Chicken by David Henry Sterry Page B

anything funny with the Hollywood Employment Agency, cuz they were people who would seriously kill you. Get the money up front.
    â€˜Goil messed up,’ Sunny says.
    â€˜We’re all messed up, Sunny,’ I say.
    â€˜Yeah, but that goil MESSED UP!’ Sunny says.
    â€˜Okay, you warned me. Now, who is she?’ I am persistent and stupid holding hands.
    â€˜She Jade,’ says Sunny.
    Jade.
    With the money she’s probably making and the money I’m making, we could get a bitching apartment, a nasty car, a killer Harley, and we could have crazy freaky sex every day. How cool would that be? I can see the whole thing so clearly.
    Jade.

9.
JADE
    Love stinks .
    â€”J. G EILS B AND

    J ADE’S NOT her real name. She never tells me her real name, and I never ask. No one knows where she lives. She drives a kooky pink convertible and she never wears shoes, even in restaurants.
    I’m tooling up the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down in the pink of Jade’s convertible, cool seasalty air breezing our hair, the moon shining on the ocean and ‘Good Vibrations’ washing over us from the radio.
    She doesn’t say anything, hasn’t spoken since we left the party. The only reason I know her name’s Jade is because Sunny told me so. In fact the only thing she said to me all night was ‘You wanna go for a ride?’
    But when she did I was out the door faster than you can say, ‘Heel, boy!’
    I caught Sunny giving me his you’re-an-idiot-to-walk-out-that-door-with-that-girl look, but all I could do was shrug him a whattayagonnado? smile as I was swept like a felled tree down Jade’s flume.
    One part of me wants her to talk, wants to know how this girl got to be Jade. But another part of me just doesn’t want to hear all her weepy stories, doesn’t want to tell her mine.
    Then I remember reading in a magazine that living the High Life is just a state of mind. If you think you’re living the High Life, ipso facto, presto chango, you’re living the High Life. I have large cash money in my pocket. I’m roaring up the Pacific Coast Highway with all this Jade. I’m living the High Life.
    But Kristy’s sitting in the living room of my mind. I should call her. I don’t wanna call her. I don’t need her.
    I have Jade.

    * * *
    When I’m ten my dad pulls me aside after church one Sunday, and there, with Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior nailed to the cross and bleeding for my sins right over my head, he says, ‘Son, one day you’ll fall in love with a nice girl, and, well … you’ll want to make love to her. You’ll know you’re in love because your organ will become engorged with blood … Your partner’s whatsit will secrete a thick lubricant … you’ll mount her, penetrate, and thrust until you ejaculate your spermatozoa. The good news, son, is that if it’s done properly, you can get the whole thing over with in less than a minute!’
    I’m sure that’s not actually what he said, but that’s what I remember. I spend the next few years trying to figure out where I’m gonna get a bloody organ, what I’m gonna lubricate it with, and where I’m gonna find something from the spermatazoic era to ejaculate.
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    Encased in steel and glass, I can see the Pacific Ocean waving at me all the way from Japan. I don’t know whose place this is, or why Jade has the key, or even where the hell I am, for that matter, but I am living the High Life.
    Jade Asian handmaiden lapdances all around me. She still hasn’t spoken a word since we got here, and the more she doesn’t say anything, the more normal it seems, and the more I like it. All those words. What’s the point?
    Jade lays out her equipment with the precision of an alchemist. Lights her candle. Lays her spike on the table. Dumps her white powder into her spoon. Floats her spoon under flame until