Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

by Adam Rapp

The manager said, “Can I hold you?”

  I said, “What?”

  He hiked his belt up and said, “I said, ‘Can I help you?’” He was nice about it — he really was.

  Someone was totally screwing with his voice. Through the soles of my Red Wings I could totally feel my feet reaching for the earth underneath the concrete underneath the Pizza Hut.

  I went, “Um. Yeah. I’m gonna like meet someone. A girl. Real pretty girl.”

  “Well, son, in your state I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside.”

  “Steve?” a voice rang out.

  The manager whirled.

  I whirled.

  Children turned into panda bears.

  Their mothers into washing machines.

  The entire restaurant spun like a salad bowl.

  It was the lion from the salad bar. It was a lioness now. The lioness dismounted and turned into Mary Mills from the gifted school.

  The floating goldfish evaporated.

  The pandas entered the washing machines.

  “He’s with me,” Mary Mills told the manager, taking my dad’s Marine Corps bag, which I had left on the Ms. Pac-Man machine, and then my frozen arm. She led me to her booth and I sat.

  Mary Mills sat across from me.

  Her hair was black.

  Her eyes were green.

  Her skin was really white.

  She was a painting. Like something stolen from one of those museums in Europe. A talking painting. I was really impressed.

  Mary said, “I only have forty minutes.”

  She could have said, “I just opened a savings account,” or “I happened to step in a dog turd on Thursday.” It didn’t matter. The fact is she spoke. To me.

  We slid on the vinyl upholstery.

  Our movements were slow and ballet-like.

  I could feel my mouth hanging open. I was like a dog under the supper table.

  I suddenly realized that I had popped this totally vertical erection that would rival any I’d ever had. My hands trembled slightly. I could hear myself panting. Under the table I adjusted my erection with my left hand. It was firm and angular.

  “I ordered you a personal pan pizza with sausage,” Mary Mills offered. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  She sort of shifted a bit and said, “What’s in the bag?”

  “Um,” I said, “just a few important possessions.”

  “Are you warm?”

  “I’m warm.”

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “I’m comfortable.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  She took my hand. It was trembling so much, I was afraid it would start like shrinking or something.

  “Do your mom and dad even know you’re here?” Mary asked, still clutching my hand.

  “No,” I said. “I sort of sneaked away.”

  “Your poor parents,” Mary Mills said, setting her glass down, breathing, breathing. “How have they been handling it?”

  I was like, “Everyone’s been pretty cool. They all realize it’s pretty late in the game.”

  Then there was a lull in the conversation. But she was still holding my hand; she really was. My hallucinations had subsided for a minute and I was suddenly acutely aware of how incredibly unreal everything felt.

  I said, “Hey, would you go see a movie with me later?”

  “Steve,” she said suddenly, setting her glass down, not bothering to answer. “I want you to know something. And this is sort of hard for me to say.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Well,” she said. Her eyes were really huge and beautiful. “I just wanted to tell you that I forgive you.”

  “Forgive me?” I said. “Forgive me for what exactly?”

  “For that day at school last year. For what you did. To me.”

  I said, “Um, what I did to you when?”

  “Outside the music room. When I was at the water fountain.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Well, you touched me, Steve. Very inappropriately, I might add. You stroked my . . . well, my butt, actually.”

  I said. “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m really really sorry.”

  Mary Mills drank again and set her glass down.

  She was like, “Sometimes, I think about that day, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “Well, I used to wonder if . . .”

  “If what, Mary?” I pleaded. “If what?”

  “Well, if things might have worked out differently.”

  I was like, “Differently?”

  “Yes. If we could have become better friends if you didn’t, well, touch me like that. I mean, I actually thought you had potential. Steve, you have so much anger inside you.”

  “I do?”

  “Steve,” she went on, “this next question might seem a little weird to you, but I have to ask it.”

  “What, Mary?” I said. “What?”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  I said, “Like God God?”

  “Yes,” she said. “God God.”

  I was like, “Um. God is like dog spelled backward.”

  Suddenly the waiter was standing over us like a funeral director. He was two thousand years old, and he had this totally Dungeons & Dragons–looking horse’s tail. He placed my personal pan pizza down in front of me, as well as a pitcher of Coke.

  Mary and I were silent now. The talk of God was over.

  I ate my personal pan pizza in about two minutes flat. I didn’t even realize how hungry I was.

  In between mouthfuls, I was like, “Mary, you ever play Marco Polo?”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “That game you play in a swimming pool. It’s kind of like tag. Whoever’s ‘it’ has to keep his eyes closed. He sort of treads water and says ‘Marco’ and everyone else says ‘Polo,’ and using his other senses, he has to figure out where they are in the pool.”

  Mary said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do, Mary. Sure you do.”

  “I’ve never played it.”

  I went, “It’s like tag, man! Like tag!”

  “Okay.” she said. “Jesus, Steve.”

  “Let’s play right now,” I managed to say in between mouthfuls. “Just me and you.”

  “We can’t, Steve.”

  “But we can, Mary. We totally can.”

  “We’re not even in a pool.”

  “Use your imagination, Mary. Give that noodle of yours something to grapple with.”

  “You’re starting to frighten me, Steve.”

  I was like, “What about Red Rover? That’s a great game! All those kids locking their arms. The summoned preteen getting slammed in the neck by an angry knot of bony arms. Let’s play, Mary. Me against you. One-on-one. Red Rover, Red Rover, send Mary right over.”

  “Steve, I understand you’re under a lot of stress with your condition and all, but I’m afraid I just can’t start playing games with you. And certainly not violent ones. Under the circumstances, I think it would be silly!”

  “You know, Mary, if you like say ‘violence’ with a lazy Louisiana accent it sounds like ‘violins’?”

  “I’m starting to feel very uncomfortable. I should have known this couldn’t be normal.”

  “You know, you’re right, Mary. You’re totally right and I’m sorry. You’re a thousand percent correct, so I have a better idea.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s just cut the game idea and admit that we’re each others’ density.”

  “Density?”

  “I mean destiny.”

  “Steve, I want you to take this,” she said, handing me something wrapped in tissue. It was small and fit in my hand. I stopped eating and started to unwrap it.

  “Wipe your hands, please.”

  I wiped my hands with my napkin and tore off the tissue paper. It was a small ceramic figurine of a man wearing a blue robe. He
had a very well-groomed beard and amazing hair. His palm was thrust out as if he was blessing someone.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a statuette of Saint Bonaventure.”

  I said, “Oh. Who’s that?”

  “He’s famous for ridding a town of a bothersome wolf. He was Scottish, I think. He’s a kind of protector. My mother brought it home the day after our house got broken into.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “About a week ago. The burglar came in through the downstairs patio doors while we were sleeping. My dad forgot to lock them before he went to bed.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, not much, actually. He ate a bowl of cereal and stole my mother’s Pennsylvania Dutch spirit plate.”

  I said, “Whoa.”

  “And I think he was wounded, because there was blood tracked all over the linoleum in the kitchen. I woke up the next morning and cleaned it all up. I thought it was from my dad. He’s always doing things in the garage with power tools and stuff.”

  Mary Mills stopped a moment and drank her water.

  “It was weird,” she added. “The burglar could have cleaned us out, but he didn’t.”

  My erection had gone away and I could feel the need to urinate totally threading through my bladder.

  “It’s odd,” Mary continued, “you almost got the feeling that the burglar wanted to stay the night or something. Like he was lonely. I mean, that whole cereal thing is so childlike. The police say that if I would have left the blood, they could have had better evidence. DNA and that kind of stuff.”

  I was like, “Man, thanks, Mary.”

  “Thanks?”

  “Totally.”

  “Thanks for what, Steve?”

  “Oh. For the statue!” I declared, thrusting Saint Bonaventure in the air with a power fist.

  “My mom was keeping him above the fridge, but I don’t understand the point. I mean, my dad just installed a five-thousand-dollar infrared alarm system that’s linked to the police precinct. Somehow it seems more appropriate for you to have him. He’ll watch over you, Steve.”

  “So they never caught the guy?” I asked.

  “No. There wasn’t enough evidence. Only a few smudged fingerprints.”

  I started laughing for some reason. I cackled like a ghoul. I laughed so hard it felt like my teeth would fall out.

  I looked up and realized that everyone was watching us.

  “What’s so funny?” Mary Mills asked.

  I was like, “What?”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  I went, “I’m not laughing.”

  I was laughing so hard I thought my stomach was going to burst.

  Mary’s face fell.

  She said, “And the quality of your laughter is so . . . weird.”

  I went, “What — you think I’m like on acid or something?”

  “No.”

  “You think I like dropped a few hits before I met you?”

  “Of course not, Steve.”

  I completely lost it after that.

  Our waiter was conspiring with the woman behind the cash register, who was conspiring with the manager. I was laughing so hard it was totally tickling my bladder.

  The manager was on his way over now.

  “Steve, why are you laughing?” Mary asked, sounding genuinely scared now.

  I said, “’Cause I’m like pissing my pants.”

  She went, “You are?”

  “Uh-huh. Ah-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh. . . .”

  And it was true: I was totally urinating in my pants. It was amazing. If you ever want to change your life immediately, just sit down in some random fast-food place and start urinating in your pants. My lap was all wet and warm, and it was running down my legs and filling my Red Wing boots.

  I even told the manager. I said, “I’m totally pissing my pants, man. Sorry.”

  The manager twiddled the ends of his mustache.

  He went, “Well, that’s just not very sanitary, son.” Now I was his son. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Whatever, Dad,” I said. I was his son, so he was obviously my dad, right?

  We were one big happy Pizza Hut family.

  I turned back to Mary and said, “And the thing about it, Mary? The thing about it is that I could like stop pissing right now, but I don’t want to ’cause it’s so like warm.”

  “He’s sick,” Mary explained to the manager.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sick. Sick as a dog. Marco!” I called out to all the families. They were all stuffing their faces. “Come on everyone!” I shouted. “Marco!”

  “I have to go, Steve,” Mary said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Son, I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave,” the manager said. “I’m prepared to call the authorities.”

  “No problem, Dad!”

  “I’m sorry, Steve,” Mary said, sliding out of our booth and leaving a twenty on the table. “Keep the change.”

  She stood. I attempted to stand but my legs were suddenly two thousand pounds each.

  “Marco!” I shouted again, but no one would return my call. They were all being shy.

  “I’m sorry we were so disruptive, sir,” Mary told the manager, but he just stood there with his arms folded at his chest.

  “Good luck, Steve,” Mary Mills said. I reached out for her, but she turned and left.

  I sat there for a moment and smelled the urine rising out of my lap. Everyone was still staring at me.

  “Let’s go, son,” the manager said again.

  I grabbed my dad’s Marine Corps bag and held it for a moment. Somehow it felt like I was holding my own head. I would unzip the bag and there I would be, grinning right back at me.

  Man, I don’t even remember leaving the Pizza Hut. All I know is that my crotch was soaked and my head felt like a helium balloon that was trying to float off into the sky.

  The traffic on Kennedy was strange and noiseless. I could see birds perched on streetlights. Big black crows. I had this weird feeling that they wanted me, these birds. They would swoop down and start pecking away at my skull.

  While Mary Mills was walking out of the Pizza Hut, I think she had tears in her eyes. Nothing dramatic. The kind you can barely see.

  21.

  I had forgotten how good a Camel Light could taste. I smoked half a pack on my way back downtown.

  When I reached Foote University, I sat down on the sidewalk and pulled a rock out of my Red Wings. It took about five minutes to undo my laces. My hands were so slow, it was like I had frostbite or something.

  Moments later a bell tower tolled deliriously. My mom always called the ones from St. Rose of Lima’s the evening vespers. “Listen to the evening vespers,” she’d say from her hospice bed. “You can hear them all the way over in Foote.”

  I turned and stared out over Foote University. It was empty as a cemetery. It somehow looked like you would get shot if you tried to run across campus.

  I finally got my boot on and headed back down Governors Boulevard.

  Through the window of a barbershop, I could see these three elderly men getting shaves. They were all leaning their heads back and it looked all weird and sexual.

  I couldn’t light a new cigarette fast enough.

  Dr. Seuss was hitting me in waves. One minute a tree was simply a tree, and then I would blink and it would change into an ostrich wearing a football helmet. And then into an enormous bear paw. The acid was doing strange things to my Camel Lights, too. I would exhale clouds of green paint. Then it was gold. And then it was black. I could blend if I smoked two at a time. Red and blue makes purple.

  I could suddenly hear birds.

  I could hear the buzzing of power lines.

  I could hear insects in a bush.

  The low Foote skyline looked like some little kid had cut it out of construction paper.

  The downtown area was totally dead-looking. Everything was closed and there w
asn’t a soul on the street. It had the eerie feeling of a place where a bomb had vaporized all living creatures, only to spare the buildings and parking meters.

  The first thing I did when I got to Jack Palomino’s was hit the bathroom. I changed out of my underwear and threw the wet ones in the trash. I had forgotten to pack an extra pair of jeans, so I peeled off the ones I was wearing, rinsed the urine out of them in the sink, and attempted to dry them under the hand blower.

  While I was drying my pants, I stared at the backs of my hands. My arms. My chest. I didn’t even realize it, but I was totally naked! Somewhere between rinsing my jeans and holding them in front of the hand blower, I had managed to remove all my clothes! Even my socks were off!

  My arms were long and veiny. My chest was so skinny you could have stuck a safety pin clear through me. My nipples were the same color as my skin. My bellybutton was a piece of dirty popcorn. There were flecks of blue paint all over my neck. I basically looked like some freak in a horror movie.

  After a few dry cycles, for some reason I started sort of staring at my crotch in the mirror. Man, I was sixteen and bald as a Frisbee. I was six three, but I had the genitals of a prepubescent snowman. The final stages of puberty were avoiding me the way girls in cars avoid looking at you on the highway.

  What happened was I started getting pretty angry. All those guys in the locker room with their hairy underarms! Throwing bars of soap to each other! Spraying aerosol deodorant into their totally bearded pits! Brad McGwire and his shaving habit, always smelling like his dad’s Old Spice! Todd Lindholm, the spelling champ with his chiseled, perfectly carpeted chest! That five-foot-four-inch freshman tuba player with the pubic mound so thick and curly it made my scrotum shrivel just thinking about it!

  I was tired of being that one guy in the shower room after gym class — the towel-line fugitive who makes a beeline right for his locker! I was through with waiting for my hormones to thaw out of their freeze-dried paralysis!

  So I figured it was finally time.

  I let my jeans fall to the floor. I took the black permanent marker out of my dad’s Marine Corps bag and drew on a bush. I used slow, careful strokes. My hands were shaking again, but I figured it would make for good frizz effect.

  I realized I was in the women’s bathroom when this totally thunderstruck-looking, heavyset waitress came blasting through the toilet stall. She screamed so loud I thought the mirror would shatter. The bathroom suddenly spun like a casino game. I rifled through my dad’s Marine Corps bag, and in a very elastic, multifaceted move, slid into a pair of Robitussin-drenched underwear. I stepped into my damp jeans and Red Wings with the grace of a wounded giraffe. When I started for the door, I slipped and landed on my knees and the pain shot up my femurs. I got to my feet and stumbled out of the bathroom.