The Weapon of Young Gods #19: Narcoleptic Blues

Peter and I returned from Ortega one Friday night at the end of March to find a message from R.J. on the machine. My roommate tossed his jacket on the bed and, with a perceptive nod, took off for Alex’s room to begin the weekend idiocy we’d anticipated for days. I slumped on my bed and dialed the number that, until I’d moved out, had been my private line all through high school, when Nadia and I would talk until 3 a.m. while R.J. was trying to sleep. He answered the phone after three rings.

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UPDATE: Revised a little bit on re-read.

“Hey Roy. How you doing up there? Anything going on tonight?”

“Not much. Pete and I are just gonna stick around the dorms. What’s up with you?”

“Well, um…you know I had to talk to the cops today, right?”

“Yeah,” I exhale, instantly bummed. “I’m due for it too. Gotta meet a detective from OC on Monday, but up here at the SB County Sheriff’s office.”

“Terrific. Nice April fool’s present, huh? Well, I just wanted to say that… um, just tell him the truth, tell him what you remember, and you’ll be fine.”

“Tell her,” I corrected. “The name is Kelley.”

“No no, that’s the last name, Roy. Detective James Kelley.”

“Oh. Well, uh, how’d it go?”

“Okay, I guess. All he wanted to talk about was Liv’s party- who was there, when they left, stuff like that. Didn’t give me any shit.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the one who got trashed enough to zap a whole twelve hours. That can’t look good. I’m still freaking out over it, even without the fucking Mexican skeletons.”

“You’re still hung up on that? Dude, I know it’s dumb to say ‘don’t look guilty,’ but just don’t…don’t give him any reason to peg you as unstable and confused or anything.”

“Um, okay,” I said, feeling suddenly unstable and confused, “but that’s been sort of my natural state of being, R.J. Lately even more so, you know?”

“Yeah, I was there, remember? You’ve been worse, trust me.” I snorted in disbelief and R.J. waited a few seconds before replying. “I…kinda doubt that,” he said. “You dealt with some pretty bizarre stuff back then.”

My guts convulsed into a knot, like they always did when I felt left out of things like inside jokes, endured public humiliation, or got hit with other social leprosies of middle school, when the bad dreams had finally ended. I tried to ignore it and said simply “Yeah, I…guess I did, but…what about it?”

“Okay,” he replied, a little less sure of himself, “well, I saw the last nightmare you had, I think. I mean, the last one before I asked you about them.”

Then it was my turn to keep quiet. I’d never handled astounding revelations very well.

“Yeah,” he continued, “the most I remember is reading in the living room, late at night- you’d already gone to bed- and then I remember seeing you just sort of shuffling out of the bedroom with this faraway look in your eyes. You were walking really slow, and, like, mechanical, and you were mumbling something like ‘I need to find it.'”

I was floored. “What else?” I asked hoarsely.

“I asked what was up, but you didn’t notice me, and said something about a bomb you had to find before it exploded. You weren’t making any sense at all, but you just kept walking right up to the front door, and then you opened it and went outside.”

“Holy shit, sleepwalking?” My heart rattled with fear.

“Yeah, I guess.” He sounded relieved that I’d kept up without freaking out. “I was terrified, Roy. Andrew was gone on business and, um, Mom was dead by then, so it was just us kids at home alone, like always, but I didn’t know what to do, so I… just followed you. I didn’t think I was supposed to wake you- I heard that’s supposed to be the wrong thing to do, but I read later it was just the opposite. I didn’t know it then, though, so I just tried to steer you away from trouble.”

“We went outside, and you took a few turns around the courtyard, still whispering that you had to defuse a bomb. You opened the gate and, um, started down the driveway.” He sounded both exasperated and frightened at the memory. “It was, like, 11:30 at night, but nobody was out driving around, so you kept on going, right across the street. You bent over one of the water meters, studied it, then straightened up and walked to a mailbox three houses down.”

“Damn,” I whispered, more appalled than ashamed. “How did I get…How did I not hurt myself, or you?”

“No idea, man. I prodded you a little to ‘try again later,’ and eventually you agreed and shuffled back home into bed. It was fucking scary, man. I was super-anxious to close the door on you.”

“Wow…um…well, thanks for watching out for me, R.J., I… I can’t believe it, you know? I had no idea you’d had to… uh…” The knot in my stomach climbed into my throat and I felt strangely disembodied, like I couldn’t know myself anymore.

“Roy,” said my brother at length. “Roy, I’m sorry you had to find out this way, okay? I just thought maybe it should be from me, you know, instead of like, a cop, or, hell, or Andrew. He would have loved another chance to try and figure you out, like you were just another patient. You’re my brother, Roy. I wouldn’t let that happen. I’m still shocked that you never remembered any of it.”

I began to shudder, crying in reflexive shock. “Yeah,” I said thickly. “Yeah… I…thanks, R.J. I’d rather know this way, you’re right.”

“Sure, Roy,” he answered back, a little soggy himself.

“Jesus, listen to us,” I choked. I didn’t want to analyze it or worry about it or go into another paranoid flight of fear after a goddamn bombshell like this. I lay back on the bed and tried to compose myself, but instead gave an allmighty snort, swallowing about a gallon of snot, and R.J. burst out laughing at my blatant grotesquery. The total absurdity of it made me feel much better.

“Well, shit,” I said. “Just call me the Great Narcoleptico or something,” but then turned on a dime to ask him if anything else was up. I wasn’t too keen on any more unearthed surprises.

“It’s probably not that big a deal, but I ran into that guy Kyle Addison again the other night. Remember him?”

“How could I forget? We recently acquainted him with the reality of violence, didn’t we?”

“Same guy. Anyway, Alan and I were at the movie theater, and-”

“Alan was there? Only the two of you? No Nadia?” My ex-girlfriend had snapped up R.J.’s best friend only days after dumping me.

“Yeah, Alan told me he’d felt strange about Nadia coming on to him from, like, day one.” He sounded resigned about the change of topic.

“No shit?”

“Really. Alan thinks she’s rebounding. She said a lotta stuff about being in love with him and everything, which was weird after she ditched you so quick. That all their dates so far-”

“Their dates? Like, multiple incidents?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, sounding bored. “Roy, we’ve been through this already. I don’t need to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb like you do, all right?”

“Fine, fine. I was only gonna say that you can tell him again from me that I got over it. Only took about a day.”

“Yeah, I remember you said that.”

“You don’t sound convinced, R.J. Look, I may have met someone else up here, okay, so tell Alan I don’t care what he may or may not have done with or to my ex-girlfriend, all right? He’s cool with me, he shouldn’t worry about anything like that. Oh, and if Kyle fucking Addison gets in your face anymore, I will personally come down there and cut his nuts off. I’ve had enough of people shoving their lame shit on you. I’m actually surprised that he got away with rattling you.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t feel like getting busted. Ocean Ranch security has nothing else to do, so they try to get anyone they can for curfew violations or other lame shit like that. Hell, one real cop almost took us away another night, but lucky for us his partner was Liv’s brother Michael, who let us off with a warning.”

“I didn’t know her brother was a cop.”

“Yep, turns out he works with that detective Kelley.”

“Oh Christ.” I lapsed into silence, digesting the implications of that until R.J. switched gears and said “So, it’s actually really cool that you’re okay with Alan, cause there is one other thing. Remember when, um, you were just dumped…uh, when you were feeling really terrible and finally went out and bought that bass guitar?”

“Look, I know it was impulsive, and I zapped my savings in one shot, but fuck, man, I wanted one forever. It was about time.”

“Hey, I never said it was a bad idea. Anyway, Alan and I were hanging out with Mike Boehm one day- you remember Mike, right, he asked Robin to Homecoming. Did you know he’s a drummer?”

I didn’t, so he continued, “Yeah, so one time when Alan had decided, to, uh, blow off a date with Nadia, he used us as an excuse- that he had band practice. Since he didn’t really want to be a liar, but he did want to play, we got together and jammed, and oh man, it was such a fucking blast. All we did was play instrumentals, like old sixties stuff- blues, surf, rock, whatever. Really simple songs to learn together quickly, you know?”

“Well,” he went on, “Alan just started singing over this one slow waltzy-type blues we were playing, singing like he was, you know, eighty-five years old and black, and we ended up jamming that song for, like, five verses, and we wrote the best blues song ever.”

“Ever?” I said suspiciously. “Um, does this masterpiece have a name?”

“Thought you’d never ask. It’s called the ‘Eat Shit And Die Blues,’ and it’s fucking awesome, and would be even better with a bassist, so…um, want in on this?”

I leaned back and laughed with pure joy. “Fuck yes, of course I do! I’ll bring the bass next time I come down. I can confirm my shitty skills for all three of you.”

R.J. laughed again, like he knew how far away I was now from re-living horrible nightmares or worrying about police interrogations. “That was the second part of this, actually,” he said. “We’d need you to come down kinda soon, like maybe next weekend- cause we already have a gig.”

“What?” This was almost too good.

“Yeah, man, a month from today. Mike and Robin pulled some strings with people they know on the activities board, and I went ahead and asked Liv too, cause she’s Senior Class, um, something-or-other, like Secretary or whatever, and she said yes right away. We can play in the main hall at lunch, for, I think, half an hour.”

“Wow. Do you- do we, I guess- have thirty minutes’ worth of songs? Do we even have a name?”

“Oh sure! Alan’s been calling us the…heh, the Blue Monkeynuts. It was the first thing he thought of, and it was pure fucking gold after playing that song. As for tunes, I can teach you all the stuff we’ve been doing. You’ll be fine and we’ll have plenty of stuff to play.”

“Awesome.” I relaxed for the first time in the whole conversation. “That’s awesome, R.J.” I smiled to myself and hoped there would never be a time when my little brother couldn’t bring me back from teetering on another brink of hopelessness.