Free Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality by Bill Peters Page B

river.
    In her living room, the walls are white-out white with Sharpie drawings of tiny schools of fish. An algae’d over aquarium is positioned like it’s the TV. In a birdcage, two white parakeets make Pterodactyl in a Trashcan for noise. Beer cans on the floor have holes poked in their sides, andI smack my lips and chew on a cloud of thin, salty-tasting smoke.
    Spirit Bunny brings us a few cans of Stroh’s from the mini fridge next to the aquarium and sits on the floor, hugging her shins, duct tape over her right knee peeling. Lip Cheese sits on the floor too, leaning forward, plucking hair from the carpet, and begins drinking like Death’s Not Wearing a Condom. He’s sweating beer mist: single-tilt drinkdown, pivoting to the mini fridge. Later, he asks Spirit Bunny if she has a boyfriend.
    â€œMy last boyfriend was an irrigation tuber in California,” she says.
    â€œFor what?” Lip Cheese says.
    She leans forward. “Tomatoes?” Then she sputters laughter. “I gotta lie down.”
    And when she stands up to go to her bedroom, the whole scene slows down, and everyone’s voice drags like mummies and balls and chains. Because Lip Cheese, right then, stands up too, and sets his hands on her waist, and presses his crotch against her, but in this four-year-old way, like he doesn’t totally understand why he likes the feeling. His breath stutters, and his cheek twitches, and then, he shapes his lips like he’s about to whistle, and he kisses Spirit Bunny. As in, on the lips.
    â€œUm, okay,” Spirit Bunny says, in the over-adult way girls do after you’ve kissed them on the lips and they don’t want you to.
    â€œWhat’s wrong,” Lip Cheese says, in this way that’s innocent-sounding, like a child possessed by Satan. My stomach folds, grows a thumb like a boxing glove.
    â€œYou’re welcome to crash on the couch if you can’t drive,”Spirit Bunny glazes, now back to her Spirit Bunny voice. “I’ll leave the hall light on. I still can’t believe those guys in that van today. Those Wasp, freaking Reagan-humping jocks!—that’s a bit touched, man!”
    Her door closes. Lip Cheese chews on his thumb and paces in front of the aquarium, whispering entire paragraphs to himself, the occasional held breath squeaking out of him.
    â€œShut up, Nate,” he says. “Don’t do another goddamn thing.”
    Which, I should talk. Because contrary to what you might think about me, I am not Coco Ferguson: Sex-Having Specialist. Which is the name Necro gave me when I was fifteen and told him I first became a Sex-Having Specialist with Lisa Alisi from Henrietta. And as I fall asleep in the apartment’s scabies recliner, I think: Dear God please don’t let anybody actually follow up with Lisa Alisi from Henrietta, because they would learn that I haven’t even lost my virginity to my pillow. And then I would no longer be able to tell myself, after a bad night, “Oh well, at least people still think I lost my virginity to Lisa Alisi from Henrietta!”
    Then, I’m awoken by, of all things:
    â€œI’m Jeffrey Dahmer! I’m Arthur Shawcross! I’m Jeffrey Dahmer!”
    Lip Cheese is standing in front of Spirit Bunny’s bedroom door down the hall. He stares upward, no expression on his face, hands folded at his waist, waiting, neutral-like, like a Boy Scout ringing doorbells on a can drive.
    Spirit Bunny opens her bedroom door, squinting at him in a tank top and orange boxers with the Coca-Cola logo.
    â€œI ate a dude! I can do anything!” Lip Cheese says. “I’ve memorized this address!”
    Spirit Bunny rubs her eye and drifts toward the door jamb. “Okay, that kind of abrasiveness is really not what we’re about here,” she whispers. “You want to sleep in the chair outside, that’s tops. But you need to know that within this space, you are riding the