The Gum Thief - cropped Page 17

  "Why would I want to look at toys?" Kyle asked.

  "Don't move," said Gloria. "I'll be right back."

  "Really, Gloria-you don't have to ..."

  But Gloria scurried away to the basement, and Steve was hearty. "Kendall was a good child. He loved his toys. Scotch?"

  Kyle looked at Brittany, who appeared far away. "Brit?"

  "Oh-sorry. I was looking at the clock over there."

  "Wretched things, clocks," said Steve. "Give me an hourglass or a sundial any day of the week."

  From the basement came rattling noises, and Steve poured more Scotch for Kyle. He then looked at Brittany. "So tell me, how is life different with makeup covering your face all the time?"

  "This?" Brittany put her hand to her cheek, massaged the tissue and looked at the resulting kabuki ovals on her fingertips. "I think I'm over makeup now," she said. "It protected me for a while, but it's like a magic spell. Once you lose faith in it, it's merely more junk in life."

  Kyle gulped his Scotch.

  Silence made Gloria's rattling in the basement more menacing. Steve said, "What's a JPEG? You used that word a few minutes back."

  "AJPEG?" said Kyle. "It's an image you send around on computers."

  "Why is it called a JPEG?"

  Brittany said, "It's an acronym for Joint Photographics Experts Group."

  "Thispegs, thatpegs-why can't people be happy with a sepia-tinted daguerreotype? Ah, look, here comes Gloria with a comprehensive selection of young Kendall's toys."

  From the basement's portal-a door over towards the kitchen-came a dreadful drumming sound that became higher in pitch as Gloria neared the dining room. With small beads of sweat percolating through the pancaked cosmetic stratas atop her brow, she staggered through the doorway and dumped a pile of weatherworn plastic animals, pedal carts and miscellaneous outdoor toys. "There!" she said. "Kendall's toys. He exists."

  Glove Pond: Brittany

  Brittany decided not to tell Kyle about the origins of Kendall's toys. Why bother? Steve and Gloria were eccentric, to say the least, but nuts? Maybe not. She certainly wondered how a child belonging to this couple might have turned out. The absence of Kendall photos was suspicious, but if Kendall had half a brain, he probably would have fled the nest at the first possible moment. Maybe he took his photos with him.

  This makeup is annoying me.

  Brittany remembered applying it up in Gloria's pink boudoir, remembered how strangely liberated she felt once she put it on-the way it allowed her to briefly reincarnate as someone new who wasn't so wrapped up in the world and its problems. But she was tiring of it now. It was a brief phase in her life; she already felt herself entering a new one.

  Meanwhile, Steve and Gloria were going through "Kendall's" toys, one by one.

  "Ah," said Steve. "Kendall's novelty scooter, emblazoned with a cartoon fish to help him roar out into the world." The fish was from Walt Disney's Finding Nemo, which would have made Kendall at most, twelve.

  "Isn't this precious!" said Gloria, holding a thrashed yellow loop. "Kendall's favourite hula hoop!"

  "He loved that hula hoop, didn't he?" said Steve with the zest of a teenager who's learned a new swear word. "Newfangled things. Took us all by surprise, they did." Steve looked at Brittany and Kyle, their brains rigorously calculating an estimate of Steve's age. "I'm kidding," Steve said. "I'm not that old."

  Gloria pounced on a small Fisher-Price choo-choo train, stripped of its primary colours by too many winters and too much sun, its plastic palpably disintegrating. "Watch what happens when I run this along the floor," she said, falling to her knees on the Persian rug, "It makes this darling little toot-toot noise." The little choochoo train's beeps made it sound like it had emphysema. Gloria and Steve beamed like proud parents.

  Extreme empty nest syndrome? Alcoholic psychosis?

  Steve sat down on the floor as well, spilling a drop of Scotch on his pants. "Look at this!" he said. "A plastic puppy!"

  "I'll be back in a moment," Brittany said. She fled to the guest bathroom, a dusty little place with one functioning light bulb. Kyle's first chapter was lying atop the cistern. She ran the water. The hot wasn't on, so she rinsed her face with cold water, then looked around for soap, finding only the vintage soap shards.

  She scrubbed at her face and watched the residue vanish down the drain like milk until finally the water was clear. There were no guest towels. Under her breath she said, "No disrespect, Kyle," and used his first chapter to sluice the water from her skin.

  Shaking her hands to hasten drying, she left the bathroom, grabbed her coat and went out the front door. "I'm just getting a bit of fresh air, guys. Back in a short while." She stepped out into what had become a night so cold it made the stars vibrate.

  Bethany

  Hey Roger, Glove Pond is back-thank you. And it was genius that you FedEx'ed it to me from your place. I think Mom's boss truly is going to shit nickels when he gets the FedEx bill, but so what. As Gloria says, art must come first. And it's funny to think that, during the night, it had to fly all the way to Kentucky or wherever first before coming back here.

  I lost six pounds this week. Not bad. All these shifts and my gym membership are paying off royally, and I don't think it's bad or scary for me to take an interest in my body. I can become strong. I can. I can become something lean and cat-like, someone whom the world will look at and go, Whoa, there's one ass-kicking wench.

  I couldn't sleep last night and there was this old Stephen King movie on channel 62 in which almost everybody on a jumbo jet headed to Boston vanishes in midflight except for these six people who were asleep. So these six people wake up, and in the seats where all of the vanished passengers had been sitting was the clothing and shoes they'd been wearing. I suppose the director wanted us to think, Ooh, their bodies left, but only their bodies. Everything that wasn't a part of their bodies stayed behind! But this is total crap. What would be left behind if everything that was you vanished? The only thing that's truly you is cells containing your DNA. So that means everything that isn't a DNA-bearing cell would be left behind on the 747. So yes, there'd be clothing and shoes, but there'd also be dental fillings, breast implants, hair weaves, false eyelashes, porcelain veneers, makeup, contact lenses, nail polish, artificial hips, donated kidneys, artificial hearts, pacemakers, cologne, heart stents-and if you think about it further, all the non-DNA stuff from inside the body: undigested food, bacteria, viruses, prions, snot, earwax, piss and drugs. And then the last thing of all would be the water that keeps everything going-gallons of water, because water doesn't have any DNA in it. Saliva would be left behind too, except for shed skin cells from within the mouth. BTW, that's how they nailed the Unabomber: from shed mouth cells in the saliva he'd used to moisten the flaps of his bomb-loaded envelopes. I think even eggs and sperm would be left behind, because aren't they only half of a DNA strand searching for another half?

  So back up in the jumbo jet there'd be 250 seats containing ugly puddles of soggy crap where there used to be people. Imagine the smell.

  Let's go further. Forget what got left behind in the plane's seats-what would it be, then, that was actually taken away in this movie's rapture event-thingy? Some weird, completely dehydrated beef jerky thing? Maybe not even that-we'd be like pantyhose.

  Wait-I'm not sure if bones count.

  Let me go ogle it.

  Five minutes later: Know what? Bones don't contain DNA, but marrow does, thus skeletons minus the marrow would be left behind inside the 747. Hair, it turns out, contains no DNA either-only the roots-so hair would be left behind as well. And don't forget teeth, minus the pulp inside them. In fact, what we think of as our bodies is only partially "us." We're made of filler. We're hot dogs, Roger. DNA is basically this containment system required to hold all of the goop we flatter ourselves into thinking is so holy.

  But . .. it turns out I was wrong about the sperm thing. Sperm contains fifty times as much DNA as blood does. It's a forensic bonanza. Weird, huh?
But here's something I could never figure out. I remember looking at my high school yearbook and thinking it was strange that there were an equal number of girls and boys. Let's face it-there ought to be one guy for every hundred women. One trillion sperm for every egg? What was nature thinking? It's always struck me as nutty. I remember watching documentaries about WWII, how in Germany in 1946 there were two women for every man, and even at the age of six, I thought,

  Yeah, that sounds far more realistic.

  Time to change the subject.

  Random fact: If you chug a gallon of whole milk, within one hour you'll puke yourself clean. Interruption ... Yves from the printing counter was wondering if I've

  seen his cellphone. He's one of those guys who buys all of his Christmas presents at a 7-Eleven on Christmas Eve his family members get copies of Vanity Fair wrapped in Reynolds Wrap.

  Yeah, Bethany, like you're totally into Christmas or something.

  Thank you, interior monologue. You are correct. I am being a hypocrite.

  But what was the universe thinking when it came up with Christmas? Hey, let's wreck six weeks of the year with guilt and loneliness and unnecessary cheesy crap! And then let's invent office superstores where they can take everyday stuff like pens and glossy printer paper and commit an emotional travesty by suggesting these items as gift ideas for loved ones!

  I think Christmas is about that point where we as humans split off from the rest of the universe and became prisoners of ourselves instead of being unselfconscious and free like the animals and birds. Yes, we received cars and jets and Hollywood motion pictures, but we also got saddled with calendars and time-the fact that there's either too much of it, or too little. And we also got saddled with the knowledge that we can either make use of time doing worthwhile things or fritter it away watching Partridge Family marathons on satellite TV stations while drinking one of the countless new energy drinks that have appeared on the market overnight. I like Red Bull because it tastes like penicillin. Sick, huh?

  Coffee break over. I have to go tidy up the bargain CD bin.

  Joy to the world.

  I'm going to show my mother the new chapters. She's your biggest fan.

  And you still haven't told me how you are.

  B.

  ps: It's five minutes later and I had to come back in and add this. I think Christmas celebrates the moment in our history as a species when we stopped being prey and began making weapons and traps and turned into predators like those apes at the start of 2001. There's never been another species that's done that. We are unique. We changed modes.

  Glove Pond: Kyle

  The doorbell rang. Kyle wondered if he might learn why his hosts had taken five minutes to answer the bell when he and Brittany arrived. No such information was forthcoming. Gloria put down Kendall's plastic choo-choo train, patted her hair and went to answer it, revealing a tall, thin, generically aristocratic white-haired man in a tweed coat frayed at the elbows, his ears pink from the cold. She was thrilled. "Why-it's acclaimed theatrical director and curmudgeonly-yet-sophisticated man about town, Leonard Van Cleef! Hello, Leonard. Welcome to my charming and gracious home!"

  "Yeah. Hiya, Gloria." Leonard rubbed his hands and walked in. Steve was still on the floor, idly playing with Kendall's Finding Nemo plastic scooter. "Hello, Leonard."

  "Hello, Steve."

  "Can I get you a drink?"

  "Scotch, if you have any."

  "Right."

  Kyle sensed no warmth between the two men. Gloria, meanwhile, stood beside a chair, practising alluring come-hither poses. "What brings you out tonight?"

  "I thought we might discuss the playa little bit."

  "Really?" Gloria's eyes saucered. "Of course we can discuss the play. We must. Art must always come first." Kyle coughed. "Oh, I'm sorry," said Gloria. "Please let me introduce you to tonight's dinner guest-" Gloria's pose reminded Kyle of nineteenth-century kill shots of British lords brandishing muskets above gargantuan slain leopards. "This is acclaimed and rich young novelist Kyle Falconcrest. Kyle and his wife are here for dinner tonight. Nothing fussy-Chinese takeout. That's the way we like it here at our house: friendly, informal, casual, and yet charming and gracious at the same time."

  "Jeez." Leonard looked at Kyle. "You a relative or something?"

  "Nope."

  "Small mercies. These two take the cake."

  Steve handed Leonard his Scotch. Leonard swished it around in its tumbler, then surveyed the room around him. "Nice digs. Been living here long?"

  "Since my first novel came out."

  Gloria burst in, "It garnered good reviews but didn't sell much." "Huh." Steve sipped his drink and Gloria said, "Kyle's last book sold ten million copies."

  Leonard looked at Kyle as though Kyle had sprouted antlers. "Really?"

  "Uh-yes."

  "Would have to have been something pretty broad to sell that much. What was it-a batch of kittens secretly takes over a weight-loss clinic? And then the kittens turn a ragtag bunch of losers into skinny people with rich sex lives and unconditional love from their family members?"

  "That actually would be a big seller," said Kyle.

  "What's a weight-loss clinic?" asked Steve.

  "Oh, Steve," chided Gloria. "Everyone knows what a weight-loss clinic is. People go to them all the time. They're very popular. You use their scientifically designed programs to lose weight while Hollywood celebrities and members of the British royal family support you through posters and brochures, urging you onward with little homilies and bromides. Some of these centres also have tanning salons."

  "How do you know so much about this?"

  "Oh, Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve." Gloria gave her husband a wise, ageless smile, then looked at Leonard as if to apologize for Steve's inability to keep pace with the times. "None of his novels ever sold very well, you know."

  "Wow," said Leonard. "You people do take the cake."

  Kyle looked at Leonard. "They really do. They're like a John Cheever novel. Except it's set in hell. Check this place out-it's like time stopped ten minutes before they cancelled the Apollo space program."

  "You've been snooping?" asked Steve.

  "Browsing. Snooping would kick up too much dust." He turned to Leonard. "The whole place is coated in dryer lint."

  Three streets away, a truck changed gears. A passing helicopter bunted at the night air.

  "Right then," said Leonard. "Enough for witty banter and formalities. I've come here to talk shop. I have news."

  DeeDee

  Roger, I'm worried sick about Bethany. She's truly and totally not herself any more. To be honest, she's ... scary. She washed the dishes last night without being nagged, and then I went into the living room and she was sitting in a chair, not reading or doing anything else, ,:-':-just sitting in a chair':-':--which sounds innocent and all, but it's spooky. It was like a sci-fi movie where a body-snatched human being is sitting motionless while the invading alien incubates within. And the window was wide open. She thinks that if she stays cold her body will burn more calories and she'll get thin.

  Why does she suddenly care what she looks like? She obviously did during her Goth years, but that was an act of rebellion, whereas this new exercise and dieting craze feels like the worst sort of conformity. Nothing would make me happier today than to see Bethany walk into the living room eating a bowl of Creamsicle ice cream while lecturing me about my directionless lifestyle and wearing a black Cure tank top with her eyes blacked out like Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper isn't strictly Goth, I know that, but you know what I mean. Where did the real Bethany go? What happened in Europe? She won't discuss it. Okay, she got dumped, but if I try to use the I've-been-there tone of voice, she gives me the yes-but-you-always-get-dumped-in-the end tone of voice. So who are you to offer advice?

  Oh, her little broken heart! Now I'm crying, Roger. Imagine Bethany's tiny little broken black heart, lying on some cobbled London thoroughfare like a piece of litter!

  I can bare
ly remember my first heartbreak. I used to fall in love so easily, falling out of love always emerged as an inevitable end product. Sometimes I remember being happy with someone, and then panicking and pretty much choosing to fall out of love just so I wouldn't get dumped. Only a young person could do something that stupid. It's only now that I'm past the point when I'll ever again be loved that I know how sacred the whole process is. Ain't life a kick in the teeth?

  If you can think of some way to make her be herself again, please be a friend to me-and to her-and share the idea.

  DD

  PS: It's funny how often I think about Steve and Gloria.

  Roger

  Bethany ... The last two weeks of the year are the worst two weeks of the year. Who the hell invented December? Curse you, Pope Gregory. It's a disaster of a month, a complete waste of thirty-one days. And it's not like early January's much better.

  I didn't know about Kyle-I hope it's not too weird, me mentioning him by name. He's a creep, and he's out of your picture. At least you saw his true colours quickly, albeit thousands of miles from home. Did you get anything out of Europe besides a theatrical backdrop for a bad personal situation? There's a part of me that's actually jealous that you got to go to Europe in love, and that you got to feel something intensely. I'm showing my age, but send me a postcard when you're in your forties and see if you don't agree.

  The important thing is to not obsess on the dark stuff-I can imagine you saying, "Gee, Roger, thanks for the sage advice." But it remains good advice. In twenty years you'll remember the good and the bad more equally. And you will get over this. That's the hardest thing of all to believe, that the hurt will dampen and shrink.