Summer in the Land of Skin. Jody Gehrman
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4
Caliban
It’s strange, I know, but I don’t really think about what I’m doing until Tuesday. Thursday the Gibson got smashed, Friday I became Queen of Fanny’s Barbecue Palace, Saturday I retrieved my things from Gottlieb’s and left a note: Have made new arrangements—Anna. Tuesday morning I awaken sitting straight up on the couch, afraid.
The weekend is lost in a haze of gin and secondhand smoke—I’ve never consumed so many drinks in my life, nor spent so many hours in smoky bars. There was the smack of pool balls, the rattle of ice cubes against glass, the torturous seduction of Arlan’s guitar late at night. Lucy and I went to the lake again, we shopped for bras one day, we went to coffee shops. We are suddenly enmeshed in a baffling intimacy, a rhythm of lives interwound, as if my nightly return to their couch were a state as natural and inevitable as the movement of stars.
Still, there are more secrets here than understandings. Where they get their money, for example. Arlan paints houses—that much I’ve figured out. On Monday morning he pulled away in his station wagon, wearing paint-splattered clothes and a baseball cap. Lucy mentioned having recently lost her job at a Texaco station when she refused to provide her boss with the lurid details of her sex life. She’s now stubbornly, willfully unemployed, and I get the feeling this is her status more often than not. Her main interest is the ’zine she puts out every month, a low-budget one-woman operation she calls Pulp. In it she blends feminist parody with National Enquirer–type headlines: “Serial Killer Claims He Saved the Planet from Blood-Sucking Sluts,” or “Confessions of a Mutant Abortion Survivor.” I’d pored over the back issues Sunday night when I couldn’t sleep. The writing was good, the humor morbid and clever. I find it hard to believe this girl barely graduated from high school.
There have been allusions to Arlan’s wealthy grandmother, but other than that, I’m left to assume that they live off Arlan’s occasional painting jobs, and Lucy’s even more occasional month-long stints at gas stations, head shops, ice-cream parlors—whatever takes the least energy. The ’zine, though widely distributed, is nothing but a financial drain, and Arlan’s band gets paid mostly in drinks. Lucy and Arlan don’t live in gluttonous luxury, but I know the expenses must add up: there are the cartons upon cartons of cigarettes to buy and the endless nights spent in bars, drinking heavily, feeding the pool tables with quarters and tipping the bartenders lavishly in moments of giddy, drunken humanitarianism.
But it’s not until Tuesday morning, the fifth of June, that I wake up startled by my own couch-inhabiting role in the Land of Skin. The money from Rosie and my own savings won’t last long in this environment; in fact, after gas, Gottlieb’s room, and all the drinks this weekend, I discover I’ve spent five hundred dollars already—almost half of the paltry stash between me and selling my body on the corner of Garden and Walnut. The air of mystery around my hosts’ financial situation only adds to my general queasiness. I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing here.
In this state of semi-panic, still befuddled with the aftermath of last night’s gin, I eject myself from the terminally firm couch, throw on jeans and toss down a cup of coffee. Lucy and Arlan are giggling in the bedroom. The sky is filling with low, billowy rain clouds. I decide it’s time to face Elliot Bender again.
I had hoped I might find him in plain view, but when I arrive, there’s nothing except the late-morning sunlight breaking through the clouds, washing over the peeling paint of the old boats and the gleaming white fiberglass of the newer ones. I listen to the sound of waves lapping and ropes stretching tight, metal bits clanking against masts, the sides of boats knocking softly against the docks; it makes me a little sleepy. A pelican hovers over the bay, its wings balanced perfectly on the light breeze, then free-falls recklessly into the water. I giggle as it splashes—there’s something so slapstick about pelicans.
“What are you laughing at?”
I turn to see Elliot Bender heading in my direction. He’s got a grocery bag in each arm and a Mickey Mouse ski cap on his head.
“There you are,” I say. “I was looking for you.”
“It’s your lucky day—here I am. Could you—?” He hands me one of the grocery bags and unlocks the gate. “You hungry? I’ve got pork chops in here somewhere. I myself was planning on a Slim-Fast shake, but I always provide solid meals for guests—the four basic food groups all in attendance. You look skinny. Do you eat?”
I realize with a pang of guilt that I haven’t eaten a solid meal in ages. By the time I get ready to answer, though, he’s already forgotten the question.
“Well hey, look at that—it’s my friend, Caliban the Pelican. You can tell it’s him because he’s got that crazed, half-monster look. Hey, Cal! How’s the fishing? Ah well, that’s the trouble with pelicans, they’re always so awkward when you try to engage them in conversation.” He disappears below deck. Something crashes to the floor and I hear him cursing. “Will you hold on a minute?” he calls. “I can’t even walk and chew gum at the same time. I’ll be out in two seconds.”
I unfold his lawn chair and sit facing the bay. He’s certainly in better spirits than I found him in last; maybe that was just a fluke. Caliban lands on a nearby boat and eyes me suspiciously. He does seem to have a crazed gleam in his eye. I wave to him, but he continues to watch me with a look of distaste.
“I don’t think Cal likes me,” I yell to Bender.
“What’s that?”
“Cal. He’s looking at me like I’m regurgitated slime.”
“That’s a good sign. He loves regurgitated slime.”
In a moment, Bender emerges with a can of tomato juice in one hand and a can of Budweiser in the other. “What did you say about the pork chop? You want one?”
“No thanks.”
“You want something to drink?” I nod, and he tosses me the juice.
“My father used to drink tomato beer,” I say. He looks at me for a moment, then nods, but says nothing. “You ever have that?”
“Fantastic,” he says, “A can of Bud, a little Snappy Tom.”
“Did my dad turn you on to those?”
“I taught him the damn recipe!” We both drink from our cans and look out at the water. “Summer’s moody around here,” he says. “Like San Francisco, only more rain.”
“I kind of like it,” I say.
“Gets old.” A mosquito lands on his forearm. He smacks it dead with his big, leathery palm and smears it on his pants. A faint, feathery line of blood appears there. “Not much work in Bellingham,” he says. “College kids snatch up most of it.”
“Yeah?” I say, feeling the panic I woke with swelling anew in my belly. There’s an awkward pause.
“Surprised you’re still here,” he says finally. “Thought you’d be back in San Francisco by now.”
“No. I’m not going back there.”
“Really?” He raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
A big, gray-bloated cloud slides in front of the sun. “Because.” My voice is plain and quiet. “I was dying there.”
“Oh yeah?” he says. A small, mean twist creeps into the corner of his mouth. He dents his beer can slightly with his thumb. “What was it? Rush hour? Cost of living?”
“No,” I say.
He chuckles, but any warmth or humor is now obscured by the dark glint in his eyes. I think of an obese wolf. “Listen, Medina,” he says. “You’re young, okay? You’re healthy. You got nothing to worry about. You don’t know shit about dying.”
“When you’re in the sixth grade and your father blows his brains out, you learn something about dying pretty quick.”
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