Bed

Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues

That kind of gnawing offness that Greg always felt, that constant knowledge that he was doomed in small but myriad ways, intensified in the presence of people, became immediate and insufferable, like a rat in the stomach. So after his parents sold the house and retired to California, Greg moved alone into an apartment behind a rundown 24-hour supermarket. There he drank coffee, and watched The History Channel. His meals became larger and less often, like a crocodile’s. He’d eat an entire package of bacon or a box of frosty muffins, sleep for 20 hours, and then masturbate, languishingly, to all his crushes from middle and high school. He became nocturnal and strange, taking on all the impatience and bipolarity of a young child, without any of the charm or smooth complexion. Sometimes he’d catch himself speaking, in his head, to objects — a thing of food, a box of Kleenex, a door — hesitate, but then continue, keep on going with what he needed to say, finish it off, out loud, because what did it matter, either way?

But then his parents changed. A year of California had changed them. They stopped sending money. Greg was forced to go out into the world, to interact with real people. And he was glad of this. He had always wanted to be a normal person. To be at ease in society. He had just been too scared to try. But now he was forced to, and so he did — he went and got a job at the public library. He was not quite a librarian, but close. Greg was a shelver. There would be carts of books to shelve, then there would be no more carts of books to shelve, then there would be carts of books to shelve.

As a shelver, Greg felt that life was passing him by in a slow and distant, but massive, way — like the moon. Whereas before, reclused in his apartment, Greg felt as if on the moon, negotiating all its post-apocalyptic, spaceman barrenness and sometimes eyeing the Earth out there — that gaudy ornament in space — at first with envy, but then with a latent, inaccurate sort of hatred.

It was probably best not to think about your life, though — ever — Greg knew, but to just assume that it was there, and happening, to trust that it was out there, doing whatever it was that a life would do. It was probably best, instead, to spend your time wiping the bathroom floor with wet toilet paper; filling the refrigerator with food, noting the day-to-day depletion of it; looking at stuff and going “Hmm” without thinking anything. Things like that. Things that were neutral and lucid and made profound sense as long as you kept them to yourself, in a secret box concealed from the rest of your brain — a box you then crawled into, like a hiding spot. An end-place.

Still, Greg would think about his life. All the time he would. He’d try to define it. It was a moon. But it was a life, too. It was a thing beyond the moon, if the moon was a hole in the sky. Or it was a cow, a fish. A dodo-bird. He was prone to crude, animal metaphors of life. He would see all of life — the entire askance crash of it, in the side yard, like a UFO — in an ant, a toad. He was prone to metaphors within metaphors. Two metaphors at once. Dashed, and simile’d. He would declare things, try things out: “Life is an ant — so small you just want to smoosh it, that you can’t help but smoosh it, that you leave the bathroom telling yourself you won’t smoosh it, but then go back, smoosh it.” Was this right? Did it make sense? He would say these things out loud, in another person’s voice, in the empty classroom of his head. Often, in a girl’s voice. It kept him company, and passed the time. But it also frightened him; these precarious beginnings of imaginary friends — was this … safe? It was iffy, Greg knew. Iffy at best. He was much too old for imaginary friends. He was 23. He should be in some army infantry unit somewhere — taking off his helmet, wiping his brow, putting his helmet back on. Or else in grad school, on a futon, patting a girlfriend’s head with one hand and marking up a textbook with the other. There were infinite other places where he should be instead of where he was right now. And this didn’t seem right — one over infinity; didn’t this equal zero? As it turned out — Greg Googled it — no, it didn’t. One in infinity only tended towards zero. But still, it didn’t make any sense. How could one trust the internet?

Greg signed his timesheet and went to the children’s books section. Rachel was sitting Indian style on the carpet. She was new here — another high schooler here for community service, which helped, supposedly, for college admissions.

Rachel looked up. “Hey Greg.”

“Hi, Rachel.” Greg had recently begun calling people by their names. It had always seemed strange to him — the sudden possession and clinical, Greg felt, intimacy of it — but now he had started doing it. His co-workers had begun talking. They would tilt their heads, peer into Greg’s face like a zoo animal, and then ask him why he was being anti-social. And so Greg had made the effort to speak more. He bought books on how to improve his social skills. One book said to address people by their names. It would be interpreted as friendly. And though his voice still sounded small and weepy to him, like gerbils let into a swamp, Greg felt good to be saying people’s names. To be making some kind of progress.

“What’s with hippos and kids?” Rachel said. “All these kid’s books involve hippos. Either hippos or grapes. What’s with that?”

“Where do hippos come from, anyway?” Greg said. “I mean, what are they related to? Elephants? It feels like they’re from outer space.” Greg could sometimes talk like this. Something inside of him would prop up, and in that quick and windowed moment, something flurried and alive would glide out, and play a little. Then it would fly right back in, though — dead now, and wooden — and knock against Greg’s insides, lodging there like a boomerang.

“Outer space?” Rachel smiled. “Dugongs?”

Greg liked Rachel. He would talk to her more. He would say something insightful and ahead of its time — something that should not have been said until 20, 30 years from now. Rachel would beam, then swoon a little. They’d get married. Open a little iced coffee place on the beach, right out of the sand, like a trapdoor. But now Greg’s face turned red, which would happen; whenever it wanted, Greg’s heart would move up into his face and linger there — hot, throbbing, and bored, like a ten year old.

Rachel watched this, then looked down. There were children’s books scattered around her, hard and plate-y, and she began to sort them. “They should do a children’s book on dugongs and manatees,” she said. “There would be prejudice between them. But in the end they would unite against the sharks.”

“Good luck with that,” Greg said. “Rachel.” It didn’t make any sense, and Greg didn’t know how he came to say it. But he had mumbled it, anyway, and so Rachel didn’t hear. She looked up and smiled. Greg tried to do something with his face — tried to smile back, look happy or something, confident and grown-up; like he wasn’t afraid of people — but it didn’t happen and he turned and moved driftily away, feeling dilute and sick, like watercolors, like a ghost with a cold.

On his lunch break, Greg walked out into the parking lot. He had planned to drive to Wendy’s for a Spicy Chicken Sandwich, but Rachel was out here with three friends, all of them leaned up against a truck.

“Greg,” Rachel called out. She waved him over.

Greg stumbled a bit, almost fell over. He had forgotten how to walk. Life was precarious like this. You could forget things. You could even float away, Greg knew, like a balloon. Or else topple like a tree, slow-motion and deadpan, teeth smashing into the blacktop. That could happen.

“Hi, Rachel,” Greg said. He tried to grin, but his face took on a grieved expression instead. He had no control over such things — his face, anything. Control was illusion. Control was kiddy glue, non-toxic and blue. Though the truth, really, if you wanted it, was that there was no glue, not even kiddy glue. That was a lie. There was nothing holding anything together. Your face could do things you didn’t want it to do, and you could say things you never wanted to say. And these sort-of accidents could covey out into the rest of your life, like pigeons, so that when you got there, to the rest of your life, you’d find only — pigeons. You wouldn’t know what to do. They’d be making those intrinsic pigeon noises, and you just would not know what to do. Eventually, though, you’d adapt — you’d take to emulating them, mockingly at first, but then earnestly, trying hard to get it right.

Rachel started introducing Greg to her friends. There were five now. Some had come out of the truck. They were talking, but Greg couldn’t comprehend anything. He was worrying that his nervousness was showing, trying to control this, worrying that he couldn’t.

“Come with us, Greg,” said one of them.

Greg felt a need to smile, so he did, but then stopped — it didn’t feel right. His face was saying things. It was saying, “I hate you. Go away. Shut up and go home. I hate me. Go home me.” It was out of control in a robot way, speaking with a kind of death knell, cheerleader-y rhythm, like something powered on AAA batteries. Something you fixed by hitting it.

“We’re going bowling,” Rachel said. “Tomorrow night. Come with us.”

Greg had an image of someone bowling a strike, then breakdancing — slow at first, but then faster, and then like crazy, breakdancing out of the bowling alley and into the parking lot. But was this how you went about getting a life? You went bowling, some other things happened, and then, finally, you were awarded a life? Greg had to try. “Okay,” he said. He nodded a few times. People were always talking about getting a life, as if there were a store and it was just a matter of going there, picking one out. It annoyed Greg. Though in his sleepier moments, he believed in this store, understood that it was in Europe somewhere, or else deep in Russia. One of those two places. He’d sometimes wake up sad because the store was so far away. Why did it have to be so far away?

“Greg, hey,” Rachel said. She did a little hop-step forward, touched Greg’s shoulder, sprung back, and giggled a bit. Greg looked down, aware of Rachel’s friends, that they were watching him, thinking strange and unknowable things. He scratched the back of his neck, kicked at a patch of pebbles, glanced back up at Rachel. She was smiling and had her eyebrows raised in such a patient and accommodating way that Greg felt, briefly, until he became aware of it, essential, unafraid, and at ease in the world — almost, he thought later, while shelving books, euphoric.

After work Greg stopped at Wendy’s. He did the drive-thru, sat in his car in the parking lot. He had the windows down and the air-conditioner on. The steering wheel was warm against his forearms. It felt good. He had a Spicy Chicken Sandwich. He also had a Dr. Pepper with ice in it. Everything was okay, Greg thought. Everything was fine. He squished some mayonnaise onto his sandwich. Forty or fifty years would pass and then it would be over; maybe something nice would happen in those fifty years, but if not, that was okay. Just sitting here in his car, eating, this was enough. Things weren’t that bad. The Spicy Chicken Sandwich tasted good, and it would always taste good. He would talk to Rachel every once in a while. Be friendly with her. That would be nice. With her 75 hours of community service, then, she would go off to college. New girls would come for their own community service. They too would go to college. They’d meet their boyfriends. Marry and live their lives.

Greg began to feel that things weren’t okay. A numbed sort of restlessness started in his chest, a lame and disfigured yearning, some mangled need to do something drastic, to get out of himself — to change; but how, and to what? Greg didn’t know. He finished his sandwich and drove home, the sun glaring blade-y and white through the windshield. He watched some TV, took extra-strength nighttime Tylenol cold, and lay on his bed. He tried to sleep, then began thinking about an uncle of his. Uncle Larry. At family gatherings, Uncle Larry would always stand to the side, at an oblique. Sometimes he’d say something and in saying it he’d start looking away, and by the time he was finished saying his little thing — an amusing observation, usually — he’d be looking almost vertically down at the ground. He would very rarely laugh, but when he did, his face would look so kind and meek and sentimental — all crinkled and papery — that Greg, watching, would get an overwhelming urge to go somewhere alone to cry. Usually, though, Uncle Larry’s expression would be one of bewildered disappointment — a kind of continual, half-hearted acceptance that things had gone wrong. It was a face that said, “Fuck the world,” but said it reluctantly, and tonelessly, and then apologized, said “Sorry,” but said all of this so shyly that no one heard, anyway, except for himself. A year ago, Uncle Larry went to the hospital with the flu, somehow fell into a coma, and, a few days later, died. Greg thought about this and wept, and went to sleep.

The next evening, Greg drove to the bowling alley and sat in his car. He was thinking about how to stop himself from worrying when he thought suddenly and lucidly that if he were seven years old he would now — proportionately, or whatever — be hanging out with one-year-olds. A seven-year-old going bowling with babies!

Rachel knocked on his window and he put it down.

“Hey, new plans,” she said. “We’re going to roll this kid’s house. No more bowling. Want to come?”

Greg’s heart leapt a bit, left a balloonish impression in his throat. He had done some rolling in high school — unfurling toilet paper in people’s yards, in their trees and bushes. It was fun. Except once when his own house had been rolled, it was embarrassing. It was bad. He tried to clean it before his mother saw, but then she came outside and saw. She didn’t say anything; just went back inside. Then the neighbor came over, angry — some toilet paper had blown into his yard.

“Who’s going?” Greg said.

“Steve, Dan, Liz, everyone.” Rachel was smiling. She leaned her forearms on Greg’s door, moved half her head inside the car, and started messing around with the levers for the windshield wipers. She smelled good. Greg noticed that from up close her face was very pretty. It startled him a little. He leaned back into his seat and became conscious of his own head, the watermelon-y heave of it.

“So you want to go?” Rachel said. “You do. You drive and I’ll ride with you.” She pulled on a lever and water squirted out onto the windshield. Her head was now entirely in the car. Greg thought of grabbing it and kissing it, clutching it like a football and taking it home, sleeping nightly with the looted person of it, like some kind of illegal but straightforward substitute for companionship.

“Okay,” Greg said.

Rachel went around the front of the car and opened the passenger door, got in. “We’re meeting at Wal-Mart,” she said. “You know where Wal-Mart is?” She started turning knobs, pressing things. The glove compartment popped open and a map fell out.

At Wal-Mart, Rachel’s friends were standing around in the parking lot. They were tan, like surfers. They wore Abercrombie shirts and khaki shorts, ankle socks and shell necklaces. There seemed to be dozens of them.

“Come on,” Rachel said. She got out, opened Greg’s door. “Come. Greg. Let me introduce.”

“Wait,” Greg said. He realized again that he should not be doing this. “I have to do something … with my car.” Things would be said. Why didn’t Greg have friends his own age? Where were his peers? Why wasn’t he in college or something? Was he a pervert? If not, what was he? Greg rattled the keys in the ignition, as if there were something irregular and needy about his car that required this rattling — to appease the engine, maybe, which might otherwise refuse to work. He turned the ignition on. Then he turned it off. What was he doing? He had the somewhat comforting thought that he could go home now. Go home, eat bacon, watch The History Channel.

“Okay.” Rachel was squinting at him and grinning. “Wait here then. I’ll be right back.” She walked away.

Greg focused outward — something a book had told him to do, a calming technique: you pretended you didn’t exist; if something didn’t exist it couldn’t be worried about. In the parking lot, entire families were exiting their minivans and moving in clusters toward Wal-Mart. They all looked pasty and hopeless, and somehow squandered, or else in the process of squandering. They looked obese. Even the skinny ones looked obese. Greg thought about this. Then Rachel was back, with a friend, who stuck his hand through Greg’s open window.

“I’m Steve,” he said. They shook hands and Steve said, “Looks like we’ll be working together tonight, eh?”

Greg nodded.

Steve stooped and looked past Greg, at Rachel, who had sat down in the passenger seat. He gave Rachel double thumbs up and a wink so unnatural that it momentarily paralyzed Greg, then sat in back.

“Let’s go,” Rachel said. “Make a left at the light. Then another left. I’ll tell you what to do. I’ll directionalize you.”

“Why don’t I just let you drive?” Greg said. He thought it might sound carefree, slacken things up or something. But he didn’t get the inflection right. It sounded like, “Why don’t you drive then, since you know everything and are an asshole.”

Rachel looked at Greg a moment. She smiled. Greg felt his neck stiffen up. He stared outside at an overturned shopping cart. A ratty-haired girl kicked at it, then ran away.

Steve leaned forward between the front seats. “You don’t want Rachel driving,” he said. “How about I drive?” He looked at Greg, at Rachel, back at Greg. He had a buzz cut and a head like a horse, though handsome. A handsome horse.

Steve got out and so did Greg. They bumped into each other as they went to switch seats. Steve patted Greg’s shoulder and told him not to worry. Greg sat in back, feeling dazed and centerless.

Steve moved his head around and talked loudly while driving. He pointed like a mock-tourist guide at things. “Where I ran out on my check,” he said, pointing at Denny’s. “They didn’t cook my chicken fingers all the way. They served me raw chicken! Then they offered me one free thing from their shitty 99-cent desert value menu or whatever, like that would make up for risking my life. Denny’s is alright though.” He went on like this for a while, then all of a sudden wanted to know about Greg. “So you went to college. Then what, you couldn’t handle it?”

Steve’s loudness made Greg feel a bit comfortable, though in a fatalistic way. Steve wasn’t a human being; he was a human machine, in the front seat, making noises, driving a car. What would happen was that this Steve-machine would make noises and drive cars for a number of years, then one day stop.

“No,” Greg said. “The tuition was out of my league.” He began to make things up. The truth was he did the four years without making any friends. Actually he did make a few friends, but within weeks they all changed, in his view, somehow, into enemies. And after the second year, then, he stopped trying, as it was nearly impossible to make friends unless you already had some. Though probably he had never tried in the first place, or ever. He felt this way sometimes, that he’d never in his life tried at anything. Probably, like some people didn’t know how to swim, Greg didn’t know the meaning of the word try. “Someone gave me TB,” he said, “on top of it all.” He made a thing up, then tacked on a cliché—so it would sound natural, or something.

Rachel turned around, grinning. She didn’t have her seatbelt on and now she put it on and turned back around. “Someone gave you a TV!”

“TB,” Steve said. “Tuberculosis, dummy.” He made eye contact with Greg in the rearview mirror. “Then what? You never went back? How’s your lung?”

“They gave me a TB scholarship, but I told them to go to hell,” Greg said. His voice was unintentionally monotone and grim and mumbled, a kind of misanthropic drone. He sounded like he didn’t want to talk anymore, didn’t want to be bothered.

“What was that?” Steve said.

Greg hesitated. “Nothing,” he said. Then there was a long, woozy silence. Things were changing in this silence, Greg felt. Tact was taking its clothes off and belching, reaching for the remote. This is what happened, Greg knew, what always happened. You did things — you tried, maybe — but after you did one thing you had to wait a while before you could do another thing. You had to sit in a waiting room where the magazines were non-profit and frank, without gloss or pictures, but only rectangular article after article on why it — other people, communication, life generally — just was not worth it. You were bored, so you read them all. The receptionist was friendly but behind glass and on the phone. The ceiling fan had one blade. It spun around, slow, like a chainsaw. By the time they called your name, you did not want to move. You had given up. You went out the other door, got in your car, punched the steering wheel, drove to McDonald’s, ordered something with extra, extra, extra bacon; and you didn’t say “please.” You said, “I want extra bacon on it.” You said that again, to make sure.

“How’s your lung?” Steve said. “Are you at 80 % capacity or whatever?” He twisted around very fast and looked at Greg.

Greg shrugged.

“How’s your lung?” Rachel asked Steve, who peered hard at the control panel, then turned the air-conditioner on full blast. “Yeah, I thought so,” Rachel said. She moved her face right up to the air-conditioner grate.

They passed Greg’s old elementary school — a flat, starfishy thing, expanded over the years in a makeshift and unenergetic way, with portables and pavilions. In third grade, on the way to P.E., Greg had spit on a minivan, due to peer pressure. Someone tattled on him and he was sent to the Principal’s office. The Principal asked why he did it, then gave him detention.

“TB makes me think of inner tubes,” Rachel said. “Poisonous ones that if you use them you get rashes.” She laughed. “Tubular colossus,” she said. “Sounds like … something.”

“Rachel,” Steve said. He paused. “Hey, I went to Wet ‘N Wild the other day. This lady was with her son. It was hilarious.”

“What was hilarious?” Rachel said.

“Your mom was ridiculous.” Steve yawned. He laughed a little.

“That was stupid,” Rachel said. She punched at Steve’s side. “I said what was hilarious, anyway, not ridiculous. Thanks for listening.”

“I said hilarious first,” Steve said. He seemed to think about that. “Greg,” he then said. “Sorry you have to witness our stupidity.”

“No,” Greg said. He leaned forward a little. “Thank you.” Something had gone wrong. Greg had mixed-up apology and appreciation, and maybe some other things. He didn’t quite understand it.

“Hmm,” Steve said. “You are welcome.” He pointed at a Starbucks that had recently opened. But he didn’t say anything. Then he said, “So Greg. Did you roll houses a lot in your high school days?”

Greg wanted to be enthusiastic, wanted to be friendly and quick with anecdotes — here was another opportunity! — but, as often happened to him in small talk, he now forgot everything that he ever knew. Information rushed away from him, became distant and twinkling as the cosmos. “A little,” he said. In the outer space of his head, he floated upside-down and sideways, like an astronaut — safety cord severed.

“How many times?” Steve said. “Thirty?”

Greg tried to think of what to say, but couldn’t decide. Too much time passed. He made eye contact with Rachel in the rearview mirror and then looked quickly, wildly, away.

“We’re pros,” Rachel said. “We do this, what, twice a week? We did our school. We did this tree one time. A tree in the middle of nowhere, in this field. Someone was like, we should roll that tree, and everyone agreed immediately.”

Greg leaned back into his seat, looked out the window, made eye contact with a little girl in another car, and then looked down into his own lap.

“Yeah; it is kind of sad,” Steve said. “This is all we do really. Not sad. Funny. For a while we did fireworks, drove around lighting fireworks, tossing them out of the car. That was fun. Before that, what was before that?”

“Truth or dare,” Rachel said. “Remember truth or dare?”

Greg remembered truth or dare. One time, Crystal Kendle dared him to jump off the roof. Either jump off the roof or kiss her. Greg was nine and wanted to kiss her. But he climbed a ladder to the roof and jumped off and hurt his ankles. The other kids called him stupid. Crystal Kendle went to the same high school as Greg, but they were strangers by then. She was one of those willowy, surrounded girls. Always surrounded, always willowy. Greg was one of those kids who, to avoid being seen eating alone, never sat in the cafeteria; was always carrying his lunch around, like someone lost or eccentric, looking for a safe place. He invariably ate in spots weird and badly-lit, spots ruthless with indignity — a dewy nook; an abstract, long-forgotten bench; an inexplicable room adjacent the bathroom, with prison bars instead of a door.

Steve turned the car into a neighborhood. A squirrel ran across the street. Steve said to be quiet. He pointed at a house. “There’s Ali’s home,” he said loudly. “Probably in bed already. Sleeping.” He laughed. “I don’t even know why that’s funny. I really don’t.”

“Do you know Ali?” Greg said.

“We’re not best friends but yeah, I guess I know him,” Steve said. “He goes to our school. He plays tennis. He’s probably Indian, judging by his name. But this isn’t a racial thing. It’s just chance, you know, coincidence or whatever. Ali’s a good guy. He’s alright. I bet he plays tennis a lot, though, like four hours a day.”

“I told Justin we were rolling his house sometime this week,” Rachel said. “He said he had a paintball gun and would hide in the bushes. He was being all serious for some reason.” She laughed. “He was like, ‘Do it, if you have to,’ all serious-like.”

“Excellent,” Steve said. “We’ll do his house after. His home.”

Greg had the thought that “Justin” was codename for “Greg”—for himself. That they were going to roll his place next. And he’d do it too, he knew, he’d roll his own apartment — like some convoluted, surreal attempt at allegory — and to avoid embarrassment he’d pretend vehemently that he didn’t know it was his own apartment; he’d change his identity if he had to — lawfully, with forms, a fifty-dollar processing fee.

They came to a cul-de-sac. Two other cars were parked in the street.

Steve parked, got out.

“Whose car?” someone asked Steve.

“Mine,” Steve said. “I carjacked it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Greg’s.” Steve pointed at the car.

“Who’s ‘Greg’?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. He laughed. “Some guy. He had TB.”

“It’s so early,” someone else was saying. “It’s barely even dark out.” His voice took on a mock-authoritative tone. “We are becoming too confident, we rowdy teenagers, we, um, fucking.…”

In the car, Greg and Rachel were still and silent until Rachel twisted abruptly around and looked at Greg, her eyes wide and white and steady. “Do you really like rolling? Do you like it a lot?” She wasn’t smiling, but looked actually a little bored. But then she was grinning and looked giddy.

Greg scratched his neck. “I guess,” he said. His voice came out little, then gone, like a leprechaun. He began to look around. There was a sudden erratic gravity to his eyes; there were people in there — little people, with little rocket packs.

“Do you like Steve?”

“I don’t know,” Greg said. He looked down at his hands, which he moved toward one another, then touched, and held, like gimp lovers. His thumbs were closest to him. He thought of twiddling them.

“Do you like me?”

Something fat and sweaty entered Greg, did a crude little jig, and then vanished, leaving in its place a hotness, a plain and glowless burning; Greg was embarrassed for many different reasons that came all at once — the accidental mob of them crowding in, drunk and with pitchforks, demanding answers. “I don’t know,” Greg said. “No.” He meant to say yes, or something like that, but “No” was what came out, and it came out mean, and his face looked mean, too, like it always did.

Rachel grinned, but Greg didn’t see. He was looking down into the dark area where his shoes were. He felt as if in grade school, and he had a thought, that he wasn’t ready to like anyone yet, that he was far from it.

Someone called Rachel’s name and she exited the car. Greg sat a moment, thought about things, then got out too, feeling like a wasteland of things gone wrong, an entire country of wrongness. He couldn’t see Rachel again — he wouldn’t — not her or anyone she knew. He would have to quit at the library, maybe move to another county or state. He went to the trunk of his car and tore open a 24-pack of toilet paper, took a roll, and threw it madly, almost horizontally, into a tree. It went clear through, and then over a fence. Greg got another roll. Someone laughed and told Greg that it was the wrong house. Besides Greg, there were about a dozen teenagers. They took their rolls, dashed a few houses down to Ali’s house, and started hurling them up. They wrapped individual flower plants and laid toilet paper carefully on the tops of hedges. One girl unfurled her roll, taut, from a tree in Ali’s yard to a mailbox across the street. A car came by. Everyone hid half-assedly behind bushes and trees. The car slowed a little, then accelerated and left. Rolling resumed. Someone said he didn’t think this was Ali’s house. They spread out, began rolling the houses on either side. Greg was in a side yard, where no one could see him. He threw his roll up into a tree, scrambled over the grass, and caught it on its way down; and for a moment felt that he knew again what it was to be a kid — to be four, five years old — but the feeling passed, went through him like a little dream, like a dream a baby rabbit would have. When they had no more toilet paper, they ran into the street and stood a moment to admire. Toilet paper curtained the houses, undulating and in layers, like something undersea and unlikely, and promising; stray sections of toilet paper stuck airily against branches and shingles, lay pat and torn and strewn over the yards and bushes; wrapped-up flower plants sat like little gifts on the grass, squat and cabbage-like, bandaged and decapitated as heads. In a different world, these houses would be celebrated. People would dance in the yards, sleep the night outside. In this world, there would be form-letter warnings from the neighborhood community association, and if the lawns were not cleaned by the next afternoon, calls would have to be made. Everyone ran wildly back into their cars, laughing and screaming things. Steve sat in the driver’s seat, Greg sat in back, and Rachel sat passenger. There was another kid, also, in back. He was smiling and looking at Greg and he said, “Who are you?”

Greg said his name, but in an unaccompanied sort of voice — a voice de-personed early-on, in the brain. The new kid kept looking at him. Greg wondered if he had answered, or just mouthed something, no sound coming out. His heart was beating fast. The question stayed in his head—who are you? “I’m Greg,” he said, but his voice seemed now so loud and melodramatic that he felt only Greglike, not truly Greg. He felt Greggy; and he felt dizzy and hollow and aloft, like an attic — a family of owls inside and hoo’ing, or else outside and flapping — mauling — at the roof. The new kid said, “You had TB!” and made a face. Greg felt that he was blushing hard and that Rachel was looking at him and he turned away, looked out his window. Down the road, someone was walking a dog, and above that was the low, thin, whiteblue moon — slit and off-color as something about to be sealed shut from the other side.

They drove off. Toilet paper caught against Greg’s window, rippled there like a flag, and then rushed off and away. All the strange and giant things began to float by, outside, in the night, and from another car, someone stuck their head out their window and screamed, “Faggot Ali!” Someone else screamed, “Muhammad Ali!” And someone else, “Muhammad Ali Baba! Ahhh! Ahhhhrrrrr!”