Read More: A Brief Q&A with Jean-Marc Duplantier
Kris and Ollie, The Barcelona Brothers, met for oysters at Deanie’s in Bucktown. They hadn’t seen each other since their father, Jefferson Parish Councilman Neil Barcelona, announced to the family at Christmas dinner that he had been molested by space aliens.
At the restaurant, Ollie parked right next to Kris’s empty pickup, turned his lights off, and took a deep breath. It had been an ugly scene at Christmas. Ollie felt his chest tighten as he remembered what he’d said that night, shouting across the table at his teary-eyed father, accusing him of inventing the bullshit alien story to divert attention from the fact that he’d been caught sleeping with Evelyn Ursin, their divorced neighbor. His brother Kris launched himself up from the table and said that the alien story was true and that Ollie should shut up. Ollie remembered standing too and pointing an accusing finger at the pock-marked surface of their father’s bald head. He’d said something about their mother at that point, about betrayal, but he couldn’t remember exactly what. Kris took an angry step towards him, but their mother rushed over and squeezed her tiny body between them and threw her hands up, right in Ollie’s face, almost a basketball move. Ollie remembered her arched eyebrows and clenched jaw jutting up at him, as if somehow this was all his fault. He took a step back and turned from them all and walked straight out of the house. He didn’t speak to any of them for weeks until Kris called to invite him out for oysters, to patch things up, he’d said on the phone.
Stepping into the restaurant, Ollie drew a hand to his nose, overwhelmed by the funk of warm oyster liquor—ripe and briny, almost sexual, like in his dank frat house at Oklahoma: the smell of bodies colliding in the dark. Ollie hadn’t been to Deanie’s in years, at least since high school, when The Barcelona Brothers were at the height of their musical and athletic fame. Kris was the point guard, played guitar, and sang; Ollie was the center and played bass.
Ollie forced a smile as he approached the table. Kris rose from his chair and offered Ollie a handshake. Ollie gave him a fist bump instead.
“You been hitting the weights,” said Kris.
“Now and then,” said Ollie. He took his jacket off, put it onto the back of his chair, and lowered himself carefully into the seat across from Kris. Ollie was six-five, four inches taller than his brother, and he was stronger too; he liked the idea of using that strength to protect them—Kris and his mother—from his snake of a father. But in spite of this strength, whenever they were together, Ollie always felt like he was standing in the shadow of his beachy, pert-nosed older brother.
A waiter, who was clearing the table next to them, held up two fingers and nodded to say that he’d be right over.
“What’s that?” Ollie asked, pointing to the beer on the table.
“Yuengling,” said Kris.
Ollie frowned slightly and looked over to the bar for something better.
“They don’t have much on tap,” said Kris, “but lots of bottles.”
“Y’all come here after volleyball?” asked Ollie. Kris was big into the Lakefront beach volleyball scene. Ollie had gone with his parents to watch one of Kris’s matches just after Thanksgiving.
“Yeah,” said Kris, “Here or Felix’s. The losers have to buy the first round.”
“When’s it start up again?” asked Ollie.
“Soon.” said Kris. “Next week.”
Ollie looked down. He placed his hand flat on the cold tabletop and pushed some stray cracker crumbs towards the center of the table. He had planned an apology for the fight they’d almost had, but now, sitting across from Kris, he didn’t know how to start. It was probably best just to skip it, he thought; there wasn’t really anything he could say. Besides, he had never before apologized to Kris for fighting with him, not even when he put him in the hospital. They had often fought growing up, and until Ollie was about fifteen, Kris had been able to wrestle him into submission. But that summer, during a basketball game in their driveway when Kris had continued to foul him—over and over again, open-hand pops to his head—Ollie got fed up and grabbed Kris in a bear hug and squeezed him, screaming with rage right into his brother’s reddening face. Kris passed out, but Ollie kept squeezing until he felt bones crack, then he let go and Kris tumbled to the cement in a heap. He had broken three of Kris’s ribs, and he felt terrible, but they never even talked about it afterwards. Ollie’s coach at Rummel made him apologize to the team when basketball started in the fall: Kris was their top scorer and would miss the first half of the season that year. But Ollie had never apologized to Kris himself, for that or for anything, so why start now?
“Have you been over there?” Ollie asked, finally breaking the silence. “To Mom and Dad’s?”
“Yeah,” Kris said. “On Sunday.”
“How’s Mom?” Ollie asked.
“Fine, I guess,” said Kris. “They really want to see you.”
Kris rotated his glass on the hard tabletop, and Ollie saw a nebulous cloud of foam orbit the surface of the sunny yellow beer. Kris was staring down at the beer too, his comb over barely hiding a saucer-sized circle of pink scalp. Kris looked up. Ollie smiled, but he didn’t know what to say, so he looked again towards the bar. He heard Kris drink his beer and then burp.
The waiter came back towards them with a washcloth.
“Gimmie one second,” he said. Ollie noticed that the table next to them wobbled while he wiped it. The waiter took a stack of napkins, folded them in half, and slowly bent to one knee to slide them under one of the legs. He grunted a bit as he stood, then he leaned on the table to test that it was stable and turned towards them. “You drinking something?” he asked Ollie. A large image of two white lilies in full bloom was printed on the front of his brown apron.
“Same as him,” said Ollie.
The waiter ran a hand over his thin beard as he walked away.
“Dad still talking about aliens?” asked Ollie.
“Look,” said Kris, “I need to show you something.” He leaned back in his chair, reached into his pants pocket, and pulled out a large Ziploc bag. He set it on the table and straightened the plastic so Ollie could see what was inside: a rod of silvery metal, about the size of a rifle bullet, but smooth, with no markings or grooves.
“He’s not making it up,” said Kris.
“What is that?” asked Ollie.
“They used it on him,” said Kris.
Ollie pinched the corner of the bag and picked it up. The metal rod slid down the greasy plastic to the bottom of the bag.
“Used it?” asked Ollie. “The aliens?”
“He’s really upset about it,” said Kris. “I know you think it’s a lie. I know he’s told lies in the past. But man, I’m telling you, it really seems like the truth. He’s really fucked up over it. And it’s not what you said: it’s not Evelyn. Mom’s known about that for a while. He says they took him to another planet.”
“What, did they put this in his ass?” laughed Olle.
“Yes,” said Kris.
“Jesus!” said Ollie. He dropped the bag onto the table and grabbed a napkin.
“He says he felt it moving around inside him a few days later.”
Ollie looked again at the bag, and he felt his heart quicken in anger. He needed to protect Kris from this bullshit. Planting evidence. A classic Neil Barcelona move. Like when he was doing coke and sleeping with Angelina Waguespack, when Ollie and Kris were still in high school. One morning he walked out of his office, at the back of the house, yawning and stretching and pouring himself coffee. They had all heard him pull into the driveway and come through the back door twenty minutes earlier, but still he pressed his head into a pillow on the loveseat in his office and rumpled up a blanket like he’d slept there.
“You need to be careful,” said Ollie. “Just because this is outrageous, that doesn’t mean he didn’t make it up. This man is a professional liar.”
“Yes,” said Kris. “He’s got problems. I know he’s not perfect. But this is pretty weird.”
“It’s like the pillow in his office…or that mafia thing,” said Ollie, suddenly remembering an even better example of Neil Barcelona’s perfidy. “Remember that? From his trial? Mysterious goons with Russian accents threatening him if he doesn’t lie to the state auditor? Total bullshit. And it worked. It got him off the hook, and reelected. He never learned his lesson. He never bears the consequences of his actions. This is exactly the same.”
“No, look,” said Kris, tapping on the bag. “This time it’s true. I know he’s not perfect, but I was there when it came out of him. I pulled this out of the toilet. He was really freaking out.”
“And so you decided to bring it to a restaurant?” asked Ollie.
“I needed you to see it. He really got hurt,” said Kris, reaching across the table and placing his hand on Ollie’s arm. “And now they say that they’ve lost you over this. Just let it go, man. Can’t you just go see them? Mom, at least. Can’t you just call mom?”
Ollie pulled his arm away from Kris. His mother, of course, was the trickiest part of all of this. Ollie thought of the call she had made back to the house, when he had squeezed Kris so hard in high school. She was in the hospital, calling from the waiting room, but she wasn’t crying; she was quiet and matter of fact. She told him he had been wrong to hurt his brother, that he was big now, powerful, and that he should protect Kris, not hurt him, that this would now be his job for the rest of his life, to always look after him, no matter how obnoxious Kris was, no matter if he deserved it or not. Protecting him was his lifelong duty, she said.
What she didn’t say, and what Ollie only realized years later, was that this was exactly her lifelong duty as well: protecting her scumbag husband no matter what he did. She was a long-suffering wife; he was a long-suffering brother. It was a lot to bear, thought Ollie, for a few broken ribs.
“Of course I’ll call her,” said Ollie.
“Thanks, bro,” Kris said, squeezing his arm affectionately. “And Dad too?”
Kris looked away from Ollie before he could answer. An attractive red-headed woman pulled out a chair at the table next to them. A small boy, maybe six years old, climbed into the chair, and the woman sat next to him. It was Bernice Lambert. Ollie remembered her from high school. Kris let go of his arm and turned to look at her. She smiled back at him and then pointed to something on the boy’s menu.
Ollie’s beer arrived. The waiter put it down next to the Ziploc and raised his eyebrows a bit.
“Y’all want some food?” he asked.
“A dozen raw and a dozen broiled,” said Kris, looking at Ollie. “Is that OK with you?”
“Yeah, fine,” said Ollie. “And garlic bread.”
When the waiter turned to leave, Kris picked up the Ziploc, rolled it up a bit, and moved it to the far edge of the table, as if to hide it from Bernice and the boy.
“Kris,” said Ollie, “you have to stand up for yourself here. Think for yourself. He’s going to take advantage of you if you just decide to believe him. And nothing changes for Mom.”
Ollie saw Kris looking again at the table next to them.
“Yeah,” said Kris distractedly, “Mom believes him.” Kris turned back to Ollie. “He was actually missing, you know. She couldn’t find him for, like, a full day. She called me about it. Then he turned up all woozy and bruised, and he slept for a week. He missed an important council meeting. Hey, do you know her? Right behind you?”
Ollie shook his head a bit. He’d clearly lost Kris’s attention. “Yes,” he said. “She’s my year. Mount Carmel. Look, I know it’s hard, but try to imagine for just one second that he’s not right. That he’s just manipulating you. He’s a fucking liar.”
“What’s her name?” whispered Kris, leaning in close to him.
“Bernice,” said Ollie.
Ollie watched Kris steal another glance at the woman and then turn back to his beer and take a long drink. Kris, like their father, was constantly on the prowl. Nothing was ever more important than getting himself laid, certainly not his family. Kris sat up taller in his chair and looked at himself in the mirror over Ollie’s shoulder. He pulled his long bangs across his forehead to hide his receding hairline, and he stuck his chin out a bit.
Bernice was sitting up straight too. Ollie saw her glance over to Kris. Then she said something to the boy and looked wistfully into the middle distance. They were posing, he thought, both of them, showing their faces at the best angles, drawing attention to their finest features.
“You need to talk to him,” Ollie said to Kris, trying to bring him back to their conversation. “A real talk. Call him on his bullshit. With Mom not there. Man to man. He won’t lie right to your face.”
“OK,” Kris said, and he looked over again at Bernice and smiled.
“He’ll cry and shit,” said Ollie, “but push him, make him tell you the truth.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Kris.
“So, you’ll do it?” asked Ollie.
“Do what?” asked Kris, looking over to him.
“Talk to Dad. Jesus!” Ollie wiped his hand over his face in frustration and picked up his beer.
“Hey, aren’t y’all The Barcelona Brothers?” asked Bernice.
“Yeah!” said Kris. “And you’re Bernice, right?”
“That’s pretty good,” she said, smiling at Kris. “I forgot your first names.”
“It’s Kris, and my brother Ollie. Ollie, you remember Bernice, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ollie, turning and raising his glass to her. She was wearing a tight t-shirt with airbrushed palm trees and a sunset beach. Heavy chunks of turquoise hung down from her ears, and a silver stud pierced her left nostril. Ollie had known her as a skinny girl; she was a full-grown woman now.
“Ollie. That’s right.” said Bernice, “I used to see you guys play at parties. You played at Heather Migliore’s pool party, right? In Kenner? That was wild.”
“Yeah,” said Ollie, “That was our last gig.”
The waiter arrived with two platters of oysters. Ollie moved their beers so that he had space to set them down.
“So, y’all don’t play anymore?” asked Bernice.
“Sometimes we do,” said Kris.
“No, we don’t,” said Ollie.
“That’s too bad,” said Bernice, “Look, this’ll sound weird, but one of your songs always gets stuck in my head.”
“Really?” said Kris,
“We always sing it when I’m driving Sam to school.” She pushed the boy’s chair out with her foot. “Say hello, Sam.”
“Hello,” said Sam.
“When I drive past Navarre in Mid City,” said Bernice. “I see the sign and we sing it: On Navarre and Marshal Foch,/ I crushed a giant cock-a-roach./ She called my name and raised her hand,/ My baby’s in the marching band. That’s all we sing. But we do it every day.”
“Yeah,” said Kris. “The Marching Band song. What did we call it?”
“‘Marshal Foch,’” said Ollie, unscrewing the hot sauce cap and adding some to a plastic horseradish cup. The only thing Ollie really remembered about Bernice was that she had dated his classmate Matt Villere, and Matt Villere was a world-class piece of shit who fucked with their math teacher Miss Thomassini so much that she had to retire. “You and Matt still together?” Ollie asked her.
“Not Matt,” Bernice said. “But I married his brother Anthony. Married and divorced.” She looked at Kris. “Sam’s his.”
Sam set down his fork. His blue plastic glasses were strapped tight to his head with rocket ship Croakies, and wild cowlicks erupted from his brown hair. Sam carefully set down his fork, stood up from his chair, and reached for his Coke, but he bumped the table and it wobbled and the drink spilled back towards him and onto the floor.
“Oh, Goddammit Sam,” Bernice said, “Every fucking time we go out!” Ollie reached over to take Sam’s hand and help him step out of the puddle. Bernice righted the glass and started wiping up with napkins. “And who the fuck gives a little boy a two-hundred-ounce glass of Coke to drink? Jesus, of course he’s going to spill it.”
“That table is fucked up too,” said Kris, leaning down to shove the wad of napkins further under the table leg.
“I’m sorry we’re screwing up your dinner,” said Bernice. “Look, eat your oysters. We can catch up later.”
The waiter came with a mop. Sam sat back down and began to nibble on a saltine. Bernice ordered a dozen raw oysters and the kid’s spaghetti.
Ollie still wanted to pin him down, to get Kris to stand up to their father. But it felt like they were actually out with this ridiculous woman, all four of them, eating together. He needed to get back to their previous conversation somehow.
“How about it,” said Ollie, turning in his chair so that his back faced Bernice. “Will you talk to Dad?”
“Let’s ask Bernice,” said Kris. “Hey Bernice, have you ever heard of people getting abducted by aliens?”
“On T.V.?” Bernice asked.
“No,” said Kris, “For real. And not just abducted,” Kris leaned over and covered Sam’s ears with his hands. “Molested,” he whispered.
“Experiments,” said Bernice. “Yeah, I heard of that. Did it happen to you?”
“Kris,” said Ollie, “Come on. We shouldn’t talk about it here.”
“Oh, was it him?” she asked, pointing to Ollie.
“No, not Ollie,” laughed Kris, “My dad. Aliens took him to another planet. Messed him up pretty bad.”
“Isn’t your dad in politics?” she asked, putting her beer down. The table wobbled again.
“Here, look,” said Kris, and he got up, took an empty oyster shell and squatted close to her table, right near her yoga pants legs. He pulled the wad of napkins out from under the table leg, jammed the oyster shell underneath it, and then stood up and pushed down on the tabletop. “Good as new,” he said to Sam.
“Thank you,” said Bernice.
“He’s on the JP Council,” said Ollie. “My dad.”
“That’s right,” said Bernice. “I saw the signs around. He’s bald, right?”
“Yes,” said Ollie.
“But Ollie thinks the alien thing is bullshit,” said Kris. “That’s what me and Ollie were talking about. I think it’s real.”
“Maybe it is,” said Bernice.
“Yeah, see Ollie?” said Kris. “It might be real. You never know. And it’s happened before, to other people. They’ve all had similar experiences.”
“I’ve heard of that,” said Bernice.
“But Ollie think’s it’s a distraction, that because Dad’s been sleeping with our neighbor he wants us to feel sorry for him instead of making him have—what did you say, Ollie?—moral culpability?”
“Kris,” said Ollie, “Really. It’s no one else’s business.”
“Y’all are really working through some shit tonight,” said Bernice. “Good thing you ran into me.”
The waiter brought Sam’s spaghetti. “The oysters are on the way,” he said. Sam took up his fork and began to eat.
“Look, I can help you guys,” said Bernice. “I’m a healer. I do energy and breath work.”
“No shit,” said Kris.
“And you boys seem like you need some healing.” Bernice reached across the gap between their tables, took Kris’s hand, and held it in both of hers. Then she closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply.
Ollie had to look away. This wasn’t going to work, he thought. He wasn’t going to get through to Kris. Ollie speared a raw oyster with his fork, dunked it in the horseradish mix, put it on a cracker, and popped it into his mouth. There was no way to get Kris’s attention back when he was on the hunt like this. It’s what broke the band up ten years earlier: you couldn’t get back on stage after a set break when the lead guitar player and singer had run off to fuck some chick he just met. That’s what happened at that Kenner pool party, anyway. Jake quit after that, the drummer, and the only talented one among them. They never found a replacement, and they never played again.
“I sense that you’d make a good father,” Bernice said. Ollie looked over to the two of them. Bernice’s eyes were closed, her powdery face blank and serene. “And you’re not seeing anyone right now. But your heart is open to love.” Kris winked at Ollie and raised his eyebrows, nodding at Bernice, wordlessly bragging to him about her eminent fuckability. Eyes still closed, Bernice raised his hand to her heart and caressed it. “And I feel the tension between you and your brother. I feel the negative energy circulating in you.”
“You should take a look at this, Bernice,” said Ollie, reaching for the Ziploc bag and holding it up. Maybe the rod would bust up their little love fest, he thought. Bernice opened her eyes, dropped Kris’s hand, and leaned in closer to the bag.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s from the aliens,” said Ollie. Kris frowned at him. “They put it in Dad’s ass.”
Sam put down his fork and turned from his spaghetti to look at the bag.
“Mind your business,” said Bernice, pushing Sam’s face back towards the plate. She held an open palm towards the metal rod. “Can I touch it?”
“It’s not clean,” said Ollie. “It was inside of him.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in aliens,” said Bernice.
“I don’t,” said Ollie. “But I do believe that Neil Barcelona would shove a hunk of metal up his ass to save his marriage.”
“Gimmie that,” said Bernice, snatching the bag out of Ollie’s hand and peeling it open. “There’s extraordinary energy here. I feel it. Actual heat, like it’s alive.” She reached into the open bag, plucked out the metal rod, and held it up. “It’s light. Almost like it could float, but it feels solid.” She held it in her cupped hands and closed her eyes. “And the energy. God. I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s surging through me. A presence.”
“Like aliens?” asked Kris.
“Yes,” she said. “I believe it. It’s powerful, whatever it is. From another dimension. And a female presence, too. It’s heating up my sacral chakra.”
“Yes, I feel that too,” said Kris, smiling dumbly and reaching out to touch Bernice’s face. […]
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Jean-Marc Duplantier teaches in the Humanities Department at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. He has published short fiction in Willow Springs Magazine, The Pinch, and Boudin, and his work won first prize in the short story category of the 2021 Faulkner/Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.
Read More: A Brief Q&A with Jean-Marc Duplantier