Stace Powers strode into the Champagne Room with a man and a woman trailing in her wake like a pair of pilot fish, her shark-like grin glowing fluorescent blue under the UV-A lighting. Her eyes darted from one small over-stuffed chair to another in a jerking mechanical manner before landing on me and blazing to life with gleeful anticipation. She was clad only in a miniscule neon-pink string bikini which visually popped in stark contrast to the abundance of dusky purple skin now towering over me.
‘So!’ she cried out, as one of the sycophants handed her a Caesar garnished with a long limp stalk of asparagus. ‘You went to Henning High.’
I nodded, and began to respond when she cut me off with: ‘Listen to me closely, you demented little fuck. Did you seriously, I mean like seriously seriously, come all the way here, entertaining the notion that you were actually gonna knock boots with me out of some sort of twisted sense of teenage nostalgia? Like, did that actually enter into the sad cavernous hollow of your cretinous skull? Look, I wouldn’t let anyone from Henning High even suck on my crusty tampons, let alone insert their useless limp pricks inta my kooch . . . are you reading me, fuckface? Is this all sinking in?’
Stace Powers leaned over the chair I sat in, clutching one armrest with an elaborately clawed talon, as she swung the Caesar near my face, smiling wider down at me. I admired her dental work, but said nothing as she continued: ‘Do you know the only reason I actually came in here when Ozzie told me someone from Henning was here to see me? Do ya? Because in Hogtown all I get are social rejects I apparently rubbed elbows with back in high school. I dunno what the population of Henning was, but I seem to have met every single student with a piss-poor excuse for a cock. Multiple times. Every single one of them, one of you, seems to think that since we both sliced open pig fetuses in Grade 10 Biology together, that somehow, as unlikely as it may seem to everyone else on the fucking planet, you’ve received an engraved invitation to my pussy . . . just last night I had a useless sack of shit who’s now a fucking lawyer, and apparently proud of it, using all the alpha male bullshit on me. Know what I did, dipshit? I laughed in his fucking face. A month ago I had a jackass who was on the student council with me offer nine thousand dollars to dance for him privately in his waterfront condo. I laughed in his face. So, come on chuckles . . . gimme your pitch. I can’t wait.’
She leaned back, breathing heavily from her monologue, and looked rather pleased with herself.
I responded: ‘Maybelline Forgrave.’
Her smile melted away, as a look of blank confusion washed across her features. ‘Say what?’
I repeated: ‘Maybelline Forgrave.’
She cocked her head. ‘What’s that? Makeup for emo goths?’
‘Nineteen Ninety-Four.’ I replied.
Stace Powers cocked her head the other way, her eyebrows jitterbugging around her forehead. ‘Dude, are you fucking tripping?’ she asked me.
I curled my index finger slowly, inviting her to lean in closer. She frowned, but leaned in. ‘Were you, or were you not . . . ’ I asked in as quiet a voice as I could muster over the din of the music. ‘ . . . the president of the yearbook committee for Henning High in the Ninety-Three slash Ninety-Four year?’
Her mouth hung open slightly. ‘Yeah.’ she said blandly. “I was. What of it?’
‘Maybelline Forgrave.’ I repeated.
Her frown returned, with interest. ‘I don’t know what the fuck that means.’
‘Maybelline was also a student at Henning.’ I told her. ‘She died that year.’
Stace’s mouth snapped shut. ‘Shit.’ she said.
‘Maybelline Forgrave.’ I repeated.
In the nature of full disclosure, it’s worth mentioning at this point that I had imbibed a drink or twelve before my conversation with Stace Powers.
‘I don’t remember her . . . ’ she said vaguely, looking my face over slowly. ‘But you. You. Yeah. I remember you now. You had, you have some sorta stupid name. Ding Dong or something.’
‘YoYo.’ I replied.
‘YoYo!’ she snapped her fingers, her fluorescent blue grin returning. ‘Ya know, I gotta say I am really fucking impressed I remembered that. Damn. YoYo. What did you do in a past life to deserve a name like that?’
‘I don’t believe in reincarnation.’
‘Hey, there was another guy out there I thought looked vaguely familiar . . . is he with you?’
I nodded. ‘That’s Moose. He didn’t want to be here for this.’
‘For this . . . ’ she mused, then a thought rippled across her features. ‘Moose? I don’t remember going to high school with anyone named Moose.’
‘It’s short for Moose Nostrils, if that rings any bells.’
‘I think I’d remember a name like that.’ she said.
‘His real na-’
She cut me off. ‘Doesn’t fuckin matter, man. You confirmed his pedigree, and we’re moving on. So, what were you saying, who died?’
‘Maybelline Forgrave.’
‘Right. It’s funny how many people you meet in your life, and never know their names.’ She took a sip from her Caesar. ‘Because, you know, a name like Moose Nostrils would stick in a person’s memory. You’re fucking with me, right?’
‘I don’t know how ubiquitous his nickname was, alright? I call him Moose Nostrils.’
‘You coined it?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘You saw him.’ I said. ‘You could play hide and seek inside those things.’
‘Wow,’ she said slowly, playing with her straw. ‘You must be a peach to know personally.’
‘Maybelline Forgrave.’ I said.
‘There’s, like, an echo in here or something.’ she said.
‘Maybelline Forgrave died that year, yet went completely unmentioned in the yearbook. Your yearbook. But, we can all look back and fondly reminisce about alt-grunge rocker Kurt Cobain also passing away that year, thanks to the two page spread you laid out.’
Stace Power’s florescent blue grin dropped dead before my eyes. Her stare at first widened in disbelieving shock, then almost immediately slammed down into a steely-eyed glare. ‘So . . . what? You came here specifically to belittle me about something I put in a yearbook when I was seventeen? Are you for real?’
The amusement of her opening rant was now dwindling in the rearview mirror, as genuine rage began to bubble up from every pore in her violet skin. As her fists clenched up tightly I observed her elaborately manicured fingernails; I only got a brief glance at them, but they appeared to depict miniature Georgia O’Keefe paintings.
One of her two sycophants approached, a female, and gently placed a hand on Stace’s shoulder. She had been the one who crammed the Caesar into Stace’s grip earlier. ‘Everything alright?’ she asked, looking from Stace to me. The sycophant’s touch seemed to jolt electricity through the woman still towering over me, she twitched away from the hand and snapped her head around.
‘Fucking spiffy.’ Stace snarled in reply. ‘Get this: the little sack of shit before you came here tonight with the intended purpose of trying to humiliate me about something from fucking high school, if you can believe that anyone would be so pathetic.’
The sycophant’s hair colour was impossible to guess under the UV-A light, but was cut into a bob which fell just below her ears and she had a pleasant face which looked as though it remained in a constant state of mild anxiety. She looked down at me with something close to pity. I smiled in return.
‘You know,’ Stace said. ‘if I had any empathy left, I’d likely feel really fucking sorry for you. Sure, the bitch croaked, that’s fucking sad. Life is amazing and death fucking sucks. So yeah, Makeup for Emo Goths croaked as a teenager, and I’m honestly sorry to hear that. But you . . . you, sitting there in your fucking hovel, hunched over and polishing your resentment over the years, slowly becoming more and more pickled by your impotent rage, that, on the other hand amuses me greatly. Because you know what, dicksmack? My life is the balls.’
I opened my mouth to respond, but she was already talking again: ‘I’ve travelled to every single continent on the planet, including crap-ass Antarctica. I stood directly where Kurt Russel’s last words in The Thing were uttered, have you even travelled as far as Etobicoke? Lobster, bitch, I gobble that shit down three times a week. Oysters? I suck those back like people stuff french fries into their faces. I’ve relaxed in winter hot springs with Japanese macaques, drinking martinis. Kilimanjaro, that’s a mountain asshole, in case you didn’t know. In fucking Africa. I’ve scaled it not once, but twice, while you were likely jerking off into a crusty sweat sock. Have you ever tripped out on Pacific Turqouise Cone Snail venom? Of course you haven’t, but I have, and I spoke to fucking God . . . do you know what she told me? She told me that she didn’t exist.’
I opened my mouth again.
‘No.’ she said, pointing at me with one of those elaborately manicured fingernails. ‘Shut up. The sheer metric tonnage of hilarity I feel toward your pathetic attempts to humiliate me publicly cannot be accurately measured by any tools currently developed by humanity. So, for you to drag this pathetic incident from the past and wave it around in my face as if it was supposed to wound me? Fat fucking chance. I’ve sang karaoke with a world renowned opera soprano, I’ve exchanged email chains with one of the most famous physicists in the fucking world. I smoked a joint with William S Burroughs. To quote Lou Reed: my week beats your year.’
She stared at me with genuine loathing, panting down into my face again.
I drunkenly responded: ‘Your breath smells like a tomato’s asshole.’
It seemed like a good response at the time.
Old black and white movies had the best slaps. Clean, sharp, and precise. The slap of Stace Powers held none of those qualities, it was half fist, a quarter talon, and connected with the side of my head, rather than my face. I suppose, in retrospect, I should be thankful she had the restraint not to brain me with the Caesar which was to blame for her breath.
A male voice from behind Stace frantically cried out: ‘Polkawoo! Hey now, come on!’ as a female voice chimed in with: ‘Stace, jesus!’ They were, I assume, the two sycophants. They fell on the mass of scrambling and flailing limbs, pulling her back off me. The left side of my head softly erupted with a warm buzzing wetness.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ Stace screamed at me.
‘Ding Dong.’ I remember answering, while touching the side of my head. ‘My name is Ding Dong.’