American Morons Read online

  American Morons

  Glen Hirshberg

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  Contents

  American Morons

  Like a Lily in a Flood

  Flowers on Their Bridles, Hooves in the Air

  Safety Clowns

  Devil’s Smile

  Transitway

  The Muldoon

  Story Notes

  About the Author

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  For John, who somehow figured out that

  almost all of it is funny, and then taught me that.

  * * *

  And for Kim, and Sid, and Kate,

  with shipwrecks and merry-go-rounds and ice-cream trucks

  and my grandfather, whom I wish you’d known.

  American Morons

  “Omnibus umbra locis adero: dabis, improbe, poenas.”

  * * *

  (“My angry ghost, arising from the deep

  Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep.”)

  Virgil

  In the end, the car made it more than a mile after leaving the gas station, all the way to the tollgate that marked the outskirts of Rome. Ignoring the horns behind them and the ominous, hacking rattle of the engine, the two Americans dug together through the coins they’d dumped in the dashboard ashtray. Twice, Kellen felt Jamie’s sweat-streaked fingers brush his. The horn blasts got more insistent, and Jamie laughed, so Kellen did, too.

  When they’d finally assembled the correct change, he threw the coins into the bin, where they clattered to the bottom except for one ten-cent piece that seemed to stick in the mesh. Ruefully, Kellen imagined turning, trying to motion everyone behind him back so he could reverse far enough out of the toll island to open his door and climb out. Then the coin dropped and disappeared into the bottom of the basket.

  Green light flashed. The gate rose. Kellen punched the accelerator and felt it plunge straight down. There was not even a rattle, now.

  “Uh, Kel?” Jamie said.

  As though they’d heard her, or could see his foot on the dead pedal, every car in the queue let loose with an all-out sonic barrage. Then—since this was Italy, where blasting horns at fellow drivers was like showering rice on newlyweds—most of the cars in the queues to either side joined in.

  Expressionlessly, Kellen turned in his seat, his skin unsticking from the rental’s cracked, roasted vinyl with a pop. The setting sun blazed through the windshield into his eyes. “At least,” he said, “it’s not like you warned me the car might only take diesel.”

  “Yes I—” Jamie started, caught the irony, and stopped. She’d been in the midst of retying her maple syrup hair on the back of her neck. Kellen found himself watching her tank top spaghetti strap slide in the slickness on her shoulder as she spoke again. “At least it doesn’t say the word DIESEL in big green letters on the gas cap.”

  He looked up, blinking. “Does it really?”

  “Saw it lying on the trunk while that attendant dude was trying whatever he was trying to fix it. What’d he pour in there, anyway?”

  Goddamnit, Kellen snarled inside his own head for perhaps the thousandth time in the past week. Jamie and he had been a couple all the way through high school. Three years into their separate college lives, he still considered them one. She said she did, too. And she wasn’t lying, exactly. But he’d felt the change all summer long. He’d thought this trip might save them.

  A particularly vicious horn blast from the car behind almost dislodged his gaze. Almost. “At least diesel isn’t the same word in Italian as it is in English,” he said, and Jamie burst out laughing.

  “Time to meet more friendly Romans.”

  Too late, Kellen started issuing his by now familiar warning, cobbled from their parents’ pre-trip admonishments about European attitudes toward Americans at the moment, plus the words that had swirled around them all week, blaring from radios, the front pages of newspapers they couldn’t read, TV sets in the lobbies of youth hostels they’d stayed in just for the adventure, since their respective parents had supplied plenty of hotel money. Cadavere. Sesto Americano. George Bush. Pavone. Not that Jamie would have listened, anyway. He watched her prop her door open and stick out one tanned, denim-skirted leg.

  Instantly, the horns shut off. Doors in every direction popped like champagne corks, and within seconds, half-a-dozen Italian men of wildly variant ages and decisions about chest hair display fizzed around the Americans’ car.

  “Stuck,” Jamie said through her rolled down window. “Um. Kaput.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not Ital—” Kellen started, but before he could finish, his door was ripped open. Startled, he twisted in his seat. The man pouring himself into the car wore no shirt whatsoever, and was already gripping the wheel. The rest of the men fanned into formation, and then the car was half-floating, half-rolling through the tollgate into traffic that made no move to slow, but honked gleefully as it funneled around them. Seconds later, they glided to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

  Jamie leaned back in her seat, folding her arms and making a great show of sighing like a queen in a palanquin. Whether her grin was for him or the guy who’d grabbed the steering wheel, Kellen had no idea. The guy hadn’t let go, and Kellen remained pinned in place.

  What was it about Italian men that made him want to sprout horns and butt something? “I say again,” he murmured to Jamie. “Kaput?”

  “It’s one of those universal words, ol’ pal. Like ‘diesel.’” Then she was lifted out of the car.

  Even Jamie seemed taken aback, and made a sort of chirping sound as the throng enveloped her. “Bella,” Kellen heard one guy coo, and something that sounded like “Assistere,” and some tongue-clucking that could have been regret over the car or wolfish slavering over Jamie or neither. Kellen didn’t like that he could no longer see her, and he didn’t like the forearm stretched across his chest.

  Abruptly, it lifted, and he wriggled out fast and stood. The man before him looked maybe forty, with black and gray curly hair, a muscular chest, and Euro-sandals with those straps that pulled the big toes too far from their companions. He said nothing to Kellen, and instead watched Jamie slide sunglasses over her eyes, whirling amid her circle of admirers with her skirt lifting above her knee every time she turned. Back home, Jamie was borderline pretty—slim, athletic, a little horse-faced—at least until she laughed. But in Italy, judging from the response of the entire male population during their week in Rome and Tuscany, she was a Goddess. Or else all women were.

  Ol’ pal. That’s what he was, now.

  Almost seven o’clock, and still the blazing summer heat poured down. Two more miles, Kellen thought, and he and Jamie could at least have stood in one of Rome’s freezing Fountains while they waited for the tow truck. Jamie would have left her loafers on the pavement, her feet bare.

  “It’s okay, thanks guys,” he said abruptly, and started around the car. Digging into his shorts pocket for his cell phone, he waved it at the group like a wand that might make them disappear. “Grazie.” His accent sounded pathetic, even to him.

  Not a single Italian turned. One of them, he noticed, had his hand low on Jamie’s back, and another had stepped in close alongside, and Kellen stopped feeling like butting anything and got nervous. And more sad.

  “All set, guys. Thanks a lot.” His hand was in his pocket again, lifting out his wallet and opening it to withdraw a fistful of five-Euro notes. Jamie glanced at him, and her mouth turned down hard as her eyes narrowed. The guy with the sandals made that clucking sound again and stepped up right behind Kellen.

  For a second, Kellen went on waving the money, knowing he shouldn’t, not sure why he felt like such an asshole. Only after he stopped moving did he real
ize no one but Jamie was looking at him.

  In fact, no one was anywhere near them anymore. All together, the men who’d encircled Jamie and the sandal guy were retreating toward the tollgate. Catching Kellen’s glance, sandal guy lifted one long, hairy arm. Was that a wave?

  Then they were alone. Just he, Jamie, the cars revving past each other as they reentered the laneless superstrade, and the other car, parked maybe fifty feet ahead of them. Yellow, encased in grit, distinctly European-box. The windows were so grimy that Kellen couldn’t tell whether anyone was in there. But someone had to be, because the single sharp honk that had apparently scattered their rescuers had come from there.

  “What was that bullshit with the money?” Jamie snapped. “They’re not waiters. They were help—”

  The scream silenced her. Audible even above the traffic, it soared over the retaining wall beyond the shoulder and seemed to unfurl in the air before dissipating. In the first instant, Kellen mistook it for a siren.

  Glancing at Jamie, then the retaining wall, then the sun squatting on the horizon, he stepped closer. He felt panicky, for all sorts of reasons. He also didn’t want this trip to end, ever. “Got another one of those universal words for you, James. Been in the papers all week. Ready? Cadaver.”

  “Cadavere,” Jamie said, her head twisted around toward the origin of the scream.

  “Right.”

  Together, they collapsed into leaning positions against their rented two-seater. It had been filthy when they got it—cleanliness apparently not the business necessity here that it was back home—and now sported a crust as thick as Tuscan bread.

  “Well, you got that thing out.” She was gesturing at the cell phone in his hands, and still sounded pissed. “Might as well use it….”

  Kellen held it up, feeling profoundly stupid. “Forgot to charge.”

  Instantly, Jamie was smiling again, bending forward to kiss him on the forehead, which was where she always kissed him these days.

  “Sorry about the money thing,” Kellen said, clinging to her smile. “I didn’t mean anything bad, I was just…”

  “Establishing dominance. Very George Bush.”

  “Dominance? I was about as dominant as…I was being nice. I was showing appreciation. Sincere appreciation. If not for those guys, we’d still be—”

  The passenger door of the yellow car swung open, and Kellen stopped talking.

  His first thought, as the guy unfolded onto the gravel, was that he shouldn’t have been able to fit in there. This was easily the tallest Italian Kellen had seen all week. And the thinnest, and lightest-skinned. The hair on his head shone lustrous and long and black. For a few seconds, he stood swaying with his back to them, like some roadside reed that had sprung up from nowhere. Then he turned.

  Just a boy, really. Silvery blue eyes that sparkled even from fifteen feet away, and long-fingered hands that spread over his bare, spindly legs like stick-bugs clinging to a branch. The driver’s side door opened, and a second figure tumbled out.

  This one was a virtual opposite of his companion, short and stumpy, with curly, dirty hair that bounced on the shoulders of his striped red rugby shirt. He wore red laceless canvas shoes. Black stubble stuck out of his cheeks like porcupine quills and all but obscured his goofy, ear-to-ear smile. He stopped one step behind the reedy kid. All Kellen could think of was prince and troll.

  “Ciao,” said the troll, his smile somehow broadening as he bounded forward. Unlike everyone else they’d met here, he looked at Kellen at least as much Jamie. “Ciao.” He ran both hands over the hood of the rental car, then seemed to hold his breath, as though checking for a heartbeat.

  “Parla Inglese?” Jamie tried.

  “Americano?”

  “Ye—” Kellen started, and Jamie overrode him.

  “Canadian.”

  “Si. Americano.” Bouncing up and down on his heels, the troll grinned his prickly grin. “George Bush. Bang bang.”

  “John Kerry,” Jamie said, rummaging in her purse and pulling out one of the campaign buttons her mother had demanded she keep there, as though it were mace. She waved it at the troll, who merely raised his bushy eyebrows and stared a question at them.

  “What?” Kellen said. “Non parlo L’Italiano.”

  “He didn’t say anything, idiot,” Jamie said, then gasped and stumbled forward.

  Whirling, Kellen found the reedy boy directly behind them, staring down. He really was tall. And his eyes were deep-water blue. Nothing frightening about him, Kellen thought, wondering why his heart was juddering like that.

  “Mi dispiace.” This one’s voice rang, sonorous and way too big for its frame, like a bell-peal. From over the retaining wall, another one of those screams bloomed in the air, followed by a second and third in rapid succession.

  “Howler monkeys?” Kellen said softly to Jamie. “What the hell is that?”

  But Jamie was casting her eyes back and forth between the two Italians. The troll pointed at the hood of their car, then raised his hands again.

  “Oh,” Jamie said. “The gas. My friend put in…”

  The troll cocked his head and smiled uncomprehendingly.

  Abruptly, Jamie started around to the gas tank and came back with the cap. She pointed it toward the troll. “See? Diesel.”

  “Diesel. Si.”

  “No diesel.” Forming her fingers into a sort of gun, Jamie mimed putting a pump into the tank. “Gas.”

  For one more moment, the troll just stood. Then his hands flew to his cheeks. “Ohhh. Gas. No diesel. Ohhh.” Still grinning, he drew one of his fingers slowly across his own throat. Then he let loose a stream of Italian.

  After a minute or so of that, Kellen held up his cell phone. “You have one?” He was trying to control his embarrassment. And his ridiculous unease.

  “Ohhh,” the troll said, glancing at his companion.

  Reedy boy’s smile was regal and slow. He said nothing at all.

  “Ohhh.” Now, the troll seemed to be dancing as he moved around the front of the car. Instinctively, Kellen stepped a half pace back toward the retaining wall, just to feel a little less like he and Jamie were being maneuvered in between these two. “In America, auto break, call. Someone come.” He snapped his fingers. “But a l’Italia…ohhh.” He smacked his palm to his forehead and made a Jerry Lewis grimace.

  The troll’s grunting laugh—unlike reedy boy’s voice—simply annoyed Kellen. “They’ll come. You have?” He waved the cell phone again.

  “Why are you talking like that?” Jamie snapped.

  “You have one? This one’s…” He waved the phone some more, looking helplessly at his girlfriend. Friend, she’d said. “Kaput.”

  “Ah!” said prickly guy. “Si. Si.” With another glance toward his companion, he raced back to the yellow car and stuck his head and hands inside the window. From the way his body worked, he was still yammering and gesturing as he rummaged around in there. Then he was back, waving a slim, black phone. He flipped open the faceplate, put it to his ears, then raised the other hand in the questioning gesture again.

  “I’ll do it,” Kellen said, reached out, and reedy boy seemed to lean forward. But he made no blocking movement as his companion handed over the phone.

  “Thanks. Grazie,” Kellen said, while Jamie beamed her brightest naïve, Kerry-loving smile at both Italians. Kellen’s father said all Kerry supporters smiled like that. Jamie was quite possibly the only Democrat Kellen’s father loved.

  He had his fingers on the keypad before he realized the problem. “Shit,” he barked.

  The troll grinned. “Ohhh.”

  “What?” Jamie asked, stepping nearer. “Just call someone. Call American Express.”

  “You know the number?”

  “I thought you did.”

  “It’s on speed dial on my phone. My dad programmed it in. I’ve never even looked at it.”

  “Get your card.”

  “They didn’t give me that card. They gave me the Visa.”r />
  “Mi scusi,” said the troll, stepping close as yet another of those long, shrieking cries erupted from behind the retaining wall. Reedy boy just looked briefly over his shoulder at the yellow car before returning his attention to Jamie and Kellen. Neither of the Italians seemed even to have heard the screams.

  Tapping his red-striped chest, the troll reached out and chattered more Italian. Kellen had no idea what he was saying, but handed him the phone. Nodding, the troll punched in numbers. For a good minute, he stood with the phone at his ear, grinning. Then he started speaking fast into the mouthpiece, turning away and walking off down the shoulder.

  “We’re pretty lucky these guys are here to help,” Jamie said against his ear.

  Kellen glanced at her. She had her arms tucked in tight to her chest, her bottom lip curled against her teeth. For the first time, he realized she might be even more on edge than he was. She’d seen the same stories he had, after all. Same photos. The couple left dangling upside down from a flagpole outside the Colosseum, tarred and feathered and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. The whole Tennessee family discovered laid out on a Coca-Cola blanket inside the ruins of a recently excavated two-thousand-year-old catacomb near the Forum, all of them naked, gutted from genitalia to xiphoid, stuffed with feathers. The couple on the flagpole had reminded Jamie of a paper she’d written on Ancient Rome, something about a festival where puppets got hung in trees. The puppets took the place of the little boys once sacrificed on whatever holiday that was.

  The troll had walked all the way back to his yellow car, now, and he was talking animatedly, waving his free arm around and sometimes holding the cell phone in front of his face and shouting into it. Reedy boy simply stood, still as a sentry, gazing placidly over Kellen and Jamie’s heads toward the tollgate.

  Overhead, the sun sank toward the retaining wall, and the air didn’t cool, exactly, but thinned. Despite the unending honks and tire squeals from the A1, Kellen found something almost soothing about the traffic. There was a cheerfulness to it that rendered it completely different from the American variety. The horns reminded him mostly of squawking birds.