by Leni Zumas
I am thirty-one years old.
I have a big caboose that is admired by some.
I have one curl that won’t stay down.
I diagnose myself with strapmouthophobia: the fear of not having much to say.
I tell him, Those are the best socks I’ve seen on you yet.
I watch him smile, and smile too. (There is something contagious.)
I can’t stop talking about his footwear.
I blush when my supervisor says, No fraternizing with the lost minds.
I ask, Any new jokes today?
I lift a dollop of crushed potato above his tray.
I blush when he says, Your eyes are so green I forget all my jokes.
I mislaunch the potato, which blops onto the tray-runner and drips to the floor.
I laugh because he laughs.
I shiver through the rest of my shift.
I go home and run it like a tape: Your eyes your eyes your eyes.
I don’t think his mind has been lost.
I suspect that when he yells at my supervisor, Stop feeding us cattle that died from the blackleg! he is making a veiled reference.
I don’t think it’s a person’s fault if other people don’t get his references.
I look skeptical when he claims he can hold his breath for three minutes. But secretly I believe him.
He tells the fish-stick girl, In ancient Rome, soldiers were paid in salt. Hence our word salary.
He wishes he could laugh when she says, Well mine is only a few grains! but it really wasn’t funny.
He pretends to choke, gallantly diverting attention from her humor.
He coughs up one of the pennies he keeps at the back of his mouth and throws it (but not hard) at the supervisor and says, Get your money out of my lunch!
He misses how at the restaurant they’d fold slices of dog shit into the orders of rude customers, then happily watch the chewing mouths.
He leans up against the glass cough guard and whispers, Angels aren’t real—I know that.
He is crying a little. (Though not in a crazy way.) I know you know! says the fish-stick girl.
He wonders what the mailman ever brings to the franzy house, other than socks and letters that notify: Your life goes on without you.
He has agreed to drive the getaway car for his roommate, provided they’re both back on the surface while this president is still in office.
He squeezes his eyes when the medical student asks him how he likes it here.
He says, Where—in this cage? and the medical student says, So the hospital feels like a cage to you?
He says, It isn’t a simile. Points at the window: barred. The other window: barred.
He senses the medical student’s disappointment, so he throws him a little bone of crazy. Hearts of oak, he cries, did you go down alive into the homes of death?
He is impatient with the fish-stick girl.
He tried to tell her this morning how this place is its own magic mountain, where the hero arrives for a three-week vacation believing he is healthy and ends up staying seven years—but she didn’t get it. She pretended to (smiles and nods) yet he saw the rockets in a line, unfired, wicks wet through.
The hero feels more at home, he added, in an Alpine sanatorium for lung complaints among the sick and nearly dead than in the so-called normal world! but she blinked in a way that reminded him of ocean arachnids who live so many fathoms down their eyes have no reason to grow.
He can’t develop his theory with her, nor with the other humans in the TV room; and his roommate, though intelligent and reasonable, has little time for theories. Wants only to discuss methods of execution.
He draws the nose-bellied boy on a napkin during their nonoptional monthly dose of improv.
He waves it above his head.
He shouts at the troupers, Here comes one scurvy type leading another! God pairs them off together, every time. Swineherd, where are you taking your new pig, that stinking beggar there, licker of pots?
He won’t stop until a nurse escorts him out of the cafeteria.
He wonders how the doctor can possibly think dinosaur-loose-in-supermarket or quiz-show-for-amnesiacs will lift a single spirit. If anything, these gags crush spirits like so many scuppernongs.
He likes how each grape of the arbor lives on its own tendril, and each tendril lives in its own follicle, and the fish-stick girl has a follicle that builds a wayward curl.
He rubs at night his own nipples, his own damp penis. His thumbs are her thumbs.
He hopes his roommate can’t hear.
His breath is like a little train.
He thinks the lung must get its golden flavor from the shiny lies humans are perpetually inhaling.
He was only obeying the poster!
He thought the method was failing, so he wasted no time.
He was only saving a life.
He can’t believe the doctor when he says the choking man wasn’t choking.
He knows the doctor lies because the president, loved by the doctor, lies.
He diagnoses himself with dupophobia: the fear of being lied to by people stupider than you.
He saw the choking man clawing his throat. Universal sign for!
He dropped his plates and ran.
He hugged the man like a bear lover.
He made a fist under his heart.
He did not stop when the man said stop.
He did not stop when the man’s girlfriend said stop.
He did not stop when another waiter said, Stop it, fuckwad! and tried to wrench him off.
He could not stop until the life was saved.
I miss him the week he spends in the infirmary. (Pennies tore his bottom on their way out, according to the nurse’s aide I paid ten dollars.)
I miss him a lot.
I have things to tell him, such as in ancient Greece there were temples where sick people slept in order to dream their own cures.
I have worked for three years at the franzy house, but the last three months have been the best by a landslide.
I was waiting for him.
I’m stupid, though, because how can you wait for a person you didn’t know was coming?
I’m not stupid, but my mouth is strapped.
I read last night in a poem: They did not meet, so they could never be parted.
I want to lend him the book the poem’s in.
I am suspicious of the new server on my shift—an eyelash batter.
I hate people who say, Does my ass look ginormous in these pants? when they have asses the size of tennis balls.
I picture taking a pan of boiling water to her lashes.
I tell her, Why don’t you take your fifteen? when he comes through the double doors, walking a little stiff. (What kind of socks today?)
I am so glad to see him.
I crane over the cough guard: sting rays.
I’ve never read The Odyssey but say, Oh totally! when he asks.
I’m sorry.
I stare helpfully at the next person in line but he says, What for? and I say, Nothing! and he insists, No, really, why are you sorry? and I say, Oh, just—I gave you the broken piece of pie.
I smile when he says, That’s all right, I’m watching my figure.
I tell him that on my drive to work I pass a church whose sign says, EXPOSURE TO SON MAY PREVENT BURNING.
I ignore the next person in line.
I want him to answer wittily—take a jab at religious hypocrisy, or make up his own and better pun. But he says, Whales’ backs don’t burn when they breach because a vitreous oil secreted by their epithelium deflects ultraviolet rays.
I worry that institutional living is infecting him. With non sequiturs.
I ask, So where do you find all your various socks? and he answers, Mother sends.
I say, Oh.
I believe there are many ways to choke.
I don’t think a blocked trachea is the worst of them.
I mean, yes, you’ll die if
your flesh-clogged windpipe is not poked clear, but is that actually worse than years of nothing to say?
I slither my fingers down at night, like they are his fingers.
I am a stealer.
I take snapshots of other people’s heads.
I take their fingers and put them in my crotch.
I need to get him out of here.
I’m afraid he will turn into one long non sequitur if I don’t.
I can borrow disguises from my sister’s human-puppet college.
I’ll drive so fast they can’t catch us.
I am a good driver.
I’ll give him my bed and take the couch. Unless he says, Hey, come here.
I drop a pan of lasagna from picturing it so hard.
I don’t even mind when the lash-batter says, Oh my god, loser! because soon I will never see her again.
I will give him sugar cake for breakfast. Grapefruit so young it hurts your eyes.
I will take him for walks around my neighborhood, which has feral cats and a lightning-struck tree.
I will read aloud from a book of his choice.
I won’t worry any more about my breath stopping in the night, because if it does, he will start it.
He nods while her mouth moves, but really, what is she saying?
He is smiling because she is.
He is thinking, What about the misery shows? (The other humans often need him on hand to explain plot and character while they suck themselves into sucrose trances.)
He likes the red best. But there is never enough.
He likes the green under Penelope’s lashes.
He hates how worried she looks, so he keeps nodding.
He thinks, If any god has marked me out again for ship-wreck, my tough heart can undergo it. What hardship have I not long since endured at sea, in battle! Let the trial come.
He says, All right, lamb, see you then.
He adds, I shrive thee of all blame for Tuesday’s fungus-riddled cod.
I run it: lamb lamb lamb lamb lamb.
I know he’d never say it to the eyelash-batter. He doesn’t even look at her, usually.
I repeat the word until my tongue hurts.
I am still holding the barrister wig, even though no one will be needing it.
I blink at the pink light growing on the floor.
I was clear, wasn’t I, in naming midnight as our appointed time?
I diagnose myself with dawnophobia: the fear of dawn.
I bet he fell asleep by mistake.
I wonder if his roommate caught him on his way out. Informed the nurses’ station.
I don’t think the roommate would rat; he is not a fan of people in charge.
I hope he’ll whisper apologies in the breakfast line. Raincheck on our rendezvous, lamb?
I won’t be able to stand it if—instead—he looks at me in that I-am-not-actually-here way and mentions a sea creature.
I will, though.
I will stand it.
I dry my eyes with a dry napkin.
I go through a whole stack—ten times ten—of suggestion cards in their plastic bin, writing the same thing on every card: Please cancel your contract with the improv comedians.
HANDFASTING
When the stranger walks into the restaurant, I am still listening to Kasko talk dirty to my sister. I’ve been listening all morning and hating Kasko and hating my sister for putting up with it. She does more than put up. She leans across the marbled counter, between poached-egg orders, bends close to his big thick face and keeps her lips apart. The spit glitters in her mouth.
Sarah isn’t spending many nights at home. She sleeps at Kasko’s trashed apartment between his crusty sheets. My parents allow this because my sister is out of high school and earns her own money. I am thinking, when the stranger walks in, about drawing up a list of Kasko’s crimes. My parents might be interested in seeing it.
Hello there, says the stranger to Sarah, and leans primly against a stool. His white shirt is stained blue from the fountain pens sticking out of its pocket. He orders hot water and dry toast and explains he is looking for witches. Yes, he says, it’s a strange thing to look for, but we must understand, he is writing a dissertation about them.
Aren’t any here, says Kasko. Town’s full up on bitches however.
I’m not talking about the broomstick kind, says the stranger. Witches are not just a matter of the seventeenth century. They are alive among us.
But not here, repeats Kasko. Look around you—there’s nothing here.
There is a bank, a courthouse, a pharmacy. A green square where two streets meet. Around the corner is the Vietnamese café where Kasko rinses sauce off dishes and uses the long distance for booking bands that come to play at the VFW for the kids of Wolvercote, old kids, little kids, our hands full of beer.
My sister in her pink uniform with a tiny black star at either breast sets down the toast and hot water. The stranger dips one of the unbuttered triangles into the cup. Softens it, he murmurs.
She nods and asks, So what kind are they?
Modern-day witchcraft, he says, assumes many guises. You have your run-of-the-mill goth girl. Your senile herb-dicer. Your lesbian bookshop owner. Your California blood-guzzler. Your sober alcoholic in search of a new spirituality. And then there are—the renegades. They don’t fit into a category because they’re either insurgent or incompetent.
Kasko tells him he is barking up a blind alley. Sarah nods. Davey and the line cook nod.
I don’t move my head.
You sure you got the right Wolvercote? says Kasko.
This is it, replies the stranger. There are no other Wolvercotes of interest to me.
How did the stranger know where to look? The witch wasn’t here long. She passed through, is gone. Kasko says that whoever mentions her name gets a beating. He is full of big talk. But he can, if he wants to, break my bones. He tortures squirrels; he once shot a dog without remorse.
This stranger owns a very nice selection of pens, sleek and heavy, with slanting tips and drippy ink. He asks questions and writes down what the others say. I am the youngest and stay quiet. There aren’t any grown-ups around except the mailman, reading his paper in the corner, and he is deaf. Sarah pours coffee and refills our waters and tongs crullers out of the glass case.
What does the word Wicca mean to you? asks the stranger.
My friend Flicka! shouts Davey from down the counter, where he and the line cook are playing two-handed spades.
The stranger persists. Have you heard this term before? Has anyone around here used the term?
We’re very uneducated, sniffs Kasko. We don’t use terms.
Sarah offers the stranger a cruller, but he says he can’t handle sugar. I get bloated and lethargic, he explains. He touches very lightly the back of her hand that holds the green flowered plate. Kasko, noticing, says this interview needs to wrap up and what else does he want to know for God’s sake?
So far you’ve told me nothing I want to know. You have described some customary social practices that include—he looks at his notes—the listening to of extremely marginal music, and the pushing over of cows as they stand in fields. You have intimated that nobody over the age of twelve in this town is a virgin.
He said virgin, yells Davey from the cards.
When the lunch rush starts, the stranger says he’s off to the Red Roof Inn on the highway to write up his notes. We watch him go. Kasko announces his theory: the guy is on a hunt for tender meat. He has a thing for girls who wear black and use period blood in their potions. A fetish, he explains. This research is a front.
Sarah isn’t persuaded. He doesn’t look dirty, she says, just kind of pathetic.
Sex criminals, says Kasko, never look like sex criminals.
He was wearing a wedding ring, my sister points out. I didn’t notice this; neither did Kasko. It’s the sort of thing girls notice.
The witch’s eyes were painted purple and black. Back in April, I looked straigh
t into them and asked for a spell. Cut those two apart, was my request. She followed my pointing finger to Kasko and Sarah, entwined. I’ll see what I can do, she said.
The stranger comes back the next morning. We are waiting. We would be waiting anyhow, because it’s July, the heat is wet and terrible, and the Morning Star has central air. My parents’ house does not have central air. The movie theater, two towns over, does not open until the afternoon.
He starts asking the same questions as the day before, and Kasko, Sarah, and Davey give the same answers. Nothing. Nope. Never noticed. The stranger is getting frustrated. Keeps asking the same things. Have we seen any girls collecting rainwater in bowls? Wearing milky stones on chains around their necks? Carrying a double-edged blade with runes carved into the handle?
Don’t blame us for the no-witches situation, says Kasko. He’s got a satisfied look I can’t stand.
I say loudly, Why don’t you talk to Egg Boy?
Shut up, Giles, they all go at once.
Who is Egg Boy?
A retarded person who lives under the town bridge, declares Kasko. Next question?
The stranger looks at me, hard. Giles, who is Egg Boy?
From across the table, Kasko is staring too. He shakes his head just the tiniest bit, and tucks his lips behind his teeth.
He lives under the bridge and steals eggs from neighboring farms, I answer reluctantly. But the stranger is writing it down. He seems excited. He finishes the coffee in his cup and slurps up what spilled into the green saucer. I look over his shoulder at the notebook and read LOCATE EGG BOY in big bleeding blue letters.
Egg Boy, whose heart was torn to pieces and left in the road, now keeps to himself in his apartment above the package store. His bad moods are feared and his grief is respected. People only discuss his plight in whispers, and never with grown-ups, much less strange ones. I’m actually not sure if this stranger is a grown-up or not. He dresses old—corduroy pants and white button-downs and thick brown shoes—but his face is soft and pimply. He doesn’t seem much older than Kasko or the other boys who are already done with high school.
I leave the Morning Star while the stranger is still sitting there, before Kasko can hit or lecture me. I take my bike away from town into the meadows, the pine woods, hiding in the heat until supper.
