“Stretch out,” he said. “When I first quit, it helped me, sometimes, to get past a jones. No kidding. Go on. Stand up and have a stretch.”
I did as advised. I rose from the chair, bent forward, toe-touched.
“Well, these contracts are fine,” Chad-Kyle said. “Though I feel a little dissed, if I’m being honest. I know this guy,” he told the Pellmore-Jasons, then, turning to me, said, “Why didn’t you say ‘Hi,’ chief? What’s up with that?”
“Why didn’t you say ‘Hi’?” Trip said.
“I didn’t realize he was him,” said Chad-Kyle. “Not til I saw his name on the contracts. I mean he looked like him, and I thought, ‘That’s him,’ but then I thought: ‘Brain-fart! How would Belt Magnet ever get inside the office of Jonny “Jonboat” Pellmore-Jason?’ Right? No way it’s him.”
“He must have thought the same thing seeing you,” Burroughs told him.
Chad-Kyle said, “Same thing, yeah, sure,” and, making a laugh face, swiped at the air, and, while tucking the monocle back into his vest, said, “Congrats on this contract, though, Belt, for real. Looks like all your embarrassing financial troubles have come to a sudden and happy end.”
“Why don’t you stamp those or whatever,” Triple-J said.
Chad-Kyle said, “Right,” and did as advised. He applied his pocket seal to each of the contracts, and passed one to Jonboat, and passed one to me. Then he filled out a pair of half-page certificates, and signed them and sealed them, and passed one to Jonboat, and passed one to me.
“That’s that, then,” said Jonboat.
Burroughs gave me an envelope, into which I dropped the papers and the check.
Chad-Kyle repacked and, as he latched his case shut, said, “Wait a second. Is that—is that what I think it is?”
“It is,” said Jonboat.
“Dang,” said Chad-Kyle.
“And the answer,” Jonboat said, “is: Yes. It’s been to the moon. Twice, actually.”
“No way,” said Chad-Kyle. “And it’s vintage?”
“Vintage?” said Jonboat. “I suppose you could say that. Sure. Yes.”
“He means the T-shirt,” Triple-J said.
“What’d you think I meant?”
“The helmet underneath.”
“There’s a helmet under there?”
“My last Space Shuttle helmet,” Jonboat said. “And the first of its kind. Before that model, there were separate assemblies for—”
“May I?” said Chad-Kyle.
“Go ahead,” said Jonboat. “That’s what it’s there for.”
Chad-Kyle removed the shirt from the helmet, held it up by the shoulders in front of his face, turned it toward me, toward Burroughs, then Trip and Jonboat, then back toward himself. “It’s in such good shape,” he said. “Looks like it’s got a touch of light staining—what is that, rocket grease or something? ha!—but, like, there’s no fade at all. No cracks in the decal. Shut your piehole cakeface. Shut your piehole cakeface. Shut your piehole-cakeface. I never knew how to say it right without the gaylord. You know, someone once told me you left the gaylord off the shirt so kids could wear it at school, but I never understood that.”
“What’s not to understand?” said Jonboat.
“Why you couldn’t wear a shirt with gaylord on it.”
“Gaylord’s a homophobic slur,” said Jonboat.
“Come on,” said Chad-Kyle. “I mean, I heard that before, but I never believed it. Like how can it be? If you call a gay person a gaylord, isn’t that like saying they’re the lord of gay people? Like the…king of gay people? What kind of slur is that? What gay person wouldn’t want to be the king of gay people?”
“At the time it was a slur,” Jonboat said. “You wouldn’t really use it to insult a gay person. You’d use it to insult other boys who, in most cases, weren’t gay, and in pretty much all cases didn’t want to be thought of by other boys as gay. I’m not exactly proud I used to use that word.”
“If I were you, I would be proud, if I may say, sir. You were ahead of your time. Me and my friends—a lot of them are gay—we use gaylord a lot, as smack talk, but like playfully, you know? My friend at work, Lotta—Belt knows her, maybe you do too, she’s about your guys’ age—and she’s a one hundred percent completely tolerant kind of person and she, just the other day, I came to work wearing this tiny bouquet of little flowers in my buttonhole, and Lotta called me a gaylord, but all she meant by it was, like, ‘Look who thinks he’s fancy!’ ”
“You sure you’re remembering that right?” Burroughs said. “Sure your friend didn’t call the flowers a nosegay?”
“No. Yeah. She did that, too. I mean, what she said was, ‘Look at the nosegay on this gaylord,’ which…But, look, people call me a gaylord all the time. I’m telling you. It’s a little edgy, sure—they say it to make fun of me—but it’s not homophobic. I mean, who’s homophobic anymore? I’m definitely not. Neither are my friends, especially not the gay ones. And no way you are, Mr. Pellmore-Jason. We just think of it—at least I just think of it, as a stuffy guy’s name. A dandy’s name, you know? Cause that’s what it is, right? It’s a kind of old-timey kind of British guy’s kind of name, isn’t it? The kind of guy who’d wear spats and a…a nosegay in his buttonhole. And I heard it was a gang once, too, someone said. I mean, wasn’t there a gang in Chicago called the Gaylords?”
“Actually, there was,” Jonboat said. “And it’s not all that uncommon of a surname, either. At one point, the president of Bell Aerospace was a man named Henry Gaylord.”
“Harvey Gaylord,” Burroughs said.
“Harvey. That’s right,” Jonboat said. “Harvey Gaylord. Mostly forgotten. Mostly unsung. But a very important person. Before he was president of Bell, he was one of the men who helped make the X-1 a reality.”
“The X-1?” said Chad-Kyle.
“Glamorous Glennis,” Burroughs said. “The aircraft Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in.”
“The huh Chuck what broke the who?” said Chad-Kyle. “That sounds like some serious history to me.”
“Serious history, you say,” Burroughs said.
“No disrespect, Jones,” Chad-Kyle said. “I just mean—it just wasn’t exactly a subject I ever like excelled at. In school, I mean. I’m more a creative type. Like I was pretty good in Art. Pretty great in Art, really. History, though—and Math and Science and English, too, English—Jesus…Just wasn’t where my gifts laid. Lied? See? English. All I’m really trying to say’s I’m not a homophobe at all, and I like it. Gaylord. The sound of it. I think it’s a great word. Like, is it edgy? Check. Sure it’s edgy. That’s been well established. Is it campy? You bet. It’s campy, too. No one denies it. Campy and edgy. The ultimate combo. I mean it really just makes the original just so much better.”