The Pursuit of Miss Heartbreak Hotel Page 12

  “Um,” they say. “So clash.”

  We all stand in silence. Eve’s speak rings again and she giggles, like popcorn popping. She presses buttons but it keeps ringing.

  “Flip,” she laughs. “Ponies ’n’ pigtails!”

  “She’s All Thumbs, flap-Jacks,” I say, cracking up and Eve snorts, rubbing her watering eyes.

  The Pennies drop their pointy chins and scrunch up their noses. “Are you … fried?” they say, lifting their lenses to look into Eve’s red-rimmed eyes. She just shrugs and my sides are aching. “Whatever,” they hiss and spin and heel it to their whip, their colorful sarongs wafting like garish enemy flags.

  “Rinse and re—” I start to say, but Eve grabs my peace sign fingers and drags me to my car.

  We get in and sit and I’m still massive giggling. Eve says stop, so I do. She says, “You don’t understand. They’re just acting like clash cogs. They’re not that flip.”

  I nod.

  “There’s just some rules, is all.” She flips down her mirror. “And I’m breaking like six thousand and fifty-seven of them—so they’re jammed. And they should be.”

  I nod again.

  I watch her mug in the mirror and our eyes meet. She slides on sparkly lip gloss and pulls a fingertip under her eyes. “I haven’t dialed, I haven’t been into it with them in, like, weeks. I’m not acting like an apple-Jack.”

  I nod again.

  She sighs and flips the mirror back up. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t mean, ‘acting’—like pretending. I’m a superbeat apple-Jack. I mean, usually, just not lately.”

  I nod again.

  “Listen,” she says. “You may think they’re clash cogs, but they’ve been my best Jacks for years. We’ve had massive good times. And do not nod your flip skull again, Bug-Jack!”

  I don’t nod. I shrug.

  “You’re driving me Ophelia,” she mumbles as she grabs the keys from my hand and turns them in the ignition of my car. I pull out of the lot and we cut a wheel and drive in silence.

  “And y’know what?” Eve says after many quiet moments. “I don’t think I like that word.”

  “Eh?”

  “Lesbian,” she says. The L-Bomb.

  “That’s random.”

  She sighs, looks out her window.

  “I mean, that’s what they’re gonna call us, you know? If they find out.”

  I shrug, keeping cool. “Who cares. If people wanna jive, let ’em jive.”

  “Come on, Bug. You can’t scheme you haven’t thought about this.”

  We stop at a red light and I pick at an old sticker of a kitten in a party hat peeling off my dash. “You know I have, Thumbs. But what I’m saying is I don’t give a rat’s tail about what other clash-Jacks want to call or not call me. Who cares?”

  “So, I suppose you’ve already told Zoë and Maya all about us swapping spit, getting cozy.”

  I shrug. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Well, forget other Jacks, then. Just for you. Don’t you care what this means? Don’t you wanna be ready to deal with it when everyone finds out?”

  “All I know is I like you. Well, not so much right now—” I check, but she’s not smiling. “B’sides, even if Jacks did talk about us, don’t you think they’d just find it massive fascinating? I would.”

  She groans. “You don’t know my Jacks. And besides, maybe I don’t wanna be massive fascinating.”

  “Word, Thumbs. Because I hear boring’s the new black.” She’s still not smiling.

  “I think you should be more serious about this.”

  “I’m serious as a broken phalange, beaver fever, Alektorophobia. Just ’cause you disagree with me ’bout this doesn’t mean I’m not serious.”

  “Well, I s’pose that just makes you a better person than me.”

  “Perhaps. But that’s besides the point. I’m just saying, can’t we just enjoy ourselves for half a nanosecond without worrying if the flipping world’s gonna come to an end? This is fun, right? You and me? Bug ’n’ Thumbs?”

  She shakes her head. “A girl’s gotta think about her future every once in a while, Jack.”

  “But that’s all you do! And, y’know what? Flip it! Flip it all. My Oma’s laid up in her bed right now, dying. And here we are. Alive. And maybe I’ve just had more time wanting this than you, but I’m not ready to let some flip-flap Barbie-Jacks tell me what I can and can’t do.”

  She sighs, sits back in her seat. I got nothing more. I make like a tree. I’m stumped.

  “Eve, what else do you want me to say?”

  “That I’m not a lesbian.”

  “I can’t say that. Only you can.”

  “Word,” she says. “I know.” And we go quiet again. “What’s alektorophobia?”

  “Fear of chickens.”

  She finally smiles.

  Soft-Bodied Aphid

  Eve hasn’t dialed in twenty-four hours and I’m trying not to read too far into it. We’ve gone longer without talking. Marta, Miles, Auntie Gail, and I are in Oma’s kitchen, cooking up a hippie dinner of nut burgers and baby kale salad. Marta’s a happy little Betty Crocker and Miles is just about dying from excitement, sandwiched between his two older sisters. After we eat, while the aunts and Dad sit in the kitchen going over and over a stack of forms, the cousins and Uncle Edgar gather for another round of Mille Bornes.

  After six decidedly non-karmic rounds, I declare Mille Bornes my least favorite game of all time and leave in a massive funk and go into Oma’s room to say an early good night. The aunts come in, say it’s time they upped her morphine. I sit in the rocker in the corner of the room and Miles comes in and climbs into my lap and he smells sweet and sticky, like little kid. Everyone else trickles in and drags up an ottoman or folding chair.

  Oma’s in a lot of pain, the aunts say. She’ll be less and less aware, could be any day, any hour, any moment. The more morphine she gets, the closer she is. Which we already knew.

  And we all just sit, watching Auntie Gail slide clear liquid from vial into tube, just like the Hospice-Jacks showed. One more dose. Getting closer all the time. And we listen to Oma breathe.

  Ten people, in a room, listening to one.

  In, out, in, out, in …

  * * *

  I dial Eve. She gets home from gigging and doesn’t dial me. She has dinner and doesn’t dial me. The sun sets and she doesn’t dial me. It’s late and I finally get her on her home speak.

  “Oh, word, Lu.”

  “Word.”

  “I never dialed you back. I was gonna after I ate.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t really scat. My mom and I are about to chow.” I hear a shaver’s voice in the background and Eve goes crickets. “Oh,” she finally says. “Word. My step-Jack’s here, too. We’re just about to sit.”

  I hear the shaver’s voice curse as a pan clanks and Eve’s breath comes and then goes hush. She’s covering the mouthpiece.

  “Are you for sure that’s your step-Jack?”

  “No. I’m not for sure.”

  I’m silent.

  She sighs. “Nate’s here.”

  I go flip inside. I see in my mind’s eye Nate Gray working his shiny-toothed Cheshire cat grin, his sky-blue eyes honing in on Eve, slimy words coiling about, oozing poisonous charm, working his evil magic.

  “Oh,” is all I manage to say.

  “We’re just scatting. We’re really just talking.” Her voice rises an octave with each sentence. “Lu, I need to do this. I gotta do this myself. Please.”

  I shake my head, but she can’t see.

  “Just trust me. I gotta see this through.”

  “I’m coming over.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Her voice cuts like a knife.

  She’s soft-bodied aphid and I’m all chewed up.

  I hang up and my speak doesn’t ring.

  Man Down

  I’m spiraling. Flip-flop-flapping. Massive.

  The whole crank
thing slams me like a careening snowplow to the guts and I hole up in Oma’s cellar. Like one of her dead and done ghost cats, I prowl, slow and coma, haunting again the cold, mildewed dungeons. I find a sixer of Auntie Kay’s Coronas in the fridge and chug-a-lug the brew, and when I think of Nate and Eve, my heart splats and shatters.

  I sift through Oma and Opa’s old drawers, find a lifetime supply of Old Spice and a secret stash of Reese’s Pieces. I shuffle about, sloshing back brews, munching stale candy, looking at the many hanged paintings, mostly done in a hasty, thick-stroked style by Uncle Remmy—my dad’s once twin—who died before I was born. I stuff my face with handfuls of sugary, peanutty bits and check behind every dusty cabinet door. I find a slide rule, a horde of pre-sharpened No. 2’s, graphing paper, and an old fold-up yardstick. Piles of massive ugly fabrics, scratchy cheap yarn, needles and pins and a little, red-and-black stuffed cushion like a ladybug.

  On Opa’s old drafting table, I see Marta’s initials are carved just under Opa’s blocky scratch. I scrape mine in with the tip of an industrial-sized diaper pin, run the edge along the thin skin of my wrist, up my arm a few times, a few times more. Leave a visible series of thin red lines. Stupid. Something I haven’t done in a while. But I can breathe again. It does the trick, always.

  I switch on the static of an old radio and the faint noise of Oma and Opa’s favorite ole-timey jazz crackles and hums.

  And my soul grinds to sand. I exhale and am blown away to dust.

  To ashes, and back again.

  * * *

  I drag tar after tar out an open cellar window, shivering in my smoke plume as the whole house sleeps, quiet as a lifetime. A deep chill creeps into me from outside and over the cold, tiled floor, eventually ushering me away to the warmth of upstairs. An invisible force leads me past open, dark doorways, Jacks fast asleep, dead to the world. Like a phantom, I wander, zigzag-style into Oma’s room, past her old, dusty dresser, glaring white porta-toilet, the Night Nurse snoring quietly in her chair.

  She startles as I sit, the old rocker creaking under me and the weight of my heavy heart.

  “Sorry,” I cringe.

  “Oh,” the nurse mumbles, blinking open tired, heavy eyes. “I must have dozed off.” I never noticed how young she is. Thirty, maybe less.

  “S’okay,” I say, turning back to Oma. I cough, then burp. “No harm, no foul.”

  She shifts, and straightens. After a moment, she speaks again.

  “You mind if I pop out? I need to make a call. My little girl’s been fighting a fever.” She looks at me. “You’re okay, right?”

  I nod, even though I’m so clearly not. She stands, says something about pain, morphine, tube. Needle. Syringe. Something. Fill to, what? First line? Whatever. I nod again.

  And I sit. I really am kinda drunk.

  I watch my sleeping, dying Oma and the heavy slack of her jaw and I listen to the thick sucking of her lower lip as she breathes in and out, in and out. It’s at this moment I realize she’s brave. Infinitely so.

  I cross my arms and pull my shoulders up, nearly touching my ears. I rock the chair, back and forth, back and forth.

  And Oma, she breathes in and out, in and out. She mumbles softly in her sleep and I turn my head to watch the night creep between the leaves of a dogwood tree that push branches heavy with delicate, flying-saucer blossoms into the glass of the closed window.

  I hiccup, giggle, then start to cry.

  And slowly, raindrops blink before me on the window and I scope an apparition of myself heeling it up the back hill, smoke trailing like the string of some beheaded balloon. That other half of me, pre-Eve, long gone, gone for long. Far away.

  Goodbye.

  I hold up tar-stained digits and wave.

  Goodbye.

  * * *

  A sudden catch in Oma’s beeps snags my ear and I jump, realize I must have dozed off. I watch her and she’s still, breathing softly. I sit back.

  I take a deep breath. Her eyelids twitch, and suddenly, they shoot open and then shut again. She frowns and her fingers grip the sheets. Forehead creasing, hard. In pain.

  I stare for one stupid, stunned second and then stumble over, grab her hand, her too-cold hand and those knuckles, going white, white. Gripping mine. She gasps, her head tilting back and my heart is in my chest and the ten pounds of corn-syrup-chocolate surprise is quick coming up hot tubes, into the back of my throat. And then my speak, it’s ringing. Ringing. RINGING. I can’t think, I answer.

  “Flap-Jack, you’re alive!” Zoë’s voice comes like a gunshot through the earpiece and I’m a bumbling fool, grabbing at tubes, wires. Bitsy comes bounding in and leaps up into Oma’s lap, whimpering, digging softly with her paw at Oma’s too-thin thigh, looking to me with watery, alien-dog eyes.

  “Zo!” I bark. “Holy crank. Oma, she’s—”

  “Butler, you sound weird. What’s what?”

  “Zoë, I’m totally tweaked. She needs her meds and the nurse is somewhere, I dunno. And I just don’t remember. Holy goddamn crank, Zo! Her Beep Beeps are all over the place!” I grab a tube of clear liquid from the table, remembering the nurse. Morphine, needle. What else?

  Pain.

  “Butler, are you for serious, right now?” Zoë says. “Are you sauced? Are you strung out? Did you take something? What the flip is going on?”

  “Jack, I dunno! I dunno a goddamn thing!” I stare at Oma’s face, contorting, twisting. “Ah! What am I doing? What was I just doing?” I remember. “This! I’m doing this,” and I focus down at my hands, shaking, shaking, and I plunge the needle tip into the vial of meds, suck up the magic juice. Oma’s face contorts in pain.

  “How much, Zoë? How much?”

  “Are you for real? What’d the nurse say?”

  “Something, something, like. Ah—” Something, but what? First? First line?

  And I’m lifting the IV connector tube by Oma’s arm, the one that goes to the needle sunk down deep in that dark blue vein, the one I’ve watched the aunts and Dad shoot a dozen times. “I’m gonna shoot the meds, Zo. I gotta.”

  “Lu, holy crank. Are you sure? Where the flip is your dad?”

  “Zoë!” I yell. “I don’t know. But she needs this now. Okay? Okay. Here I go,” and through tremors of biblical magnitude, I guide my two earthquake hands, the needle sliding, sticking, then slipping finally into its connector and my thumb, it slowly depresses the syringe. Bitsy gives a little yelp as Oma takes another gulp of air, her face a map of agony.

  And then, and then …

  “Lu?” The line crackles and Zoë’s still there. Oma’s eyelids, they flutter open, find my eyes. Then, then, they relax. They close and go slack and Oma, she’s sighing a great big groan and her head is sinking soft into her hospital bed pillow. I wait. I listen. I watch.

  Beep … Beep..…. Beep. It slows.

  And my face is going numb, my arms, limbs, fingers, buzzing from life. Like a snuffed-out candle. Going going gone.

  “Holy Mary Jesus,” I barely whisper, my whole frame collapsing forward, my head falling into the gristly mass of Bitsy’s little body, my speak dropping from where it was pinned between my ear and shoulder. I breathe deep in her dry, doggy scent and then her soft little licks pepper my face, my forehead, my ears. I shiver all over and drip sweat from every single pore at the exact same time.

  Then there’s a hand on my back and when I straighten up, the nurse, her dark brown eyes are fixed on mine. Bright, shimmering spots speckle her face. I blink through them, but they won’t go away.

  “No harm, no foul,” I hear myself mumble, my speak vibrating in Oma’s lap and I fish it out from within Bitsy’s curled up joints. And then I’m shuffling through the kitchen and out the front door.

  It slams behind me and in blinking stop-motion, I’m stumbling, sliding down the steps and the spots, they go bigger, bigger still. A buzzing, deep and loud, like a swarm of green flies around my head, like pesky beach flies. Like that day at the beach, with Eve. And the stinking whi
te ray. And What’s eggs in the sand. And I manage two steps, then a third and then I’m aloft, too soon finding ground. I’m Man Down. On the tar I fumble with fingers like marshmallows for my speak, for Eve’s number. I need to call her but my chest is clenching and my lungs collapse and there’s a scrape of rubber on tar, the slamming of a car door. And someone’s face fading in, just there before my own, just as I’m going down, down, down.

  Then everything, it all goes black.

  I hear my name, and then nothing.

  Nothing.

  Power Wash

  There’s water, tiny beads of rain, drip-dropping onto my face.

  I open my eyes, and tiny beads of rain are drip-dropping on my face.

  I don’t remember who I am, or where or when, as tiny beads of rain are drip-dropping on my face.

  The sky’s trickle joins in a burbling brook of tears that come fast down my cheeks. Zoë, she’s here somehow and she’s propping me up, my pulse in my head thundering a hurricane. Her lips are moving and I’m in some strange dream.

  “Lu?” she says, as if through a tunnel. “C’mon, Butler, snap back to me.”

  And I crane my head over to catch the crazy fear in her eyes. Somehow, for some reason, I smile. And then my stomach is lurching, skipping, jumping ship. Mutiny.

  And my battered body is heaving forward, thick waves of golden Corona mixed with Reese’s and Marta’s hippie nut patties hurl from my wide-open throat, out, across the driveway in a magnificent arc. As if in slow motion, I watch as it fans and then finally splatters all over shiny blue paint, slowly revolving chrome rims.

  “Jack!” Zoë howls, covering her mouth, and I’m doubled over, gagging, gasping, waves of nausea rippling tides over my skin. And I’m soaked in sweat again, drenched. My innards clench and I hurl again, hit her whip again. This time, it sticks, slides down so, so slow. And I’m pretty sure now this isn’t a dream. This is real. I retch, cough, spit.

  And Zoë’s behind me, gripping my hair. “She shoots, she scores,” she says soft and a giggle from somewhere deep within my toes surfaces.