Yeah?
Theres a table made out of wood? And theres, like, this vase, and its red glass, and its got flowers and wait a minute.
What?
Your heart sounds weird.
Sure you can. Chicks can always see the future, its what they do. Guys dont, so much, except those weathermen, you know meteorologists. Forecasters. So whattya see?
I cant see anything, I repeated.
Dont be lame. Close your eyes. I did. Okay. Whattya see?
I put my head on his chest. Well, maybe in that foyer we were talkin about? With the, what do you call it? umbrella stand? I was speaking real slow. Groping love-talk.
Yeah?
Theres a table made out of wood? And theres, like, this vase, and its red glass, and its got flowers and wait a minute.
What?
Your heart sounds weird.
Oh, yeah, that.
I had my ear to his chest, where usually with humans you hear chunka-thoom, chunka-thoom, chunka-thoom. But! Oscar had this other sound, chunka-jazz-thoom, chunka-jazz-thoom, chunka-jazz-thoom.
Ive got this heart thing, Oscar said. Valves and shit. Like a murmur. He shrugged. His dick went down from where it was, but he was working up the confidence look and the greaser sneer on his face, like whats-his-name, the movie star. Even in bed he was working hard on his attitude. Its nothin, he said.
Fuck and alas, Oscar! Its something. You should, like, have it looked at?
They did already. And they said, Forget it, hell live. So tell me about this vase, Chloé, that you mentioned.
But now, I sort of didnt want to do it, I didnt want to imagine the future. The righteousness had gone out of that, too. But I thought maybe I should, a favor to Oscar. Theres flowers, you know, people have flowers in vases.
What kind?
He had his hands now in my hair, which was tricky, cause my hairs so short. I dont know. It was hard for me to imagine the fucking flowers in the damn vase while Oscars heart was murmuring and death was taking a close look at him. Roses, I said. I took a big breath, to imagine them. Red roses, with petals? Like they have them.
Okay. Weve done this. Whats upstairs?
Oscar, Im sort of tired of this. I shined a big fakey smile at him, then dropped the idea.
Come on, Chloé, whats upstairs?
I shut my eyes. I was working at it. I was imagining. Imagining is hard work for me, at times.
Well? he asked.
Im still goin up the stairs.
Okay. He waited. You up there, yet?
Yeah. Just about. I got my hand on the banister.
So whats up there?
I had this problem then. Because what I was seeing was, all the kids Oscar and I would have. Like three kids in their kid clothes, OshKosh overalls with spit-up on the bibs, and theyre yelling and jumping up and down and breaking shit and having fun, like a kid party. And maybe a baby in a crib or something.
Well? he asked.
Big bedrooms, Oscar. The thickest carpeting you ever saw.
Right. I can see it. Its, like, gotta be white.
Yeah. Its the second floor. White carpeting in the hallways. Thing is, Oscar, Ive never been in a house with a second floor. So its hard for me to know.
I have, he said. They got bedrooms up there.
Okay. He closed my eyes with his fingers. He did it real softly. Okay. I guess Im, like, supposed to imagine the rest of it, I said.
Whats in the bedrooms, Chloé?
We are.
And what else?
I took a deep breath, from way down in, what do they call it? the diaphragm. By which I mean my heart. Because I have one, too. Kids, Oscar. Theres kids everywhere. Theyre our kids. Weve got, like, three? I cant count them all.
His dick started standing up again. I was hopin youd say that.
Bullshit. You were? Really?
Yeah. On account of I am the person who is not scared, like I said. Fearless. So that would also include kids, right? I like kids, man. Gettin into trouble and shit. I was a kid. Absolutely.
Absolutely! I said, so happy my toes were tingling, little battery-operated things zapping them. So
Yeah?
I was thinking of his heart. So I have this idea.
Whats that?
I brought it with me, I said.
So what I did then was, I got out of bed, naked, and I walked over to my backpack, and I was about to get the thing I wanted to show him out of there, but I had to clean myself up, I was dripping, so I said, like the Princess of Wales: Excuse me, Ill be right back.
I went out into the hall, I guess youd call it. Oscars bedroom is on one side, and his father, the Bat, well, the Bats bedroom is on the other side, and thats it, in this little ranch house. Oscars older brother, hed moved out, and theres no mother because shes dead and everything. It was about four in the afternoon. I was going to the bathroom to clean the remnants of Oscar off of myself. And I did. But when I was returning to Oscars bedroom, I thought I saw something way down out there on the corner of my eye. It was Oscars dad, the Bat, in the kitchen, sitting at the table, peeling some kind of awful fruit, and I sort of thought he got a measuring look at me, without my clothes on. Maybe I was imagining it. That can happen.
I think your dads home, I said, standing there. My hand stayed on the doorknob.
Fuck him, Oscar said.
No, I think hes really home. I waited. Hes peeling food, I said, to prove it.
So whatre you going to show me?
I took the videocam out of my backpack. This, I said. I hoisted it on my bare shoulder and aimed it down at him.
Whered you get that, Chloé?
I sort of stole it. The people who own it, they wont miss it. I meant my parents, who I knew pretty well.
And whats your plan?
I put the camera down on the floor and got back into bed with him, my forearm on his chest. Well, this girl told me how, you make a tape, you know, us in bed, you sort of invent a name for yourself and a story and then, I mean, we, well, what we do is, we just make a tape of ourselves doing it, like what we usually do, maybe some additions, fancy stuff, costumes that we take off for the camera, and theres an address these sex industry magazines have where you send the tape, or, well, you send them a sampler first, then the tape, and they send you huge bucks. This girl I know, Janey, shell do it all for us. She wants to break into the video industry.
Oscar didnt look that happy about it. You could see he was kind of divided. Cause after all we had just been talking about a house, and, like, vases and stairs. And so much money that you werent afraid of anything in the world. Its hard to make big bucks at Dr. Enchiladas or Jitters. But he was the one who said our sex lives were so good we ought to be able to make some money out of it, but clueless as to how, leaving it to me. He was the one who said we were magnificent, or some word like that. I told him I knew he was smart and could think of a story we could act out. It would be harmless.
But. I also had a little disgusting feeling, even as I was saying what I was saying. I mean, Oscars got a nice body and, me, Ive got a nice body, but I could see these old men looking at our tape and drooling. Excuse me, thats not always the road to vases and flowers and kids upstairs. Thats radically poor karma, guys drooling. Also, as a rule, guys who drool dont shave. Gargoyles! But I thought, hey, a few times, why not, hey, nothing ventured? And we dont have to see the guys. Well be safely inside the television screen.
Anyway, this friend I had, this video person named Janey, would help us make it look cool. And tasteful. She was the one who gave me the idea in the first place. She said she knew what to do with it, to sell it. She had taken film and video classes at the community college. She knew lighting and how to focus.
This is where, out of the blue, Oscar said, Chloé, its weird, but I love you. He waited. I never said that before.
And I said, Oscar, I love you, you are everything.
You think we can make some money out of this?
Maybe. Then I said my nothing-ventured thing and how we were so minimum-wage and actually desperate right now.
Its way creepy, he said. But its okay. I guess. Cause of the money.
Right.
And its not like work, either.
No, its not like that.
Chloé, tell me somethin about when you were a girl.
Why?
I want to hear it. I just want to see you from then. He looked right in my eyes. He wasnt zoned. So I, like, got up and sort of straddled him.
Okay, I said. When me and my sister, we rode in the car? long trips? We sat in the backseat. And time goes slower in the backseat than the front seat because the front seat gets everywhere first, in case you havent noticed. Just zombie slow. So what my sister Rhonda and me did was, we took Kleenex tissues, just plain Kleenex, from our mother, who had zillions of them in her purse, and wed take them, and this was a contest. We invented this. I had my hands on his shoulders, pinning the boy down. Id open my back window, just partway, and put the Kleenex, just, sort of, the edge of it, into that groove that the window makes, and then Id, like, close the window? Rhonda did that with her Kleenex on her side. So there was mostly Kleenex tissues flapping outside, but held in place, and the cars speeding along, with these white Kleenex ears on both sides of it. And Rhonda and me, wed watch our respective Kleenexes, out there, as the landscapes flew by, cows and farmland and cities and landfills, and the one whose Kleenex lasted the longest, didnt get torn up by the wind, she was the one who won the contest. I know it sounds dumb. But I you know I kinda enjoyed this. It kinda passed the time. I waited. Well, you wanted a story.
That was when I heard footsteps outside our door. I was sure I heard them.
Oscar, I said. Oscar, I think your dads outside. I think hes listening.
Oscar looked toward the door. Dad? he said. You there?
I heard a floorboard creak. The Bat was standing, just standing out there, giving off ghoul-auras. Jesus. My philosophy is, if somebodys standing outside your bedroom door, not saying anything, theyre not going to be good for you. They are going to be the devils hatchlings.
Dad? Oscar sat up in bed. He lowered his feet to the floor and stood up. He reached down under the bed. He got a knife from the box he had under there. The blade was very shiny and pointed. I didnt like Oscar being naked, though, under those circumstances. A mans gotta have clothes on to be in a fight. Shorts, anyway, like in boxing. Just my opinion. Oscar couldve probably taken him, though, hes so buff.