Processed cheese, p.30
Processed Cheese, page 30
Finally, after what SideEffects considered a ludicrous amount of pleading, Loophole admitted him to the inner sanctum of LoopholeWorld: his apartment. It was a two-room efficiency above the GrinAndBearIt Medical Supply Store in a sad strip mall out on 101 east of the CorrugatedDreams plant. Notoriously low-rent area. Inside, though it did smell predictably of stale gym socks, the place wasn’t as bad as SideEffects had imagined. It was cluttered but relatively clean and, amid numerous shelves stuffed with video-game cartridges, empty beer cans, and superhero action figures, there was even an actual book lying on its side in incongruous loneliness. SideEffects had to check the title. It was a copy of How to Become Rich in Five Easy Lessons. The bedroom was about the size of a good walk-in closet, the bed unmade, the white sheets gray. They immediately undressed and climbed aboard.
“This the bed you screwed Farrago in?” SideEffects said.
“The very same.”
They tore into one another with fierce abandon.
They went on a cool luxury cruise to hot islands with unpronounceable names. They danced in the foam. They baked in the sun. They met a pair of old queens in identical powder-blue jumpsuits who’d led fascinating lives as art dealers in the BooHoo district of Mammoth City. The couple had known PaperCut and ChinaTube and EverAfter when he was first making those clever little mad dogs out of pastel beanbags. They’d even had cameos in PaisleyButtercup’s epic farce Tonal Skies. They were quite wealthy and loved to play cards, though they weren’t particularly good at any game involving betting. Loophole financed the next year of his life playing Potter’sChoice against them. Neither seemed to mind very much. They held enough assets to buy the boat. After the cruise the two couples traded numbers. They promised to keep in touch. They never did.
Back home in good ol’ Randomburg, SideEffects and Loophole had just finished fucking behind the Dumpster back of the SlurpyCream when they ran into Farrago on line out front.
“Believe you two know each other,” SideEffects said.
Everyone pretended not to know what they all knew.
“What’s up?” Farrago said. She side-eyed her brother.
“I’m in the market for a new place,” Loophole said.
“Yeah?” She side-eyed Loophole.
“You know that apartment. It’s so small.”
“Seemed to fit you okay for ten years.”
“Ten years is a long time.”
“Listen. Where you been, anyway?”
“Around, okay? I got business, you know?”
“Yeah, I know your business. Listen, I want to see you. I’m coming over tonight.”
“Yeah, sure, that’d be great, that’s good. What time?”
“Seven?”
“Fine. Looking forward.”
Farrago turned to her brother. “Get him a fantastic place, okay?”
“I will certainly do that.”
She walked off to her car without looking back at either one of them.
“She forgot to get her cone,” Loophole said.
“She is my sister. Treat her right.”
“Always have.”
It took almost a full week, but at last Loophole told SideEffects at an exclusive PretzelClub dinner celebrating the anniversary of their first full year together what had happened the night Farrago came over. They’d chilled, crossfaded, kissyfaced, slapped uglies all night long, and now she was good. Loophole’s version. Which, as SideEffects had already begun to comprehend, was not necessarily of the real world. But of course SideEffects and Loophole were in the middle of their own translation and there was only so much energy available to devote to so much material. And besides, everything disintegrated anyway in the obsidian heart of each other’s pupils. They moved on.
For six charged months the relationship remained otherworldly. It wasn’t like a movie. It was the movie. They were stars and whoever was directing them deserved a Macadamia Award. The narrative glided professionally along through the warmth of a skillfully sustained dream, the spice of the expected crises arriving at precisely the perfect moments and resolving themselves after just the exactly proper amount of effort and suspense. They both knew as well as it was possible to know anything at all that they were being directed by fate or, more likely, something outside language toward the denouement they both desired, a place bursting with love and hope and redemption and all that good stuff no one ever really gets in real life. Things began to go bad in the cabin in the woods. They’d rented a place in the nearby Bric-A-Bracs for the summer, an exceptional’s idea of a rustic hideaway complete with every convenience and appliance known to a happening, on-the-go lifestyle but still retaining the look and damp, earthy appeal of old rugged wood. It started, of course, with sex. Their sexual engine had been running in a lower gear for some time before SideEffects even took notice. He didn’t say anything for fear of the potential shape of that conversation, so it wasn’t the total mindfuck it might have been when, one morning as he lay in bed admiring the outright majesty of Loophole’s sunlit erection, Loophole turned to him and proposed that the guest list for their next evening mattress party be expanded from none to who knew how many.
“No.”
“It’s a big bed.”
“I know where this road ends and it’s not a pretty spot.”
“I’ve never been there before.”
“You don’t want to visit, believe me.”
Loophole sulked the rest of the day. Dinner at PhineasPheasant that evening was ruined and the reservations had been just about impossible to get. So began the sad and prolonged Loophole subplot to SideEffects’s personal melodrama. If one day he could only find the time for that crackling memoir he knew he could write. The relationship entered its chronic phase. Everyone knew the end result, but that didn’t mean there weren’t small compensatory pleasures to be found along the way. He and Loophole still enjoyed much of the time they shared together. They were civil. They joked around. Sometimes they even fucked. They pretended everything was the same even if it wasn’t. And, after several months of this pantomime of indelible togetherness, they began to drift inevitably apart. Interestingly enough, it was SideEffects who first ended up falling into a stranger’s bed. Or so he liked to believe. The stranger’s name was FilmSprocket, or so he said. SideEffects met him online on SafetyCatch, a site he sometimes visited to scroll through the semicoherent advertisements that love-hungry looky-lous posted in the eternal quest for even the loosest of connections in a shoddily constructed world. He usually skimmed through the electronic pages, sneering internally at the sheer quantity of naked need on embarrassing display. What is wrong with these people? he’d say to himself. But then one especially energetic flag waver caught his roving eye. Read this or not, it said. I don’t care. Email me or not, up to you. I don’t like you anyway. I don’t want to meet you. I don’t want to have sex with you. So move on. You’ll probably find someone better. But if you’re tired of all this interminable shopping, flogging the infinite search, let me know. I am, too. SideEffects contacted him immediately. Unfortunately, FilmSprocket lived in CreosoteSprings, a small town just outside BigSack, home of ParleyMuffin bakeries, where all the flugelcremes in the world were manufactured. The following week he flew halfway across the country to BigSack—the air rich with the aroma of warm cinnamon bread—rented a car, and drove the thirty miles to CreosoteSprings. FilmSprocket lived in a bizarrely painted bungalow that reminded him instantly of his mother’s place. Its interior was crammed with thousands of miniature cartoon figurines drawn from the complete history of animation, a collection valued at, so FilmSprocket immediately informed him, a quarter of a bazillion dollars. FilmSprocket’s own valuation, as far as SideEffects was concerned, on the traditional ten-point scale, could be found more toward the low end. That night FilmSprocket took him out to the local hot spot, a depressing dive called TheTaperedEnd, where they had a couple of SpongeShots, and after a couple of hours FilmSprocket informed SideEffects that he didn’t like him, either. But they went back to FilmSprocket’s place and had sex anyway. Of the decidedly generic variety. SideEffects flew out early the next morning. On the flight he reassessed the Loophole concept. Maybe it was something about him (SideEffects). Maybe he was at fault. You never knew. Why not try on that consideration for a while? See if it fit? His head instantly felt clearer. So he was in a good mood on the cab ride from the airport to The Aspiration Tower. He was in a good mood on the elevator ride up to his floor. He was in a good mood entering his apartment, calling out for Loophole, walking through the rooms, satisfied by their familiar orderliness, still calling, and on into the bedroom, where at last he found Loophole, his boyfriend, his lover, sprawled on their private futon in the hairy arms of a hairy man. He couldn’t tell you what he screamed, but it was screaming and it was ugly and it went on for a long time. And from somewhere inside the screaming the strange man disappeared and maybe the cops were called. He seemed to have a memory of some imposingly stern people in uniforms trying to talk to him. But he wasn’t certain. He wasn’t certain where Loophole slept that night. He wasn’t certain where he slept. They couldn’t even sit down together, look each other in the face, and talk calmly and coherently for a couple of days.
“You weren’t supposed to be back until Thursday,” said Loophole.
“And that makes it better, that you could have gotten away with fucking someone else if only I hadn’t come back early? Is that what you’re saying? That it’s really my fault? Is that the issue here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“Why’re you so flamed about this? It’s just sex.”
“What do I know? Maybe I’m crazy.”
“That’s what I always liked about you.”
And the halves of the piece inside SideEffects that had been broken began rubbing their jagged ends together. The mild discomfort actually felt good. And he was able to produce, for the first time since the lifequake, a replica of a smile, only half a one, of course, but still a passable facsimile. Then, without having planned it or considered the consequences, SideEffects revealed where he’d been the last two days and what he’d done. Loophole forgave him. What else could he do? So they declared a truce and entered into the third act of their relationship. It was the best period yet. They felt older, which they definitely were, and wiser, which they believed themselves to be. Each thought the other’s looks had improved immeasurably. And they had. They’d started going to the local MuscleBarn together and running cardio contests together and hefting weights together and sweating together. They ate only PurityBureau-approved farm products. They made smoothies from high-end roadside weeds. Sex became dynamic, more athletic, longer-lasting. Orgasms were like exploding galaxies. They treated each other as fellow humans, with courtesy and respect. They enjoyed each other’s company for unaccountable stretches of time. They each wanted to do the same things at the same time. They rarely argued, and when they did they were able to resolve the dispute in minutes. And for about a year and a half life went pretty well for both of them. Real estate in the area had never been better. Loophole got a job as assistant manager at PizzaMercy. Money was flowing through both their accounts and they were happy. And SideEffects had started Loophole on the journey to get his own realtor license. Aside from a substantial increase in Loophole’s income, neither could have asked for more. There were no dramatic emotional storms, hardly any minor complaints, but whatever fragile bond they had managed to cobble together for these months began to wither in tiny unnoticeable stages. Neither knew why or even bothered to memorialize the erosion with a passing comment. Both men started working more hours and were home less often. Then came the missing long weekend, the three end-of-the-week days when Loophole just disappeared. And he wasn’t at work when SideEffects called. He wasn’t with Farrago, either, because she was in Mammoth City for the entire month with her bestie, Anagram, doing God knew what. At first SideEffects was irritated, then slightly angry, then he realized that in fact he simply did not care all that much, and when Loophole finally showed up without offering even a flimsy excuse SideEffects let it go. He realized that internally he had already left. Eventually Loophole returned to the fancy new apartment SideEffects had gotten for him and they didn’t see each other all that much anymore. SideEffects did of course finally begin having sex with other people. There were other dicks, other holes. He found some. But some essential ingredient had gone missing from his life, something lighter than air that had helped elevate the leaden chain of days you drag behind you like an anchor.
Then for a while there was a pleasant bare patch, no fizzes, no splats, toothy civility and flashes of affection prevailed, while the last shred of whatever there had been between them seemed to have fallen into a crack and simply disappeared and walking away was practically painless. Eventually the time of Loophole twisted itself into a story SideEffects told to himself and others whenever it was time to tell those kinds of stories. And about life, he told himself, as do all patriotic Mammothonians, he had no regrets. He always did the right thing at the right time. Pretty much. And whatever happened to him happened for the best. Pretty much. But then he remembered, no, not true, it wasn’t he, it was his brother who had won that damn lottery, actually taken the whole megillah, all of it. Out of how many untold millions of ticket holders, his own crazy loser brother. What were the idiot odds? He had never won a fucking thing.
Chapter 20
Home on the Range
The curious mixture of meat fried and gunpowder fired was a smell not easily forgotten by those who experienced it at any age. It took up stubborn residence high in the nostrils, back deep in the sinus caverns. It wove itself into the fibers of shirts and blouses and handkerchiefs stuffed into back pockets and seldom-explored purse corners. They (Graveyard, Ambience, and his old friend Crankcase) weren’t enjoying the famous brunch, exactly, but instead that ever-popular meal located somewhere between lunch and dinner: a lunner. They were each eating a rimfire patty melt with smallbore sauce (the house specialty) and an order of loaded magnum fries (fan favorite).
“For hamburger mixed with saltpeter,” Graveyard said, chewing heartily, “this ain’t half bad.” He’d already enthusiastically plowed through half his sandwich and was seriously contemplating a second.
“It’s Chef Strudelstein’s personal family recipe,” said Crankcase. “The choice of weapons aristocrats everywhere. He’s from Lower WellBeGone. The eastern side.”
“It’s okay,” said Ambience. She’d taken two bites and put the burger back down on her plate. She did not pick it up again. Today she was buried inside her customary period funk, an annoying personal she wasn’t about to share with two guys, each of them strange to her in different ways. Graveyard, of course, presented a familiar strangeness. Her time in grade with him had rendered her relatively immune to his numerous assorted oddities, though he was, of course, still capable of ambushing her at any moment with some fresh and unexpected twist in the backbone of his days. This new guy, Crankcase, Graveyard’s famous bestie from high school, was something of an interesting puzzle to her. To start with, there were his looks: definitely in the lower digits on the Fuck-O-Meter. He appeared to be relatively fit, though that could be deceptive. She hadn’t seen him naked. He shaved his head, yet there wasn’t much hair to be shaved in the first place. Graveyard told her once he’d already lost most of it by his junior year in high school. Quelle horreur. Straight-ahead adolescence was bad enough without an additional comeliness crisis. And frankly, the head itself was not of sufficient shapeliness to be so glaringly exposed. It had numerous oddly placed bumps and depressions. It looked like a badly peeled potato. His dark, ferrety eyes were set exceedingly close together and basically he had no lips, just a long thin line across the lower third of his face signifying “mouth.” There were other minor problems with his ears, chin, cheeks, but you get the picture. He did have a nice nose.
He was a stranger to her because she hadn’t ever laid eyes on him until less than an hour ago. Graveyard was a stranger because she had been laying eyes on him for more than eleven years now. And she wasn’t quite convinced that all that looking and subsequent touching had taught her enough to say for sure that she knew him. And she wasn’t even certain what knowing anybody actually meant. Her life now and for almost the twelve years previous largely consisted of following Graveyard around, each day, each week, each month, always learning a little bit more but never enough. And so she had followed him here to this cheap grease joint clumsily affixed as a sort of tawdry extra enticement to the wonderful world of guns. It reminded her of another fry hole back in the War, MyHood’s BBQ Market, where you could get bullets with your meat. The day she was reminded of, her second month at play in the sandbox, was also one on which she thought, she couldn’t be sure, she had wasted her first human being. On a routine morning patrol somewhere in the Lower Jahbooty Valley they’d stumbled into a real soup sandwich. Everything everywhere just started blowing up real good. Jagged shit flying through the air. Ground littered with dominoes. Somehow she found herself flat on her stomach behind a hill or a dune or a fucking mound or whatever fucking piece of moon dust the entire colorless country was made out of. The mound was certainly of insufficient elevation to provide even minimal comfort and security while she was being shot at. The hajji shooting at her was crouched some fifty yards away behind the black carcass of a chewed-up deuce. Or maybe it had been a meat wagon. Something big that ran on wheels. He’d squirt off a few rounds, duck behind the wreckage, wait, and repeat. Ambience took careful aim at the spot where the head kept turkey-peeking. She waited. The head popped into view. She squeezed the trigger. The head disappeared in a cloud of pink mist. She waited. She waited. No more head. Maybe she had just killed a guy. Her first. Imagine that.
