Vineland Read Free Page B

you . . . fourteen?”
    â€œNice going, like to try for the car?”
    â€œNothin’ personal, jeez.” Zoyd had been removing the large and colorful dress. The girl shied away in mock alarm, covering her mouth and making her eyes round. He was wearing ancient surfer baggies underneath, and a dilapidated Hussong’s T-shirt. “Here you go, it’s all yours, mind if I check myself out on the news?”
    They sat together on the floor in front of the Tube, with a chair-high bag of Cheetos and a sixpack of grapefruit soda from the health-food store, watching baseball highlights, commercials, and weather—no rain again—till it was time for the kissoff story. “Well,” chuckled news anchor Skip Tromblay, “an annual Vineland event was repeated today, as local laughing-academy outpatient Zoyd Wheeler performed his now familiar yearly leap through another area plate-glass window. This time the lucky establishment was the infamous Cucumber Lounge, seen here in its usual location, just off Highway 101. Alerted by a mystery caller, TV 86 Hot Shot News crews were there to record Wheeler’s deed, which last year was almost featured on ‘Good Morning America.’ “
    â€œLookin’ good, Dad.” On the Tube, Zoyd came blasting out the window, along with the dubbed-in sounds now of real glass breaking. Police cruisers and fire equipment contributed cheery chrome elements. Zoyd watched himself hit the hardpan, roll, come up, and charge the camera, screaming and baring his teeth. Footage of the pro forma booking and release wasn’t included, but in Tubal form he was pleased to see that the dress, Day-Glo orange, near-ultraviolet purple, some acid green, and a little magenta in a retro-Hawaiian parrots-and-hula-girls print, came across as a real attention-getter. Over on one of the San Francisco channels, the videotape was being repeated in slow motion, the million crystal trajectories smooth as fountain-drops, Zoyd in midair with time to rotate into a number of positions he didn’t remember being in, many of which, freeze-framed, could have won photo awards someplace. Next came highlights of his previous attempts, at each step into the past the color and other production values getting worse, and after that a panel including a physics professor, a psychiatrist, and a track-and-field coach live and remote from the Olympics down in L.A. discussing the evolution over the years of Zoyd’s technique, pointing out the useful distinction between the defenestrative personality, which prefers jumping out of windows, and the transfenestrative, which tends to jump through, each reflecting an entirely different psychic subtext, at about which point Zoyd and Prairie began to drift away.
    â€œGive you a nine point five, Dad, your personal best—too bad the VCR’s busted, we could’ve taped it.”
    â€œI’m workin’ on it.”
    She looked at him evenly. “We really need a new one.”
    â€œAll I need’s the money, Trooper, I can’t even keep enough groceries in this place.”
    â€œOh, no. I know what that means. Fat talk! What am I supposed to do? Isn’t me that’s leaving all these cakes and pies and stuff layin’ around, candy bars in the freezer, Nestle’s Quik instead of sugar, eeoo! What chance have I got?”
    â€œHey, all’s I was talkin’ about was money, kid. Who’s been makin’ you crazy with fat talk?”
    The girl’s head on its long smooth neck and vertebrae gave a small precision turn and tilt, as if slipping into an adjustment that would allow her to talk with her father. “Oh . . . maybe one or two remarks lately from the Big I.”
    â€œOh great, yes, the well-known punker diet expert—named himself after what again, some robot?”
    â€œAfter Isaiah Two Four, a verse in the Bible,” shaking her head I-give-up slowly,