Processed cheese, p.33
Processed Cheese, page 33
“A present?” said Roulette. “Wonderful. You know how I love getting presents.” He opened the bag and pulled out a comic book also sealed in plastic, which he proceeded to gape at in wonder. “A Crackerjack Comics number eleven. How the hell did you ever manage to snag one of these?”
“Complete fluke. BackAlley called me just the other day to talk some business and happened to mention in passing that this super-rare book had come in totally unexpectedly from a regular over in Squirreltown who needed money for a sudden divorce and so, reluctantly, had to break up his collection.”
Roulette kept holding the book at arm’s length and staring at the garish cover art, and he couldn’t stop smiling—a rare reaction to reading material of any kind. In his entire life he had hardly ever cracked a book with a hard cover. Whenever he wanted to expose himself to some inert pages for a change, instead of to moving images on a screen, his immediate primo choices were superhero adventure comics and/or bar guides. Immersion in such fantastic worlds seemed to still the constant vibration in his inner engine mounting to a point where he was able to convince himself that no, despite how it sometimes seemed, he was not idling but steadily moving on, always traveling forward, and that the road was good and the direction true.
“What’s so great about a Crackerjack number eleven?” Graveyard said.
“The holy grail of collectibles,” Roulette said. “First appearance of Patchman. His origin story. One of the most sought-after issues in all of comicdom.” He turned to SideEffects. “Hope you didn’t have to mortgage the house for this baby.”
SideEffects shook his head. “Talk about mortgages. BackAlley owes me a big solid. Don’t worry about it.”
“I think I’ve got some old Patchmans in my bedroom closet back home,” Ambience said.
“Don’t throw them out,” said Roulette.
“Wonder if they’re worth anything at all.”
“Everything Patchman is worth something,” said Roulette. “Let me put this away someplace special.” Still gazing at the comic as if it were a framed photograph of an old girlfriend, he walked out from behind the bar and disappeared into his back office.
“Scored several lasting points with that one,” said Graveyard.
“Leave it to you to keep track.”
“Surprised you’re not doing the same. Considering your lifelong infatuation with numbers.”
SideEffects ignored his brother’s comment and turned his attention to the silent wife. “So Ambience,” he said, “how you doing these days?”
She shrugged. “Wish I could complain, but I’m fine.”
“This jagoff treating you okay?” he said, glancing at Graveyard.
“Now that the daily beatings have stopped, yeah.”
Roulette emerged from his inner sanctum, wiping his hands on an old bar towel.
“What were you doing back there?” SideEffects said.
“I don’t know. My hands just felt dirty. I had to wash them off. Sometimes they just get that way. All the filth in this place. You never know what you’re touching.”
“Didn’t get any crap on the Patch, did you?” said SideEffects.
“Are you kidding? Of course not. Thank God for protective plastic.” He slapped his right palm hard against the counter. “Now, what can I get you?”
“What are they having?”
“What do you think?”
“BroomDusters?”
“Of course.”
“Hard-core. Hit me with the same.”
Roulette quickly mixed up three specials with his usual polish and set them carefully on the bar.
“Why don’t we retire to a nice cozy booth?” SideEffects said. He picked up his drink and turned to go. “Need something firm to prop my aching back against.”
“That still paining you?” Graveyard said.
“Oh, off and on. Mostly when I get tired. Like I am now. We’ll be over in the corner, Dad.”
Roulette nodded, his attention now thoroughly absorbed by the afternoon’s live broadcast of the hearing before the Tumbledown House Select Committee on Foreign Footsie Play under the Green Baize. It was in its fourth continuous week and already there’d been half a dozen resignations at the highest level, a couple of arrests, and a deep stock market decline that left investors like Roulette helplessly affixed to the daily news feed.
The three of them settled into a booth with sticky seats and a wobbly table.
“Classy,” Ambience said.
“What do you want?” said SideEffects. “It’s a dive.”
“Better not let Dad hear you say that,” said Graveyard.
“You think he doesn’t know? He likes it like this.”
“That may be, but I don’t think he necessarily wants such an opinion being bandied about in public by his own kids.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants.”
“Awfully harsh, Sidey.”
“You haven’t been around here for the last eleven years.”
“I talk to him on the phone when he’ll take my calls.”
“Anyone can sound relatively normal on the phone for a couple minutes.”
“I take it, then, you’ve heard about the Muenster moon?’
“You kidding me? Yeah, I’ve heard about the rind in the sky. I’ve heard about the bubbling peanut-butter-and-jelly core at the center of the earth that’s going to erupt sometime tomorrow morning. I’ve heard about the replica presidents. The great portal in the electromagnetic field that dogs and cats use to travel into and out of our lives. Aliens in the embryos, money embedded with antipodean microchips, cybernetic ants, the senator with the glass brain. I’ve heard it all.”
“You have to admit, though, that all this color really brightens a life, spices up all our drab twenty-four-sevens.”
“If you like living in a cartoon world.”
“You see your father a lot?” said Ambience. This whole family was a wonderhouse of limitless wings.
“When don’t I see him? He wants me to drop in here every other day at least or he’s out at my place every other night. He could call, but he won’t. You know about him and the phone, right?”
“He won’t get a cell.”
“The rays it gives off cause brain cancer.”
“Of course they do, but what about a landline?”
“He hears weird sounds on it, so of course it’s probably tapped.”
“And who exactly’s interested in hearing what a hick barkeep stuck in the sticks has to say about anything?” said Graveyard.
“Who isn’t? That’s his view, anyway. Don’t you know he’s in possession of dangerous info nobody should be in possession of? That’s why he’s being surveilled every minute of every day. As a matter of fact, we all are.”
“We all are what?” said Ambience.
“Being surveilled.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know. Them.”
“And who’s them?”
“Those who want to know, I guess. Ask Dad. He can explain all this horseshit better than I can. It’s something about total control and, of course, total money. All I know is the fix is on and we’re all fucked.”
“Can you imagine the load?” Ambience said. “Carrying all that stuff around in your head every day?”
“You know, Graveyard, you wised up and skyed on outta here while the getting was good.”
“I did what I had to do.”
“I really really hated you for a long, long time.”
“You could have done the same.”
“I was too young and too broke. And who else was going to hang around, make sure Dad wasn’t going to fry another wire or two?”
“Mom?”
“She couldn’t make a coherent grocery list. No, I’m afraid the only logical possibility was yours truly.”
“Farrago?”
“C’mon,” SideEffects said. “She has trouble opening a door. No, I was the lucky winner of this lottery. And you know why? You know why I won? I was the only one in the fucking drawing.” He picked up his drink, drained the remaining half in one continuous swallow, then with meticulous care placed the empty glass on the precise spot in the center of the table where it was obviously supposed to go. He looked at his brother and his sister-in-law in measured turn, as if daring either one to speak a single word. Then he turned and sat silently and stared flatly at whatever happened to be offering itself up for consideration outside the window: car, tire, gravel, girl, tree, road, sky, each object displayed in about that much detail. He really wasn’t at the table anymore. Then he turned again and contemplated his brother for several slow seconds. “You know,” he said, “I think I need some money.”
“Dad said you were doing so well,” Graveyard said.
“Dad doesn’t know everything.”
“How much do you need?”
“More than I can comfortably ask for.”
“What is it? Gambling, girls, booze, or drugs?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Not something boring like bad investments or bad loans?”
“Try all of the above.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Graveyard said. “So little brother has been living a secret life all these years.” He caught Ambience’s eye. “Can you believe this?’
“He always looked shady to me,” she said. She felt as if now they were in a movie together and he was the guy’s guy and she his tagalong girlfriend. It was stupid and silly to be thinking that, but she couldn’t help it. He gave her the proper expression back. Up one on the Fuck-O-Meter.
“Can we get any details?” Graveyard said.
“I don’t think so. Fill in the blanks.”
“How much do you need?”
“How much did that lottery pay out?”
“I think that’s a matter between me and the state. And I can’t believe you even dared to ask.”
“Dad got a high-end SUV.”
“Is that what this is about? You don’t want to be the one who drew the short straw?”
“I think I’m owed something.”
“You do, huh? What about your get-out-of-jail-free card?”
“Haven’t seen that yet.”
“And how much will it take to make you shut up and go away?”
“I figure half would be about right.”
“Really? And through what bizarre accounting practice did you arrive at that particular sum?”
“It’s a fair number.”
“For an inbred crime family.”
“You don’t know what it’s been like, stuck in this hellhole with a sister who occupies a permanent position on the spectrum, a mother who’s about as substantial as a piece of fluff, and a father who’s the self-appointed mayor of wigtown.”
“And for that you demand half my money?”
“What’s half a life worth?”
The stolid gray dome that had been covering this particular patch of earth since sunrise opened suddenly for no apparent reason, allowing a shaft of brilliant bright light to penetrate the dirty front window of The Crevice, ricochet off a copper mug sitting on the third shelf above the bar, and into Ambience’s left eye at the precise instant the perception passed through her—though it may have been the BroomDusters speaking, too—how random that right now (1:11 by her watch) she had been placed in this strange bar in the nowhere upcountry, trapped in unforeseen family crossfires, wondering what time the feature ended, or that, frankly, how random right now to have been placed anywhere at all. What she needed most at the moment, she abruptly decided, was a sweet hit of ellipsis. Under the table she began rooting around in her lambskin bag.
“As the oldest”—SideEffects was speaking in that funny little carnival barker voice of his he sometimes fell into—“it was your duty to watch over the family.”
“Like a shepherd?”
“Like a son.”
“I wouldn’t describe either one of our parents as infirm.”
“You know this place hasn’t been doing so well lately, either.”
“He hasn’t said a word about it to me.”
“You know his way. Also, he takes some thirty pills a day.”
“For what?”
“You name it, he’s got it. And someone’s got to stick around to make sure they all go down. He gets confused sometimes.”
And the boys went on as boys do, blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Sometimes when Ambience found herself in a situation like this, a hijacked innocent to intense convos that were not her intensities, she felt herself beginning, step by step, to thin out a bit. It must be like consciously losing one’s hair, if one could actually feel the loss of each separate strand. She supposed she was still visible, but only in the most superficial sense. She entered into one of her ghostly selves, which had always seemed to her to be a place where she saw things she didn’t ordinarily see and where whatever it was that rolled ceaselessly through her mind and let her know she was alive spoke more loudly than usual. Since she was an only child with only a single parent, this persistent abrasiveness between blood relatives was something novel and intriguing to her. After a while all this friction must become quite exhausting. Are all families of more than two just like this? Probably. She didn’t know anyone her age who had a healthy or even a relatively communicative relationship with their parents. Everyone was tense and unhappy, though few would admit it. To start, everyone needed more money, especially those who already had more money than they could waste in a lifetime. Greed was an insatiable mouth. Next, everyone needed numerous hugs and kisses, an infinity of x’s and o’s. Then, most of all, everyone needed not to need. Good luck, everyone, with that one. She opened the pillbox under the table, plucked out a pill between thumb and forefinger, raised her hand to her mouth, and slipped the magic between her lips. Then, reaching under the table, she tapped Graveyard on the thigh three times and slipped him a dose, too.
And blah blah blah the insistent background noise began rising steadily back into audibility:
“You were the one took that big chip out of Dad’s favorite driver, not me,” SideEffects said.
“I certainly did not. I wasn’t even allowed to use those clubs.”
“Didn’t keep you from doing so whenever you damn well pleased.”
“So you remember.”
“And I’m the one took the paddling for it.”
“Well, I took the hits for letting the dogs out.”
“You deserved it.”
Brothers. What a vicious mess. Ambience could now see quite plainly that they were truly related. The shape of their bodies. The shape of their minds. No wonder they disliked each other so much.
“When we went to Funtastic,” Graveyard said, “you were the one got to ride with Dad on the Whirly-Ball. Twice. In the front car, yet.”
“It was my birthday.”
“And what did I get on my birthday?”
“Beats me.”
“The Big Box of Brain Busters.”
“But you always liked mental games that no one but you could solve.”
“I hated those. You had to have a graduate degree from Porcupine U. just to open the damn package.”
“You went to Porcupine.”
“That’s why I had trouble opening the box.”
“He did leave with a master’s in Patterns of Concomitance and Contingency in Ancient Rhetoric,” Ambience said.
“Which catapulted me into the high position I hold today.”
“You didn’t need no degree to get where you got,” SideEffects said.
“Let’s not go through that door again. Just tell me how much you want.”
“I ain’t begging for nothing.”
“Seems to me that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
SideEffects stared steadily at his brother as his expression slowly hardened. Then he glanced away for a second, turned back again, and just as Ambience was beginning to slip ever so languidly through the mist into that other world, abruptly tossed his fresh drink directly into Graveyard’s startled face. “Hey!” said Ambience, reaching out a hand too late. Without a pause Graveyard leaped across the table, seized his brother by the neck with both hands, and began shaking and throttling him as furiously as he could. Glasses went flying, alcohol splashing onto everyone. Back at the bar the woman with the ombré hair screamed. Ambience jumped from her seat and quickly backed away as the table collapsed and both men went crashing to the floor. Roulette came rushing over, loosing a torrent of incoherent obscenities and accompanying spittle over all. “Stop it!” Ambience was yelling. “Stop it! Stop it!” It was all she could say. As she got on her knees, down on the floor herself, trying to pull one of SideEffects’s hands from around her husband’s neck, he batted her away, then hit her a second time hard in the face with his fist, and she got really angry. “Fuck you, you bastard!” she said, then punched him with her own fist, at which point Roulette grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her out of the fray. “Now, you,” he said, “you stay here!” The brothers were tangled together on the floor, pummeling each other as best they could, both their faces beet red, trading insults neither of them heard. Roulette squatted down, tried to get between his two sons, pry them apart, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a clenched fist (it wasn’t entirely clear whose) caught Roulette in the jaw, and instinctively he started hitting back at both of them. He was serious now and punching for keeps. In seconds there was blood from somebody all over everybody. Ambience simply could not believe the chaotic scene now spread out before her: father and sons reduced to a welter of thrashing limbs on a gummy floor. Everybody was hitting everyone else, everyone grunting, panting, cursing. Then suddenly, for no discernible reason, all the swearing simply stopped at once, as if the voice track had been abruptly cut, and all that could be heard was the dull, sickening sound of fist on flesh, over and over again. Ambience began to shout, without any awareness whatsoever that she was the one doing the shouting: “That’s enough, you fuckers! Enough!” No discernible response. So, surprised by her own strength, she simply reached down and with seemingly no effort whatsoever simply lifted SideEffects off her husband’s body as easily as she would have picked up a large dog. Probably that emergency adrenaline she’d read so much about. Roulette delivered a last light tap to Graveyard’s cheek, let out a groan, rolled over, and slowly struggled to his feet. He wiped at his mouth, then stared at the blood on his fingers. “I didn’t want to do that,” he said. He looked down at his sons. “You two…” He had no more words. “I didn’t start it,” SideEffects said. “You didn’t do anything to stop it,” Roulette said. “He threw a drink in my face,” Graveyard said. He got up off the bloodied floor and wiped his hands on his pants. Roulette turned, waving a dismissive hand toward them all, and walked away, back to the safe place behind the bar. “The drink in my face,” Graveyard said. “Did you happen to see that?” Without turning or speaking another word, Roulette waved his dismissive hand again and kept walking. “You can get up now,” Graveyard said to his brother, who remained prone on the floor. He appeared to be studying something he now found of deep interest up on the ceiling. “We’ve got to replace those tiles,” he said. Then he got to his feet with a clumsiness he pretended was purposeful.
