Waveland Read Free Page B

moved into the house, and Greta rented the apartment to a one-handed white guy named Eddie who was a veteran of the first Gulf War and an acquaintance of hers. He told Vaughn he was gay. He was a nasty-looking thing with cartoon hair, stuck up straight as licorice sticks, and a fondness for Hawaiian shirts, of which he seemed to have a good supply. He seemed like trouble, like he could take care of himself and he'd do it at your expense. He stared, unblinking, always looking straight at you, pressure in those eyes. The night he came to see the apartment, Greta came back inside after showing the apartment and said, “He's one of those off-the-books military types they send in for the sterile fatigue stuff.”
    “Why rent him the place?”
    “Like him,” she said. “He's on our side, you know?”
    “Grand,” Vaughn said.
    “He's taking you out for beer,” she said.
    “When?”
    “Now,” she said. “I told him you'd go with.”
    They went to a local bar called Hot-2-Trot. It was a place Vaughn and Greta had gone a few times, off the beach near Central Avenue, the leveled main street in Waveland. Eddie wanted a nightcap. “Just one drink,” he said.
    He got drunk. When he was drunk he asked Vaughn to kiss him, and Vaughn said, “No. And you'd best be careful, as I am friends with the landlady.”
    “Heard that,” Eddie said. “Miss Greta. She's good.”
    “You know her?”
    “Oh… no, not really. I mean, sorta. I worked some job of hers a couple times, landscape stuff, construction. Hey— c'mon. Give us a little peck on the cheek.”
    “I don't kiss people anymore,” Vaughn said, trying to steer clear of any kind of trouble. He figured Eddie was testing him.
    Eddie had giant pruney lips. He was a percussionist before he lost the hand.
    “Wingy Manone,” Vaughn said, remembering the one-armed trumpet genius from some book his brother, Newton, read when they were kids.
    “Shit,” Eddie said, and he frowned, as if Vaughn's saying it was crude and insensitive.
    Vaughn started to apologize, and suddenly Eddie leaned over and kissed him. Sloppy, on the lips, his moustache scraping Vaughn's upper lip, Eddie's lips grabbing his like some snap-on tool. There wasn't anything Vaughn could do.
    Vaughn figured Eddie was screwing with him, or maybe Eddie
was
gay and wanted to prove it to everybody every minute.
    “Gotcha,” Eddie said, smirking, turning back to his Lone Star.
    “That's it,” Vaughn said. He wiped his mouth elaborately. “Maybe try brushing next time.”
    “Now, if you'd just pecked me, like right here”—Eddie tapped his lips, which looked like a pair of liver-colored shrimp bunk-bedding on the bottom of his face—“if you pecked me like I asked, you'd have been home free.”
    Eddie had a fancy one-handed cigarette-lighting trick. Hedid it and then looked to Vaughn for approval. “I can do it with no hands, too,” he said. “Like that guy in
Freaks.”
    “People been doing that since that movie came out,” Vaughn said. “The forties or something. That guy had
no
arms.”
    “Guy was a laundry bundle,” Eddie said. “But I'm bringing the trick back.” He made a big smoke cloud. “They're killing cigarettes here,” he said. “Next month or something. I'll have to go outside.”
    “You can deal with it.”
    “So what's with you and Greta?” Eddie said. “You moved on up? That the thing?”
    “We're friends,” Vaughn said. “We're seeing each other.”
    “Oh, now that's nicely put.”
    “I don't think I like you all that much,” Vaughn said.
    “You haven't had my best stuff yet,” Eddie said.
    They got more beer, and Eddie started telling Vaughn about the war. “It's like the minute I saw those people over there playing drop-the-goat I knew we were in trouble. I mean,
drop-the-goat
. Right there, you know? You do not want to fuck with people who play ball games using an animal as the ball.”
    “Yeah,” Vaughn said.
    “It's a question of reverence for life,” Eddie