King Dork

Tucci, but I figured it was worth a shot.

I brought it up with a great deal of subtlety, mentioning that Sam Hellerman’s parents had given him a bass as an early Christmas present and that it had been very easy to order it from the Guitarville catalog. I let my voice trail off.

Her answer amounted to a no, which didn’t surprise me.

But for the life of me I really, really couldn’t fill in the so.

“Baby, don’t even talk to me about Christmas right now,”

she said. “More people commit suicide on Christmas than on any other day of the year. So . . .”

TH E E NTI R E CONTE NTS OF MY RO OM

“Hey, chief,” said Little Big Tom. “We’d like a word with you.

If you’ve got a minute.”

It was the Thursday evening of the first post-Fiona week.

I followed Little Big Tom into the kitchen, puzzled and a bit apprehensive. He only called me chief when it was serious or when he was nervous about something. He had this grim expression, like he wasn’t even trying to look cheerful the way he usually does. I figured they must have found out that I went to the party in Clearview instead of Sam Hellerman’s house on Friday night, but boy was I wrong. Well, I mean, I guess they had found out about the party, indirectly, but that wasn’t the main issue.

My mom had on her Picasso Guernica- print shorts, cowboy boots, a red and white checked halter, and a polka-dot 97

scarf worn like a headband, and was leaning against the counter smoking one of her Virginia Slimses. You’ve come a long way, baby, I thought. It was shocking to think how much she wasn’t even kidding.

Little Big Tom started to caress his Little Gray Mustache at the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, as though he were trying to stretch it out to get that extra droop that used to drive the ladies crazy in Vermont in the seventies.

There was an uncomfortable pause while we all looked at the kitchen table. A whole lot of my stuff was spread out, neatly arranged in little piles. Some books. Some records and CDs. Some random martial arts materials. My Talons of Rage fantasy blades that I got from Ninja Warehouse, which had been used as a D and D prop long ago and were now purely decorative. Some of my old role-playing military strategy games, and some board games, including Risk and Stratego.

Some of my dad’s stuff: videos of Clint Eastwood movies and war movies. Tora! Tora! Tora! The Enforcer. Patton. The bowie knife he gave me for Christmas the year before he died. My army coat. Jane’s Military Small Arms of the 20th Century and the Tanks and Combat Vehicles Recognition Guide.

A couple of my notebooks. (Uh-oh.) My “Kill ’em All and Let God Sort ’em Out” T-shirt. And a big stack of my weapons-and-tactics magazines, fanned out like cards on a blackjack table.

“What is this shit?” said Little Big Tom, eventually.

“The entire contents of my room?” I said.

Well, it wasn’t quite everything, but that was essentially the correct answer. See, in real life parents raid their children’s rooms and confiscate the porno magazines and drugs; in the back-assward world of Partner and Mrs. Progressive at 98

507 Cedarview Circle, they leave the porn alone and confiscate everything else.

There was another bumpy stretch of awkwardness, during which all you could hear was the rhythm of my mom’s sucked-and-blown Virginia Slims 120s. Short, hissing intake.

Pause. Long, exasperated release. It sounded like a factory in a cartoon, or in an educational film on how they make steel tools. Ordinarily, it can be very soothing.

“Why,” Little Big Tom finally said, “do you feel the need to read this garbage?”

Why, I thought, do you feel the need to try to impersonate Jimmy Buffett and wear shorts and sandals with black socks and eat tofu loaf on Thanksgiving? Some questions have no answers.

“I don’t know what to say. Your mother and I hoped to set an example so you would respect and share our values.”

Now that was funny. I just looked at him. The look that says: “what are you, high?”

Then he said something that totally threw me.

“It’s very important to have respect for women.”

I stared at him.

Well, now I’m going to skip ahead to the part where I ended up figuring out what the hell Little Big Tom was getting at.

It was hard to piece together because very little of what he was saying made much sense, but here’s my best guess as to what had happened. Little Big Tom, making his rounds, had overheard the conversation about the Fiona Deal and had found it disturbing. He hadn’t liked the way Sam Hellerman had referred to Fiona (I hadn’t, either, though I doubt we had exactly the same reasons). I don’t know how 99

much of the rest of the conversation he heard, but if he missed anything, he could have read all about it in my notebook. I’m ashamed to say that one of my notebooks contained, among other embarrassing items, some tortured “letters to Fiona”

I had scribbled out during a stretch of maudlin, sleepless nights. And I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled about the lyrics