Look At Me_ A Novel Part 19

"I was enthralled," I said. "It was like falling in love."

Chapter Eleven.

Michael West stood at the chalkboard in front of the words "Inscribed Angles" and watched Mary Peterson punch out a wad of blue gum between her big serrated teeth. He felt the possibility of anger in himself and glanced at her covertly, hoping it would catch. The Walther was strapped to his calf. at the chalkboard in front of the words "Inscribed Angles" and watched Mary Peterson punch out a wad of blue gum between her big serrated teeth. He felt the possibility of anger in himself and glanced at her covertly, hoping it would catch. The Walther was strapped to his calf.

"Henry is correct," he said. "An inscribed angle is an angle whose vertex is on a curve, and whose sides contain chords of a circle. What does the angle do to the arc? Someone, please."

They stared at him with their helpless mouths, their freckled cheeks and moist pale eyes. "Intercept," said Marcie Blum.

"Precisely."

The lesson continued. The blue gum looked poisonous, disinfectant. Michael raked himself against it, desperate to locate the anger that had lived in him like a hot coal for much of his life. In his eagerness, he'd begun watching news reports from the part of the world he had come from: dust, rage, starved zealous faces, languages he had trained himself not to think in anymore but occasionally still did, when he dreamt. The images jogged memories of his own rage, years ago, hearing English words in the street, or spying the bustling, clandestine trade in videotapes of Hollywood movies: cloudy, illicit, the apparitions barely visible through the murk of amateur recording devices used surrept.i.tiously, heads of moviegoers sometimes blocking the picture. Yet infused with a promise that was like the sting of a scorpion. There was no recovery. Capture desire and the rest will follow. Wars, weapons; they were messy, obsolete. Feed people a morsel of something they'll crave the rest of their lives, and you won't have to fight them. They'll hand themselves over. This was the American conspiracy.

"Are there additional questions?" he asked. Then, disliking his formal diction, he amended, as another hand went up, "Lemme guess. You wanna know if that's gonna be on the test."

t.i.tters. A wad of blue gum. Michael lifted his foot, feeling the weight of the Walther at his ankle. He wore it often to school, secreted against different parts of himself, liking the sense of power, the implicit threat. The gun held the place where his anger used to be.

When the bell rang, they shuffled from the room in their winter boots. It was January, and the paroxysm of Christmas, that product America had packaged and exported nearly everywhere (he'd heard the streets of Istanbul were full of Santas) had subsided at last. Snow was predicted for later in the day, and Michael West looked forward to this. He had never seen it at close range.

The room emptied, and Lori Haft stood at his desk. She often required his help after cla.s.s, and her scores had improved. Michael sought this avidly, to maintain good relations with her mother: the fool who sees everything. He dreaded to confront her in his present, weakened state.

"So," Lori said. She wore a tight green sweater with little rabbits woven into it. She twirled her hair on a finger. "What's important?"

"You tell me what you think is important."

"Um." Her hair was sugary, soft. Michael noticed this, noticed the shape of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s through the sweater, but felt nothing. Deadness. Without the anger, his desire, too, had mostly vanished.

"I guess the part about the angles ... ?"

He crossed his legs, resting one hand on the Walther, excited by the thought of how easily he could remove it, unmask himself and cause the whole ghastly charade to fall suddenly, cleanly away. "You tell me, Lori," he said, looking into the flower of her face. "You tell me what is important."

Ricky lay spread-eagled on his back in the dead winter gra.s.s outside Paul Lofgren's rec room, holding his breath so they wouldn't see him pant. One hand on his Tony Hawk, he listened to the crack of boards against the empty swimming pool. The pool was getting repainted in the spring, so now they were allowed to skate it raw, f.u.c.k it up as much as they wanted.

The hash was making him sweat, even in just a T-s.h.i.+rt. He shouldn't have smoked, but it was Paul's private stash, Paul's jade-green pipe with the bowl like a wind G.o.d puffing out his cheeks, Paul yanking him into the powder room with the circles of pink soap in a white sh.e.l.l by the sink, yanking him in while the others were microwaving Cheeze-Corn in the kitchen. Then firing up a dense little pellet and smoking it with Ricky alone, because Ricky was Paul's man. Even though he was an eighth-grader and Paul was a junior, age was irrelevant. Paul liked him best. Ricky had stopped wondering why.

He deserved it, that was why.

He could do a backside grind on Paul's tricky pool, that was why.

"Cathouse," someone said, and Ricky muttered, s.h.i.+t. s.h.i.+t. Not that again. Not that again.

He staggered to his feet, ears ringing, nosed his Tony Hawk to the pool's edge and dropped in, cold air knocking through his T-s.h.i.+rt. He swooped into a frontside grind on the pool's edge (metal trucks abrading the concrete) but coming back down the board squirted out from under him and he was flung into big looping steps to keep from slamming against the turquoise concrete (Paul didn't wear pads, so neither did anyone else), pinwheeling his arms, panicking for a second because the Mediport was under the skin of his chest-what if it shattered inside him? But no, they'd taken it out last summer, which was why he could skate.

It bugged him, how he kept forgetting that.

He collected his board and hoisted himself from the pool straight into the evil beam of Jimmy Prezioso's grin. Ricky beamed back his secret weapon, a face devoid of emotion. He'd learned this trick from Charlotte back when he was going to school with no hair, half his eyebrows gone, a baseball cap over his head and so scared all the time it was like trying to carry a live hen in his arms. Charlotte told him, "No one knows what you feel-no one can see behind your face." In the bathroom mirror, they practiced: "Tell me what I'm thinking," she said, her eyes flat and narrow and mean, and Ricky said, "You hate me," about to cry like always back then, and Charlotte put her arms around him and said, "No, you dumbolt. The opposite.

"You can hide behind your face," she told him, and that's what he did. That's what got him through all of it.

Charlotte had powers, to what extent Ricky still wasn't sure. He respected them.

They dropped in one by one. Paul flew up the pool's curved side and did an air, clutching the board to his feet with the kickflip indie grab they'd seen on the Toy Machine video-as a skater Paul was egregious beyond all measure-landed hard on the board and sc.r.a.ped back down having nailed the trick effortlessly. Cacophonous applause, everyone flapping their boards up and down with their feet. Paul had the same things all of them had: hair, eyes, legs (he was taller than Ricky by at least a foot), but in Paul some alchemy had happened, and he was better. A king among men.

"What time does it open?" Paul, calling from the pool to Jimmy Prezioso, his slave. Talking about the cathouse, or what they thought was a cathouse.

"Sundown."

"Soon." Mark Smallwood, stating the obvious.

Ricky dropped in again, loose in his knees, riding the munchy sound of his Pig Wheels. He leaned, twisted, s.h.i.+mmied back up the pool's parched side and rocked the fakie, then swooped back down into the bowl, in a zone, finding lines he'd memorized-he'd try an air if Prezioso weren't standing there waiting to laugh if he slammed-up again for a frontside ollie, his body singing, dancing.

"Thought bubble: Why is little Ricky stalling?" Prezioso, of course, who hated him, who was jealous of his skating, his bond with Paul. Ricky ignored him, skating because it felt good (Paul was watching), because he felt strong and light, he was firing lightning bolts from the top of his head that spelled out the words I'M NOT SICK!

When he lost speed at the bottom of the pool, he finished it off with a little kickflip, landing softly on the board.

"Lush, bro." Paul.

"Dire." Chris Catalani, clanging his Richard Angelides.

"Egregious." Mark Smallwood, going with the majority.

"Pretty." Prezioso-who else? In a sweet, nasty voice. "Very, very pretty."

Ricky hefted himself from the pool and stood in front of Jimmy. He smoothed his face flat as a bedsheet. "And," he said. It was Paul's favorite word, his universal comment-"And"-just that, floating by itself, meaning anything, everything. Until his a.s.sociation with Paul, Ricky had been blind to the word's potency, its vast expressiveness.

"And, you look pretty."

Ricky tossed his Tony Hawk onto the concrete in front of Prezioso, where it collided noisily. He was stalling, waiting for Paul to pick a side. Jimmy waited, too. They all waited, exhaling arms of steam.

In the very long pause, Ricky heard someone sawing trees.

"Like you know Thing One about pretty, you rank m.o.f.o." Paul to Jimmy, shoving his arm, and everyone laughed, even Jimmy did, he had to. He was Paul's slave.

After school, Michael drove to McDonald's on Alpine Road and sat in his car in the parking lot. He had done this many times since arriving in Rockford, had visited all eighteen McDonald's in and around the city, including Belvedere and Machesney Park, but had never eaten the food-never in his life-having always believed the internal result would be combustive, violent. Now he longed for that.

He gazed through his winds.h.i.+eld at the fake red-brick exterior, the debased shrubbery surrounded by wood chips. Beijing, Moscow-they were all over the world, McDonald's, colonizing, anesthetizing, and it was said that no country containing one had been at war since. Of course, they were already defeated.

Today was the day. Michael went inside and stood in the long, slow line. After surgery, the stomach had only two weeks in which to begin functioning again, or it lost the ability. People died that way. For Michael, the anger was like that; deprived of its logic, its livid energy, he questioned his survival.

"Can I help you?" A girl roughly the size of an American refrigerator. He ordered a Big Mac-what else?-a Coca-Cola-what else?-French fries and apple pie, carried the orange plastic tray to a small plastic table and peeled the foil away to expose the burger. His first thought was that it didn't look big enough, it was squashed, pelletlike, the meat gray and incidental; was this really a Big Mac or had they given him something inferior? Then his own thoughts sickened him-greed, individualism-and he lifted the thing to his mouth and jammed half inside.

He couldn't taste anything at first, could only think that it would never go down, he would choke to death on this gray sweetness, dry and sticky; he tried to swallow, his throat straining, seizing to push the clotted ma.s.s down its slender duct. Finally the lump evacuated his mouth with a tearing sensation, eased into his throat like a rat moving through a snake. He ate a French fry, breathing hard, sweat on his face, then shoved the second half of Big Mac into his mouth, loosening its airless compression with a slug of Coca-Cola, his body braced for the surge of rage that would galvanize his dead insides when this affront reached them, an explosion that would shove it all back up. But nothing happened. He sat there nibbling French fries, watching light trucks light trucks big as houses slip past on Alpine, the Walther inert at his ankle, feeling the lump of food dissolve and become part of him, its cells mingling with his own cells, dividing to make new cells-the cells of a person who had eaten at McDonald's. Then he crumpled the rest of his meal into the foil, a s.h.i.+ny McDonald's wad, pushed it through the plastic slot of the garbage bin and stood beside it, unsure what to do next. big as houses slip past on Alpine, the Walther inert at his ankle, feeling the lump of food dissolve and become part of him, its cells mingling with his own cells, dividing to make new cells-the cells of a person who had eaten at McDonald's. Then he crumpled the rest of his meal into the foil, a s.h.i.+ny McDonald's wad, pushed it through the plastic slot of the garbage bin and stood beside it, unsure what to do next.

He walked outside. Rockford, Illinois, flat and colorless in winter. He was among runways of concrete and woodchips and highways, for no reason. By sheer accident. He could be here or anywhere. Michael West had lived amidst danger for many years without ever panicking, had absorbed the possibility of fear, drawn it in. But standing by himself in the parking lot outside McDonald's, he felt a first intimation of terror: of the land, the crus.h.i.+ng gray sky, the bloated strangers everywhere. Of facing this new world alone, without an enemy.

Ellen waited in her Lexus outside the low-lying medical complex where Gordon's office was, heat and radio on: "Baby Stay with Me Tonight," a song whose unabashed cheerfulness made her snap her fingers. The sky was soft and white. Snow? She hoped.

Now that she'd done it, called Gordon at his office using Charlotte's telephone (as if that would provide some sort of camouflage); now that he'd agreed (albeit stiffly) to meet and talk things over, a delicious calm had befallen Ellen. Getting the kids off to school, promising Harris she would sprinkle cured kudzu over the salad tonight (he'd been asking for weeks) for a little ad hoc market research-why had these things seemed so unmanageable before? Yesterday, she'd bought lingerie at Lord and Taylor-black, Gordon loved black, but the inky flora that glutted her drawers from their year of trysts was nubbled and stringy by now; she'd worn it to the hospital, to play squash, tennis. She'd worn it to church.

There he was. Leaving the building, striding toward her through the parking lot, not smiling, but then, these were anxious moments, climbing into each other's vehicles in public. A miracle-would he really get in? He did, bringing cold and steam. "Ellen," he said, kissing her cheek politely, the way he kissed her at c.o.c.ktail parties, this man she'd screwed in bathrooms, closets, toolsheds, bas.e.m.e.nts, splayed over flights of stairs, in cars (they would drive to Rock Cut Park, hardly speaking in their hurry and compulsion), in attics, outdoors in summer (just one time, it made them too nervous), in motels where they'd paid cash, and once, insanely, in an empty banquet room adjacent to a wedding reception they both were attending with their spouses. Some distillation of these memories a.s.sailed Ellen now that Gordon was so near, the smell of his aftershave, his antiseptic soap, and she was stunned by a fillip of nostalgia so sharp it felt like pain. Her hands shook as she backed out of the parking lot.

"How are you?" he asked, running a hand through his fading blond hair. "How's Ricky?"

"Off the chemo since May. Now we have this agonizing year of tests ..." She was driving, nervous. She didn't want to talk about Ricky, kind as it was of him to ask.

"Should we grab a cup of coffee?" Gordon suggested. "We're right near Aunt Mary's."

Ellen glanced at him, startled. Aunt Mary's was a public place, a place they very well might see someone they knew. "Actually, I was thinking," she began, knowing already that it was the wrong suggestion, even as it vaulted from her, "we could drive out to Rock Cut and take a walk before it gets dark." She'd imagined them holding hands in the cold. Imagined it starting to snow.

"I don't have time to go that far," Gordon said.

They settled for McDonald's, on Alpine Road. Already the sky was fading into dark. As she waited for Gordon to bring the coffees, Ellen felt an ache of dissatisfaction; the setting was wrong, without atmosphere or romance-and yet, she reminded herself, watching Gordon's tall Nordic profile as he waited in line, their attraction never required those inducements. Had crashed forth in far less auspicious settings than this one.

The tray looked small in his hands. Silly. McDonald's was a place where everyone looked silly. Gordon sat, gathering his unwieldy knees under the table. They stirred their coffees. Something had changed about him, Ellen decided. There was a new composure, even buoyancy. She wondered, fleetingly, if he had begun an affair with someone else.

"So," he said. "You've had a h.e.l.l of a time."

"Is it that obvious?" she said, dryly.

"I didn't mean that." He smiled, eyes winking inside their pale lashes. Ellen knew he didn't mean that, so why had she said it?

"It's true," she said. "For a long time, everything stopped."

"How could it not."

The coffee was sour, too hot. Ellen set down her cup. "I think I was-abrupt. At the time," she said. "With you."

"I understood," he said simply. He was making it all very easy. The problem was that Ellen hadn't come here to apologize, or be forgiven.

"Anyway," Gordon said, "soon, hopefully ..."

"Yes. Spring."

"And then you can relax."

"But Gordon."

And now he wasn't smiling anymore. He looked away from Ellen, to her left, a tiny seizure of apprehension unsettling his face. And in that moment she saw it all: that Gordon had his old life back again-his old life minus the thrilling, crus.h.i.+ng abstraction of another life he would rather be living. That no one had replaced her. The opposite; Gordon regretted what had happened between them and was determined not to repeat it. And at last Ellen recognized the new quality she'd noticed in him today, and put a name to it. Relief.

"Gordon, I miss you," she said.

"It's rank, but I have to get home pretty soon." Even saying it, Ricky heard the lack of conviction. Wedged in the front seat of the truck between Paul (driving) and Prezioso (smirking), Ricky aimed his unhappiness out the window as they headed south on Alpine. Smallwood and Catalani had it worse, stuck in the open back with the yowling wind and the boards, Ricky's Tony Hawk included, which he hoped they wouldn't have the nerve to touch.

He was afraid to go to the cathouse, but saying so was not an option, or else Jimmy or G.o.d forbid Paul might think there was something wrong with him because of the chemo. Jimmy had implied it. And Ricky didn't know; was he normal? Two years ago he'd seen a girl at the hospital wearing a pink T-s.h.i.+rt and a stiff blond wig, crying. Lisa Jacobs. She'd walked out of the girls' room, her face soaked and tired and gentle in a way that seemed beautiful to Ricky. Lisa snagged in his brain. For months she made him look forward to the treatments; he shook, sometimes, at the thought of seeing her. Lisa had the bad kind, the kind in your nervous system. She had a younger sister named Hannah and two Siamese cats. Her parents were divorced, and her hair, when she'd had it, was dark brown. "I'm a cancer blonde," she'd said, and laughed a little harshly. Ricky hadn't seen Lisa in months, and he had a bad feeling about it.

The windows of the "Glamour Health and Fitness Center" were covered with moth-colored lace and ringed with white Christmas tree lights. The little sign in its door said "Open." It did seem pretty small, Ricky thought, for a health club.

Paul parked up the block, and Smallwood and Catalani clambered from the back and surged around the windows.

"R. and me'll go first." Paul.

"Someone else can." Himself, hollowly.

"All of us, c'mon!" Mark, blundering in the door like a big cold dog.

"... if you want to see them really laugh." Paul. And as always, a blinding nimbus of truth surrounded the fact, once he'd said it. "Anyway, R. needs the experience." This last with a barely perceptible wink-at him, Ricky thought. Or had Paul been winking at Jimmy, saying something else?

Ricky a.s.sumed a smooth, mellow face that told the world this was all exactly in line with his expectations. He glided out of the truck, heart detonating in his chest, and sauntered beside Paul to the Glamour Health and Fitness Center, whose door, not too surprisingly, was locked. Paul pushed a little pink doorbell lit from underneath, and a buzzer sounded. Paul shoved open the door.

The place was softly lit, pale pink walls and a short white counter where a bored-looking lady was sitting on a tall stool. She wore a magenta leotard top and was tan, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a little bit of acne on her cheeks and an upturned nose and s.h.i.+ny red lipstick. She looked either part Spanish or part Chinese or maybe both. "What can I do for you?" Coldly, but with a husky voice.

"We're here to work out." Paul, grinning weirdly.

"Sorry. It's members only."

There was a pause. Paul looked at the lady and the lady looked at Paul.

"And." Paul. The word floated in front of the lady, majestically suspended, but when she didn't react, it boomeranged back around at Paul. "So, uh. How do we join?"

"The club is full." She had an accent from somewhere. China? Spain?

"We won't take up much s.p.a.ce."

"Not this gentleman." The lady eyed Ricky, and he sensed a squint of humor somewhere in her face. "You, mister, you're taking up s.p.a.ce already."

"Well, that's just peachy, because Ricky here is the eager beaver."

Ricky gaped at Paul, who had never in his experience sounded so r.e.t.a.r.ded. It was a painful thing to witness.

"Ah. So." The lady turned to Ricky, and he was momentarily distracted by the question of whether she had just spoken to him in Chinese. Then he inclined his head in a slow, easy nod. He was trying to picture kissing this lady or even doing it with her, but the effort strained his imagination to the point of blankness. She was a lady, like the ones you saw at the Piggly Wiggly stacking their carts with pints of Jell-O salad.

"He's my brother." Paul blurted this for no apparent reason. Ricky averted his eyes in distress.

The lady climbed off her stool and came closer. She wore a wraparound skirt that waved a little in some hot, invisible breeze. "How very sweet. Looking out for little brother."

"I'll pay extra."

She ambled to one of the windows, lifted the moth-colored lace and glanced outside. Satisfied with what she did or didn't see, she turned to Paul. "Pay for what?"

"Whatever you normally do."

"Kid like this? I take him to the zoo. See the lions."