Читать книгу The Indifference League - Richard Scarsbrook - Страница 5

MR. NICE GUY

“Here I come to save the day!”

— Mighty Mouse, from the TV series

Mighty Mouse Playhouse, 1955–1966

Mr. Nice Guy is typing an email invitation to the other members of The Indifference League:

To: statistician; hippieavenger; missdemeanor69; thedrifter; theperfectpair

Subject: The Brat Signal™ is ON!!!!!!!!

Greetings, Lads and Lasses,

Given that our collective thirtieth birthdays are rapidly approaching, I am activating the Brat Signal™!!!!!

To commemorate this milestone year, all surviving members of The Indifference League ™ are hereby summoned to The Hall of Indifference™ for the upcoming holiday long weekend!

As so often happens these days, his mind drifts back nearly twelve years, to the night that they collectively became known as The Indifference League.

*

It is a warm, starry evening on the Sunday of the July long weekend, and Mr. Nice Guy and his friends are hanging out on the stony beach in front of his parents’ cottage.

(He is not yet known as Mr. Nice Guy; none of them have their alter-ego names yet. It will happen later this night.)

They are gathered around a campfire that has been fuelled to ridiculous roaring heights by Psycho Superstar, with gasoline siphoned from the lawn mower, kerosene drained from the antique lamps inside the cottage, and flammable flotsam and jetsam scavenged from the beach.

On the end of a straightened wire coat hanger, The Statistician is holding a bratwurst sausage in the flames. He swings the crackling, blackened meatsicle over in front of Hippie Avenger and says, “Want it? I swear it’s a veggie sausage.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Like, yuck.”

“Um, I’ll take it,” Mr. Nice Guy intervenes, sliding the bobbing sausage from the wire with an enriched-white Wonderbread hotdog bun. The bratwurst crunches as he bites into it, and he says, “Mmmmmmm … gasoliney-delicious!”

“Thankyouverrymuch,” says Psycho Superstar, in a voice approximating the already-dead Elvis Presley’s. He tosses a cupful of kerosene into the fire.

(None of them are actually known by their alter-ego nicknames at this point, but this is Mr. Nice Guy’s memory, and his mind can retroactively modify anything that it wants to. It’s possible that it wasn’t even Mr. Nice Guy who saved Hippie Avenger from that hot dog, but he remembers that it was.)

Hippie Avenger gazes up at the tiny lights blinking in the sky, and dreamily muses, “The pilots of those airplanes can, like, probably see this fire from up there.”

Psycho Superstar takes this as a compliment, and heaves a broken Styrofoam cooler onto the blaze, proclaiming, “I want this fire to be fuckin’ seen from space!”

SuperBarbie, from her perch on SuperKen’s lap atop an army-surplus Field Marshal’s chair, says, “That is not good for the environment.”

“Tell that to all the industries your dad owns stock in, huh?” Psycho Superstar counters, as the Styrofoam begins to distort and melt. “Though you might have to settle for wearing cheaper shoes, then.”

SuperKen’s deep voice resonates like a cannon blast. “The quality of the air we breathe is everyone’s responsibility.”

As the captain of the Varsity football, soccer, and hockey teams at Tom Thomson High, the president of the Student Council, the lead tenor in the school choir, and the co-chairperson of T.N.T. (the clever acronym for Teens Need Truth, the Christian prayer club at school), SuperKen is the uncontested alpha male of the group. Usually, none of the other guys would ever contradict him, at least not to his face, but Psycho Superstar won’t let it go this time.

“Remember your responsibility to the environment when you’re dropping fucking bombs on it, dude. One bomb is worse than a hundred bonfires.”

SuperKen is attending the Royal Military College in the fall. He has already been fitted for his dress uniform.

“He is correct,” The Statistician says, after a moment of hesitation. He is normally reluctant to embrace any position taken by Psycho Superstar, but The Statistician has harboured a grudge against SuperKen since the graduating class awards were announced a few weeks earlier. Sure, SuperKen deserved to win Male Athlete of the Year, and probably even the school spirit award, but The Statistician suspects that one of the coaches or some starstruck female teacher must have exaggerated a grade or two for SuperKen to have beaten him for the highest academic achievement award.

“The airborne gaseous and particulate contaminants released by the detonation of a single conventional firebomb,” The Statistician explains, “would indeed outweigh those created by a burning Styrofoam cooler, by a ratio of about ten thousand to one.”

The Statistician has no idea if his estimate is even close to correct, but who is going to argue with him? He was careful to use that lovely mathematician’s qualifier, about.

“Yeah,” adds Psycho Superstar, invigorated by The Statistician’s unexpected support, “and burning forests and buildings … and bodies … that ain’t so good for the air quality, either, Sergeant Rock.”

SuperBarbie glares at Psycho Superstar and The Statistician.

“Not every man can wear the uniform, y’know,” she snaps. “Not every man has what it takes.”

SuperBarbie has been SuperKen’s girlfriend since grade nine. They’ve exchanged promise rings, and SuperBarbie has a hope chest in her bedroom, which she fills with the kitschy dust-collectors that SuperKen gives her as gifts.

Despite having a figure as similar as biology will allow to her anatomically impossible fashion-doll namesake, when SuperBarbie ties her hair back in a ponytail and squashes her breasts into a body-armour-grade sports bra, she is a tremendous athlete. In addition to being the captain of the women’s varsity volleyball and softball teams, SuperBarbie also set new city records in the 100- and 200-metre dashes. She stood right next to SuperKen at the graduating class awards ceremony with her Female Athlete of the Year trophy in hand. She is also the treasurer and secretary of the student council, the lead soprano in the school choir, and the co-chairperson of Teens Need Truth.

SuperBarbie is SuperKen’s female mirror image in every way, his ultimate counterpart. Although some of their inferiors have sarcastically referred to them as “The Perfect Pair,” they nevertheless earned enough votes to be named king and queen of the senior prom at Tom Thomson High.

“Not every man has the courage to stand up and fight for their God and their country,” SuperBarbie reiterates, flipping her ponytail at Psycho Superstar and The Statistician.

“Well, goddamn it, Hot Lips,” says Miss Demeanor, drawing from her encyclopedic memory for pop-culture quotes, “resign your goddamned commission!”

“M*A*S*H, right?” The Drifter says. “Good one!”

“My commission!” Miss Demeanor bawls. “My commission!”

“Idiots!” SuperBarbie hisses through clenched teeth.

“It’s okay, baby,” says SuperKen, patting her behind. “Let them have their fun.”

SuperBarbie emphatically kisses SuperKen, and for a moment they resemble the picture of Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart on that famous movie poster for Casablanca, or maybe Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. You can almost hear the orchestral soundtrack billowing up around them.

“Thanks!” Psycho Superstar says. “Permission for fun!”

He tosses more kerosene and beach garbage onto the fire and the column of flame roars skyward like the afterburner trail of a fighter jet.

“Your nickname should be ‘Smokey,’ baby,” Miss Demeanor suggests.

“Well, there’s already Smokey Robinson, Smokey Bear, Smokey and the Bandit,” the Statistician says. “Not too original, perhaps.”

They are all very concerned with being “original.” Hence The Statistician’s professorial Harris Tweed jacket, the way he says “indeed” and “perhaps” all the time. Hence Hippie Avenger’s sandals, her flower-printed smocks, and her, like, Flower Child way of talking. Hence Psycho Superstar’s testicle-gripping, intentionally-ripped black jeans, his collection of heavy-metal concert T-shirts festooned with skulls and demons, and the way he uses obscenities like punctuation. Hence Miss Demeanor’s blood-red lipstick, her needle-straight she-vampire hair, and the faux-leather miniskirt that barely covers her crotch, in which she sits with her legs slightly parted, daring you to look.

SuperKen and SuperBarbie feel no need to differentiate their appearances from others; their accomplishments set them apart from the crowd. The Perfect Pair dress themselves in the sort of clothing seen on any of the statistically perfect models from the current year’s Sears catalogue. At the moment, they are wearing matching “cottage clothes,” with little ducks — or maybe they’re loons — embroidered on their crew-neck sweaters and khaki pants.

“Too bad,” says Psycho Superstar. The handful of dry leaves he’s thrown crackle and vanish in the orange roar. “I like the sound of ‘Smokey’!”

“What about ‘Pyro,’ then?” Miss Demeanor says. “Nobody’s taken that one yet.”

“Some comic book superhero’s named Pyro,” The Drifter says. “One of the X-Men, I think.”

Of course, The Drifter doesn’t think Pyro is one of the X-Men; he knows. But, as the youngest of the bunch, two years junior to the rest of the gang, he’s not so sure that his encyclopedic knowledge of comic-book characters and plotlines is considered very cool anymore, especially since his older brother, The Statistician, just won all those university entrance scholarships.

“The X-Men suck,” says Psycho Superstar, as he searches around with a flashlight for more flammable items to throw on his Monument to Combustion. “Give me the good ol’ Super Friends any day of the week. Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman …”

“Don’t forget Zan and Jayna, the Wonder Twins!” Miss Demeanor interrupts.

She and Psycho Superstar punch knuckles, mimicking the ring-touching gesture that initiated the superpowers of the Wonder Twins; it’s no secret that the two of them have been having a thing together.

“Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!” Miss Demeanor squeals. “Form of …”

“A Steely Dan Brand stainless-steel dildo!” Psycho Superstar hollers. “Form of …”

“A tube of KY personal lubricant!” Miss Demeanor responds.

It is also no secret that Psycho Superstar and Miss Demeanor have been having quite an adventurous thing.

“Zan and Jayna sucked,” The Statistician grumbles. “The chick always got to transform into something cool, like a jaguar or a falcon, while the guy always turned into something useless, like a bucket of water or a rain cloud.”

Of course The Statistician is trying to be inflammatory; he would normally never use a word like “chick”; as the former captain of the Tom Thomson High School intramural debating team, The Statistician is always up for an argument, even when he knows he’s on the lower ground.

“Feminist bullshit,” SuperKen says.

“Hey!” yelps Miss Demeanor.

“Yeah, seriously,” Mr. Nice Guy adds.

“Look, guys,” Hippie Avenger says. “Feminism isn’t a bad word, okay? It came along at a time when, like, women didn’t have the vote, when we were considered, like, property, for Chrissakes.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Nice Guy reiterates.

“Feminists are just man-haters,” SuperBarbie says, rolling her eyes, and then tightening her arms around SuperKen’s neck.

“I’m a feminist,” Hippie Avenger protests, “but I’m definitely not a ‘man-hater.’”

“Or women who can’t get a man,” SuperBarbie adds.

“Hey,” Mr. Nice Guy says. “She’s got me!”

“Exactly,” SuperKen says, flexing the muscles in his arms as he gropes SuperBarbie. “She couldn’t attract a man.”

“Troglodyte!” Mr. Nice Guy wants to say (but doesn’t).

“I’m a feminist,” Miss Demeanor says, raising an eyebrow at SuperBarbie. “Wanna insult me, chickie?”

“And she’s into me,” Psycho Superstar adds.

“Well, I’m into your body,” Miss Demeanor says, pinching his ass.

“I’m okay with that,” he says. Then he turns and glares at SuperKen. “So, my lady here is a feminist, Seargent Rock … wanna tell me that I’m not a man?”

SuperKen and SuperBarbie glance at each other, and seem to telepathically agree to ignore them; the Male and Female Athletes of the Year may be fitter, but Miss Demeanor and Psycho Superstar have the potential to be a lot meaner in a fight.

“Come on, guys, let’s not get personal,” The Drifter says.

(Mr. Nice Guy was going to say something like this, but The Drifter beat him to it.)

The Drifter figures that his comic-book knowledge will not make him look like a geek in this particular instance, so he says, “This discussion is about Zan and Jayna on Super Friends, remember? Zan always turned into things made of water, and Jayna always turned into an animal. It’s just the way their superpowers worked. There was nothing political about it.”

“Everything is political,” Miss Demeanor says.

“Whatever,” SuperKen says, “Jan and Zayna still sucked.”

“And, no offense, ladies, but as much as I hate to agree with Sergeant Rock,” Psycho Superstar adds, “the rest of those add-on, politically correct Super Friends were bullshit, too. I mean, Apache Chief? Samurai? Rima the fucking Jungle Girl? Gimme a break.”

Hippie Avenger sighs. “But, like, the creators were just trying to instill some cultural sensitivity into their young viewers, at a time when, like …”

“Then they should have created culturally sensitive characters that didn’t suck ass!” Psycho Superstar says. “The real superheroes are the five originals: Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman.”

“Aquaman is useless,” The Statistician says, with unexpected emotion. He adapts a Saturday-morning-cartoon-superhero voice. “Superman and Wonder Woman, you two go fly around the world at supersonic speed to prevent the disaster that’s been set in motion by the Legion of Doom! Batman and Robin, you guys get your asses into the Batmobile and stop the villains from escaping their lair! And Aquaman … uhhhhhh, yeah … Aquaman. Um, what are your superpowers again? Oh. Right. Um, then you go for a swim, okay? And while you’re in there, you should have a talk with your friends the fishies. Yes, you go do that. That’ll really help.”

Everyone laughs, except for The Drifter. He takes a slurp from his beer and mutters, “I like Aquaman.”

The Drifter is the closest thing to a real-live Aquaman in the group. He was on the Tom Thomson High School junior swim team in grade nine, but he wasn’t allowed back in grade ten because of his lacklustre grades. From the beach here at Mr. Nice Guy’s parents’ cottage, The Drifter can swim all the way out to the island and back.

“Aquaman,” The Statistician pronounces, “is useless.”

“Fuckin’ right,” Psycho Superstar agrees. “Robin could beat him in a fight. The friggin’ Boy Wonder. Hell, Batman’s butler would kick Aquaman’s ass.”

“Not in the water,” The Drifter says, his eyes narrowing. “The neutered, Saturday-morning-cartoon version of Aquaman we all saw on Super Friends wasn’t a fair representation of the King of Atlantis! I mean, in Superman vs. Aquaman, Aquaman took down Superman by flooding his lungs with water, then …”

He stops, and his face flushes red. He’s crossed the Dork Line yet again.

The Statistician laughs. “You’d better put away the comic books and start hitting the textbooks, little brother.”

“Stop calling me ‘little brother.’”

“It’s what you are.”

“Fuck off. I’m just as big as you are.”

“What? Are you gonna go tell the fishies on me?”

Hippie Avenger, who can’t swim at all, has already consumed a six-pack of strawberry-flavoured vodka coolers, and she always gets sentimental or amorous (or both) when she’s drunk. She throws her arms around The Drifter (who is momentarily distracted from his funk by the feel of her braless breasts against him), and she says, “All of you guys are, like, my Super Friends!”

“More like the Super Dorks,” The Statistician says, rolling his eyes, hoping to deflect yet another maudlin, tearful, it’s-our-last-summer-together moment. “Perhaps we should call ourselves the Not-So-Super Friends.”

“You’re such a dick,” The Drifter mutters.

Without unlocking his gaze from the second bratwurst sausage he’s scorching, The Statistician says, “Perhaps you should shut up and go study for your remedial summer-school courses, little brother.”

The Drifter jumps up, fists clenched.

“Hey now, boys,” says SuperKen, in that fighter-pilot voice of his, “calm down, now. I don’t want to have to intervene.”

The Statistician turns and glares at SuperKen. “What are you, the United Nations Security Council? Perhaps you should mind your own business.”

“Yeah,” The Drifter says. “This is between us. Go back to fondling the Female Athlete of the Year.”

“Hey,” SuperKen says, easing his grip on one of SuperBarbie’s breasts. “Watch it.”

Mr. Nice Guy feels obligated to ease the tension by saying something funny, so in his best Ted Knight voice (who did the narration for the Super Friends cartoon on Saturday morning TV), he cries out the motto: “To fight Injustice. To right that which is wrong. And to serve all mankind! ”

Again The Statistician rolls his eyes. “Perhaps our motto should be: To talk about how somebody else should do something about Injustice! To get drunk while discussing right and wrong! And to eat bratwurst while doing it!”

He thrusts the scorched sausage in the air, brandishing the crooked coat-hanger wire like a general leading a cavalry.

“You’re such a superior being,” The Drifter snipes. “The rest of us have so much to learn from you.”

“Actually,” Miss Demeanor says, “he’s right. Our modus operandi is sitting around together, drinking and eating and throwing bullshit around. We never actually do anything”

“And there are probably, like, a thousand other little groups like us all over the Western world,” Hippie Avenger ponders. “We’ve never had a Vietnam to bring us together. Or a Kent State. Or a Woodstock.”

“Or a World War One,” SuperKen adds. “Or a World War Two.”

“Nor a depression, nor an inquisition,” says The Statistician, in that professorial tone of voice, “nor a Renaissance, nor a revolution.”

“And fucking amen to that!” Psycho Superstar says. “Who needs any of that shit?”

“And fucking amen to that!” Miss Demeanor seconds, grandly raising her bottle in the air. “To Indifference!”

“To the Not-So-Super Friends!” Mr. Nice Guy cries, also raising his bottle.

Not wanting to look like the sucky-baby his brother often accuses him of being, The Drifter reluctantly lifts his bottle, too. “To the Indifference League,” he says.

“Good one!” says Hippie Avenger.

“Nice,” says Miss Demeanor

Mr. Nice Guy shrugs, and mutters, “What about the Not-So-Super Friends?”

“It’s good, too, buddy,” Hippie Avenger says in that soothing, dovelike voice.

“To the Indifference League!” The Drifter cheers again.

Hippie Avenger, Psycho Superstar, Miss Demeanor, and The Statistician hoist their drinks and repeat the toast in unison. As the co-chairs of Teens Need Truth, the Perfect Pair are still clucking to each other over the blasphemous use of the term “fucking amen,” but in the spirit of the moment they join the toast anyway, waving their antifreeze-coloured athletic beverages at the airplanes and stars twinkling overhead.

Bold declarations are made.

“Collectively, from this point forward,” Hippie Avenger says, “we will be known formally as The Indifference League, and informally as the Not-So-Super Friends. All those in agreement, say ‘Aye’!”

“Aye!” the others cry.

“My cottage,” Mr. Nice Guy declares, “will be henceforth known as The Hall of Indifference. We will all pledge to meet here at least once a year for the rest of our lives. All those in agreement, say ‘Yeah’!”

They all cry “Yeah,” even The Statistician, who is pretty sure that he will soon be moving on to Bigger and Better Things.

“Signed, the Breakfast Club,” says Miss Demeanor.

“Another good one,” the Drifter affirms. “You rock, Molly Ringwald.”

“I’m more like the fucked-up Ally Sheedy character, I think,” says Miss Demeanor, as she reaches stroke the crotch of Psycho Superstar’s shredded jeans. “But I do rock.”

“Oh, baby, you knowwwwww what ah like!” Psycho Superstar croons, Big Bopper style, placing his hands behind his head and performing several spastic pelvic thrusts.

The Perfect Pair look away in disgust, even though SuperBarbie has been casually grinding SuperKen’s erection between her gym-toned butt cheeks all evening.

Her wine-cooler-fuelled euphoria unrestrained, Hippie Avenger cheers, “Now, like, all we need are superhero names!”

Since they are aware that everyone calls them Ken and Barbie behind their backs, anyway, The Perfect Pair are good sports about it. They simply add the prefix “Super” to their nicknames, and then they run off giggling into the cottage, where they will kiss and fondle and suck and stroke and finger each other, but they will not have actual intercourse, since they have promised God (via the Teens Need Truth club) that they will wait until their wedding night to consummate their bond.

Mr. Nice Guy and Hippie Avenger invent one another’s Indifference League names. They have been dating for the past couple of months, and they’re going to the senior prom together; they have not yet stumbled upon Just the Right Moment to have sex with each other, though.

As far as the rest of the gang can tell, Miss Demeanor is not so much dating Psycho Superstar as simply exchanging bodily fluids with him. Nevertheless, she is so moved when Psycho Superstar names her after his second-favourite rock song (a track from the Kim Mitchell EP), that she jumps up and hugs him, kissing him on both cheeks. Miss Demeanor’s lips have spent much time on other parts of Psycho Superstar’s body, but she’s never kissed him there before. Her lips normally hit him like punches, like challenges, but these ones are more like whispers. He has to holler “Fuckin’ RIGHT!” at the top of his lungs just to keep things in balance.

Without girlfriends or sex buddies to assist them in selecting their own alter-ego titles, The Statistician and The Drifter pick their own. The other Not-So-Super Friends agree that their new aliases suit them.

The Indifference League spends the rest of the night becoming superheroically intoxicated.

“Hey, Statistician!” The Drifter calls out, now full of cheap, sweet beer and renewed brotherly love, “Cook me up another bratwurst, wouldja?”

“Indeed,” The Statistician replies, “but first you’ve got to activate the Brat Signal.”

It’s a pretty good joke for The Statistician.

Mr. Nice Guy smiles drunkenly at the stars; even if the other members of The Indifference League don’t realize it yet, he knows that the day that has just passed by will be a defining moment for all of them, that they have just formed the sort of esoteric bond that keeps friends together for the rest of their lives.

And it happened here, at his cottage, because of him.

I am happy, he tells himself. All is well. Yeah.

Mr. Nice Guy glances at his watch, his most prized possession: The Super G Digital Athletic Chronometer. It has a built-in calculator and everything; it’s as if he’s got the instrument cluster from a fighter jet strapped to his wrist.

The Super G reads 12:11 a.m. Eleven minutes past midnight. It’s tomorrow already.

The day that has just passed also happened to be his eighteenth birthday. None of them remembered, not even Hippie Avenger.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. It’s okay. It was a good day anyway.

When Psycho Superstar turned eighteen last month, they all chipped in for a bottle of rye whiskey for him, and he got to grope both Miss Demeanor’s and Hippie Avenger’s bodies when they complied with his request for “a birthday babe sandwich.”

For Mr. Nice Guy’s birthday, nobody even passed a card around for everyone to sign.

But it’s okay. Mr. Nice Guy doesn’t mind.

He is happy. All is well.

*

There is a pensive smile on Mr. Nice Guy’s face as he floats up from this old memory and resurfaces in the present, where his fingers are still hovering over the keyboard of his outdated computer.

It never happened again. Despite Mr. Nice Guy’s consistent efforts, that weekend twelve years ago was the last time that they were all together in the same place at the same time — well, except for the funeral, of course. Sure, a few of the other Not-So-Super Friends would show up at The Hall of Indifference from year to year, but never everyone, and sometimes no one at all.

This year will be different, Mr. Nice Guy thinks. He can feel it. This year, everyonce will come. He blinks, blinks again, and then continues typing.

Of course, the invitation is also extended to everyone’s significant others.

The Statistician’s moody, passive-aggressive wife was inducted into The Indifference League a few years ago, but Mr. Nice Guy doesn’t dare mention in the email the nom de plume that he and Hippie Avenger invented for her: Time Bomb.

Miss Demeanor and The Drifter have taken to calling her that, too, but never in front of The Statistician, and especially not to Time Bomb herself, who could go off at any moment, without warning.

Mr. Nice Guy stabs at the keyboard again.

The Drifter, Hippie Avenger and Miss Demeanor, invite your current main squeezes along if you’ve got ‘em, and we’ll initiate them into the League.

Mr. Nice Guy leans against the backrest of his faux-leather desk chair, hoping that either Miss Demeanor or Hippie Avenger shows up solo; lately he has found himself wondering if, under the right circumstances, some of the old magic might return with one of his former girlfriends. It’s been a lonely year.

He shakes his head, and types some more.

Mr. Nice Guy will provide all the booze and food (especially the bratwurst!). I’ve bought new sheets and pillows for The Hall of Indifference™, so no need for sleeping bags anymore!

Long Live the Not-So-Super Friends™!!!!!!!

Your Fearless Leader,

Mr. Nice Guy

Of course he will provide everything, the food, the booze, the lodging. He will pay for it all, without expecting anything in return, even though most of the other Not-So-Super Friends have higher incomes than he does. Of course he will! He is Mr. Nice Guy!

Mr. Nice Guy deletes “Your Fearless Leader.” SuperKen will surely make fun of him if he includes that line. He is about to hit the “Send” button when he notices something else, in the second paragraph of the email:

To commemorate this milestone year, all surviving members of the Indifference League™ are hereby summoned to The Hall of Indifference™ for the upcoming holiday long weekend!

He also deletes the word “surviving.” No need to reopen that old wound.