Friends and Traitors Page 9

  —Baby, she said, do you ever think about college?

  I dropped my spoon into the milk.

  Did I ever think about college? Did I ever think about college?

  Living with Adeline was like sitting sidelined at the big game, watching the team rush toward victory. While she grew into an adult, an intellectual, someone with a future, I cobbled together the autodidact’s consolation prize, an education patched together from Eurotrash art films, hand-me-downs, and science fiction paperbacks.

  —Did you know that Adeline’s father attended NYU for his DDS?

  —Adeline’s excellent at keeping secrets, I said.

  —We’ve been great friends to the university. Have you taken the SAT?

  —We didn’t take the SAT, we took the ACT.

  —But you took an admissions test?

  —Yes, I said.

  —And did well?

  —Yes, I said.

  —And your grades in high school?

  —I did very well, I said.

  This was true, but who knew if my academic prowess was won through my own merits? Being an athlete lent itself to favorable interpretation of assignments and class participation. The faster that I ran, the higher my grades. I pulled in an A average.

  —I called NYU this morning, said Suzanne. You’re well past deadline, but I asked if there wasn’t a way to bend the rules, considering how promising of a student you are, and bearing in mind the amount of money that this family has donated. They’re faxing an application to my office. You’ll need your high school transcript and two letters of recommendation. Adeline’s father was good friends with one of the trustees, so he’ll write you one, and you’ll have to ask an old teacher for the second, and then we’ll see about getting you accepted.

  —Can you do that? I asked.

  —Do what? she asked.

  —Ignore deadlines?

  —The only reason to be rich, said Suzanne, is to avoid the little details that ruin most people’s lives. Otherwise, what’s the point of having money?

  MARCH 1988

  Stacie

  One night, I lay in bed, atop my blankets, finishing Là-Bas, a novel by the French decadent Joris-Karl Huysmans, whom I’d discovered through a passing reference in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Hound.” Before leaving New York, I’d checked a few bookstores to see if they carried any Huysmans.

  One surly clerk at the Strand remembered that Dover Books published several editions of Huysmans. I walked down to 180 Varick Street, to the Dover Bookstore, and there, sure enough, on the ninth floor among the gray metal racks, were limitless copies of À rebours and Là-Bas.

  The latter recounts the story of a nineteenth-century Parisian aesthete. Ennui forces him toward a scholarly investigation of the Middle Ages, focused primarily on the personage of Gilles de Rais, an anointed nobleman and compatriot of Jeanne d’Arc, a man who helped chase the English out of France. With the war finished, Gilles’s bloodlust did not subside, driving him into a phase of outrageous debauchery. Alchemy, unspeakable sexual rites, demonology. All culminating in the murder of hundreds of children, their bones thrown into his moat. Huysmans’s protagonist follows his subject over the edge, immersing himself in a world of contemporary French Satanism, culminating in sexual encounters at a Black Mass beneath the shadow of Notre-Dame.

  A high squealing laughter sprung from Adeline’s room. I followed the sound. A blonde girl and Adeline sat on the floor, like teenyboppers from television, giggling and laughing and gossiping. The Captain supine in the blonde’s lap, furry stomach turned upward.

  —Do you remember Rebecca, the fat one from seventh grade? She, like, lost all the weight. She’s like a model now. I heard she’s dating Rob Lowe.

  —Darling, someone’s always dating Rob Lowe. It’s a universal constant.

  I coughed and pushed myself into the room.

  —Stacie, said Adeline, this is Baby.

  —Baby? asked Stacie. What kind of name is Baby?

  It’s shocking the shit you stumble upon while living in another person’s house. Suzanne had saved every photograph, every crummy Polaroid, every coffee-ringed snapshot, every pictorial memento. This mania went beyond albums and framing. Stray images were scattered through the house.

  —It’s his name, said Adeline. What kind of name is Stacie?

  —I can defend myself, I said.

  —It’s not you I’m concerned about, said Adeline. It’s her. What if you, like, beat her?

  —Why would he beat me? asked Stacie.

  The most interesting photographs were of Adeline’s time in high school. Pictures of a sophomore, a junior, a senior, dressed as late-late-late punk verging into protogoth. All black clothes, black boots, black lipstick, black eyeliner, black mascara, dyed black hair in strange croppings, sticking up and out at random, no rhyme or reason.

  Some of these photos were taken at Crossroads, or as I liked to call it, Misfit High, surrounded by a motley crew of freaks.

  After we got to Pasadena, I’d asked Adeline why we hadn’t whittled away time with her fellow mutants. They were all gone, she said. Everyone was at college. Or dead.

  Stacie was something else, a friend whom Adeline’d known since junior high. Before it all, before the death of her father, before the black makeup.

  A very special kind of California girl. Too perfect and too sharp, as if she spent hours each morning in the bathroom, standing before her mirror like a minor Fascist bureaucrat, removing every trace of any possible flaw. Her face was almost unnatural, as if she weren’t real, as if she were a hologram projected from a higher dimension into our familiar three.

  —Baby’s got a mean streak a mile wide and twenty fathoms deep, said Adeline. You wouldn’t know it looking at him.

  After beating a retiree at Variety Photoplays, I resolved myself against violence, a vow kept for nine months until I pounded the sense out of this asshole from Staten Island who told Adeline that he could smell her pussy.

  Being quick to anger was so goddamned embarrassing, as it revealed my belief that the best solution to every problem was to find the biggest person in the room and hit him until he cried.

  —What do you guys, like, want to do tonight? asked Stacie. Should we, like, go dancing or something?

  —Yes! I shouted.

  —Where should we go?

  —What about Marilyn’s? asked Adeline.

  —Marilyn’s is, like, so passé. We’re adults now. That’s kid’s stuff.

  —I haven’t been in years.

  —It’s all ages. Do you know what that, like, means?

  —Let’s do it, said Adeline. We won’t even drive. We can walk.

  —We’re too old for Marilyn’s, said Stacie. You can’t repeat the past.

  —Can’t repeat the past? asked Adeline. Of course you can.

  I changed my clothes while Adeline and Stacie smoked pot. The sickly scent wafted into my room. I rushed back to Adeline’s boudoir.

  —Adeline! What if your mom smells it?

  Adeline made a disapproving click with her tongue.

  —Is the big bad pot monster scary wary for Baby waby? she asked. Are you going to cry?

  She was right. Why would Suzanne care? Suzanne didn’t care about anything. She’d probably danced naked on Malibu beaches while the radios of cherry station wagons blasted out “Mockingbird,” toking dope and getting her brains screwed out by surfers. Deep down, I wasn’t much more than a cotton-pickin’ chicken picker, shucking corn and squeezing teats. I’d never be sophisticated. I’d never keep up. I took a few hits off the joint, letting it seep straight into my brain chemistry.

  The first fifteen minutes of our walk were through an upper-class heaven, lush greenery and beautiful homes. At what seemed like a random intersection, Adeline pivoted.

  —Where are you going? asked Stacie.

  —You know, said Adeline.

  —Oh, said Stacie.

  We followed Adeline down a long street, stopping before a modest two-stor
y dwelling. The lights were on. The living room was visible. Two children played inside, chasing each other back and forth.

  —Why are we here? I asked.

  —I grew up here, said Adeline. Mother bought her present home roughly four years ago. Daddy would never have tolerated such a vulgar place.

  —It’s not so bad, said Stacie.

  —It’s vulgar, said Adeline.

  We retraced our footsteps, heading back to the intersection and entering a business district. The streets grew wider, the traffic became heavier, the trees sparser, the buildings uglier.

  To look at Stacie, to hear her speak, I wouldn’t’ve imagined that a thought could enter her head unless it was blown into her skull with a gun. But here she was, crossing Colorado Boulevard, beneath a cement bell tower, telling us that she’d decided to major in Classics with a focus on the Ancient Greeks.

  —Why Classics? I asked.

  —It’s, you know, like, I thought I like wanted to do foreign policy but at USC, we’ve got to, like, take prerequisite courses, you know? So one of them is on the history of philosophy and so, okay, we were, like, reading a lot of Plato, you know, and then we like got to the Symposium. And it was, like, the funniest and most interesting thing I’d ever read, you know? So I read more and more about the Greeks, like, as much as I could.

  —What of the Romans? asked Adeline.

  —The Romans not so much, said Stacie. I don’t really, like, like them.

  A purple awning hung over the entrance, bearing white script lettering: MARILYN’S BACK STREET. The entrance was in the rear of a strip mall. We walked around the block, going through a parking lot full of teenagers. They squealed and chuckled. Different than New York teenagers, the ones who menaced with nothing more than a stare. These kids were easy. Soft faces, soft bodies, soft eyes. I could’ve stolen their lunch money.

  The club was dark, its décor time-warping to the late 1970s. Packed, crammed, jammed, wedged, lodged, stuffed, chock-a-block with every adolescent in a twenty-mile radius. I could smell the hormonal insecurity. I could hear pimples popping.

  After Spider-Man’s wedding reception, I’d returned to Tunnel. Three times. Without Adeline. Michael Alig threw parties in the basement. The best were Larry Tee’s Celebrity Club. I dug the vibe, part circus, part freak show. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but as much as I liked Michael’s scene, I preferred the regular Tunnel. The basement was performance art. Upstairs it was pure dance. I could lose my mind with the physicality, with the sound of the beat.

  Adeline moved over to a wall, staring at the dance floor, glaring at these poor kids, most of whom were about six years her junior. She lit a clove cigarette.

  —Why did we come here? she asked.

  —You insisted! said Stacie.

  The DJ put on “Faith” by George Michael.

  —I love this song, I yelled. Come on, let’s dance!

  Adeline wouldn’t. Stacie would. There we were, a pair of twenty-year-olds shaking ourselves silly among an awkward throng of high schoolers. Nothing in the club ever means anything, but here in Marilyn’s Back Street there was an especial lack of consequence, because there was no chance of seeing these people again. And if we did, what did it matter? They were dickheads from high school! In Pasadena! I danced harder, faster, thrilled by the anonymity.

  A song came on, one that I’d heard before, “No New Tale to Tell” by Love and Rockets, with some very sexy lyrics: You cannot go against nature / because when you do / go against nature / it’s part of nature too. The flute solo. The kids waved their arms and jumped like epileptics. So did I. So did Stacie.

  I yelled at Stacie: —I’m exhausted!

  —Me too!

  Soaking wet with sweat, clothes sticking to my skin. Stacie grabbed my hand, pulling me off the dance floor. We couldn’t find Adeline. We went into the parking lot. Adeline was leaning against a gray El Camino, smoking.

  —Why are you, like, out here? asked Stacie.

  —I couldn’t, like, take it, she said. So I’ve been talking with the kids.

  —What did the kids say? I asked.

  —Absolutely nothing, said Adeline. The kids never say anything. They never have.

  We walked home.

  —You know, said Stacie, that song’s right, you know. There really is no new tale to tell. Like, I was talking about earlier, you know, like the Symposium? It’s, like, a big gay orgy, where all these Athenian intellectuals hang around getting drunk with Socrates, talking about the different meanings of love, and of course it’s, like, some of them are very carnal, and then some of them are, like, ethereal, and then at the end, this beautiful youth of Athens, Alcibiades, storms into the party, and he’s, like, upset, because he can’t, like, figure out how to fuck Socrates. So his definition is, like, the opposite of a definition, it’s just, like, a list of all the things Socrates says he knows about love, but how he won’t ever, like, actually, you know, do anything about it. Like, he won’t fuck Alcibiades.

  —Hooray, said Adeline.

  She walked upstairs and went to bed.

  —The last few months were pretty rough, I said.

  —Adeline’s always like this, said Stacie. She’s a depressive.

  I brought Stacie into the kitchen and made us ham and cheddar sandwiches. We sat beneath the dim track lighting, stools pulled up to the island, talking about this and that, that and this. The Captain strolled in, giving us a sideways glance before he visited the pantry. I heard him digging in his litter box.

  —What about the Symposium, I asked, made you want to major in Classics?

  —It’s Socrates’ definition of love, you know, like, Platonic love? If you read it closely, what he’s really saying, you know, is that love is, like, just friendship and the way that friendship, like, nurtures a love of the good. And, like, I loved that, you know? Like, I liked the thought that there was a culture somewhere that valued friendship. That there was a book which told you that you could have friends.

  MARCH 1988

  Baby Dreams

  With the first few dreams, I thought that I was talking to my mirror image. As the nights went on, it became clear that my dreams were of Emil, as if his ghost haunted me through sleep.

  One dream kept reoccurring. Emil in the living room, on a couch, watching television. I came in from behind, drawn by the noise of the idiot box.

  Emil turned.

  —It’s you, he said.

  —It’s me, I said.

  —Or is that me?

  —Or are you me?

  I sat next to Emil. We watched television together. Emil explained that the program was about Hell and Heaven, and had been filmed on location.

  —Everyone’s very interested in the afterlife these days, he said, so it’s a brilliant idea to make a documentary.

  —Yes, I said.

  —Do you want to see where I am? They filmed outside my apartment.

  —I don’t believe in Heaven.

  —Who said I was in Heaven?

  —I don’t believe in Hell, either.

  —What if Hell believes in you?

  I’d jolt awake, sweating. It happened every night.

  APRIL 1988

  Baby, Adeline, and Stacie Go to Scream

  Stacie called, suggesting that we go to Scream, a club located in Los Angeles proper. I demanded that Adeline say yes. We’d been in Pasadena for nearly two months and I still hadn’t seen Hollywood. Not even the sign!

  —You won’t like it, said Adeline. Hollywood’s even more of a sewer than New York. It’s east of Eden and west of garbage town.

  —I want to see the Walk of Fame, I said.

  —Jesus, she said. You’ve got to be kidding.

  —Adeline! I want to see La La Land!

  Stacie came over. We got stoned. They decided that I should drive us into the city, despite my license being, at best, only semi-valid. Adeline wanted to take the 134 to the 2, but Stacie insisted that I drive on the 110, a terrifying road with little lanes and ever
yone speeding about forty miles an hour too fast. The darkness of the new moon didn’t help, and I almost crashed three or four times. Zipping around curves, moving through dark tunnels.

  And then, after the final bend, there it was.

  Rising cluster of anemic skyscrapers and endless expanse of built-out humanity. I’d seen New York, I’d lived in New York, I’d loved New York. Nothing looks as good as the Manhattan skyline. Nothing impresses like New York.

  But Los Angeles! Those lights!

  —Fuck, said Adeline, my heavy flow is supposed to be tomorrow, but it’s coming on strong.

  —Did you bring extra? asked Stacie.

  We took the Wilshire exit, passing through a straight shot of emptiness, nothing but office buildings, strip malls, and homeless people. Stacie told me to find somewhere to park.

  —Where’s the Hollywood sign? I asked, as we walked.

  —Calm down, said Adeline. We’ll see it when we’re, like, done with the club. These things’ve been there for, like, decades. They aren’t going anywhere.

  We parked and walked toward the club, joining a crowd that thickened with each step, an ant trail ending at an enormous cement building, a slab monolith festooned with Art Deco angel statues holding swords and torches in their folded hands. The entrance was an intricate metal gate rising about two stories, topped with a superbly ornate clock. Words carved into the building, running above the metal: ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER YE WOULD THAT MEN SHOULD DO TO YOU, DO YE EVEN SO TO THEM.

  —And by their fruits ye shall know them.

  We passed through the metal entrance, moving into a beautiful lobby with a grand carpeted staircase at the back of the room. Two wings ran off either side, pounding music coming from each. People all over the stairs, standing around, talking, smoking, drinking. Rock’n’rollers, mods, rockabilly, death rockers, punks, goths, freaks, weirdos, losers.

  —I’ll find you guys later, I said.

  A rhythmic looping sound, like waves crashing, the earth itself quaking. I followed it into the dark room. A ghoulish malnourished guy with giant ears was at the microphone, playing a guitar and singing, a cute girl on the keyboards, and two other men, bass and drums. The voice coming from the lunatic was deep, grating, irritating.