suckered by his own con. Recently, Jeremy had begun to suspect that
some people played the game of life so well, they didn’t know it was a
game.
They deceived even themselves with all their talk of friendship, love,
and compassion. Tod was looking more and more like one of those
hopeless jerks.
Being best friends was just a way to get a guy to do things for you that
he wouldn’t do for anyone else in a thousand years. Friendship was also
a mutual defense arrangement, a way of joining forces against the mobs
of your fellow citizens who would just as soon smash your face and take
whatever they wanted from you. Everyone knew that’s all friendship was,
but no one ever talked truthfully about it, least of all Tod.
Later, on their way from the Haunted House to an attraction called Swamp
Creature, they stopped at a stand selling blocks of ice cream dipped in
chocolate and rolled in crushed nuts. They sat on plastic chairs at a
plastic table, under a red umbrella, against a backdrop of acacias and
manmade waterfalls, chomping down, and everything was fine at first, but
then Tod had to spoil it. “It’s great coming to the park without
grownups, isn’t it?” Tod said with his mouth full. “You can eat ice
cream before lunch, like this. Hell, you can eat it for lunch, too, if
you want, and after lunch, and nobody’s there to whine at you about
spoiling your appetite or getting sick.”
“It’s great,” Jeremy agreed.
“Let’s sit here and eat ice cream till we puke.”
“Sounds good to me. But let’s not waste it”
“Huh?”
Jeremy said, “Let’s be sure, when we puke, we just don’t spew on the
ground. Let’s be sure we puke on somebody.”
“Yeah!” Tod said, getting the drift right away, “on somebody who
deserves it, who’s really pukeworthy.”
“Like those girls,” Jeremy said, indicating a pair of pretty teenagers
who were passing by. They wore white shorts and bright summery blouses,
and they were so sure that they were cute, you wanted to puke on them
even if you hadn’t eaten anything and all you could manage was the dry
heaves.
“Or those old farts,” Tod said, pointing to an elderly couple buying ice
cream nearby.
“No, not them,” Jeremy said. “They already look like they’ve been puked
on.”
Tod thought that was so hilarious, he choked on his ice cream. In some
ways Tod was all right.
“Funny about this ice cream,” he said when he stopped choking.
Jeremy bit: “What’s funny about it?”
“I know the ice cream is made from milk, which comes from cows. And
they make chocolate out of cocoa beans. But whose nuts do they crush to
sprinkle over it all?”
Yeah, for sure, old Tod was all right in some ways.
But just when they were laughing the loudest, feeling good, he leaned
across the table, swatted Jeremy lightly alongside the head, and said,
“You and me, Jer, we’re gonna be tight forever, friends till they feed
us to the worms. Right?”
He really believed it. He had conned himself He was so stupidly sincere
that he made Jeremy want to puke on him Instead, Jeremy said, “What’re
you gonna do next, try to kiss me on the lips?”
Grinning, not picking up on the impatience and hostility aimed at him
Tod said, “Up your grandma’s ass.”
“Up your grandma’s ass.”
“My grandma doesn’t have an ass.”
“Yeah? Then what’s she sit on?”
“Your face.”
They kept ragging each other all the way to Swamp creature. The
attraction was hokey, not well done, but good for a lot of jokes because
of that. For a while, Tod was just wild and fun to be around.
Later, however, after they came out of Space Battle, Tod started
referring to them as “the two best rocket jockeys in the universe,”
which half embarrassed Jeremy because it was so stupid and juvenile.
It also irritated him because it was just another way of saying “we’re
buddies, blood brothers, pals.” They’d get on the Scorpion, and just as
it pulled out of the station, Tod would say, “This is nothing, this is