"Lucy," he said, and yawned. "Look, I don't care if you wanna' talk to me. I'm just in a bad mood here."
Lucy did not answer. Her form remained still on the other cot.
"I said hey, what do ya' wanna' talk about? Huh?"
Still nothing, just the dim velvet buzz of the machine between them.
Hopper sat up and looked over to see her face. "If you wanna' act like an asshole, go ahead. I'm not gonna' waste my time, baby. I've gotta' get some sleep."
Suddenly, Lucy screamed. "Sleep? You want sleep?" Even in the darkened room, Hopper could see her face burn and grow, her eyes rapidly seashell fan, lips drag and eyebrows buckle. "Hopper, you fucking bastard!" With a shriek, she coiled and leaped from the cot, pounded feet downward and lashed her arms wide.
"I need sleep, you bastard! Give me yours, damnit!" Feral, wheezing, she missiled toward Hopper, springing like a Jack-in-the-box fired by dynamite. Clubbing and mashing, she toppled across him, cracking his head and chest, crushing his stomach. "I can't stand it anymore!" she bellowed, swinging.
Hopper pulled and flailed, straining to escape the crazy pummeling woman, shocked and sick and strangely frightened of the moments he'd never expected. Lucy had been so kind and careful, needy and timid under mink coat hair; never angry, never noisy, she acted like a worried friend, storing her own troubles in a personal cabinet. After the days he'd known her, he would never be able to spot the animal battling him now, and remembering her past impression made it tough to tiger back.
"Stop!" he shouted, grabbing one of her arms as the other railed his back. "Lucy, stop it! Get offa' me!"
Lucy laughed bitterly, fiercely. "Go to hell, you prick! How dare you talk about sleep?"
Switchblade fingernails raked across his left arm, carving red canalwork that seeped fiery droplets. All that beautiful hair quilted downward, framing her raging lava face as she battered and stabbed. Hopper punched blindly, his muscled force useless before the crippling mad fury.
"You want sleep? You'll sleep for a long time, bastard! Good night, Teddy shithead! Sleep tight!" As her mallet fist exploded against his nose, Hopper wondered where the doctors were. Still watching behind the two-way mirror, and this just another experiment? Or were they out to lunch?
Like lobsters, Lucy's hands clamped powerfully around his neck.
Bolting, sweating, crying, pissing, Hopper erupted from the cot. Now the doctors surrounded him, reaching and staring in their curtain white smocks. Lucy was suddenly cool, wondering harmlessly with hands no longer strangling. She tried to touch him, and Hopper dove away.
"Ted, it's all right. You'll be okay now. You're awake."
Hopper shuddered like a palm in a hurricane, viral polar chill sweeping icelike through his arteries. Down he went, knees collapsing and everything else freezing as he passed out stringless in Pinocchio cedar kindling.
*****
"This food tastes like shit," offered Campbell, slopping a lumpy gray wad of mashed potatoes on his tray. "That's the one physical quality I won't miss about this place at all--the crummy food. A Whopper, a Whopper, my kingdom for a Whopper."
"You don't have a kingdom," said Lucy.
"Ah, but I do, fair lady! Each man is his own kingdom, is he not? I rule myself, and nothing else truly in this entire world. I am my own country, my own great domain. And the best thing about being king of yourself is you can't be overthrown."
"You're a clown, man," said Hopper from across the table. "You are way outta' control."
"Au contraire! I am definitely in control. Everything that I do is planned and worked out mentally in advance. As for being a clown," said Campbell, suddenly standing up, "I plead guilty as charged." He stepped away from the table and spread his sapling arms in the air. "Alley-oop!" he barked then, bending down diving headfirst toward the floor, clocking legs and body upward to create a pole-perfect handstand. "Ta-da!" he grunted, swaying giraffelike for seconds in the middle of the crowded lunchroom. Then, he yelled something and toppled timber forward, feet dropping like wrecking balls onto the table, knees cracking on the edge as dishes jangled shattered and food puddle flew. Hopper and Lucy were plastered, too late tumbling away from the spewing mess.
For a second, Campbell was silent, head sullen sunk on the floor, brown work shoes jutting toward the sky. "Well," he finally muttered from below. "I told you I was in control."
Lucy and Hopper roared as they fumbled him back to his feet. Everyone eating around applauded and laughed like a circus audience.
It took a few minutes for everything to settle down, for Campbell's fellow subjects to zipper fade their welcome laughter and relax once more. Still smiling broadly, Lucy made feeble swipes at the Rorschach splurge of twistered food muddled on her clothes and the table. Hopper slid a cigarette out of the first new pack he'd bought in months, lit it and stuck it between his lips.
"You know what?" said Campbell finally, playing with his ponytail. "When this is all over, we should all do something together. We should get together and do something."
"You mean after tomorrow?" asked Lucy, scrubbing her grassy green sweater.
"Yeah, that's what I mean. Tomorrow we finish the sleep group, so we should all have some time on our hands. That is, we can work something out, you know, whenever it's convenient for the both of you."
"I work during the day," said Lucy.
"In the evening then."
"What do you wanna' do?" asked Hopper.
"Well, I don't really know." Campbell hesitated, released his ponytail and thoughtfully began twiddling his thumbs. "Go get something to eat maybe, talk a while. I just feel like we should do something together."
"I would like to see you two again," said Lucy. "You're both nice guys, even if you're pretty weird. I'm glad I got to meet you, believe it or not."
"Yeah, that's how I feel, too. It's strange, but I feel very close to you two. I suppose spending seven hours a day together, five days a week will do that to you." Campbell picked corn from his tray, lined it up in skinny yellow rows on the tabletop. "Plus, we're all sleep rejects. We could start a club, like 'Snoozers Anonymous' maybe. No normal sleepers need apply."
"So what do you think, Teddy?" asked Lucy. "Are you in? We're all pretty broke, so we'll eat someplace cheap."
"Yeah," said Hopper, folding his arms on the table. "Sure, why not? I guess I could put up with you guys one more time."
"All right! It's settled, then, everybody. Let's...let's meet at the diner down the street. Saturday, at, how about seven-thirty? Seven-thirty at Dean's."
"Okay, seven-thirty. This ought to be fun," said Lucy.
"I'll be there," said Hopper.
"The start of a beautiful friendship," chuckled Campbell, shooting the corn away kernel by kernel with flicks of his springy finger. "I sense great things about to happen!"
*****
Of course somebody had to walk by soon. On a night like that, silver moon coasting and warm wind rehearsed, seeking peppy customers would patter to the clubs. They would flutter ballet by, negligee tuxedoed and wiping glossy sticks across cinnamon lips. Pockets jingling, full of status cymbals, xylophone symphonies rippling ahead, they would strut dabble pilot past unknowing, Saturday unafraid. And then he would have them.
He huddled in the shadows, crouching rabid leopardlike by a fuming putrid sack. One shot was all he'd need, one great booby with money to burn and out he'd fly and gone he'd go. That's all it would take, all it would ever take in the simpler dirty world, an arm around the neck, a jab in the kidneys, a wallet or a purse and feel those bills. There were beeping horns instead of beeping monitors, fizzling neon replacing Christmas blinkers, the bracing stink of garbage instead of the smell of medicine. It was black and white, rich and poor, day and night and nobody bothered to know him out there.
Footsteps clopped on the sidewalk far away, high hard heels of a woman with a plan. Hopper peeked out from the alley, spotted her wavy fur form trotting along. He leaned back to wait and lit the last cigarette f
rom his pack.
By the time he awoke, the fancy diamond girl was gone. His cigarette was out, the filter fallen on a newspaper pile; somehow, the papers had not caught on fire.
Hopper rubbed his throbbing back and waited.
Campbell didn't make seven-thirty either.
*****
A Wall of Lisas
I watched quietly as Lisa ate. Spoonful after spoonful of soup passed between the bowl and her lips. As each bit of broth and noodles reached her mouth, she paused thoughtfully, then blew on it. A tiny plume of steam would flee from the cooling spoonful, then Lisa would slurp up the soup and swallow.
Somewhere between each swallow of soup, Lisa would force in a bite of buttered bread. She would pick up one of several slices, already spread with margarine and stacked neatly on a plate, and deliver the slice to her mouth. Crust went first, always, since it was her favorite part. Then the white center, smothered with pale margarine. Sometimes, the goopy margarine would cause a bit of bread to stick to the roof of her mouth, and I would watch as her jaw and tongue worked to remove the junk.
She washed her food down with an occasional swig of milk. It was powdered milk, since she liked to drink a lot of the stuff but couldn't afford the real thing. It tasted watery, I knew, and left a sour aftertaste.
Lisa ate with her mouth open. She said she ate that way because of a tumor in her nose which made it hard to breathe. As I watched, I could see the food mashed and rolled and mixed. I saw the bollus wrung and churned in that pumping maw, sloshing and sliding, soup and bread and sour powdered milk stirring together. Her face as I watched was that of a cow, contentedly chewing cud; it wasn't hard to see a cow there in her crude, misshapen features.
Lisa had a crooked nose, sunken eyes, and protruding lips. Her teeth twisted this way and that, her chin was double, and her hair hung in tangled, oily strands. Ugly...she was ugly. As I watched, she continued to chew, a glistening paste forming in her mouth. The slop squirmed and bubbled and seemed to melt into her features. Face and food became one and the same.
By the time she got up to wash the dishes, the bowl was nearly empty and the bread was all gone. Lisa liked to eat, and rarely left anything behind after a meal. She liked the taste of food; it satisfied her as few other things in life did...except TV, of course.
Next, Lisa did the dishes, running them through soapy water with her stiff, sandpaper hands. Swabbing the dishes dry with her bony pretzel fingers, she stacked them in the cupboard as the clock ticked loudly. I saw Lisa glance at the time, then mutter that her show had already started. Hustling into the living room, she flicked on the TV and threw herself down on the couch.
Lisa loved TV more than anything. She scheduled her days around it, sacrificing anything to catch her favorite shows. Between shifts at the plant where she worked, she would run to the tiny employee lounge with the moldy furniture where nobody went, and would turn on the TV there to watch her soaps. The soaps were best, she always said. All those glamorous people falling in love and having adventures and romance. Sometimes, she said, she would dream that she was in a soap opera, and that she was different and life was different. When she talked this way, her crooked nose would crinkle like a prune, her caved-in eyes would glitter with a faraway look, and her bulging lips would part in a blissful sigh. She would raise a chapped hand to gently smooth back her hair...gently, in the gesture of a soap opera starlet, but betrayed by the mess of her body.
The lights in the living room were all out, so the grainy gray beams of the TV played across her face. She smiled as she watched an actor and actress embrace on the screen. Her teeth glowed grayly as TV glare seeped past her lips. I could almost see the grainy light travel deeper inside her, passing through her teeth, filling her mouth as the churning food once had. I pictured it flooding down her throat, past her bobbing Adam's apple, into her stomach. There it would be digested and spread out into her body, filling it with a gray, flickering glow. Her features blurred with the TV light, and it was almost hard to tell they were there at all.
The show ended and Lisa stopped smiling. A final flash of the beautiful heroines, a chorus of the theme song, and the screen went blank. The grainy light disappeared, the room darkened, and the station went silent for a second. Lisa's body seemed to drain of the television glow, and her ugly features came into focus again.
On the blank screen, she saw her reflected image. She was alone there, alone in the dark as she had always been. As usual, she was alone and ugly.
I was alone and ugly. You see, she was me, I was her. I was Lisa, ugly, boring Lisa, Lisa of the sunken eyes and twisted teeth and oily hair that hangs down over my skull like a ragged mop. That was me there on the screen, staring out of the darkness--into the darkness. I was Lisa, Lisa who sees her ugliness wherever she goes, whatever she does. I saw myself eating, reflected in the shiny toaster on my table. I saw myself doing dishes, frowning back from the glass panes of the window above my sink. I see myself now, watching TV, reflected in the picture tube of my set. I hate the toaster. I hate the window. I hate this damn TV which taunts me with pictures of beauty and passion which I will never know. But most of all, I hate this ugly thing named Lisa, this thing with no friends or lovers, who has never had a lover and never will--this pig with cracked lips and a crooked nose, this empty joke of a woman who fills herself with food and fantasy instead of anything worthwhile.
I cry. The news starts. I jump up, tears falling on the dingy carpet, and turn off the TV. I decide to try and go to sleep, and head for the bathroom to get ready for bed. Still, I can't get away from her; there's a mirror on the medicine chest, and she is waiting there for me. Her face is red and puffy and wet with tears. Her nose is creased and her eyes are hateful and dead. Thankfully, she vanishes when I open the cabinet to get some aspirin, but my luck doesn't last; she springs back into view when I swing the door shut, reappearing to haunt me relentlessly. She fills a cup with water and swallows two aspirin. Lisa never takes sleeping pills, she says they make her sick, and aspirin help her sleep just as well. Next, she uses the toilet, and after that, washes at the sink, trying hard not to glance at that mirror and spot her tormentor. But she fails: turning to flick off the light as she heads for the bedroom, she catches a glimpse of the sickening creature. Her legs are thick stumps and her buttocks are flabby, bulbous bulges. Her hips are hidden away deep within her, somewhere beneath the clinging pillows of fat. No womanly form, nothing on her to indicate sex except sagging, slack breasts like a couple of kidneys. All around her is nothing but mush and a rotten pussy pulp that encases her like leprosy.
She is ugly, disgusting. I hate her.
As I lay in bed, trying to sleep, I kept thinking about Lisa. Why is she so grotesque, so crude and unappealing? Why did she have to be born in that body, with this kind of life ahead of her? Once, I remember Lisa telling me a story, late one night when there was nothing on TV and she was feeling lonely. One day, she said, she was walking home from work. Lisa was just walking along when she suddenly saw these two kids, a boy and a girl, both teenagers. They where just walking along in front of her, as slow as you please. The boy had one arm around the girl's back, the girl had one arm around the boy, and they just kept walking along. Lisa only followed them for about a block, till they went down a side street, but she told me that block was just about the longest she'd ever walked in her life. She just kept watching those two kids, the whole time she was behind them, kept watching them with their arms around each other and kissing every couple of steps. She kept thinking about how young those two were and how much older she was and yet she'd never been in love. She'd never even kissed a man. Every minute she watched those kids, she felt closer and closer to death, till they finally walked down that side street. By the time she'd finished telling me about this, she was crying like crazy. Every time she sees people like that, she still gets all choked up.
It was no use, I couldn't sleep. I decided to get a cup of warm powdered milk to help me feel drowsy. The kitchen was dark, eve
n with the light on, and I could hear the clock ticking slowly on the wall. I put some milk in a pan and put it on the stove, turning on one of the burners. Then, as I went to get a mug from the cupboard, I saw Lisa on a dish. There she was, reflected on a plate that was laying in the dish drainer.
Enough.
Had to go she had to go she had to go she had to go.
I grabbed the plate and flung it to the floor, where it shattered into bits. I hated that thing, that fat, ugly woman. I hated her! I had to get rid of her, now.
I ran to my table and pushed the toaster off and onto the floor by the plate shards. It made a funny popping noise when it hit. Then, I dashed into the bathroom, the bedroom, the living room, snatching every mirror I could find, gathering up every last trace of Lisa. There was finally only one mirror left, a full-length dressing mirror on my door. I ran toward it, the other mirrors in my arms. Oh God--why did I keep all these mirrors? What made me keep them where I could see Lisa? Especially this big
one--what's wrong with me?
When I got to the full-length mirror, I had to stop, stunned and sickened by what I saw in its shiny cold pane. Lisa was there, staring out at me, crying. Her lips were cracked and protruding as ever. Her eyes, though filled with tears, were still as sunken as before. Her nose, as always, was twisted and warped. And she was empty, empty--no feelings or love or life or even food or grainy TV light. I hated her, hated her, hated her!
But wait...
It was even worse than that...worse than ever.
I felt my heart stop and I gasped and stepped back from the vision, too shocked to believe it. She wasn't alone. There wasn't one Lisa in that mirror, but thousands of them--swarms, hordes, mobs of them, lined up in a row, marching back to infinity. Oh God--there were whole flocks of Lisas, an army of fat, ugly hogs who were waiting to hurt me.
6 Short Stories Page 5
