Adam Levin: Hot Pink

I hung up.

My mom coughed.

I said, “Eat a vitamin.” I took two zincs from the jar on the tray and lobbed one to her. She caught it in her lap by pushing her legs together. It was the opposite of what a woman does, according to the old lady in Huckleberry Finn who throws the apple in Huck’s lap to blow his fake-out. Maybe it was Tom Sawyer and a pear, or a matchbox. Either way, he was cross-dressed.

The other zinc I swallowed myself. For immunity. The pill trailed grit down my throat and I put my tongue under the faucet.

“What happened to cups?” my mom said. That’s how she accuses people. With questions.

I shut the tap. I said, “Did something happen to cups?”

“Baloney,” she said.

Then I got an inspiration. I asked her, “Can you make your voice low and slutty?”

“Like this?” she said, in a low, slutty voice.

“Will you leave a message on Niles’s machine?”

“No,” she said.

“Then I’m going away forever,” I said. “Picture all you got left is bingo and that fat-ass Doberman chewing dead things in the gangway. Plus I’ll give you a dollar if you do it,” I said. “You can smoke two cigarettes on that dollar. Or else I’ll murder you, violently.” I picked up the nearest thing. It was a mortar or a pestle. It was the empty part. I waved it in the air at her. “I’ll murder you with this .”

“Gimme a kiss!” she sang. That’s how she is. A pushover. All she wants is to share a performance. To riff with you. It’s one kind of person. Makes noise when there’s noise, and the more noise the better. The other kind’s a soloist, who only starts up when it’s quiet, then holds his turn like it’ll never come again. Cojo’s that kind. I don’t know who’s better to have around. Some noise gets wrecked by quiet and some quiet gets wrecked by noise. So sometimes you want a riffer and other times a soloist. I can’t decide which kind I am.

I dialed the number. For the message, I had my mother say, “You’re rated G for gypsy , baby.” Niles is very sensitive about getting called a gypsy. I don’t know what inspired me with the idea to have my mom say it to him in a low, slutty voice, but then I got a clearer idea.

I dialed the number again and got her to say the same thing in her regular voice. Then I called four more times, myself, and I said it in four different voices: I did a G, a homo, a Paki, and a dago. I’m good at those. I thought I was done, but I wasn’t. I did it once more in my own voice, so Niles would know it was me telling people he’s a gypsy.

My mom said, “You’re a real goof-off, Jack.”

Cojo came upstairs, panting. “Tina and Nancy,” he said.

I thought: Nancy, if only.

Cojo said, “They might have a car.”

It was a good idea. I called. They didn’t know for sure about a car but said come over and drink. I kissed my mom’s head and she handed me money to buy her a carton of ultralights. I dropped the money in her lap and pulled a jersey over my T. Cojo said it was too hot out for both. It was too hot out for naked, though, so it wouldn’t matter anyway. Except then I noticed Joe was also wearing a jersey and a T, and I didn’t want to look like a couple who planned it, which Joe didn’t want either, which is what he meant by too hot out, so I dumped the jersey for a Mexican wedding shirt and we split.

A couple blocks away from the Christamestas’, this full-grown man walking the other way on the other side of the street looked at us and nodded. It’s a small thing to do but it meant a lot. It meant we were feared. My lungs tickled at the sight of it. I got this tightness down the center of my body, like during a core-strength workout. Or trying to first-kiss someone and you can’t remember where to put your hands. Even thinking about it, I get this feeling. This stranger, nodding at you from all the way across the street.

It was late in the afternoon by then, and tropical hot, but overcast with small black clouds. And the wind — it was flapping the branches. Wing-shaped seedpods rattled over the pavement and the clouds blew across the sun so fast the sky was blinking. It opened my nose up. The street got narrow compared to me. The cars looked like Hot Wheels. And in my head, my first thing was that I felt sorry for this guy who nods. It’s like a salute, this kind of nod.

But then my second thing is: you better salute me, Clyde. And I get this picture of holding his ears while I slowly push his face into his brains with my forehead. I got massive neck muscles. I got this grill like a chimney and an ugly thing inside me to match it. I feel sorry for a person, it makes me want to hurt him. Cojo’s the same way as me, but crueler-looking. It’s mostly because of the way we’re built. We’re each around a buck-seventy, but I barrel in the trunk. Joe’s lean and even, like a long Bruce Lee. He comes to all kinds of points. And plus his eyes. They’re a pair of slits in shadow. I got comic-strip eyes, a couple black dimes. My eyes should be looking in opposite directions.

I ran my hands back over my skull. It’s a ritual from grade school, when we used to do battle royales at the pool with our friends. We got it from a cartoon I can’t remember, or a video game. You do a special gesture to flip your switch; for me it’s I run my hands back over my skull and, when I get to the bottom, I tap my thumb-knuckles, once, on the highest-up button of my spine. You flip your switch and you’ve got a code name. We were supposed to keep our code names secret, so no one could deplete their power by speaking them, but me and Cojo told each other. Cojo’s special gesture was wiping his mouth crosswise, from his elbow to the backs of his fingertips. Almost all the other special gestures had saliva in them. This one kid Winthrop would spit in his palms and fling it with karate chops. Voitek Moitek chewed grape gum, and he’d hock a sticky puddle in his elbow crooks, then flex and relax till the spit strung out between his forearms and biceps. Nick Rataczeck licked the middle of his shirt and moaned like a deaf person. I can’t remember the gestures of the rest of the battle royale guys. By high school, we stopped socializing with those guys, and after we dropped out we hardly ever saw them. I don’t know if they told each other their code names. They didn’t tell me.

Cojo’s was “War,” though. Mine was “Smith.” It’s embarrassing.

I coughed the tickle from my lungs and Joe stopped walking, performed his gesture, and was War.

He said to the guy, “What,” and the guy shuddered a little. The guy was swinging a net sack filled with grapefruits and I hated how it bounced against his knee. I hated that he had them. It made everything complicated. My thoughts were too far in the background to figure out why. Something about peeling them or slicing them in halves or eighths and what someone else might prefer to do. I always liked mine in halves. A little sugar. And that jagged spoon. It’s so specific.

The guy kept moving forward, like he didn’t know Joe was talking to him, but he was walking slower than before. It was just like the nod. The slowness meant the exact opposite of what it looked like it meant. I’m scared of something? I don’t look at it. I think: If I don’t see it, it won’t see me. Like how a little kid thinks. You smack its head while it’s hiding in a peek-a-boo and now it believes in God, not your hand. But everyone thinks like that sometimes. I’m scared my mom’s gonna die from smoking, the way her lungs whistle when she breathes fast, but if I don’t think about it, I think, cancer won’t think about her. It’s stupid. I know this. Still: me, everyone. Joe says “What” to a guy who’s scared of him, the guy pretends Joe’s not talking to him. The guy pretends so hard he slows down when what he wants is to get as far the hell away from us and as fast as he can.