Kilroy was Here Read online

  “Ah, the River Luau,” Dad says. “Poplar Bluff’s annual homage to its non-existent Polynesian heritage.”

  “Tony, honey, you’ll be on your own for a little while tonight. Is that ok?” She flashes The Look again.

  “Relax, Suzanne,” Dad chides. “He can take care of himself. Just no gin and Fresca, please, son.”

  “I’m sorry. I worry,” Mom says. “These last few weeks have been so difficult. He broke up with Marlene. His best friend ran away with a girl. A laundry list of out-of-character behavior.”

  My loving, adoring parents proceed to list off said laundry list.

  “You mean like the spectacular nose dive his grades took prior to graduation?” Dad’s face scrunches as if he’s genuinely trying to remember something he obviously easily recalls.

  “Yes,” Mom concurs. “That nose dive prior to the graduation he almost boycotted because of its emphasis on artificially applied honors such as grades instead of actual learning.”

  “Let’s not forget quitting his job without so much as a warning,” Dad adds.

  “Oh,” Mom chimes. “There’s also breaking up with a lovely girl he adored only a few weeks before prom.”

  I glare at the sarcastic assholes currently inhabiting the bodies of my parents. I know I’ve put them through hell the last few weeks and I suppose they’re allowed a few jabs at my expense, but I’ve grown weary of the constant rehash of my sins.

  “You two make a great comedy team,” I tell them. “You should start a podcast called Why Our Son Sucks.”

  Mom gives The Look and tells me she’s sorry.

  “You haven’t exactly been making good choices lately,” she adds.

  Dad steps back to me, his hand on my shoulder. The Reassurance. “We want you to know that you can talk to us. You’ve always been able to talk to us, right?”

  “It’s complicated,” is all I can say before I stand up to leave the room. I feel the need to escape to my Soul Torture Playlist.

  “What does your day look like?” Mom asks.

  “More questionable choices,” I announce. “After knocking over a liquor store and losing my virginity to a prostitute I found online, I plan to build a wormhole generator so I can transport myself off this planet.”

  “Well, don’t forget you have therapy this afternoon,” Mom says.

  “How could I forget?”

  *

  Every session starts with the same question.

  “What is something good that has happened since our last session?”

  I used to not answer because I couldn’t think of anything. Now, I make stuff up in a passive aggressive way to show my disdain for this entire process.

  “Yesterday I wore pants outside the house. Hashtag blessed.”

  “Are you still having nightmares?”

  “Not every night,” I say. “Not like before.”

  The man, my court-appointed therapist named Dr. Gilbert Lawrence, looks at a legal pad resting on his knee and twirls a pen in his hand. It’s a nice pen. Sleek. Elegant. I’d like to have it for myself. It’s a rollerball pen and I like rollerball pens. My brain clicks with the instant knowledge that rollerball pens were developed in Japan in 1963. I don’t say this out loud, though. I don’t know how I know this about rollerball pens. This conversation is uncomfortable enough without me blurting out random useless trivia. The awkward silence between us is filled by a staccato clicking he makes with his tongue.

  “Do you have something you wanna share?” I ask him. “What’s something good that’s happened to you since our last session?”

  “This is your time. This is about you.” He always says that and I hate it. I don’t want to be here sitting in a comfortable leather chair across from a man in a white and taupe bowling shirt who studies me through a persistent smile. I have to, though, because a judge said so. I guess Dr. Gilbert knew I hated the idea of a therapist, so he gave me some advice to ease my anxiety.

  “Don’t think of me as a therapist or counselor. Think of me as your life coach.”

  Life Coach Gilbert it is, then.

  “I still have panic attacks, night terrors, and an irrational fear of things that swirl,” I tell him. He chuckles at that, but doesn’t realize I am being absolutely serious. I won’t even turn my back on a flushing toilet for fear of being sucked into some parallel universe where fish carry guns and Justin Bieber is our dark overlord.

  He rests his bearded chin in his non-pen-twirling hand and grins at me. He looks so friendly, so inviting. It should be so easy to open up to him. I really can’t, though. Maybe I could talk about Marlene and feelings and regret, but there’s no way in hell I could tell him about Jeff and portals and Corporate and 8-foot tall purple aliens.

  “Are you going to college?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

  “It’s an important decision. What are your options?”

  I pause before responding. “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it. You will regret both.” He gives me a quizzical grin in response. “Sorry. It’s something someone once said to me. Yes, I’m going to college. I’m going to study becoming a notary public. I like the idea of stamping things.”

  “Have you talked to Marlene?” More pen twirling. More grinning. I want to be annoyed by him, but he really is nice. The idea of seeing a therapist conjures an image of men in white coats standing outside his door. I imagine myself answering a question about my mother that prompts the men in white coats to charge into the office and shoot a straightjacket at me from a T-shirt cannon before dragging me away. My remaining years would be spent eating applesauce through a straw while rocking back and forth and mumbling incessantly about vengeful potatoes.

  “I have not. Why would I? We broke up.”

  “A couple of weeks before prom night.”

  “I can’t talk about prom night. I’m under strict orders.” I wince a bit because I shouldn’t have said that.

  “Strict orders?” Life Coach Gilbert furrows his brow and leans in. “Strict orders from whom?”

  I shouldn’t say things like that because it only makes things harder on people like Life Coach Gilbert who are just trying to help, but I am so sick of everyone wanting to know how I’m doing. I can’t tell them. Plus, no one knows about the nature of my work with Corporate. It’s a secret.

  “Well, you know.” My brain scrambles for a viable explanation about who would be giving me strict orders and why. “The voices…inside. They tell me not to.”

  “Voices?”

  I’m overdoing it.

  “Not voices,” I say. “Just, you know. I’m afraid to talk about it, I guess. It’s too difficult.”

  Nice save, I tell myself.

  “You’ll never make progress unless you can talk about that night. Obviously something very traumatic happened to you,” he says. “I can’t help you if you don’t share. What happened that night?”

  I huff and roll my eyes because it feels like the right moment to do something derisive. “Why is everyone obsessed with what happened on prom night? Something came up. I chose not to go. That’s all. Sometimes you don’t go to prom. Why is everyone making such a big deal?”

  “Do I need to read the police report to you again?” He raises his eyebrows and it makes me want to punch him in the throat. I do not need him to read the police report again. I do not need him to rehash the events of the Saturday night that followed The Prom Night of Which We Shall Not Speak. After six straight nights of horrific nightmares, I got liquored up on gin and Fresca. Events of that night never materialized in my memory, but the police report states I ran around town in only my underwear and a beach towel cape, riding a broom like a horse, and shouting “I’m Grandor the Malevolent! Kneel to me, Earth People!”

  I say nothing.

  “You asked your arresting officer to prom because you said you needed a do over.”

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sp; “Well.” I clear my throat. “She was pretty cute.”

  This time he says nothing.

  “So,” I blurt. “I have my first experiment with alcohol and everyone decides I need therapy?” I can feel a familiar lump of anger forming in my throat; the same lump that formed when Max told me no one would be looking for Jeff.

  Life Coach Gilbert leafs through the legal pad, lips pursed and once more twirling the pen. I wonder about his life outside this office. Is this what he always wanted to do with his life? Does he eat ice cream or frozen yogurt? Is his wife as annoyed with the pen twirling as I am? Asking myself about ice cream fills me with the need to say everything I know about ice cream. A switch ignites in my brain and I’m suddenly aware that I know more about ice cream than anyone knows about anything.

  “The origins of ice cream can be traced back to China around 200 B.C. They made sorbets out of snow and saltpeter.”

  My life coach furrows his brow again while maintaining his warm smile.

  “Don’t me ask me how I know that,” I say.

  “No, it’s not that.” He winces like someone who bit the inside of their cheek and reaches his hand to the back of neck. “Ow. Damn.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Something’s biting me.” He slaps at his neck like swatting a mosquito. He looks at his hand and sees a dot a blood on his palm. “Guess I got it. Helluva thing.”

  He plucks a sanitary wipe from a container on the coffee table between us and cleans his hand and neck. He reiterates his steadfast belief that he can help me get better at recovering from The Prom Night of Which We Shall Not Speak. He says something else, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah, progress. Blah, blah, blah, walls. And so on and so forth until the end of time. He writes a refill for my Xanax prescription to keep me calm.

  “Take care of yourself until next time,” he says, handing me a business card with the date and time of our next appointment. I’m already thinking of excuses to not come.

  *

  After the Life Coach Gilbert Session, I climb into my little Toyota Corolla and the oppressive humidity slaps me in the face like a wet blanket of summer depression. I swear it’s 157 degrees in here. I switch on the engine and crank the air conditioner full blast, which means more hot air for a couple of minutes so I roll down my window.

  “The first manufacturer to include air conditioning in their vehicles was Packard in 1939,” I say to the inside of my car. A spasm of frustration with not understanding why I know that overtakes my body and I release a guttural roar. I turn to see an old man staring in me the way old men do when they don’t understand young people today.

  I turn on some music to listen to “Mr. Roboto.” Jeff was obsessed with Styx and often erroneously compared the song to our friendship. The song tells the story of Kilroy, a rock star whose band is imprisoned during a fundamentalist dystopia bent on eradicating rock music. Kilroy disguises himself as a robot (the Mr. Roboto of the title) and breaks into the prison to free his friend Jonathan Chance. I promise that is what the song is about.

  “I am Kilroy,” Jeff would always tell me. “And you’re Mr. Roboto.”

  “No,” I would say. “They are the same person. Kilroy is Mr. Roboto. Mr. Roboto is Kilroy.”

  “Yes,” he would nod. “They are one. We are one.”

  And on it would go in an absurd conversational loop. Really, a simple internet search would have cleared the whole matter up, but I never had the heart to push it. Even now, I wonder if Jeff is floating around in space still confused about the meaning of “Mr. Roboto.”

  Sweat trickles down my face as Dennis DeYoung, the lead singer of Styx, repeatedly thanks Mr. Roboto for doing the job nobody wants to. My phone alerts me of a text message from Mom.

  Love you, honey. Wanted you to know.

  I let out a long sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose in an effort to stave off a flow of tears. Damn her for being so good to me. I shake my head slightly to regain composure and notice something pinned under my windshield wiper. I get out of the car and retrieve it, looking around to see if anyone is watching me because surely this is the setup of a hidden camera reality show. It’s a business card. On one side three words are printed.

  KILROY WAS HERE

  My hands tremble and my stomach knots. I look around again to see who might be around watching my reaction. I flip the card over to see if anything is on the back and find instructions written.

  Go to Someone Else’s Books and buy a copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  I do as instructed and speed to Someone Else’s Books, my favorite place in this godforsaken town, and realize it is closed on Mondays. Whatever this is all about will have to wait until tomorrow. I sigh with frustration and start up my Soul Torture playlist. I steer through the streets of Poplar Bluff until I drive past Marlene’s house. “Bubbly” ends and “Hate Me,” by Blue October starts. I crank the volume, scream along, and drive home to sit in the dark of my room alone, which is totally not pathetic at all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I want to own a used bookstore exactly like Someone Else’s Books. It used to be an old house in the center of town on Main Street. The owners sold it to a guy named Kevin Raulston a few years ago and he renovated it and filled each room with a different genre of books. Someone Else’s Books is my oasis and as I approach it from the sidewalk, I feel a weight lifting. That doesn’t relieve the knot in my stomach, though. Jeff left a clue for me inside the store and I’m anxious to see what it is. I open the front door and a bell above it chimes. The smell of old books greets me and I’m at peace with the world. Kevin Raulston is stationed behind the counter at his laptop.

  “How’s life, Kevin?” I ask.

  “Life?” The tone of his reply suggests I have not asked a simple question. He spins slowly in his chair to face me. “I need a minute.”

  Kevin is broad-shouldered but not muscular. Heavy-set. His hair looks like he has perpetual pillow head. He talks like a drug-addled hippie from the sixties. I don’t know how old Kevin is but, by his general appearance and demeanor, I estimate his age to be anywhere from 28 to 79. The area he designates as the office is lined with star maps, drawings of aliens, newspaper clippings and pictures of various UFOs. A display of books about ancient alien theory owns the center of the front room.

  “Tony, I’m close.” Kevin pulls a map of Poplar Bluff off the wall and spreads it out on the counter. He points to red circles designating certain areas of town.

  “Close to what?” I ask.

  “To finding out how the Herpezoids are getting through!” He taps on each read circle as he speaks. “Sightings have increased. People I trust have taken them down personally. I think it has something to do with this area right here.” He points to an unpopulated area along the banks of Black River outside of town. I recognize it as the area where the portal is. Like everyone else in my life except Jeff, Kevin knows nothing of my work at Corporate.

  “That place is closed off and secret,” he says. “Very mysterious. The only plausible explanation is alien activity.”

  “Or, maybe,” I say, “it’s just private property and the owners don’t want people trespassing.”

  “You don’t understand how conspiracy theories work, do you?”

  “You really believe this stuff, don’t you, Kevin?” I’m careful not to sound condescending because I like Kevin. He harbors this notion that an alien race known as Herpezoids is infiltrating Earth to take it over. I also wonder if he knows about the portal.

  “You need to open your mind, Tony.” He leans in and whispers. “The Herpezoid invasion is upon us. They’re already here among us. You think I’m crazy. Everyone thinks I’m crazy, but, the day is coming when all shall know.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say and then we stare at one another and try to figure out if I’m lying about that.

  “I’m poor,” he says flatly. “Buy something.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  I leave the fron
t room of the store and head down a short hallway. I pass a door on my left adorned with a plain sign that reads “Private.” The first doorway on my right leads to a room that houses all the classics. This place is nothing but books and books have never steered me wrong. I think that’s why I enjoyed reading the training manuals at Corporate. They provided me with knowledge and guidance which brought me peace. I stand for a moment to look around the room. The sound of the bell above the front door chiming can be heard from in here. I hear Kevin greet the entering customers with “buy something! I’m poor!” It all sounds far away, though, because I’m the only one in this space. The smell of old books is a tonic.

  I move to the far corner and locate several selections from Ray Bradbury. I reach for the lone, tattered paperback copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes. The friendship between Jim and Will, two boys who face a supernatural circus, touched me. The title also appealed to me because it’s from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act IV, Scene One. A witch says “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” We read Macbeth in high school and when Jeff came across that part of the text, he immediately starting giggling. When I asked what was so funny, he said, “I keep reading it as ‘by the thumbing of my prick.’” Jeff is a horrible student. He carried his homework, if he bothered to do it at all, folded up in his back pocket. He spent our high school days convinced he would work for Corporate for the rest of his life.

  I miss that dumbass.

  I flip through the book and a business card and a packet of green Kwench-Aid falls out. My thumb holds the pages and I see a highlighted quote.

  So now Jim was the kite, the wild twine cut, and whatever wisdom was his taking him away from Will who could only run, earthbound, after one so high and dark silent and suddenly strange.1

  My mind floods with memories of Jeff and me playing, running, and imagining new worlds. He was uninhibited; nothing fazed him. His life had always been an improvisation, a random collection of stream-of-consciousness happenings. One time, he literally ran with scissors, chasing girls around our seventh grade art class shouting, “I want your hair, my pretty!” Three days of detention did nothing to curtail his behavior. I have always maintained a more straight-laced approach to things. Follow the rules. Read the manual. Have a plan.