The New and Improved Romie Futch Page 2

  “And I had a dream about you last week, Romie,” she said. “Dreamed we were doing acid like we did twenty years ago, except we were in a hot-air balloon, floating over the mall. Your hair looked just like Robert Plant’s, except not as blond.”

  “Robert Plant now or Robert Plant way back?”

  “Way back.” Crystal smiled, that small, slightly sad bending of the lips that made her look like a panda, especially when she’d gobbed on too much eye shadow. “And Helen had moved to Mexico. What do you think the universe is trying to say with that one?”

  Crystal shot me a smirk. Then she grabbed a glass pipe from her wicker nightstand, stuffed a fat bud into it, took a long hit, and handed it to me.

  “It’s too early for the bong.” She winked.

  “What time is it?”

  “Twelve thirty.”

  I took the pipe.

  The Xanax was working its magic. My mad-dog heart began to chill. Shame over the general failure of my life and feelings of nameless dread melted away as Fleetwood Mac flowed from dusty stereo speakers and Crystal poured me another mimosa. Sunlight gushed through the sliding glass doors that led out to her tiny balcony, which boasted a dying geranium and overlooked the back of Patriot Self-Storage.

  Three drinks and two bong hits later, I found myself entwined with her on the bed, breathing in the familiar swimming-pool smell of her hair and the Poison perfume she’d worn back in 1994, when Helen left me for an art student named Adrian and sweet Crystal had saved my life.

  • •

  Crystal’s son, Sam, was off at a Surf City time-share with his daddy, so I camped at Crystal’s place, not setting foot out of her magical cave for a solid week. We smoked weed, drank booze, popped Adderall at midnight, and took Morpheus to sleep. We buffered our hangovers with Crystal’s precious Xanax, which she fed me as a mother would Skittles to a diabetic child. And then we’d repeat the whole deal the next day, starting around one.

  Bands sometimes practiced down at Patriot Self-Storage. Our favorite was a cover band whose half-decent “Stairway to Heaven,” along with a half tab of Soma, soothed our stoned brains. We’d kiss, grope, stumble to her bed, with its avalanche of accent pillows. We’d fuck so lazily that sometimes I’d pass out on top of her, then I’d wake up, go to town like a jackrabbit on crank, feel myself go numb, and lose myself in a dream of Helen, at which point I’d surge back to life. I’d charge forward with tears dripping down my cheeks.

  Each day at four, just as her second beer began to melt her angst about her employment situation, Crystal spoke to Sam on the phone. She’d be quiet for a spell after she hung up. Then we’d pack the bong, switch from beer to liquor, and stream something trippy on Netflix—A Clockwork Orange, The Wall.

  “It’s different,” Crystal would say. “What do you think the universe is trying to tell us?”

  “I can’t exactly describe it.”

  “Me neither, but I know it’s something important.”

  She’d look at me with those eyes. I’d note a little flower of feeling that was sweet enough, but then I’d remember Helen. Sometimes the memory would be dramatic: Helen renting a hotel room for our tenth anniversary and filling it with wisteria. But mostly I’d recall everyday moments: Helen squatting over a flower bed, yelling at me to come check out this weird beetle she’d found, smiling slyly, treasuring the brilliant blue creature like a jewel in the bowl of her palms. Just like in the old days, my feelings for Crystal would shrivel. By the time her son was due back from Surf City, I was ready to go home. I was not prepared to face life—lapsed mortgage, Visa bills, failing taxidermy business—but I did need a break from the constant partying, the hangovers that grew more bottomless each day, each trap door leading to another trap door, and so on, over and over, until my brain was free-falling at the speed of light.

  So I went home, stripped the dingy sheets off my bed, and passed out on the naked mattress. With the help of two Morpheuses, I slept for twenty hours straight, the last stretch spotted with nightmares involving my mother during her final days, shrunk down to seventy-five pounds, her body wreathed in the plastic tubing that kept it going. I woke up with cotton mouth and tremors, only six pills left in my stockpile, a departing care package from sweet Crystal.

  • •

  I allowed myself a half Xanax to survive that first morning, fortifying myself for a slew of voice-mail messages from the irate customers I’d ignored during my stay at Druid Forest. Timmy Dennis wanted to know where the fuck his mallards were (slumped in the fridge, skin rancidity threatening their plumage quality). Duval Elliott had finally taken his kill, a prize buck with a Boone and Crockett antler spread of 143.6, “elsewheres.” Ben Horton didn’t want to pester me much but thought he should check on the status of his coon. Though I’d finally got that sucker in just the right pose, playfully pawing the air where a varnished bream would soon be gasping for its life, I hadn’t stuffed the fish—didn’t remember what I’d done with the carcass, in fact—plus the raccoon itself had no eyes.

  I made some calls, cleaned Timmy’s birds, and picked out a set of rotating glass eyeballs for Ben Horton’s coon. By the time I finished up, it was 6:00 PM. My stomach was growling. So I microwaved a burrito, sat down in front of my laptop, and settled back into the slump of my bachelor ways. I checked my e-mail (more static from irate customers), checked E-Live (twenty-seven notifications and all of them bullshit), and, idling over Helen’s profile out of mindless compulsion, nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the words IN A RELATIONSHIP.

  This sent me straight to the liquor store, where I bought a pint of Jack, a forty-ounce bottle of vodka, and two cases of Schlitz with ginseng and ginkgo biloba.

  By midnight I was wasted, had gobbled half my precious Xanax reserve, had wrung myself dry over YouPorn. At 1:00 AM I was still staring at the screen—eyeballs dry, dick sore, face radiation-burned. I’d hunkered down to watch “She Blinded Me with Science” on YouTube, a nostalgic jolt from my middle-school era, when I noticed an ad in the upper-right-hand corner of my screen, that spot where Google dangled bait generated by my own e-mail content and pathetic surfing habits, taunting me with taxidermy-supply sales, penis-enlargement pills, and memberships to cut-rate gyms. But this was something different.

  HAVE YOU EVER DREAMED OF BEING A GENIUS?

  I could almost hear Crystal’s husky voice whispering into my ear: What’s the universe trying to tell you, Romie?

  I clicked and read with a crazy sense of fate:

  Males between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, without course-work or degrees from four-year colleges or universities, are invited to participate in an intelligence enhancement study at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, GA. Testing period starts on June 30 and ends on August 15. Subjects will undergo a series of pedagogical downloads via direct brain–computer interface. Subjects will receive $6,000 compensation—$4,000 upon finishing a series of bioengineered artificial intelligence transmissions and $2,000 upon completing follow-up tests. Travel expenses paid. Room and board provided. Serious inquiries only. Contact Matthew Morrow, MD, PhD, 404.879.4857, drmorro@cybercenter.com.

  TWO

  Four days later, I was standing in the lobby of the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, a fuckup among fuckups, because, apparently, I was the only one arriving way past the official check-in time. The sun was setting beyond the row of sickly palmettos that fringed the mostly empty parking lot. The floor-to-ceiling windows were all fired up from the setting sun. Light beams bounced on the shiny white floor tiles and ricocheted off the metallic walls, right through my aviators and into my bloodshot eyes. The receptionist, in the process of packing up glossy pocket folders, turned with a huff. She was tall and skinny and middle-aged pretty, like a woman in a detergent commercial, the kind of down-to-business babe who’s serious about stain control.

  “You almost missed me,” she said, patting her bobbed hair. “You’ve got five minutes to look over the paperwork, which I presume yo
u’ve already perused.”

  She sat me down on a couch shaped like a tadpole, placed my packet on the funky plastic coffee table, and handed me a pen. Inside the folder was a map of the building, questionnaires about my medical history, pamphlets containing rules and regulations, and consent forms galore. The consent forms had been e-mailed to me as PDF attachments, but of course I hadn’t looked them over as carefully as I should’ve, busy as I was getting hammered each night, wondering if I should answer Crystal’s booty-call texts. Score a few Xanax for the road. Feel the sweaty warmth of her motherly palm on my forehead one more time.

  I had a single Xanax left, stashed between two Trojans in a balled-up sock and stuffed into a pocket of my duffel bag. It had taken every ounce of self-control I’d had to save this last ticket to Peace of Mind. I knew that night would be hell—first night sober in months, the strange locale, my brain on the verge of an overhaul. Over the last few days, I’d lifted the pill to my trembling lips countless times, but I’d somehow refrained from popping it.

  “Are you ready yet?” said the receptionist. “Carl’s here for the night shift and I’ve got to get home.”

  Carl, the elf-like security guard stationed at the front desk, waved at me.

  “He’ll take you through the tunnel,” said the receptionist.

  “Say what?”

  “You’ll see. Now, how about signing a form or ten?”

  Halfway through the first paragraph of the first consent form, I’d already come up for air, scientific mumbo jumbo swirling in my head. My reading comprehension skills, never the best, were not up to par that evening. So I said fuck it, scrawled my signature at least a dozen times, and handed the receptionist a sloppy bundle of paper. Then I traveled through the security tunnel, a contraption straight out of Star Wars that highlighted every bone and organ in my body, every tooth in my mouth, every dirty piece of underwear in my duffel bag, every last mint in my box of Tic Tacs, but which, via some miracle, did not detect my precious last Xanax.

  • •

  I could tell my roommate was a haunted motherfucker the second I walked into the room and caught him in tighty-whities, spinning around to throw karate moves at his mirror image. But what did I expect? Though I figured the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience might be packed with down-and-out SOBs, I hadn’t given it much thought until I was face-to-face with a man who looked like the love child of Steven Tyler and one of those lizard creatures from the miniseries V. Regarding his spastic, frog-eyed face, I got the sense that a green reptile hid under his scabby human skin. I got the sense it might bust out any minute with a sputter of slime. I got the sense this creature might gnaw my head off while I was sleeping. Still, I introduced myself, politely offering my hand as my mother had taught me, remembering her advice: No need to break anybody’s fingers, Roman, but you don’t want to hand them a dead fish.

  “Romie Futch.”

  Last time I checked, I had a normal human hand—though my nails were bitten to the quick and my palms were stained from the epoxies and varnishes of my trade. But my new roommate backed toward the wall as though I’d offered him a rabid bat.

  “Needle,” he muttered.

  “That your nickname?” I said.

  “That’s my name.” Needle spun around to demonstrate a David Lee Roth karate kick. “Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same. I’m from Cairo, Georgia. Got a black belt. Don’t take shit from nobody.”

  There was a strange shadow on his sunburned chest—a faded tattoo that was too murky to make out.

  “I’m from South Carolina,” I said, trying to play it cool.

  “South Carolina?” He winced and pretended to spit. “Look.” He grinned, revealing a case of meth mouth that gave me the serious creeps. “It’s all good. What you got in that there bag?” He crept closer and I caught a whiff off him, rotting leaves and a stab of perfumed laundry detergent.

  “You know, the usual—clothes and shit.”

  “I was hoping you might have you some Scooby Snacks, maybe some Get Nekkid.”

  He flashed his ghoul grin again. A special-effects artist could not have done better.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’. You got a smoke?”

  “No.”

  Needle started jogging in place like a cartoon spazz ready to rocket over a cliff, steam shooting from his ears. He was at least six feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten.

  “You got five dollars?”

  “Why?”

  “Vending machines.” He leapt toward the door and then jerked back like a leashed dog.

  So I doled out five dollars, just to have a minute’s peace. Needle, after peering left and right several times, dashed down the hallway in his underwear. I took a look around, grooving on the college-dorm vibe, which reminded me of the time I’d visited Helen at the University of South Carolina at least two decades ago. I recalled the two of us, entwined on her twin bed, waiting for her super-dork roommate to skedaddle. In particular, I remembered how, when the roommate finally heaved off with her enormous backpack, we didn’t pounce on each other like starved leopards. We stared at each other, electricity zinging back and forth between our eyeballs so intensely you could almost hear a crackle in the air. We gulped. We eased into it slowly. But soon, we almost fell off her ridiculously narrow bed.

  These beds weren’t much bigger. A twin with a headboard that doubled as a desk hugged each wall. Teeny closets flanked the entryway. The cinder-block walls were painted the strange orange beige of prosthetic limbs. I put my duffel on my dresser, sat down on the cheap mattress, and attempted to study the map the receptionist had given me.

  But there was my roommate, stomping back in with two Dr. Peppers, a tube of Oreos, and a pack of Marlboro Reds. Fortunately, he ignored me: plugged himself into his MP3 player and zoned out to some death-metal filth—Nightrage or Fleshcrawl—tracks that make Metallica’s darkest jams sound like Disney tunes. Guzzling Dr. Pepper and smoking an illegal cigarette (according to the map, there was a smoking patio downstairs with ionic smokeless ashtrays), Needle rocked to his dismal music, releasing a tortured moan every five minutes. His bed was about three feet from mine. A plastic BI-LO bag jammed with clothes sat on his dresser. We had a sliding glass door with a cramped balcony that overlooked the parking lot, and even though it was open wide to the summer night, the tiny room was filled with smoke. At the rate he was going, Needle would work through that pack of Reds in a few hours.

  And then what?

  I shuddered to think.

  I unpacked my duffel and went to check out the Richard Feynman Nanotechnology Lounge, which, according to my map, was just at the end of our hall beyond the reading room. Vending machines glowed eerily in the dim lounge. Not a single human being was relaxing on the IKEA sectional. Not one down-and-out bastard was milling around in the hallway outside. And I wondered if Needle and I were the only poor fools desperate enough to let mad scientists tinker with our brains.

  When I returned with my supper (Diet Coke, Snickers, a pack of Nip Chee crackers), Needle looked a bit more relaxed. His long body sprawled over his bed, troll feet dangling off the end. His smile was not what I’d call peaceful, though it was way less manic than the grin he’d first greeted me with.

  I inserted my earbuds and scarfed down my pathetic supper while listening to Aqualung. Thank Jesus for Xanax, I thought as I fumbled for my green socks. I might have been a sorry son of a bitch who hadn’t quite managed to get his shit together, but I had a thing about balling my socks just so. So when I found my green socks with the toes sticking out, I knew something was up. The Trojans were still there, just not taped together like they had been. And my ticket to relaxation was gone. Needle, a bloodhound for substance of any sort, had sniffed out my last yellow bus and gobbled it up.

  I slumped on my bed, feeling my balls deflate at the thought of confronting a meth head who dabbled in the martial arts. I wondered if I should just hightail it—gun it down I-20 and be back in Hampton
by midnight. But the thought of spending one more minute as the old Romie Futch was enough to keep me cramming tasteless crackers into my mouth, listening to the faint hum of the fluorescent overheads as my lizard-faced roommate lapsed into twitchy sleep.

  When I got back to Hampton, I’d have 6K in my pocket. I’d have a brand-new brain. Maybe I’d have the get-up-and-go to do something with my life. Chip would turn hot pink with hypertension and envy. Helen would take one look at the New and Improved Romie Futch and dump her stuffed shirt of a boyfriend. My retired father would get off my case for once in his life about running his taxidermy shop into the ground. And my dead mother would look down from whatever limbo she inhabited and, seeing that her son had finally grown up, ascend to the fourth dimension or merge with a thousand other shining souls on some distant astral plane. I could envision her up there, some kind of lavender ectoplasm, hovering, all-knowing, shooting beams of love down at her lost son.

  It’ll be okay, Romie. You’ll make good in the end.

  THREE

  Chloe, a pretty female technician not much older than twenty, leaned over me, warming my face with her minty breath. She wore a blue paper cap that matched her eyes and made her look like a Mennonite.

  “Are you comfortable, Mr. Futch?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m just glad y’all didn’t shave my head.”

  “No.” She smiled, revealing beautiful teeth, except for one weird yellow fang, which was kind of sexy. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Thank God. I mean, that would’ve sucked.”

  Despite the framed paintings of flowering meadows and a potted tree, the room had a hospital vibe—blue walls, rolling shelves of medical equipment, a disinfectant funk. The technicians, hip variations on the chess-club types I remembered from high school, explained everything to me in patient Mr. Rogers voices. There was Chloe, with her pale blue eyes. There was Josh, with his hipster ’stache. I could see Chip dork-baiting both of them—dissing Josh’s piddly facial hair, mimicking Chloe’s Yankee accent while checking out her ass. There was also Dr. Morrow—the head honcho—but he was busy with another subject (a word that basically meant guinea pig).