Eric Puchner - Model Home

“What are you doing here?” Dustin asked, staring at Kira’s little sister. The happiness he’d been feeling had evaporated.

“What am I doing here? Fuck. That’s a good one.”

“You know these people?”

“We met at a Flag show,” Breakfast explained. “Greg Ginn was trying to get in her pants.”

“Actually,” the beautiful girl said, “he’d already taken them off.”

Taz looked at Dustin’s belt buckle. “Yucko, bucko. That’s one ugly belt.”

“She and Suze have been doing PAM snorts,” Breakfast said apologetically.

Dustin didn’t ask what a PAM snort was. Taz wobbled over to the fridge, the lightning bolt in her hair bisecting her eyes; he was only beginning to figure out that the saddle shoes were an ironic gesture. Both of her ears were covered in little jewel-like scabs. Dustin frowned. Somehow, through no fault of his own, he’d gone from being a guest at this party to an unwitting accomplice in the drug use of his girlfriend’s sister. His girlfriend’s fifteen-year-old, mentally disturbed sister. He’d either have to risk getting in deep shit with Kira or call her and look hopelessly uncool in front of Breakfast and his friends.

He was relieved when Breakfast suggested they go on a beer run. Dustin offered to do it himself and bring Taz along for company. He needed to figure out if he could be held responsible. He checked for Biesty on the way out, but he’d disappeared somewhere with the hash smoker.

“You like this shit?” Taz asked, pointing at the tape deck. Getting her in the car had been psychologically complex, achieved in the end by the promise of cigarettes.

“It’s X. The best band in the world.” He turned it up.

“It’s, like, stomping on my buzz.”

“What do you listen to?”

She shrugged. “The Buttholes.”

“The Butthole Surfers?” He laughed. “You just heard that at the party.”

“Probably because it was my tape.”

Dustin wondered whether she was telling the truth. They stopped at a red light, under the glow of a streetlamp. She was definitely less attractive than Kira. She had fuzz between her eyebrows and there was a little mole, like an errant crumb, on her upper lip. Plus the scabby ears, which she kept picking at with her fingernail. There was something about her face — its unreadable smirk — that made him unhappy.

“Is there, like, an unperverted reason you keep staring at me?”

“What’s that in your hair?” he asked. “Peroxide?”

She turned her face away quickly. “It’s a witch’s forelock.”

“What?”

“I thought Kira only dated smart guys.” She kept her face turned. “Like a birthmark. They used to burn people at the stake if they had it.”

“Does your family know you’re here?” he asked.

“Right. Ha-ha. They packed me a lunch.”

Dustin frowned. “Just so they don’t think I have anything to do with it.”

“I won’t tell a peep. A person. Don’t get your panties in a wad.” Taz tried to roll her window down, struggling with the lever. It came off in her hand. “Piece of shit,” she said, tossing the lever into the backseat.

“Hey!” Dustin said. “That’s a hundred-dollar part!”

“And it doesn’t work? I’d say you got majorly ripped off.” Her eyes surveyed the front seat before settling on the steering wheel in Dustin’s hand. It was his favorite part of the car, wine-colored and big as a yacht’s. “Do you have some of those, like, fuzzy dice?”

“No.”

“I thought only people with fuzzy dice drove cars like this.”

At the 7-Eleven, Taz insisted on coming inside to pick out her cigarettes. Kira was right: she was a major pain in the ass. Who did she think she was? Girls loved the Dart; just last weekend someone on Hollywood Boulevard, a chick with a mohawk, had asked him for a ride. The 7-Eleven was as bright as a toothpaste commercial. Sweating on their little Ferris wheel, the hot dogs looked sad and immortal, as if consigned to hot dog hell. Dustin found himself wishing he had never left the house. He glanced at the mirror above the beer section and saw a friendly-looking surfer kid in a ridiculous belt buckle. His face flushed with shame. A guy wearing one of those travel vests with all the pockets on them came over and stood beside Taz.

“To beer or not to beer,” the man said, “ that is the question.”

Taz looked at him. “Did you really just say that?”

“What?”

“‘To beer or not to beer, that is the question’?”

“I’m trying to decide.” The man winked at them, checking his watch. “It’s getting late.”

“Congratulations,” Taz said, shaking his hand. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Dustin bought the beer with his fake ID, annoyed at his envy. He wished he had the balls to tell someone they were stupid. They headed back to the party, cruising down Western with its grubby-looking mini-malls, all of them the same Pepto-Bismol pink. He’d have to remember to put that in a song. “Pepto Abysmal,” he’d call it.

“Kira said you got kicked out of boarding school.”

Taz scowled, lighting one of the cigarettes he’d bought her. “Kira doesn’t know anything.”

“Actually, she’s very smart. She’s worried about you like your parents are.”

“ Actually, they couldn’t give two shits.”

Dustin shrugged. What did he care? “If that’s true, then you must be a real fuckup.”

“Or maybe they’re just, like, total hypocrites.” She yanked up a sock. “Everyone knows Kira smokes dope. She’s going out with you, for crap’s sake. She smokes out, screws to her heart’s content, but of course they treat her like some virgin-ass Teen for Christ.”

“Well, they’re half-right,” Dustin mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He felt his cheeks go warm again.

Taz laughed. “Kira’s a virgin ?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Hey. I never said that.”

“Holy crap,” Taz said, grinning. “She must be, like, the only one in her class.”

This wasn’t true, of course. How could it be? And yet he had a vision of the rest of the incoming seniors at PV High, doing it all over campus while he groped and fondled under the maddening threat of the Grip. Dustin began to drive recklessly for no reason, whipping between lanes and braking suddenly at a red light. They rocked forward in their seats, the beer clinking at Taz’s feet. “Whoa,” Taz said. The light changed and Dustin veered onto a side street, fast enough that the tires squealed. “Big man,” Taz said, raising her hands in mock fright. Dustin felt ridiculous but couldn’t stop himself. He flew down the narrow street doing sixty; a man stepped off the sidewalk into a strip of hydrangeas, shaking his fist like someone in a movie. “ Very impressive,” Taz said as they screeched up to the party.

He couldn’t look at her. His face burned. When he finally did glance at her, gripped by loathing, he was surprised to see that she was no longer smirking. Or rather, she was still smirking at him but it was as unpersuasive as a mask, her eyes large and childlike. He’d actually frightened her.

Inside, there was something going on. A group of people were huddled in the living room, cheering at the floor. Dustin nudged into the circle to see the attraction. The lobster was backed against the wall, reared up with its claws raised like boxing gloves, cornered by a hissing gray cat standing a few feet away. The cat was arched into an omega, as though being sucked helplessly to the ceiling.

“Get some Raid,” the guy next to him said.

Dustin went into the kitchen to put the beer in the fridge. He did not like this party quite so much anymore. Biesty was hanging out by the poster of “Afrosexual Positions,” writing something on the wall; Dustin looked closer and recognized the lyrics to “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”