and ran across the dry and barren yard to the soothing but temporary
freedoms of malt liquor and general meandering. It was a painful
tumble, but worth it. Often the rock star would intercept him and
rope him into strangely pointed and personal conversations. But the
man was lonely, and always had plenty of beer, so Colin usually
obliged. Actually, they had a lot in common, Colin was proud to note.
It was too bad one could not choose their parents.
The security cameras that scanned Bidden’s massive backyard
would normally have prevented his sneaking out, but Colin knew a
blind spot, a tree he could climb that was never recorded because the
head of his father’s prize statue of Aphrodite blocked the camera’s
view.
It wasn’t that Bidden was such an overprotective, doting father.
He knew what trouble his son was prone to get mixed up in; the night
afforded many terrible risks. He feared not for Colin’s safety, though,
rather that the boy would get in trouble with the law and sully his
own public image as a charismatic father-to-all—an image he had
carefully cultivated, appearing in his own advertisements as a kindly,
trusted proprietor of your friendly neighborhood coffeehouse. To this
end he imposed a strict curfew. But this only impelled Colin to skip
classes during the day, drinking and carousing with the ne’er-do-
wells at the private high schools he kept flunking out of. And it forced
him to discover sly means of nocturnal escape. Colin was careful
never to be caught, else risk losing access to his secret tree of
nightlife. He worshipped it like a heathen at a live oak or a Christian
at two intersecting planks of a dead one.
The thick nails he had pounded into the neighbors fence were
still there and so it shouldn’t have been a difficult climb. But Colin
had fattened and softened considerably since his youth. They pushed
as hard as possible, but their hands seemed only to sink into the flesh
of his buttocks. He peered out over the top edge into the massive
backyard.
“What the fuck…?” he said, gasping, then cried: “Let me down!
Let me down!” He tried to duck his head under and steady himself,
but he could not find a foothold and slipped, falling on the others and
badly knocking the wind out of them. They lay there for a moment
trying to regain their breath.
“That was awful,” Izzy moaned. Though having nearly drowned
many times he had never suffered the impact of a wayward flesh
meteor.
ABYSSINIA
298
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