Frank Portman - King Dork

But all I could find were things like “fux” and “yum,” and none of them were even in a straight line like they’re supposed to be. There was “mmmmm” running diagonally from the upper left to the lower right. All that stuff reminded me of Fiona somehow. But that was the only intelligible thing about it.

It didn’t take me too long, though, to realize that it was probably a code. Then it took about twenty minutes of staring at the note and thinking about the CEH library to develop what I thought was a pretty good theory about what sort of code it was, and how it might work. But several solid hours of scribbling yielded only gibberish. Either I was totally on the wrong track or I was missing something. I even swallowed a bit of my pride and phoned Sam Hellerman to see if he had any ideas. But there was no answer at Hellerman Manor.

I eventually had to admit defeat. I closed my notebook and settled into an uneasy, half-asleep night of fretting about Tit, the dead bastard, zombies, pod-hippies, Halloween, witchcraft, my dad, my mom, murder, Sam Hellerman, Mia Farrow, Little Big Tom, Amanda, Black Sabbath, Paul Krebs, Roman Polanski, Anton and Zena LaVey, Matt Lynch, Nostradamus, Mrs. Teneb, Superman, Dr. Dee, Elvish, Klingon, Brighton Rock, Fiona, and Jane Gallagher. It was exhausting. When I finally dropped off, I had a dream that I solved the code and that the revealed message suddenly made it clear how it all fit together perfectly as part of a single story that explained everything. But when I woke up, I couldn’t remember what it was.

Ordinarily, I’d have immediately run, not walked, to Sam Hellerman with Tit’s mysterious note. He hadn’t been too in-115

terested in my dad’s teen library when I’d told him about it.

He only liked science fiction and fantasy. Basically, if a book didn’t have a map of somewhere other than earth in it, he couldn’t see the use. He had a point, but then, he didn’t have a mysteriously deceased dad to investigate. I had tried to tell him how great Brighton Rock was, but he had just rolled his eyes.

Tit’s note would have been right up his alley, though, and I’m sure he would have been able to help. He’s a clever guy.

However, things were a bit strained between us because of the Fiona situation, and because of—well, something was going on with Sam Hellerman, something hidden from me. It wasn’t just that he was being a dick about Fiona and hanging out with hippies. He was also acting weird toward me in general, kind of distant and secretive.

Calling him had been my first impulse upon finding the note. But of course, he had been out. Later, when I asked him where he had been, he said, “Visiting my grandma,” which I didn’t believe for a minute.

A thought struck me.

“Hey,” I said. “If you ever happened to be somewhere like another party or something and you happened to see Fiona there, you’d—you’d tell me, right?”

He just looked at me like I was the most pathetic creature he had ever seen. Which was well within the realm of possibility, especially since Sam Hellerman didn’t get out much.

He was also evasive when I probed for the story behind the new Hellerman/drama hippie nexus.

The first thing he said was “I didn’t expect a sort of Spanish Inquisition.”

“Nobody,” I said blankly, “expects the Spanish Inquisition,” supplying the required response but continuing to stare 116

at him as though to say “there is a time for quoting Monty Python and a time for choosing another path.”

Then he said: “trust me, you don’t want to know.” Then, after watching me continue to stare at him for some time, he cleared his throat and claimed that, actually, he was considering going out for drama and trying out for The Music Man.

I allowed my expression to change from “your feeble attempt at false jocularity will never succeed in changing this subject” to “who exactly is this moron and why is his Sam Hellerman impression so laughable and unconvincing?” He finally said, lamely: “There is a thing called hanging. It’s not a big deal.” And he asked me what my problem was, though I don’t think he expected me to answer. He added that it

“probably won’t be for much longer anyway.” Which sounded pretty fucking weird to me, but he clammed up after that, and no amount of eye-rolling, sarcasm, or even long, steady, unblinking stares would induce him to say any more.

Look, I never said it was a “big deal.” Just that it was unusual. And the more he tried to make it sound usual, the more unusual it seemed. That’s all I was saying.

We were more or less civil to each other, and still spent a lot of time together working on the band (the Medieval Ages, me on guitar, Samber Waves of Grain on bass and bodywork, first album That Stupid Pope. ) And we were still alphabetical-order friends, and that’s forever. But there were now some topics that were more or less off-limits, and that made me feel self-conscious about bringing up other matters. Rock and roll was okay, but not too much else. Plus, for the first time since the Order of the Alphabet had brought us together back when we were little kids, I was on my own for lunch.

I have to admit, though, that apart from all that, I kind of wanted to keep Tit’s note to myself. Even though it was little 117

more than nonsense, the fact that only I knew about it made it the most intimate thing connecting me and my dad.

Similarly, and rather selfishly, I hadn’t told Amanda about the CEH library, even though I knew she would have been pretty interested in it. I had no clue what the coded message might be, but I had developed this absurd idea that if I did decode it, it would turn out to be a kind of message to me. I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone else to know what that message was. I wasn’t even all that sure I wanted to know it myself.

While it remained unsolved, it retained boundless promise.

Solving it could only disappoint. On the other hand, you can’t just leave an unsolved code kicking around in your life.

LOU R E E D

It was in the midst of all the pod-hippie business that Sam Hellerman’s bass finally arrived. I had to admit, it was sweet. It almost looked like a copy of a Fender Jazz Bass, but it was made in Korea and the fine craftsmen in the Korean bass sweatshop had put their own collective individual stamp on it. And by that I mean the name on the oddly rectangular head stock was not

“Fender Jazz Bass” but rather “Apex Dominator 2.”

He didn’t have an amp yet, but we figured out how to plug it in to the back of the Magnavox stereo console in my living room so the sound would come out of the speakers.

It sounded kind of distant and rumbly and fuzzy, but sort of cool, too. Famous recording engineers and producers spend millions of dollars experimenting with effects and overloading preamps and poking holes in speakers with pencils and even pouring foreign substances over circuitry to achieve the sort of thing Sam Hellerman could accomplish just by being too cheap to buy an amp. We are geniuses.

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He looked cool with it, too. He had it slung so low around his neck that it hung well below his knees, and in order to reach the G string he kind of had to dislocate his right shoulder a little. He appeared to be in considerable pain. Like I said, way cool.

We had just finished working on the band’s signature tune, “Losers Like You,” which goes:

Catcher in the Rye is for losers

Losers, losers,

Catcher in the Rye is for losers

Losers like you

(The Sadly Mistaken, Moe Vittles on guitar, Sam

“Noxious” Fumes on bass and landscaping, band name spelled out in bullet holes on the side of a family station wagon, first album Kill the Boy Wonder. ) It sounded a lot better with bass instead of clarinet, I’ll tell you that right now.