Heartbreaker. Claudia Dey
won’t blow me in the back of my truck.” And, step two, I blew him while he said my name over and over, and when he was done I directed him to his fuel shed, where, step three, he took off his heavy necklace of keys, while looking at me under his security camera. The look was exaltation and the Saturday night sky was dark. However grainy, Traps would watch the video of me waiting for my payment, step four, one full jerry can of his gasoline—one hundred miles of transport—again and again, pausing it at certain moments, when he could really see my face.
I HEAR TRAPS opening and closing our kitchen cupboards. He is looking for the alcohol and concluding his call home to Debra Marie. “We did a tour through the territory. The Heavy doesn’t want to do a door-to-door. Not just yet. Says it’s a family matter. A private matter.”
Tonight, Traps will drink himself to sleep on our beige couch. Too much, too little. He still finds this hard to gauge. He will be standing, talking, drinking, taking, killing, talking, drinking, standing. And then unconscious. Debra Marie loves crime shows. Murder shows. Shows where the plot rests on violence. I wonder when she will stop dragging Traps’s faithless body to comfort. When there will be a trail of blood in his wake. An antler plunged through his heart. “Besides, it’s Delivery Day tomorrow, and no territory woman in her right mind would miss Delivery Day.” He agrees with himself: “No territory woman would miss Delivery Day.”
My father is lying in the half-built room on a hooded chair, and because of the tarp, and the work light he has set up in there, we are both a bright blue. Is she missing? I want to ask him. You can tell me. I can handle it. I can’t handle it. “You need to get some rest,” I say instead to my father, and I unlace and pull off his boots, tug at the cuffs of his jeans. I was with him when he bought the jeans. “Not too tight?” The Heavy said to the salesmen, who nodded with their arms crossed, which was a confusing set of messages. “Denim is a tight and captivating weave,” the salesmen said. The Heavy bought them in a moment of hope. Hope makes you buy clothes that don’t fit you. A brawl to pull off, the jeans hold my father’s shape and appear to be standing, a former fighter turning soft.
“I love that perfume,” he says.
Three things he does not say: Where are you going? When will you be back? Won’t you be cold?
My father, who never raises his voice. Never goes to Drink-Mart. Does not listen to music. Does not watch television. He fears he will miss something real, he explains. Life is about paying attention, Pony.
Traps watches me closely as I lace up my boots and throw on my camouflage outerwear. Camo on camo. I open the front door. On the back of my outerwear are the words I was coloring in earlier with Neon Dean’s impermanent marker, when my mother came down the stairs in her indoor tracksuit, a stale cigarette in one hand and her truck keys in the other. Fifteen years of blank tape running out and clicking off. The asteroidal event. The impact event.
CAN’T TOUCH THIS
THE NORTH HIGHWAY is silver with ice, and Lana is riding behind me. This is our usual formation. Tonight, we’re just trying to stay upright. The road is slick. The shoulder better. At least there’s some traction. In the distance, we can see the bonfire, sparks shooting up into the low black sky. Of note: This is exactly what I see before I faint. Same panorama. I listen to protest rallies and sporting events (also in the devotional section). I love the sound of a crowd. I put the tapes into my cassette recorder, and I feel surrounded. I pump my fist in the air and nearly wipe out. Lana lets out a howl behind me.
When I arrived at Lana’s bungalow, she was at her bedroom window. She had teased her hair and was holding a crowbar in her hands, vigorously working the bottom of her window frame. I knew she would be sweating. She was a sweater in the first degree. Nerves or yearning.
Two years ago, Lana’s mother died. Caution. Steep drop. Lifeguard off duty. The women of the territory decided the cause was inconsolability. Soon after her mother’s death, Lana’s father married a girl just a few years older than Lana. This is how it goes in the territory. In the rare instance a woman dies, it is expected her husband will remarry. Children need a mother. If a man dies, his widow remains a widow. Children need a mother, and they still have one. Lana’s mother’s portrait is wrapped in a black bedsheet and stored in their toolshed. Lana’s stepmother’s name is Denise. Her portrait hangs above their mantel. In it, she wears a very tight sweater and Vaseline on her eyelashes, and a smile that seems to say, I am pretty sure I am being paid for sex with food, shelter, and beauty products. Her name necklace, given to her by an ex-boyfriend, says DENIS.
Lana’s mother’s color scheme was violet. Now, Lana’s bungalow is red, and her stepmother sits sidesaddle on the shag carpet in their living room, watching television and eating from a large bowl. She is pregnant, and most nights, Lana’s father stands in their driveway with his truck running, staring into his high beams until his eyes sting. When Lana screamed at her father, “Admit it, there’s a stranger in the house, and she’s evil! Admit it, Denis is pregnant with another man’s baby!” Lana’s father put a lock on her bedroom door and painted her window shut.
I watch Lana fall to the ground and walk unevenly to her ten-speed. Her father has rigged their front yard with motion-detector lights. Lana’s father reminds me how completely I have slipped from The Heavy’s view. Maybe it’s the camo on camo, I joke to myself. A joke is a disguise. Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people? Someone said this once. Paint my window shut. Worry about me. I want my father, The Heavy Fontaine, to paint my window shut. I want my father to worry about me. I want my mother to come home.
“You are totally talking to yourself,” Lana says and looks back at her bungalow, bungalow 2. “Teen prison break. Seriously. I might have just broken my wrist. Is everything all right? You look like Cherie Currie. Only after a fight. And before a hunt. With longer hair. And more height. And less fame.”
“Thank you.”
“And maybe poorer and more isolated.”
“Let’s roll.”
“Psyched.”
Lana has tied a strip of leather around her neck. She is wearing a snowmobile suit and her steel-toe, steel-shank boots. She has belted the snowmobile suit and cut off the arms. She has her wool socks pulled up above her knees. “It’s the closest I can get to lingerie,” she says. On the back of her armless suit she has written HIGH HOPES. She digs her heels into the ground. It’s frozen. Even The Heavy couldn’t muscle through it. Winter in the Death Man’s shed. “Damn-o that camo. I can barely see you. Don’t get shot!” Lana says. Then a tremble to her lower lip. “Seriously. Killing you would kill me.” She laughs. “1-800-OH-MY-GOD.”
I DID NOT NAME the complainant (as much as she tried to get it out of me), but I did tell Lana about The Complaint Department. One July night, in the founders’ bus. Two pink pills, three blue ones. This was soon after I secured my first jerry can of gasoline. Nineteen more to go.
“It’s not like kissing on television,” I said.
“Duh,” Lana said.
“Not even close.”
“Okay.”
“You have to really relax your mouth. See? More. That’s better. That’s good. Your mouth goes a lot farther back than you think it does. Remember when we took our emotional measurements? We thought I would have the broader shoulders, but you did? The actual measurement of your mouth will astound you. Blowing will free you from the emotional measurement of your mouth.”
“Exciting.”
“And could have a domino effect on your other body parts.”
“Bonus.”
“Despite the name, there’s no blowing.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t blow on it.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t blow on the dick.”
“I won’t. I mean, when