Eric Puchner - Model Home

Naked, Warren parted the blinds and saw someone besides the pig, a shirtless man who was the spitting image of Jesus Christ, sitting in the gravel that bordered the neighbor’s lot. He had long blond hair and a beard and a luminous, underfed look. Warren thought maybe he was deranged. The man lay back in the gravel with his hands on his hips, holding his legs in the air and scissoring them back and forth.

Warren slipped into his clothes and roamed the trailer in search of Melody, who’d disappeared. He went outside, where pig and man were still lying on the ground.

“You must be Warren,” the man said, standing up. He offered Warren a gravelly hand and introduced himself as Melody’s little brother. His name was Kenny. “Melody told me about you.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“She and Pop went to buy an antenna. End of the free world, he can’t get his channel anymore. She told me to tell you she’d be back.” He looked at his dirty palms and then wiped them on his shorts. “Sorry, long drive. Got to keep my abs in shape. Do you want a beer?”

Dustin had the night shift at the video store; another hour or so and Warren wouldn’t have to face him. He followed Melody’s brother into the kitchen, wondering if a Jesus impersonator would dread returning to his own house so much he’d start an affair. Kenny handed him a Bud Light from the fridge and then chugged his own in what seemed like several gulps. Warren asked him how his trip was, remembering the video shoot in Salt Lake City.

“Those Momos are real slave drivers. Had me up on a cross for two hours. I mean, they wanted some Method acting up there. The bad part is your neck. They’re all like, ‘Your head isn’t sagging!’ Do you know what that does to your splenius muscle?” Kenny shook his head. “Kirk used to be Mormon, Melody’s husband, and even he thinks they’re greedy.”

“You mean ex-husband.”

He seemed embarrassed. “Well, I guess technically they’re still married. I don’t know about the terminology.”

Later, Warren helped Kenny put the new antenna on the roof, which meant crouching on the marshmallowy tar and handing him screws when he needed them. He felt uncharacteristically useful. Melody and her father watched from below, the antenna box discarded at their feet. She looked different in her sunglasses, younger and almost beautiful. The shard of skull dangling from her neck glimmered in the sun. Her dad squinted at the long-haired man fiddling with an antenna, his half-naked son, telling him how to install it. What an odd thing a family was, Warren thought. The permutations, like the patterns of a chess game, seemed endless.

The installation was harder than it looked. Kenny began to curse under his breath, his bare back glazed with sweat.

“Put it where it won’t get hit by lightning,” the old man said.

“Don’t give me any ideas,” Kenny muttered.

“That’s what happened to the old one. It got hit by lightning. It messed up the signal.”

“That’s not what happened,” Kenny said. “Lightning wouldn’t mess up the signal.”

“I don’t know,” Melody said thoughtfully. “Animals in Africa won’t attack another creature that’s been hit by a lightning strike.”

“Excellent point,” Kenny said.

A boy in jungle-print sneakers began to antagonize the miniature pig next door. Warren could see him from the roof. The boy had a slingshot and was zinging gravel through the fence at the pig, which squealed when it was hit and gimped around its pen. Kenny stood up on the roof and raised an arm theatrically over his head, as if he were giving the Sermon on the Mount.

“How many days will it take the devil’s minions to tear off your flesh?”

The boy stared up at him, startled. “Huh?”

“Wrong! You can’t measure it in days!”

The boy ran off, spraying gravel. Kenny knelt down again and finished with the antenna. Following him down the ladder again, Warren slipped off the last rung and turned his foot on the ground, his ankle flaring with pain. It swelled up immediately. Melody jogged into the trailer to get some ice, her necklace clinking against the buttons of her shirt. Warren wondered if it was true what she’d said about animals being struck by lightning. Perhaps it was the smell that warned other creatures away. How lonely you would be, tottering around the Serengeti, smelling like bad luck. But you’d be safe as well — an accidental blessing. He started to get up but Melody had already come back with a bag of ice, tender with concern, pressing it to his ankle to numb the pain.

Taz climbed out of the water in the moonlight, naked except for her high-tops. She’d taken her clothes off first before climbing over. Scaling the top of the fence, wet hair dangling in her face, she looked like a little girl. Dustin turned away, studying the rabbit enshrined in its tree. Its skeleton had been picked clean, a ghoulish Christmas ornament.

“What are we down to now?” Taz asked, catching her breath. Her wet hair, pasted to her head, made her seem even nakeder. This was the second time she’d visited since the day they’d found the rabbit; as before, she’d asked to go down to the dump, insisting on an “after-dinner swim.”

“Sixty-five,” he said. “You’ve got, like, forty more years to shave off.”

“I don’t feel any different. I hope it’s working.”

She plucked her bra from the Joshua tree and slipped it on, reaching behind her back with two hands to clip it together. There were two types of girls: those who waited to dry off before putting on their clothes, and those who didn’t. Dustin had forgotten which kind he preferred. He took a swig from his beer, unable to taste a thing over the smell of the dump.

“I watched a video at the store today,” he said. “ Faces of Death. ”

“What is it?”

“A bunch of people dying. Real ones. There’s this one part where some waiters bring out a screaming monkey to some people at a restaurant and stick it through a hole in the table, like from underneath so you can only see its head. Then the diners beat it to death with hammers and eat its brain right out of its skull.”

“Christ,” she said.

“It made me sick.”

“But you didn’t turn it off.”

Dustin shook his head. He took another swig of beer. The stars were getting fuzzy around the edges, fat as snowflakes.

“Are you going to work there, like, forever?” Taz said.

“Where?”

“At the video store.”

He bristled. “Why not?”

Taz shrugged. “It’s just that you were all set with college. UCLA.”

“That’s just what I need. To hang out with a bunch of assholes in Calvin and Hobbes T-shirts.”

“They’re not all like that.”

“I went to a party with Biesty, and everyone was doing beer bongs.”

“There are some cool people at UCLA.”

Dustin glared at her. “What the hell do you know about it?”

“I was there, remember? At the party.”

“You’re sixteen!” he said.

She scowled, wringing some toxic water from her hair. Her T-shirt was stuck to her back, a shoal of pink. “Must be hard, being so old and mature.”

He stood up angrily, searching through his backpack to see if there was any beer left. She didn’t know anything. Actually, growing older was a breeze; it was just a matter of getting in touch with your inner creep. When you were in high school, you had certain ideas about creepiness and the sorts of things you would never in a million years be caught doing. For example, getting drunk by yourself. Or watching Faces of Death all alone in a video store in the middle of the day. And then you were doing the thing, and you realized it was no big deal.