Cruddy - Lynda Barry [38]
I stood near a ferry dock and kept breathing the air in, I could not get enough of that kind of air. The smell of french fries made me look up. There was an outdoor stand where people were buying paper baskets of fish and chips and cups of clam chowder. I had heard of clam chowder. Sometimes people ate it in books. But I didn’t know what it was and it did not sound good to me. I got in line and watched the two worker guys, teenagers. The one who waited on me had brown skin and full lips and tilted-up black eyes. He wore his paper hat pushed so far forward the point came down to between his eyebrows.
He said, “What you want?”
I said, “French fries.”
He picked up the tongs. “What size?”
“Large.”
He lifted a paper basket off a stack. “What to drink?”
“Milk.”
“No milk.”
I said, “No milk?”
He pointed at the board behind him. “We got Coke, Sprite, Root beer, Orange—HEY, DONITA! HEY!” He started waving frantically and cupping his hands around his mouth. “DONITA! HEY! YOU DON’T SEE ME?”
A girl with dark piled-up hair and a lime green minidress was getting into a car. She waved back and called, “I see you, Romel.”
The other worker guy nudged him. He said, “Maybe she see you, but what do she see?”
Romel said, “A stud.”
“Shit,” said the other worker guy. “You ain’t going to get none of that. In your dreams maybe.”
I said, “Orange, please. And that girl should go out with you.”
“Awwww,” said Romel, and he was smiling big. “See there?” He tap-slapped the other guy. “You hear what little man say? Say it again.”
“That girl should go out with you.”
“Haaaa!” said Romel, and the other worker guy laughed. “Because I’m a stud, ain’t it? She look at me and see a stud! Put some extra fries up for little man. Little man, you all right. Who beat you in the face like that? I’ll kick the shit out of him if you tell me to. You want me to? Where he at?”
I took my fries to some picnic tables near the water. Seagulls swooped around and I threw a fry, wanting to see how a bird would get it out of the water, but a seagull caught it in midair. I threw a couple more and the birds came swarming. I noticed I was feeling decent. Very decent. I walked to a place with a lot of tall totem poles in front of it. And that’s where I found it. YE OLDE CURIOSITY SHOPPE. GIFTS. ODDITIES. SOUVENIRS.
Beside the front door was the bone with the sign underneath it that said WHALE PENIS.
I said the words very softly. I pushed open the door and a bell above me rang.
Chapter 19
RAINS. TRAINS in the day are nice but trains in the darkness are another kind of creature. It is a form of tripping to stand on the railroad tracks beside a slaughterhouse in the darkness. To wait in the pitch-blackness with your eyes closed for as long as you can stand as the roaring gets closer and crashes all around you. The groaning vibrations and the metal screeches and the bell going ting, ting, ting.
To stay on the tracks with your eyes closed after the twisting bright headlight hits your face, turning the insides of your eyelids white, it will be any second, any second, the mighty engine blasting and its shocking sharp ray of blinding light and then the whistle screaming and you jump, flying to the side, rolling in the stickery weeds and laying flat while the black wind rushes over you. This is what I used to do in the good old days.
“Hey,” said Julie. “Want to know what’s on Nightmare Theater tonight?” She was sitting on the couch eating a second bowl of cereal. I was in the mother’s chair smoking one of Vicky Talluso’s cigarettes and holding the USN lighter, running my thumbnail across the engraving.
I was wearing Vicky Talluso’s hat, and I will admit, some of her makeup. And I had looked through her wallet. And I knew what her address was. And I knew what her phone number was. And the Turtle’s stash box was still there. And I was blowing smoke rings