“I do,” I say. I mean it.
People are always working on their lawns in Luke’s neighborhood. I guess because they don’t have people that work on their lawns for them. When we pull up to his house his father is outside on a riding mower that’s making his surface flesh jiggle. They say you can tell what women will look like when they’re older because of their mothers, but I’ve never really heard that logic applied to men and dads. This is a good thing, I think.
I give Luke a huge hug and decide that when the time is right, I’ll know it. I wait until he is upright and celebrating a touchdown, then I give a little clap as well.
“Luke, you got me pregnant, but I took care of it for us.” I pause a little. “I know you don’t have a lot of money and stuff.”
His touchdown arms drop and his face contorts into a horrified teddy bear impersonation. “You mean you killed it?” he asks. His eyes have gone pained and watery.
I suddenly feel like a parent who’s telling a child a family pet died. “Come here,” I say, but he steps back.
“I’ve got to think,” he mumbles, which I know is bad.
Thinking is not a part of Luke Gunter, and not a part of feeling good. In fact it’s almost the opposite.
When I get home I take some of Grandmother’s Marinol. I’m feeling nauseous.
“Gammy,” I ask, reaching into her nightstand, “can I have some of those pills? The ones that make you eat ice cream? I think I got car sick.”
She’s asleep so I help myself. Her neck-hole is breathing and making a sputtery, flapping sound. I imagine a scenario where she’ll only awaken if the right man puts his finger into that hole and keeps it there, like a reverse King Arthur and Excalibur.
Gammy? I can’t hear you. Use the mic.
When Grandma first wakes up she often forgets she can’t talk. It’s sad. It looks like she’s trying to blow out thousands of candles on a birthday cake.
I t-h-i-n-k I s-m-e-l-l c-h-i-c-k-e-n. I-t w-o-k-e m-e up.
There’s no chicken, Gammy. She dozes back off violently, lots of elbows, as if she’s being escorted to sleep against her will.
I can’t help staring at her. She seems to be continually deflating from her neck hole, wrinkled and losing the battle for air. Her hole is like a withered pit that used to hold a large seed, but one day it fell out and she wilted.
It is so gross how we are born and so gross how we die.
Luke broke up with me in a text message. It said: I feel nothing 4 U.
After I scrapped our DNA craft project, he started dating Kristi. Apparently she is no longer using Chet as a human lollipop.
“Luke feels nothing ‘four’ me,” I said to sleeping Grandma.
Ironically, Kristi is the tallest flag on Piedmont Academy’s Mt. Abortion. She scaled it before the rest of her classmates had even started climbing. I think of how the number four could describe either me and the dead coffee-bean and Kristi and her dead who-knows-what (they vacuumed. It had to have been more like a quarter); or it could describe me and Luke and our dead coffee bean and Kristi. Or it could describe the number of Gammy’s sedatives I will have to take after receiving this distressing news.
But first, the message. Positive that they are involved in an act of fornication at this very moment, I call Kristi’s phone (knowing she will not answer) in order to get her machine (knowing they will hear it). My rage will be the soundtrack of this particular Kristi home pornography session.
I leave a mean tirade about how I know they’re naked and on camera, and she picks up in the middle of it,
“You stupid bi—”
but I snap my phone shut. My phone is a tightly shut clam and all the badness that happened inside is going to irritate itself into a pearl. It will just take a bit of time. My phone vibrates again and again, filling, no doubt, with venomous messages I will never listen to, but the thought of never hearing them somehow makes me sad. I get even sadder as I think of Luke and Kristi together, and me alone, and this oily kind of sweetness starts to crawl up my throat and then melt back down again over and over, like something I ate long ago but am just now tasting.
ICE MELTER
I work at a small business that makes ice sculptures for gay pool parties. I answered the job ad because I’m diabetic and they offered health insurance. When I showed up for the interview, they were thrilled.
“You’re perfection!” exclaimed my bosses, a male couple who were looking for someone who would not easily distract or be distracted. “Not only are you a woman, but you are also a very plain one.”
At the end of each party, I have the saddest job: to melt down the ice creation into nothingness. This makes the hose in my hand somehow feel like a gun. I try to at least be humane about it. If the sculpture is an animal, say a dolphin, I always do the head first. That way it will no longer be able to feel anything and the rest of its death can be painless.
One night the ice sculpture for the party was a giant hypodermic needle. It was some LA heroin-chic thing, but being diabetic and humorless, I didn’t think it was funny.
“You know,” I said in a heavy tone to my bosses, “some people have to use needles every day.”
“Honey,” they chided, “we’re not catering a rehab graduation. It’s a joke.” I told them I wasn’t laughing and they gave me this look that said they felt sorry for me, the same one they’d given me when I asked if they liked my new outfit.
That night, as the partygoers passed the sculpture pointing and laughing, I stood next to it with my chisel and politely scowled. Whenever someone asked for a piece, I gave him one that was far too big, overfilling the cup and spilling the drink.
“There’s more where that came from,” I’d mention.
Later, when one of the waiters offered me a glass of champagne on a tray, I took it.
“Look who’s letting loose,” one of my bosses teased, passing me. He was naked except for a strategic piece of animal print silk.
I decided to have another glass. Eventually, a man came up and asked why I looked so glum. I never drink, being as alcohol turns straight into sugar, so I was feeling a deep, meaty warmth that I’m not used to, especially not when standing next to a block of ice.
“I have to inject myself with insulin every day.” I was speaking in a volume and tone not socially appropriate for the hired help. “I don’t think this symbol should be used as a novelty.”
The man took a slow sip of his drink. The drink was probably warm, seeing as he’d walked over to me to get ice. His movements were universally calm; even his blinks seemed to take longer than they should.
“That’s the thing about symbols,” he said, “they mean different things to different people.”
I chopped off a large piece of needle and plunked it into the man’s cup. He did not say thanks, but “Huh.”
I began to look him over. I was suddenly very lonely, and hoped that this man, who had now been standing with me longer than any guest at any party ever had, maybe wasn’t gay. I think the man somehow picked up on it, my sudden ache for physical affection.
“I think it would be therapeutic,” he said, “if you gave the needle a big hug and a kiss. You clearly have some resentment towards needles, and resentment is just not healthy.” He took another one of the slowest sips in the world, even slower now that he had such a large piece of ice in his cup.
Had I drank four glasses of champagne? Five?
I wrapped my arms around it. I’ve never had a lover, so it was an awkward embrace.
The sculpture felt slimy but cleansing, like my wrists were being covered in very cold perfume. I puckered up my lips and closed my eyes, but before I started to move in the man stopped me. His face had slowly gotten very close to mine.