Phone Fun
By Scott Deckman
Monday. Jun 25, 3:38 PM
Chapter 21: collison course.

He parked the van in a dimly lit parking garage, ready for his blind date. The accessories were ready: the vehicle stocked just in case something came up and he couldn’t wait until the apartment. This whole phone thing was a bit different: and a bit dangerous if he didn’t mind his Ps and Qs he had to admit to himself, and it was getting a little out of control, he’d also admit. And his girlfriend had seen the list and the notes on each prospective score, which on one hand was easy (thankfully) to explain away, a moment of weakness, I wouldn’t have ever gone through with it baby, come on now honey, let’s try this new shit I just got, it’s supposed to be straight from Colombia, real pure, the good shit. Good thing that drugs were her ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, such a little whore, he really could do so much better. But what the hell, she was gorgeous and fucked and sucked so well, even if lately he had come real, real, very close to letting his half-life totally override good sense and letting his fingers (soon after exploring her succulent flesh) end her putrid existence. It was a little frightening, and something he had to keep tabs on if his vida loca was to continue, and really, he was busy perfecting his American, no, that was way too provisional, too limiting: he was busy constructing his human portrait, the only way he could ever express the void that he felt, the love, the hate. The body count stood at 13, and up to more than one a week: if he could, at all costs, hunt one down. For if he was unsuccessful in his pursuit, the misery was brutal and it basically took a drug-induced coma to pull him through such a defeat. The urge needed satiation, demanded it, and the drugs weren’t keeping him as in-check as they used to. His need was zigzagging out of control, but maybe this is what it all lead to, maybe in martyrdom would be his out?

He was dressed in a Polo rugby, a pair of Eddie Bauer khakis, and Timberland hikers, all fairly new, and all augmented by one rich, good-looking picture of ideal genetics and gestalt. And he knew it, knew it in the way both sexes treated him, the way he attracted things like magnets, the way knowledge came to him, knew it by his mastery of the moment (even now, when things were careening out of control), that thing Freud always talked about, or was that… Nietzsche? He had taken the call of the Superman and ran with it, and as he neared Hard Rock Cafe, nestled in this gaudy crass paragon of commercialization-cum-working class guilt and temporary amnesia, he could smell victory, it was written all over him, his hobby, his deportment. The world was his for the taking and once more he deserved it.

*****

Marylynn sat with her iced tea awaiting a hottie of serious pedigree, a guy who hadn’t talked about sex (directly), hadn’t breathed funny (not that she could tell), hadn’t talked about getting blasted or high, and did I mention he was hot? Maybe this was gonna be different, who knows? He seemed too good to be true, something her grandmother always said to be wary of: “Sweetie, when something looks that good, something’s gotta be wrong with it. Just remember that, dearie.” Nana said that to her in the nursing home shortly before passing. She fidgeted, drinking this tea that was a little bitter, tea that she didn’t feel like dumping any extra sugar in – two was enough – maybe unconsciously not wanting to muck things up with a pushy little attitude. Life had given her hard knocks and maybe little inconveniences like these were the Creator’s way of instilling grace in her, something, even she’d admit, was lacking. She was dressed in a delectable little getup: Tommy Hilfiger sky blue denim overalls (price tag: $79.99 on sale at Macy’s) and light brown open-toed slingbacks exposing her delicate little feet, something her mom loved playing with incessantly when she was brought home from the hospital, all the way up until Marylynn was using those tootsies to get around. And even then, when she’d be given baths, Mom would still marvel at the cute little things, and even give them angel kisses as Marylynn would squeal and try to get away.

In her mind she looked cute and sexy and sinfully hoovered all the looks she was receiving from guys, ages 14 to 60, all wanting to take her home, all wishing they were eating and talking with her. God was smiling on her this night, and she just knew it was going to be a rousing success, a Hallmark moment right in this lovely foreign town her parents always degraded, even though the father spent a good portion of his younger life here, in nearby Parkville.

She saw him before he saw her.

Oh my God…

On second thought, he didn’t look exactly like the picture but, incredibly, he was just as hot. Her insides started their butterfly march, and her eyes the winsome, probing gaze; Marylynn suddenly felt a bit naked, usually having the upper hand in these encounters, and suddenly she blanched.

He was out of her league.

He was wandering around the other side of the bar, finally spotting her; he pretended to wave to someone while moving his mouth in the subterfuge. He was important, he was in demand, he knew people for Christ’s sake. And when he finally locked eyes with her from across the bar he almost fainted, she was so deliciously innocent and young, so like a lost puppy glad to see her master that his knees went weak and he briefly thought of not killing her, at least not right away. As he ventured further around the Gibson Les Paul-shaped bar, a strange tingling engulfed his diaphragm, a subtle yet building tide of neuropeptides, searching, swerving from capillary to muscle to bone and back, signaling a trail of memory state, nebulae, something altogether unexpected and unfortunate, though arcane.

He put on a happy face as he got closer.

Oh my God here he comes, she was thinking. My hair, my eyes, my face, that pimple that’s starting to grow on my chin! All the crazy stuff: my overalls are old hat, my shoes! What am I thinking he’s a professional and I work at a coffee bar. But above all, the admission that he was way, way too gorgeous and she was way, way lucky and, oh he just looked so… strong and masculine, so immaculate, and those lips and cheekbones… so beautiful! Maybe this was bad, she reminded herself, a temperance that had about as much chance of getting through her harried brain presently as trigonometry, which she somehow managed to fail three times, once at South Lakes High School and twice at Mason. And her emotional IQ wasn’t fairing much better, either.

“Pete?”

“Marylynn.” Pete went and hugged her, breathing in her intoxicating Estée Lauder Beautiful scent, freshly scrubbed skin, her essence.

She flushed noticeably.

“Pete, wow… you look very nice tonight,” she chirped, little-girl smile plastered on indelibly.

“Thank you, so do you.”

He could feel the trembles start and cursed his life.

“So… did you have a nice drive over here?”

“Ah… yeah, it was great, not much traf – bartender! I’ll have a Bass, uhh,” he looked at Marylynn, expecting a rebuff, remembering that whole Jesus thing, but got a cold hand on his instead, a curt smile and an affirmative nod. “Bass it is.”

“It’s on draft, okay?”

“Draft. Draft would be fine. Yes, draft it’ll be.”

He turned toward her with something approaching respectful reservation, “Well, didn’t want to…”

“It’s okay, just be yourself. I can’t impose my will on anyone these days. Hmmmm…”

“Yeah… me either.”

“Pete,” she reached out to his hand again. “Is anything wrong in there?”

“Ah… no, no, of course not, of course not. Just fine, just glad to be here.”

He grabbed an errant napkin from the bar and sopped up some perspiration from his expensively kept integument, Marylynn’s smile again evocative of a hazy shade of meaning, something foreign and close at the same time, like the Statue of Liberty or Embassy Row or…

“Okay, you just seem… have you ever met anyone off this thing before?”

“No, no, you’re the first one Marylynn.”

“Great, I’ve met a couple and let me tell you. The first one…”

He tried to concentrate on her cute little cheekbones, which in reality, he’d have to admit, were only a centimeter or two south from being modelesque, and under that aw shucks demeanor he sensed a wild ride in the hay. But his hands were now officially trembling, slightly, hardly noticeable, interminably, and as she rambled on about phonelinewhatever, he checked his pants for the little vial of coke and his little batch of Xanax, knowing he’d have to have a refill pretty soon in the little boy’s room if this shit was gonna fly; she’d never go anywhere with him like this, not if his body continued its hellbent path of betrayal at a time when he needed it to stay together the most. Anything but look into those cute little periwinkles that seemed altogether devoid of malice and lurid detail, so, so, so… this was hard.

“Marylynn, what… did he say when you did that?”

“What did he do what? I’m sorry, I…”

“Oh, okay, that’s right, I’m sorry, must be the beer.”

He smiled maniacally and pointed to his draft, which he had taken two sips of since she was doing her scattershot synopsis of online dating in the sketchy, volatile ’00s.

“Yeah, well what about you Pete?”

He just stared past her.

“Oh yeah, sorry, just ah, hectic day at work, please forgive me. Marylynn, just ah…” he bent over and coughed, briefly stuck his handsome head up and smiled. “Sorry about this, something in my throat.” He got out while managing to get at the Xanax in his khaki’d pocket, which he flung in his mouth, two little green cure-alls in the strength of 100 mil apiece. As soon as he reappeared he washed the things down: he only had a few left in his pocket, hopefully he wouldn’t have to use them, as hard as they were to get these days.

“Okay, you look better,” she said, knowing not only how lame this sounded, but also how untrue.

“So Pete, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself, you know, where you went to school, where you grew up, I can’t remember if you told me or not.”

“Growing up… Pittsburgh, yes I grew up in the Hunnington section, real nice, ever been there?”

“No… no I haven’t. Why don’t you clue me in a little?”

She was doing this annoying-cutesy thing with her straw, looking like prized livestock in his mind, just ravishing yet something, somehow, there was a threat, salmonella lurked, disguised, unnamable menace.

“Let’s see…” he was having trouble concentrating, as if he could actually see the malfunctioning at work behind his eyes; he saw, don’t ask me how, neurotransmitters that weren’t quite firing right, somehow staggered, laggard, not quite cutting the ground substance’s mustard, and to his horror, he saw some that weren’t firing at all. Lucidity was a thing of the past, left at the office, and still he trilled a web of deception that surprised him even. Thank God for the speedy influence of Xanax.

“…And then… well, Harvard. And it was really a blast, really. The New York job, with Sherman Leggman, went fine, but here in… Baltimore, well, it was a sweeter deal, VP status. The pay wasn’t much more, but, okay, maybe $30,000 more, but another year or two and I’ll be worth twice what I am now, and then I can basically call my own shots.”

He smiled, turned, and downed the rest of his Bass, the regal English ale probably settling him a bit as well. Maybe that was it.

“Another glass of tea there, Marylynn?”

“Sure, yeah, that’d be nice, please. And thank you.”

Her eyes, there it went again. He grit his teeth and breathed in, steadied himself with the most saccharin of gazes, and ordered two more drinks.

*****

“Ha?”

Coming to, Gilmer was sure he missed something vitally important to his wellbeing on this planet: did he miss The Sopranos, a final, Christmas, Easter, a new Passion Cove? Then it hit him, first the Camaro’s leather upholstery, then the stinking crowd at Camden, the cool breeze, the crack of the Louisville Slugger, the indifferent stares everywhere, the hot dogs and beer and the mesmerizing girl selling overpriced concessions, and…

Christ…

The whole scene came into focus: the yelling; the big black brute of a security guard who wouldn’t listen; being escorted out to Eutaw Street by what had to be three of those blues, all as large or larger than Jimbo even; the mini-melee they all took part in with said bouncers, killjoys; the stupid little bitch who totally overreacted. Why was she even nice to him in the first place? And she was, no two ways about it, and he did nothing out of line. And of course his eventual collapse and the two of them talking about him while he was in the roiling ether, neither here nor there, but kinda sorta both, about what he did, about who he was, about what alcohol sometimes did to him, and incredibly, he sort of agreed with them. Except the faggot part.

“Ah…”

His head hurt as soon as he attempted movement, and a nice little buzz reminded him that he was still in its dastardly clutches, and what he needed now was another beer to settle him.

Zone…

“Fuckin’ bastards.”

After a big breath in and a fumble or two, he made it out of the car with a slouch, head a battering ram of discontent, a split cranium, snake eyes.

Oh my Lord…

On instinct, just before he closed the door, he rummaged around Jimbo’s car for some aspirin, first in the glove box, then the dash, until finally striking pay dirt with the little catchall in front of the gear-shifter module.

“Thank God.”

He grabbed three of the Bayer, or all that was left in the little handy clear plastic bottle, and stopped short of putting them in his mouth, as he would wait for some suds or water or some type of liquid.

After shutting the door he walked gingerly, blinking hard, head still a little clouded, somehow not even wanting to throw up. He meandered, hustled, navigated across Pratt Street and beheld that monument to urban renewal, a kind of inverse of the previous paradigm: suburbanization of the downtown sector. His eyes moved from ESPN Zone to Barnes & Noble to Hard Rock Cafe.

Oh fuck…

Still-fresh memory burned: God if he needed that scar, that cut. Great thing about him, you had to admit: no matter how bad he screwed up, there would always be some other foible to rain down on him soon enough, some obscene perfidy of the human spirit to make him forget. Now he wished he could just jump into the harbor and drown, end his pathetic misery, maybe start over as a fish, reverse this evolution thing. It had to turn out better than this.

His heart was sinking.

*****

“Oh God, Pete,” she giggled.

He reached out and grabbed her clammy hand, feeling better/worse each second, about ready to reel this one in before he capsized.

“You ah… you seem to be enjoying yourself pretty good over there, with all my tales of idolatry and bigotry.”

“Oh you’re harmless, underneath that suave veneer. You’re a softie.”

“Yeah, baha hahahahaah,” he couldn’t help the conceit. After all, she said it.

Precious.

“You’re such a sweetheart, Pete.”

The look in his eyes registered another cranial explosion. He swallowed hard and smiled through this latest wave of mutilation, more nefarious because he could almost place the tsunami. Cruel flesh memory finally digging up the skeletons, rattling the chains, the sickness, remembrance on the turn of a phrase, slight eye contact, sly, sly thing, creeping closer to get him, freaking him out, but smile, smile, smile, yet still unnamed, but ever closer.

He had to move.

“I gotta use the little boy’s room,” he rose on licorice legs, almost falling over his stool, causing her a second or two of hesitation until that killer smile encroached upon all worry and doubt: wonderlust is alive and well.

He bounded for the men’s room, wandering about in a daze as she watched him, bumping into walls festooned with autographed guitars and other rockin’ memorabilia, bumping into people, headed the wrong way until he finally lumbered in the direction of the downstairs bathroom, somehow, the circuitous route better than the path not taken… she hoped.

“Oh my God.”

She actually thought about waiting for him in front of the bathroom, a pitiful intimation that was shunned as soon as the impulse reared its cloying head in her brain.

Oh Marylynn…

She played with the straw in her tea, glad she used enough sugar so it was at least sweet this time. There she sat, heart and saliva and bone and marrow, enthralled with this hot new guy, and, yes, so he drank, she couldn’t stop the world and if he ever liked her enough maybe she could make him quit. Witnessing took time, she reminded herself, but she felt this weird loving sense from him when he touched her, something a little deeper than skin, and while she couldn’t be sure, Marylynn thought that they may have been connecting somehow, an unspoken sense of wonder and trust and, oh well she tried to circumvent any gedankenexperiment from reaching fruition. And he was soooo gorgeous.

“Oh God.”

Marylynn watched in muted horror as what looked like that Gilmer character from the phone line – whose picture she’d already deleted from her desktop (and tried deleting from her mind) – she saw what looked like him stumbling around, looking haggard, sidling up to the bar opposite her with one hand clutched and his hair looking really sodden, crappy. She watched in amazement as he ordered a drink, and then in unadulterated dread as he locked eyes with her while downing a Coors Light like a man possessed, on a mission.

Oh Christ that’s her I can’t believe this…

Yeah, he didn’t know what his feet were up to, and with the way Jimbo was acting, he didn’t feel like putting up with that cranky asshole for a second in the Zone. He’d found he’d rather wallow in humiliation all by his lonesome, hardly explaining his current predicament, glutton for punishment he seemed to be these days. Remembrance being what it was, the thought of redemption or catharsis really wasn’t at the forefront when he stumbled into the bistro (I mean, what were the odds?), but the fact that she was here was to him more than stark coincidence, more than the randomness of fate, it was a revelation of sorts, a providential second chance (maybe?) to put things right. She made it tougher by turning away as soon as they locked eyes. He couldn’t believe any of this: the conversation’s lewd turn, the numb outcome, the penetrating guilt put away, never to be thought of again. That was the promise, or the hot dog hottie that coaxed his crazy sense of self, his near arrest at the stadium, his head, his friend’s curses and hexes, the New American voodoo spell he was drowning under, all undertow and no peak, no crest, just draining vortex, and by God now this.

And he wasn’t gonna waste this, whatever this was.

“Oh God here he comes.”

The fire started as kindling, just smoky nuance in the ribs, but it soon graduated into something needing a little red extinguisher, then the flames threatened inferno; she wasn’t ready to confront the truth about herself tonight, tonight was for untethered joy and release, for the hottie convert and supposed proselytization, for her pleasure: not this black spot. He pitched closer, kind of swaggered a little and hitched up right beside her, right in Pete’s seat; oh how she prayed for divine intervention, angels on high. She stared straight ahead as the rippling flames of body, mind, and soul begged to differ.

“Hey… I can’t…”

He suddenly stopped, hotflashed, not knowing if mistaken identity was better or worse. Seconds crept by like red imported fire ants, magnified by time, circumstance and weight.

“What can’t you do?” She turned toward him, voice a little shaky.

“I… first off I wanna apologize… and second off, thanks for keeping me in mind,” he tipped his beer to her.

“I can’t believe this,” she said with impassioned dispassion, blinking hard, suddenly conscious of her eyeballs. “I think you better go.”

“I ah… it’s okay,” Gilmer, still intoxicated, thought it good to pontificate on the pleasures of the corporeal. “You know, ah… that thing you told me about. I just wish it didn’t upset you is all.” He stared at her while swigging another gulp. Some of the fermented liquid got loose and dribbled down his chin, which he unceremoniously wiped away. “I mean, uggh! Oops. God, sorry. Look, I know I’m a mess but I didn’t mean to soil you.”

“Just leave! Just go,” she said, choking back tears.

“Oh Christ, I mean, God I’m… please… stop… I…” he was exasperating, both to look at and to listen to, riding the roller coaster of his life: steep climbs, large drops, pitiful outcomes. Damaged, fractured vignettes, raunch and pap, spit and hand, hops and barley. “Was at the game today."

Scott Deckman

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