The First Bad Man

“I think it’s too quiet,” he yelled, one hand holding an earphone up to his ear.

  “Well, don’t turn it up.”

  “What?”

  “It’s perfect the way it is!” I made an A-OK sign.

  While the caterer explained a problem they were having with the coffeemaker, I watched Clee talking to the Kick It girls. They were all dressed just like her and she seemed to know some of them—probably the daughters of her parents’ friends. I tried to imagine doing scenarios with one of the other girls, a girl with brown bangs who was showing Clee something on her phone.

  “So we should serve less coffee? Or water it down?”

  “Serve less.”

  It was unthinkable—the girl with brown bangs was just a little girl. Clee glanced at me from time to time; I looked away. Seeing her in public, with her parents, was unsettling. The DJ put on a song that was everyone’s favorite, and the girls rushed to the dance floor with their hands in the air. They danced in a hip-hop style and Carl wiggled among them in a purposefully goofy way that made the Kick It girls laugh. He caught sight of me and beckoned. I held my neck to explain I was up to my neck in managerial duties. An invisible lasso began spinning over his head; he roped me. Everyone was watching so I allowed myself to be pulled onto the floor. Clee took one look at my hips swaying in my crinkly ethnic skirt and turned her back, horrified. I snapped a little to show I was having a terrific time and watched the girls do movements that looked more appropriate for a strip club than a fundraiser for self-defense. They were all in high heels—not one of them could run from an attacker, not to mention the amount of self-inflicted foot pain they must have been suffering. “Holla,” they kept yelling, “holla!” Was that even a word? Or was it holler? People were giving me funny looks; I probably wasn’t “on the beat” or whatever. Where was Phillip? Someone bumped into me and I turned to glare. It was Clee. She did it again—as if we could fight right here, wrestle down to the floor. Or else this was just her way of dancing. She bumped again and this time put her hand lightly on my stomach while standing behind me, containing me in a way that forced our rhythms together. I looked around and realized this was an actual dance, a lot of people were doing it. I couldn’t see her face but I could tell she thought this was funny, she was trying to make the other girls laugh. And hey, I could take a joke, for a minute, but the song went on and on and it felt, quite frankly, inappropriate. From Suzanne’s expression I could tell she agreed with me. I broke away with a little shimmy. My phone vibrated in my pocket.

  Phillip. This text didn’t mention Kirsten. It pertained only to me and unequivocally revealed his true feelings about us.

  SENT A DONATION—PLS SEND RECEIPT WHEN YOU GET A SEC.

  A dull and respectable text for a dull and respectable woman. We had never been a couple, not on any level or in any lifetime. But wait—my phone shook again. Maybe he was kidding and this text would say I was kidding.

  HOPE TONIGHT WAS A BIG SUCCESS!

  Polite—the only thing worse than dull. I had waited too long to reply about my decision and this was my punishment. It was hard to type with the music pounding. I used all caps like him, yelling through the night.

  I’M CLOSE TO A DECISION!

  I stared at the phone, waiting. No reply.

  I added: :)

  No reply.

  I waited twenty more minutes. No reply. I stared grimly at the sea of dancing people. It was time to go home. Jim could manage the rest. I told Clee I was going and she surprised me by immediately walking off the dance floor.

  “Let me find Jim.”

  Jim carried something out to my trunk. He asked Clee what she wanted it for and she shrugged. It was wrapped in a flowery sheet. In the rearview mirror it seemed to be moving.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see,” said Clee.

  She carried it into the bathroom with her. A few minutes later I felt a tap on my shoulder. She was in a full pummel suit. I hadn’t seen one like this since the late nineties—the giant head and gloves, the shoulder pads and groin guard. She immediately began grabbing me, no script. It was like being hit by a monster, something from a nightmare. I forgot the simulations and fought to kill. No mercy, no advanced mercy, just blood. I punched Phillip in his balding head and Kirsten in her flat stomach, I punched them both at the same time, pounding on them like a door.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, holding my arms, “slow it down.”

  I slowed it down.

  Clee was almost motionless, not assaulting me so much as moving her padded body into mine. My slow punches felt like tai chi. After a while the giant-headed alien just pinned me. Or held me. A strange minute passed. I counted to seventy and then coughed. She stumbled backward and pulled the foam head off. Her hair was messed up, her face sweaty and red.

  “This was a dumb idea,” she said. No squeeze squeeze.

  THE NEXT DAY CLEE ANNOUNCED she’d been moved to the night shift for two weeks. I crept around her in the mornings, going to the office so she could sleep. Did she miss simulating? She didn’t seem to. I was having trouble working or sleeping. My phone was very still. Ever since my reply, Phillip and I were at an impasse. I regretted the smiley face. Sometimes I went to the bathroom at five A.M., when she got home, just to show her I was awake and available, but she ignored me, watching TV with a T-shirt oddly wrapped around her head like a person lost in the desert. Often her pillow was over her face, so I couldn’t be sure if she was cocooned in her sleeping bag or still at work. Once I patted it, to check, and she reared up like a mummy awakened, her hair matted, eyes frantic.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “I wasn’t sure if you were in there.”

  She stared at me, waiting, as if another explanation was coming.

  “The way your sleeping bag puffs up,” I reiterated, “sometimes it’s hard to tell . . . so I was just . . .” She pulled her head back under the pillow.

  AT THE END OF THE two weeks she slept for a full day, then took a shower that seemed to never end. While she was in there Phillip texted: BATH. MUTUAL SOAPING BUT NOTHING MORE. And then: DECISION STILL CLOSE? He was still waiting for me, of course he was. But instead of relief I felt more agitated. I paced around the kitchen. Clee’s shower pounded on and on. It wouldn’t be hard to determine the shower’s gallons per minute, using a bucket. When the water finally shut off I checked the clock—forty-five minutes. We had never discussed splitting the utilities but maybe it was time. Two checks or I pay and she pays me back half? What was that sound? Blow-dryer. She was blow-drying her hair. She came out of the bathroom dressed in slacks and a satiny blouse, her hair a warm, shiny line. Her feet were coated with some kind of mentholated fungal cream. If she was going out, “A Day at the Park” would be a great option and didn’t take too long. Then I could have the house to myself. I put my purse on my shoulder, strolled around the living room and then sat on the “park bench.” She looked at my purse.

  “You going out?”

  “No . . .” I said suggestively.

  “Me either.”

  It was a long night. She tidied the living room, she did her dishes. At one point I found her standing in front of the bookshelf with her head cocked to the side.

  “Do you have a favorite one?” she asked.

  “Nope.” Whatever she was doing was making me extremely tense. With the TV off there was no separation or sense of privacy.

  “But you’ve read them all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmm.” She ran her finger along the spines, waiting for a book recommendation. She had a decorative bobby pin in her straight hair. I had been looking at it without understanding what it was.

  “Is that . . . ?” I pointed to the pin. “Does that have a rhinestone on it?” It was not at all her style—the way it was placed looked accidental, like a piece of twig.

  “What’s the big deal?”


  “Nothing. I just wasn’t sure if you knew it was there.”

  “How would I not know? Obviously I put it there.” She adjusted the bobby pin and pulled a book called Mipam off the shelf.

  “That’s a Tibetan novel,” I warned her. “It was written in the eighteen hundreds.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  She sat carefully on the couch as if it had only ever been a couch, never her bed, never a park bench or a car. The book was open in her lap and she read or pretended to read. After a while I gave up and went to bed.

  The next morning she was dressed in her usual sweatpants and tank top.

  “My friend Kate is coming to visit,” she said coolly. “She’ll sleep in the ironing room.”

  “Great.” But it was not great. How could we do anything with her friend Kate here? It had been more than two weeks since we’d done a scenario. My globus wasn’t back but I felt tight everywhere, wound up and ready to snap. If we could just do it once, then I wouldn’t care who visited.

  “She’s on her way,” said Clee. “She left Ojai an hour ago.”

  I set up the cot in the ironing room. I laid out the towels with the sugarless mint.

  “She should be here any second,” she said.

  I dumped some baking soda down the garbage disposal.

  “I see her parking,” said Clee. She stood behind me. I turned around. We faced each other. She laughed a little, shaking her head with disbelief. What? What was I supposed to do to make it happen? This felt like the fundraiser all over again, like there was some hip-hop thing that everyone else knew about.

  “Holla?” I said.

  Her brow furrowed with incomprehension. The doorbell rang.

  KATE WAS A BIG ASIAN girl with a loud laugh and a tiny gold crucifix hanging between her breasts. Her truck had a strange vehicle hitched to it. As she came through the door, she said, “Give me some booty,” and slapped Clee’s butt. Then she stuck out her own butt and Clee slapped it back.

  “That’s our version of a high five,” Kate said, coming toward me with a wide smile. I held my hand up in the air to show I preferred the regular version. She handed me a Tupperware container full of plain cooked spaghetti.

  “Don’t feel like you have to feed me, I’ll just eat that.”

  I hid in my bedroom until they went outside to look at the thing on the back of Kate’s truck. I set up the card table again, plugged in my computer, and began to work. A horrendous noise erupted in the driveway. I ran out to the porch expecting to see smoke but Clee and Kate were just chatting loudly next to the deafening vehicle as it idled.

  “It’s just like a regular ATV but it’s legal anywhere,” screamed Kate. She was smoking.

  “It doesn’t have the horsepower of a regular ATV,” yelled Clee.

  “For its size it has the same amount—actually more. If you blew it up to regular size it would have more horsepower.”

  “If you blew up just its back half it would look like you.”

  They both laughed. Kate dropped her cigarette butt in my driveway.

  “My ass is so huge.”

  “It’s really huge.”

  “Sean likes it. He says he likes to get lost in it.”

  “I thought you weren’t hanging out anymore.”

  “We’re not. He just comes over and gets in my ass for a while and then goes.” I looked to the left and right wondering how the neighbors were enjoying this conversation. “Honestly it’s so big I can’t even feel him. So my dad was right?”

  “Yeah, she’s a full Beebe. Not as bad as Mrs. Beebe, but bad.”

  “She sure looks like one.”

  She meaning me? One what?

  I ran down the steps, waving hello, and they fell silent. Clee kicked the vehicle’s large tire and then suddenly jumped into its saddle and took off with an earsplitting rumble. We watched her stop at the end of the block; she let out a whoop and yelled something we couldn’t hear.

  “Who’s Mrs. Beebe?”

  Kate laughed into the back of her hand in an oddly dainty way. She probably had a tiny dainty mother.

  “You heard that? Oh shit, we were just kidding around!” She checked my face to see if I was mad. “Clee’s all right. She likes to act all tough, but she’s a total softy when you get to know her. I call her Princess Buttercup.” She laughed nervously and turned the ring on her pinky. “I think you know my dad. His name is Mark Kwon?”

  Mark Kwon, the divorced alcoholic Suzanne had set me up with years ago. That was her dad. Kate Kwon.

  Princess Buttercup came roaring back down the street. “That’s got some crazy go!” She did a few circles and then jumped off. Kate patted the seat. “Your turn, Cheryl.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t think I have the right license for operating—”

  Clee walked me over to the grotesque bug. “Ever ridden a motorcycle?”

  “No.”

  “It’s easier than that. Get on.”

  I got on.

  “That’s your gas, that’s your brake. Have fun.”

  I pushed down on the gas the littlest possible amount. Kate and Clee watched as I very, very slowly pulled away from the curb, and then, like a woman astride a giant tortoise, gradually rolled up the street. It was interesting to be up so high and not enclosed. I’d never moved in such a leisurely way on my own block. My neighbors’ houses looked unfamiliar, almost bleached. The putt-putt of the motor overwhelmed all the usual sounds; I was enclosed in a bubble of noise. A dog barked silently; a young mom in a sun hat put sunblock on the silently wailing faces of two toddlers. They grew still as I slowly rolled by. Twins. I’d never seen them before. Except I had.

  Where are you going? they asked in unison.

  Up the block, I guess.

  But you’ll be back for us?

  I’ll be back, but not today.

  They were crestfallen, both of them. Somehow both Kubelko Bondy. Why had this soul been circling me for so long? Did it stay young or was it getting older too? And would it eventually give up on me? This was the wrong question—obviously it was I who would eventually give up. It was just a habit, like memorizing license plates. A silly little tic, that’s all. I stomped down on the gas pedal and the mini ATV jumped forward, roaring up the next block. The noise shook everything out of my head. What a magical way to get around. I’d always thought of these types of machines as toys for uneducated people who didn’t care about the environment, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe this was a kind of meditation. I felt connected to everything and the motor volume held me at a level of alertness I wasn’t used to. I kept waking up and then waking up from that, and then waking up even more. Was everything redneck actually mystical? What about guns? I turned around. Clee and Kate were very tiny but I could see them, wildly gesticulating for me to come back. I tried pushing down all the way on the gas. In an instant I was zooming toward them and they were running out of the way, screaming.

  THEY WANTED TO HAVE A PARTY.

  “It’s not a party. It’s just some of me and Clee’s friends from high school who live here now,” Kate said. “Some of our old classmates. Right?” Clee nodded. She was slowly turning the pages of a magazine, recommitted to ignoring me.

  “I can’t allow anything that will depreciate the value of the house,” I said. “I draw the line there.”

  “The value will for sure not depreciate,” Kate said.

  “Will there be loud music?”

  “No way,” she said. “I don’t even listen to music.”

  “What about drinking?”

  “No. None.”

  “You would have to clean up afterward.”

  “I love to clean; it’s, like, my thing.”

  “Well, I guess there’s no harm in a small gathering of classmates.”

  “I’m thinking about it more now? And actually a fe
w people might be drinking. But I can tell them to keep the bottles in paper bags if you want.”

  First a big group of loud girls came. Then a group of boys came and Kate plugged her phone into my stereo using a cord that one of the boys had brought. They moved my Mexican artifacts off the top of the speakers, which I appreciated. My phone buzzed. SHE JUST HELD MY STIFF MEMBER FOR ONE OR TWO MINUTES, BUT NO MOVEMENT.

  Then the boy turned the stereo up to its absolute maximum, which made it so everyone had to scream when they talked.

  Then a steady stream of girls and boys came.

  Then I went into the ironing room and typed up a note to the neighbors about the noise and printed out six copies. Once I was outside I realized the whole block could hear the music and six was not enough. When I went back to print out more copies the boys and girls were playing a game involving spraying alcohol on each other.

  I’LL ADMIT IT, I WANT TO CREAM IN HER MOUTH.

  And immediately after that: I REGRET THAT LAST TEXT, IT WAS TASTELESS AND SHOWED A LACK OF RESPECT FOR KIRSTEN. I HOPE YOU CAN OVERLOOK THAT LAST ONE. WE LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR DECISION. TAKE YOUR TIME!

  Some men came. They didn’t even look young; one of them might have been my age. He grinned at me. It seemed as though the men had brought drugs. Definitely hashish or ganja, maybe something else too. It was impossible to use the bathroom—I was waiting in line for more than twenty minutes before Kate bounced over and yelled, “People, people, people! This is the woman who owns this house! Her name is Mrs. Beebe! Let her cut to the front of the line!” She was very drunk. I told her thank you and instead of saying You’re welcome she yelled, “People like me, they just do!” and handed me her drink.

  “Is this alcoholic?” I yelled.

  “It’s punch!” she screamed in my ear.

  I drank it while peeing to save time even though I didn’t really need more time right now. It tasted alcoholic. All the towels were on the floor, which was wet. DO YOU WANT TO SEE A PICTURE OF HER? he texted. I deleted it.

  I leaned against the living room wall and watched Clee. She jumped on a boy’s back and yelled, “Foul on the play! Foul on the play!” with one hand up in the air. She knew I was watching her. Now she was saying, “Dang, girl, you need to shave!” and Kate was saying, “No I don’t, I’m Asian!” I watched them hold their legs in the air for different boys to compare. Poor Kate, who had to look so ordinary and be best friends with someone who looked like Clee. Someone whose eyes, though a tad far from her nose, were an exotic feline shape, someone whose hair was so sleepy and golden it seemed to be endlessly shifting like water, even in the picture I found online of her making pretend gang signs in a food court. Someone whose mouth was really too tender to be in public. I watched the sweaty, eager faces of the two boys Kate had enlisted in the leg test. She was screaming, “Shut your eyes so you don’t know whose leg it is!” The two boys were rubbing their hands up and down Clee’s leg and smelly foot and she was looking right at me. I looked back at her. It had been almost three weeks since we’d done a simulation. Why was she even here? My phone vibrated.