At a certain point he finished his Marlboros, crumpled the pack in his fist, and dropped it in her hand. Rose told me to let her out, and off she marches up the sidewalk, stick-thin girl with big farm-girl strides in her tight jeans and high-heel sandals. One block and two minutes later, she’s back in the Lariat with a fresh pack and he’s lighting up without word one of thanks. And I’m wishing I’d been quick enough to jump out and get them myself. That’s how it was with Fast Forward, you wanted to be his foot soldier. I was proud to be a General of the present day, but would have given anything to be as old as Big Bear, and the one to have been his left tackle.
It wasn’t till Rose got back in the cab, giving me a full front view, that I saw the scar running up the left side of her mouth. It dragged through both lips, leaving them out of whack in a kind of snarl. She was one of those heavy-makeup girls, majorly covered up, with the color boundary where the face meets the neck. Due to the scar, you have to think, but really it was not hideable. I wondered what that was like. For guys, it’s just war wounds. We had this defensive tackle Davy with a serious scar on his forehead from where he was playing in the driveway as a tiny tot, and his dad ran over him partway with the car. And Davy was A-okay girlwise, a babe magnet to be honest. But for a girl like Rose, did this scar put her out of the running? Or middle-tier girlfriend level, so she could try all her life with Fast Forward but still remain doomed? I didn’t know the rules. Something was going on between these two, but love was not it.
Not my problem. I was living the life I’d been waiting for. From time to time Big Bear would step from the Lariat hood onto another vehicle and lie on the roof, leaning over the window to talk to the driver. From time to time somebody would give him a joint, he’d take a couple of drags, then walk back over onto our hood and pass it inside to Fast Forward. We’d pass it across, and I’d hand it back out the window to Big Bear. The sun hung low over the mountains like a big red tit, the lights blazed green and red off the glass store windows, the girls bent their beautiful faces together keeping their secrets, their bodies of sweetness, Fords and Chevies, the river flowed. This is how it’s done, I thought, and I am doing it. Dragging Main.
39
I don’t know why, and God help me. But whatever it was Maggot needed, I thought Fast Forward could put him together with it. If I was a friend to both, I was duty-bound. So I invited Fast Forward to come with us to Fourth of July at June and Emmy’s.
Word was out on this being the party of parties. Regardless June Peggot being no friend to fireworks, happy to sit you down and tell you all she’d seen professionally in the way of blown out body parts. No matter. Emmy crossed all normal lines of popular, hanging out with certain of the geeks, plus drama kids. Put those together and stand back. They’d been going to Tennessee for the banned-in-Virginia items, your aerials and laterals. Collections were taken up. Angus was like, Idiots with gunpowder, no thanks. But I was jacked for the day to come.
Fast Forward picked me up with two passengers already, surly Rose and this chick called Mouse, due to her tiny size I’m guessing. Not shyness. She had on a silver bodysuit thing like MTV-wear, already in the middle of a story as I climbed in. Full Yankee accent: “So he’s on air in two minutes, I am losing my shit and ohmygod I get it, this is a comb-over on top of a toupee! I am supposed to do what with this? So I pick it up and lob him with the powder so he won’t shine through and then pop it back down, you guys, I could be a very rich woman if I decide to extort.”
Fast Forward said he thought she already was a rich woman. She laughed and hugged her giant purse. Turned to me, blinked her huge eyelashes. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”
Mouse told me she did hair and makeup for celebrities, in case I’d missed that. Fast Forward told her I was the rising star of our football team. To anybody else he’d say “of the Generals,” so this Mouse individual had to be from a galaxy far far away. Filly she said, which is a girl horse and made no sense until she clarified it was a town, Philadelphia. I gave the directions to Maggot’s house, and then we were five in the cab. Cozy. Mouse hops in my lap with her feet dangling. She’s pretty, I guess, her head too big for her small body, snub-nosed, but makeup obviously at the pro level. Her hair was this exploded whale spout situation that got in my face. She was like a doll on my lap. Still running at the mouth, she’s got a gig coming up for a Britney show or whatever, constantly interrupting herself to remark on some ramshack place like she’s never seen poor. Her big purse was on the floor at this point, rolling and clanking. I saw the end of a Pringle can sticking out. In case you were wondering what does a mouse eat.
Maggot was twitchy as hell. I saw Fast Forward checking him out sidewise. I was used to Maggot, to the extent you can get used to the black-dyed hair curtains, the neon mesh sleeves and giant black pants that he and his Batcave pals got at their Goth outfitters place over to Christiansburg. Chains all up and down the legs, so if you needed to put the boy on a leash you’d find many convenient attachment points. Maggot would always be my blood brother, but at that moment I was embarrassed. Mouse was staring at his makeup and dye job like she might not live through the experience. It could have been worse, Maggot was known to turn up at school with his scalp dyed black on accident. I gave directions to June’s. Fast Forward drove with one hand on top of the wheel, cigarette out the window, eyeshades at Slim Shady half-mast, while Chatty Cathy ran her travelogue, ohmygod that dog is chained up, how can people be so cruel, what is that green shit growing on the side of that house (it was normal moss) ohmygod. Half a mile out from June’s the line of vehicles started, parked all sigoggling on both sides of the road. We pulled over and walked down the gravel road, already hearing music through the woods.
“Nice sidewalks you have here in East Jesus Nowhere,” Mouse said, grabbing Fast Forward’s arm, teetering in her giant platform sandals. She was barely waist-high to him, toting that gunny-sack purse. Rose fell back into walking alongside Maggot and me, but looked like she’d snatch us baldheaded if we tried striking up a chat. Maggot checked out her dog-snarl scar, which maybe he thought was wicked, who knows. At the bottom of June’s driveway he stopped to light a joint. Rose said “Bogart much?” so Maggot passed it to her in a futile gesture of friendship. He probably needed to balance out whatever he’d taken for pregame. The lad was wound tight. NoDoz crushed and snorted was a Maggot go-to, a grade school discovery I’d needed to try no more than once. I mean. Is life not menacing enough without feeling like ants have moved into your skin? Not if you’re Maggot. He moved on from there to Adderall, which is doctor-legal, anybody can get it from anybody. And lately, smurfing Sudafed from drugstores to sell to the cookers. Probably getting paid in merchandise.
Rose took her time with the joint, waving bugs away from her face and her big cloud of hair. I took a couple of hits and headed in. Two guys ran through the woods wearing shoes and nothing else, yelling about swimming. There was no pond around. Guys were shooting bottle rockets at each other. Leggy girls slumped among the trees like wilted daisies, probably running replays of failed attempts, like we did with football games we should not have lost, but did.