"Hey!" I barked at him, feeling all heroic. I looked at my bent arm, wondering what I'd do to defend myself if he wanted to tussle.
"Don't," old lady Rhonda said to me. She looked really scared, and her frightened eyes made me remember Karla and the way the man's wedding ring had punctured my nose, the taste of blood slipping down my throat, me crumpled up on the sidewalk after he kicked me and strutted away.
"Who are you?" the guy said. He had huge front teeth, the size of playing cards.
"You don't have to burn the TV," I said. I looked at my good hand. Worrying about a fistfight. It looked so small and useless. Like I saw an ultrasound of myself. Me, Rhonda, a fetus. Me, with the buzzing fetus hand. "Just give it away. Give it to me. I don't have one."
"I'm teaching her a lesson," he said.
"It's the same lesson. Either way she doesn't have the TV."
The guy mulled my offer over for a minute. You could tell that he really wanted to burn something and was disappointed that there might be another way to solve the problem. I was sure he'd incinerate it anyway. But finally he agreed to give it to me, and old lady Rhonda kept thanking him and he was saying, "Yeah, yeah," while walking back into our building. She looked at me and winked. I shot one back at her.
When I got done struggling up the stairs with the TV, I kicked my front door until Vern opened it.
"I wouldn't light a cigarette too close to this idiot box," Vern said, "unless you want to burn the place down."
"Will you help me?"
He sighed and grabbed a side of the TV, relieving my crooked arm of the excruciating weight. We walked in and set it on the couch.
"I'm proud of you," Vern said.
"Are you teasing?"
"No, seriously I thought that guy was gonna burn it for sure.
"Thanks."
"Let's not get all sappy, soldier," he said and walked straight to the door and left.
I kept peeking at the pruno. Nothing had really changed since Vern added the ketchup, water, and sugar cubes. The bag had lost all of its pressure that had made it swell so big before, but it was showing signs of bulging again slightly around the edges, beads of condensation collecting on the inside of the bag.
I couldn't tell you why, but I kept getting out of bed every couple of hours, walking into the kitchen and checking on the pruno. Making sure everything was all right.
Finally' about five a.m. I snatched the pruno off of its nest of spaghetti crumbs in the kitchen and set it down on the floor next to my mattress. I sent the klutzy, dying hand from my bent arm over to touch the pruno every time I stirred in my sleep.
Two nights later, old lady Rhonda and I were on the burned couch, watching "Wheel of Fortune." A man from Boise, Idaho, spun the wheel and lost everything. BANKRUPT! Pat Sajak shook his head like he was astonished; he apologized to the man and said, "There's more where that came from."
The couch had dried out nicely. It smelled like singed hair and mold, but neither of us minded. Old lady Rhonda brought American cheese sandwiches and a bottle of cheap vodka, which we drank on the rocks, out of coffee cups. I'd back-washed a big piece of sandwich crust into my drink, and it sat on the bottom like a decomposing fish. Her long gray hair was pulled into a pony tail. It was the only one I'd ever seen that actually looked like a horse's tail.
On the TV. two words: a person:
"Figure it out yet?" old lady Rhonda said.
"Not yet." I tried to grab that piece of crust from my cocktail, but it only broke up, lying in brown clumps.
A guy on TV said, "Is there an L?"
"No, L," Pat Sajak said.
"I've already got it," old lady Rhonda said to me. "I'm not good at much, but `Wheel of Fortune' is my game."
"What is it?"
"I'm not telling," she said.
TV: "Is there a IV?"
Pat Sajak: "No TV."
"Have you ever thought about going on the show?" I asked her.
"I'd probably freeze up. Stand there looking stupid. That's what my husband says, anyway."
"Fuck him," I said.
TV "An M?"
Pat Sajak: "Yes."
Vanna White walked over and touched the M's illuminated spaces.
"Got it yet?" Rhonda said.
I was convinced. "Yes."
"What is it?"
"Crash man," I said.
"What the hell's a crash man?"
"It's like a stunt man who deals exclusively with crashes."
"There's no such thing," old lady Rhonda said, "and besides, look at the TV again. That wouldn't say crash man. It would say Crashman Man."
I got up and finished my drink and went to the fridge for some more ice cubes. I dumped them in without rinsing the backwash out of my glass.
"Are you sulking?" she said.
"No." But I might have been. I drank an entire glassful of vodka before filling it again and coming back to the couch.
"I got to go," old lady Rhonda said. "Got to have dinner ready before my husband gets home from work."
"Is he good to you?"
She looked at me, her lips pursed. "What do you mean?"
"Is he nice?"
"When he's not burning my stuff, sure, he's nice."
"What are you doing in the morning?"
"No plans," she said.
"Let's have breakfast."
She hugged me. "You ask if he's nice, but no one's been as nice to me as you are in years. Do you like waffles?"
I nodded. We were still hugging.
"I'll cook a masterpiece," old lady Rhonda said.
"Any time you want, you can come and sit on the couch if you miss it."
"It isn't that I love this couch," she pointed toward the window, "it's that I hate it out there."
We kept hugging. I didn't want it to stop, but I could feel her arms go heavy, waiting to pull away. I squeezed her one more time, and we walked to the front door.
"Oh, and the answer to the puzzle is Chairman Mao," she said, smiling. "My little Crash Man."
Tell Me More
I'd like to hear more about the house, he said. The weird thing was I never saw Angel-Hair eat any tuna fish, just the smell, always the smell. I didn't know what else to tell him, I'd been saying the same stories for days, months, years. I said, It was all that house's fault. How is it the house's fault, he asked. The house, I said. No question, I said. Angel-Hair sat in front of me. His left leg crossed over the right one. It went black shoe, black sock, streak of white leg, black pants. I could look over his head and through the metal grating and out the window and I could see the desert sky. Letch and I used to shoot doves out of the same sky with twelve-gauge shotguns. Teaching Rhonda to be a man, he said. Angel-Hair's eyes popped back and forth, focusing on my left eye then my right eye. Letch wanted to go to Vietnam, but both his kidneys were on the same side of his body, and he wasn't allowed to go and kill. How could it be the house's fault, Angel-Hair asked. But I knew the house was cursed. It was the place where the men, all the men that mom loved, they came in the house, stayed in the house, all the men who were never nice, hurting us, leaving us. All the wrong notes she hit on her keyboard. The house is evil, I said. How, he said. Right eye. The sidewinders were my friends, but Letch had introduced us. One day. While we were shooting doves. He found one coiled and purring. Letch knew how to pick it up without getting bitten. Sometimes the doves didn't die when you shot them. They'd flop on the sand. One of their wings going crazy. You had to take them by the heads and spin their bodies around in circles to break their necks. Letch picked up the snake, first by the tail and then he somehow took hold of it right behind its head. I was scared, just watching him do it. But I was also hoping. What if, I thought. What if that snake sticks him full of poison. Left eye. The doctor leaned down and scratched the plot of white skin that was above the black shoe, the black sock. Letch held the snake and said, Come over here, Rhonda. Angel-Hair said, Please tell me how the house was evil. The sidewinder was hissing and screaming. Its fangs were out. I didn't want to go anywhere near it. Look, Letch said, wagging the snake. I inched toward them. Closer, Rhonda, he said. I won't let anything happen to you, he said. The doctor coughed. I'm waiting for an answer, he said. What was the question, I said, and he said, How was the house evil. The house was evil because it was the place where all the bad stuff happened. But the house, he said, didn't do the bad stuff. I didn't answer him. Started wondering whether that house was cursed forever, wondering if every little kid who lived there would be shattered like me. Sometimes after we killed doves, I'd get a splotchy bruise on my right shoulder, from the kick of the shotgun. Letch would press on it. Tease me. He'd say, Mark of a man. I liked it when he said that. He held the sidewinder up, at my eye level. He said, I want you to stick your face right in there. Why, I said, and he said, Do it. I said to Angel-Hair, Some places are just cursed. Letch, really yelling now, shook the snake around, agitating it. Hissing and screaming. Right eye. God damnit, Rhonda, he said. I want you close enough to kiss it, he said. I knew not to cry. I knew that there wasn't anything I could say to change his mind. Will you hold it still, I said. He smiled. He said, That a boy. And then Letch wasn't moving the snake at all, holding it perfectly still, but the sidewinder's mouth was wide open, fangs gleaming. Purring like crazy. I stuck my face right in there, inches away. Its breath smelled like lighter fluid. Talk to it, Letch said. I'm not scared of you, I said. Good, Letch said, Say it again. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of you. I'm not scared of you. You can't blame the house, Angel-Hair said. But I could. I could blame anything. Anyone. I wasn't through with that house yet.