Visits from the Drowned Girl

by Steven Sherrill

  “Oh!” she said, coming around the corner startled. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

  “Sorry,” Benny said, trying, but unable, not to stare. He realized his mistake. A victim of visual chicanery, hoodwinked by physics, Benny had been looking through the aquarium to the other side. And through the trickery of refraction, light, therefore his perception, was bent. Altered. She was not a miniature woman who lived among the fishes, nor amphibious, comfortable both on land and in water. No. Before him stood an air-breathing creature of the earth. But, and this was the focus of Benny’s stare, she was not a real woman … or not a whole woman … or at the very least not a full-sized woman. It was as if, in the transition from the shrunken illusion atop the submerged stepladder to the startled person rounding the corner, she had lost something. Some part of herself She was a midget, no two ways about it.

  “Are you delivering something?” she asked, looking Benny up and down.

  Benny shook his head no, becoming more and more self-conscious about his tattered jeans and T-shirt from a tower company called Goliath Erections, and most self-conscious about his Ripley’s Believe It Or Not hat. He crossed his arms in an attempt to hide the tattoo.

  “This is Claxton Looms.” She paused, almost gesturing with the can of fish food in her hand. “Luxury Apartments. May I help you?” There was a subtle inflection to the “you.”

  Yes, in fact. You may be able to help me.

  It occurred to Benny that he had never seen a midget up close before. Not a pretty one, anyway.

  Do you know the drowned girl?

  “Apartment,” he said, his head bobbing in a way that indicated ab­solutely nothing.

  Can you tell me who she was? Can you tell me why she did that terrible thing? To me?

  “Okay?” she said, expecting more from him.

  “You’re Rebecca Hinkey?” Benny asked.

  What could I have done to stop her?

  “Have we met?” she asked. Judging from her demeanor, Rebecca Hinkey saw herself as the first line of defense for Claxton Looms. For maintaining its standards. The warmth or chill of her greeting certainly depended on your perceived potential as a resident. Benny, it was plain to see, held little promise.

  “Employee of the month,” he said, thumbing toward the door.

  “Most people ring the bell,” she said, pointing in the same direction.

  Standing just a head above Benny’s waist, he guessed the midget Rebecca to be four feet tall. He tried to remember whether it was dwarves or midgets that had disproportionate limbs; decided it must be dwarves. Rebecca’s short arms and little legs led all the way up to what Benny per­ceived as a cute, solid butt that, while far from normal, seemed to fit well her diminutive trunk and its equally diminutive breasts. Nor did she have a grotesque head with those pitiable features that come to mind at the mention of dwarf. Rebecca Hinkey was pretty. Off-kilter, but stunning even, in a compacted sort of way. She filled her tiny figure almost to the point of breaking.

  “Staring is rude,” Rebecca said, making clear that she’d said the same thing thousands of times in her life, and expected to say it thousands more.

  Benny expected none of this. Not the midget. Not the lust. However, his own ignorance rarely surprised him. Benny barely knew how to act with normal women. Not only did he categorize incessantly, but the boundaries of his categories were usually vague, overlapping, and based on nothing but momentary (flawed) cognition. Black, white. Woman, girl. Normal, abnormal. Pretty, ugly. Stupid … These terms and more he threw about like loose change, rarely clued in to where they were spent. And Rebecca Hinkey was … well, different.

  “Sorry … um, I’m looking for an apartment. One-bedroom, an efficiency, maybe.”

  “There are no ‘efficiency’ apartments at Claxton Looms. And our one-bedrooms start at $750 per month.” Rebecca offered this information without moving from the foyer. And with some certainty that it would be prohibitively expensive for Benny. Which it was, but he had his poker face on.

  “Okay.”

  Rebecca sighed after coming to terms with the silence that followed his response. “Come with me,” she said, and Benny followed her around the wall housing the fish tank to the office where her desk sat. Followed her and tried hard to concentrate on why he had come, and not to form opinions about her or her anatomy. Followed her and looked for signs that would link her to the drowned girl. There were none readily apparent. She wasn’t dressed in black. In fact, her skirt and blouse were almost cheery. There were no official-looking papers. No indications of worry or concern, although could Benny recognize them if they were present? Maybe midgets can’t be read in that way. From so high up, the drowned girl had looked of normal height. As for her features, her hair and eyes, the way her nose might have angled from her face, the lips and their fullness or lack of, Benny had no clue. So what was her connection with this abbreviated person? Blood kin? Friends? Enemies?

  Rebecca showed him the apartment. Not to do so would have been discrimination. She didn’t have to put her heart into the act, though. Benny got the standard spiel, sans oomph. Sans emphasis. Sans anything but breath and pared-down syllables. Every time Rebecca stood near a wall or a doorjamb, Benny had to fight the urge to place his hand palm down on top of her head and mark her height.

  “Claxton Looms was founded…” she said. “Blah blah blah…” she said. “Units facing the courtyard … a secure building.” Rebecca eyed Benny, then the door before continuing, “Blah blah blah … all the best amenities … pool, sauna, clubhouse … two parking spots … blah blah blah blah.”

  Benny didn’t care what she said.

  “I need you to fill these out,” she said, handing Benny a clipboard with a Claxton Looms pen dangling by a chain from the corner. The forms were the truest filter for Claxton Looms. With questions about current residence, salary, and information necessary for a credit check, this was where the unsavory types usually went away humbled. Benny took the forms, sat in a squeaky couch right by Rebecca’s desk, and tried his best to fill them out. He took his hat off, tucked it between his thigh and the couch.

  “Where do you work?” she asked, just as he was getting to the question on the application.

  “Uh, I’m a chef,” he said, not too far from the truth. “Downtown. At Shaw’s Crabhouse.”

  A big, big lie. Shaw’s was probably the finest seafood restaurant in the state.

  “Oh?”

  The phone rang. The handset filled her diminutive palm. He told her nothing about climbing towers. Nothing about the fishcamp.

  “Claxton Looms Luxury Apartments. This is Rebecca—may I help you?”

  Conjecturally, the call provided time and opportunity for Benny to redirect toward the truth. For him to realize the absurdity of his actions. He should just go home. Excuse himself and leave. Rebecca obviously recognized the name of Shaw’s. Anyone would have. The lie seemed to buy Benny a little respect, so he wrote it on the form. Her easy acceptance of the lie fueled the rest. Rebecca sat up straighter, in her full-sized desk chair, watching Benny write while she spoke on the phone.

  “Sorry, Mr. Setzer,” she said, transferring the phone from one hand to the other; the act took all her fingers. “I didn’t realize it was an internal call.”

  Benny lied about everything on the forms. About his salary, where he lived, where he used to live, his references—two long-dead relatives and Gene Whoey, his imaginary childhood friend—everything. Even his social security number, which she would use for the credit report. Benny lied while Rebecca struggled to maintain her role of authority for him, and concerned servility to the man on the phone.

  “Yes, sir, I put in a work order for it yesterday. But—”

  Aside from the stepladder for feeding the fish, Benny saw no evidence that Claxton Looms made accommodations for their Employee of the Month’s dimi
nished stature. She seemed almost lost behind the big desk. Benny would’ve dropped his pen as a ploy to look under the desk to see if her little feet rested on a stool, or dangled above the floor, but it was chained to the clipboard, and dropping the clipboard was too stupid even for him. A tableau of ornately framed photographs formed an arc in the center of the desk. The angle was wrong, so Benny couldn’t see the pictures clearly. Couldn’t make out the faces, the bodies, the contexts.

  “No, sir, I didn’t have—”

  Benny completed the forms long before Rebecca Hinkey finished making promises and serving up apologies to the disgruntled Mr. Setzer. Benny’s own ragged sense of decorum, tempered by a streak of impudence that tended to flare whenever anyone was being told what to do, urged him to move away from Rebecca’s desk. To find some distraction until she was off the phone.

  With faux Art, capital A, on the walls, spotless carpeting, decor straight out of Pier One Imports, Crate & Barrel, or some other such place, and idyllic pictures of ideal residents frolicking in the pool, working out—and sweating beautifully—in the exercise room, and gathered for an evening of perfect socializing in the clubhouse, Benny, for reasons both phobic and real, couldn’t even begin to imagine himself living here.

  On a low table, at the other end of the couch, a stack of magazines drew his attention. The top magazine lay open, its cover folded beneath, with an uncapped Claxton Looms pen crossing the page. Benny picked up the magazine, only to find that the one beneath it was folded open, too. As were the third and fourth. They were all Cosmopolitan magazines, and all open to something called “Cosmo Wants To Know.” Quizzes. Surveys. Personal tests. All completed. A nearly-empty bottle of some fancy fizzy water sat by the stack on a Claxton Looms coaster warped by condensation. Benny intuited the impression of a small body in the couch seat and back. Rebecca had been sitting there.

  Build Your Perfect Man

  A chance to build a guy who’s got it all.

  Confess Your Career Crimes

  Share your story with Cosmo.

  Need Beauty Advice?

  We have the answers.

  What’s Your Vagina Attitude?

  Cosmo wants to know how you feel about “down there.”

  So did Benny. Who wouldn’t? There were other magazines and other tests about love and relationships, about work, about desires and dreams, all the boxes X’d in Rebecca’s careful script. The scores tallied and averaged, then evaluated by the omniscient and anonymous wisdom of the editorial board. Benny was saddened, somehow, by the implications of these tests, but not enough to keep him from sliding the bottom magazine from the stack to find out how she’d answered those very personal questions.

  “Ahem…” Rebecca cleared her throat once, her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, then again a little louder before Benny got the point.

  “Sorry,” he mouthed, closing the page on her innermost secrets. He registered the flush of anger and embarrassment on her face.

  Benny went to the aquarium to watch the fish. He wondered various things about this midget he was lying to. Did she have a boyfriend? He saw no ring, although he didn’t look closely. Where did she shop for those small clothes? How did she feel about “down there”? Why was her business card in the drowned girl’s stuff? And what the hell did he plan to do when she found out he was lying?

  “I’ll call them right away, Mr. Setzer. Absolutely. Yes, sir. Have a good day.”

  Rebecca hung up the phone. Benny heard the handset land in its cradle, but he didn’t turn around. He waited for her to speak. When she didn’t, he filled the silence.

  “Your tang’s got a serious case of hole-in-the-head disease.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s actually called ‘lateral line erosion.’ Pretty contagious.”

  “Do you know about fish?”

  “A little,” he said, the truest things he’d said to her yet. He knew enough to be certain that the gaping holes in the yellow fish’s head would kill it if left untreated.

  Rebecca came from behind the desk and stood beside Benny at the aquarium.

  “One died already,” she said. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  She held the clipboard full of lies in her hands. Funny how deceit can seem at once weightless and crushing.

  “When were you thinking about moving?” she asked.

  “What?” Benny asked, forgetting momentarily the ruse.

  “Once your references are checked and the credit report is run, when would you be able to move in?”

  “Oh,” he said. “As soon as possible.”

  Before leaving, Benny reached tentatively with his hand to shake hers, unsure of what she would give back. On the way down the road he spent little time pondering the aftermath of his lies, but he looked periodically at his hand. I touched a midget, he thought, and marveled at the normalcy of her hand, which, despite his apprehensions, was not oily or scaly, not fin-like at all. Was quite human.

  Enough of this shit. What am I afraid of?

  Benny decided then and there, at a stop sign on Plank Road, actually, to watch the drowned girl’s videotapes. It was stupid of him to wait. He didn’t even know why he waited. But the lack of a VCR presented a small problem. Maybe he could borrow one from Jeeter. No sooner did he arrive at this point of resolved determination, a moment of quiet clarity, than dis­turbance and confusion, in the form of a squealing-tired, high-revving, barely mufflered Harley-Davidson, jarred him back into a fuzzier reality.

  “Where’ve you been, man?” Jeeter asked, leaning the bike to stick his head too far in the van’s driver-side window for Benny’s comfort. “I thought we were going to the flea market. It’s pastnoonand you know all the good stuff is going to be gone.”

  “What I know, Jeeter, is that you smell like dirt and that there was never any good stuff to begin with at the flea market. It’s all shit all the time. We just convince ourselves that there’s something more exciting about unknown shit than our own familiar shit.”

  “Wow. You’re deep.”

  “Fuck you,” Benny said. “Get out of my window. How’d you get so filthy?”

  “Ponds, my friend-without-vision. I told you I was expanding. I’ve been out in Meyer’s Park, digging holes for the monied and dumb. If you had any sense, you’d get in on the ground floor of this enterprise.”

  “I guess you won’t find many people bragging about my overabundance of good sense.”

  Jeeter filled Benny in on his day. It occurred to Benny that borrowing a VCR from Jeeter would require too much explaining. Doodle. He’d ask Doodle.

  “Hey, is there a cure for hole-in-the-head disease?” Benny asked.

  “You mean lateral line erosion? Like in fish?”

  “No, like in Dink. Of course in fish. Is there?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” Jeeter said. “Why?”

  “You got a tank out at Claxton Looms? That apartment building in the old mill?”

  “No.”

  Jeeter told Benny how to cure lateral line erosion.

  “I passed him this morning,” Jeeter said, putting his helmet on.

  “Who?”

  “Dink, riding that damn moped out on the bypass. I almost ran over him myself, just to spare some trucker the inevitable misery.”

  Benny ignored him.

  “Let’s go to the flea market tomorrow. First thing in the morning,” Benny said.

  “I might have to go to church first.”

  “Fuck you. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “I got a hot date tonight. Planning on doing a lot of sinning.”

  “Bye, Jeeter.”

  When Benny pulled into his driveway, Doodle, with her back to him. stood bent over at her front stoop. Benny tooted the van’s horn and she wiggled he
r ass at him. She was planting tomatoes in five-gallon pickle buckets. The paperback she’d been reading all week lay on the concrete stoop by a Mr. Pibb can, the bookmark only a few pages from the end.