Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,8

lungs faltered. His howl cracked. He looked at Jenny and said, “You have a black belt in judo?”

“I trained with Chinese Buddhist monks.”

“Nice try. Judo’s Japanese.”

“What do Chinese monks practice?” Mandy asked.

“Kung fu,” Steve said.

“Well, maybe the Chinese monks Jenny trained with also practiced judo too.”

Jeff’s wolf howl sputtered into chuckles. He began shaking his head.

“What?” Mandy said, planting her fists on her hips.

“No comment,” he said, shooting Steve a this-is-what-I-deal-with-everyday look.

“Hey,” Mandy said. “Shouldn’t we put our Halloween costumes on?”

Everyone agreed and went to the BMW’s trunk. Steve scrounged through his backpack for the white navy cap he’d brought, found it at the bottom of the bag, and tugged it on over his head.

He heard a zipper unzip behind him. He started to turn around only to be told by Mandy to stop peeking.

“Peeking at what?” he said.

“I’m changing,” Mandy said.

“Right there?”

“Hey, bro, stop perving on my girl,” Jeff said, eyeing Steve up and down: the white navy cap, the red pullover, the pale trousers. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

“Gilligan,” Steve said.

Jeff guffawed and turned his attention to Jenny, who was slipping on a pair of cat ears to go with her black eye mask and bowtie. “Come on, help me out,” he said to her. “A dog? Wait, a mouse? Hold on—someone who is completely fucking unoriginal?”

“What are you?” Steve asked him.

Jeff shrugged out of his pastel blue blazer and yellow necktie—he had come straight from work to pick Steve and Jenny up out front NYU’s Greenberg Hall—and exchanged them for a black leather jacket. He held his arms out in a ta-da type of way.

“No idea,” Steve said.

“Michael Knight! You know, from that Knight Rider show.” He whistled. “Sexy mama!”

Steve turned to find Mandy adjusting her boobs inside a skintight orange bodysuit with a plunging neckline. Accentuating this were shiny orange boots, yellow tights, and a feisty yellow wig with black highlights. In the center of her chest was the ThunderCats logo: a black silhouette of a cat’s head on a red background.

“Cheetara,” she said, smiling hopefully.

Noah, Austin, and Cherry were approaching from Noah’s green Jeep Wrangler, appearing and disappearing in the swiftly morphing clouds of mist. Austin, carrying an open bottle of beer, was in the lead. He’d shaved the sides of his head and styled the middle strip of hair into a Mohawk a year or so ago. With his satellite ears and angular face, however, he looked more like Stripe from Gremlins rather than a punk rocker. A flock of crows, tattooed in black ink, encircled his torso, originating at his navel and ending on the left side of his neck, below his ear. Now only a couple of the birds were visible, seeming to fly up out of the head hole cut into the cardboard box he wore. Condoms were taped all over box, some taken out of the packages and filled with a gluey substance that surely couldn’t be semen.

“You get one guess each,” Austin told them, tipping the beer to his lips.

“A homeless bum,” Steve said.

“A total jackass,” Jeff said.

“Homework,” Mandy said.

Austin frowned at her. “Homework?”

“That box is a desk, right?”

“Right—I dressed up as homework.”

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Jeff said.

“A one-night stand, mate!”

Steve and Jeff broke into fits. After a moment Mandy laughed hesitantly. Then she said “Oh!” and laughed harder.

“Gnarly, hey?” Austin said, smiling proudly. “So, how the fuck is everyone?”

“Not as good as you apparently,” Jeff said.

“This is my first beer. Right, Cher?”

“I’ve lost count,” Cherry said. She was perhaps five feet on tip toes, though her teased hair gave her a couple more inches. Jeff called her Mighty Mouse, which always ticked her off. She’d grown up in the Philippines, but moved to the States to work as a registered nurse a few years ago. She had nutmeg skin, sleepy sloe Asian eyes, a cute freckled nose, and the kind of sultry lips that would look good sucking a lollipop on the cover of Vogue magazine, or blowing an air-kiss to a sailor shipping off.

Noah joined Steve and took a swig from a bottle of red wine. He was the polar opposite of Austin: wavy dark hair, unassuming good looks, mellow, disciplined. Even more, he was an up-and-coming sculptor. His first exhibit a couple months back had been well-received by critics, and he’d sold a few pieces to boot.

“You a boxer?” Steve said to him, referring to the black shoe polish he’d smeared around his left eye. He’d also drawn a large P in