I point to myself and give him a what the fuck look.
Jung laughs. He wets the tip of his joint with his tongue and puts it in his pocket. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Well it wasn’t there for me, Dora.”
And then he walks back into the club. I watch his hair as he walks away.
I stare at the cig in my hand. Smoke curls up toward my face. So the guy is obviously sexually open, has no problem with recreational drugs, loves to dance, and digs animal ju ju. I take a big ass drag off my cig, then flick it. It bounces on the pavement and glows for a moment.
I just have one question.
Why the fuck couldn’t this dude have been my therapist?
19.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED? I write. I press down super fucking hard with a red Crayola crayon on a napkin at Shari’s, and thrust the napkin pretty much into Ave Maria’s face.
“ Well I just mean I didn’t think it would do any harm,” Ave Maria goes.
I snatch the little napkin back and break the goddamn crayon trying to write an answer … I have to get a new napkin and crayon. The napkins and crayons and straws and silverware and shit are all at this mini station in the center of Shari’s restaurant. It’s exactly like the medicine cabinet deal in the ER. Maybe the whole world works like this – little substations in life. I grab a wad of napkins and a black Crayola and some Tabasco for good measure and go back to the table.
The orange gloom of Shari’s feels a little like we’re sitting in a bowl of puke. It’s two a.m. so there aren’t too many other customers – a table of goths across the restaurant – jeez did I ever look that dorkish? A couple of truckers on barstools, a gaggle of rotund nurses I sincerely hope I’ve never seen before. Cops don’t congregate until around 4:00 a.m.
Obsidian sucks on a banana milkshake and fondles a plateful of bacon. Little Teena downs steak and eggs. Ave Maria polishes off a plate of pancakes with whip cream and strawberries all over them. She’s got whip cream smeared on her chin. Yes it’s a perfect joke. But I’m in no mood.
“What’s the big deal?” Little Teena asks. “It’s just a few Facehooker friends and YouTuboners that are looking at it, and no one really knows what they’re looking at anyway, right? Plus it’s pretty dark. It’s not like there was proper lighting. I mean, the troll’s even in the shot a couple of times.” He whips out a cigarette and a lighter. Lights up.
A waitress waddles over and scowls at him and shakes her jowls. “Sir, you can’t do that in here. We’re a non-smoking establishment.” She points to a sign behind Little Teena’s head.
“Ah, fair lady,” Little Teena says, “so true.” He grabs my black crayon, sticks it in his mouth, and lights it. The waitress backs away like she’s a little frightened.
I snatch the black Crayola back, blow the flame out, and rub some of the melted black on my lips. Then I douse it in my glass of water. Smells like melted kid hope.
My head itches. My hair is coming back but I look … patchy. I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my hoodie – great. I’m so pissed I’m frothing a little. I suck spit back into my mouth and finish what I’m writing and shove the napkin over to Little Teena. It’s not FINISHED. Don’t you get it? It’s MINE.
“OK, OK,” Little Teena says, using the napkin to dab at his forehead.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Ave Maria sort of whimpersings at me. “This is the I’m sorry song.” She improvises a happy little tune. I look at her. She makes her eyes all big. She rests her head on her fists atop those goddamn pencil thin wrists. “So soooooooorrrrrrrrrry,” she sings. She pulls the hood of her hoodie up around her head and yanks the strings tight. In a neon pink hoodie with the hood pulled tight around her face, well, it’s pretty impossible to be mad at someone who looks like a bright pink singing penis with a girlish face. She blinks.
I write: your sorry song stinks and throw it at her.
The problem is this. Ave Maria told one of the teen misfits we let view the footage on the wall next to the troll statue that he could film it on his fucking iPhone. “I guess,” she said, out of earshot, so I didn’t know it was even happening. Sometimes she just doesn’t think.
Well he filmed it all right, but the new G4 iPhones? Yeah. They have HD video recording and FaceTime video calling. So the guy pretty much filmed the whole rough cut and shot it off to god knows how many of his wanker little buddies … there’s no way to stop the transmission of images once they signal through the flames. I’m so pissed off I want to punch a hole in the crappy pumpkin color vinyl booth seats. Ave Maria bobs up and down a little. No way am I gonna laugh. I try for a Stop. Moving. Now. Face. I write: you’ve got cum on your chin and slide another napkin over to Ave Maria.
“Nuh uh!” she says, then wipes, then tastes it, then smiles.
“Anyone want the rest of my bacon?” Obsidian asks, holding a slab of swine up in the air.
I give her the you know I want the bacon, asshole look and she smiles and hands it over. Everyone else gives me what’s left of their bacon too. Everyone knows bacon is my favorite food. I chew and stew. The sound of my chewing is all anyone says for a bit. The chorus of short orders and grill sizzling is in the background. I half want to record.
“I was only trying to help,” Ave Maria says. “I thought if more people saw it,” she stabs a strawberry with her fork and chucks it over my head, “we could get you out of your fucked up dungeon household and back into the world – I was just trying to create … whadya call it?” She looks pleadingly at Little Teena.
“Buzz,” Little Teena says, lighting and smoking his straw. Burned plastic smell.
“Yeah! That. Buzz,” Ave Maria says. She shuts up and puts her neon pink head back on top of her wrists. “Don’t be hatin’ on me, Ida,” Ave Maria says. “Or I’ll cry. Like right here. In Shari’s. Really loud.”
I study her face. I think I know what that would sound like, given her high notes. Her eyes well up.
Goddamn it I quickly scrawl out on the paper placemat – don’t fucking cry. My cell vibrates in my hoodie pocket just underneath my rib cut. I don’t care who it is. I’m with the only people besides Marlene that matter, so fuck it. It buzzes and buzzes against me. Maybe it’ll make my rib cut scab bleed. Whoever you are? Leave a message, punkass. I figure it’s Mrs. K. She can suck it.
“Look,” Little Teena says all fatherly, “that footage won’t last long on Facehooker because they’ll figure out there’s giant COCK going on sooner than later.”
Ave Maria is bobbing her head up and down maniacally. “Yeah,” she goes, “You can’t have vag or tits or cock on Facehooker.”
Little Teena douses his straw in his coffee. “I can figure out a way to hose the signal on YouTube, but it’ll take me at least a day. So will you get your panties out of a twist and calm down? By the time you finish your man movie, it will be a goddamn masterpiece. Check that big beautiful ego of yours, madame artiste.” He puts me in a faux head lock and nuggies me.
I wrestle free. Fuck. You. I write, then: I’m not wearing panties. Then I charley horse him.
“OW. That fucking hurt you know,” Little Teena says. Good thing I have blubber. I’m a higher mammal.”
“What about me,” Ave Maria goes, bopping up and down, “don’t I get one?” She’s smiling like a giddy little penis cartoon.
“You, my bulimic beanpole, have no blubber,” Little Teena says.
I give Ave Maria a good kick in the shin underneath the table.
“Thank you!” she sings five octaves higher than human.
Then we’re just who we are again. My cell buzzes my gut again. I whip it out of my hoodie pocket. Huh. No idea who that number belongs to. Must be Indians trying to sell me something. That could make decent soundscape though, so I hold my phone to my ear to listen to the voice mail.
“Gross. My thighs are stuck to the seats,” Ave Maria says. She’s wearing old school navy blue gym shorts and white tube socks. Before we get our check, we mak
e a break for it out into the parking lot, a fat waitress with sweat stains from her pits to her boobs chasing us and screaming, “You dirty little fuckers, get your asses back here!” But it’s not like she’s gonna, you know, chase us, and like I said, the cops don’t congregate before 4:00. Obsidian shoots her the bird and takes her T-shirt off and swings it around in the air and throws it in our wake. Briefly I’m stung by the beauty of her undershirt. Those Italian white ribbed stretchy kind. Did I think she’d be wearing a bra?
My voicemail kicks in as we run. “I have been trying to reach you. You have something of value that I am in a position to procure. I have a lucrative offer to make to you.” I don’t even listen to the rest. Must be a wrong number. Or Indians trying to sell me shit. Doesn’t even make any sense. I shove my cell back into my hoodie pocket. Whoever that is can wait.
We run. Together. Chaotic and mismatched. I may not be able to yell, but I can sure as shit run, and nothing beats the sound of docs on pavement. I flip on my H4n in my Dora purse. Clompclompclompclompclomp. Beautiful. My heart pounding. My rib cut stinging. I still have the crayon. I put the Crayola crayon in my mouth between my teeth. I forgive Ave Maria.
“To the cigarettes!” Little Teena yells, with his arm jammed forward and his lighter lit like we’re leading some kind of teen monster charge, a crass ample gay boy, an anorexic pink penis cartoon girl in tube socks, a bad ass Native American, and a raging mute – I bite therefore I am – through the black Crayola of night.
20.
“YOUR FATHER WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOU.”
That’s what I wake up to after maybe two and a half hours of sleep. The voice of Mrs. K. through the crack of my bedroom door. For a second I think I’m dreaming, but nope, I have to pee and my rib cut hurts.
“I know you were not here last night,” Mrs. K. says in a low demon tone from the other side of my bedroom door.
Creepola.
“Don’t think I won’t tell him,” Mrs. K. says.
Who does she think she is, anyway? This is my home. Even though I wish it would blow up. But I see the angle. She’s staking her territory. Peeing on things and leaving her scent. Rearranging spoons, I bet. Clever twat.
I pull my covers over my head. Ugh. Why do I even come home anymore? I fucking hate this godforsaken place. I live in a Fellini movie. Under the covers, everything looks black and blue. Cool. It’s kind of peaceful. I should film under here.
“Now, Ida,” the she vixen goes.
I roll out of bed and into my skinny black jeans. Not sure how many days I can wear this same underwear. Starting to smell a little too much like apples. I rub my head. Feels like … Astroturf. I check my face in the computer screen. Wow. I guess that’s what insomniacs must look like. Like someone spooned out little hollows under their eyes. Cave eyes. Fuck. I don’t mind telling you. I am no way looking forward to this. But later today I get to see my Sig. For reasons I can’t even begin to explain, it gives me strength. He ain’t my grandpa and I sure as shit ain’t Heidi, but you got to take what you can get.
I open my bedroom door. I walk down the hall of family. At the end is my parents’ bedroom – but that hardly seems like a good thing to call it these days. It’s the fucking father room. Where everything that will happen next gets born. As I walk down the hall toward the fucking father room the floor seems to pulse. Ew. It smells like middle age.
Propped up in bed with a gazillion pillows I’ve never seen before, underneath a bizarro Asian design comforter my mother would have eaten glass before ever buying, is the man formerly known as dad. He’s clean shaven. Mrs. K. is standing next to him holding a towel and the safety razor I used to give myself this bitchin’ head. She looks so proud of herself. Her lipstick is gleaming. Her eyes give her away though. Here comes Ida’s ass whoopin’, I bet she’s thinking. Are her tits saluting something?
I don’t know how else to say this but to just say it. That clean shaven guy in the bed? The one with the sunk in cheeks and knotty throat and silver hair? That’s not my dad. I mean it is, it has to be, right? But I don’t even recognize him. It’s like aliens replaced my dad with some Frankenstein they cooked up in a spaceship to look human. Um, clearly someone needs to buzz trim that ear hair, people. He’s got an oxygen thingee in his nose. A tank next to his bed. His pajama shirt is unbuttoned and I can see a giant red railroad track going from his sternum down toward his belly button. Open heart surgery scar. When I look at it I can’t feel my legs and my breath jackknifes and I get the spins. I look immediately away from the red railroad track between me and his internal organ and up at the ceiling.
Up on the ceiling? Of fucking course. A dong shaped crack. Huge. Like a giant dong spying on me. Told you, Fellini movie.
“Ida,” my father says. I look not at him, but kinda to the left of his ear. Where did my dad’s voice go? This guy sounds like … like Alan Arkin. No shit. Soft and nasal and a little like he’s just hit puberty.
I got no voice, so I just try to look at his … jesus, when did the color blue leave my father’s eyes? Steel color piss holes. Could the alien theory have merit?
“I’ve been meaning to speak to you.”
I look back up to the ceiling. Then at my own belly. Wonder how long that sentence has been true. Years, I’d wager.
Mrs. K. wipes the razor up and sets it down on the bedside table. She pretends to pull the covers up around this guy in the bed playing the role of my dad. He smiles. Is it true all men just want a series of mothers?
“Look,” he says, adjusting himself against all that poofiness, “this is a difficult time.”
No. Fucking. Shit. Sherlock. I look at Mrs. K. I look back at the alien.
“I’m going to need you to be a little more adult,” the alien says.
Adult. Right. Like you two?
“Until I’m up and about …”
I shoot a set of eye bullets over at Mrs. K. She’s grinning with no teeth. I half expect some mechanical tongue to shoot out and slit my throat. Fuck her for smelling good. That dang Lancôme perfume.
“Please, can I count on you to … please help Peppina – “
BRAIN STOP. Oh my fucking god. I suck in a breath and hold it. Peppina? Her name is Peppina? What the fuck kind of name is Peppina? I laugh. Luckily nothing comes out sound wise. All they see is my shoulders sort of spasming. Peppina stops smiling. Pretty sure she’s grinding her teeth. I want so badly to go S’up, Peppina Peppilepticpepperonina? right this second. But I can’t.
“ – as much as possible,” he continues. “She is giving of herself quite a lot to be here with me at this time. Ida. Do you understand me?”
Oh, I understand you all right, daddy. I nod my head slowly up and down. I shove my hands in my jeans pockets. I shrug, and tilt my teen head, giving them the universal ’sthat all? gesture.
“You may go,” my father says.
Peppina looks disappointed that I didn’t get swatted. Or rolled in butter and set on fire.
I exit the fucking father room. It’s right then and there that I decide. I’m not using Vivaldi as the soundtrack in the Sig movie when his wang shoots blood. I’m using the recording of my father breathing from when he was in the hospital. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. In a loop.
My real father’s been abducted by aliens and captured by a strange big-titted demon vixen. My real mother’s in Vienna turning more and more beige. Pretty soon she’ll be transparent.
Which pretty much makes me an orphan, I figure. My cell vibrates. Well hell. It’s that weird number from before. I don’t answer. I go into my bedroom. I throw my backpack onto my bed. I pack the SD cards with all the audio and video of my Sig movie. I pack a few new pairs of underwear. I pack my Mantegazza book, my purple Sharpie, Xanax, Vicodin, and Percocet. Two joints. A tiny bit of blow I have left from dosing the Sig. I pack cigarettes, a Pixies T-Shirt, my earbuds. I pack my Swiss Army Knife Elite. I check the voicemail on my iPhone. This time I sit on the edge of the bed and listen.
“Hello Ida. I
’ve been trying to reach you. Through certain … mutual channels, shall we say. It has come to my attention that you have something … well, I’m very much interested in something you have. Some video footage, I believe? Could you perhaps return my call – I can assure you, I can make it very well worth your while.”
What the fuck? Pervola? Somebody’s dad? A cop? Mutual channels, what the fuck does that mean? I make a pit stop at my computer and do a reverse phone number look up. Odd. What comes up? Hill and Knowlton Inc. Big time PR agency in Seattle. Um, they do Microsoft. What the fuck would they want with me? Gotta be a wrong number. A hoax. But I really like the idea of using it for soundscape loops so I hope the dude calls back and calls back.
How does he know my name? Whatevs. Doesn’t matter. Life is a Fellini flick. No time.
I don a pair of Steve McQueen mirror shades. I put on a black leather biker jacket. Quick search of the pockets reveals more Vicodin and hey! A barely touched box of Hot Tamales. Ave Maria will cream. On my way outta the hellhole, I see Mrs. K.’s purse. I nab her wallet and take all her cash and a couple of her credit cards. Christ. She’s got pictures of the midget demons in her wallet. Could there be two uglier children? Spawn gone wrong, that’s for sure. Are their ears pointed? Then I spot something else on the kitchen counter – pearl drop earrings – undoubtedly Mrs. K.’s, double undoubtedly a gift from the alien formerly my father. I snatch ‘em up and put them in my mouth like sugar cubes and flee. I’m sucking on the pearl drops, Siggy. Smile.
Luckily, I have a shrink.