So I tried making myself fall asleep again. I rested my head on the quilt, shut my eyes and began snoring. But it didn’t work. I was wide awake.
"It’s not fair!”
In frustration, I climbed from the mattress and rushed after Cut ’N Style. She was unconscious, probably at the hospital with Classique and my mother. I kicked her down the stairs, saying, "That’s what you get, you’re a bad dog!"
And later, when Dickens arrived with food, I told him, "Cut ’N Style ruined my great dream. She woke me up and now I’ll never know."
I was at the dining room table, and he was removing my meal from a paper sack, arranging each item -- thermos, foil-covered plate, slice of pound cake in a sandwich bag, fork and knife -- neatly before me.
"She’s your friend?" he asked. "She fell in the hole and disappeared forever and I can’t find her."
"That’s Classique,” I said, "not Cut ’N Style. Cut ’N Style is on the floor over there -- but Classique is in the hospital -- I dreamt her -- and I saw her with Mom and Mom was burning."
Dickens frowned and shrugged. He didn’t understand, so I explained that Classique was no longer a head. She had a woman’s body. And she was getting a real brain.
"Bet it costs a million dollars," he said. "I’d like a new brain sometimes -- I think a new one is shiny."
"Yeah -- and it was a big brain. She was excited and I guess she wasn’t a doll anymore.”
Dickens pulled the foil off the plate -- "She must be pretty" then unscrewed the thermos cap.
"She is. She’s beautiful."
He pushed the plate toward me -- greasy meat, two legs, a thigh or a breast.
"Dell says eat what you can and hide the leftovers in this-”
He handed me the foil, which I smoothed in my lap as if it were a napkin. Then I sniffed at the meat, "Is it the squirrel?"
"No,” he said, shaking his head. "No squirrel. Dell hates those. She won’t cook those -- she just won’t."
"Oh," I said, reaching for the fork, "that’s good. I don’t think I like squirrel either.”
And while eating, I thought about Classique’s operation. How was the brain put in? Did it hurt? Did she bleed? Is she different?
Why did she need a brain anyway?
Because it’s fabulous, dear. It’s fantastic, darling.
"Fabulous," I said, picking at the meat. "Wonderful."
Dickens glanced at me. He was in the living room, holding my father’s wig, his fingers combing the coils. Then I watched as he planted the wig on his bald head; the coils sank past his ears and forehead, adorning his shoulders. And -- wearing his goggles and swimming trunks and flip- flops, the wig askew -- he looked like a crazy woman, half- naked and loathsome.
"I'm pretty pretty,” he said.
"You’re funny,” I told him. "You’re weird.”
"No, no,” he whined, "because I don’t want to be weird, okay? I’d like the red lips and then I’ll be beautiful."
He needed more than red lips. He needed rouge, maybe mascara.
"All right," I said, "I’ll fix your face."
He clapped.
"Yes, if you fix my face I’ll be happy.”
"I will,” I said. "Except I better eat Dell’s cake first, better drink all my apple juice.”
"And hide the leftovers."
"I know that already.”
But there wasn’t going to be any leftovers. I ate every piece of meat, chugged the apple juice, consumed the pound cake in three bites. Then I fetched Grandmother’s cosmetic bag -- my tummy feeling bloated and satiated, my meal swishing around inside, as I sprinted up and back down the stairs.
"Sit still or else you’ll make me do it wrong,” I told Dickens, who fidgeted while I unzipped the bag. He was cross-legged on the living room floor, spine straight, hands squeezing his knees.
"Won’t move a muscle," he said. "Don’t have muscles anyway, so I won’t move them.”
I shushed him, and then emptied the cosmetic bag between us, shaking out the lipsticks and mascara and compacts and tweezers and cotton balls. I arranged the six lipsticks into a row.
"Now, which one?"
Scarlet Surrender or Pink Tango or Hyacinth or Sweet Vermilion or Chinese Red or Rose Blush.
"That one,” he said, pointing at Pink Tango.
"This is best," I said, taking Scarlet Surrender. "Puff your lips."
He puckered.
"Get ready-"
It was difficult applying the scarlet evenly. Stay in the lines, I told myself -- but my hand moved too fast when doing his bottom lip, and I smeared lipstick across his chin. His upper lip went smoother; I only overshot once, reddening the end of his nose. But that was his fault. He sniffled and my hand jerked.
"You’re Rudolph," I said.
‘'You are,” he replied.
Then I dabbed on the rouge, brightening his cheeks, creating rosy circles.
"Almost finished," I said, shutting the compact.
He was gazing at me, his eyes magnified behind the goggles.
Bug eyes, I thought. Creepy bug eyes.
"I think you’re nice,” he said.
And as I leaned forward, straightening the wig, he kissed my lips -- a nervous peck, which tickled and made me giggle.
"That’s silly," I said, wiping my lips. "You got red on me, silly kisser.”
'He glanced at his swimming trunks, embarrassed, and folded his hands over his crotch.
"The old lady was a silly kisser too," he said. "She kissed me, but that’s when I was little and she was really old. Sometimes she did this in my mouth-”
He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it.
"--and that was fun. It was a snake, I think, or a goldfish dancing. She was awfully sweet too. Sometimes I’d be here all day just kissing with her. She’s a nice lady, except she’s dead.”
I was both delighted and curious to hear him speak of Grandmother.
"She’s Daddy’s mom," I said. "She never kissed me because I didn’t get born yet.” `
"I think I knew that. I think maybe someone told that to me.”
"Dickens, she was your girlfriend -- you were her boyfriend."
He took his hands from his crotch and assumed an expression of sorrow.
"No, I was her cutie. Her little cutie. Never been a boyfriend. Don’t know what that is, except if I got older I’d be her boyfriend, I suppose. If she didn’t die, you know. If she didn’t fall down the steps. Think she was coming to kiss me when she falled ‘cause I was there in the yard pulling weeds. And I ran away when she did that. But I didn’t know what to do. I was just little, you know. I was scared, I guess. She was nice."
"She was old,” I told him, envisioning the chest in the attic, the junk stored within. "How old are you?”
A worried, confused look settled on Dickens’ face.
"I don’t know. I’m not an old man though. Dell says I’m a boy. She says l’m a baby. She says I’ll always be a baby ‘cause my brain got wired wrong.”
You’ll buy a new brain, I thought. When you have the world’s biggest penny, you’ll get the operation.
"You’re a little cutie,” I said.
He smiled.
"You’re a little cutie too.”
So I kissed him.
Then he kissed me.
And we were laughing, our lips and teeth red with scarlet.
"Silly kissers.”
I was about to kiss him again when the quarry suddenly boomed, rattling the windows.
"Uh-oh.”
Dickens creased his brow. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, the blond coils slipping from his shoulders.
"They’re expleding the gr0und,” he said. "They dynamite everything so there’s no more left. I seen them do it. I go there and see them. It’s bigger than firecrackers and bullets.”
"I like firecrackers.”
"l\/Ie too. I really do. So if you want to see the boom hole, you’ll see the ocean to, if you want."