Crumpling the condoms up, she threw them in the trash.
“I didn’t mean to laugh at him,” I said. “Marxy, I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”
AK47 picked up Marxy’s socks and handed them to Pearl. “Here. I think these are his.”
It felt like the world was happening around me and I was not a part of it anymore. Pearl and AK47 said quiet things to each other, while Marxy stood behind them. When I tried to go around to talk to him, AK47 held me back and said, “Just a second, okay?”
Pearl and AK47 talked, and every so often they got even quieter and tried to look at me without making it look like they were. I wanted to apologize to Marxy and tell him I was sorry for laughing about the condom not staying on. He stood in the corner and stared out the window and then started walking in place. I tried to get his attention and wave to him, but he kept walking and walking, like in cartoons how someone who thinks a lot goes back and forth and ends up walking themselves into a deep hole.
And then Pearl said they had to go and she led Marxy out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Marxy as he walked by. They went out and shut the door. “I didn’t say anything that bad,” I told AK47 when we were alone. “I just thought it looked silly. Why is he so mad?”
“Men are weird about their private parts. It’s not your fault.” She sighed. “We knew this might happen.”
“He kept talking and it was nothing like how it was supposed to go. But having sex and making love is like water, not stone,” I said, which is what one of the magazine articles I had read on the Internet said about being a good lover.
“It never goes the way it’s supposed to, Zee. It’s something you learn.” She put her arm around me and put her head on my head. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
chapter twenty-two
We went from the hotel to AK47’s apartment. AK47 wanted to take some time to figure out what to do next, and also to get me into fresh clothes. Because we had told Gert we were going to a movie, she sent a text telling him we would be a bit late coming home, that we were going out for some dinner after.
While she texted Gert I tried calling Marxy from my own phone. Pearl had told me not to, but she wasn’t in charge of me or my legend. I wanted to tell Marxy that even though our first try having sex didn’t work, that I wanted to try again. AK47 told me that everyone’s first time is weird, to not feel so bad.
“I feel like a fuck-dick villain,” I told her. “I have let my fair maiden down.”
And she put her hand on my shoulder and told me it wasn’t my fault. “It’ll be okay,” she said.
Nobody answered the phone the first time I tried calling, so I kept pressing the button for redial and let it ring. The answering machine came on and I told it that I was Zelda and that I was in love with Marxy and I was sorry for whatever happened.
On the third call someone answered the phone. I said, really fast, that I loved him, and that I was sorry for making him upset and saying that he didn’t know how to use a condom. But it wasn’t Marxy.
“He needs time,” Pearl said. “Stop calling, Zelda.” Then she hung up.
The next time I called, the phone kept ringing.
More memories started coming, and when they did I started to feel ashamed.
For example, one rule is that you are not supposed to make fun of how people look when they are naked. And I accidentally did that to Marxy. He had also worn his Batman tie, which was not very sexy, and I had worn my underwear. When I thought about it, I was angry that he did not try harder to be sexy, and then I felt bad again for laughing at how his penis looked.
AK47 brought me coffee with chocolate powder in it and told me to breathe.
I asked when we were going to tell Gert. “I have no idea.” We sipped our chocolate coffees. “Not yet, anyway. I need a game plan.”
* * *
AK47 told me to let her handle Gert, and when we got home they got into a fight, though not as big as when Alf came into the apartment and Gert went Berserker. There was not much yelling this time. Instead of yelling, Gert got quiet and seemed more sad than angry.
Gert was mostly sad because we didn’t tell him that Marxy and I were having sex.
“It’s like you cut me out,” he said.
AK47 plopped next to him on the couch. “Well, we sort of did. You don’t exactly have the best track record for calm under fire.”
I said, “It was my decision to have sex. I am not a car you drive. You do not control me.”
Gert got quiet.
Neither of us told him how it went badly. He did not need to know everything, AK47 said.
Gert calmed down and then apologized to AK47 and apologized to me.
“I just…” he started saying, “I don’t like not being able to help. You know?” He was picking at a string on his jeans.
AK47 nodded and said she knew that. “It’s okay. We know you just want to do what’s best for Zelda.”
“But sometimes I have to decide what’s best for me,” I said. “Even if it’s wrong.”
Gert sighed and sat up. “So how did it go?”
AK47 and I exchanged glances. “Well, nobody’s first time is all that great,” she said.
Gert nodded and said, “You can say that again.”
* * *
All that week Marxy did not call or come to the Community Center, which made me sad. None of the things I liked to do were fun anymore, including basketball.
On the court I decided that I wouldn’t play any basketball games, any real games, until Marxy came, since I didn’t want to be playing when he walked in and my heart kept hurting. I wanted to be able to run toward him, like in movies.
I had a present for Marxy, a printed paper from the Internet of his favorite basketball player, Larry Bird, making a shot to win a game. In Kepple’s Guide to the Vikings I learned about people called þræll, who were basically slaves who owed people debts. They worked for the person until they didn’t owe anything anymore. I wanted to show Marxy that I was willing to work as a þræll until he was ready to forgive me. Slavery is evil, which is something I learned in school. But when someone owes something, they should pay the person they owe back. I wanted to pay Marxy back.
I wanted to be moving really slowly, running toward Marxy, holding the Larry Bird photo in my hand. His face would light up and he would say, in Viking, that he loves me and isn’t mad and that we are two Vikings, just like always, in battle together.
Instead, I sat on the side of the gym, on the bench, while everyone played. There weren’t enough spots on the teams for everyone, so people subbed in and out. I was the only one who didn’t want to get subbed into the game. I just held on to a ball and squeezed it, moving my fingers all along it, along the skin, which felt like an old crusty orange.
Hamsa subbed out of the game and sat down next to me.
“You aren’t playing,” Hamsa said.
“I’m watching the game.”
Then he got serious and punched my shoulder. “Marxy’s not coming back because of you. That’s why Marxy isn’t here. He’s my best friend and you fucking fuck-dicked him.”
There was a ball near the bench we were sitting on, so I got up and threw it at Hamsa so hard it hit him in the arm. His hands didn’t go up fast enough to catch the ball. The ball bounced off of him and hit the ground and he said something not in English.
“Fuck-dick,” Hamsa said, and pushed me.
Before anyone knew anything, we were fighting. Not like Vikings, not honorably. We were grabbing onto each other and pushing and pulling. When Hamsa’s arm came close to me I bit it as hard as I could. Hamsa screamed and pulled his arm back.
I don’t know if Vikings bit others in battle or not, since they had swords and didn’t need to. It did not seem like the honorable thing to do in battle, since animals bite, not warriors. Berserkers would do anything to win, though, so in the end biting Hamsa to win the fight was okay. Gert says that in a fight there are no rules.
�
��Break it up,” Big Todd said.
One of the volunteer adults took Hamsa to get his arm fixed and to stop the bleeding. People have germs in their mouths, just like animals, and Hamsa’s arm needed to be cleaned so that he wouldn’t get the germs from my mouth and get sick and die.
“Come on, now,” the volunteer said. He was the father of one of the retards who I didn’t know. He put his arm around Hamsa and told Hamsa to hold his hand over where I had bit him. “I know it hurts,” he told Hamsa.
Yoda and the others were watching Hamsa cry. Then they watched me. Their mouths were open, like they had questions to ask and couldn’t remember how to ask them.
“Stop looking at me,” I said, since their staring made me feel like I did whenever Gert and I would go somewhere new and people would look at me and think, What is wrong with her?
Big Todd ran a hand through his hair. No fighting was one of the Rules of the Community Center that was near the top.
“He called me a fuck-dick,” I said.
“Zelda. The office. Okay?”
I sat in the office until the end of the hour, in the same chair with Larry Bird. In that time Big Todd came in and told me that I had wounded Hamsa, and I had hurt his feelings too.
“You acted like a villain,” he said. “Right?”
He was correct. But it was actually worse than being a villain: I had acted like a Berserker, like Gert when he attacked Alf, who is smaller and not able to defend himself. I had acted like Uncle Richard when he smashed the bottle on Gert. My list of THINGS LEGENDS NEED was becoming a list of THINGS THAT VILLAINS DO.
Before Hamsa left, I wanted to make sure that I apologized. Hamsa was waiting by the Community Center door with his uncle. He had a Band-Aid on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Hamsa,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Hamsa’s uncle gave him a push. Hamsa looked at his uncle and then said, “I accept your apology.”
Hamsa’s family knows what it’s like to be different, according to AK47. People have even bigger problems with Muslims than they do with gay people like Big Todd or people who dress like thugs, the way Gert dresses. Hamsa has two problems: he is retarded, and he is Muslim. Ever since villains flew the planes into the towers, everyone has started hating Muslims.
Even though Marxy was still not talking to me, I felt like I had done the right thing for once, even if it was only after doing a bad thing first.
* * *
I got onto the bus and Yoda did not want to sit with me. AK47 said for him to stop being a goon and he said that I was a villain for hurting Marxy.
“And she bit Hamsa,” Yoda said.
“Is that true?” AK47 asked.
“It’s true,” I said. The first part of becoming legendary and a hero is to overcome your mistakes.
“Did you apologize?”
“I apologized.”
“She’s still a jerk,” Yoda said, and when the bus stopped in front of Yoda’s house he did not give me a fist pound.
The doors closed and AK47 turned around in her seat. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around.” She held up a cigarette. “Sorry. I’ll explode if I don’t have one.”
* * *
She parked the bus in front of a playground. We were not allowed to smoke on the bus, so we sat on a swing set and smoked together. Our feet went up and down and the cigarette smoke went up in the air. We were laughing after a few swings, especially when the cigarette flew out of her mouth and went in the air and almost landed in her hair.
For a little while I forgot all about Marxy. Then I got sick and we had to stop swinging.
We sat on the sand cross-legged. AK47 said that she felt partly to blame for how the sex went, and for fighting Gert in front of me. And not just fighting. Yelling and slapping and hitting. “That’s a goddamn bad example to set. Fighting isn’t how you solve problems, even if you are a Viking like us.” She leaned back and stared at the sky.
“You can’t change the past,” she said. “But going forward. What does your legend need?”
I thought about it. She told me to think about all the heroes in all the legends I had read about, in Kepple’s and on TV and in movies and books. What did all the heroes do?
“They fight,” I said.
“Well, symbolically, sure. But sometimes fighting isn’t actual fighting fighting. Sometimes it’s not giving up.”
I looked up. AK47 folded her arms.
“I want to symbolically fight,” I said. “I want to win back Marxy.”
She sat up and slapped all of the sand off her legs. “Good. Then let’s go get you some Marxy.”
* * *
AK47 knew the way to Marxy’s since she had picked him up a hundred times in the bus. It was a good day for battle. The sky was very cloudy. You cannot do battle when the sky is too nice and blue, with the sun shining, since you would just want to sit and relax, instead of fighting.
We drove into Marxy’s neighborhood, where tall houses faced each other with big windows like eyes and doors that were bright red and green. It was enemy territory, meaning it was not a place where I went, and I was prepared to do battle with Marxy’s mother, and with Marxy too, in a way, since I wanted to defeat his bad feelings toward me.
AK47 parked the bus. I took a deep breath. We did a dab, and then I went off to battle.
I went to the door and turned around. AK47 waved then made a fist, which was to show that she was with me in spirit. The doorbell did a bunch of different rings, like a song. Across the street a woman was pushing a baby carriage. She waved at me and I waved at her.
The door opened, and it wasn’t Marxy or Pearl. It was Sarah-Beth.
“Hello,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” she asked me back.
“I asked you first.”
She frowned and called out behind her. Pearl came to the door. “Zelda,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “what are you doing here?”
I said that I had come to win back Marxy’s heart. “Is he home?”
Pearl told Sarah-Beth that she should go back inside. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Sarah-Beth nodded and did as she was told. Once she was inside Pearl stepped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind her.
“Marxy doesn’t want to see you,” she said. Then she saw AK47. “Is that Annie?”
“I want to see him,” I said.
She waved to AK47, who put down her phone and waved back. I told Pearl that I wanted to see Marxy, even if he didn’t want to see me. I said we were in love.
Pearl did not respond. She walked to AK47. I followed after.
“What are we doing here?” Pearl asked AK47.
AK47 got out of the bus and crossed her arms. “The star-crossed nature of love,” she said.
“Marxy doesn’t want to see you now, Zelda,” Pearl said.
With a shrug, AK47 said that it was between me, Zelda, and Marxy. “Can’t they talk?”
“That’s what I want,” I said. “Just to talk.”
Pearl shook her head. “We have company over.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes. Right, Zelda?”
I had a speech written down that AK47 had helped me write. It took me less than two minutes to read when I practiced it. “Two minutes,” I said.
Sighing, Pearl said to wait on the porch. “We’ll see if Marxy wants to.”
* * *
AK47 and I waited as Pearl went back inside. I told AK47 about Sarah-Beth being over. AK47 said she was probably the company that Pearl was talking about. AK47 watched the house for a minute, not saying anything. She had THE LOOK, which meant that her brain was working on something very hard, so hard that she couldn’t use her mouth to say words at the same time. I asked her what she was thinking.
“Why won’t he see me? And why is he hanging out with Sarah-Beth?”
“Nothing.” She took my hand. “There’s a chance that M
arxy’s not going to want to be your boyfriend again, Zelda.”
That was not possible. Or it was possible, but I would win his heart back. That was one of my strongest skills: not giving up in battle, no matter how much I was losing. Finally Pearl opened the door and waved me over.
“You have ten minutes. He’s up in his room.”
I went in and passed Sarah-Beth, who was sitting in the living room, watching TV. She didn’t say anything when I walked back. Pearl walked behind me, up the stairs, which had cushiony steps with carpet. The house smelled like a mall at Christmas, like flowers.
We got to Marxy’s room. The door was open. Marxy was sitting at his computer. He spun his chair around and did not smile back at me when I smiled at him.
“If you need me,” Pearl said to Marxy, “just holler.”
“Okay,” Marxy said.
Pearl closed the door, but not all the way. I could hear her walking down the stairs. When she got to the bottom I took out the piece of paper from my pocket, where I had written what I wanted to say to Marxy.
“ ‘Dear Marxy,’ ” I read.
“What is that?”
“It’s my speech,” I said. “Just listen.”
Marxy wasn’t good at sitting still. I knew that, so I made sure that the speech I had written was short. While I read he twirled in the chair and played with his fingers.
“ ‘I know I have messed things up, but I am in love with you and I would like to be girlfriend and boyfriend.’ ”
He started patting his hand on his legs. It got louder the more I read. I tried to ignore it. Marxy wasn’t saying anything. Sarah-Beth knocked and said Marxy was going to miss the basketball on TV.
“Okay,” Marxy said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She closed the door. Marxy kept patting his knees until he finally stopped. “Okay, I think the time is up and you should go.”
When We Were Vikings Page 19