Chapter 51

 

Pick of the Litter

 

 

“Did you take Biology when you were a soph?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Was it with Mr. Dimancheff?

 

“OH yeah.”

 

“Can you give me any sorta like tips about doing dissecting?  Not here ‘n’ now!” Vicki hurriedly demurred.  (She and Bomber were having a Saturday post-practice snack at Wag’s, the “family restaurant” offshoot of Walgreens.)  “Maybe tomorrow afternoon, if you’re not too busy?”

 

“Sure.  Still got my dissection kit.”

 

“What, did you buy one?  He didn’t say we’d have to do that—just pay a lab fee.”

 

“S’got some good tools in it.”  (Chomp)  “I’ll bring it over tomorrow, about four.  Want I should catch you a frog to demonstrate on?”

 

“No thanks!” ugghed Vicki, pushing away her plate of crisp tossed salad and eyeing Avery’s half-eaten steakburger with distaste.

 

She shouldn’t be spoiling her appetite, what with Joss’s Sweet Sixteen party (the first of two) coming up that evening.  This one was being hosted by P.J. Panucci at his odd house on Mullein Road, on the northeast corner of Lesser Park.  “Peanuts” Panucci’d built it for his third wife Eunice (successor to Beany and P.J.’s mother Griselda) who’d dreamed of a Desert Moderne habitat, more suitable for Palm Springs than Vanderlund.  Peanuts had hired a student of Mies van der Rohe to design a Bauhaus curio that made many onlookers think of a stainless steel diner on stilts.  Joss called it “the Minimalist Manse” and adored its novelty, even if some of the neighbors thought it belonged in the same architectural freakshow as Foley’s Folly.

 

That evening Vicki spent her time at the Manse feeling multiply bothered.  For one thing, she (and Alex, Nonique, Spacyjane, LeAnn Anobile, and trembly trepidatious Kathleen Prindle) was/were driven there by Felicia, and not just as a maternal favor.  Fel and Miriam Monticello sought an audience with Peanuts in his role as a director of the real estate brokerage Roosa Swight & Rhedde, which dealt in commercial and industrial property management.  These fields seemed more ambitious (and potentially lucrative) than run-of-the-mill residential listings, though less easy for newly-licensed agents to break into—unless, as Midge put it, they had an Influential Connection.

 

So not only did Vicki have to go to an oversleek elevated trattoria for her very best friend’s first-of-two Sweet Sixteen parties, she had to arrive there in the company of her mother who said “Hello, I’m Vicki’s MOM” right out loud for everybody to hear.  Thankfully, not many could hear this over/under/through all the clamor; but that too was bothersome—the Manse’s soundwaves had a lethal reverb, more like the bells at the end of The Nine Tailors than the funky horns of Earth Wind & Fire on the staccato stereo:

 

Keep-your-eye-on-Ju-pi-ter-such-beau-ty-in-the-sky We-will-wait-for-your-ree-tur-urn-in-the-by-and-by—

 

(Bang-shang-a-lang...)

 

The Panucci family had welcomed Joss into their chromium home, not only for her many excellent qualities but because of her talent on the cornet.  “A regular brass section” was how she characterized the household—P.J.’s trombone, Beany’s sousaphone (prominently featured in last year’s The Music Man) and kid brother Boogie’s Boy Scout bugle, while Eunice had been known to play the French horn and Peanuts himself could oompah a mean tuba.  “There’s a lot of Dizzy Gillespie cheeks (even on Nanki-Poo!) when the blowin’ gets busy ‘round that Manse,” according to Joss.  So a brass-bold chick like Sheila Quirk was in her element at this shindig, shaking booty to Earth Wind & Fire’s All ‘n All; whereas Vicki kept getting uneasily reminded of that bad guy trapped in the Nine Tailors church belfry, subjected to hours of vociferous bell-clanging.  Also of Alex reciting Poe in Miss McInerney’s eighth-grade English class:

 

Hear the loud alarum bells—brazen bells! What tale of terror now their turbulency tells!

 

(Brrrr...)

 

Another botherment: whether Nonique should be invited to tomorrow’s dissection “tutorial.”  Not that there was any fear of Avery being a bigot—he had nothing but praise for Cedric Grier, his teammate on the varsity baseball squad.  But it might be prudent to bear in mind just how pretty Nonique was, how better built (up front, at least) and how susceptible some white boys were to brown sugar.  Then again she was Vicki’s lab partner, not to mention her tied-for-third-best-friend, and hardly a showoff flirt like Isabel or Carly Thibert.  (Still, there was no reason to rush into asking her—probably couldn’t be heard over/under/through tonight’s racket anyway...)

 

Take a chance as you dance in ro-mance In a trance to ad-vance and ex-pand...

 

One silver lining to this stainless steel disquiet: Laurie approached Vicki at the streamlined buffet table and made herself make conversation, complete with eye contact when they weren’t shouting chitchat in each other’s ear.  This was the tenth consecutive year that Laurie’d come to Joss’s birthday party, from first grade onward; she seemed more at ease than at Spacyjane’s two months ago, more like their old favorite blabberyap.  She was even keeping a helpful eye out for Kathleen (who bordered on hyperventilation from being amidst such a crowd).  So hooray for Dr. Harvey’s psychotherapy—and hope he can persuade Laurie to quit nibbling her pooftail-tips.  Until then, let’s put down our plastic punch cups and dance some more:

 

Keeping time, time, time in a sort of Runic rhyme To the throbbing of the bells—of the bells, bells, bells...

 

Till the clock edged toward Saturday night teen curfew and P.J. shoehorned five girls into Eunice’s Cadillac Seville.  It had a split front bench seat, allowing both Joss and Alex to sit up with the driver while Vicki, Nonique and Spacyjane rubbed elbows in back.  Felicia’d already left the Manse with Kathleen and LeAnn, having given the unembarrassed Joss a big hug and the “I-don’t-know-this-older-person” Vicki a big smile that indicated her schmooze with Peanuts had gone promisingly.  (Which was all well and good but Gahd, Mom!  How red do you want your daughter’s face to turn?)

 

During the ride to Jupiter Street, Vicki could have told Nonique about tomorrow’s “tutorial”—in fact she could’ve asked the entire carload to drop by for more-the-merrier coaching.  But the others didn’t need it: Alex was in the advanced course with future surgeons Becca Blair and Rachel Gleistein; Spacyjane had kindhearted Doc Plassy as her lab teacher; and Joss’d put Biology on hold till next year, saying it needed to be taken “hand in glove” with Co-ed Gym.  “They’re practically the same subject, if you catch my meaning if you get my drift.  Besides, Personal Typing’s traumatic enough—all those true confessions at forty words per minute.”

 

And even if the others did need it, even if most of Vicki’s closest bunchkins were in this Caddy, the bottom line (in some cases bosom line) was that it’d be too much to assume Avery would remain impervious to their undeniable attractivity.  P.J. might only have eyes for Joss—and so he should—but he hadn’t supposedly sculpted allegedly nude statues of two different girls at two different times, and Vicki still wasn’t convinced that Bomber still wasn’t pining away for Bianca Panucci and her Mighty Mouse T&A.  “She can do better” he’d told Mamie Gatto, better than going out with a convicted cheater like Gootch Bulstrode; and unlike Rosalind Kuhn she wasn’t off in Germany or California but still right here flaunting her bouncy Beany bottom and bosom for Bomber to reminisce about and ruminate over—

 

“C’mon,” Nonique broke in to suggest, tugging at Vicki’s jacketed arm while Alex and Spacyjane climbed out of the parked car and Joss loudly cleared her throat with a few Mind giving me ‘n’ P.J. a moment of privacy? sub-ahems.

 

You didn’t ahem “please.”

 

Oh shut up.

 

You shut up.

 

“Pleeeeeeeze.”

 

Okay, Hot Lips.  Enjoy your Sweet Sixteen.

 

Part ONE!

 

The second half came the next morning, after their Queen Anne aerie sleepover.  Wilson Legge (who’d played trumpet for James Brown and with Parliament-Funkadelic) was guesting at the Airport Hilton’s Sunday Jazz Brunch, backed up by their house band the Skyborne Ensemble.  So thither the bunch gathered for groovin’ over quiche, crepes, and seafood omelettes made to order, while Wilson Legge regaled them with “Up for the Down Stroke” and “A Blow for Me, a Toot for You.”

 

Not till the amply-nourished girls were filing out of the hotel did Vicki turn to Nonique and murmur “Bomber’s coming over to tell me about dissection... wanna hear him too?”

 

Silent ironic eyeroll by Vernonique.

 

“I mean, you’re still gonna have to hold my hand while we actually do it,” Vicki hastened to restate.  “And maybe hold my head over a bucket too, if it’s as gross as I’m guessing it’ll turn out to be.”

 

Loud expressive cough from Vernonique.

 

Neither of them put it into words, yet both knew Nonique took considerable pride in adopting the strong/supportive/protective role at this stage of their friendship, after so many months of having Vicki stand by/side with/stick up for her.  Not that she smacked her Fashion Fair’d lips at the prospect of slicing open dead critters and documenting their innards; but as Nonique had put into words, she could prepare a raw chicken for general consumption without passing out.  Or needing Avery Loderhauser to draw her a diagram beforehand, she didn’t add aloud.  Instead: “Learn all you can, girl—‘for tomorrow we die‑sect.’”

 

“We better both bring buckets.  I might need two.”

 

One of them that afternoon in her own garage, upon whose workbench Bomber spread the contents of his Hamilton Bell lab kit: scissors, tweezers, straight needle, bent needle, blunt probe, eyedropper, six-inch ruler, and scalpel with a surgical blade on which Vicki thought she could detect faint traces of mummified guts.

 

The savory crepe in her stomach didn’t rest any easier when Bomber thumbed through an old spiral of precisely-lettered notes and deeply-detailed sketches, showing an earthworm’s entrails and how they interacted.  Who knew it had a mouth?  Or a gizzard?  Or an anus, which wasn’t a word she’d wanted to hear Avery utter?  Or that every worm that crawled the earth had digestive, reproductive, circulatory and nervous systems?  No reference anywhere to an inchworm measuring a marigold!  It all sent Vicki down the road to writhing if not retching, halted only by an echo of Fran Loderhauser’s voice: Bom’ll kill me if I quease out on him...

 

“Scalpel’s extremely sharp,” Avery admonished while reloading his dissection kit.  “Never forget that.”

 

Thanks, I’ll remember, Vicki tried to say without opening her mouth or gizzard or... nervous circulatory digestive system.  Come up with a politer topic!  She was about to ask after Fran when the word “Teatclamp” popped into her head, just as Bomber snapped the baby-blue Hamilton Bell case shut.  Eww!  Crossing defensive arms across her chest, she blurted “Can I ask you a question that has nothing to do with dissection?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Did um Bianca Panucci really y’know pose for you to make like a statue of her?”

 

Shrugging into his letterman’s jacket: “Hey, it was her idea.  Who was I to tell her no?”

 

Vicki’s fingertips dug into her shoulders at this verging-on-ungallant remark.  As if Mighty Mouse had armwrestled him into letting her let him see her less than fully dressed!  “I suppose her sculpture turned out really great, she being so cute ‘n’ all?”

 

“Didn’t get finished.  Hardly got started.  Welp, got to be going—”

 

“Wait!”  (Lowering arms and arching spine.)  “What if... I had... the same kind of... idea she had?—I mean wearing like a swimsuit!  Even if I’m not... well, I know I’m not... as ‘put together’ as Bianca...”

 

The vibe from Avery Loderhauser was definitely familiar.  Hearkening back to Roger Mustardman saying “Oh, I get it—we’re on a fishing trip” when Vicki’d asked him “Am I?  Really?” after Roger’d called her “the loveliest young lady I know.”

 

Avery, a man of far fewer words, said only “You’d do.  We’ll see.”  Then, with one of those half-hooded flickers of amusement/annoyance as he turned to leave: “Don’t let the worms get to you.”

 

(Which could be interpreted as a life-affirming sentiment.)

 

*

 

Fiona had no objection to funk in the aural sense of the word, but Wilson Legge and the Skyborne Ensemble were not going to be booked as entertainment for her sixteenth birthday in July.  Which, incidentally, would not be classifiable as “Sweet.”

 

That adjective was just as inappropriate for Monday morning’s assignment in Second Hour Advanced French: to translate selected passages from Part I, Chapter 9 of Madame Bovary.  Emma’s descent through frustrated fantasies into futile frittering cut overly close to Fiona’s own creative bone; as did how Flaubert would spend an entire week revising a single page of text, in constant pursuit of le mot juste—the absolutely exact expression of his unwritten thought.  Which Monsieur Can’t-Even-Spell-His-Name-Right Dunlap’s students were also expected to reach for, and not fall too dismally short of, in their due-on-Friday translations.

 

Fiona didn’t envy Monsieur’s having to read the stabs at this taken by Spacyjane Groh or Isabel Carstairs, or Zalman Tergeist who’d be sure to argue how his phraseology outprecised Flaubert’s.  Joss, of course, would make her usual determined effort, and Rula Hradek would probably venture into erogenous zones that’d be of great interest to most everyone in class.  Except Feef, who dialed down her consideration of À quoi bon! à quoi bon! so she could think about the current state of Downbite.

 

She’d never trusted slithery Jasp Melcher, not from their first run-in at the Aragon Ballroom during the Ramones-and-Runaways concert.  Not even after he’d recorded that technosavvy demo tape, or produced that bona fide 45 single of “Dead Letter” backed with “Clicking on Vixteen.”  No, Jasp wasn’t ever on the level or anywhere near it.  But when he’d invited Downbite to a spring break party at his house on Laubdecke Street (whose parent-free status was concealed from Downbite’s mothers and fathers) why shouldn’t they have expected it was so they could perform there?  Who’d call that an unreasonable presumption?  Yet when they tried to borrow Shaggette’s van to transport Robin’s drum kit, they were told not to bother—the Nodules would be the only band on Jasp’s “Broke Spring Bash” bill.

 

Then he compounded that insult by asking Britt and Cramps Aplenty to sit in with the Nodules!  Cramps was somewhat understandable, having hooked up with their rhythm guitarist Charlie Hoarse; but they already had a by-all-accounts adequate lead guitar in Edsel Reinke, who by-all-indications was pissed off by giving way to Britt and who could blame him?  The fact that she could run rings around Reinke as both an axe-slinger and vocalist only twisted the shiv; while Britt’s gaslit dismissal of her sit-in as a just-this-once party favor didn’t dab much ointment on Reinke’s burn.

 

(What would “burned by gaslight” be in French?  «Brûlé par la lumière du gaz»?  Don’t suppose there’s any mention of gaslight in Part I, Chapter 9 of Madame Bovary... well by damn, looky here—)

 

...elle voyait dans les ténèbres se tordre au vent des becs de gaz...

...she saw in the darkness, twisting in the wind, the gas burners...

 

(Talk about taking a stab at it!  Way to hit the shiv on the head, Flaubert!)

 

Almost two years had passed since Britt’d been allowed to infiltrate the Rosa Dartles and use her wormy apple to spoil that band’s barrel.  Try to pin her down, whether for restriction or clarification or laboratory dissection, and she always eludes confinement.  Confounds anticipations.  Instead of shoring up Smooch Smarks with Cramps and Hoarse and Shaggette’s van, Britt had scrapped the Smarks—cutting Lenny Otis and Dino Tattaglia loose for Tayser Pierro to pounce on “like an alley cat finding a couple of day-old fish heads,” as Robin’d gibed.  Now those layoffs were reportedly backing Epic Khack in Tayser’s new counterpart to Downbite, which Sheila-Q was betting would be called Upheave.  “Just the sort of taste they’ll leave in everybody who hears them’s mouth, too.”

 

As for the Nodules, they’d actually scored some ink from their performance at the Broke Spring Bash.  Not so much a review, though, as a half-assed critique on the back page of last Friday’s Channel: “The Punk Scene in Multch,” profiled by that multifarious music critic Dilly Vlasic.  What was a double bass player from the VTHS Symphonic ensemble even doing at Jasp Melcher’s?  Keeping tabs on Julep Muller, that’s what.  Dilly and Julep had been boon companions in Scout troops, student orchestras and environmental crusades till Julep got drained dry (it was said) by Zal Tergeist acting like a leechy Nosferatu.  Now she strummed her plaintive off-key harp on the shadowy side of the street (it was also said) and Dilly tagged along, partly as Julep’s caretaker and partly (it was also said) to partake in any decadence they might stumble across.  And then be in denial about, as per her “Punk Scene in Multch” badmouthing:

 

The Nodules, like so many other quasi-street gang groups, have shown that they have no talent and play a very simplistic brand of music owing much to the garage bands of the middle 1960’s.  It’s doubtful that they ever learned to tune their instruments.  Most of the Nodules sound like somebody stuck long needles into them and recorded their screams at a turned-up speed.  The songs themselves tend to sound alike and are incredibly boring and annoyingly repetitious.

 

“Oh Lord!” Sheila’d squawked upon reading this smear.  “Maybe it’s just as well Jasp didn’t ask us to play.”

 

“Are you kidding, Quirk?  We’d’ve gotten a way worse writeup—just what we need to bring Monte Secchi around,” Robin’d argued.  She and I.M.A. Camera had spent the last six weeks campaigning to win Downbite a slot in the lineup for the AnaRCHonda Pit’s all-ages night, tentatively scheduled (at last report from Sylvia Doad) for “May Day or thereabouts—except I think that’s a Tuesday this year—so maybe the weekend before, or the one after” [honk] “but don’t quote me on that.”

 

No reason to believe Britt wouldn’t choose to go play onstage with Downbite at the Pit.  Same went for Cramps, though her keyboard wasn’t essential to Downbite or the Nodules.  But Britt’s licks and riffs were, both vocal and on that uncanny Gibson SG.  No two ways about it, as Robin’d declared and even Fiona had to admit, bitter as that brew was to swallow—

 

“Mam’selle Preston, expliquez-nous comment Emma se sentait plus en plus irritée par Charles.”

 

Aloud, Pebbles listed Charles Bovary’s objectionable table manners.  Mentally, Fiona gnarled about Derrière Dunlap and his aggravating whine: intrusive, invasive, interferative (if that was an English word).  And obnoxious as the yellow eyes of Dennis Desmond, who’d lurked around Britt at the Broke Spring Bash and then for much of the past week.  No need to fear for Britt’s “honor” or “virtue,” of course; nor did Feef have any inclination to do so.  Yet Dennis had freaked out Vicki during that thunderstorm at the drive-in last fall.  And then had somehow transformed Laurie into a heinous Harelip capable of intimidating even Britt, even Bunty O’Toole—if only momentarily.  More recently there’d been talk of Dennis spooking other girls Fiona hardly knew but who also had formidable reputations, girls like Gigi Pyle and Cheryl Trevelyan and Snickers Paar.  Hmmm... maybe an arrangement could be made where he’d scare a little bejesus out of PoonElly, just enough so she’d quit calling Fiona “Fifibelle”—

 

“Mam’selle Weller, qu’a fait Emma pour convaincre Charles de quitter Tostes?”

 

Damn it, Dunlap!  Okay, what did Emma do to convince Charles to leave Tostes?  Drank vinegar so she’d lose her appetite.  So mutter-respond “(Elle but du vinaigre pour se perdre l’appétit)” to Monsieur Derrière; and ponder how this’d be the same side effect of bracing yourself to keep Britt Groningen in the band, with or without Dennis Desmond as part of the deal—at least until Downbite could play the AnaRCHonda Pit, on May Day or thereabouts.

 

*

 

One story overhead, Lesley Ogilvie was sitting bolt upright in Mrs. Mallouf’s Second Hour Existential Literature seminar.  Reinforcing this posture with a tight-laced mental corset, since Lesley was disposed by nature to slump in her combo desk-chair till her dark head rested on Deborah Karberski’s behind it.  But slumping, slouching, and stooping-to-conquer were all Scott Grampian trademarks, and thus to be repudiated.

 

Stay unbending till the ending / then there’ll be no further rending...

 

This week’s topic in Exi Lit was Notes from the Underground.  Apt (in retrospect) since Lesley’d been a subterranean-dweller for six weeks after the Valentine Turnabout, until delivery of-and-by her acceptance letter from Kenyon College.  Now it was purely a question of how soon all ties to Vanderlund could be unbound, dissolved or severed while sustaining bolt-uprightness.

 

First step: a methodical purge of all things Grampian from her bedroom, pocketbook, school locker and psyche.  Next task: do her belated duty as Presiding Genius of Austen-Alcott and finally steer it down the Euthanasia River, along with Howe-Stowe, Brontë-Browning and Emily Dickinson.  But Lesley’s proposal for across-the-board termination met with sufficient resistance that a compromise was made: the four LitSocs would merge into a single VTHS Literary Society, whose members would compete to have their poems, short stories and essays published in Aqueduct magazine.  As for orations and declamations, Mrs. Pentire agreed to splice these onto Debate & Forensics and so keep those LiSoc plaques active in the school’s non-sports trophy case.

 

That done, roughly eight weeks were left to kill before graduation, and they’d probably be as pointless as the meandering monologues of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man.  Even so, deliberate inertia had often been hung out at by Lesley and touched upon in her “shaggy rug” compositions:

 

If the center of the universe   Is occupied by Frankie Valli Why not embrace the unsightly curse   And blindly limbo in an alley?        How low can you go        Through all eternity      With both eyes open        And nothing there to see?

 

No limboing, though, by people who keep themselves bolt-upright.  Nor any more self-burial on Canongate Lane, where Kirsten’d moped all weekend after Ignorance (the aged Afghan hound) got diagnosed with hypothyroidism—a condition Lesley and Want (the other aged Afghan) were taking in stride.  They wouldn’t have to force medicine tablets down Iggy’s gullet.  Lesley, for one, would soon be off and away to Ohio.

 

As for now: Exi Lit.  During the past two months this had devolved into a daily discord (as Nancy Sykeman liked to alliterate, with emphatic duhhs) between C Sharp Major and B Flat Minor, alias Pamela Redfern and Bayard “U.” Flaherty.  They’d been dubbed “breakups-in-law” at the Turnabout Dance, where Flaherty’s date Tara Garamond absconded with Pam’s steady (as he goes) Jeremy Tolhurst, even as Joo‑dith! Joo‑dith! Joo‑dith! did the same dirt-cheap deed with Mr. Be Seein’ Ya—

 

—never mind.  Forget it.  Keep those mental corset-laces double-knotted, and that physical backbone unslumpingly straight.

 

Pam’s strategy for coping with abrupt dumpage was to throw herself even more headlong than usual into academic overachievement, even this late in her final semester of high school.  Such was the route she’d always taken to rise above adversity, ever since her father got institutionalized after multiple suicide attempts.  Her mother, far from hushing this up, toured The Cityland relating it in frank detail to survivor support groups.  Pam’d been compelled at a tender age to keep a civil tongue in her bereft head vis-à-vis her parents; yet this pointed her (so she thought) to a career in the diplomatic corps, after cum laude-ing at one or another of the Seven Sisters.  Toward this end she’d cultivated the tasteful poise and elegant demeanor of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Jaclyn Smith from Charlie’s Angels, though in fact she looked a lot more like Patty Duke (minus the identical cousin).  Every class, club or contest that might possibly enhance her scholastic résumé had been taken, joined or entered, with Pam typically leading, running or winning them all.

 

Then had come the fateful Turnabout.  Jeremy (make that Jerkimer) got purloined not by some chesty bimbette but Tara Garamond, of all people.  That’d been a punch to the Redfern solar plexus on so many levels it was a wonder Pamela hadn’t shattered into a pillar of salty fragments.  But no, she’d kept it together and started scaling loftier-than-ever heights, not relaxing her pace even after getting accepted by Vassar (Jackie-O’s alma mater).  Just last week in Exi Lit, Pam had presented what some might call an innovative interpretation of Waiting for Godot—

 

—that had gotten riddled like a dartboard by Bayard “U.” Flaherty, the self-styled Brill Yant.

 

You didn’t have to hang out for long with Flaherty (alias B. Flatt) to realize that every time he glanced at a mirror, he beheld Erich von Stroheim.  This despite reminding every other film fanatic of Waldo Lydecker in Laura—a Waldo who feasted nonstop on cayenne peppers dipped in tabasco sauce and served flambé.

 

Trampling out advantage where the grapes of wrath are boiled...

 

Many people cut Pam Redfern some slack and overlooked her affectations, taking into account her parental problems and recent romantic ordeal.  Flaherty cut Pamela with everything except an actual knife.  Not that he singled her out for exclusive abuse—Brill Yant aimed his vitriolic bazooka at the entire cosmos.  Drawing blood was never enough; hemorrhages had to be induced again and again, till the target got exsanguinated.

 

At Snead Elementary (so the story went) Brill’d been picked on by Jody “Butch” Putscher, the Bully of Baroque Vista, who’d doubled down with both fists if anyone dared stand up to him.  Brill had responded with bait-and-goad psychosexual analysis, taunting Butch (as “Buffy”) for subconscious devotion to Sodom and Classical Greece.  Brill’d rewritten pertinent extracts from Krafft-Ebing to cite Jody Putscher as case subject, glossing these in terms a grade-school bully could comprehend.  When Butch upped the ante with a thrashing that chipped two of Brill’s permanent teeth, Brill spread the word that Butch intended to cornhole their entire sixth-grade class, girls as well as boys, plus any household pets of sufficient size.  When Faye Howell’s cat Saddlebag went missing, Brill suggested the Putscher cellar be searched for the poor saddlebuggered animal—and Filly Faye herself had better blow a rape whistle any time Butch approached her from behind.  For that crack Butch dispatched Brill to the emergency room, only to be told “You’re sick, Jody Putscher, you are SICK!” by beautiful heartbroken Faye, even as guys started calling him “Fudge Plugger” and asking if he’d creamed his jeans while whaling on Flaherty.  Before long, Butch’s own father grew so dubious about his son’s tendencies that he shipped Butch off to an out-of-state military academy famed for its stalag-style discipline.  And from Snead to VW and then VTHS, the word putscherfied came to be applied to any bled-dry bull’s-eye targeted by Brill Yant.

 

Never again, though, on such an epic scale.  Which must stoke the furnace of Flaherty’s relentless rage: once you get a taste for immolation, you settle for nothing less.  What are a few chipped teeth and an ambulance trip or two, if they enable molding a banal thug into a mutant sacrifice for slaughter on the savage altar?  But how to enflame another barbaric auto-da-fé?  Fall back on covert contrivance, especially when dealing with a female of the species such as Pamela Redfern.  No lambie-pie was she—more like an armadillo shielded by a resilient carapace.  Yet even in chainmail there are chinks that might buckle under pressure if ingeniously applied.  Once breached, fiery ignition can proceed, followed by slow roasting to make the meat tender and juicy and flavorful.

 

Burn, baby, burn...

 

When Mrs. Mallouf’s Exi Lit seminar’d studied The Trial, Pam had given an oral report on Josef K.’s alienation from society and self.  Flaherty, called on for commentary, had implied that Pam’s viewpoint was skewed by her own split personality—demure depressive sophisticate vs. status-driven social-climbing maniac.  “‘One pair of matching bookends / different as night and day.’”

 

The Patty Duke Show may have dropped out of syndication a few years back, but its theme song could not be easily forgotten (a hot dog makes her lose control!) and Pammy Redfern’s resemblance[s] to the title character[s] was/were repeatedly referenced.  On each occasion Flaherty loosened one of the screws safeguarding Pam’s insecurity about the stability of her sanity.  No need for him to mention Poppo in the booby-hatch; much more effective (and Chinese water-torturous) to drop-drop-drop allusions to Me, Natalie or You’ll Like My Mother or (of freaking course) Valley of the Dolls—“‘Get up at five o’clock in the morning and sparkle, Neely, sparkle!’”

 

Let’s not forget The Miracle Worker.  Last week Pam’s Innovative Interpretation (as capitalized by Nancy S, with emphatic ihhhs) of Waiting for Godot had been that Lucky’s “thinking aloud” signified a potential breakthrough from mindless silence to rational (if incoherent) articulation.  Flaherty, by way of rebuttal, had reminded Pam that while Helen Keller may have recognized “wah-wah” at the pump, she remained blind-deaf-and-more-or-less-dumb long before pinball wizardry was invented.  Left in the dark for the rest of her life, even knowing that light had a name.  Perpetual confinement in a soundless void, with only gropes for contact.  “Incoherence never breaks through—it keeps bringing you back to bedlam and abandons you there, all on your lonesome.”

 

Icy glare from Pamela Redfern, matching the cold sweat on her chilled brow.

 

Why did Mrs. Mallouf permit this to go on day after day?  Perhaps she too was sick of Pam’s breathless bound-for-Vassar yen to be like Crazy Daisy Culpepper’s aunt and become the ambassador to Luxembourg.  Or maybe Mrs. Mallouf relished Pam’s regarding Flaherty as the Samsa family did Gregor, post-roachification.  Knowing he’d been the instigator of her Turnabout dumpage; knowing he’d set Scrawny Tara loose to seduce Jerkimer (somehow) out from under Pam’s thumb.  Feeling perspiration seep out of her demure armpits to stain her status-driven blouses as Flaherty jabbed at them, at all her other weak spots—not with a knife but a pitchfork, and not the type used in haylofts but a miniature plastic swizzle stick.  Which can perforate chainmail disguised as delicate girlflesh, when applied ingeniously.

 

Death by a thousand cuts pokes and jabs   Bodies laid out upon marble slabs Here lie victims of having been bit   Listening to Existential Lit

 

Doodled by Lesley among random Dostoevsky notes before the Third Hour bell rang.  She rose (as bolt-uprightly as her combo desk-chair would allow) and left Room 403 with Nancy S, who’d had a ball bouncing around Waiting for Godot but thought Notes from the Underground ought to get interred six feet deep.  On their way downstairs to Room 316 for Economics with Ms. Grigoryan (where they could watch Scrawny Tara lead Jerkimer by his blue-blooded nose) Nancy said “You’ll never guess where B. Flatt’s going!”

 

“To hell, his home away from home—”

 

“Besides there.  Shimer College!”

 

“Shimer?  Didn’t they go bankrupt?”

 

“That’s why he’s going there!  That and the ‘Grotesque Internecine Struggle’ they had in their sordid past!  Says he won’t go to any college that didn’t have one!”

 

“Why do you listen to that Weasel?” Lesley asked, not for the first time.

 

“‘Cause I’m watching out for you, chickabiddy!  Ol’ B. Flatt may like to puncture C Sharp, but it’s your sweet ass he’s always hankerin’-pankerin’ for!”

 

Lesley planted the aforesaid ass in an Economics desk-chair and restraightened her spine.  Nancy’d been slinging hogwash about Flaherty “coveting your dark allure from afar” since junior high, but Lesley’d never once believed it.  Scott had thought—never mind what Forget-His-Name thought or felt or said—pay attention to Ms. Grigoryan’s lecture on comparative advantage.  Bide your time till she calls on Jerkimer (“Mr. Tolhurst: explain how opportunity cost is calculated”) and witness Scrawn try to slip him the answer via telepathy or handsignals, so he won’t have to “charm” his way out of not having a clue.  Which you’d think a shifty operator like Jerkimer might have, even if he only got accepted into Stanford as a legacy.  But he falls back on improvised technobabble, and Scrawn has to give the correct response.  Which she does, of course; Tara Garamond can calculate the cost of any opportunity—and find a designing solution as to who-besides-her-should-pay-for-it.

 

Not even Bayard “U.”-for-Unwilling Flaherty was able to resist her wiles, though he compensated with weaselly ploys of his own.  The LitWit Ring used to sneer that Scrawn and Weasel’s idea of “making out” was to whack each other upside the head.  Everyone believes he inflicted her on Jerkimer (whose guts he’s hated since childhood) for drainage and depletion; if this also shredded Pam Redfern’s heartstrings, so much the better.  At the same time, Weasel denounced Scrawn for jilting him with her elopement, vowing vengeance of the most scurrilous sort.

 

(Talk about Turnabout...)

 

“Ms. Sykeman: tell us how opportunity cost affects specialization.”

 

“I’m so GLAD you asked!” gushes Nancy, getting the [Laughter] she thrives on.

 

Speaking of specializing: Flaherty’s contribution to Aqueduct ‘78, still unfinished this close to deadline, is rumored to be a novel-length variation on The Story of O titled You Are the Kinkajou.  Rula Hradek (ever the erotic speculator) has visualized this as a sadomasochistic fantasy with Scrawn as its subject, plunging through depths of squalor that would’ve scandalized Stroheim and made his bullet head blanch.

 

Well, that’s Rula in a nutshell—if you can’t be good, be lurid.  But remember McTeague’s teeth grinding Trina’s fingers in Greed (“biting the hand that feeds you”; we know what that’s like) and shudder to think where else they might’ve gnawed—

 

“Ms. Ogilvie: how will you react if it turns out Flaherty’s writing You Are the Kinkajou about your sweet ass?”

 

“‘SCUSE ME??”

 

The Grigster, not the sort of teacher to display exasperation, nonetheless heaves a sigh.  “People: letting your mind wander can be fatal.  You can wrap your car around a lamppost.  You can drown in a matter of minutes.  And you all have almost two months of high school left to complete, regardless of how many colleges may have accepted you.  So let’s focus, for the moment, on Economics.  Ms. Ogilvie, try again.  Tell us why and how a production-possibility curve is drawn.”

 

Ohhh, myyy, goodness.  Or as Kirsten might put it—jeepers creepers.

 

*

 

One story overhead, Vicki tried to focus on the rise of fascism in Europe after World War I.  Reflecting that if her grandfather Volester hadn’t emigrated from Trieste in 1920, she might not have had to inhale so much formaldehyde in Biology an hour ago.

 

No dipping hesitant toes in laboratory water by Mr. Dimancheff’s students; they got flung into the deep end on their very first day of dissection.  The only mercy was not having to vivisect any worms—those had come dead-on-arrival and steeped in reeking preservative.  Then too, the actual slicework was less godawful than Vicki’d dreaded, thanks to Avery’s tutorial and Nonique’s equilibrium.  Vicki’d even proved to be semi-adept with scissors and tweezers, probably because of her dab hand at hairdressing and cosmetic application.  Less so using needles or probe; and as for the scalpel, she hadn’t even wanted to touch the wrapper discarded from its extremely sharp blade.

 

In the meantime Nonique’s eyes had positively shone with industry as she’d played worm-coroner, wearing an energetic smile from start to finish as if posing for a magazine spread in Jet or Cosmo: hot young oboist stirs up pickled intestines.

 

“(You’ve got no business looking so good doing something this gross,)” Vicki’d grumbled.

 

“(Blame that on Mother Nature, girl,)” Nonique’d replied with a toss of her ‘fro.

 

Hardy har har.  One other mercy was that they couldn’t get hurled into the deep end every Monday morning.  As the dissectible critters became more complex, their carcasses would be increasingly expensive, as would mistakes made by students who didn’t receive hours of pre-chopping preparation.  And one last mercy: VTHS wasn’t one of those gruesome schools that eviscerated dead kittycats.  Vicki’d have to drop out, run away and join the circus before even thinking about doing something that horrible.  (Fetal pigs were going to be bad enough.)

 

While Ms. Goldberg lectured about Mussolini’s March on Rome, Vicki swept the worms from her brain and reviewed track & field’s recent/current/future state(s).  On Wednesday the Lady Gondoliers would be heading down to Willowhelm for a dual meet with the Lady Windjammers.  If Gwen Cokingham didn’t make a phenomenal recovery at today’s and tomorrow’s practices, she’d be scratched from the two-mile run and Alex would take her place; Lisa Lohe or Jackie Vince would fill in for Alex on the 880 medley relay.  Which Windjammers were likely to run the two-mile?  Vicki and Alex had raced cross country against Lillie Guldbaer, who wasn’t to be taken lightly even if she was only a freshman.  Rhonda Wright’s crony/rival Florette Stock (“of the Spaghetto Stocks”) could run marathons like a world-class Marilyn Bevans.  And there were the Girdley twins, Peg and Patsy, always intent on outpacing each other.  These full-figured gals had double-dated Slats and Stretch Schrimpfen “just to put everybody seeing them into a pea-green funk,” according to Rhonda.

 

As for the hurdles... well, Vicki’d rather hear about Mussolini stage-managing a coup d’état (and imagine Dexter Rist assisting him behind the scenes) than think about hurdles right now.  But no—got to face up to facts.  Snickers Paar hadn’t been allowed to practice on Saturday, though Ms. Ohara’d agreed her bruises and contusions weren’t severe.  So Snickers had limped into the gym to glower pulp/noir‑ily as Vicki’d been drilled on both the 220 low and 110 high events.  She (unlike Snickers) hadn’t tripped over a single hurdle; but all her leaps seemed to have been done in extreme slow motion, finishing eons after Heather and Kirsten and Eileen.  Vicki’d tried not to brood about this during Joss’s Saturday night party or Sunday morning brunch (and we mustn’t forget to come in early tomorrow, to decorate Joss’s locker on her actual sixteenth birthday) but that had been then and this was inescapably NOW.

 

The Windjammer hurdlers were even less to be sneezed at than their long-distance teammates.  First and foremost was Brandy Heinzerling, Ginger Snowbedeck’s undress-opponent at that Homecoming strip-off.  On Wednesday Brandy would do the 220 hurdles directly after going toe-to-toe with Ginger in the 880 medley—assuming the two of them didn’t get into a hairpulling brawl such as Ginger’d had with Penny Stone at the Powderpuff game.  Then there were Avis Haysend and Ashley Breredon, both nimble speedsters who regrettably sided with those who blamed black people, not blockbusters, for Spaghettoizing Willowhelm’s old Italian neighborhood.  (Florette and Rhonda retaliated by referring to this pair as “Avis ‘n’ Ashley—‘Holy Mackerel, Kingfish!’”)  Lastly there was Clemmie Dumas, who’d been captain of last fall’s JV Jammer volleyball squad.  She was also the kid sister of Cody Dumas, whose traffic clash with Brewster Canute had aggravated the longstanding feud between Willowhelm and Vanderlund.  But Clemmie despised Cody and bore no grudge against the Gondoliers, going out of her way to flirt with Vanderlund boys and very successfully too, she being a supercute fieldplayer like Carly Thibert or Junior Nygren.

 

“They say she can spread her legs faster’n anyone running hurdles in NESTL(É),” Marlene Crivitz had snidely snortled—with a Can’t say that about YOU, can we? eyeroll at Vicki, deriding her lack of speed and sexual expertise.

 

Well, Vicki wasn’t about to Do It with a guy who’d be leaving for Arizona State no later than Labor Day.  She even pressed her thighs together at the thought of letting Avery sculpt her wearing just a swimsuit (redden tingle blush).  But by golly he’d choose to sculpt those thighs way before Marlene’s, or Snickers Paar’s either no matter how curvaceous those might be.  Nor did Vicki need to slather on makeup to be twice as pretty as the two of them pressed together, so they can just keep their glowers and eyerolls to their snide-ass selves—

 

P-E-E-E-E-A-L went the Fourth Hour bell.  Vicki’d missed hearing tonight’s homework assignment, which she’d have to get from Alex and find some time to do along with Biology and Geometry and Spanish and English after track practice.  Really, life had gotten too complicated to live sensibly on a Monday morning.

 

*

 

Two stories underfoot, Nicole Paar eased her still-sore body out of Physics in Room 216, one wary step at a time.  Trying to give Ms. Ohara the impression of being fully healed while shaking off Hound Dog Hauck’s encircling arm, whose “uplift” verged on fondlement.  No thanks, Rover; go sniff somebody else’s rump.

 

Freed from his gambits, she eased on down to the cafeteria for Lunch 4A and the popping of more Tylenols.  “Extra-strength,” their deceptive label said.  At least they didn’t have side effects like the various pills filched from Juanita’s medicine cabinet this past weekend for painkilling experimentation.  (Unsuccessful: owwwwtttch...)

 

Piss on the pain.  Crap on the ache.  Soldier through both—there’s no freaking way she could be replaced at Wednesday’s Willowhelm meet!  Not when she had a score to settle with Avis “Purple Haze” Haysend, whom everyone except the coaches and refs knew was a perennial stoner who practically ran hurdles with a joint between her teeth.  Yet she’d still managed to edge out Nicole on the 110 last season—thanks to a lack of urine tests.

 

Lunch was the usual macaroni salad with Lydia Shanahan and Elke DuPont.  Lydia took track & field more seriously than anyone else on the team and would be sure to ask buttinsky questions, so those Tylenols would have to be swallowed when she wasn’t looking.

 

“Forget the high jump this week,” Lydia advised.  “Bear down on the hurdles, if you can do ‘em without hurtin’.”

 

“Right, right.”  (As Heather Hendon would say.  Lydia’s earnest notice shifted to a minibox of Sun-Maid raisins—pop those Tylenols now.)

 

“Main thing about taking a fall, y’know, is not to let it get you down.”

 

“Sure, sure.”  (Too bad Lydia was such a straight arrow; everyone knew her cousin Long John smuggled “substances” for Bunty O’Toole’s crew on the family boat.  Maybe including Percodan, which Juanita was out of.)

 

“Gonna finish that?” asked Elke, glancing at Nicole’s macaroni container after scarfing three times as much pasta as Nicole could hope to digest before afterschool practice.

 

“Yeah, yeah.”  (Quit with the piggishness, DuPont; leave a few morsels for the rest of us before the 4B bell rings.)

 

Container cleaned out and fresh fruit consumed, Nicole was pausing at a garbage barrel to toss her orange peels and soiled napkin when “My old flame / I can’t even think of her name / She would always treat me mean / So I poured a can of gasoline / and struck a match” resounded behind her—

 

—and two “uplifting” arms wrapped around Nicole’s ribcage, high enough (she being fairly short) that her bosom was perched atop crossed wrists when she got hauled off the linoleum and dangled above it.

 

“—Dennis—”

 

“You were exxxxpecting ssssomeone else, Ssssillybillee?” went his overfamiliar voice.  “Let’s have a gooood lonnnng looook at you” (said to the crown of her head) “and see how thoroughly you’ve recovered yourself” (sudden doubt whether her bra was still fastened) “after last Friday’s calamitous cataclysmic capillary-shattering pratfall that you managed to pull face-first, begorrah, which takes an admirable not to say arousing” (hauling her higher, mashing her muchachas) “amount of anatomical flexibility that I, for one, always suspected you had in you and about you—”

 

“—put... me... down—”

 

—as Elke and Lydia vanished from sight while the cafeteria began to fill with 4B lunchers who seemed to take no notice of this loony screwball (make that sssscrewball) or the girl he literally held hostage inches off the floor!  Where the hell was the faculty monitor?  Should she let out a scream, like a squirrelly-girly damsel in distress?  But before Nicole could make up her mind to do this, she found herself standing again on her own two feet—and with hindquarters aquiver from an openhanded smack that drove all other aches and pains clean out of her system.

 

“¡Ahí tienes!  ¡De nada, piernas calientes!”—and he was gone.

 

SON OF A BITCH!!

 

Retrieving her fallen books and purse (that still contained those nudie-bondage Polaroids, hidden in an envelope) she hightailed it around to the Girls Gym to check her Maidenform in the locker room (it had come unhooked! the audacity!) and then spend study period seething in the gym bleachers, pretending to prep for Fifth Hour Advanced Algebra (again with the bra!) & Trigonometry, but seeing not a single cosine.

 

That Bastard Kahuna!  How dare he!  Never mind Nicole’s shooting for the dark side of the moon since the ice storm a couple weeks ago—that dark side had no cock-and-bull business grabbing hold of her, much less feeling up her boobs or slapping down her buns in front of the whole cafeteria!  She was the one destined to finish on top!  She was supposed to be the indomitable femme fatale—not some namby-damn-pamby Red Riding Hood getting mauled on Grandma’s mattress by a sssscrewball!

 

Nicole sprang up when the 5C bell rang and stalked out of the gym, buttcheeks still stinging at every step.  Yet as she climbed the stairs to the second floor she slowly realized that, apart from her outraged ass, she was now moving without discomfort.  Feeling as though she’d been massaged all over (all over) with Icy-Hot analgesic balm that raised vibrating goosebumps on every inch (every inch) of her epidermis.  Wow... maybe those Tylenols really did have extra-strength side effects.

 

Entering the Trig classroom, she did her best to display pain-free movement (but not pulsating frisson) for Miz Huntoon’s benefit.  Only to get hooted at from the next desk by Jawbone Jaubert, who like many ‘mos could instantly spot the slightest change in a girl’s appearance or behavior.

 

“(Scored that Percodan, did we?)”

 

“(If I did, it’s no thanks to you.)”  [Jawbone’d claimed he could provide it, but at a price too steep for Nicole to afford.]  “(I’ll have you know I’m a quick healer.)”

 

“(Course you are—a regular faith healer.  Hee hee hee...)”

 

What a pal!  She tried to think of a Lutheran curse-on-his-head-or-at-least-his-jaw, but Trigonometry intervened.  Followed by Sixth Hour Computer Programming, where Britt Groningen checked her out with pseudo-sleepy-smily interest—not from beneath heavy eyelids but openly, blatantly, knowingly.  Unlike oblivious Marlene in Seventh Hour Italian, taken as a change from four years of French even if it meant having to imparando la lingua alongside Candy Gates:

 

“Signora Agapito!  Sei sicuro che sia l'accento corretto?”

 

“She can take that accento and cram it where il sole don’t shine,” Marlene snortled at 3:15 when they went back down to the locker room to get ready for track practice.  Nicole skinned off shoes, socks, Fiorucci jeans and drawstring T-shirt with effortless flourishes, while Marlene gave her a stupefied side-eye.  “What—aren’t you still racked up?”

 

“Nope.”  With an undie-clad twirl on one nonchalant foot.

 

“Sorry, Tiny Dancer, I’m all outta dollar bills to stuff in your G-string,” heckled Marlene.   “So what do you call that on your knee if it’s not a big ol’ bruise?  A big ol’ hickey?  You finally letting Hound Dog hump your leg?”

 

“Whatever it is,” Nicole told her, “it sure doesn’t hurt.”

 

Pulling on practice sweats and training flats (no spikes allowed inside the gym) she officially reported full recuperation to Ms. Ohara.  “Lydia thinks I ought not to do the high jump this week, but I feel up to trying.  Definitely the hurdles—no problem there.”

 

Nicole could almost hear a face fall behind her still-prickly backside.  Turning around after getting Ms. Ohara’s conditional okay, who did she see but that “Bal Masqué Badass,” Vicki Vhatever—

 

—at which point the frisson pulsating across her skin and through her veins went into thermodynamic overdrive, and made her pivot sharply away.

 

B-r-r-r-r-r-r-r...

 

She (Nicole) had first become aware of her (Vicki) at Vanderlund Junior High (VW) two years ago.  Even though Nicole and Marlene had quit the Drama Club after the Battle of Scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they’d continued keeping tabs on its activities if only to savor Jawbone’s backstage espionage as “Phantom of the Sock-Hop.”  That year’s Spring Musical had been You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown with Candy Gates (who else?) as Lucy.  And trailing behind her had been “Velma” (Vhatever), an eighth-grade flunky who’d looked and acted like C.G.’s put-upon little sister.  Nicole (hardboiled by then but not yet entirely pulp/noir) had almost felt sorry for the poor thing, at first; had even contemplated trying to recruit her as Jawbone’s assistant saboteur.  But before that offer could be made, Poor Thing’d stared at Nicole’s face with a Why do you use so much powder and paint? expression—on a blemishless unsplotched countenance that looked as though every tear it’d ever shed had only made it prettier.

 

So: not someone to take pity on or show compassion to.  Or even aggrandize as an enemy, lacking as she did the offensive essence of a Candy Gates or Cheryl Trevelyan.  Just a snippy zitfree upstart who (Marlene discovered) had run cross country the previous fall on the squad Nicole should’ve been second-in-command of!

 

Meanwhile the Big Kahuna’d surfed out of everyday acquaintance, pestering other girls on the 8-Z and 9-X teams.  Once in a while Nicole’d glimpsed him roistering around school or the neighborhood, usually from afar.  Not till tenth grade at VTHS had they been assigned to the same class—English with Ms. Shelley Stoker—where Dennis had made that quid pro quo proposition: one A-rated term paper about The Big Sleep in exchange for a ssssmidge of hersssself.  How close Nicole had come to stumbling into a tumble (as Marlene would slur) was a topic for an uncomposed term paper.  She’d come to her senses instead, repulsing his topaz irises with The Long Lavender Look.

 

(Reply hazardous—ask again later...)

 

Then last September Marlene’d nearly burst at the seams with scuttlebutt about Dennis “skinny-dipping” during a thunderstorm at the Emerald Suburb Drive-in.  He’d gone there with a couple of girls, one of them Jenna Wiblitz the Stage Crew maven; but surely she’d kept her clothes on.  Jenna, immune to histrionics, could keep the Kahuna at bay even if he transformed into a naked stag like that guy in the Greek myth.  The other girl, though, the one Marlene’d said had been seen nestling close to Dennis on the front bench seat of his International Harvester Wagonmaster, had been Vicki the hell you say Vhatever—and even if she hadn’t stripped down for a skinny-dip with Dennis at that flooded drive-in, what had she ever done to deserve observing him do it??

 

Piss on them both, and not just with rain.

 

Nicole—not wanting or needing any kind of “social life” by then—had gone out and gotten an evening-and-weekend job at the Eclipse Cinema.  For occasional analytic laughs she toyed with the Barnyard Balladeers, Wolfie and Hound Dog and Oink Gibson.  Oink (real name Randall) was by his own standards the handsomest and studliest of the trio.  By Nicole’s standards he was the easiest to diagnose: grandiose narcissist, gullible ego.  “Gotta pay the piper, babe” he’d grunt when asked (with batted lashes and pouting lips) for the “loan” of a pen or a few bucks or half the food on his plate—even his Bulova watch on one occasion.  None of which ever got returned or refunded without Oink’s giving up something of equal or greater value, and thereby “paying the piper.”

 

But why bother taking aim at Oink?  Or Wolfie or Tooey or any other randy heehaw who leans on the Eclipse candy counter to leer “Gonna show me yer Snickers, sweet thang?”  Why open fire on them when they’re only dumbass fish in a barrel?  When you could be shooting for the dark side of the moon?

 

Say, let’s call it the Joker’s Moon   Pressing ham on your windowpane Till it shatters in smithereens   And showers down like rain...

 

As in “a sharp rain’s a-gonna fall.”  But not on Nicole Paar.  Not any more.

 

Hear that, Dennis?  You may have gotten away (so far) with mashing boobs and swatting buns and tripping feet over a hurdle—after picking Bitchy Britt Groningen out of the crowd in front of the crowd instead of Nicole.  For which there’ll be retribution; you haven’t reckoned on messing with a femme fatale—a deadly woman.  In pulp/noir lingo, a Dame with a capital D.  Tough as nails; doubly so when thwarted or flouted by some temporary setback.  Drawing a bead on your piss-tinted moon before blasting its dark side out of the night sky.  “So some of you’ll live but the most of you’ll die—even your razzmatazz...”

 

All through t&f practice (which Nicole aced, every event she tried) her peripheral vision kept skipping past Britt the Bitch to locate Vicki the Vhatever.  There she was... there she was... there she was...  Marlene swore that Vhatever’s nose had been broken during a volleyball match last year, and this was somewhat corroborated by people who’d actually been there like Kirsten Ogilvie and Lisa Lohe.  Nicole couldn’t believe it, much as she wanted to; there wasn’t the least trace of any injury on that damnable face (YET).  According to more recent legend, Vhatever’d fought off a Mad Bludgeoner copycat at the Shoreward Club’s Bal Masqué.  But again, where were the scars and marks of combat?  Still waiting to be lastingly, indelibly applied?  Not that this couldn’t be arranged, if needs be—and Nicole Paar’s needs had been boosted way the hell upward that very day, alongside the cafeteria’s garbage barrel.

 

Into which another dumbass fish could always be tossed for shooting.

 

Yes, you could almost hear that oh-so-perfect face fall—right down to the gym floor next time, or better still the cindertrack where it might get trampled by every kind of running spike.  When the opportunity arose...

 

*

 

Precisely one week later and half a mile to the northeast, the remnants of the Bingo Nygren Stationary All-Stars & LitWit Ring gathered at the Channelside Sammitch Shoppe.  This had just added a no-smoking section, which would’ve infuriated the not-stationary LitWits now puffing away on college campuses—Mitchell Lodge and Evita Krauss, Rodney Ottomann and Allison Pendleton, plus Bingo himself blazing up at Notre Dame.  The Ring’s remnants stuck to one of their customary booths, where they’d be blowing their usual smoke—Tara Garamond’s Virginia Slim, Bayard “U.” Flaherty’s Gauloise Blue, and Marcus McNamara’s White Owl cigar—after indulging in deli meats on Vienna bread.

 

Tara took a bite of Polish sausage and chewed it pensively.  Jeremy Tolhurst had begged off meeting her here this afternoon; she didn’t know where he was or with whom.  Only that if he were smoking right now, it’d be tobacco or pot or hash that someone else had paid for.  Cheapskatey of him, considering how much untapped moolah was in his wallet.

 

She also, upon reflection, didn’t know why Marcus McNamara went by “Spanky” when he couldn’t possibly wield a paddle with enough impetus to make anybody jump.  A paddle applied to his ass would sink into absorbent lard, like a spatula stirring cookie dough.  Picture a young Alfred Hitchcock with profuse unkempt hair, slow-speaking and slow-moving as well as obese, and you’d have Spanky McNamara.  His vast black-sweatered paunch was wedged against the booth’s formica tabletop, though this didn’t prevent him from slow-devouring a foot-long Italian beef sub.  Occasionally he offered an inch au jus to the girl squeezed in beside him.  She seldom took more than a nibble of it; nor did she have anything to say or smoke.  All of which underscored her status as a non-LitWit, no better than an interloper—were it not for her uncommon appearance.

 

Baby lamb all set for mint sauce, thought Tara.

 

“Say hello,” Spanky’d slow-talked while standing in line at the front counter, “to Bethel Mathers.  No relation to Jerry.  As the Beaver.  You can call her ‘Thel.’  Not ‘Beth.’  Won’t answer to ‘Beth.’  Doesn’t often answer to ‘Thel.’  I saved her from drowning.  Not in water.  Academically.  Isn’t that so, Thel?”

 

Nod nod nod by Thel.  She nodded continuously as Spanky and the others spoke, gazing at each in turn with apparent puzzlement in her big blue cornflowery eyes.

 

Leave her alone and she’ll go home / wagging her tail behind her...

 

But she couldn’t, squeezed in as she was, so Tara designed mental ad campaigns around Bethel Mathers as a baffled lambkin.  Pastoral products; farm-fresh goodness; shepherds tending scenic flocks for the tourist trade.  Each promo centered on an extraordinarily pretty blonde with short fleecy curls and, at first-second-third glance, air of callow innocence.  At fourth-fifth-sixth glance, though, this came to be shadowed by a sense of something like suspense.

 

There was an old movie or TV show that Tara hadn’t seen or read about but heard of, where a little kid walked all over town not knowing (though the apprehensive nail-biting audience knew) that he?/she? was carrying a live timebomb—which suddenly went off, kaboom! and took the little kid with it.

 

Dynamite subject for an uncommercial design.

 

But Tara, seated in a sticky booth across a formica tabletop from Bethel Mathers, got the distinct notion that any bomb in her possession would take the rest of them out and leave Thel unharmed.  Even unaware of what’d happened.

 

Nod nod nod...

 

She looked like cotton candy wouldn’t melt in her mouth.  Which brought a cottonmouth snake to mind; then cotton connected with Mathers to stir up a memory of Salem witch trials in The Crucible, which had been taken to heart by that weird soph chick who’d dropped acid and danced naked on the school roof last November.  Couldn’t have been Thel, though; she and Spanky went to Hereafter Park, not VTHS.  And the hullabaloo at Vanderlund would’ve redoubled if that naked dancing acid-dropper had looked anything like her.

 

Dynamite subject for a supercommercial design!

 

Or not, at seventh-eighth-ninth glance.  “No relation to the Beaver” indeed: hard to believe a fully-fledged female was inside that prim preppy outfit.  Unlike Tara, who might be scrawny(ish) but came equipped with real-life T&A—not an anatomically-incorrect doll-bod.  Maybe when Spanky said he’d saved Thel from drowning, he meant he’d refashioned her (“academically,” i.e. mad-scientist-style) from a callow lambkin into a Stepford Starlet or Bionic Playmate.  Which’d explain what a girl who looked like her was doing squeezed in beside a guy who looked like Spanky McNamara.

 

Under normal circumstances Tara wouldn’t’ve hesitated to share these raunchy speculations with the rest of the booth, attaching a LitWit barb to each.  But again she felt that sense of ticking timebomb suspense—

 

—until it got overridden by irritation as Weasel waffled ON and ON about his magnum damn opus, “You Are the Kinkajou.”

 

Its typescript, thick as a phonebook, had been presented (not “submitted,” not by Bayard “U.”-for-Unregulatable Flaherty) at the very last minute before Aqueduct’s deadline.  It got dumped in Tara’s lap, since Scott Grampian’d received his acceptance letter from Slippery Rock and lost all interest in playing editor.  Which no longer made much difference, since the choice of stories for publication now hinged on what used to be the annual Intersociety Literary Contest.  Weasel, of course, didn’t give a fart about this.  Nor that the stories were supposed to be short—no more than 3000 words—and subject to further condensation.  None of these rules applied to “You Are the Kinkajou,” so far as Brill Yant the Fictional Auteur was concerned.  He kept badgering Tara with stringent instructions on how his tour de force must be laid out and must be printed; any divergence, however minute, was guaranteed to make him go ballistic.

 

(Tara’d already decided to take a photo of the “Kinkajou” typescript from the side, to emphasize its bulk, and caption it Bayard “U.” Flaherty’s donation to this year’s Aqueduct—period, end of sentence.)

 

ON and ON he blustered at the Sammitch Shoppe, gesturing with one hand while the other pinched his unlit cigarette till it bent and broke.  Serving up exposition galore about an illicit apparatus called the “phants-presser,” invented for unsanctioned research.  Its test subject, a naïve teen girl named Lyonesse, became receptive to the device when she drank a “sublimate solution” snuck into a glass of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill by Albrecht, an unscrupulous lab assistant.  This enabled his taking control of Lyonesse’s brainstem (triggering rapid-eye-movement sleep) and visual cortex (stimulating intensely lifelike imagery) to perform nonconsensual dream manipulation (i.e. “phants-pressing”).

 

Nod nod nod went Bethel Mathers.

 

Gag gag gag went Tara Garamond, an imaginary finger down her make-believe throat.  Sitting beside Weasel, she at least didn’t have to see his gross chipped teeth as he yammered ON, or the scar on his brow that’d been inflicted by Butch Putscher.  But still: gag gag gag.  So flagrantly obvious that “Lyonesse” was supposed to be Lesley Ogilvie, despite there being nothing lioness-like about her; she always came across as the chief mourner at her own funeral, especially since Scottie gave her the heave-ho.  On the other hand, Weasel’d been picking the hell out of Pamela Redfern lately, and most guys would prefer to insinuate their nasty selves into Pam’s dreams etc.; so maybe Lyonesse could be called a composite victim.  In any case “You Are the Kinkajou” sounded disgusting and Weasel hadn’t even gotten to the meat au jus of it yet—when dastardly Albrecht would manipulate Lyonesse in ways that might make even “Erotic” Hradek blush.

 

As Tara’s attention wavered, it occurred to her that Spanky’d been silent all through Weasel’s tirade.  By now he should’ve made some lugubrious interjections, bait to which Weasel invariably rose.  “The McNamaras,” he might respond, “scrounged around County Clare like a passel of rustic illiterate donkey-schtuppers, while up in County Galway we Flahertys were teaching the Marquis de Sade how to put the bid in and on morbidity!”  But this afternoon Spanky merely enjoyed his White Owl cigar—though that black-sweatered paunch kept jiggling with what Tara hoped was amusement, not a pigged-out gut-ache that might turn upchuckish.

 

Odder still: Thel’s big blue eyes grew more and more cornflowery as her nods began to accelerate.  Weasel’d been staring at Lambie-Pie through that idiotic pince-nez he’d special-ordered from Wiblitz Optical, trying to penetrate her Brooks Brothers blouse and feast on the cyberboobies within.  Far from taking offense at this immodest affront, Thel leaned over Spanky as if to give Weasel a better view, while her Brooks Brothers?/ Sisters? jiggled in time with the paunch below them.

 

That was all Weasel needed to keep raving fiercely ON: “‘Why am I obeying him like this?’ Lyonesse asks herself as she kicks off her pumps, reflexively, as if he’d tapped her knees with a rubber hammer!  ‘I’ve never been willing to let Albrecht tell me what to do, or where to go, or how to feel!  Now I’m standing here on his shag carpet in my stocking feet, letting him see my purple toenails through sheer nylons!  He’s bossing me around without so much as a please or thank you—trespassing on my privacy!—intruding on my intimacy!—violating my personal space!—’”

 

“Ohh!  Ohh!” broke in Bethel Mathers, waving her hand as if in a classroom.  “Could he make her dream that she’s buried alive?  Trapped underground?  Lost in a cave like Becky Thatcher?  A cave where Tom Sawyer doesn’t find her again when he goes back after finding the way out?  ‘Cause she crawled away in the darkness while he was gone, and that’s why she isn’t mentioned again in the rest of the book?  Or!—or!—like Axel in Journey to the Center of the Earth, when he gets separated from his uncle and Hans?  And he’s left alone in the dark and goes crazy, running and screaming and trying to drink the blood pouring down his face as he bangs into jagged rocks?  And the others don’t find him again either, and that’s why the rest of that book is so dumb ‘cause Axel isn’t really there to keep telling the story?  ‘Cause he’s buried alive underground like Becky Thatcher, and his uncle and Tom Sawyer never get over it ‘cause everybody blames them—and then Tom goes crazy and stays in love with her ghost??”

 

All this in a lambkin voice, like Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

 

Bayard “U.” Flaherty, for once in his fiercely weaselly life, had nothing to say.

 

Spanky McNamara, whose jowls were now jiggling along with his paunch, took the White Owl from between his lips and held it to Thel’s.  She inhaled once and blew out a perfect round smoke ring for the remnants of the LitWit Ring.

 

Well! thought Tara Garamond.  Those changes would certainly put “You Are the Kinkajou” right up?/down? there with Erotic Hradek’s “Spirit Within, Spirit Away,” in which a suburban high school got visited by an extroverted incubus/succubus.  Or the sheaf of poems submitted to Aqueduct by some kid named Purvis, each one a macabre mix of Edgar Allan Poe with Emmeline Grangerford.  Or the sketches of Arby Paulsie, who’d never gotten over his breakup with Tara and so began going out with ninth-grade freshgirls who dressed like her and wore their hair like her and were flat-out underweight like her.  Even his artwork—once imitative of Art Paul’s on Playboy—had turned into spindly stick figures.  (Very complimentary, Greasy Gut.)

 

But so be it!  If Scottie wants to fly the “snowbird circuit” with Judy Disseldorf, Tara can step up as de facto Editor-in-Chief of Aqueduct ’78.  Bring it in on time and in shape, demonstrating she can hit the ground running this fall at the Parsons School of Design.  And while we’re at it, let’s “subtly” remind Phantom Tollbooth that if he flunks Economics he won’t have the credits to graduate and’ll have to park his butt in summer school if he wants to start at Stanford come September.  Yes, time’s a-wastin’; Jeremy better hasten and air out his wallet for Tara’s benefit—putting the pro in “pronto.”

 

*

 

At that same hour two miles to the northwest, the Lady Blue Angels were hosting the Lady Gondoliers on the softball diamond at Hereafter Park High School.  Marilyn “Jive” Mansfield, pitching for the Angels, threw a brushback duster at her cousin Millicent “Mauly” Carstairs, who charged the mound with bat in hand.  Both benches promptly emptied to take part in the wildest all-girl brawl NESTL(É) had ever yet experienced.  It took half-a-dozen players to pry Demandin’ Amanda Pound apart from Darla McNamara (Spanky’s younger but similarly oversized sister), while a broken nose got tacked onto poor Doreen Jobling’s fracture list.  The H.P. umpire—crooked, of course—declared that Vanderlund had forfeited the game.  He didn’t penalize Jive for her precipitating beanball, but recommended that Mauly, Amanda, and five other Gondoliers —even Doreen!—be suspended for the rest of the season.

 

(“Some rhubarb,” Avery Loderhauser would remark when he heard about this.  Vicki wouldn’t be sure whether he intended it as a cheer or jeer.)

 

(Elsewhere that evening: Monte Secchi told Robin Neapolitan that Downbite could only play the AnaRCHonda Pit’s all-ages show if Britt Groningen was their lead guitar—a condition to which Britt wouldn’t commit, even after Robin offered to break her neck.  “[You know doing that’ll never pin her down,]” mutter-reiterated Fiona.)

 

(Elsewhere that evening: Lesley Ogilvie’s upper back suffered muscle spasms, not from spinal bolt-uprightness but scrunching prolongedly on the kitchen floor as, in Kirsten’s absence, she force-fed a hormone supplement to Iggy the lethargic Afghan.)

 

(Elsewhere overnight: the first installment of “Emboweling Below”—a knockoff-blend of The Monk, Metropolis, Marauders of Gor, Mark Twain and Jules Verne—was cobbled together by Brill Yant, to be thrust upon Tara Garamond the next morning.  Its story-so-far: pagan priest Ingebo pursues barefoot maiden Æthelthryth through the catacomblike burial mounds of 9th Century East Anglia.  “More to come!” threatened the author.)

 

Meanwhile: Vanderlund’s softball players spent Monday evening and Tuesday morning spreading news of their melee at Hereafter Park.  So VTHS was keyed up to a high pitch (as it were) by Tuesday afternoon, when it hosted the H.P. girls track team at a dual meet on Hordt Field.  Ironic tension, given that last week’s meet at Willowhelm had been relatively cordial, despite lingering Windjammer resentment of their football defeat and postgame turmoil at Vanderlund’s Homecoming Game.

 

Willowhelm might’ve been mellow(ish), but Vicki Volester had felt resentful and obstructed at Wednesday’s meet.  With Alex running long-distance instead of Gwen, Vicki’d been displaced to fourth in the two-mile behind her, Rhonda, and Florette Stock; then sixth in the one-mile behind those three plus Big Sue and Lillie Guldbaer, beating only the Girdley twins.  Then (again) she was only able to set up and take down hurdles, not leap over any!  The still-visible scabs and bruises on Nicole Paar’s legs hadn’t affected their steel-spring Slinky-mobility in the slightest.  Snickers’d not only whupped Avis Haysend, Ashley Breredon and Clemmie Dumas, but beaten Brandy Heinzerling and come within a few tenths-of-a-second of tying Heather Hendon herself, in both the 220 low and 110 high events.

 

The only good thing about the whole stupid meet had been Laurie’s overcoming all reticence and reserve to hang out with Vicki whenever neither of them was in a race.  She’d stayed particularly close by Vicki’s side on hurdles crew, and then while they’d monitored the hurdling.  “(Watch out for Snickers,)” Laurie’d said in a lower and slower tone than her onetime blabberyap.

 

“I am, darn her!  Why couldn’t she’d’ve sat out one meet, at least?”

 

“(Ssshhhh!  Not what I mean!  She’s bad news, Vicki.  Stay away from her.)”

 

The old Laurie would’ve gone on to gossip in descriptive detail, explaining what she meant and why she meant it.  Latter-day Laurie’d simply stayed close by—on the field, in the locker room, in the showers, and on the bus back to VTHS—contributing a lot less to their chitchat than she used to.  Still, it’d been a great improvement over the past seven months of estrangement, and Vicki was happy to have Laurie back as an active bunchkin.  Alex agreed wholeheartedly, praising Dr. Harvey the Bob Newhart look-and-soundalike for his psychotherapeutic skills.

 

Friday’s dual meet at Multch North had been postponed indefinitely due to delays in replacing their cinder track with a new all-weather metric-measured surface.  Well, it served Multch right for trying to get fancy-schmancy ahead of Vanderlund, whose School Board hadn’t yet funded such innovation.  Which was fine with Vicki; she didn’t feel ready (math not being her best subject) to translate yards and miles into centi-these or kilo-those.  Friday’s meet couldn’t be held at VTHS because the boys were monopolizing Hordt Field; so the girls had devoted that afternoon to extra practice, further time trials, and more fumblefingered attempts (by Vicki) to pass that miserable baton.  Better that, though, than going to Multch North; Lisa Lohe’d come down with a 24-hour bug, and Vicki might’ve been obliged to sub for her in the mile relay—never hearing the end of it at subsequent lunches.

 

Another boon: not once during the past week had Vicki sensed any peril from Nicole Paar, at least no more than usual.  Unless you counted her evident invulnerability (why couldn’t Snickers have gotten stung by that 24-hour bug?) and looking hotter than ever—even if the makeup mask she always wore now appeared to be a solid porcelain shell.  Guys sure didn’t seem to mind this; after the Willowhelm meet, one of Brandy Heinzerling’s own legion of boyfriends had asked Snickers out, right in front of Brandy!  Snickers’d turned him down flat, but with a teasy twitch of her thinclad behind as it climbed aboard the bus and left the legionnaire to his Heinzerlingering fate.

 

That was last Wednesday.  Now it’s this Tuesday, and Snickers has volunteered to go with Stella Foote and Chookie Yentlebaum to welcome the Blue Angels as their bus arrives from Hereafter Park.  Captain Louisa Lang’s in mood to be hospitable, and not just because of yesterday’s softball fracas and recommended suspensions.  One of the t&f Angels is Totie Kornfeldt, the only girl in NESTL(É) capable of seriously challenging Louisa at the discus and shot put; their mutual enmity’s as heavy as the projectiles they hurl.  So it’s Snickers who’s heading out with the team managers—

 

—until she pauses at the door, looks dye-rectly at Vicki, and says “Tag along, kid.”  Adding “Not you” when Laurie bravely (though with a pooftail-tip in the corner of her mouth) starts to join them.

 

Vicki’s eyes dart this way and that, hoping to find a coach who’ll forbid her going.  But all she sees is a freckly s‑m‑i‑l‑e by Britt Groningen (the dart-and-flickstress) who steps aside to let Vicki reluctantly pass, a rookie-respectful step or two behind the others.  “Um... why?...” she ventures to ask, dry-mouthedly.

 

“Safety in numbers,” Snickers tosses back over her shoulder.

 

Stella Foote, jaw set grimly, ignores Vicki’s trailing after them.  Stella’s the classic student sports manager—she’d give anything to run and leap and throw on the track & field, but lacks the chops to compete.  (Especially bitter for somebody named Foote.)  Ditto to a lesser extent for Chookie, who gives Vicki an Oh God shrug; she’s been passing along the account of yesterday’s softball rhubarb, and now more Blue Angels are about to invade Gondolier territory!

 

Outdoors, Ms. Grigoryan ambles up as the H.P. bus whooshes to a halt on Steeple Street.  The Grigster’s presence sweeps the deck of rubberneckers, who drift away as the Blue Angels’s head coach disembarks.  Mr. Ferguson is a tall gray worried-looking man, said to have been a champion high jumper in college till his career got cut short by an injury from a fall.  He and the Grigster shake hands and swap commonplaces while he scans Steeple Street, nods at Stella and Chookie—then stops dead at the sight of Nicole.

 

She gives him her widest brightest paintedest smile and, for the first time in Vicki’s earshot, an audible snicker.

 

Coach Ferguson’s long jaw drops; his tall body does a kind of standing Fosbury Flop as it swivels away.  Meanwhile the Angels are emerging from the bus, each with an attitude ranging from subdued to churlish.  Jive Mansfield isn’t among them, fortunately, but two of her volleyballing girl-goblins are: Lindsay Gavin and Sondra Elster.  They’re both hurdlers, both hustleminded opportunists, elbow-nudging each another as they get snickered at; both snortle in scornful response.  Here comes Totie Kornfeldt, big as a bulldozer, flexing hands the size of frying pans as she anticipates taking on Louisa again.  Then a couple of long-distance runners Vicki remembers from cross country: Marianne Burstyn (looking ready to burst with vexation) and Inez de Borba (looking like she’d rather be dancing the samba in São Paulo).  Away they all get conducted toward the visitors (i.e. boys) locker room, while Vicki tries to make a break for her own—

 

“Hold it,” goes Nicole.  Snickerlessly.

 

“...I um got the two-mile to get ready for, y’know...”

 

The Paar lids and lashes are all part of that shell of a mask, but two viridescent eyes peer out of its shellacked sockets like a pair of moss-grown dueling pistols.  Vicki instinctively snaps on her own black laserblasts, if only for a split-second—and Nicole’s eyes revert to greenish teen-girl irises.

 

“Get along, then.  And don’t be late for hurdles crew.”

 

You’re not the captain!  You’re not a coach!  Or the boss of me either!  As if I’d ever be late for anything to do with hurdles!  You better watch out for me, Miss Thunder Thighs, and where you’re going today ‘cause I am ready-willing-able to take your place the next time you trip and fall and maybe scrape your face off leaving nothing but skullbones to cake over with concealer so try snickering about that, why don’t you?—

 

—all the way back to the girls locker room, and out to the field, and onto the track, and almost up till the firing of the two-mile run gun.

 

As a result Vicki takes belated notice that VTHS is keyed up to a high pitch (as it were).  Plenty more people are in the grandstand and around the track than two weeks ago for the Houlihan meet.  Mauly the Mauler—Demandin’ Amanda—Natalie Fish and other softballers—even Dory Jobling, who wears a nasal splint and martyred demeanor—plus a spate of guys too, Gondolier jocks on various teams that were unjustly penalized by Hereafter Park referees in the past.  And from these uncongenial spectators rise a pervasive grummish grummish grummish...

 

“We didn’t do anything!” Marianne Burstyn blusters in the lane next to Alex’s.  “I don’t even like Jive Mansfield!  Why take it out on us?”

 

Vicki steals a quick glance at Inez de Borba in the lane next to her own.  She’s a friend of Carly Thibert and Keiko Nakayama; their fathers all teach at Lakeside Central, Inez’s is supposed to be an expert on Brazil or Portugal, Inez just likes to run and dance.  Her body language bespeaks nervousness, anxiety, even fear.  Vicki’s cross-wired instincts are to say something comforting and/or take advantage of Inez’s distraction—

 

“On your mark!”

 

—Oops—

 

BANG and they’re off on another two-mile eight-lap run.  Since it lasts eleven-to-sixteen minutes and isn’t a sprint till the final kick, the crowd’s antagonistic grummishes simmer down a bit.  All the G-Girls finish before the Angels—Rhonda first, Alex second, Vicki third (at 13:21.2, a half-second short of a new Personal Best) and Big Sue fourth.  Vicki makes sure to slap Inez de Borba’s palm, pat her on the shoulder, escort her off the track; Alex does the same with Marianne Burstyn.  So far, not so bad.

 

But then comes hurdles crew, setting up the 220 low event.  Laurie (who’s already run the 440 relay with Cindy Ryder, Marlene Crivitz and Michelle Blundell) comes hurrying to take her position next to Vicki.  They’re joined by Jackie Vince (who’ll be running the 440 dash with Marlene, Ginger Snowbedeck and Joyce Usher) and Sheila-Q (who’ll be doing the triple jump with a healed lower back and strengthened pelvic floor muscles, plus Lydia Shanahan, Naomi Fish and Henrietta Lang).

 

Up go the eighty barriers, ten each in eight lanes, staggered halfway around the track.  Over from the jump pit trots Thirsty Kirsten to report (between gulps of Gatorade) that Louisa edged Totie Kornfeldt in the discus throw, 126’ to 125’11”.  Kirsten herself managed 16’8½” in the long jump but doesn’t know who won it—she always jumps first so as to have a brief breather (and lots of gulpage) before the 220 hurdles.  Jackie Vince distributes fruit and granola for the crew to snack on, waving a Jujube box under S‑Q’s nose but refusing even a sample—“No way José, ixnay on tooth decay in the middle of an eetmay.”

 

Vicki and Laurie, eating bananas, observe Ginger Snowbedeck “swugging around” from the 880 medley to flirt with a bizarre gnomelike individual at trackside.  He’s a stranger (and then some) to Vicki but looks like a shrunk-down version of Zalman Tergeist, complete with beard or more accurately a goatee.  If Gigi Pyle were here, she might recognize this goateed gnome as the master of ceremonies at that Matterhorn Terrace orgy last October, where Ginger did an “Asham Was a Tootin’ Turk” striptease atop the faux chateau’s ballroom piano.  Gnome boops Ginger’s jerseyed belly-button with a stubby fingerbone; she giggles like Poppin’ Fresh.  Vicki nearly flings a banana peel under Ginger’s feet as she goes swugging off, leaving Gnome to adopt more of a gremlin’s stance.

 

His name (later to be learned) is William Bankhead Goff, known as Billy Boy and Bonkhead and Mr. Bonks.  Since the disappearance of Parnell Travers and deterioration of Lynndha Ednalino, he’s seized the reins (such as they are) of the Traversers (such as still traverse) though only a junior at Hereafter Park.  He, unlike Marianne Burstyn, is a very close friend of Jive Mansfield and her goblin-girls, including the two lining up for the 220 low hurdles: Lindsay Gavin and Sondra Elster.  Indeed, Mr. Bonks was the M.C. mastermind behind the scenes of a much-whispered-about H.P. mud wrestling match between these goblinettes, which made the Traversers a mint of money that Bootleg McGillah would’ve given his front teeth to hijack before it all got spent on tootin’.

 

Vicki feels no urge to slap palms with either goblinette.  Lindsay’s the Scottish equivalent of Netherlander Britt Groningen: a frecklefaced, frecklebodied redhead with swamp-witchy penchants.  Sondra has wide unfocused eyes like Spacyjane—no, more like Delia Shanafelt’s slightly-bulbous blinkers, though she doesn’t simper sociably as Delia does.  And unlike Inez or Marianne or the other two Angel hurdlers, Sondra and Lindsay show no sign of fright or unease or chagrin as the crowd’s grummishes resurge.

 

And Dennis Desmond springs out of the April turf to sidle over beside the Goateed Gnome.

 

Laurie stiffens and shivers; goblinette lips curl upward; Nicole Paar twists her lacquered mask into another wide bright snickery grin.

 

GRUMMISH GRUMMISH GRUMMISH goes the growing multitude.

 

Over or under or through this, Vicki hears Dennis ask “Come here often?” and Gnome answer “What’s your sign?” before both say “Ten-four, good buddy!” just as the gun goes off—

 

—and away the eight girls go, Heather like a shot and far out in front, Snickers neck-and-neck with Sondra on her left and Lindsay on her right, rounding the bend one-two-three! in tight formation like jet pilots, one-two-three! over each hurdle till the last barrier before heading into the final stretch—

 

—but even as Heather zips toward the finish line, the trio behind her breaks up in disarray with Lindsay lurching sidelong into Eileen and Sondra doing the same to Kirsten while Snickers soars above their tangled bodies like a heroic hometown Gangbuster outscoring villainous visitor Renegades in the old Roller Derby Game of the Week:

 

“C’mon down and see all the jams ‘n’ slams at the INTernational AMPHitheatre!  You won’t find a more sensational, action-packed sport in the world today!”  Jostling and walloping each other up against or even over the rail, with shoves and insults and mutual challenges to skate one-on-one in a grudge match race—

 

—but here on Hordt Field an orchestra of whistles is piercing the GRUMMISHes, and a shower of trash descends onto the track though no one appears to be throwing anything.  (“Manna from heaven’s garbage truck!” Sheila-Q will scowl when the hurdles crew is assigned cleanup duty.)

 

The two goblinettes, surrounded by meet officials and coaches from both teams, are bellowing they were deliberately obstructed and interfered with by Snickers who ought to get disqualified on the spot!  Snickers, giddily fanning herself with both hands, replies that if any unintentional contact did occur, it was only because Lindsay and Sandra’s arms kept flailing across their lines and into her lane where they didn’t belong.  She can hardly be blamed for jostling anyone who encroaches like that—accidentally or otherwise—and it’s not her fault if they lose their momentum and/or balance as a result.

 

Then, aiming those moss-grown dueling pistols dye-rectly at their previous target, Snickers adds: “Isn’t that right, Vicki?”

 

To whom everybody in attendance seems to turn, falling silent and staying motionless as they await her reaction.

 

Tenths-of-a-second pass like decades.

 

“(...f’you say so...)”

 

“There you go,” snickers Nicole Paar, as though a point has been validated.

 

Up roars the GRUMMISHes; back to each other turn the disputants, witnesses, commentators.  “An infraction is an infraction!” Coach Ferguson tries to assert, but with head and body contorting as Snickers lounges at his very elbow—almost as if she intends to rest her dizzy head on his supportive chest.

 

“Lord, do we have to start calling her Snuggles now?” Sheila-Q wonders aloud as she takes plastic bags out of the cooler so the crew can start scooping debris off the ground.  Eww!—some of it looks like shredded worm-bowels from Biology dissection trays, and Vicki wishes she hadn’t just eaten that banana.  “Where did this stuff come from?” she hears herself ask over/under/through the ruckus, along with Heather Hendon’s “What is going on here??” and Laurie’s “Bad news, bad news,” and Jackie Vince’s “Hey, did we go out for track & field so we can pick up litter?” and Britt Groningen’s whistling a tune from Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell and Dennis Desmond’s telling the Goateed Gnome “Pinch-poke, you owe me a Coke”—

 

—but all she sees, besides the unheavenly manna underfoot, is two varnished eyelids cocked askew so viridescence can continue to glint in her direction.

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

 

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Return to Chapter 50                          Proceed to Chapter 52