Free What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery Page B

Sid.”
    I stick out my hand.
    “Sid, this is Bill.”
    His wrist may be limp, but his hand’s about as soft as deep-fried armadillo.
    “Bill’s like famous.”
    The dude makes pleased little chuckling sounds.
    “He’s the Dog Groomer to the Stars.”

15
    Bill’s house can’t be any farther than the Jell-O factory, just a pricier direction, but Blitzer gets him to spring for a cab by saying I’m meeting my new girlfriend for some underage clubbing action at eleven, and otherwise I’ll keep her waiting at Crossroads of the World all by her girlie lonesome. He asks me her name, just being polite I guess, and Blitzer slides me a side of elbow, we’re all in the backseat and he’s in the middle.
    “Nancy.”
    Blitzer has to cough for laugh camo, and I wonder what his name’s supposed to be, and what’s up with the AKA action anyways, our names are mostly all made up in the first place, and second and third place too for some of us. Darby went by Bobby Pyn for starters, and then Richie Dagger before he wrote “Circle One” and settled on Darby Crash. Though Siouxsie’s comes from the nonfiction list, jacked from Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees.
    Bill says he doesn’t get out on the town as much as he might wish. He’s got this way of talking that reminds me of English accents, respectable ones, though without the sound of the accent itself. It’s hard to describe. Suave, you might call it. When he pays the fare he says to the cabbie, “And a very pleasant evening to you,” like he’s cruising into Opera Central in a tux with a babe in a Lucille ball gown on his arm instead of heading for the Betamax and the California king with a pair of punk rock rent boys in tow.
    The cabbie just grunts. He picked us up on Selma, after all. I wonder what he thinks we’ll do with Bill.
    Work him over with our studded belts?
    Pee on him in his bathtub?
    Force-feed him Milk-Bones?
    Those are all Stickboy stories. I’ve never done anything like that. The closest was last year staying at Skinhead Manor by Hollywood High. It was right after Sham 69 played the Whisky and we all had shaved heads and combat boots, and that jerk Eugene who’s in
The Decline
started scoring tricks with Jews and minorities who’d get the kinks out through abuse by skinheads, mostly just verbal, though. And I got in on that sometimes, they’d pay extra for a crew of us, I thought it would be creepy-Crowley, but basically it was Live from New York it’s Saturday Night. None of us were even prejudiced, the Stern brothers who rented the house were Jews themselves, so we had to really work it to be all hard and mean, though as long as it stayed at name-calling level with backup spitting now and then we definitely conned the vinces, we got lots of repeats.
    But this one black dude tried to get us telling darky jokes and no one even knew any. So he ended up flowing us these astronaut ones himself, with punch lines like “janitor in a drum” and “the jig is up.” Then to stay dry any refund demands we made up a song on the spot with Animal Cracker on guitar and Stickboy on bass called “I Hate Niggers,” and that was such a hit we did an encore later for this big-time Holocaust movie producer, “Anne Frank Was a Bitch.”
    It turns out Bill’s trip is more like the opposite, after we jam up the walk and he goes inside and closes the door while Blitzer runs it down for me, standing on the porch. But I don’t know about “fully” nonsexual, I’ll be stripping down to my shorts at least and our buddy Bill will be choking his cheetah like the night before the world’s end as long as I stick to the script.
    And as long as he does.
    So I ask Blitzer why he can’t go in too, I mean, how fun, being in a strange house almost naked with a stranger alone in his bedroom.
    “He wants one on one. I’ll be right here. I told him not to lock the door. If he tries anything weird, just yell.”
    He reaches for the door knocker, but I grab