Processed cheese, p.24
Processed Cheese, page 24
“Isn’t that Farrago?” said Ambience as they pulled up onto the crunchy gravelly driveway. It was, and as soon as she saw the car, Farrago bounded across the dry scraggly lawn to greet them. They hugged, they kissed, they examined each other for any changes in appearance since the last visit, which was at least five years ago now.
“What’s with the raincoat?” said Graveyard.
“I’m washing my jeans.”
“So? You don’t have anything else to wear?”
“No.”
“You expect me to buy that?”
“They’re my favorite jeans.”
“Okay. But it doesn’t look like you’ve got anything on under that coat.”
“I don’t.”
Ambience smiled. “I understand completely.”
“Where is everybody?” Graveyard said.
“Dad’s at work. Mom’s I don’t know where. SideEffects was just here about an hour ago looking for his baseball bat or some shit, I don’t know.”
“We staying in my old room?”
“What do you think? They didn’t do a fucking thing to it, though. Said if you wanted better accommodations you could, and I quote, blow your wad on an overpriced shithole at the Stay ’N’ Pay.”
“Guess we’re home,” said Graveyard.
“Guess you are,” said Farrago.
They left their luggage and the bags in the car and cautiously entered the house. A fragrant breeze was blowing through the living room from the tears in the curtain of rattling plastic covering the space where the back wall had been razed to accommodate the additional bedroom begun, by Graveyard’s reckoning, some twenty years ago and still unfinished. No comment. They trudged upstairs to check out Graveyard’s boy cave. The room was pretty much as he remembered. An indelible memory folded into each wrinkled guitar-god poster plastered to the walls, every chipped action figure and muscle-car miniature on the largely bookless bookcase, one entire shelf of which was devoted to a complete set of realistically rendered plastic critters from Aster Feud. Decorative strings of multicolored Christmas lights were tacked to every wall. The windows were painted black. There was a green piñata in the shape of a pickle dangling from the center of the ceiling. An aquarium tank on the school desk in the corner was filled with cleaned animal bones of some kind. The closet door was open, revealing a cascade of clothes both hung and piled in heaps on the floor.
Ambience made an unclassifiable face. “This place should be preserved in amber,” she said. “A major exhibit in the Museum of Arrested Adolescence.”
“I don’t think anyone’s slept in here since you left,” said Farrago. “Mom wouldn’t let ’em.”
“Who’d want to?” said Ambience.
Graveyard picked up a delicately painted toy planet warrior from the bedside table. He studied it for a moment. He put it down. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. Revisiting the past enshrined in this particular room was like sorting through an impossible mound of old smelly laundry.
“There’s a tent in the garage,” said Farrago. “You could pitch it in the backyard.”
“There’s always the pricey shithole,” said Ambience.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Graveyard said. He looked around the room one last time. This is the last time I will see this space, these objects, he said to himself. This room, ever again. “Good thing we didn’t unload the car.”
“I could tell them you stopped by,” said Farrago, “but there was, like, something wrong with your car, like an oil leak or something, and you had to get it fixed, like, right away.”
“Not bad,” said Ambience. She looked at Farrago with the sisterly admiration of a fellow accomplished liar. “We could go with that.”
So they did.
At the nearby Stay ’N’ Pay they naturally decided to opt for the best, the priciest—the deluxe Wayfarer’s Delight suite, which actually consisted of little more than a couple of average-size rooms joined by a makeshift door cut into the adjoining beaverboard wall. The “suite” smelled faintly of mold and cigarette smoke, and the worn furnishings exuded a distinctly repurposed air.
“So what now?” said Graveyard.
“Let’s fuck on these filthy sheets.”
So they did. For Graveyard, entwining with Ambience was the body equivalent of a palate cleanse. His boyhood faded like a photograph left too long in the sun. Plus, sex on a strange bed in a strange place added its own particular zesty seasoning to the event. Halfway through the proceedings Graveyard’s dick seemed to detach itself from his body and become a separate object no one especially owned, a curious object they shared among themselves in a sweet space somewhere outside of time. Afterward they lay there side by side, panting, for a long while.
“Never felt that before,” said Ambience.
“Me, neither,” said Graveyard.
“I want to feel that again. As soon as possible.”
“Know what I think?” said Graveyard.
“No. What do you think?”
“There’s no end to this. There are no real boundaries anywhere. We feel as much as we can bear until we can’t bear it anymore and then we stop, and wherever we stop, however incredibly good that may feel, something inside us knows there’s more, there’s always more. Unfortunately, arriving in that place doesn’t seem to come naturally. It’s like we have to learn how to feel good. Isn’t that amazing?”
“That why the planet’s so fucked?”
“Apparently so.”
“How’d we escape?”
“On the money rocket.”
They looked into each other’s faces and for a prolonged interval they weren’t seeing faces anymore but what the faces covered. Then they fell asleep. The ringing phone woke them around six. It was Roulette.
“Welcome back, stranger,” he said.
“Hello, Dad,” said Graveyard.
“Old homestead not good enough for you? Instead of staying here for the grand sum of absolutely nothing you’d rather go off and pay actual money for the privilege of rolling around on a pile of bedbugs?”
“It’s the only exercise I get.”
“They found a body over there sometime last year. Dead with a bunch of sticks, pencils, screwdrivers, what have you jammed up his ass. Door locked from the inside. Looks like he was planning on quite a fun weekend for himself.”
“What was the room number?”
“What do you mean, what was the room number? How the hell am I supposed to know what the room number was?”
“Well, you sound like you’re an authority on the case. I doubt we’re in the same room.”
“Your mother’s here and she’s already turned the whole kitchen into some kind of mad scientist’s lab throwing together a special dinner for you. Your favorites: beef duds, potato spackles, braised fingerstalks, and those horrible little rolls with freshette marbling and those godawful catacomb seeds you like so much. So be sure to bring a competitive eater’s appetite. You don’t want to disappoint her. We expect you in an hour.”
“I haven’t eaten all day.”
“Perfect. You know your grandmother always said that hunger was the best seasoning for any meal.”
“Didn’t she also say you should eat what you want when you want?”
“Your grandmother was a crazy bitch.”
Roulette never said goodbye. He simply hung up the phone when he was finished talking. Which he did now.
“How’d that go?” said Ambience.
“Let’s get on over there and get this fiasco over with.”
Chapter 17
Winner Winner Family Dinner
They were settled around the old familiar table in the old familiar dining room whose decor seemed grimmer and the walls closer together than memory had placed them. Even before Graveyard took his customary place at the table, his entire body was unexpectedly seized by a pervasive, under-the-hood, all but unscratchable itching sensation. Home. His parents had also shrunk appreciably in size since he’d last seen them, on one of their rare daring visits to Mammoth City some three years ago. Once they’d been giants. Now more dwarflike.
“House look any different?” said Carousel.
“No, strangely enough,” Graveyard said. “Aside from an overall surprising reduction in size, everything seems pretty much the same. Why? Was there something I was supposed to notice?”
“No, not really. Just can’t remember what’s changed since you were here last. It’s been so long.”
“Well, there is one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That godawful reproduction hanging above the couch in the living room.”
“Angler’s Afternoon? Your father’s favorite picture. I had to send away special for that.”
It was a famous watercolor from BuffetPalette’s late rustic period. It depicted a barefoot boy wearing a straw hat and seated beside his trusty Dalmatian at the end of a rickety wooden pier. He held a bamboo fishing rod in his freckled hands, its thin white line dropping vertically into the dead center of a series of white concentric circles spreading symmetrically across the mirrored surface of a secluded country pond. The boy’s cheeks were madder lake, the dog yellow ocher, the pond sky blue number 1.
“Get rid of it,” said Graveyard. “Immediately.”
“It’s a great work of art,” said Roulette. He was already half finished with whatever it was they’d all been first served on matching scalloped salad plates.
“It’s not good for you,” Graveyard said. “It’ll make you sick looking at it. It’ll make you sick just sitting under it.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
“No one asked you to.”
“Can we please just stop?” said Farrago. “We haven’t even had our jiggerydoo yet.”
“Yes,” Carousel said. “You know how much better it tastes before the middenage wilts.”
Everyone fell silent for several whole minutes. Studious scraping of cutlery across the tableware.
“One thing I can tell you I certainly did notice,” Graveyard said. “The TV.”
“What about it?” Carousel said.
“It’s the same one I watched when I was ten.”
“So?” said Roulette. “It still works fine.”
“That may be. But it’s too damn small. I don’t know how you manage to make out anything on that mini screen. It’s like peeking through a keyhole. You need a bigger set. A much bigger set.”
“What I’ve been saying for years,” said Carousel. “It’s not good for your eyes.”
“My eyes are fine,” said Roulette. “Good enough to catch all your folderol.”
No one spoke. More clinking and scraping.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” said Carousel. “We haven’t been all together for a genuine sit-down dinner since I don’t know when. Like a real family.”
“Or a ghost facsimile of one,” said Graveyard.
“Well, minus a member,” said Farrago. She glanced meaningfully at the vacant chair beside her.
“Oh, please. You know your brother. When he says he’ll be here, he’ll be here.”
“As if that promise ever means anything.”
“He’s got business,” said Roulette. “He’s making money. Pass that brown stuff in the green bowl.”
“This reminds me of that famous dinner party in Mountain Manna,” said Carousel. “Remember that scene where Prettybone, who’s under a ton of makeup and looks ultra old and ultra ugly in this movie, invites all his relatives to a big farewell dinner in this huge mansion on the top of a hill where only rich people live cause he’s dying and—”
“We’ve all seen the picture,” said Roulette.
“The big surprise is that what he really wants is for them to simply enjoy one another’s company and celebrate his life and their own lives and just life in general.”
“So what’s all that got to do with us?” said Farrago.
“The dinner scene, honey,” said Carousel. “Remember, the entire scattered clan’s back together for their first reunion in years and everyone’s talking and laughing and having this fantastic time and gorging themselves on heaps of food that probably tastes as good as it looks and it’s so perfect and homey and warm, it just makes me feel all wholesome and buzzy inside. Of course, that’s before the knives come out, but still—”
“Piece of ridiculous crap,” said Roulette.
“This is a fabulous dinner, Carousel,” said Ambience. “And these astonishing potatoes. I don’t believe I’ve ever had anything quite like them before.”
“They’re spackles, dear. No trouble at all. Wahoo indigo rounds parboiled in sugar water, then oven-poached in a creamy bath of frolic oil and wester butter. I swear Graveyard ate them just about every day for a whole year when he was little. Couldn’t get enough.”
“Well,” said Graveyard, “tastes like candy, right?”
“I suppose,” said Ambience. “But healthier.”
“That’s what I was raised on. Healthy candy.”
“Guess I got the unhealthy kind,” said Farrago.
“So dramatic,” her mother said.
“You always jabbered on all the time about how good potatoes were for us, full of fiber and potassium and vitamin B and vitamin C and how they make you smart and lower your blood pressure and we should all eat them every day.”
“Until the next day, when they tell us that was wrong, a big mistake, and we should never touch a potato again for the rest of our lives,” said Carousel, as though she were reciting something she’d recently read. “Once that media light hits a fact of any kind it shrivels right up and dies. Truth only prospers in the dark.”
“Uh-oh,” said Farrago. “Here we go again.”
“Where’d you get that?” Graveyard said. “Dad?”
“Where else?”
“Where does anyone in this family get anything useful?” said Roulette.
“What’s SideEffects up to these days?” said Graveyard. “I’ve lost track of our brother these last few months.”
“He’s good,” said Carousel. “Just sold a house over in Guffaw Estates for three hundred fifty thousand. That’s a record in this area.”
“I was offered a buy-in on the original investment in Guffaw,” said Roulette. “Turned ’em down cold.”
“Bet you regret that now,” said Graveyard.
“Bunch of developers from Mammoth City. Coming up here to destroy Randomburg same as they did that town. Close-talking assholes, all of ’em.”
“You did well on the CrossHair-BingoBango deal,” said Carousel.
“Only because our nearest competitor, MahoganySands, got indicted a week before signing. And even then the payout wasn’t all that stellar. Should have just taken that money and played the lottery.” He looked at his son.
Graveyard refused the look. “So anything new in the neighborhood?” he said.
“Not much,” said Carousel. “Old TireRetread finally died. You remember him. The man who wrote that nasty letter to President MadeForYou and next minute the street’s swarming with Secret Service. With guns.”
“The man was an idiot,” said Roulette.
“Yes. Well, now he’s gone. Mizzen’s disease. The absolute worst. Took him forever and by the end he was licking the grapes off the wallpaper for breakfast. Horrible. I saw it and wished I hadn’t.”
“I hear the widow got three hundred for the house,” Roulette said.
“She wishes she got that,” said Carousel.
“SideEffects would probably know,” said Farrago.
“Both sons on opioids, too. Terrible tragedy.”
“Crankcase called,” said Farrago.
“Yeah?” Graveyard said.
“He wants to see you.”
“I haven’t talked to him in years. How’d he know I was here?”
“In this town,” said Roulette, “everyone knows everything.”
“He still on over at Bullets ’N’ Brunch?”
“He’s the manager now.”
“Maybe I’ll drop by there sometime tomorrow.”
“But you’ve got to tell us all about your trip,” said Carousel. “We’re dying to hear.”
“What trip?” said Ambience.
“The one you and Graveyard took overseas. To Bullionvilla.”
“Oh, that.”
“Doesn’t sound like you had much fun.”
“We experienced various complications.”
“Nothing too serious, I hope.”
“I lost some money at the tables,” said Graveyard.
“Depends on how you define some,” Ambience said.
“But what were the people like?” said Farrago. “Do they really eat fried omicrons in red sauce for breakfast?”
“Yes,” said Ambience. “With the beaks still on.”
“Eeeeeew,” said mother and daughter in unison.
“They wear shoes with soles made out of gold leaf?” said Roulette.
“Only the most flagrant assholes,” said Graveyard.
“I’ll bet the women all have mustaches,” Farrago said.
“Just the ones who kiss toads and drink beer out of a glass.”
“Don’t they all follow that religion that demands all unbelievers be branded with an X on their foreheads?” said Roulette.
