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

Nate. Because I wouldn’t be a man unless I changed your goddamn diapers. Have to let them know who’s boss .”
    Back in Penfield, the house with Real Dad’s room is this large, peeling, cotton-gin-era thing with a single broad, white wall as a front. The sign above the maroon front door, which is slanted in its frame, says PENFIELD MANSE.
    The stairs are maroon-carpeted and squishy going up to the second floor, and the maroon changes the light to a color that, if it were a Crayola, would be called Dying Cantaloupe. Real Dad nods as he passes maybe a priest, or any one of the alone-a-thon of divorced husbands that might occasionally open their doors and lean out, in their bathrobes and flip-flops. He opens his room’s sliding wooden door, where there is no lock. The showers, I remember, are communal and down the hall.
    Real Dad brushes his teeth while he sits on the sofa and flips on the TV. Some old movie comes on, with Groucho Marx in it. He starts laughing, really hard, through the toothpaste, at the punchlines. Which means he’s done talking for the night, and I’m leaving. “Have fun,” he says, and spits into his kitchen sink.
    Back home, Mom is postured like geometry on the Woolly Mammoth. Her one glass of Sam Adams, foam drying to the sides. “How was he?” she says.
    â€œWe tried to see this band Squeezebeagler and got kicked out,” I say. “Then he bet me he could kick the receiver hook off a payphone.”
    She puts a hand to her mouth, crossing her leg, a springechoing through the couch’s hollows. “He’s funny,” she says. But then she narrows her eyebrows, angering down a smile.
    And then, according to the God Hates Nate Act of 1931, I change into my Bills pajama pants, go to the den, and look at NecronicA.
    Mom’s bedroom door closes. When I hit refresh, I flinch: The word SOLD appears in red across the thumbnail of a painting of a naked woman with a legion of army soldiers on fire behind her, faces peeling off, tongues broiling.
    Which makes me think, really, the whole time so far, maybe I was lying to you about Bringing the Funny and Holy Grail Points. Maybe I’d rather not joke around with Real Dad, and maybe sometimes I’d really like to talk to Real Dad about what Garrett Alfieri told me, about how I’m still the same and I talk the same, and how I’m not good at anything, and how Necro has NecronicA and Weapons of Mankind and all this money, and Lip Cheese has a Home and a Cash and they’re all happier than me.
    Back when I was happier, even an hour ago, at the end of my night with Real Dad, he went to bed, and I went home. When I got in the car to drive back to Gates, from outside the Penfield Manse, Real Dad’s window was the only one with a light on. Through his window, I saw him take off his shirt, posture frumped up. There was no expression on his face, no Wall of Comedy. He folded some piece of clothing, downed a glass of water in one gulp, and turned off the light.

THE NINTENDO POWER BUCOLIC FARM
    A waitress at Applebee’s hovers her hand over a phone behind the hostess stand when Lip Cheese comes in and slides in across from me and next to Toby at the Airplane Booth. Static prickles his hair when he rips off his pull-down mask-hat, and he smells vaguely like hard-boiled egg. He removes a rolled-up stack of papers from the pocket of his Bungee Cord Drop-Zone jacket and places it on the table. The top page says Quitclaim Something or Other and has the word “hereby.”
    â€œLip Cheese: What?” I say.
    â€œI was at the County Clerk,” Lip Cheese says. “I thought if you were still mad at Necro, that I could do some research to, you know.”
    Toby and I look at each other. I bite into a hollowed-out French fry.
    â€œThese copies cost forty-three dollars, guys!” Lip Cheese says. “It took me two hours to figure out what a deed was!”
    â€œLip Cheese: I just