Clown in the Moonlight (3 page)

She hands me the pack and I clamp a filter between my teeth and push in the lighter.
 
It pops thirty seconds later and I raise it to the cigarette and puff heavily behind the wheel.
 
She sits there brooding, smoking.
 
I'm no longer quite as deviant or dangerous because I don't want to eat myself.

Paramedics are placing a sheet-covered gurney into the back of an ambulance.
 
The contours are all wrong.
 
There's no way to tell if it's a man or a woman or a kid.
 
The faces lined up on the sides of the road are nearly featureless.
 
We clear the area and I gun it, back wheels chirping on the rain-slick tar.
  
The windshield wipers thunk in perfect rhythm with my heartbeat.

She says, "There's a party at Gwen's tomorrow night.
 
Ricky will be there."

It's a dare.
 
A taunt, a challenge.
 
It's a summons.
 
I ought to drop an anonymous tip and call in Gary's body, but I'm a little worried it'll somehow get back to me.
 
I don't need cops bracing my ass again.
 
I don't need more violations.
 
I don't need more time in the stir or in the bin.
 

Besides, I want to meet him.
 

"There's going to be mescaline.
 
Have you ever tried it?"

I have.
 
I didn't like it.
 
I don't understand how anyone can.
 
I've tried all the psychotropics.
 
Most of us on the ward have.
 
They leave their fingerprints behind on our brains.

"I thought he was the king of acid?"

"He'll have plenty of LSD too, if you prefer that."
 

She knows I don't.
 
She knows I don't partake.
 
I haven't had so much as a beer in two years.
 
I'm clean.
 
I have to stay clean.
 
Liquor and drugs only loosen the chains of my rage.
 
I'm not going back to the stir.
 
I'm not going back to the joint.
 

She's at my ear, nibbling.
 
"Don't be upset."

I'm not.
 
This has all happened many times before, like a well-rehearsed ballet.
 
It's the thing I fear the most, if I fear anything at all.
 
That I won't be able to fuck a chick in a park without her showing me a satanic sacrifice.
 
That I can't walk up a dirt path without a member of some group like the Knights of the Black Circle turning up.
 
That I can't stand at the fridge of a convenience store buying beer without a murderous girl with razor wire in her hair asking me to take a ride.
 
It happens in smaller or larger form, everywhere I go.
 
They find me or I find them, often in my dreams.
 

Even in juvie there were mutts with infernal or angelic script tattooed across their chests and backs, phrases in ancient Arabic or Assyrian they'd found on the Internet.
 
In Bellvue there were entire wings devoted to the whack jobs who claimed to have made love to the Devil, or been raped by him, or who'd had their children eaten by him, or who'd murdered their babies in the name of him.
 
And there were twice as many who said the same things about Christ.
 

Group therapy was something else with that bunch.

I think of my old man when he was in prison.
 
One again I wonder how he survived.
 
He's a tough prick but not nearly as tough as he thinks he is, and overestimating yourself is what brings the animals to your flanks.
 
They must've smelled the terror he tried to hide beneath his hard man exterior.
 
I know I do.
 

My father has no apprehension about telling me what he had to do to survive.
 
He goes into great detail about shanking Aryans and Mexicans and blacks.
 
He hates queers but explains without irony how he raped new fish.
 
It's all true and all half-true.
 
Most of what he did he did because he was a bitch.
 
I imagine him face down on his bunk while a D-Block train formed behind him, his hate a living thing within him that ten or twenty other men try to dig out of his guts, inch by inch.

My father's fists are like steel.
 
My father telling the doctors and teachers and truancy officers how clumsy I am.
 
My father explaining how I trip over skateboards.
 
How I run into fences trying to catch left field drives.
 
My father, lying his ass off, still afraid of the world.
 
And worse, looking at me when I'm nine and fully understanding that by the time I'm nineteen, he will tremble when I enter the house.

Linda talks about Gwen.
 
They're best friends even though we've never hung out with her.
 
I sense more than a little jealousy and rivalry.
 
So that means Gwen's a looker.
 
They've fought over boys, they've traded lovers, they've done their best to ruin each other's reputations.
 
Linda sounds like she wants to share me with Gwen.
 
I look at her and can't even remember how or when we met.
 

From second to second, even as I stare at her, I can hardly recall her face.

"Have you ever killed anyone?" she asks.

A
t the party, they're all talking about Gary Lowers.
 
Nobody liked him much.
 
They're glad he's dead.
 
Some of them think it's funny.
 
Some of them are properly awed that he lasted as long as he did.
 
Many of them have already seen the body. They describe his face, what's left of it.
 
Somebody supposedly brought along gardening shears and took his pecker as a souvenir.
 
A girl mocks him.
 
"I wuv my mommy.
 
I wuv her so much."
 
The rest crack up.

It seems like Ricky Kelso's led every other kid here up through Aztakea Woods.
 
Or they've led each other, the way Linda led me.
 
She's over in the corner drinking a slow screw against the wall with Gwen and Gwen's boyfriend, a cat named Prill.

Wherever I go, there's Gwen.
 
She's a looker all right.
 
Cheerleader beauty, raven hair, pursing her lips, snarling, laughing, all the right curves, her dark eyes on me.
 
She cuts me off whenever I try to cross the room.
 
She stands close enough that her large tits crush against me.
 
Kids dance around us.
 
She acts like they keep pushing her into me.
 
They're not.
 
Once her lips brush mine.
 
I taste cherry lipstick.
 
She smiles and gives a throaty laugh.
 
My groin stirs.
 
She spots my half-erection.
 
She laughs harder and eases away into the throng.
 

I shake my head, knowing how some of tonight will play out and wondering about the rest.
 
Prill follows Gwen at a distance and glowers at me, his blue eyes blazing.
 
He's a fullback on the school team and tried to crush my hand when he shook it earlier.
 
At first he was startled when he couldn't, and then he was impressed, and finally the fear set in.
 
For any of us, for all of us, the smallest, strangest minor disruption can petrify us.

But apparently not corpses of classmates.
 
Someone puts a mixed tape in and everybody starts to dance.
 
They're wild and passionate in their movements.
 
They grind and rub against one another, every twist and bend sexual and full of need.
 
It's a show in itself.
 
I smell weed burning and I spot a few kids taking hits of acid, popping pills.
 
Bottles of hard liquor are standing everywhere, the keg in the corner has a ring of punks around it doing keg-stands.
 
I'm in the corner slugging a glass of orange juice, pretending it's a screwdriver, keeping a clear head, but even that's getting harder and harder to do.
 
I keep an eye out for Ricky.
 

I haven't seen my father in five days but I hear his voice hissing in my ear, like he's hovering right behind me.
 
It makes me want to turn around, but I don't know what I'd do if I actually ever found him there.
 
Kill him, or go insane.

Linda is dancing with Prill in the living room to a warbly muted pop-punk song cranking from four speakers tilted forward.
 
She's trying to make me jealous.
 
She wants me to beat the hell out of Prill here in front of everyone.
 
She's got nothing against him.
 
In fact, I'm sure she wants him, wants to steal him from Gwen.
 
She catches my eye and makes certain I see her cupping Prill's ass and pulling him tighter and tighter to her.

Gwen keeps the boys on edge like rival dogs about to leap on a skittering animal.
 
The night's got to end in more blood.
 
It's on everybody's mind.
 
They saw the effect of
 
murder but missed out on the bleeding.
 
It leaves them wanting.
 
The lust is bright in their faces.
 
They need to see the fresh red pumping.
 
It's affecting their fantasies and dreams.
 
It's all they're thinking about, all they want now.

The small talk is puerile and insipid.
 
I drink my juice and act the ex-con.
 
My eyes are narrowed.
 
I check hands for shivs.
 
I don't chase away anyone who approaches me, but I don't respond, I don't participate.
 
I'm an outsider, maybe like Lowers himself.
 
They've got me dead in the woods already with a thousand ice pick holes pumping liver bile and brainpan fluid and little arcing founts of blood.
 

There's a tap at the dark window behind me.
 
I look.
 
I see nothing, but I imagine it's a night bird that's followed me back from Aztakea.
 
I picture the black trees bowing and scratching for my attention.

Gwen finds me in the crowd.
 
She's a little miffed that I'm not making a play for her. Having a football hero boyfriend isn't enough. Having fifty other guys foaming over her isn't enough.
 
She needs us all.
 

She points her tits at me in accusation and says, "So are you a shy guy, a wallflower?
 
You seem like such a shy guy.
 
Come dance with me."
 
She tugs the glass of juice from my hand and draws me forward into the center of the living room.
 
I resist, but my resistance draws even more attention, kids looking our way, Prill practically snarling.
 
Gwen's hair hangs in her eyes, and she stares at me with heat and hate and want.
 
She lures me across the floor, where we grind into each other and bang around with the rest of them.
 

I wonder who the other members of the Knights of the Black Circle might be.
 
I wonder if they're brushing against me now, marking me with death symbols, scrawling names of power casually against my back.
 
I imagine the Angel of Death arching high against the silver clouds, swooping down, alighting on a nearby roof, waiting for me to leave.

I'm a good dancer too, in an old-school sort of way.
 
My mother taught me when I was a child.
 
She'd turn the record player up and really cut loose.
 
Music somehow soothed my childhood fevers.
 
We'd clasp hands and she'd swing me around on the freshly waxed kitchen floor, the soles of my feet charged in cotton socks, as I slid and learned how to shake my hips.
 
She'd gyrate and groove.
 
When my father got home from work, he'd find the two of us laughing and sweating.
 
He'd stomp inside hard enough to make the 78s skip and ask, "What have you two been doing?
 
Fucking?"

It's an exercise in self-control that Linda manages to hold back for nearly five minutes before she beelines for me and Gwen, dragging Prill along with her.
 
He can barely sway his slow, bulky body.
 
They dance beside us and she's in his arms, riding against him hard while he does a box step, barely lifting his feet.
 
She glares at Gwen and they show each other their perfect teeth.
 
This has nothing to do with me or Prill or anyone else, except maybe Ricky.