The Boy in the Tunnel

by Gardner Linn

25.

The invitations went out on a Thursday—fifteen hand-lettered cards that read simply “HALLOWEEN AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH,” with no date or time or location, distributed to the students in Dave’s Honors Microeconomics class—and on Saturday over 250 people descended on 1134-B Dogwood Terrace for the party of the year. They came as vampires and mummies, Frankenstein’s monsters and Indiana Joneses, Elvises and Jesuses, slutty nurses and slutty witches and slutty black cats, pantsless businessmen, three black fraternity brothers in KKK robes. The party was never spoken of aloud, but everyone knew about it; they were drawn to free beer and the thrilling potential of unfamiliar contact by the intuition that is a college student’s greatest gift.

Joanie had heard about the party from her hometown friend Audrey, whom Joanie had drifted away from in high school but now sought out as a freshman—she needed someone to corroborate her memories, to prove to herself that everything that had happened up till now was real. Joanie, at the urging of her brash volleyball teammate Kenya, dressed as the Slutty Green Giant, which she was determined not to regret.

Audrey met Joanie at Mary Rutherford with two guys in tow, twins, wearing identical red-and-blue paramilitary costumes.

“Ho ho ho Green Giant indeed,” Audrey said when Joanie walked out in her leafy leotard and green body paint. “Emphasis on the ‘ho.’”

“I get it, Audrey.”

The twin with the scar on his cheek stuck offered his hand to Joanie. “Xamot,” he said.

The other twin followed suit. “Tomax.”

Joanie was able to glean that they were dressed as some evil twins from GI Joe, and Joanie should really have known that because it wasn’t cool to be unaware of your culture. The twins had convinced Audrey to dress as some GI Joe character too, the Baroness, and she didn’t seem too happy about it but also seemed to enjoy the twin with the scar’s appreciation of the costume.

The party was still in its early stages when they arrived, in the non-scarred twin’s Volvo, and they were able to park in the cul-de-sac instead of the Food Lion parking lot down the street. A pack of guys, soft and shapeless and blandly innocent, clustered in the driveway, drinking beer too quickly from paper cups, trying to feign criminal cool. They kept their eyes pavementward as Joanie passed, only looking up once she was in the house, safely back in the realm of fantasy.

“Oh my god fucking She-Hulk,” one of the guys said.

The living room caliginous, furniture pushed to the walls, a gooseneck lamp on the floor shining into a corner, just enough light to outline a handful of nervous kids waiting for the lubrication to kick in. No one dancing to “Crosseyed and Painless.” A Darth Vader in denim shorts already asleep on a green chair.

Down the hall, toward the light of the kitchen, a table heavy with bottom-shelf bottles. a Frank Bullitt pouring a glass of a thick, pale yellow liquid. He handed the drink to Joanie and said “a Dreamsicle.” The Ned Flanders next to him leered through his glasses and said “Hi-diddly-ho-ho-ho, Green Giant.”

Joanie took the drink and downed half of it—she’d need some help to get through a whole night of “ho” jokes—and discovered with some delight that it did in fact taste like an orange Dreamsicle, but with the sharp kick of alcohol, like a corrupted piece of childhood.

Bullitt and Flanders both roared with recognition when the twins walked in the kitchen. “Tomax!” they shouted. “Xamot!” And then gasps at Audrey, the Baroness. If it was possible to corrupt something that was already corrupted, and then turn that corruption into a facial expression, that’s what was going on beneath Flanders’s fake mustache.

Bullitt handed Dreamsicles to everyone, a fresh one to Joanie. She learned his real name was Avery. His grey hair didn’t seem to be the result of dye. More people arrived. Joanie saw Kenya and the rest of the volleyball girls, all wearing the baggy uniforms of the men’s basketball team; then the basketball team arrived, wearing the girls’ tight volleyball shorts. Joanie wondered why she hadn’t been invited to participate in the costume-swap, but then she had another Dreamsicle and forgot about it.

“They were building TerrorDromes in Trucial Abysmia. Like how awesome would it be if Iraq was actually called Trucial Abysmia. You think the Trucial Abysmia tourism board ever just went ‘Fuck it, you guys—until we change our name to something nice like Auschwitz nobody’s gonna visit.’ I think the world needs a Trucial Abysmia. No matter how shitty a place you lived in, you could still say ‘At least I don’t live in fucking Trucial Abysmia.’ What’s their national anthem, a guy like gasping for air after getting stabbed in the gut?”

The twins turned out to both be named Alexander Pratt—James Alexander “Xander” Pratt and Alexander James “Alex” Pratt. Joanie was pretty sure Xander was the one with the scar. She wanted to know if the scar was real. He said it was. She licked her thumb and rubbed it across his cheek, smearing the red line. The heat goes on where the hand has been.

Joanie saw Avery mixing more Dreamsicles—orange juice, half & half, amaretto—and decided against having another. The drinks sat heavy in her stomach, heavy on her forehead. Kenya was in line. She told Kenya to get her something. Five minutes later, in the living room, Kenya brought her a glass of something clear and sweet and fizzy, thick with mint. “Didn’t know where you’d run off to,” Kenya said.

Denim Vader had found his second wind and was standing on the green chair, spotlighting people with the lamp. He was shouting something, but Joanie couldn’t hear it over the rubbery bass. The spotlight found Joanie’s green face, made it a green moon rising. The light reflected off her face onto the masks of the horrible and the desperate around her and below her, and they all shone with the same light, before Vader’s knee gave out and he collapsed, a wet crunch coming from inside his mask.

Let’s find out if that scar is real, for real. A mint leaf found its way into her mouth and she chewed it to fragrant pulp.

“I don’t even know who the fucking Baroness is.” Audrey, on a loveseat in a bedroom now, off the kitchen. Five minutes later? An hour? Joanie’s drink was full again. “Xander said it would be cool if I dressed up like the Baroness and I said okay, like whatever, you know, I didn’t have any other ideas and he thought it would be cool, so I did it but now he’s with that fucking slut in the Catwoman costume and holy shit I’m so fucking stupid”

Joanie knew what was going on, but she wasn’t sober enough to explain it. After she had wiped off Xander’s scar, Alex had drawn a scar on his own cheek; that was Alex making out with Catwoman, not Xander. Joanie couldn’t articulate this.

Joanie just laughed, and at first Audrey was laughing along with her but Joanie kept laughing and Audrey couldn’t think of what was so funny, so she stopped laughing, but Joanie just laughed harder and harder until finally Audrey just said “God, you drunk bitch” and stormed out of the room, leaving Joanie doubled over on the loveseat, laughing at something that wasn’t even funny.

*******************

Dick heard about the party from Chet, like he heard about everything from Chet nowadays. Dick knew he was lucky to have a friend like Chet, a friend who knew about all the awesome parties and also had a car to drive him to the awesome parties and to the Wal-Mart to get costumes for the parties. Chet wore a Viking helmet, sunglasses and his bio lab coat; Dick wore safety goggles, a dust mask, rainbow suspenders and a BB gun. They were Dr. Leif Wunderbar and his sidekick, the Severe-Eye-Injury Kid, characters from a movie Chet had made up.

Dick didn’t know how Chet knew about the party, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to know anybody at the party, and as they walked up Dogwood Terrace from the Food Lion he felt exposed and ridiculous in his costume; he needed the safety of others equally stupid-looking.

But it was no better at the party; people looked at him with two questions in their eyes: “Who is that?” and “Who is he supposed to be?” And if anyone had asked, he could have explained, at least the second question, but no one asked. He found a guy who was wearing nothing but strategically-placed “HELLO MY NAME IS” stickers and borrowed one; he wrote “The Severe-Eye-Injury Kid” on his and stuck it to his chest, but that only seemed to add to the confusion.

“What the fuck is the Severe-Eye-Injury Kid?” asked the grey-haired guy in the turtleneck who looked like he was supposed to be somebody’s dad. Before Dick could answer Chet stepped in and announced “He’s Dr. Leif Wunderbar’s trusty sidekick!” and struck a pose. The old-looking guy recognized Chet and said hi and then they went somewhere else to talk and Dick was alone, pretending to be something no one understood.

Dick went outside to the back porch, where the keg sweated in a trash can filled with ice, and waited in line to fill a cup. He pulled the dust mask down around his neck so he could take a long drink of the weak beer. He wandered back inside, back to the living room, where a retarded kid in a Darth Vader mask was shining a lamp at some eight-foot-tall girl all painted green. Everybody in the room was staring at the girl, their bodies involuntarily twitching to spastic white funk. They were looking up to her and she was looking down on them. It was all so very something.

Dick had one overwhelming urge, and that was to shoot Darth Vader with the BB gun. So he pumped the rifle, lined up Darth’s knee in the sight, and pulled the trigger.

*****************

--Okay man seriously Audrey’s cute and all, especially in the Baroness costume, but holy shit did you see that girl what’s-her-name, the fucking Jolly Green Giant? Holy SHIT Audrey said they were like best friends in middle school I mean can you even IMAGINE? Can you let the image of those two in like some sleepover pillow-fight scenario just like play in your mind? I mean I know the whole Baroness thing was my idea and look, obviously it was a good idea but Jesus CHRIST this Joanie girl. Like who would even THINK the fucking Jolly Green Giant would be the hottest thing EVER? Dude are you with me on this?

--Dude you have no shot. Audrey’s into you, I can tell. This freaky tall girl, she’s not only not in your league, she’s not in any league at all. They won’t even let her in the game. Plus you don’t want to piss Audrey off. She’s the best bassist we’ve seen, plus she said she knows a drummer.

--Yeah but dude Joanie—

--Oh holy shit dude look at Catwoman over there.

*****************

Dave’s mustache itched. The spirit gum had come loose after two Car Bombs, and the mustache flopped over his lips, soggy with liquor. It was annoying, but he didn’t want to pull it off because that shit hurt.

The party was not going a hundred percent like Dave had hoped. Aside from the mustache, there was the green sweater, which he had borrowed from Avery, and which Avery had said belonged to his grandfather, and which felt like it was made out of fiberglass insulation and asbestos. His skin itched and felt sore somehow. And doing the voice all night was no picnic either, but that’s what’s called commitment to a character.

Avery had taken off with that idiot in the Viking helmet, leaving Dave alone at the bar. Dave wasn’t going to bartend for all these drunk douchebags. They didn’t need him to put rum and Coke in the same cup for them. They were all in college, for Christ’s sake. He wanted to mingle.

Through the throng in the hall to the living room, Talking Heads still rattling the walls, drowning out all other noise. Picking the music was one of Dave’s favorite things about having parties, and woe to anyone who tried to question his choices.

“There’s a party in my mind / and the party never stops,” sang David Byrne. Don’t you see? thought Dave. Don’t you see how perfect this is? You all want to live in a movie, you all want your lives to be soundtracked, and here I have done it for you, I have provided the context for you to make something happen, to create a perfect, lasting memory, an image that everyone here can take with them into the future, to look back on and say “I was there and that happened while I was there.” Memories can’t wait, people.

For some reason the even weirder kid who was with the weird Viking guy was standing there with a BB gun looking just immensely pleased with himself. Across the room, some idiot in a Darth Vader helmet was all upside-down in the green chair, like clutching his knee. Dave pushed through the crowd to Vader, knelt down and took off the kid’s helmet. His nose was swollen and freely bleeding.

“You okay, man?” asked Dave.

“Dude,” said Vader.

“Don’t bleed on my chair, okay?” Dave pulled him up and sat him on the couch that officially belonged to Avery. “Get somebody to drive you home if you know anybody sober enough.”

“Dude,” said Vader.

Dave wanted to have a word with the dipshit with the gun, but he had disappeared. Some unstable dilsnick bringing a BB gun to a party. Fucking freshmen.

Dave sat in the green chair and ripped off the alcohol-soaked mustache. It hurt, just as he had predicted, but the pain was sharp and short and died quickly. It didn’t move in.

This party was not like the one a month ago with Stacy, which though it had ended bad had started great; it of course wasn’t like the parties from movies that parties like this always aspired to but failed to be. The purpose of a party was to draw all these disparate people into the same place for the same reason, to bring them all together into the skin of the same creature, working toward a unified, unspecified goal. They came in with their own personalities, their own specialties, their own selfish functions, but once they entered they became cells, parts of the larger whole, and those functions were put to use for the good of the whole. That was what was supposed to happen.

But again, like always, it didn’t happen. Everyone stayed in the groups they entered with, serving only themselves.

Dave wanted to talk to that girl who was dressed like the Baroness. Dave had always had a thing for the Baroness; while his prepubescent friends obsessed over Scarlet or Lady Jaye or even the obscure model-turned-tank-driver Cover Girl, he was concocting elaborate scenarios wherein he was a kitchen boy at a Swiss boarding school who caught the eye of a bookish dark-haired girl named Anastasia. Among her schoolmates she was shy and demure, but at night, behind the stables, she displayed a startling, sparkling cruelty, goading him into criminal acts which he happily committed, all to see her smile her entitled smile. No rodents were safe from his knife.

Then it was later and he was silver-masked Destro, plotting with the Baroness Anastasia to take over COBRA, and again her lust for cruelty spurred him to do the unspeakable; the rats were bigger but the knife was the same.

The world of his fantasies was the world of adults as understood by children, all conflict magnified to the point of requiring heavy artillery, all impulses misinterpreted and redirected, passions sublimated into violence. No wonder he was so screwed up now, no wonder he was more attracted to the Baroness costume than to the girl wearing it. She was like an avatar of all his adolescent desires, and probably not even his; he wasn’t special for obsessing over GI Joe. Last year a girl had come to the Halloween party dressed as She-Ra, and Dave hadn’t even been able to breathe around her.

The Baroness wasn’t in the living room so he got up and struggled back through the hall to the kitchen and nearly ran into her as she stomped out of Avery’s bedroom. She was upset and he thought about reaching out and stopping her, comforting her, but she was out of his reach before he even formed that thought.

Then another thought popped up, one that said this was Avery’s fault; he had tried something and gotten nowhere and now she was embarrassed and scared because of him, and it was now Dave’s responsibility to Make Things Right. He couldn’t believe Avery would do something like that, whatever it was he had done. Dave would take his knife to this rat, for the pleasure of the Baroness.

Dave pushed open the door to Avery’s room, guiltily, for he was never allowed to enter without express permission; but instead of Avery, drunk and frustrated on the bed, what he found was the Green Giant, laughing hysterically, leaving patches of green body paint on the loveseat.

Dave stepped into the room and closed the door. The Giant stopped laughing at the click of its shutting, and looked up at Dave, red-eyed and woozy.

“You lost your mustache,” she said.

“What’s so funny?” Dave said. He crossed the room, pulled Avery’s leather chair away from his desk, and sat down.

“I’m sorry,” the Giant said, standing, “is this your room?”

“You don’t have to leave.” Dave stood up, to be ready for something, and she wobbled on spindly legs and sat back down. “What’s your name?”

“Ho Giant. Green Gianie. Joanie.”

“I’m Dave.”

“Hens love roosters, geese love ganders, everyone else loves Ned Flanders.”

“Not me.”

Joanie listed to her right and kept leaning until her head hit the cushion; she folded her legs up on the loveseat and stuck her feet on the wall, leaving two faint green footprints. “I’m drunk, Ned.”

“Me too, Joanie.”

“Hey, that’s my name.” Joanie closed her eyes, and Dave thought she had fallen asleep, but she suddenly opened them again. “Is this your room?”

“No, mine’s upstairs.”

“Who was that guy with the grey hair? Is he somebody’s dad?”

“No, he just looks a lot older than he really is.”

Joanie’s hand trailed on the floor, her fingers brushing the detritus that had collected there. She found something intriguing and brought it up to face-level to examine. She showed it to Dave: Avery’s Handbook.

“I don’t think you should be looking at that, Joanie,” Dave said.

“Why not? Don’t you want to know some secrets about your roommate?”

“No.”

Joanie opened the purple cover and examined the title page. “Seriously, Joanie, just put it back. Avery doesn’t like people going through his stuff.”

“What do you care? This isn’t yours.” Joanie turned her head to look at Dave, the room horizontal from her position. Dave tensed, glanced at the door.

“Just give me the book,” he said. He didn’t want to start a thing here. Avery would be upset if he knew they were looking at his Handbook, maybe upset enough to get Dave kicked out of the Dead Men. Plus you just didn’t look at your best friend’s Handbook; aside from it being just plain wrong, you never knew what kind of shit you’d find out about that you’d wish you never knew. It’d be like what happened with Stacy, only worse.

Joanie turned to the index, eager. It didn’t matter to her, because she didn’t know Avery, didn’t know Dave. She could just read about them as if they were characters in a book, unreal people whose lives would never affect or be affected by hers. “Here it is,” she said, “Your roommate. Your real name is Taddlington?”

“Stop reading.” Dave saw it now, saw how this would end; they had met knowing nothing but would leave knowing too much. A random meeting at a party that could have turned into something, but the Handbook made sure nothing was ever random, that everything was already both something and ultimately nothing. The Handbook kept them docile, he saw now, kept them from being able to experience those perfect moments unmediated; they always knew what was coming, and had time to brace themselves.

“I’m going to read about how you and Avery met,” Joanie said, and Dave didn’t try to stop her; there was no point in trying to stop her, because she had already done it. It was already written.

Joanie turned to the middle of the book and found the page she was looking for. She read it silently, lips parted. “What does it say?” Dave said. Joanie ignored him, kept reading. “I told you you shouldn’t read it,” he said.

Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her green cheeks, like rivers carving clear fresh paths through virgin fields. She closed the book and let it fall to her chest.

“I don’t even know you,” she said, wiping a wet swath of green from her cheek.

“I know,” Dave said. “I don’t know you either.”

“How could you say that?” She choked and coughed, throwing the book off her chest, back to the floor where she had found it.

“I don’t know what I said.”

Joanie unfolded off the loveseat and stood up, oversized in the small room. “I’m not going to let you say it. You’re never going to see me again.”

Dave looked up at the girl, now mottled green, standing above him in his roommate’s bedroom. He wished, for her sake, that what she said would be true, but he knew it wouldn’t. They would see each other again, because they had to see each other again, and though they would both know it would end badly, he would be glad for their reunion.

Joanie opened the door and left the bedroom. Avery’s voice rumbled from the kitchen: “Caveman Theatre commences in five minutes! It is time for the entertainment!”

© 2005 Gardner Linn