Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality Read online

  Something unclicks inside me. “You don’t know Necro!” I say from behind Toby. “Necro’s not that type of guy! Necro hasn’t Unabombed anybody!”

  But Necro, right now? He droops his lower lip, raises his triangle Dracula-brows, and twists a button on his Necro Hall Of Fame Parka. As the bouncer muscles Toby toward the door, Luckytown says, voice thinning into the crowd: “I don’t think you know your friend here as much as you think you do.” He flops his arm toward Necro. “He’ll light a bomb and he’ll take you by the hand; he’ll lead you straight into hell, he’ll lead you into …” and then I can’t hear him anymore, because we’ve been nudged outside.

  Riding home on 490, Toby’s car’s wipers whimper across the windshield.

  “I was so close, so close to throwing a punch,” he says. “When I think about it, I feel sorry for every person in there. Laughing like that. Who laughs at a life?”

  Next to me, Necro leans against the window and smirks into the collar of his Necro Hall of Fame Parka. He mumbles something.

  “What’d you say, Necro!” Toby goes, near-pulling the car over. “You laughing along with them?”

  Necro leans against the window, closes his eyes, and laughs, once, into his fist.

  “Kangaroo for a Kid? Kangaroo for a Kid?” Toby says. “Is that what you said? I have eleven German Shepherds, and one of them died, and the reason everyone calls me Kangaroo for a Kid is because—”

  “Drop me off right here!” Necro says, pounding Toby’s headrest. His eyes are bloodshot and dark, like caves where fawn fall asleep and die. “You all look at me like I’m stupid! You take and invent a conspiracy. That is animalism!” Necro says. “It’s a good thing they don’t have a word for you—you and your Cockdramas! Your moral masturbation! Your pleonastic intestinalism! Your hippocampal food rape!”

  Toby pulls over on the side of the highway, passenger side-view mirror inches from the highway’s concrete sound-blocker wall. Necro slams the door, pushing air in on us. He shrinks in the rearview mirror when Toby drives off, walking with big strides on the road shoulder.

  “Well I don’t know what any of that meant!” Toby says.

  Minutes shift by like earth plates. The sky is light purple, and there appears to be a crane, stretched all the way up into the cold into the top floor of a skyscraper. The water spraying out of it looks like a feather.

  At the exact same time, in the seat well where Necro was sitting, I find a manila folder with Necro’s bootprint on it. The folder has a bunch of what appear to be printed illustrations, in color on shiny paper. One shows a knight with a single flame making a wide curl around his body and ending at his sword blade. Behind him, a silhouette of a palace, gutted bright orange with flames. The body of a young man, in a pageboy vest, lies at his feet.

  “What’s that?” Toby says from the front.

  “Oh, just some job applications I left in here,” I say. I stick the folder in my jacket.

  Because, in the way old friends do, Necro always forgets to take his things with him when he leaves a place. He’s left five pairs of boxers at my house, five chapsticks, one pair of swim trunks, two retainers, one bicycle, one Rygar, two Rush T-shirts, thirty-four colored pencils, one sleeping bag, two pillows, one toothbrush, and a pencil drawing of Electrus Nucleotide, a chrome bald man staring straight at you, arms muscley but straight-lined and robotic, like rock candy, each hand crunching a much smaller robot, electricity falling from their necks like confetti. The day he drew that was one of the Big Days, years ago, a day of Crazy Stories. Beforehand, we rode our bikes, standing up on our pedals, really Maverick Jetpantsing it, one county over into the pine trees. Somehow, the gate to the Holleder Armory was open. We made up our own organization back then, the CTA, even though the letters didn’t stand for anything. But we’d printed CTA bumper stickers—he’s left nineteen of those at my house—and we snuck into the armory, stuck them on some army jeeps, and rode away.

  I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Pinning Bow Ties on the Dead? You take that phrase.

  NECRONICA

  The Wegmans human resources office is mocha colored, the size of a bathroom that gave up on getting a toilet. I’ve borrowed one of Fake Dad No. 3’s purple shirts, and am wearing khakis and navy Polo socks. The tiny plastic fastener-thing that holds the socks together in the store knots up in my calf hair. I’m sitting in a plastic chair with no armrests, talking to this interviewer woman who is all shoulder pad:

  “And why is it that you want to work in Meats, or in Cheese Shop?” she asks.

  “I just thought it would be interesting,” I say. “That cheese, you know, would be interesting.”

  When, actually, I checked off “Meats” and “Cheese Shop” on the application because “cheese” is a funny word. Not Pants-funny, but those were more innocent times: Cheese; Power Down!; MEOW; etc.

  But after this bad job interview, and bad job interviews over the next week at Paychex, Abbott’s, the Jack Astor’s out near MCC, I call Necro, and I get the Robot Voice Message that says, in its Dr. Sbaitso voice: “We cannot take your call.” I eventually go to Applebee’s where, in the later afternoon, the window booths are empty. Grown men with loosened ties sit at the bar and eat off the workday with a buffalo chicken salad and a radioactive-colored margarita. Rain and wet headlights are outside, a donut-glaze of ice on everything. Via the payphone in the bathroom corridor, I manage to get ahold of Necro—which has been like trying to get ahold of the Pope over the last month—to meet me here.

  “God I need to complain,” I tell him on the phone.

  So, a little consolation, I’m thinking, regarding a Job, a Plan, etc. And also, to get a better idea of whether Necro is mad at me, not specifically for Tadahito Murakami: Ninja Surgeon, but maybe just mad at me in general.

  I sit down at the same booth we always do, in the corner, below the model airplanes hanging from plastic strings, in the carpeted portion of the restaurant that’s raised one step. I get three Coke refills in before I see the Vomit Cruiser pull into a parking space outside.

  Which of course, when Necro comes in, he’s shit-zero in the way of help. With Lip Cheese behind him, he walks in like he’s just taken the best shower ever. And worse, he’s wearing his white Pink Floyd T-shirt, rust-stained from the washer, with the picture of the guy in the suit shaking hands with the guy on fire: Necro is always far more of an asshole on days when he wears his Pink Floyd T-shirt.

  “You tell me how I’m doing, Nate,” Necro says, stuffing the Necro Hall of Fame Parka and Lip Cheese’s Bungee Cord Drop-Zone jacket into the corner of the booth across from me. “Two percent raises went in at work today, little currency flow, liquidity, whatnot. I got a home, I got a cash.”

  “Necro’s got a home, he’s got a cash,” Lip Cheese says.

  Because Necro? The same kid who gets fired like it’s his job? “What does that even mean, you Maverick Shitpants?”

  “I’m going to get paid to take and sell my drawings online!” Necro says.

  Food climbs back up my throat. Suddenly, there’s a part of my brain that says: You can always go home and have a nice Sadness Custard Montage and sell your tears at GNC. But our waiter shows up, calls us “guys” like he knows us, and instead I say: “Can I get fries and coffee?”

  Necro tells me the name of the website: NecronicA. “Like Metallica,” he says. “Except NecronicA.” Which he laughs at harder than any joke I’ve ever told him.

  “Necro’s got a home! Necro’s got a cash!” Lip Cheese says, scraping his napkin across his mouth.

  “Lip Cheese: He’s got a home, he’s got a cash, he’s got Holy Grail Points,” Necro says.

  “I’m doing data entry—at Paychex!” Lip Cheese, of all people, says, this same kid who once told Sandra Buckley, after he went with her to see Ransom: “You know something? You made a great movie even better.”

  “Nate’s got no home, Nate’s got no cash,” Necro says.

  “Nate, you’re pathetic,” Lip Cheese says.
And he and Necro start cracking up! Necro, with the throat-cackle he was using around the Weapons of Mankinders, with their fat-guy shorts and their thick-lens serial-killer glasses!

  “Whatever, Washcloth King,” I go to Lip Cheese. “Whatever, Got Beat Up by a Girl.”

  But when Necro doesn’t laugh at that, and Lip Cheese’s ears even don’t turn red from embarrassment, I feel myself getting light-headed. Because right now, Toby is leading with 1,560 Holy Grail Points, and Necro has 1,511. And I have 1,363, and Lip Cheese has 317. And I don’t know how many Holy Grail Points they think Having a Home and a Cash is worth, but it starts to make me think that maybe I’ll never have even 1,400 Holy Grail Points, and that maybe Lip Cheese might now finally be catching up with me Holy-Grail-Point-wise. And maybe ten years from now, I’ll never have a Plan, and nobody will ever ask me what’s wrong or if I need help.

  Then, Necro leans over the table and tells me something I wasn’t expecting.

  “This NecronicA I got, this is a business opportunity venture,” he says. “There’s money behind this; capital—you know—expenditure or whatever. You were asking: When are we going to take and make that money? Here’s where. NecronicA’s receiving money from this nonprofit that I guess Bambert runs to take and revitalize the city and is going to get a metric fuck-ton of donations for. That guy, Brandon-who-you-met, told me to apply a few months ago with some work samples—it’s all anonymous application-wise—and this panel of judges decided to give me a grant, to draw, like Man-Serum-Bagelheart era!”

  “What, you needed his permission?” I say.

  Necro sputters into his palm. “No, man! Like a grant of money. It’s part of this whole thing, where I can just work on NecronicA—like an artist-in-residence studio deal. He’s giving me a $17,000 stipend—what I make a year at work; he’s giving me my very own Necro HQ, and the payment installments start once I move in.”

  “Necro’s got a home, he’s got a cash!” Lip Cheese says.

  “After the explosion, Bambert decided he couldn’t take and just sell only weapons anymore—he needed to do something positive and community-based. So, he sat in his basement, in total self-induced psychological quarantine, and had this huge revelation: The northwest quadrant of downtown Rochester is operating significantly under population capacity. And he figured, why not try to take and generate some seed money, give people monetary incentives to get back in these vacant structures—artists, culturists, futurists, and thinkers—to rebuild downtown. He said he’s wrapping up paperwork on this former RG&E plant he wants to convert into lofts. Easements, whatever. So me, and a few others I think, who are getting some of this seed money, have already paid a $2,500 fee so Bambert can take care of bullshit with regards to permits and renovations. It’s just because the money’s all pledges right now and he doesn’t actually have it monetarily in-pocket yet. But we won’t not get the money. I’ll totally be paid back. I’m losing money right now, but Bambert says those down payments are standard. And you have to lose money to make money, so.”

  I lean back to make room for the waiter when the French fries arrive. Past the waiter’s arm, Necro is looking directly at me, something he never does. On his coaster, there’s a drawing of an executioner, resting the handle of his axe on his shoulder, but with these deep, plush, puppy-dog eyes behind his mask.

  “It’ll be good, Nate,” Necro says. “I reduced my work hours for this.”

  “So he’s like a philanderer? Philanthroper? A charity?”

  “He says he’s got a board of directors, articles of incorporation, some bylaws,” he says. “But I’m not worried about that right now. Because I was thinking: I could take and use you as sort of NecronicA’s marketing guy. You’d have to learn a little HTML, but I could give you part of my revenues, in sales. You could put yourself to work, put all your talking to good use finally.”

  I blush. I’m flattered or totally embarrassed. I have to think only for a second.

  “No, Necro!” I say. “What am I going to do? Sit at some computer, like: ‘For sale? Painting of Dragoon Lance?’”

  Put my talking to good use? Like I’m pathetic enough to need help?

  “You say that now,” Necro says. “But see if I take and ask you again. You say that now.”

  I say that now, but when I get home, I change into my pajama pants early, go into the den where the computer is, and type in NecronicA. Sure enough, on the computer, against a black background, the website that appears displays as the header the NecronicA logo—harpoon-points at the ends of the N and the A—with two animated gifs of lightning bolts. There’s one section, T-shirts, and another, Graphics / Airbrushings, where paintings are for sale. Not just doodlings, but paintings—with shading. One is called: “The Party Rests, In a Prelude to Hell.” Paintings with sunsets reflecting off armor, castles carved into mountains. A painting of a baby with a pair of huge, purple bat wings—wide as the lava lake below.

  I sit, elbows on the computer desk, in the dark, for the next three hours. Millions of NecronicA-related catch-phrases come to me: “NecronicA—Suck a Sack of Sorcerers” or “NecronicA: Not Your Grandfather’s Demon-Art Apocalypse.” I whisper them out loud. Bits of my saliva turn rainbow-colored on the monitor.

  Then, I stand up. I bite my index finger and start to pace, the way I do only when I’m alone, and I pretend to be at a party and am really ripping on somebody. Then I spend forty good, kernel-hardening minutes hating myself, and then I take a nap. I wake up and hear the dishwasher running and Mom watching TV, and I’m so mad at Necro that when I get hungry, all I can do is drink a glass of milk and go back to sleep to kill my appetite.

  I milk-glass through the next day as well, since Fake Dad No. 3 drove Mom to dinner and thus Mom has made no dinner for me. So I put on some pants, take Mom’s car keys, and drive to Applebee’s. I tell all of the above to Toby, at the corner airplane-model booth. He pays for my French fries, and he eats his own fries five at a time, getting grease on his wristwatch, palming the appetite-sweat off his forehead.

  “Because, I saw Necro the other day,” I say. “He kept on saying ‘I’ve got a home, I’ve got a cash.’”

  Toby massages his chinfat.

  “Do you even know what that means?” I go. “Because, even worse, Necro has his own website!”

  Toby pauses, mouth open, food in it. “Like what, Necro Online?”

  “Exactly, Toby! Thank you!” I go. “He’s selling drawings, T-shirts.”

  “Textbook Colonel Hellstache,” Toby mumbles through the fries in his mouth.

  Since it feels good to feel good, I then say to Toby, “And, hold on a second—”

  I hold up one finger to let him know to wait a minute. I run out to the car and reach over the parking brake to the passenger seat, and take the folder Necro left in Toby’s car, with the drawing of the knight carrying a young man with everything on fire in the background. Back at the Airplane Booth, I slap the folder on the table. “There’s this.”

  Toby opens the folder and holds the drawing up to his face. Snot drags up his nose when he sniffles.

  “And more like that on the website!” I say. “Like, when did God decide He didn’t hate you, Necro? Like who died and made you talented? A home? A cash? He probably set those fires himself. Probably tried to kill all of us.”

  Toby’s face freezes. “Holy crap, Nate. Do you think?”

  “Why not? I don’t know. Who knows anything?”

  A corner of Toby’s mouth curves into a smile. He scratches his forehead under the plastic size adjuster on the Bills hat he’s got on backward.

  “I mean, the way Necro bailed out of the car on 490?” Toby says. “The way he didn’t have a thing to say when Luckytown accused him of Unabombing? The way he laughed after we left Goateez? You’d think: Your friend goes into a coma, and then there’s these fires, and he’s running his online castle porn.”

  I laugh for the first time in weeks; I feel oxygen return to my brow. I sip my Mountain Dew.

  “
And—and—and!” Toby says, face goofballing a little, grinning a little. “Remember how Necro was the first one to run over when Wicked College John got hit? Like he’s going out of his way to act like he cares? Or how he asked us to pick up his weapons seconds before the building exploded? Or how he was checking his watch? Or how after you made the joke about Kangaroo for a Kid, he told you and Wicked College John that life is precious?”

  And I can’t tell, right now, if Toby’s just staging a Toby Cockdrama—where he’ll take some small comment you mean nothing by and turn it into something that’s military-operation serious. Once, me and Necro started a joke about how Wicked College John’s SUV was so expensive it ran on tiny butlers that lived inside the engine. Toby called Mendon police and reported the SUV’s VIN number.

  “I guess I did bring up Kangaroo for a Kid,” I say.

  “And he brought up Did You Shee the Fight? That’s one of the Uncomebackables.”

  “I don’t know, Toby.”

  “But Necro—he can assemble an explosive.”

  Which, okay fine. Review the Necro Archives under “Explosion.” Review the time police asked him about all those vitamins he bought at CVS. Review the Walkman he blew up, the GI Joes he blew up, and the fact—how did I not notice this—that Necro never got along with Wicked College John at all.

  “And what about that one time that me and Necro and Lip Cheese and Wicked College John were having Science Rock Jam in my basement that one Christmas?” I say. “And Wicked College John was on guitar, and Necro put Johnnyfangs, that inflatable bat, remember with the skull head, on keyboards?”

  Toby rolls his eyes. “I absolutely hated Johnnyfangs. That bat was so stupid.”

  “But Wicked College John was playing ‘Light My Fire’ on guitar, and was complaining about how ‘Light My Fire’ is a keyboard-heavy song, and he suddenly screamed at Necro: ‘I need a keyboardist with fingers!’”

  “There was blood in the snow afterwards,” Toby says.