IDLE

BY THOMAS VAN GEMERT

The public radio station is begging for money again between the jazz so Vance shuts it off. It is the weekend and a party is raging in and outside the house across the street. He sits up in bed and peers out the window through the blinds: a keg on the porch and boisterous college students standing around chattering on the front lawn with plastic cups.

He takes a sip of tea and sniffs inside the mug again. It smells remotely like cat piss for some reason and he tries again to remember where he grabbed the mug from in the kitchen. He sighs and, dropping the book he was reading to the floor, puts on the headphones to the police scanner. After sifting through a number of boring phone conversations, he recognizes a voice. It is the girl downstairs, Maureen, complaining to a girlfriend about the loud party across the street. He can’t believe it: someone else is rotting in this house on a Friday night. Then she complains about other things like the yellow stains in the armpits of all her shirts and her yeast infection. He stops fondling himself at this point and clicks off the scanner. Standing up, he looks at a blank wall and realizes he must get out of this room or go mad.

In the house next door he finds Kevin sitting on the floor of Matt’s room playing a harmonica. Matt always drove to Cleveland on the weekends to sleep with his girlfriend and left his door unlocked. Kevin’s own room is dark and dirty and stinks real bad. Vance seeks out Kevin every now and then mainly because Kevin is more of a loser and it boosts Vance’s ego a little.

“Recognize that one?” Kevin says. He is a filthy creature with matted, oily hair and dingy jeans. His feet are bare and there is always a black scum between his toes. Vance notices that Matt’s room is beginning to take on the pungent stench of Kevin’s. Matt will soon be locking his door like any sensible person would.

“No what was it?” Vance mumbles.

“Pork pie hat. You didn’t recognize it?”

Vance shakes his head. Kevin didn’t have an ear for music but he thought he did, just like he thought he was making it in the world. Vance cracks open the can of beer he brought with him and looks around. Kevin’s maroon McDonald’s visor is slung over a bedpost. It looks like he is making himself at home. The sheets are all ruffled and there is a dark sunken impression in the middle of the bed. Christ, was he sleeping in the bed too?

Kevin keeps playing the harmonica on the floor while Vance sits in a corner on a hard wood chair, lifting the beer to his mouth every ten seconds. The phone rings and they look at each other. It rings three times before the answering machine kicks on with Matt’s lame greeting and indistinguishable tinny music in the background. At the beep a girl begins explaining in a troubled voice how her car has broken down and that she is calling from a convenience store she had to walk two miles to get to.

“How’s it going?” Vance says into the phone. Kevin drops the harmonica and starts making hand gestures. Vance looks the other way.

“Matt?” the girl says. “Is this Matt?”

“No Matt’s busy”

“Can you get him on the phone? This is important.”

“Matt’s busy in Cleveland.”

“Oh.”

“With his woman.”

“What was that?”

“He’s busy with his woman.”

“Oh.”

“Are you one of Matt’s women?”

“Who is this?”

Vance can hear Kevin pissing in the toilet across the hall and for a second he considers fondling himself.

“Matt sends his sympathies about your predicament. Do you like movies?”

“Who is this? Is Matt there? Let me talk to Matt.”

“Would you like to be in a movie? I have a camera.”

“Good-bye jerk.”

The line pops and Vance drops the phone clattering to the floor and picks up his beer. There is only a swig left and he downs it, squeezes the can, and drops it on the floor on his way out of the room.

Out on the front porch there is a Chinese man that Vance has never seen before sitting on a chair. A case of beer lays ripped open at his feet. He is staring out across the street at the party. Vance asks for a beer and the Chinese man hands him one and continues staring at the people laughing and talking loudly on the front lawn across the street.

“See that chick in the white skirt?” the Chinese man says. Vance sits down on the top step of the porch, looks at the girl, and takes a swig of beer.

“I’m getting her in my room tonight.” the Chinese man says. From inside the house, Kevin’s harmonica can be heard very faintly.

“Do you believe it?” says the Chinese man.

“Eh?” Vance says.

“Do you believe it?”

“Believe?”

“Watch this” says the Chinese man and he gets up and walks off the porch and across the street. Vance throws his empty can into the bushes and grabs another one out of the box. A very shrill note pierces out of the open porch door as Kevin blows forcefully into the harmonica to end his pitiful little song.

Across the street the Chinese man is talking to the woman in the mini skirt. He keeps leaning on one foot and then the other and scuffing one of his sandals into the grass. The house next door to the party is all dark except for a dull yellow light in the attic window. A fat man walks out the front door below with a bag of garbage hanging from his fist. Vance recognizes him. One early morning this fat man tried to bust into his room and then stumbled out onto the fire escape. Vance picked up a metal rod out of the corner of his room and tip toed across the darkness to peek out the window. In the moonlight he could see a large pale ass and a red goateed face grimacing. The next day he found a pile of shit on the fire escape. The fat man steps off the porch and walks heavily in skimpy flip flops to the parking lot next door. He tosses the bag of garbage into a dumpster and a loud metallic clang echoes out over the empty cars. He walks back into the dark house and Vance hears the screen door slam between the chattering voices of the party.

He takes another big swig and looks back at the Chinese man who is now talking to a tall man instead of the girl. The tall man has his hands on his hips and Vance can’t see his eyes from under the brim of a red baseball cap. The Chinese man is making sharp gestures with his hands and then the tall man shoves him and he falls back tumbling in the wet grass. Nobody seems to have noticed this. They continue their constant chattering. The Chinese man gets up and starts marching back across the street with his nose crinkled and teeth bared. Vance looks down at the porch steps and waits for the sandals to start stomping up them but they never do. He looks up and the Chinese man has vanished.

A minute later a loud engine starts up from the parking lot behind the house. Vance recognizes the revving pattern: two shorts and a long. The same revving he hears 7:55 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

The helmeted Chinese man tears out around the house on a motorcycle headed straight for the party. The guests scream and begin to scatter away, full cups of beer sloshing over the grass. The motorcycle’s chrome cylinders shine under the street lamp as the Chinese man rides across the street and fans the back wheel across the lawn tearing up and spitting out large chunks of grass and dirt. Halting the bike in the middle of the lawn, he revs his signature pattern for a while as a few party-goers now safe in the house push curtains aside and peek out the windows with gaping mouths. The fat fire escape squatter walks out onto his dark porch and stares. Then the back tire begins spinning and there are more flying clumps of grass as the motorcycle tears away and shoots off down the street. Vance stands up on tip toe to catch the Chinese man turn the corner three blocks down. He picks up what is left of the case of beer and walks over next door to the house he lives in. Maureen’s door is open and there is music playing. Vance looks down at the case of beer he is holding and smiles but then remembers: the yeast infection. Shuddering he walks up stairs to his room and cracks open another can. The public radio people have stopped begging and the jazz plays on.

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