The Boy in the Tunnel

by Gardner Linn

43.

Renee hated frat boys with the kind of irrational passion usually reserved for first teenage loves (which was more apropos than Renee cared to admit, given where Danny Jillette ended up), the kind of passion that manifested itself in uncontrollable physical urges—to be on or in another human, by any means necessary. To rip right through whatever defenses there were, with whatever tools were handy. Fingernails, usually.

But the loathing Renee felt for frat boys was nothing compared to the hatred she had for their female hangers-on. Sorority girls, Little Sisters—any girl who ever ventured past the front porch of one of the big houses along Hollister Ave., essentially—they were all less than human in Renee’s eyes. She arrived on campus wanting to save these girls from their inevitable fates in the musty, Belushi-poster-bedecked rooms of roofie-equipped KA brothers, but it took less than a month for Renee to realize the impossibility of her quest. Now she just wanted to punish them. The blonde girl hanging off the shoulder of the impossibly (but all too probably) stereotypical frat boy here at the back of the Kangaroo was merely the next in line.

Renee bent her head to the ear of the blonde girl, who up close looked weird and fake—Asian features, maybe, subdued into bland whiteness by a thick stratum of makeup. Renee put her black lips next to the girl’s pink ear and whispered “Ten dollars says you shit blood tomorrow.” The girl opened her mouth as wide as it would go, exposing brilliant white teeth, the rabbit teeth in front large and prominent, and Renee could see cracks forming in the makeup around her mouth. The girl slipped off the shoulder of the frat boy, but it wasn’t like she really slipped. It was like she did it on purpose. As she fell her right hand went to her mouth, and she spewed out a viscous pink liquid, but Renee was pretty sure it came from her hand—a hidden tube or something—and not her mouth. Renee had looked into her eyes. She was stone sober.

The frat guy didn’t even try to help his latest jizz receptacle to her feet. Instead he glared at Renee, but his eyes didn’t display the full force of contempt that she had felt so often from guys just like this one. They regarded her, a woman with no organizational affiliation, the same way she regarded them: subhuman. If no one could vouch for her or back her up, then she might as well have not even existed.

But Renee didn’t see that in this guy’s eyes. He was looking at her, not at her chest, not at her legs, even in the Death Nurse dress. He could see her. “What the fuck?” he barked, but it was all an act. “Fucking bitch.”

The counter jockey was coming up the aisle with a baseball bat, but slowly—he wanted the situation to resolve itself before he had to get involved.

Owen couldn’t see what Renee could. He stepped to the frat guy with instinctual chivalrous fury. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. The fuck you doing?” Owen placed himself between Renee and the frat guy.

Renee could see that Frat Boy didn’t want any of this. But he played along. “The fuck you doing, man? Look what your bitch did to my girl.”

“My bitch?” Renee couldn’t tell which word caused Owen more consternation. She could see the gears turning in his head, trying to figure out how to express to Frat Boy that Renee wasn’t his, per se, but he was going to do his best to protect her anyway, so maybe one day she would be. He appealed to Frat Boy’s own sense of chivalry. “Aren’t you going to help her up?”

Frat Boy looked down at his friend, her hands slipping in the puddle of what Renee was sure was fake vomit on the floor. “Gawwwwddd, Dasssshhh,” she slurred, almost real enough to pass. Renee stifled a laugh. Dash. How fucking perfect.

Dash grabbed Drunk Girl around the upper arm. “Come on, Heather. You’re embarrassing yourself.” He jerked her to her feet. An irregular splash of pink rimmed her lips, exacerbating her nightmare-clown appearance. She wiped at it with her red sleeve, succeeding only in smearing it up her cheek.

“Dassshh. I think I had too much to drink.” Heather took in Renee’s Death Nurse dress from hem to cleavage, then landed on her face with a sneer. “Who’s this bitch?”

The counter jockey took another step up the aisle. He raised the bat to his shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “You guys probably want to take this outside.”

Heather raised a limp middle finger. “Fugyou, muhfah. Talking.” She swung her hand to Dash’s chest and rubbed it. “Kickiz ass.”

Owen turned to the counter jockey. “It’s cool, Roger. We were just leaving. You want to ring up these cups and a couple bags of ice?”

“I can’t deal with any shit in here, Owen Bean,” Roger said. “Gotta clean up that mess now anyway. Don’t want any more shit.”

Heather laughed, wild and vicious. “Ownbean? Your name’s Ownbean? Huh? Mr. Bean?” She stood on her tiptoes and bit Dash’s ear. “Hey Dassshh, kick Mr. Bean’s assss.”

“Let’s go, Owen. She’s not even drunk. She’s faking it. Some kind of Halloween costume or something.”

“Fugyou say, bitch?” Heather reached out a hand with fingernails so long they were more like talons and pushed Renee in the shoulder, knocking her into the fried-pie display. “Thass right.”

Renee hadn’t been in a fight in eight years, ever since the day in P.E. when she wouldn’t give the basketball back to Cheryl Wilkins (Cheryl had been held back twice, which meant she was both huge and stupid, and she had been missing free throws for like five minutes, but all the other girls were too afraid to take the ball from her; but when she finally made a basket, Renee figured that meant someone else could have a turn, a view that Cheryl did not share) and Cheryl kicked her in the knee, which prompted Renee to headbutt her right in her gigantic right boob (which boobs were a source of simultaneous pride and shame for the rapidly-developing Cheryl). Renee and Cheryl had both ended up in in-school suspension for a week, a week which they spent glaring at each other across the mobile classroom, which rocked in its chocks every time Cheryl set her girth upon it.

Renee had felt no urge to fight since then but now, fake drunk or no, the blood was rising up her spine to her head, telling her it was time to put it to use again.

Owen was about to lose it. “Control her!” he screamed at Dash.

“Yo, brah, you know you can’t control a chick.”

Heather smirked and pushed Owen in the chest. “You wanna piece?”

Roger flexed his fingers around the grip of the baseball bat. “I thought this was over, Owen Bean.”

“Yeah, it’s over. Let’s go, Renee.” Owen turned his back on Dash and Heather.

Heather shrieked out her shrill hyena laugh. “Pussy!” she shouted. “Pusssssyyyyyy!”

Heather’s underwear-enhanced boobs made for a pretty easy target. Renee lowered her head and attacked.

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

Dave glanced through the open back door toward the porch. Audrey was still there. “We can’t have Caveman Theatre without all three judges,” said Avery. “It’s just not done.”

“Get somebody else. Taylor.”

“You know Taylor’s not here.”

Dave glanced again at Audrey. She was checking her watch. “Look, Avery, I’ve got a real tenuous grasp on something here, and I can’t take half an hour to deal with your Caveman Theatre bullshit.”

The sides of Avery’s jaw flexed as he pushed down on bottom molars. “I’m not stupid, Dave. I know where those green footprints came from.”

“So?”

“So you’re going to judge Caveman Theatre with me and Owen Bean. Is this not a reasonable request?”

This was what Dave hated right here. This strict adherence to pointless rules and symbols. It only worked in your favor if you were in a higher position than one of the other Nine (which Dave was) and if you were an asshole (which Dave liked to think he wasn’t). He could boss around Owen Bean and Taylor if he wanted to, but what was the point? They’d just resent his authority the way he resented Avery’s. “It is reasonable.”

“Great. Owen Bean’s not back from the Kangaroo yet, so you can go and flirt. I’ll let you know when we need you.”

Fuck Avery. Seriously.

Dave walked back out to the porch and sat down next to Audrey. “Sorry about that. Avery takes Caveman Theatre way too seriously.”

“How old is he, anyway?”

“He’s only twenty.”

“For real?” Audrey put her glasses back on. Now she was someone else, a third person: not Audrey, not the Baroness, merely a girl pretending to be something whose importance she couldn’t fathom. “He looks like my dad.”

“Mine too.”

“Hey, I read your stuff in the Ambassador. Do you really believe all that shit?”

“Not really. That’s just a character to sell papers.” The last thing Dave wanted to talk about was Taddlington Taft. That guy was like an evil genie who only came out when Dave got to the bottom of a bottle. He had nothing to say about that side of his life. He did it because he had to. If he talked about it with anybody he might admit that he did it because he liked it. He liked ceding control to a side of himself he normally fought to keep hidden. But there was nothing to be gained from being that honest with anybody, particularly a girl he wanted to make out with.

“Right. An Andy Kaufman thing.”

“Sure. Not as good as his stuff, but sure. Same kind of thing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I think I do.”

Dave didn’t know how to respond. He wasn’t sure if this was playful banter or not. He just let Audrey’s statement hang in the air between them until it was indistinguishable from her cigarette smoke, until it permeated his clothes and his hair, until he smelled like what she knew him to be.

Audrey pulled another cigarette from its pack and lit it from the one in her mouth. “You want one?” she asked. Dave nodded. She handed him the cigarette and lit another one for herself. Dave sucked on the cigarette, trying to draw the smoke as far into his body as it would go. He wanted to breathe smoke, like a dragon. Breathe in smoke, breathe out fire. Protect your hoard.

“Why were you crying?” Dave asked, punctuating his question with a cough.

“Hey, you don’t even know me.”

More smoke for the lungs. Build up a good supply.

A Homer Simpson, yellow makeup smeared and blotched on his face and arms, stumbled around the corner and vomited into the Plastics recycling bin. He braced himself against the side of the house for a moment, letting the last remnants of acidic spittle hang from his mouth. When the strand finally broke, he looked up at Dave. A smile broke on his face. “Hey Flanders! Hey Flanders!”

Dave tried to ignore him.

“Hey Flanders!” Homer took a few shaky steps toward Dave. “Say it! Say it, Flanders!”

Dave blew out a cloud of smoke and watched Homer through it, the colloidal grey air blurring the human grotesquerie into something almost cartoony and real. “Okely—“ said Dave.

“Okely-dokely!” Homer laughed, a violent eruption of noise from deep in his expansive belly, poking out pale and tumescent from under his white polo shirt. He laughed until the braying sound was all that Dave could hear or know.

He is laughing at you, Taddlington. You haven’t given anyone any reasons not to laugh.

“Hey, man,” said Dave. “You mind leaving us alone? We’re talking.”

Homer just laughed. Droplets of saliva sprayed from his mouth. His arms rubbed against his shirt, leaving yellow smudges. He took another step forward and his foot hit a rock. Homer fell, laughing all the way to the ground.

© 2006 Gardner Linn