Cruddy - Lynda Barry [14]
He looked very relaxed laying on his back in the straw. He seemed to be somewhere around our age, a little older maybe, and he was looking very much like a typical glue-sniffer dropout. The extreme relaxation of the guy was interesting to me. A very fat fly lifted itself and made a worn-out buzzing sound and flew a lopsided circle around his face. He followed it with his eyes and said, “Not now.”
Vicky said, “He’s wasted.”
She nudged his leg with her boot and it was quite rubberized. Except for the slightest movement of his open hands he was still and I saw he was extremely pale. Dark circles ringed his eyes. His hair was white-blond and longish, looking greasy and clumped together. All of him was looking very white except his eyes, which were black, weirdly black and crowded with fringes of too many white eyelashes. His fingers wiggled a little, and I started thinking of a white moth on its back moving paper-colored legs so slowly.
He was wearing a red-and-white-striped surfer shirt, very large and ugly high-water bell bottoms, tight to just below the knees and then flaring out the wrong way. He didn’t have socks on and his shoes were the most insane pimped-out beige patent leather with scuffed gold buckles and high stacked heels that were worn down to almost sideways. They looked big on him. He saw me staring and said, “These are the Lord’s shoes, Hillbilly Woman. We traded. Now I walk in his shoes and he walks in mine. And guess whose fit better?”
“He’s completely wasted,” said Vicky. “Look at him.” She clawed at her forehead, digging her short fingernails into the bald eyebrow skin above her left eye. It was the reason she was bald there. She clawed at it whenever she was trying to figure out what to do next. And she had such an active life that the hair never had a chance to grow back. The father taught me to watch the hands. Always watch the hands. The hands will tell you everything you need to know.
“Hey. Spy,” said Vicky. “You tripping?” Her voice was too loud for the situation. “You drop? Hey. You. Talk. Answer.”
He didn’t look at her. He kept his black eyes on me. Vicky noticed it. She said, “He’s in love with you, Roberta.”
She meant it as an insult. The guy did not give off normal vibrations and nothing about him was cute, but it made her mad that he was noticing me instead of her. When she said it, he smiled and the sudden alive pinkness of his gums and his wet teeth sent a shock through me and caused an involuntary jerking. Sometimes the autonomic nervous system is called that, the involuntary. And sometimes the passageways are frayed or badly wired. I have certain bare spots and he found one.
Vicky was kneeling beside him, bending over his face while her hands were quick going through his pockets. “Yeah, you’re tripping aren’t you, little hippie man? His pupils are totally blown. Is it acid? Hey. Answer. Is it mesc? What’s your name?” She pointed at me. “You like her? She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Right, Roberta?”
She gave me the olden look. Maybe the oldest of the olden looks. The go-along-with-it point of the eyes. The father would have laughed at her. She was so obvious. She had no style at all. I felt a little disappointed. The father would have bent over laughing.
“Roberta doesn’t have a boyfriend and she loves getting high. Right, Roberta? Are you going to get her high? What’s your name?” Vicky’s fingers worked her way into his bagged-out shirt pocket without trying to hide what she was doing.
“I am the Turtle,” he said. “You know me as the Turtle.”
“Yeah? What’s this?” Vicky pulled out a round flat container with a metal lid. “This your stash?” She shook it and there was a damp scratchy sound.
“Since 1822,” said the Turtle.
“Yeah?” said Vicky.
“It satisfies.”
“What is it, hippie man? Hash?”
The Turtle said, “It’s a new day so let a man come in and do the popcorn,” and then snatched the container out of her hand before she could pry off the lid.
I thought of a trap-door spider. He moved as quick as that.
“Don’t be so tight,” said Vicky. “I wasn’t doing nothing.