Chapter 19
Curtis, two weeks earlier: Frankie Says Relax
Curtis isn’t always stuck in the time warp of Greener Valley. When Scratch and Skip ends at 10pm, Curtis slowly moves from heartsick puppy singing songs of the 70s to heartsick puppy singing songs of the 80s.
It’s almost 10pm and Stu gets ready to drop the needle on “Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat.” Curtis turns the dial on his radio before he can hear even the hiss before the song starts. Too many memories, too much pain. He can tolerate all the songs on Scratch and Skip except for that one.
He moves the dial down until it settles on 92.7, another station time forgot. They play only music of the ‘80s, and only the new wave. None of that hair metal crap. No pop ballads. Just straight up new wave. Curtis likes this music. It’s a nice departure from wallowing through the ‘70s, though the DJ seems to be the ‘80s equivalent of Stu McLundy – a guy stuck in a time warp, glad to have the listeners that are only too happy to suck from the tit of nostalgia. Sometimes Curtis imagines himself as one of them, all skinny tie, tight jeans and checkered Vans, pogoing to Depeche Mode while girls with blue hair and torn fishnet stockings dance next to him. In his mind he’s happy as one of them and sometimes in these fantasies he’s even wearing a little eyeliner and a few earrings and some of the girls are hitting on him.
Curtis has a hard time concentrating on his new wave dreams tonight. He’s still sitting at the kitchen table, and the Cure is drifting from the radio. He wants to be lost in time, he wants to be getting ready to kiss some girl in a Frankie Says Relax shirt. But Curtis’s mind turns on him sometimes and as he leans in to kiss his imaginary girl, she turns into Sharon. She pulls away in disgust and slaps Curtis in the face. He offers himself a sarcastic laugh as way of condolence and says out loud “Only you, Curtis. Only you can have fantasies that turn into nightmares.” He turns off the Cure, turns out the lights and goes to bed.
Curtis dreams of nightclubs and Sharon. He’s going from club to club, looking for some ‘80s action, but every club is playing nothing but “Heartbeat.” Stu McLundy turns up as the bouncer at each door and he checks Curtis’s ID. “Sorry son, we can’t let you in.” He never says why, just turns Curtis away. He finally finds a club that has no bouncer. He walks through the door and hears the familiar strains of The Cure. He orders a drink and walks to the dance floor. It’s empty except for one person. Sharon. She’s wearing one of her outfits, which is to say she’s wearing next to nothing. She looks at Curtis and points to the floor, a dominatrix asking a sub to lick her shoes. Curtis puts his drink down and crawls to Sharon. When he gets to the black pumps, he looks up her long, beautiful legs and under her short skirt. Sharon lifts her leg as if to give him a peek and Curtis is just about to moan when Sharon kicks him hard in the chin. His head snaps back and his body follows. He’s sprawled out on the floor and Sharon walks over, straddles her legs over his face and squats. She’s going to pee on him, he thinks. Instead, a trout appears between Sharon’s leg and drops onto Curtis’s face. He screams and squirms as Sharon laughs and when he pushes the fish off his face, he looks up and sees Sharon is now in her wedding dress. It’s decorated with fishhooks and dripping muddy lake water. Sharon looks down on Curtis, smiles and says, “You’d love to see this, but you don’t have the balls.”
With that Curtis laughs. It’s a laugh devoid of humor and filled with bad intentions. As he laughs, he shakes, and with each shake, Sharon falls apart. Bones erode, pieces of limbs fall off, her face becomes nothing more than a horrified skull. Curtis laughs until he can’t breathe, until Sharon lies in pieces around him. He stands up, dusts himself off and says, “We’ll see, bitch.”
Curtis wakes up laughing. He gets out of bed, goes to the kitchen, gets a paper and pen, turns on the radio and sits down to write a letter to Sharon while Joy Division sings about love tearing us apart.
Dear Sharon,
You don’t deserve to live.
And so, you won’t.
Love always,
Curtis
He puts the letter in an envelope and addresses it to Sharon. He turns off the radio and instead sings softly to he while contemplates the envelope.
“Listen to my heart pound. Listen to my love sound. Heartbeat, it’s a lovebeat….”
He puts a stamp on the envelope and at 1am walks three blocks to the post office to deposit the envelope in a mailbox. He goes home, gets into bed and dreams again of Sharon falling apart.
He wakes up the next morning knowing what he’s done will be the end of him. He feels it. Like he just set off a terrible chain of events that will culminate in very bad things, possibly his death.
He laughs.