it turns on.

Claude is six feet two inches tall. He walks with his hood up, hands thrust in his pockets, face hidden. He is much more handsome and strong than his brother; the same fair coloring that doesn't burn in the sun, but perfect skin and an angular face. He is taking a fifth year of high school at a bad boarding school, and even there he is not a good student or a good athlete, though
he lifts a lot. He listens to rap and metal. He used to do blizzards of cocaine. There is a famous story about him that all the kids know. The story goes that one night, in a bar, he walked up to some kids with his huge pet snake coiled around his neck and shoulders. He didn't know the kids, but they went to some private school, so he knew what they were. And he pushed up against the biggest kid, rubbing the snake on his shoulder. The kid was scared silent—he just stood there, trying to wait it out, whatever it was. Claude didn't want to wait, of course, so he started pushing the snake up toward the kid's face. The kid backed away, and somebody yelled for Claude to back off, which gave the kid more balls, and so he said,
Yeah, man, what's the idea
?, then laughed a nervous laugh. He knew he had to make it all funny. And Claude was smiling too. Then, out of nowhere, or so it seemed to everyone there, Claude hooked the inside of the kid's cheek with his forefinger and yanked back violently. The cheek ripped with an audible tear, and all this blood fell on the bar and into the martinis. The kid was screaming and clutching his face, and Claude just walked out of the bar. Everybody knows this story.

Claude's friend Tobias was with him that night and is with him again now. He is walking down the street next to Claude, dressed the same way. His hood is back, though. And where Claude is handsome, Tobias is beautiful. Not quite effeminate, just beautiful. Tobias is a part-time model. There is a famous story about him
too. It's about how when Tobias was twelve, he took a shit in his bed just so the maid would have to clean it up. Tobias bragged about it the next day at school, and nobody laughed harder than Claude. Tobias is still proud of the story and tells it a lot, and when he does, there is still nobody who laughs harder than Claude.

So now the two of them are walking down Canal Street in Chinatown.
Slantyville
is what they call it. It's a trip down there, for them for sure. First they smoked, of course. And they have already bought a skinned rabbit from one of the windows where it was hanging. They carried the rabbit around for a while, then threw it in the open back window of a passing yellow cab. Now they stop by a trinket shop. There are weapons in the window. Sais and nunchakus and great replica samurai swords. Claude and Tobias are not samurais, but they like swords and are still a little fucked up. They walk in.

It is much brighter inside than Claude expects. There is a TV going with a tape of a karate sparring match playing. Beneath the glass counter there are knives for sale. One is especially long and bright, a butterfly knife with blades that slide in and out of the shaft. Claude taps the glass over the knife and indicates to the middle-aged Asian woman behind the counter that he wants it. She takes it out and hands it to him. Claude runs his soft hands up and down the blade. The woman is tiny and fat, and she nods and smiles in anticipation of the sale and takes the blade back from Claude.

“Look,” she says. She spins her wrist, and there is a metallic swish as the blades open out. Light bounces off the blades onto the walls and reflects off the glass over the framed
Enter the Dragon
poster. Claude is transfixed.

The lady puts the knife on the counter, satisfied with her demonstration. “Here,” she says, and reaches for a different weapon. A bola, small and painful, with brass orbs to shatter shins and skulls. She holds the rope and clacks the brass together, and the sound is loud and sharp. Claude watches the orbs go and almost grabs them out of her hand. He tests their weight as if to throw them. He holds one of the brass spheres to his cheek and feels the chill metal against his pores. He puts the bola down next to the knife and points to the halberd in the window.

“Ah,” sighs the lady. Of course. She pads to a back room where there are two more such spears leaning in a corner, behind a box of miniature Statues of Liberty and New York snow globes. She brings one back to the counter and places it before Claude.

“No case?” he asks.

“Sorry,” she says, and wraps a cloth around the crescent ax head and the point of the spear. Claude pays her, and she smiles and nods. Claude puts the spear and bola in his bag, and the knife in its plastic case in his inside coat pocket, where he can feel it against his chest. The shaft of the spear sticks out of his bag and bangs the door frame as he walks out. Then Claude turns
back to the woman and slurs out, “Hoh, tenk veddy much, my little yellow-skinned sister.” Tobias can't stop laughing.

Claude and Tobias stop at several similar shops before they find the subway and head back uptown. At the end of the night, nunchakus and throwing stars, sharp and bright, and a double-bladed sword and brass knuckles and two sais and a knife disguised as a fountain pen are all on Claude's person or in his bag and clinking. Tobias thinks the night is a riot, and laughs some more and tells Claude he's one crazy fucker before they part ways at the subway stop at Eighty-sixth and Lexington.

When Claude gets home, his brother's party is still going on but he doesn't care. He is a samurai, his bag heavy with weapons. In his room, he takes all the clothing out of a wardrobe and shoves it under his bed. He opens his bag and arranges the knives and swords with care. In less than an hour, Claude steps back from the closet and admires his careful work. Closed, the wardrobe looks like a regular closet, an oaken antique. Open it and the weapons glint in the half-light, arranged in some perfect order like a private shrine.

Chapter Thirteen

SAMURAI HAVE BEEN
White Mike's favorites since he saw them in cartoons when he was eight. When he was twelve, he read
Shogun
over Easter break and thought about dying with honor. What he imagined to be samurai music would play in his ears. Walking the street, White Mike would run and jump off railings, bringing an imaginary samurai sword down upon imaginary foes, maintaining the all-important
chundan
, middle ground. A year or two later he would equate all this with
amor fati
when he finally got around to reading Nietzsche— the idea that you must love whatever comes, joy or sorrow, pain or happiness. After he read Nietzsche, everything made a lot more sense.

So White Mike lives in his apartment, which is big and empty, with his father whom he never sees, and looks out the window at the night, and forces himself to be content. He forces himself to enjoy reading, or watching television, or preparing a meal, or doing his laundry, or spending the money he has made, or whittling a tiny bird, like he is doing now at the kitchen
table with an expensive handmade pocketknife he purchased. It is a forcing.

Or later, up in his room, at his desk, White Mike has the lights on and spreads all the weed out on his desk, and it sits before him in different piles, different amounts, and it is nothing new. And he is compelled to order it and organize it and store it away for sale later because it is the most important thing he does. It is what he does, and so it will be done precisely, and with nothing else in mind. Because what else is there to do?

GRADE 11

English: 97
Mike has been an active participant in the discussions of
King Lear
and is always thoughtful and inquisitive in class. He wrote a remarkably original and thoroughly documented term paper on the difficult topic of “Nietzschean Existentialism,” as he called it; though, as with the rest of his work, it did not seem to be very satisfying to him
.

Latin: 98
A truly dedicated student. Mike's translations continue to be written with a passion and interest uncommon in students his age. He could be more forgiving to his classmates, however. He is, at times, extremely impatient.

Mathematics: 98
Although Mike is a fine student, he is clearly uninterested in mathematics.

Science: 69
Mike is clearly a bright young man, but he simply does not do the work. While all of his test scores are in the 90s, without completion of the lab reports it is impossible for me to give him a grade above merely pass.

History: 96
Mike wrote a superb term paper, beautifully researched and highly informative. What he needs to learn is the give-and-take of discussion.

Homeroom Comments:
Mike excels in what pleases him and does dismally in what does not. All of us at the school sympathize with the recent tragic event, but it is also our responsibility to point out that his continued disciplinary problems only undermine his future. Although I find Mike charming and have come to think of him as a friend as well as a student, his manner can be off-putting. At times he can seem quite distant, although I do not believe he is ever bored. Mike has many gifts. He may even have genius in him, although many of us who have taught him agree that it is very frustrating trying to bring it out. He is old enough now for it to be up to him.