Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality Read online

  “If I could, I’d have hired a pimp on retainer to get you a trailer full of lady people, upon which you could implement a glorious Symphony of Cock, an old-fashioned Utica Chinstrap,” Necro says.

  “The old Joseph Avenue Mason’s Jar,” I say.

  “The old Mack Avenue, Detroit, Mr. Potato Head.”

  “That’s how they do it on Mack Avenue.”

  I hear a gulp in the pondwater. Even though, really, I’d rather talk about whether I’ll be lonely the rest of my life.

  “Cheers?” Necro says. We share the cup. I take the first sip.

  “Golden chandeliers of tasteness,” Necro says.

  After I take the after-sip “ah,” I go, “I try to call you, but you’ve been off Maverick Jetpantsing. I never see you!”

  He shakes his head. “I’m still living with Dad, still cutting straps in Building 38, the ground-up cow bones still look like couscous.”

  “What about your prize money to live on your own?”

  Necro breathes. “Bambert said he has money, from businesses, people from the churches, so he can take and start giving me his donated financings. I paid him this $2,500, this broker’s fee type of thing, which I think I told you about” (I’m sort of flattered he remembers) “but he keeps having setbacks. He’s been having more trouble acquiring various easements on some of these apartments, you know, these property structures, living quarters. So I’m waiting that out. That, coupled with immersing myself in NecronicA …”

  Which, if Necro has no Maverick Jetpants planned yet, now is my chance to prove, once and for all, that I Am Happy: “With everything that’s happened with Wicked College John—I’ve been trying to think more positive, thinking about doing something Huge.”

  Necro sips the Scotch through his teeth and hands me the cup so the side he drank from is facing away from me. “There was this toaster fire at the weapons shop,” he says. “All it did was blacken one whole wall, but nobody can work there anymore because the house’s innards are basically large panels of charred bread—also known as toast, I guess. Bambert was saying how a few days earlier, a light bulb took and popped in the middle of the night once when the lights were off, so maybe the wiring was inherently flawed, and that sent an unwarranted jolt through the nerve system.”

  “Did somebody do it, do you think?”

  Necro purses his lips, puffs his cheeks, and breathes through his nose. “If somebody did do it, you’d think they would be, you know, more anthemic than a toaster. But all of Webster hated us anyway. They took and tried to ordinance us out to the Interstate with the porn stores. But that’s why me and some of the Weapons of Mankind trolls are thinking about doing some of the re-lo action out near PA, where they got the Karate and Fireworks store and the Swords and Candy store,” he says. “Somewhere where there’s maybe more of a demographic for us.”

  My breath shortens to dried-up coffee nerves. “Wait. Are you leaving?”

  Necro jets some air through his nostrils. “Not today. Unless I decide to invent a robotic cake.”

  Our shadows disappear and reappear as a cloud passes the sun. I rotate the cup with my fingers, forget what part of it Necro drank from, check to see if the sunlight shows any saliva reflection on the rim, and take a sip anyway. The scotch tastes like a well-cleaned mansion library.

  “A weapons store,” I say. “I could go along with that, work at a weapons store.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “But I, you know, completely have my own opportunities, you know?” I tell him. “A Happy Rolodex.”

  A wrapper rolls toward us and stops, like it’s startled to be in the presence of humans. I pass the cup to Necro and he chews on the edge of it when he laughs: “Nate Nate Nate.”

  And with that alone I feel like I have to start our friendship all over again.

  “Why do you want a Plan so bad, Nate?” he says.

  I think about that for a minute. “I don’t have any Holy Grail Points like you. It’s not so easy.”

  “It’s not supposed to be easy! That’s the paradox, Nate! On New Year’s, I decided I was going to take and Not Suck. I was going to be a man in better faith, who wasn’t so straight-jacketed by his own facticity. I was going to take and initiatize myself.”

  “But I have been feeling better! I’m putting the joy in …”

  “Liar!” he bark-whispers. “You Plan-less, Plan-less, Plan-less liar who has lied! I see your long line of hang-ups on the answering machine!”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  His eyes widen for a second. “Anything. Throw a punch out there, get on a bus.”

  A yacht rotates, whale-like, toward its side. On the back, its name says SEVENLY. Necro yawns, the way he does, at any time of day, before he’s about to get going.

  “Welp,” he says, the way he ends “well” with a P, “in the name of conversational protocol, I need to say now that I should drive you back.” He throws his Red Wings cup toward the boats, but the wind slings the cup back over his shoulder. “There’s a thing going on tonight with the Weapons of Mankind trolls. Anyway. Happy birthday.”

  “Wait, Necro,” I say. “No Maverick Jetpantsing just yet?”

  He raises one eyebrow, investigative reporterly.

  “Or, nothing,” I say. “What I meant was, you’re not mad at me or anything, are you?”

  A Tops grocery bag skids across the dirt.

  “I mean, when Wicked College John got injured, you seemed mad at me,” I say. “I haven’t seen you around so much since that day—it’s just been me and Toby.”

  Necro smiles into his shoulder, which maybe means he still likes me. Because I did okay today Bringing-the-Funny-wise, right? A Day of Quickness, right? That’s how they do it on Mack Avenue?

  “You said on my machine we had to take and do some serious discourse about something?” he says, jamming his boot’s steel-toe into the dirt, which is brownie-soft.

  “Oh, no,” I say. “That was it. What we just did.”

  Then I say: “Hey, though. What were you going to say to me that one time? Before we went to Weapons of Mankind that night? You were going to say something, like, ‘I think, with you, Nate,’ and you never finished the sentence, because Rambocream showed up.”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend, with the glasses. His arms are like these flat lengths of an ice cream sandwich.”

  He laughs, finally, one single honk, an actual laugh. I feel like heaven struck oil.

  “I’m going to take and tell him that,” he says. “He will hate that.”

  “But what were you going to say?”

  The sun is out now, baking my shoulder. Nothing makes me more nervous than April sun; the Springtime Breezes of Fear are far worse than the Hellstache January Sads. Necro shakes his head. “Maybe I’ll remember. You’ll have to give me time on that one. Patience comes to those who wait.”

  Back home, Mom stabs two candles in two chocolate cupcakes, and sings “Happy Birthday” with actual notes. She turns on the kitchen light. No other lights are on in the house, which makes me feel tired. She gets out this white box from the corner spin-drawer, removes the foam insulation from a pint glass inside, washes out the dust, and pours me a pint of Sam at the kitchen table. She cheerses with me.

  “I remember, on my twenty-first birthday,” Mom says, shoulders unshriveling for once. “I had finished at MCC, and the one semester I lived in the dorms at St. John’s, my friends gave me a six-pack.”

  “Did you ever drink it?”

  “I took six classes that semester!” She sets the edges of her lips to her pint glass, leaving tree-trunk-like rings of foam with each sip. “But under the bathroom sinks, there was a removable panel doohickey on the bottom, and below that panel, a hollow space. You weren’t actually supposed to remove the panel, but I hid the cans there and closed the wood panel back on, so that someone else might find it who moved in after me.”

  And it’s right here with my mom, where she hugs me Happy Birthday and my palms
press into her shoulder fat, that we’ve maybe both said sorry. For the first time in a while, I can stay in tonight in the living room with the Fritos and milk—Inside with a capital In.

  Later that night, from the kitchen, the phone rings. When Mom picks up, she peeks around the entrance to the living room, where I’m watching some VCR-Plussed Monday Night Raw. “Toby,” she mouths.

  I shake my head and mouth: “No.”

  “He’s not here can I take a message?” Mom says. “Okay. Okay. Will do. Bye.”

  Before Mom finishes her pint of Sam Adams, she hands me an envelope containing three hundred dollars cash, for rent, which I immediately give back to her.

  CUNNAHOS

  The next morning, the Manpower Skills Assessment Center in Greece has gray fabric partitions to divide its six computers. The only other applicant at a computer is a large lady with a neck tattoo and a bullfrog chin.

  A gray box appears at the center of the computer screen and tells me to enter the formula that adds numbers in Excel. A timer counts down in the bottom corner. On the typing test, the last sentence I type is: “Why, then, would one run in the rain, when one would get as equally wet as they would walking?”

  Back in the waiting room, a rectangle with doors at both ends and a reception window, my recruiter brings out the results sheet.

  “You crushed the Word functions portion, you crushed the Word typing portion.” He’s tall and Irish, like a college basketball player, leftover freckles in his face and these thick-framed rectangular glasses. “Your Excel?” He tilts his head at the results sheet. “Now, I can push the Word. I can go hard at that with clients. But clients are looking for Excel, at least for the positions that would be a match for your educational background. Now I’m not taking away from your C’s—you passed and nobody can take that—the A in Home Ec. But, I mean, do you know Access?”

  Since he’s already shaking my hand, I tell him No.

  “Buy a book. I mean, we’ll call if we get a bite. But buy a book.”

  Mom has lent me the car, so I drive to Pittsford. I fill out an application at Fantastic Records. I write on the application that I would prefer not to work a register. For available hours, I write 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Thursday. I write on my application at Richardson’s: “No waiter jobs, dishwasher: yes.”

  Back home, I call Costello’s. I call Kaufmann’s. I end calls with “Hope to hear from you soon.”

  I check NecronicA. Two new drawings. One is this sketch of a skater kid with fat laces on his shoes and a spark coming from the tip of his shoelace. Another is of a ghost hand, spraying fire from the mouth in its palm at a pink, meat-textured car with headlight eyes who is clearly a character I drew once at a sleepover—the Hamaro, the Camaro made of ham.

  So, to keep up with Necro, to keep up with NecronicA, I stack the still-hot plates from the dishwasher. I start to get hungry, so I drink a glass of milk, bring the phone down the hall to my room, and nap off a hunger headache.

  Much later, in my armpit, I hear a digitized bleating noise. Which, I remember, is actually the phone, ringing me awake. I can’t see anything in my room, because the blinds are closed and it’s now seventy-five percent dark outside, hours past business hours.

  “Nathan, how are ya this is Danielle from Kelly Services,” Danielle says on the phone. I sit up and clench down a yawn. Her voice is squeaky but gentle. I’ve never seen her, not once.

  “I’m calling because I’ve found a position in Henrietta that we think would be a great fit for you and they would like to set up an interview!”

  “Really!” The entire inside of my body vacuums the carpets, throws the loose-elastic underwear in the hamper, scrambles to regain Happy Rolodex form.

  “The job is as a cashier at a local but expanding retailer called Qualtech,” she says. “The hours would be Tuesday through Sunday, 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.. Pay starts at $6.50 per hour, and increases with prolonged employment. It could be a great position—just to build some experience—before you make a bigger career move.”

  Immediately, the inside of my head becomes concrete-solid with what I’d be missing if I took this job. Because when Necro works a day-shift week, he gets out at 6, home at 6:30, done eating at 7, and if I don’t have a chance to call him between 7 and 8, then he’s out somewhere, probably sharing that “So forget about the old lady!” tagline—which me and him found funny together—with Weapons of Mankind.

  “So what do you say?” Danielle says. I can almost see her smiling on the other end.

  “Well—I have things going on during the weekends,” I say. “I also can’t use a register, so, I guess I don’t think I’m interested—”

  Her voice firms. “We have been inundated with applications for this position—people calling: ‘What about this cashier position?’ I’m a little concerned, given our previous attempts to place you, over what we’re going to do if I can’t find another match.”

  “I guess I just think my strengths are in loading, unloading, stock boy.”

  I hear what’s either phone static or a sigh on the other end.

  “Well I will continue to work with you if anything comes up!” she says, perky but annoyed. The hang-up feels like a pen jabbed into my ear.

  I call Necro. Robot Message Voice. After I go back to bed, I hear Fake Dad No. 3’s keys splash on the kitchen table. Mom’s footsteps, too. The bedroom door closes.

  So I open the garage. The car’s orange gas-tank Empty light is on, but I drive out anyway. My legs feel weak and ticklish. I feel comfy and sick, the way my body would try to convince itself it had the flu when I wanted to stay home from school. Light bleeds brightly everywhere in the wet road. Only a few heads lean over tables in the Main Applebee’s windows.

  I drive to one of the hills we used to go to, so I can stare at the skyline, alone, after no more Good Times are left in locations like these. On one side of the road is a brown-paneled apartment complex, and on the other, the hilldrop, and far off, the skyline, where we’d look at the Hyatt and the building with the revolving restaurant, and tell jokes about who would win in a fight between a windmill and a water tower, or imagine how funny it would be if women chose boyfriends based on their Eddie Vedder impersonations (“His baritone register on ‘Jeremy’ was so much deeper than mine!”).

  But then I step out of the car and onto the slippery grass of somebody’s yard. I look over the hill into the way-downtown, and a huge brain-blister explodes.

  Two smoke trails converge in the sky, like a wishbone, and, below them, fires, like a pair of pumpkin eyes across the darker flats of the city. Two fires, I might add, for the two drawings on NecronicA.

  So I drive around to try and find Necro—just so I know he’s somewhere not near there. Because if he was around yesterday, maybe that means he’s around tonight. Past the A-Plus, which is now a Hess, where Necro locked himself in the freezer; past the Harro East, where Necro bought me tickets to see Rollins; past the Penny Arcade, where there’s always metal, but no Necro.

  Then, back in Gates, suddenly my car won’t go above three miles per hour, and I realize the car has run out of gas.

  I coast to a stop on a bridge over the Erie Canal, which has fog over it and a fish-skin iridescence on the water. I walk around looking for a pay phone but don’t find any. So I walk, for a while, up the longish, weeds-crowded driveway that clears into the empty park and ride.

  Mosquitoes hover over pond-sized puddles surrounding the bus stop—a glass enclosure that’s three phone booths long. There is no noise anywhere. After leaning against one of the bus stop’s outer steel posts long enough to feel like I’m posing for a photo, headlights trickle through the plant life, and the bus hisses to a stop. I get on and nobody gets off.

  Inside, the bus seats are plastic, orange like a seventies kitchen. The fluorescent lighting is stale and fluttery. Ads in Spanish line the curves where the windows meet the ceiling. Three other people sit in sweats and winter jackets, stumpy as trash bags. The bus gags into gear
, wavering our shoulders, shifting our fat, putting us to sleep.

  Except, it turns out the bus, actually, is heading downtown, and away from Gates. But: Are you looking at this guy sitting directly across from me?

  Even if I never find Necro tonight, check off the boxes: this flat-faced, toothbrush-shaped guy, skin whiskey colored, tall enough that, when he sits, his legs are spread out spider-style; this ancient leather jacket where every crease looks stiff; shaved-headed, brow and nose angled downward. One of his scars pushes the corner of his right lip inward. And: he has this ping-pong-ball-shaped divot in his head right near his hairline. In other words, he is a Raw Dog’s Raw Dog.

  Because, sometimes, you have to take a bus somewhere. Right, Necro?

  Raw Dog steps off the bus at One Millionth Street and Crack Avenue. When I step off the bus to follow him, I’m already a hangnail salad, given that I’m still dressed for interviews, dressed for the 2028 Khakipocalypse. A woman in a wheelchair across the street vomits into a pail. There’s a cardboard panel in place of a window at a Checks Cashed.

  I follow Raw Dog, around the trash bags on the sidewalk, past a porn store that smells like dish detergent. Raw Dog walks fast, in eighth gear, but he walks with a limp. Which would be, if I were much smarter, Bad Sign No. 1. But I’m absolutely convinced right now, four hundred percent, that Raw Dog will out-Good-Story and out-Maverick-Jetpants anything Necro might be doing tonight.

  Raw Dog double-checks behind him and goes into what looks like a building whose first floor is brick and whose second floor is blue house paneling. A sign on the window says WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO BE SELECTIVE.

  The bar’s door is iron and its doorframe skims my scalp, like the frame was built in the 1600s when all men were hobbits. Inside it’s as dark and bacterial as inside someone’s boot. When I sit down, I’m already a tourist, a neon highlighter. Everyone else there is enormous: a grizzle-fest of only men.