Geek Love

by Katherine Dunn

She’s right. We each appear totally alone in our lives. I’m the shy, isolated dwarf creeping in and out of my shabby room, living only through my throat and my inherited work. She is the muscular monolith, cut off by brass, stalking around in her old man’s ambition, too imposing in finance and physique for the regular commerce of talk and touch. We choose to seem barren, loveless orphans. We each have a secret family. Miss Lick has her darlings and I have mine. All we’ve really lacked is someone to tell. Now she tells me, and I tell all to these bland, indifferent sheets of paper. The only point where our narrow tracks converge is her bid to turn my darling into one of hers.

  Does she lie to me? She keeps things from me. She wouldn’t let me watch the surgery or treatment sections of her home movies for a long time. Does she keep more aside? Hide more of herself? Horrors she doesn’t trust me with? Titillations she is ashamed of? I sail along thinking she is perfectly open. Her eyes are as wide as a child’s when she talks to me. But maybe I’m the fool. Maybe lying so constantly has burnt my view. Believing that she is fooled, I consider her too simple to lie.

  We are alone in the pool. The lifeguard has gone for the night, trusting Miss Lick to lock up. Miss Lick sits on the side, her huge legs drooping into the water. She shudders as I stop to breathe at her end.

  “Do you ever,” her eyes circle the echoing green of the big room, “do you ever get the feeling somebody’s watching us?”

  My head swivels, searching automatically, though I know that the watcher is me. “You’re just tired and spooky. You need your supper.”

  She shrugs it off. Forgets. But does she really know? Is she playing me while I play her?

  It rains every night now and the air is soft in the morning. Almost warm. A faint haze, not quite green, softens the iron branches of the trees. Miranda’s anatomy drawings are finished. She has mounted them on cardboard and she stores them in a huge plastic binder.

  “I want you to look at them.”

  “I can’t.”

  “All this time you’ve never looked.”

  “Just not at the ones of me. I don’t want to see myself.”

  “You look in mirrors. I’m better than any goddamned mirror.”

  “It’s not your work. I like your other drawings. This just scares me.”

  “I take it personally. This is my best work. The best I’ve ever done. I don’t see you as ugly. I see you as unique and wonderful.”

  “It’s hard dealing with you seeing me at all.”

  “Miss-fucking-steerious! I’m handing the whole mess in tomorrow morning. The competition results will come out in two weeks, the day before I go into the hospital.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Or whatever. I don’t know where Miss Lick has that work done.”

  “I have to get back to work now.”

  “The semester ends Friday.”

  “Thank you so much for the tea.”

  “I’m calling Miss Lick today to arrange things.”

  “See you soon.”

  “I may not come back here afterward.”

  I trotted down the hall with her leaning out of her doorway to talk to my back.

  “I’ll be in a nursing home for a while and then I’ll probably move away.”

  I’m not even tempted to anger. Time is a rap on the ear with a brass knuckle. I’ve been letting it ride. Having my little cake—chummy with Miranda over tea, chummy with Miss Lick over home movies—snuggling down in a thick-headed fantasy that what little I was doing would make the difference, as if putting across the lie was success. All I had to do was accept mild discomfort in a strange room, sneak up the fire escape to visit Lily and Miranda, and this puny martyrdom would miraculously obliterate the problem.

  The next morning I get to the club an hour before the lifeguard arrives and use the key Miss Lick has given me to get into the pool locker room. I lug two gallon jugs of concentrated ammonia in a shopping bag into the dressing room, stack the plastic bottles in my locker, and cover them with the bag.

  The door from the locker room into the footbath is solid wood hung in a steel frame. The auger is an ancient handcrank from the landlord’s tool kit in Lily’s basement. On my knees on the cold tiles I open the door slightly to slide a single sheet of the Oregonian underneath. The door swings shut, leaving half the paper on each side to catch the wood dust. I drill the hole under the lowest hinge and within a quarter inch of the frame. The bigger bit enlarges the hole to a one-inch notch in the door’s edge. I wrap the dust in the paper, ready to carry away with the auger.

  The clear plastic tubing slides easily through the hole. On the footbath side of the door a few inches of tubing droop toward the chlorine reek of the blue surface. I bend to suck air through it. The tube is clear, not pinched by the door closing. With the tube gone the hole is in the dark below the hinge, hardly visible unless you are on your hands and knees.

  I work the narrow end of the funnel into the end of the tube, coil the arrangement tidily, and tuck it under the bag in my locker. As I walk out through the big glass doors in the front lobby I see the glossy young lifeguard putting her bicycle into a stanchion.

  Miss Olympia Binewski McGurk, the albino dwarf, takes two steps to the average one because her mystic breastbone has spent thirty-eight years trying to increase its distance from her agnostic spine. Those two steps carry our Miss Oly, the hunchback, into the tidal stench of corned beef and cabbage filling the dim cove of McLarnin’s at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning when Jimmy McL. himself is steaming the wherewithal for the famous eleven-to-four buffet. The bar is clean. The glasses wait, glittering in their racks.

  Miss Oly hoists her twisted frame onto the least spinnable bar stool and nods encouragingly at Jimmy. The mirror is obscured by bottlenecks, leaving shards in which Miss Oly catches a flicker of her blue-tinted spectacles and goat-grey wig bobbing over the waxy wood. Her big, soft voice is deeper than the tenor McLarnin’s.

  “A shot of Jameson’s please, Jimmy,” she says, and McL. sways toward her, wrapped in cabbage mist from the kettles and flapping a bar towel in front of his red knob nose to clear the view.

  “Celebrating, are we?” gurgles Jimmy in sympathy with the tall, tipping bottle.

  “You too?” asks Miss Oly, squinting her rose-pink eyes behind the sapphire lenses.

  “Thank you,” McL. deliberately misunderstands. “I’ll stick with Murphy’s though. I was weaned on it.”

  “Is that so?” Miss Oly would like to know.

  Jimmy gives a slow, thoughtful swipe at the bar with his towel and raises his crisp white eyebrows. “True enough. I was colicky as a babe and my mother’d send me off to sleep with a rag-tit tied up in thread and soaked in Murphy to suck on. She swore by it for a whole night’s rest.”

  “I was thirty-eight years old,” muses Miss Oly, “before I ever felt the burn of whiskey on my lip. But I knew it right away for what it was.”

  “The virgin’s arms,” nods Jimmy. “God’s breath.”

  “I am amazed at all the years I spent without whiskey,” says Oly.

  “Just as well. It takes a lady of a certain age to contain the stuff. Particularly the Irish. No offense but a bit of weathering and experience are required not to go right off the edge with it. I would hesitate to serve Irish to a green schoolgirl. Mixes and vodka are enough for them to go wrong on. I couldn’t look at myself shaving if I poured Irish for the young.”

  “Don’t tell me you look?”

  The diplomat McLarnin senses a delicacy about mirrors in Miss Oly, and deftly switches his bulk to block her exposure to the jolt of her own image reflected in shreds behind the bar bottles.

  “You’ve a voice like mulled toddy, Miss O,” grins Jimmy. “I cried like a busted banker at your story on the radio this morning.”

  “Hush,” grunts Oly, ducking a peek into the empty darkness behind her. “The Story Lady of Station KBNK isn’t supposed to be boozing at ten A.M. Today’s show was an old tape. I called in sick. Besides, McLarnin, I have the voi
ce of a baritone kazoo and your real name is Nelson. You were born in Nebraska. Admit it.”

  “You’re bitter this morning, Miss O. And it leads you to grievous error. I was born up the street at Good Sam, fifty-six years ago, and I’ve lived in the sound of its sirens ever since. Not unlike yourself, I imagine.”

  “I was born in a trailer. No idea where it was parked at the time. But I was conceived here.”

  At 5:30 I am sitting on the windowsill of a deserted conference room on the fourth floor of the TAC Club, watching the circle drive inside the entrance gates. Miss Lick’s sedan blows in on time and the lackey in the club uniform opens her door for her. He takes her keys and tools the car out to her private parking space as she heads for the entrance. I get down off the sill and settle into an armchair to watch the wall clock.

  I can feel her in the building. With my eyes closed I can see her crossing the lobby, nodding to the woman at the reception desk, clumping down the carpeted corridor to the elevator. I know exactly how she will stare at the elevator door, waiting for it to open, with her big hands folded in front of her to prevent fidgeting.

  Usually I am in the locker room when she walks in. Today her face—ready to smile as she pushes through the door—will lift in puzzlement. She will skin down and get into her tank suit wondering about me. I can almost hear her splashing into the footbath and feel the air move as the locker door hisses closed behind her. I can smell her heat mingling with the metallic green fumes of the chlorine in the unventilated cubicle.

  There is no bulb in the ceiling fixture of the footbath. The only light is the grey murk that comes through the small diamond-shaped window in the door to the pool. She will be standing there, ankle-deep in chlorine water, peering through the thick, wire-reinforced glass. She will be searching the pool for me.

  She stands, rotating her big shoulders, her elbows flapping like wings. She bends, hiking a foot out of the blue water, running her fingers between her toes, trading feet for the same ritual.

  Planting both feet in the soup again she takes the plastic quart jar of chlorine from its niche in the tiled wall, opens it, and, ignoring the measuring scoop, sprinkles a goodly pinch of the sea-green crystals over the surface of the water.

  The plan is simple. She is always the last one out of the pool. The lifeguard locks up and leaves as Miss Lick begins her second mile of laps. The respected Miss Lick has her own keys and can come in to swim at 3 A.M. if she wants to. She can certainly swim alone with her dwarf pal and lock up behind herself.

  I, pale thing, always climb out before Miss Lick, and have showered and dressed before her pork palms slap the pool deck to hoist her out. Sitting on the bench in the locker room, I can always hear her sighing and swishing for long peaceful minutes in the footbath before she comes in to scour herself under the shower. Miss Lick never gets enough of that chlorine footbath.

  There is plenty of time to empty the full chlorine jar into the water of the footbath. It’s simple to close the footbath door to the locker room and turn its deadbolt, and then slip out to the corridor and down to the hall door opening onto the pool.

  I stand, silent, behind the tall stack of paddleboards until Miss Lick emerges from the pool, cascading water, and stomps over to the footbath door. As the door wheezes closed behind her I am there to twist the deadbolt.

  The monster is caught in the closet with her eyes stinging in the rising chlorine. She is pounding the sides of her fists on the door to the locker room as I scuttle for the hall, run the few silent yards to the other entrance, and gasp my way in with my heart screaming hide-and-seek in my ears.

  Her pounding fills the room. I race to my locker, scatter it empty, an ammonia jug in each hand, dragging toward that little hole in the door.

  “Oly!” she bellows beyond the wood slab. The name freezes my lungs. The skin all over my body rises in pimples of fear.

  “Oly! Are you all right?”

  Now she is pounding on the poolside door. The drum wave moves away from me as I shove the tip of the hose into the hole. The stink of chlorine is strong from the small hole and my eyes water from bending close to it.

  “Ahoy!” she roars at the far door. The pounding wood is like the beat of fists on my spine. With the jug under one arm, I carefully pour ammonia down the mouth of the funnel, watch it sear downward through the clear plastic tubing and rush through the door, toward its mingling with the chlorine and a new toxic identity.

  “Ahoy! Ahoy!!” Mary Lick would never yell “Help!”

  A bubble of hysteria giggles up through me, rocking the jug tucked under my arm. A smack of ammonia fume hits my nose and the roof of my open mouth, burning. I turn my head, gasping. Almost spilling.

  I hear splashes beyond the wood, and the pounding rips out again above my head. “Oly! Oly! Oly!” she screams. Her voice is harsh and ragged now. The ammonia jug is nearly empty. It’s taking too long. The pounding stops. In the silence I can hear the faint trickle of the last ammonia running out of the tube and into the chlorine water on the other side. A weight hits the door, inches away from me, and slides, squeaking downward. Silence. Then the whisper, “What the fuck?” The words rush out of the funnel into my face with a strange sick breath that sets me coughing. She’s found the tube. The funnel jerks from my hands, whips wildly through the air, smacks the wall, hops and twists on the floor. The funnel’s open mouth shrieks, “What the fuck?” in a whisper. The end of the tubing spurts out of the hole beneath the hinge. The tube and the funnel fall dead to the floor. The whisper comes from the hole, “Daddy?” as I scramble away from the hole on my knees, coughing as the whisper comes again. I choke and hold my breath to hear as the hole says, “Please … Please.”

  I know her locker combination. Scuttling for the lock I can hear the hiss of the whisper but I can’t make out the words that press themselves through the hole. The dial sticks and clogs and I can hardly see through my tears. I miss and try again, with a high whine coming out of my own throat. The lock falls to the floor.

  The holster is under her suit jacket, on the hook. I yank a bench close and climb to reach the gun. Jump back to the door on tiptoes with the fat gun heavy in one hand. I reach for the knob to twist open the deadbolt and dodge as the door gushes open against me. The gas comes out and I choke and fall to my knees with fire in my eyes and a rake in my nose and throat.

  She is huge, lying across the doorway. Her breath sounds high and it bubbles. Her white arms have tumbled over her red bloated face. She moans, a small sound from the wet heap of her chest. I drop the gun and pull her long arm by its wrist, crying, “Mary! Help me. Mary, move. Come on, Mary. Oh, Mary, I’m so sorry.” And I am sorry and I don’t care if she wakes and kills me if only she will wake up and move. I never meant this. I never wanted to hurt her. I only needed for her to die. Not this pain. Not this fear.

  “Mary!” I yell, yanking on the heavy arm. “I didn’t mean it like this.”

  Miss Lick’s eyes pop open, staring upside-down and furious. Her wrist flicks loose from my hands, swatting me, groping for me as I fall clattering against the forgotten gun on the floor. Her hand snaps onto my throat, hot and hard. A white light comes on behind my eyes as she lifts me above her with my right hand fluttering at her fingers on my throat and my left hand heavy with the gun. I am rising, until my ears explode and I begin a long, slow fall at the end of her arm, toward the tile floor, watching the sudden black hole where her right eye was, her big legs flopping in the footbath and the sputtering roll at the crotch of her tank suit as a dark liquid runs onto the tile. Her hand is still huge on my throat, but she’s gone. I’m alone.

  News article from the May 18 Portland Oregonian:

  Two women whose bodies were found huddled in the footbath of the Thomas R. Lick indoor swimming pavilion of the Timber Athletic Club following a hazardous fume alarm this morning were apparently victims of murder and suicide. Portland Police Detective M. L. Zusman, directing the on-site investigation, told reporters that both women had apparently
died of gunshot wounds and that a gun had been found at the scene. The exact cause of the deaths will not be confirmed until the completion of post-mortem examinations by the Multnomah County Medical Examiner.

  Investigation at the scene was delayed by the presence of irritating fumes from an unidentified gas present in the pool and locker-room area. The gas is currently undergoing laboratory analysis for identification. Fumes were first noticed by a janitor who entered the pool area for regularly scheduled cleaning at 8 A.M. Firefighters who responded to the alarm discovered the two bodies.

  “At first we didn’t know who did what to who,” said Detective Zusman. “But a note was found on the scene. Or rather a notebook which seems to give an account of the incident up to a certain point.” Contents of the note have not been revealed. The names of the victims are being withheld pending notification of their families. It is not known whether the victims were members of the prestigious private athletic and social club. TAC spokesmen refused to discuss the incident until more information is available. The Lick Pavilion will be closed until the police investigation is completed.

  Earlier reports that one of the bodies was that of a handicapped child have since been contradicted. Police confirm that both victims were adults.

  Delivered by regular mail, May 19:

  My Dear Miranda,

  Since you were a year old you’ve been told you were an orphan. This was not true. Your father died when you were very young but I, your mother, have been watching over you until now. I am your mother, I, the dwarf in Room #21.

  Your name is not Miranda Barker but Miranda Binewski. Barker was the ironic label chosen by the Reverend Mother Aurora when you were still in diapers and first entered the convent school.

  You will have a lot of questions. Enclosed are two keys. The long key is to my room, #21. On the floor in the closet is a big leather trunk. The short key will open the trunk. The top tray inside is full of your school records, photographs, sixteen years’ worth of letters from Reverend Mother Aurora and Sister Lucy. They’re addressed to me and they report on you. That should be enough to convince you that I’m not imagining our relationship out of drugs or lunacy.