Killing Time in Crystal City Read online

  Why do they want to do that anyway, make your destination look like your departure when they know all you want to do with your departure point is to depart it?

  Anyway.

  “Anyway,” I say, as the bus hisses into its bay and I return to collect my backpack and my actual friend.

  • • •

  The bus station of Crystal City is precisely as grimy as the one back in Ass Bucket. It’s a little bigger, though, so there are more bays, more buses coming in, more going out, belching more exhaust into the oily air and beeping randomly and for no apparent reason other than to make everybody more jaggedy and angry.

  I follow behind Stacey as we bump our way out of the big daytime dusk of the garage area, fighting through the flow of fellow travelers to get to the terminal on the other side of the thick glass doors. Already my eyes feel irritated and what passes for air here is working my lungs over to provoke the first whistlings of wheeze as I breathe.

  The diesel-mechanical stench is replaced by a deep-fried-humanity stench as we push through the doors into the waiting lounge, cafeteria, ticketing offices tilt-a-whirl of busfolk society. Just a few steps in, Stacey turns around sharply and I almost bump into her before braking.

  “Is that you making that noise?” she says.

  “No,” I say, and lung-whistle right through it.

  “Of course,” she says. “Of course you have asthma. Why wouldn’t you have asthma?”

  “Okay,” I say firmly, “first, it’s controlled asthma, it’s only that the concentrated bus fumes set it off a little. And second, is that some kind of asthmatic stereotyping thing you’re doing there? Because that would be very uncool.”

  Stacey’s hungry grin tells me that my passionate defense of the maligned tribe of asthma sufferers has done nothing to the old fire of prejudice other than throw another log onto it. Before she can say more, however, she’s cut off.

  “Derek?” says the small, nerved-up girl who nudges Stacey aside to speak right into my chin like it’s a microphone. “Are you Derek? You are, right? Sure, it is you. It’s me, Molly.” As she says her name she smiles really hard, really hard, as if you can amp up a smile like you can a scream. She also holds up her right arm, showing me her cast.

  Her intensity could just about push me backward all by itself but I help it along by inching away from her breath, which is slightly sour but with a top layer of Scope that is so strong it’s almost a mist.

  “Sorry,” I say, “but I’m not Derek.”

  “What?” she says, sounding genuinely perplexed by my failure to be Derek. “But you look like you, pretty much. And it’s the time, and I’m here. And the cast, and everything. You have the cast, and everything.”

  Stacey takes this as her cue, and bumps Molly’s shoulder with a casted forearm roughly enough to send her sideways into the path of a big fat businessguy, who jolts her even harder without seeming to notice.

  “Yo, rudegirl,” Stacey says as Molly pushes her glasses back up her face and fails to hide the large, watering eyes. “You are mistaken. This is Kiki Vandeweghe, he’s not your Derek.”

  I’m looking at the slight, twitchy girl whose voice sounds like she has an air bubble trapped in her throat, and who is dealing with the superior force that is Stacey by wrapping her arms around one another in what looks like a badly needed hug. And as I’m looking I think I am sorry for not being Derek. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been that, and prevented this.

  “Hey, sorry,” Stacey says a lot more warmly now that she has made her point about manners and now that she can see the delicacy of the little lost creature before her. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  Molly shakes her head without speaking and continues her unilateral embrace. Her hair is a large gingery mass of a garden with curly parts and frizzy parts and bushy parts shaped into an almost perfect globe. She seems to have attempted some kind of parting in there between the middle and the left side but it’s mostly fought back, and the overpowered hair clip is really just floating about six inches away from the scalp. Between the shape, the color, and the midstripe it looks a lot like a Cleveland Browns helmet.

  Stacey steps up to her and gently takes the clip, which appears to be in the form of a yellow school bus, and works it back through the hair to where it belongs. Molly holds completely still, but follows Stacey intently with her wide eyes.

  Suddenly it occurs to me. Maybe I just could be Derek. The Derek or a Derek, what’s the difference? I’m betting no difference at all, as far as Molly is concerned. So yeah, why not? She could have her Derek, the universe could have some rightness, and I’m pretty sure it would even be okay with Kiki since he is currently unattached.

  “What’s this, a convention or somethin’?”

  Startled, I look to my left where the speaker is holding up a left arm almost completely covered in a cast that is bent at the elbow. Since it is twice the cast of anybody else’s here, I’m thinking he may want to be our leader.

  “No, it’s not a convention,” is my clever response to the man who acknowledges me not at all.

  “Molly?” he says, walking right up to Stacey. “Please, tell me you’re Molly.”

  Stacey goes right on taking care of the business of hairdressing before she sizes the guy up. “Even if I was Molly, I wouldn’t tell you I was Molly.”

  Molly tells him she is Molly anyway. “I’m Molly.”

  Stacey is still looking the guy up and down when she says to her, “Are you sure? Maybe you’re not Molly.”

  “I’m Derek,” he says, still staring at Stacey and staring a stare that says he is failing to recognize any of the hostility waves radiating from her.

  I step in quickly. “Sign my cast, Derek?”

  “What?” he snaps, but grabs the marker and squiggles his mark along the outer edge up near the elbow.

  “This is your Derek?” Stacey asks, getting in between them and holding her gaze.

  “I guess so,” Molly says.

  “Who are you?” Derek asks Stacey’s back. Stacey’s back keeps him on hold.

  “You thought he”—she thumb-points back at Derek—“looked like him?” She pinkie-points at me.

  “The picture was kinda blurry,” Molly says, the air bubble in her throat expanding.

  “Oh, the picture is more than kinda blurry,” Stacey says.

  “What picture are we talking about?” I ask.

  “Uh, I’m here to meet Molly, right, so if the two of you who are not Molly would be on your way, we can get on with getting to know each other.”

  “That picture,” Stacey snaps.

  And a picture he is. I mean, I know I’m not bringing home any blue ribbons from the fair, but if he looks like me it has to be me after being dragged underneath a truck, left to age in the summer sun for a couple of months, and then given an all-over coating of a fine-grade motor oil. Although, it appears by his dense stubble that he is well capable of growing a beard. Like, three times a day.

  “How old are you, De-rek?” Stacey says with a hammer blow to that second syllable.

  He seems to be up for the game with her, which I personally think is unwise.

  “Why don’t we just call it early thirties,” he says, all leery.

  “What piss,” Stacey spits. “I didn’t ask what year you were born.”

  “See, Molly,” Derek says, leaning in to take her hand, “I tried to be nice and get along with your friends, for your sake, but it just doesn’t work with some people.”

  Then, it goes emphatically wrong.

  Then, Molly takes his hand.

  Then, Stacey nearly takes off Molly’s hand, in slapping the two apart.

  “What’s wrong with you, girl?” Stacey says, starting to shuffle the girl away toward the streetside exit. “This is a bad thing. You have to know this is a bad thing.”

  “Nothing’s w
rong with me,” Molly says, but puts up no resistance to Stacey’s mothering.

  “You are outta line,” Derek snarls, walking after them. “She wants to be with me.”

  Even though nobody’s invited me, I start fast-walking after them. Derek is managing a seriously quick stride that keeps pace with the now-running girls while at the same time not looking like he’s chasing or pursuing anybody. The kind of thing I’d think takes practice.

  What kind of guy practices that?

  Myself, I’m pretty sure I look like I’m running, or run-shambling, as I catch up to the action. The girls have reached and gone through the middle one of a five-across bank of glass doors to the street. They run hard left. Seconds later, Derek goes through that same door while I pass through the one to his immediate left.

  Then it all becomes a mess of a run-shamble as I half-stumble, half-throw myself to the ground in Derek’s path. I fall hard to the pavement, breaking my fall mostly with my good arm while I also take Derek right out of the play. He hits my side just below his knees and just like that he is up and over, his legs taken right out from under him. I am looking in the direction of the fleeing girls as Derek flies over me and hits the pavement with his jaw after his big bent cast breaks all up on impact with the sidewalk.

  He is howling and growling, rolling on the ground and holding his resmashed broken arm and bleeding a good puddle from his mouth as I scramble up and scram away.

  I might not be a superhero, but I can fall down like nobody’s business.

  • • •

  I walk up the street, through the center of Crystal City, trying to catch up to them. I trot for a couple of blocks and then walk hard for a couple more. Then I walk slowly for a couple more, before I start trying side streets off the main drag and then side streets off those, with no plan, no idea what I’m doing. And no luck.

  ONCE THERE WAS JASPER

  How did you get this way?” Jasper asked me, about a week before the school year ended. Or the quarter year for me since I only moved after the April vacation. We were walking the six miles home from school, because it was a Thursday. We walked home Tuesdays and Thursdays. That was Jasper’s idea because he said it made the weeks shorter.

  I never felt it did any such thing. Nothing made the weeks shorter. But I walked with him every Tuesday and Thursday because if I didn’t he would just walk on without me, and then where would I be?

  Jasper was my friend. He was my best friend. As well as my second-, third-, and fourth-best friend.

  Jasper was also genius at conceiving questions that served no purpose other than to drive me demented. “See, I know where this goes,” I said. “First, I’m expected to say, ‘What way?’ Because then you get to tell me how screwed up I am before then going on to get me to list the reasons why. As if I agree with you in the first place, which I don’t. But you can just forget about it, because I’m short-circuiting your whole plan by not asking what you mean by ‘this way.’”

  It was a disused railway line, this long Tuesday-Thursday walk we took. Lots of overgrown grass. When he was bored, Jasper would make various train noises, and my favorite was the low and rhythmic chunk-chunk, chunk-chunk, chunk-chunk of the cars rolling over the seams in the track.

  “Chunk-chunk,” he said, then, “chunk-chunk, chunk-chunk . . .”

  “You can chunk-chunk all you want, but I’m not going to ask.”

  “You sound ridiculous. The accent is on the second chunk.”

  “I’m still not going to ask.”

  “Of course you’re not . . . chunk-chunk, chunk-chunk . . . because you know very well how you are.”

  Sometimes they didn’t even have to be questions and they would wind me up anyway.

  “No, wise guy. Actually, I don’t.”

  “No? Okay, then, let me tell you. You’re kind of paranoid. You’re a doomsayer.”

  “I’m not a doomsayer.”

  “Oh yes. You are a sayer of doom. And self-pitying. You’re Olympic-standard at making yourself out to be the victim in everything.”

  “Stop picking on me.”

  “Ha. Good one.”

  “Good what? God, I hate it when you do this stuff to me. If I’m so awful, why do you even bother—”

  “Did I say I was finished? There’s more. Jeez, you are so rude. So, we’ll add rudeness. And you’re ungrateful. You refuse to recognize any of the privileges that you enjoy. . . .”

  I ran ahead of him now, down the middle of the abandoned tracks, trying to escape the litany of sins that I could still hear rolling out in a train-chug of a cadence. Finally, I just lay down across the tracks like a suicide.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he said, approaching, not slowing, then stepping over me, “and you’re a martyr.”

  I got up, charged after him, then tackled him to the best of my limited ability, dragging him down to the ground by his backpack like a lone hyena trying to take physically superior prey.

  “This cannot possibly all be true,” I said, more or less into the back of his head. “Or you wouldn’t even be talking to me now.”

  He turned enough to give me the side of his face. He smelled like almond paste.

  “Maybe it’s because you remind me of a big iguana I once had. He whipped me in the face with his tail when all I was trying to do was share a piece of my exquisitely ripe mango with him.”

  “Hnnn,” I said, remaining right next to his cheek to give his comparison theory the complete half-second consideration it deserved. “I don’t think it would be worth all my million flaws just to be reminded of your violent, scaly, childhood pet that probably didn’t even exist.”

  “He did exist, and I loved him. To be honest, I even kind of enjoyed the tail-slap. I tried to get him to do it again, but by then I think he was onto me.”

  “Right,” I said in exasperation, shoving him down as I pushed off of him. I started down the tracks toward home again, and he scrambled up and ran alongside me again.

  “You know the reason I put up with all that crap of yours, ya reptile?” he said. “It’s because you are so funny.”

  “I’m not. Even I don’t find me amusing.”

  “Well, that’s that then, I’m out of explanations. Looks like all we’re left with is, love is blind. Don’t you hate being on the receiving end of a cliché?”

  “What I hate is when I ask you to stop saying something and you continue saying it. Could you not say that again, please?”

  He sighed loudly to produce a dramatic echo effect as we crossed under the short trestle bridge just before his route home veered to the left.

  “I’ll try, Kiki,” he said, splitting off and getting a safe few feet of distance away, “but I can’t make any promises.”

  “No, you clearly cannot,” I snapped. “Didn’t I ask you—didn’t I make you promise to stop that and call me by my given name?”

  “That is your given name. I gave it to you,” he said, walking backward down his road to give me just that bit of extra taunt. “You were almost gonna be Clyde Lovelette, until I came across Kiki Vandeweghe, which is certainly more you. You have the soul of a Kiki. I know you’re in there. We need to save you from this sad-sack Kevin and release the Kiki within!”

  “No,” I said as he turned away and punched the air in some kind of freaky inexplicable triumph. “No, we don’t.”

  He punched the air again then, with both fists, laughing.

  He so enjoyed himself, winding me up.

  Jasper Jerk. Why would I miss a person like that? Why would I miss him even a little, never mind a lot?

  OFF GRID

  Maybe I came for more than the name.

  My uncle Sydney lives in Crystal City. And he loathes my father. He told me several times that if I ever got it in my head to run away, I was welcome to come to him in Crystal City. Though I am not running away exactly—I am moving o
n and moving up—I think it’s reasonable to assume the invitation still applies.

  Sydney belongs to that long and dishonorable tradition in families called the black sheep. Every family really should have one and if they don’t have a suitable candidate within the organization, then they should do a search, because I figure everyone needs their black-sheep services at least sometime in their lives.

  My time is right now.

  I don’t give him any advance notice of my arrival because I have no contact details other than a street address. As far as I know, nobody else has such details either. He may or may not use phones and computers and other electronic devices but since he’s been referred to more than once in our house as Off-the-Grid-Syd, it’s kind of assumed that he doesn’t.

  I still carry with me like a pirate’s tiny treasure map the directions to his house that he drew up and gave to me in a Batman card as a thirteenth-birthday present. “Doesn’t look like much right now,” he said with a wink, “but just you watch that sucker appreciate in value over the next few years.”

  He looks like a prophet today, as I stand on the little porch of the house at the address that I found in only three and a quarter hours and through the kindness of a half-dozen strangers. Two of whom turned out to be the wrong kind of kind and every kind of strange.

  I press the doorbell three times before deciding it is broken or disabled, and then I knock.

  I haven’t even lowered my knocking hand before he throws the door open wide to me.

  “Kevin!” he says, rushing out to give me a lung-busting hug.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Uncle Sydney,” I gasp as he hugs out the last of my oxygen.

  “Didn’t I tell you? Huh? About that sucker appreciating in value? What are you now, seventeen?”

  “Just last month,” I say.

  “And I missed it.”

  “That’s okay.”