And now she was saying Beauty and the Beast. I looked silently out the window. Outside it was nighttime. I had waited in that screened-off corner, bent over a hunting magazine, until it got dark. Marietta had long since gone home and Claudia nearly locked me in the office. She had gasped and grabbed her chest when I called to her from my spot behind the room divider.
“At least take off the damn sunglasses.” She tossed the cigarette away and then pushed the button to close the power window. “You don’t want to ruin your eyes on top of everything else.”
The following Thursday I was surprised to see that they were all there again. Except Marlon and the guru, neither of whom I missed. Janne was accompanied by the same woman, the one who looked like an older version of her. With legs. She pushed Janne’s wheelchair down the long hallway and the old tiles of the Family Services Center squeaked beneath the wheels.
“Hi, Janne,” I said as I caught up to them.
“Hi, Mark.” She looked up at me briefly and then stared straight ahead. Her mother squinted nervously.
“I can push the wheelchair,” I said.
“That’s very nice of you.” Janne’s mother tightened her grip on the handles as if she was afraid I wanted to make off with her daughter.
“Piss off,” said Janne without turning her head.
I shrugged my shoulders and let them go ahead.
The self-described psycho queen had brought an embroidered pillow that she was sitting on now. I remembered her name: Kevin. Her lipstick reminded me of Claudia’s though she had on more and had applied it much more deftly. Friedrich smiled when he saw me, which made me reflexively reach up and touch my own face. But it was still the same. Richard with the prosthetic had both legs, the real one and the artificial one, up on the chair next to him and was staring blankly out the window.
I entered the room behind Janne. She was met by a flurry of greetings. For me, nothing. So I didn’t bother to say hello either.
“Bye, Mama,” said Janne glumly to the woman, who looked around nervously, scanning from one face to the next and fidgeting with her handbag. Janne rolled her wheelchair to the edge of the circle the others had formed with their chairs. There was a space left free for her and an empty chair next to the space. I headed for the empty chair but was stopped in my tracks by a look from Janne. Not you, said the look, and I pivoted and headed in another direction as if I’d run into a glass wall. But nobody seemed to find it funny.
Without looking at me Richard lifted his limbs off the chair next to him, freeing up another spot. He looked totally annoyed having to do it, as if I’d begged to sit next to him.
The guru was late. We sat there silently. Janne stared at the wall and looked as if she had turned to stone. Richard read the newspaper. Kevin and Friedrich looked anxiously around the circle trying to make eye contact.
The door flew open. Everyone except Richard looked up.
But it was only Marlon, who I had already put out of my mind.
Now it was easier for me to believe he was blind. He stood in the doorway and rocked on the balls of his feet. He was frowning and his nostrils quivered. I wondered what his eyes looked like behind his sunglasses. Whether maybe he had something to hide. Or maybe someone just told him he’d look cool with sunglasses on, like Agent K from Men in Black. Like, a girlfriend or something. He looked like somebody who had sex on a regular basis.
“This chair is free,” said Janne quietly. He turned his head in her direction. He went toward with tentative steps, tripped on her wheelchair, and nearly lost his balance. She reached out her hand to brace him but then he managed to straighten up again. I’d bet anything he did it on purpose. Then he grabbed the free chair and let himself fall into it. He stretched out his hand toward Janne as he did but wasn’t able to reach her. This time she did not put out her hand.
I wondered whether Marlon realized that everyone was looking at him. Blind people apparently sense that sort of thing. Janne definitely knew that she got stared at, stared at like we were some poor working-class family and she was our TV. But it didn’t seem to bother her. Maybe she even liked it.
“Is everyone here?” Marlon asked Janne. She shrugged her shoulders and looked around the circle.
“The guru’s not here,” said Richard. “He probably needs a new Chinese teacher’s handbook.”
“Why Chinese?” asked Friedrich.
“Because what I actually registered for was Intensive Chinese.” Richard looked wistfully out the window.
“I don’t believe this is that sort of course,” said Friedrich, sounding unsure.
“Do you think I really do?” Richard rolled up the newspaper and swung it at the wall. Kevin jumped. Something small and black fell to the floor. If I hadn’t have heard the crack of the shell I would have taken it for a housefly.
“And you, Janne?” asked Friedrich. “Why are you here?”
She ignored the question. She didn’t even look at him.
We heard someone running down the hall. Then the guru was standing in the doorway gasping for air.
“Couldn’t find a parking space?” asked Kevin quizzically.
The guru held his chest, wheezing, and leaned against the doorframe. He didn’t look just tired but also surprised.
“You’re all here.”
“Where are the drums?” Kevin asked weakly.
Friedrich was the only one who had signed up to, as he put it, make contact with other handicapped people. The guru seesawed back and forth on the back legs of his chair and listened. As he spoke Friedrich let his little blue eyes rest on me of all people. I crossed my legs, took off my hat and put it on my knee, and smoothed out my hair. Not only had my hair not been cut for an eternity, it hadn’t been combed in nearly as long. My fingers kept getting snarled in the matted strands. As Friedrich began to explain that his organs were decomposing because of an autoimmune disease and that as a result he didn’t have long to live, I felt sick.
Friedrich happily listed all the medications he took on a daily basis. They had complicated poetic names that he seemed to take visible delight in pronouncing.
“Stop,” said Janne when he started to say the fourth one. “Nobody cares.”
Friedrich gulped. He forgot to close his mouth and gummed the warm air for a while.
“But we’re here to talk.”
“Not with you,” said Marlon.
Kevin started to tremble again.
The guru cleared his throat and turned suddenly to me.
“Tell me, Mark.”
“Marek.”
“Tell me, Marek. There was a story in the newspaper a year ago about a fighting dog that attacked a young man.”
“Really?” I said. For the first time Janne looked at me for longer than a quarter of a second. For another quarter second I’d probably have to have allowed my entire ear to get bitten off.
“Yes?” I said in her direction.
“Well, I was just wondering… ” said the guru. Everyone seemed to be listening, his voice hung in the breathless silence, and my back began to tingle. I didn’t want them all to stare at me. Everyone always did anyway, but somehow here it didn’t seem right. Blind Marlon had even turned his left ear to me and seemed to be straining to listen.“… if perhaps you would like to tell us about it,” said the guru.
I hadn’t been expecting such brazenness.
“I remember it, too,” said Richard. “It was big news in the paper and they ran a photo of him.”
“What kind of photo — before or after?” asked Marlon.
I needed to do something to distract myself from my urge to rip the chair out from under him. So I stood up and left the room and I didn’t even care whether Janne looked at me for more than a second as I walked out.