Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality by Bill Peters Page A

always forgets to take his things with him when he leaves a place. He’s left five pairs of boxers at my house, five chapsticks, one pair of swim trunks, two retainers, one bicycle, one Rygar, two Rush T-shirts, thirty-four colored pencils, one sleeping bag, two pillows, one toothbrush, and a pencil drawing of Electrus Nucleotide, a chrome bald man staring straight at you, arms muscley but straight-lined and robotic, like rock candy, each hand crunching a much smaller robot, electricity falling from their necks like confetti. The day he drew that was one of theBig Days, years ago, a day of Crazy Stories. Beforehand, we rode our bikes, standing up on our pedals, really Maverick Jetpantsing it, one county over into the pine trees. Somehow, the gate to the Holleder Armory was open. We made up our own organization back then, the CTA, even though the letters didn’t stand for anything. But we’d printed CTA bumper stickers—he’s left nineteen of those at my house—and we snuck into the armory, stuck them on some army jeeps, and rode away.
    I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Pinning Bow Ties on the Dead? You take that phrase.

NECRONIC A
    The Wegmans human resources office is mocha colored, the size of a bathroom that gave up on getting a toilet. I’ve borrowed one of Fake Dad No. 3’s purple shirts, and am wearing khakis and navy Polo socks. The tiny plastic fastener-thing that holds the socks together in the store knots up in my calf hair. I’m sitting in a plastic chair with no armrests, talking to this interviewer woman who is all shoulder pad:
    â€œAnd why is it that you want to work in Meats, or in Cheese Shop?” she asks.
    â€œI just thought it would be interesting,” I say. “That cheese, you know, would be interesting.”
    When, actually, I checked off “Meats” and “Cheese Shop” on the application because “cheese” is a funny word. Not Pants-funny, but those were more innocent times: Cheese; Power Down!; MEOW; etc.
    But after this bad job interview, and bad job interviews over the next week at Paychex, Abbott’s, the Jack Astor’s out near MCC, I call Necro, and I get the Robot Voice Messagethat says, in its Dr. Sbaitso voice: “We cannot take your call.” I eventually go to Applebee’s where, in the later afternoon, the window booths are empty. Grown men with loosened ties sit at the bar and eat off the workday with a buffalo chicken salad and a radioactive-colored margarita. Rain and wet headlights are outside, a donut-glaze of ice on everything. Via the payphone in the bathroom corridor, I manage to get ahold of Necro—which has been like trying to get ahold of the Pope over the last month—to meet me here.
    â€œGod I need to complain,” I tell him on the phone.
    So, a little consolation, I’m thinking, regarding a Job, a Plan, etc. And also, to get a better idea of whether Necro is mad at me, not specifically for Tadahito Murakami: Ninja Surgeon, but maybe just mad at me in general.
    I sit down at the same booth we always do, in the corner, below the model airplanes hanging from plastic strings, in the carpeted portion of the restaurant that’s raised one step. I get three Coke refills in before I see the Vomit Cruiser pull into a parking space outside.
    Which of course, when Necro comes in, he’s shit-zero in the way of help. With Lip Cheese behind him, he walks in like he’s just taken the best shower ever. And worse, he’s wearing his white Pink Floyd T-shirt, rust-stained from the washer, with the picture of the guy in the suit shaking hands with the guy on fire: Necro is always far more of an asshole on days when he wears his Pink Floyd T-shirt.
    â€œYou tell me how I’m doing, Nate,” Necro says, stuffing the Necro Hall of Fame Parka and Lip Cheese’s Bungee Cord Drop-Zone jacket into the corner of the booth across fromme. “Two percent raises went