"1999" - A Third (and final) Excerpt
From my latest novel "1999"
Martin’s birthday fell on a Monday that year. But his mother held the party the day before, on Sunday, during what turned out to be a scorching late summer afternoon that broke all sorts of crazy records. The heat index reached almost a hundred and five degrees. There was no wind. Humidity was at seventy-five percent. And if all that didn’t turn his special day into the sweltering Hell that it was destined to become, the air conditioner crapped out. To bear it he assisted in opening every window and door in the trailer, flies, gnats, wasps and bees be damned, and then, while his mom baked the cake, he went to Walmart to purchase a couple box fans for added ventilation. That helped a little, but not really.
His mother had soured quite a bit on Leah since their arrest. But Martin said that if she was not allowed to come then he most certainly wouldn’t be there either.
Despite all the hullaballoo surrounding her Leah was over an hour late. He was standing at the open door peering out at the street when she finally showed up. She opened her car door and promptly fell out of it. She righted herself, held her hands out at her side and wavered in place as she tried to capture her balance, and then tottered towards him, snaking a sinuous path from her car to his doorway with a big no-hole’s-barred shit-eating grin on her face. She had a small wrapped gift sticking out of her purse. When she reached the porch she threw her arms around him and almost fell over again. He had to hold her up. “Happy birthday,” she slurred. She smelled of weed, cigarettes and liquor.
Martin squinted into her eyes. “Are you fucked up?”
“Of course.” She waved a hand through the air and handed him the gift out of her purse. “This is for you.”
“You can’t be here fucked up. My mom totally has it out for you right now.”
“Psst.” She waved her hand about again. “I got just the thing to fix me right up. Can we go to your room?”
“You’re an hour late.”
“I was busy.” She sauntered past him and towards his bedroom. “Goddamn it is hot in this house.”
“Air conditioner’s broken.” He studied his gift. It was in a plain white box with a bright red bow. “What’d you get me?”
“Oh, that? It’s just for show. It’s not your real present.”
“What’s my real present?”
She did a sudden about-face at the entrance to his room that nearly caused her to topple over again but Martin caught her. “Oh you’ll see. Later.” She gave him a tiny peck on the lips.
When they got into his room Leah sat on the bed and dug her bag of crystal out of her purse. “You got a CD case or something?”
Martin tossed her one. “I see you came bearing multiple gifts.”
“This’ll help sober me up some. You want to do a line?”
“I don’t see why not.” Then, indicating his gift: “Should I open this now?”
She spread out four lines onto the CD case and made them neat with her driver’s license. “You can do whatever you want. Like I said, it’s just for show. It would’ve been weird to show up without anything.”
He slipped the red bow off the box and opened it. Inside was a navy-blue necktie covered in designs that resembled DNA helixes. He held it up and looked at her incredulously. “A tie? Really?”
She shrugged. “I just thought it seemed normal, like the kind of thing a girlfriend would give her boyfriend. Was I wrong?”
“I don’t wear ties.”
“But like, you might soon, eventually, when we jet, you know, who knows, you might need it for like a job interview or something. Or for the wedding.” She snorted the first two lines, then handed him her straw. He bent over to snort what remained. “Anyway. Like I said, it’s not your real present.”
“Okay okay I get it.”
“I feel so much better now.”
“You were drinking?”
“Just a little. I got this whole big thing planned for you later, I can’t wait. I’m so excited!”
“Well. Let’s try to get through this thing first.”
She leaned back on his bed and crossed her legs, gazing up at him. She was dressed in one of her Type O Negative t-shirts and a little black skirt with fishnet stockings. On her feet were her Doc Martens. She looked very sexy.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You want me to suck your dick before we go back out?”
“Does a duck smoke quack?”
She threw her head back and guffawed. “So dumb. Get over here.”
She grabbed him by his belt and yanked him towards her. He almost fell on top of her but he caught himself by grabbing one of the bed posts. She began unbuckling his belt but then his mother’s voice called from the kitchen. “Martin? Martin? Is Leah here yet? The food is ready.”
Leah pouted. “Aww shucks.”
“Rain check?”
“Oh you know it. Let’s go see what your mom thinks about that tie. I bet she’ll love it.”
They came into the kitchen holding hands. Martin twirled the tie around his finger so it was the first thing his mother saw.
“Oh hi, Leah.” His mother gave her a small hug. “I didn’t know if you were here.”
“I just got here actually.”
“And the birthday boy!” She took the tie from him and held it loosely to give it a once over. “A tie! Did you get him this?”
“I thought it matched his eyes.”
“It does! Maybe between you and me we can start getting him to dress a little bit more maturely.”
Martin and Leah sat at the table.
“I’m so not hungry,” Leah whispered.
“Me neither. Just pretend to eat.”
His birthday dinner had been picked up from KFC, which he had personally requested. There was a single large bucket filled with fried chicken and smaller containers of mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw, mac & cheese, broccoli and baked beans. Martin was allowed to serve himself first, it being his birthday, and then he passed the food around the table. They ate on Styrofoam plates with plastic utensils.
Their plates were nearly identical. They took a single chicken leg each, a small scoop of mashed potatoes and a tiny dab of coleslaw. They ate slowly, the amphetamines coursing through their bodies turning everything dry and tasteless. They had to swallow each bite with large gulps of soda to force it down.
For dessert his mother had made his favorite cake from when he was a kid, vanilla with chocolate frosting. She brought it in with the seventeen candles already burning. She and Leah sang him happy birthday.
“Make a wish, make a wish!”
He gripped Leah’s thigh under the table as he closed his eyes. He didn’t believe in wishes, but behaved as though he was making one anyway so as not to upset his mother. After he blew out the candles she cheered and clapped her hands. Then she cut the cake and served everyone ice cream. The cake and ice cream turned out to be just as tasteless as the meal.
Then it was time for presents.
“All right honey which one do you want to open first?”
There were only two to choose from, a large one and a small one, the latter which turned out not to be a gift at all but a collection of brochures to various local creative writing and film programs. “I thought we could sit down together and start thinking about where you’re going to go to college,” his mother said.
The second gift, the large one, was very, very heavy and in a square box. “This is to go with your college brochures,” his mother told him.
It was a black antique vintage typewriter.
“I found it at that antique shop on Main. Forty bucks. Can you believe it? It needs a new ribbon and maybe some minor repairs, but I think it suits you.”
Martin was unimpressed. He hit a couple keys and they stuck together. “Nobody writes with typewriters anymore. They use word processors now.”
His mother looked hurt. “You know we can’t afford a computer.”
“Well you just wasted forty bucks.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“It’s just a fact.”
“I just thought that you might like typing away on one of those like the pros used to. Don’t you remember when you were little and I used to have that little electric typewriter?”
He didn’t.
“You were probably four or five and you could already read. And you’d get your little picture books and you would retype the words into the typewriter. You used to tell me how you liked the sound it made. You’d bring me these little plagiarized stories and try to pass them off as your own.” She laughed softly. “Don’t you remember that?”
“Is that true?”
“You’ve always wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember.”
Leah squeezed his hand under the table.
“Is that everything? Am I free to go?”
“You wouldn’t like to stay and visit a little while?”
“Leah and I have plans.”
“Plans doing what, exactly?”
“I made us dinner reservations,” Leah put in.
“But we just ate.”
No one had anything to say to that.
*
Martin watched the slow darkness descending on the flatlands outside the window of Leah’s hearse. She sped the whole way. She was exuberant and giddy and kept glancing at him. When they were nearing the cemetery Martin took a deep breath and sighed loudly. He pivoted his shoulders to look at her. “So what is this big special surprise, anyway?”
“Oh you are not going to believe it. It is the surprise of surprises, baby.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
But she stayed mum.
By the time they reached their destination it was full dark. There were no stars. A strange late summer cloud cover had moved in over them blotting out the moon. They got out and came together at the front of the car. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. “I love you.”
He sighed in a tired sort of way. “I love you too.”
She gazed up into his eyes keeping her arms around his waist. “So when you first see what I’ve gotten you you might be a little taken aback. But don’t freak out or anything. It’s going to be great.”
“What is it?”
“I got butterflies in my stomach I’m so nervous and excited.”
“You’re just still fucked up probably.”
“Can you grab the lantern? It’s in the back.”
That’s when he got his first whiff of what he might be in for. He opened the back hatch to find blood on the carpet. Not a lot. But noticeable. He grabbed the lantern and shut the hatch. He almost jumped out of his skin when he turned around because Leah was right there, staring at him with that big crazy grin.
“What is the one thing you want more than anything in the whole wide world?”
“That’s easy. Your pussy.”
She threw her head back and guffawed, then reached out for his hand. “Hm. Well. This is almost as good. Come on. This way.”
He followed her into the cabin and to a closed door near the kitchenette. Leah opened it. It led down a dark set of dangerous-looking stairs.
“Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“This is going to be great.”
He felt a sudden pinch of fear in his chest. When he tried to speak he couldn’t. A thick copper lump rose to the top of his throat. He swallowed it back down and tried again. “What is it?” His voice was barely a whisper.
“Oh you’ll see. You go first. Since you have the lantern.”
Martin bent over to peer down the stairway. A strong fetid odor drifted out. Something like sweat mixed with something else he could not identify. He gave Leah a long fretful look. “This better be good.”
“Oh it will be.”
As he descended the only sound at first was Leah’s footsteps behind him, which was a relief, since for a moment he’d been sure she was planning to push him down the stairs and lock him up. He didn’t like small dark places. They made him tense. His body contracted. He gripped the railing, taking each step with caution. He heard something moving around down there. A rat, maybe, or some other rodent. Almost sounded like crying but was much too faint.
At the base of the stairs the odor became even stronger. Something almost tangible that he could feel tickling the ends of his nostrils. But nothing could have prepared him for what he discovered when he reached the bottom, it’s outline barely visible in the lamplight. He stopped and stared at it for a long time as a rising tide of panic swept through him.
Leah stepped up behind him. “So what do you think? Is it everything you could have hoped for?”
He turned to her observing the strange mirthful expression dancing across her face just at the edge of darkness, barely touched by the light from the lantern. He had never seen her look so proud of herself.
He pivoted back to the messy bulk on the dirty concrete floor. “Clarissa?”
Something stirred in her and she looked up at him. He brought the lantern closer. She was a sorry sight indeed. She’d been badly beaten, her face bloody and bruised. Her wrists were shackled above her head to a small piece of metal piping that ran the length of the ceiling. She was confined in such a way that she could hardly move. She was on her knees with her arms stretched above her scantily clad in a black sports bra and a pair of little black running shorts with purple trim. She had on old tennis shoes that were dirty and worn-looking. Her body was caked in dirt and grime. Her hair matted and tangled. He’d be lying if he said something about it didn’t turn him on. There was something kind of sexy about seeing her all chained up and incapacitated. But there was also something so incomprehensibly wrong with it that he felt it contaminated him somehow. Like he was discovering, or excavating, some deep dark hidden part of himself he’d never been fully cognizant of. Maybe he’d known about it in an abstract off-handed sort of way. But now he’d grown unalterably conscious of it. It begged only a single question that he had no answer to: what the fuck was he supposed to do now?
Clarissa whimpered softly. Her eyes were so pathetically sad they made you want to curl up into a little fucking fetus-shaped ball and cry. They contained the whole sorry history of sorry pitiful humanity within them. When she tried to lift herself up off her knees he saw that she was kneeling in a thick chunky putrid mass of her own vomit. He took a step back and put his shirt over his face at its disgusting stench.
“Martin. Please. Help me.”