Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality Read online

  Because now, all Necro’s doing is rolling his hand, moping at it. Like a total Hashbrown Gargoyle.

  Silver pipes—some thin like bendy straws, others large enough to crawl through—run along the brick buildings of the Kodak Park production plant across the street. Men walk slowly in and out of the factory, the beep and a click, way off, from the turnstile door when they hold up their scan passes. Some of the thinner staff, managers maybe, are still wearing their protective glasses over their regular glasses. Others have purple around their eyes and thick stubble, like they had their faces professionally tinted; undershirts under open jackets, work boots in grocery bags.

  So I say, just to say something: “Kodak Park Hair-Vest Cavalry, on a Friday night. Men who filter their coffee with their underwear.”

  Necro breathes deeply and drops his shoulders, like he has to reach down and lift his mouth from a well to even talk to me: “Off to take and treat themselves to the new upscale Subway, in Pittsford.”

  My brain is sweating, looking for any addition.

  “What if they took and had new, like, palatial food there,” Necro goes on. “Like a condor wrap?”

  I’m tearing through the Joke Rolodex—a mummified sandwich found in the Pyramids; a sandwich prechewed by a cast member of Party of Five—and when I settle on one, it feels like I have to hurry it out of a burning building.

  “A condor wrap with diamond sauce?”

  “A sub made from the thigh meat of one of Winston Churchill’s generals?” he says.

  “Maybe, like, a sandwich that’s so upscale they won’t let you see it.”

  “When you order the sandwich they take and blindfold you and drive you into the mountains and make you eat it at gunpoint.”

  “You eat it and a forty-five-year-old man turns into a swan.”

  “You eat it and it frees all the hostages, you know, from Lebanon,” he says.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And with that we’ve made, maybe, our last joke. Our first joke, and still the funniest word in the history of language? “Pants.” “Satan” is close seconds, but Pants is Joke Royalty. Pants became Pants the night I slept over at Necro’s utility-shed-sized house in the woods in Spencerport. Before we put on Dream On, we snuck upstairs from the basement to make sure Necro’s dad was asleep. But among the stacks of yellowing mail, next to the empty gasoline tanks on the floor, Necro’s dad sat upright on the sofa, asleep, tattoos up to his neck, naked except for a condom, every light in the house still on, but his pants were folded, neatly, on the cigarette-burned carpet. And then Necro yelled, wailing like he was in pain: “Oh God my pants!” and we rumbled back down the steps, sputtering laughter, palms skimming the stair railings.

  Necro could have said anything then—even some vocab word he’ll use when he can’t think of a simpler one—and it still would’ve been the funniest thing. We became friends. And Pants became Jetpants when Necro crashed his ATV into a dirt bank in the woods, and his body flew over the handlebars, legs still bent into sitting position. And Jetpants gave us Necro’s prescription Percocets, which gave me any night we stood on the trestles, my thinking cool and cube-like. And Jetpants became Maverick Jetpants when me and Necro Maverick Jetpantsed out of high school forever.

  But that was two years ago, and now Necro works in Chemical Recycling in Building 38, and tonight the sky is the color of sheep wool, getting bluer with evening. Above us, a plane flies across the lot where, at the opposite end, there’s a tower that looks like a milk crate. Steam exhales from it at all hours. Necro stiffens his left arm, raises it upward, draws his right arm back like he’s aiming a bow and arrow, and opens his fist, fingers spread straight, and, quietly, we look up. The imaginary arrow makes a perfect curve through the air toward the plane. When the plane flies just over the tower, Necro makes a saliva-y explosion noise, and I realize we were thinking the same thing.

  This won’t last all day. Soon Toby and Lip Cheese and Wicked College John, who’s back home for January break, will be here. So I go: “Man, what are we going to do?”

  “You mean, tonight?” Necro says.

  “Like, overall,” I say. “Like, a Plan. Like, I gotta start making that money.”

  Necro scratches the back of his head, the way he does whenever he’s about to say something serious and maybe nice. “I think, with you, Nate, it’s a matter of finding—”

  Then I hear from behind: BWOAAAA!

  Which I expect to be Toby. But instead, it’s some different shaved-headed guy I don’t even know. He’s wearing a wifebeater and a leather vest, and these army pants tucked into Nazi-type boots tied tight around his legs. His arms are as muscleless as the vanilla flats of an ice-cream sandwich. He has this sneery look on his face, with wire-rimmed glasses—not exactly a Rambo’s Rambo. Necro doesn’t even introduce me, so I’m immediately calling the guy Rambocream.

  And—like this isn’t Textbook Colonel Hellstache at all—Necro proceeds to actually give Rambocream a man-hug!

  “And a splendid greeting to you, Sir Pocketwatch-pants Von Moneycolon!” Rambocream bellows, like banquets and chimneys.

  “And a good evening to you, Sir Spectacles Von Snifter-pants!” Necro foghorns back.

  I breathe down a heart tornado. Because, Necro! You use Pants with someone not named me? He’s even laughing differently—this throat-cackle, when I’d counted so many nights as Nights of Quickness whenever I could get Necro to push some air through his nose.

  So when Toby’s car makes a wide turn across the lot’s empty lanes and parks next to the Vomit Cruiser, it’s clear that this is going to be the World’s Most Colonel Hellstache Evening. “What is this Voltron of Retargery?” Toby says, looking over at Rambocream. “Who’s Poached Death?”

  “Brandon,” Rambocream says, extending his hand to Toby.

  And this, at least, makes me crack up. Because it would take easily 3.5 Rambocreams to out-huge Toby—and Rambocream’s hand is just out there, getting pinker. And Toby just leans back, clapping his Bills mittens together, smiling with his little baby gremlin teeth. Rambocream’s glasses frost up into silver dollars. Toby flares his chinfat, shaved head steaming. Then he shakes Rambocream’s hand anyway.

  When Wicked College John—or as I should call him, Recently-Issued-Restraining-Order John—shakes my own hand, he does this finger-hook move that you know he clearly does with his Mook-Platter friends at Bonaventure. He’s tall as a male model, pores leaking cologne, permanent hangover swell under his eyes. What looks like white deodorant streak on his pea coat.

  “Telling you man, it’s good to be back,” Wicked College John says to me and Toby.

  I nod, Toby nods, but half of my face is looking at Rambocream and Necro, who are walking away toward what is, I guess, Rambocream’s car—this red econo-Nissan parked along the curb on Eastman.

  “… but this whole business with the girlfriend, really been messing with my grades,” Wicked College John is saying, looking around and shifting his feet. “I got two B’s; I got a C. All I was doing was calling, trying to tell her I was studying, I was in deep concentration, and that I threw that coffee mug at the wall, out of a general anger. But she made, like, eighty copies—she gave the form to her work, her friends’ apartments? But she’s eighteen. She doesn’t have an outside-world …”

  Wicked College John’s voice fades. Necro and Rambo-cream open Rambocream’s hatchback and lean their heads in.

  “So, I’ve had a lot of adversity, really,” Wicked College John is saying, “a lot of abrasive personalities to deal with. But it’s good to come back, see you guys. Really helps someone see what they have going for them away from here.”

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” Lip Cheese, who we’ve forgotten about, says from behind us. His jacket is caution-sign yellow, with bungee pull-tabs everywhere. He’s wearing a pull-down mask-hat, and his lips push out beak-like through the hat’s mouth hole. Just standing there.

  Toby and Wicked College John
laugh so hard they have to brace their hands on their thighs. Lip Cheese wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and his lips start to twitch, so you know he’s shutting down a little.

  Don’t even bring it up, guys!” he says. “I haven’t cried since the Ten-Ten-Ten Girls hit me with the pillow!”

  Wicked College John claps Lip Cheese on the back and jolts him into Toby. I would laugh too. But I hear Rambocream’s car trunk slam, and see Necro clearly smile at something Rambocream says as they walk back and rejoin us. Necro unfolds some yellow looseleaf sheets of paper from his pocket and hands them to Rambocream. Then, though, from the creators of Oh Shit: The Movie, I notice the papers in Rambocream’s hand are drawings!

  I try to tell myself: Maybe Rambocream just lent Necro the drawings and Necro was returning them? But one drawing is of a vampire with bear paws, a walking cane, and a collar on his cape that’s as tall as a lampshade. VAMPAW, the name reads at the bottom of the paper, in Necro’s square-shaped handwriting. Another of what appears to be a whale, with human hands for fins, and metal armor covering six breasts on its underside.

  But Lip Cheese is in the middle of saying, “… I dumped it back into the wine box and taped it back up! Sorry I have respect for my parents, Toby!”

  So I chime in—because Necro never not-laughs at this: “More like dumped it back into the Sock Hospital, Lip Cheese!”

  I look at Necro hard to see if he’s watching. But he’s busy using his hand as a clipboard, clickable pencil wobbling on its axis, shading something in on a drawing of a snake whose tongue is a hatchet.

  So I jam my Bills winter hat down my jacket and into my armpit and make my voice higher and whisperier to impersonate Lip Cheese: “It’s dishydrosis, guys! It’s a sweat condition! Wait: What are you talking about?”

  “Wait, what are you talking …” Lip Cheese begins to say.

  Toby and Wicked College John crack up, but it’s a total waste of an Uncomebackable Insult. Because Necro isn’t paying attention, and Rambocream dangles his keys from his finger and goes: “Well, we should probably, you know.”

  Necro pulls down his parka zipper to his neck, and I notice he’s wearing this white dress shirt and a red tie. “We have Weapons of Mankind tonight,” he says.

  His jaw muscle flexes. Toby and I are already looking at each other.

  “We sell various rare weaponry—novelties and collectibles on a limited signal public broadcast,” Rambocream says, in Upstate New York’s flat-voweled nasal accent. “Factory-sharp inventory unavailable in some states. World War II-era emphasis, historical Germany. Heritage weaponry, really,” he says, and, taking a deep breath, “Heritage.”

  Except right when Rambocream says that, I notice a patch on the left half of his vest with a sewn illustration of a large-lipped monkey dragging a pail of water in each hand. His vest has a shiny metal pin, too—not of a swastika, but the other one that looks like a plus sign, with the ends curved slightly out like trumpets. Gold border, red in the middle—tiny like a Polo emblem. That’s when entire cities in my head lose their gravity. Because what Hitler did, back then? Textbook Colonel Hellstache. But I remember that I can never remember if the plus sign stood for Nazi Germany, or just World War II, or Germany’s air force, or just Europe. Then I remember, I think, that the pin stands for Europe, which means I don’t know anymore what the monkey stands for, and I don’t know what this says about Necro.

  So I ask: “Well, Necro? Are we invited to this shit show?”

  Necro looks at Rambocream. Neither of them says no.

  So, as with howevermany stupid years that have passed between us all, we cram into the Vomit Cruiser and follow Rambocream’s car into downtown Rochester, a place big enough to be a city but small enough to have an Inner City.

  On 104, grains of road salt spray through the Vomit Cruiser’s undercarriage.

  “I visited their weapons booth last Christmas, and mankind is his weapons, guys,” Necro says. “Weapons are preparedness. State and local governments? They can seize your property anytime to build a highway. Look at 490. Eminent domain. Waco. Our police-state postal service? With postmaster general Nicolae Ceauşescu who can just take and control our very means of transmitting lingual expression?”

  “So no Century Club tonight? Not even Jaeger Cowpunch?” Wicked College John says. “Will there at least be some Irondequoit girls there?”

  Necro chuckles through his nose. Wicked College John hacks at Necro’s arm from the back seat, which yanks the car one lane over. A few crumpled papers shake loose from under the passenger seat into my seat well.

  As in: More drawings! On a napkin, a building that looks like a courthouse exploding, with a silhouette of a kitten with bat wings hovering in front of it. On a flattened McDonald’s bag, a wizard, standing biblical and stiff, arm extended at a right angle, a stalactite of beard hanging from his chin. Behind the wizard, a castle is on fire.

  Which, me and Necro: Our whole junior high, we would stay up and draw at sleepovers—a drawing of Slayer onstage maybe, or that time we made up Man-Serum Bagelheart, who had a shovel for one arm and whose digestive system can convert rocks into orange juice. But to draw now, post Trestles Phase?

  Wicked College John picks up one of the drawings. “Necro, what is this Faggot-Lane Walkery?” he says, which I sort of agree with.

  “Take and don’t either of you even ask the subject!” Necro says, with out-of-nowhere teeth-grindingness, voice like if charcoal could bark. “Don’t you dare even broach it!”

  “But I want to know your feelings, bro,” Wicked College John says. “A lot of expressives tend to have bad childhoods: pervy uncles, Kangaroos for Kids …”

  “You’ll be in big trouble if you keep talking, John!” Necro says.

  “Don’t let his eleven German Shepherds know about Kangaroo for a Kid, John,” I go (because: Vampaw? the other ones?). “They’re very possessive.”

  But I immediately feel horrible bringing up the one Uncomebackable Insult against Necro, because Necro wasn’t even at his house when Kangaroo for a Kid happened, and I never found Kangaroo for a Kid all that funny anyway. And he looks at me in the rearview mirror with this new, cold humanless look, the way some anime villains have sleek eyes with no irises. And now I know he’s seen something terrible inside of me, but I have no idea what, and there’s a part of me that wants to sweep every person and every sound out of the city, and follow Necro quietly through the streets for the rest of my life, and ask him, over and over: But what do you mean? But what do you mean?

  Then I notice, on a sheet of yellow looseleaf: A man, whose eyes extend outward like telescopes, holding between a pair of tongs a miniature house that’s on fire; he appears to be setting it in a glass case with other houses on fire. On the back of an ATM receipt, a Kodak logo with human eyes melts. But the drawing I stare at the longest, that throws a long grim-reaper hood over my brain and keeps it there forever, is on the back of what looks like a page from a school essay. In that drawing, a single, tiny sperm, tail like a fishhook, floats against the moon above a burning Applebee’s. The Applebee’s looks almost exactly like the sad cube of the Main Applebee’s—where Necro always bought me fries—in Gates, which was always enough of a town to have an Applebee’s, but not a good Applebee’s with the newer menus, or with the seat leather whose color hasn’t been punched out of it.

  “We were kidding, Necro,” I say. Which we only ever say as a last resort.

  A panel of ice snaps silently off a semi ahead of us, rotates, and explodes softly on the road. We take an exit into the Mattresses in the Streets District. Houses are boarded up but with satellite dishes mounted to the roofs; others have second-floor doors on the outside but with the stairs or balconies fallen off. Necro’s face is snarled up and witch-like.

  “All I can say is: Life is precious, Nate,” he says. “You especially, John. What I’m about to take and undertake with my life tonight, what I’m about to undertake with the world tonight, could be immense.”

  WEAP
ONS OF MANKIND

  Downtown, Rambocream lifts up the guard gate to a brick building that has the words ROCHESTER PUBLIC BROADCASTING painted above the door. Metal clanks in a hockey bag that Necro lifts out of Rambocream’s car trunk and heaves over his shoulder. Across the street, vines grow out of a mailbox at a boarded-up post office, and a place called Good Times Pizza has maybe four things on the front shelf. Houses with heavy doors have balconies that are held up with orange seat-belt-like straps from the roofs.

  Right then some barrel-shaped black lady, hair pulled back tight, white-blouse-type outfit and black leather sneakers, walks toward us. With her face totally neutral, she draws back her purse—this hot maroon, rhinestone-covered thing—and whips Rambocream on the left arm with it. Necro and Wicked College John and Toby immediately get between her and Rambocream, shoes squeaking on the sidewalk. She draws her purse back again, face still neutral, and swings again.

  “That patch is really not a good idea,” she says, purse strap coiled around Necro’s arm, voice stern in an office sort of way.

  “This patch is an historical item, ma’am,” Rambocream says from around Necro’s head, fistfulling his vest’s monkey patch and raising it at her. “By no means do any of us sympathize with any act of oppression. This is a collector’s …”

  Her purse hits him in the mouth. “We’re gonna get shot,” Lip Cheese mumbles to himself.

  “Hitler was a product of incest, ma’am!’” Wicked College John yells, hand planted in the woman’s collarbone, purse strap whipping around his torso. “A product of incest! Would I say that if we didn’t hate him?”

  Her body is fuming Avon. “That’s a bad idea, sir. That’s really not a good idea,” she keeps saying, voice level as she walks away, backward, still facing us as she rounds the corner.