by Dan Lopez
Steven turns to Peter. “You see?” Holding Gertie close, he flings Talkin’ Tina toward the wall with his free hand. His arm is so much stronger than Thaddeus remembers, his aim much surer. There’s a brutal crack, and Gertie screams.
“This whole thing was a mistake,” he says, and storms upstairs, depositing Gertie into Cheryl’s arms on his way.
Peter follows, and for the second time that day Thaddeus finds himself alone with Cheryl in a house that doesn’t feel anything like his home.
Thaddeus sighs and folds his hands on the table. “Your son is too sensi—”
“Don’t.”
Talkin’ Tina lies crumpled in the corner, partly in shadow, its dress torn where the shards of its plastic arm ruptured the fabric—a doll’s equivalent of a compound fracture. Thaddeus lumbers over to the wall and picks it up. He squeezes its stomach, but it no longer produces even a garbled whistle. Its hair, however, remains as soft as ever, its expression as garrulous. He shrugs and offers Gertie the doll, which she accepts.
“Poop,” she says.
And despite everything, Thaddeus feels laughter well up from someplace deep inside of himself. “That’s my girl!”
“WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING TO DO?” HE ASKS. Trellised chains creep up the inseam of his baggy black pants, shushing like a maraca as he paces.
His name is Asher—you know this because he told you at the bar after apologizing for sneezing on you—and his blue hair is spiked at irregular angles. The graying smudge across his brow indicates that the dye job is recent. You watch him out of the corner of your eye as he, in passing, taps a purple fingernail against the surface of the table in the breakfast nook before moving on to the living room. With each stride he abuses the hem of those hyperbolic pants with the heels of his black boots.
“It can be anything,” he says. He’s congested, and as he speaks he presses the meat of his thumb against his nostrils, first the left side, then the right. This does not, however, deter him from scrutinizing the living room. He touches everything, then scratches the skin of his torso and arms where it’s exposed, which is everywhere because his white tank top stretches so low in all places that at any given moment you can see the metal rods traversing his nipples and the unfinished snake tattoo crawling across his rib cage.
“You just move in?” he asks. “This place is empty.”
You say that you’re in the process of selling the unit and that everything is staged, which is not entirely a lie. This is a stage of sorts.
He nods.
You imagine that he’s searching for some indicator of your personality—to determine if you’re the kind of trick willing to call the police if he robs you, perhaps for the money to finish that tat-too—but the house divulges nothing. Nothing here is personal. If he were to open the drawers he would find them empty. This is not your house; it is nobody’s house, merely one in a string of subdivision platforms from which to launch your work, and tonight Asher is your work.
Aside from the fact that by sneezing on you he invited a certain level of retribution you would’ve loathed to pass up, you chose him because the manner in which he presents himself represents rage and rebellion, which is what you want tonight. At home, the situation has stymied. But as you mix him a drink of equal parts bourbon and soda with just a splash of GHB, you wonder if perhaps you acted in haste. His questions betray a desire for intimacy and, by extension, a yearning for inclusion that is anathema to your mood tonight.
He finishes with the living room and moves on to the kitchen counter, where he languidly flips through the crisp pages of a home design catalog. “Like for me, my favorite thing in the whole world is snowboarding,” he says, “but it’s hard to do in Florida.”
“Sure,” you say, and hand him his drink and a tab. One dance at Back Booth and the promise of ecstasy was all it took to get him to agree to come home with you. Now you’re here, and he’s a wounded fish, blindly swimming. Easy prey.
He thanks you and leans over so that his chin rests on the counter, then, affecting what he must consider a coquettish gesture, he flicks a surgically forked tongue at you and asks, “So what’s yours?”
“My favorite?” Leaving the kitchen, you sit on the couch and beckon him over. “That’s easy. It’s Asher.”
He washes down the tablet with a hearty swig, then sneezes. “Sorry. God, I can’t taste anything.”
Your smile is coy, practiced. “Bless you,” you say.
For a while you chat about nothing. This is the part you enjoy the most. All the pieces are in place and what remains is some casual conversation and to wait. When he begins flexing his jaw you know that the ecstasy has taken effect. That’s your cue to tease his fingers with the smallest wisp of a touch. He’s got gorgeous robust fingers, the skin freckled and almost translucent the way it often is with natural redheads. Lean in close and whisper: “I’m going to rip you apart.”
“You’re funny,” he says, and curls into you, his spiked blue hair poking your abdomen. The red is still noticeable at the roots.
“You have no idea,” you say.
He finishes the last of his bourbon, then turns with a wink to face you. His hands caress your thigh and your arm. He rubs his back into the suede couch cushions and he laughs. “You know what would be great right now? Music! Let’s dance. Doesn’t that sound great?”
“Sure.”
His eyelids droop. You palm his smooth chin and wrap your hand around his sweaty neck. When you kiss him, you taste the bourbon on his cracked lips. His forked tongue curls around your teeth, then he snorts and you detect the metallic tinge of antihistamines in a small drop of his mucus.
He breaks off the kiss in a nervous giggle. “Sorry,” he says, “my nose is just pulsing with happiness, I guess.”
“No big deal,” you say, and taking his hand you lead him toward the bedroom. “Come on.” He doesn’t protest.
You both strip, then you sit him down on the edge of the bed and tell him to wait as you slip on just the pants from a pair of scrubs and head to the shower.
The first one was a skittish volunteer at a hospital—squeamish at the sight of blood—who came to the club straight from his shift. You had no protocols for your work, only a vague notion that something had to be done and that you were the one to do it, so you were imprecise. You’ve kept his scrubs all this time as a reminder to be more objective, which is what you are attempting to be with Asher, but his blasé attitude and innate appeal weaken your resolve.
It’s important to wash. Like sharpening the knives, showering protects you. And as you lather and then rinse, you study the way your honed muscles move in symphony, swelling and contracting beneath your skin. It has taken three years, but now this is no longer a body; this is a tool. Smile into the mirror. Then smile again until you get it right.
You must get it right.
He waits on the bed, desiring you, wondering about you: wondering, perhaps, what he will tell his friends about you tomorrow because it would’ve never occurred to him that he wouldn’t see tomorrow. You feel the heat of his lust radiate through the walls and it puts a smile on your face, which, upon inspection, appears natural.
You’ve been gone only a short while, but when you return there’s a different energy in the room. He’s wearing your discarded shirt and scrolling through his phone. Your backpack, which you had hidden in the closet, is open at his feet and he’s holding a pacifier.
“I got cold,” he says with a grin. “And your closet’s empty. I hope you don’t mind.”
The pacifier isn’t his either. It’s yours and it’s her favorite one, the one with a picture of Minnie Mouse. You should kill him right now for his forwardness. Instead, you shrug and endeavor to remain aloof.
“Here,” you say, handing him a tissue because you don’t want his snot on the comforter.
He stares at the tissue for a moment before absently placing it on the nightstand.
Turning the pacifier over in his hand, he examines the chipped pi
cture of Minnie Mouse, her dress worn away at the edges. “Cute paci.”
Gritting your teeth, you snatch it from him. “Yes,” you say. A vibration starts in your hands. Whatever empathy you felt earlier evaporates. He is nothing. Doing nothing. Fighting nothing.
“That’s cool, I guess.” Sniffling, he wipes his nose across the sleeve of your shirt.
Leaving the backpack unattended was careless, and now he knows more than you were willing to share. The important thing, though, is to not allow this mistake to derail the work. Everybody fails, but it’s how one learns from those failures that define a person’s character.
“So,” he says. “You, like, do ecstasy a lot?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, so then you just love Disney a whole lot.” He pounds his fist into his open palm and hops up and down on the bed. “Do you have, like, a hidden shrine to Mickey Mouse or something?” He’s giddy with the ecstasy and finds all of this hilarious.
Your palm throbs. Massage it. Take deep breaths. When you are calm, you continue. “Not exactly.”
“Then what?” He bites a lip and his eyes widen. “Oh my God, do you have a kid?”
Your patience expired, you tell him ecstasy is the thing, then stash the pacifier in your back pocket.
The banter—or perhaps the heady cocktail of drugs he’s consumed—arouses him, and kneeling on the bed, he prowls toward you, the snake on his side slithering beneath the gauzy cotton of your shirt. “See?” His backside slides out from under the hem. “That wasn’t so hard.” He emphasizes the word hard.
Clutching the front of your scrubs in his fist, he squeezes. You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and prepare.
“What say we get these pants off, Doctor?” Accompanied by a chorus of sniffles, the pimples on his cheeks arrange themselves into a greasy grin. He nuzzles into the front of the scrubs, adding his scent to yours, compelled, as all men are, to mark his territory. But he has no claim here, and besides, your scent is only laundry detergent and soap.
“Look!” you shout. Let the color drain from your face and contort your features into a mask of fright. Point frantically at the blank wall behind him. Confuse him. “Look! Look!”
Like a dog obeying, he crawls around to face the wall. “What?” he asks, his voice groggy with chemicals.
The longer he stares at the featureless expanse, the more desperate your calls become and the more sluggish his reaction. You would like to toy with him some more, to extract a few more ounces of frustration from the moment, but your hands are on fire, the tendons pulsing under the skin. You simply can’t wait any longer.
Woozily, he rises to his knees, keeping his back to you all the while as he searches the wall in vain. “I don’t see anything.” He exhales in a long stream; the thick veins in his neck pulse. “Are you playing with me?”
An electric shudder passes through your entire body, and, grinning, you crack your knuckles. Leaning in so that he can feel your breath tickling his hairs, you whisper: “Look closer.”
“I don’t want to,” he says. He’s tired of this game and has turned to whining. But it’s almost over for him. Your fingers encircle his clammy neck. He won’t have to play for much longer. He closes his eyes, and you can feel him go limp in your hands. “What should I be seeing?”
CHERYL PICKS UP A PAPER TOWEL FROM THE KITCHEN floor and places it in the trash. Sunflower seeds, a snack packed into Gertie’s lunch, are spilled across the counter. She folds the lip of the bag, clips it shut, and stores it in the cupboard before wiping down the granite. She scrubs egg yolk and pungent hot sauce from Steven’s rushed breakfast plate. Without a word to anyone, he’d gone out last night, returning late. This morning he hadn’t wanted to get up, but Peter dragged him out of bed just in time to get dressed for work and eat.
“I know I left the kitchen a mess,” Peter says from the couch. He’s stretched out with an ice pack over his eyes. “I’ll take care of it. I just need to lie down for a minute; I’m feeling much better already. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I never used to get headaches.”
“It’s probably stress,” she says. “When Steven was little I got terrible migraines.”
He sips from a glass featuring the racially diverse cast of a popular children’s cartoon, then sets it down on a coaster. A drop slides down the side, passing over a little native girl in a beaded tunic. Cheryl wonders if perhaps the sparkly-eyed girl is Gertie’s favorite character, or if maybe it’s the dimpled Asian boy holding a soccer ball and laughing. Does she even know that she’s Asian? With any luck, these distinctions won’t mean much to her generation, but how could they not with somebody like Thaddeus as her grandfather? She shudders at all the racist jokes he’ll make in the coming years. If he’ll even get the chance. After last night’s dinner, there’s the distinct possibility that Steven won’t let him near her ever again.
“It’s too bright in here—that’s the problem.” Peter crosses to the patio doors and draws the blinds. “There. That’s better.” He returns to the couch and his ice pack. “You know, you don’t have to clean, Cheryl. I’ll do it.”
“I enjoy tidying up. It makes me feel useful.”
She finds a stack of business cards stashed away in the back of the silverware drawer. First glancing to make sure that his eyes are covered, she flips through the stack: a landscaper’s card, a card for bottled water home delivery, multiple refrigerator magnets from the same Chinese restaurant. (Do they order from there so frequently because of Gertie’s race or is it laziness? If she’s being honest, neither option appeals to her.) She goes through the rest more out of a sense of completion than anything else. But her idle nosiness takes a bitter turn when she comes across a card for Gertie’s day care. She’s offered to watch her during the days more times than she can remember, but instead they leave her with strangers. It’s not right. She’s family. She’s the grandmother, for God’s sake. She practically begged Steven to let her stay home with her this morning.
“Really, it’s no trouble,” she’d said. “I’m happy to do it.”
But Steven declined, insisting on the importance of maintaining a schedule.
“Okay, but some variety is good, too, don’t you think? We never were that strict with you and you turned out fine.”
“Look, I can’t get into this right now. I’m running late. You’re just going to have to respect our decision. I’m sorry. It’s really the best thing for her.”
Our decision. The implication worries her. Steven and Thaddeus she knows how to handle, but Peter is an unknown. If she has to worry about him, too, she might be in trouble.
“Well, what about your father? What should I tell him?”
He turned in the doorway and drummed his fingers on the doorknob. Gertie hung from his hip, sucking her thumb. “Tell him I’ll see him tonight.”
She sweeps the business cards back into the drawer and turns her attention to corralling loose sections of the newspaper.
“I need to get going,” Peter says. “I can’t be too late to the office.”
“Skip work,” she says, walking away from the paper. “If Gertie has to be at day care, you might as well take advantage. We never get to spend any time together, just the two of us.”
He hesitates.
“Come on,” she says. “It’ll be fun. I want to get to know you better. Besides, don’t you deserve a day off every once in a while?”
“Maybe you’re right. Between the newspaper and the gallery—”
“Exactly! Now, you just relax. I’ll make you some coffee. The caffeine will help your head.”
“Thanks, Cheryl.”
“Of course!”
As she waits for the coffee to brew, she wipes down the table and they make small talk about the weather. The latest forecasts predict an active tropical season in the Atlantic, though there’s no possibility of a hurricane for several months.
“We have the shutters now at least,” he says, sitting up when she serves the coffee. “N
atalie got us worried when it came through last summer. There was damage at the shelter. I think it spooked Steven.”
She empties and then washes the coffeepot. “You have to be prepared,” she says. “That’s the important—” She stops midsentence.
“Is everything all right?”
“What’s that? Oh, yes, just a hot flash.” She floats him a weak smile.
He frowns. “Maybe you should sit down?”
“No, no. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
But, of course, it’s not a hot flash. The air has changed in subtle ways that she’s learned to recognize over the years. Thaddeus is up. She thought he’d sleep for at least another half hour but his cycle must be off. Her pulse quickens. She’ll have to tell him that Gertie is at day care. The news will crush him. He was looking forward to spending the day with his granddaughter.
Peter stands up. “Here, let me help you. I’m feeling better.”
“No, sit down. I can—”
Thaddeus’s arrival silences her. He wanders into the room, humming quietly. “Good morning,” he says, addressing the room as if he were speaking to an auditorium and not just the two of them. He moves without aim and stops beside the kitchen counter as if by accident.
“You’re up early!” she says. He mumbles something about the weather and having trouble sleeping in a new bed, but she doesn’t listen. Instead she makes encouraging sounds to keep him talking while she dashes around the kitchen. Over the years, she’s learned that the best way to neutralize him is to keep him busy, so that’s what she’ll do. She can’t allow him to piss off Peter as well. Not after last night. When there’s a lull in his monologue, she sets down a glass of water in front of him and presses a pill into his hand. “Here. Take this. It’s the new blood pressure medicine. Sit down. I’ll bring you something to eat. Do you want eggs?”
His eyes swim up to meet hers. “Where’s Stevie?”
“He dropped Gertie off on the way to work,” she says, as if it’s nothing, as if it’s exactly what she expected would happen. Confidence, she’s learned, placates him. “He’s at the real estate office all morning, then the shelter in the afternoon. Busy, busy, busy! You know how that goes, but he said he’d see you tonight.” She smiles and points at the pill in his hand. “Why don’t you sit down? And take that already.”
