Mosquitoland

by David Arnold

  “Did you know, at birth, our bodies have three hundred bones? Over time, they—”

  “Hey,” I interrupt. “I asked you a question.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Mim? Chill. I’m going to tell a story, and that’s going to be my answer. Mmkay?”

  I wave a hand in front of me. “Continue.”

  “So. Over time, those three hundred bones fuse together into two hundred and six. Don’t even get me started on how weird this is. More than half of those are in the hands and feet, which are four of the smallest human features. And yet, if you add up all those bones, the entire skeleton is only responsible for fourteen percent of the total body weight.”

  “You’re a science freak.”

  “Possibly. Well. It’s been suggested.”

  God, I could eat him. “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is this: My heart must continue beating in order to pump a red liquid called blood through tiny tubes called veins throughout this unit called a body. All my organs, in communication with my heart, must work properly for this carbon-based life-form called Beckett Van Buren to exist on this tiny spinning sphere called Earth. So many little things have to be just so, it’s a wonder we don’t just fall down dead.”

  “That happens, you know.”

  Beck ha-has, then puffs a breath ring into the air. “I guess I just think life is more mysterious than death.”

  “How very philosophical. You should write a book.”

  Another ha-ha, and I’m suddenly aware of my own sarcastic mitigation. Possibly due to the late hour, though more likely owing to my borderline-drunken fascination with Beck, I’m acting like a freshman at prom; blasé, elbowy, incapable of original thought. In an effort to steer the conversation toward higher ground, I say what I should have said the first time. “So you believe in God because you’re alive?”

  “Guess I should just say that next time, huh?”

  The radio is playing a new song, and it’s nice, but if it ended, I would be fine. Nothing like the undertaker song. That fucking tune left me ravished.

  “Where was your dad?” Beck asks.

  “What?”

  “In your story, at the bank or fish market, or wherever. Where was your dad?”

  “He was never around back then.” I pause. “Actually, I don’t know why I said that. He’s always been around, but even when he’s around, he’s not . . . around, you know? Not present. Or at least, not since Kathy ruined everything.”

  Something howls in the distance.

  “What do you think?” I say. “Coyote?”

  “What if you’re wrong?” says Beck.

  “Yeah. Probably just a wild dog or something.”

  “Not that. About Kathy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Beck shuffles, uncomfortably. “Nothing.”

  “Uh-uh. Out with it.”

  “Look, I’m sure I don’t know the whole story, but you’ve mentioned this bitch of a stepmom more than a few times, and I don’t know . . . you’ve never really given any good reason for not liking her.”

  I am Mary Iris Malone and I count to ten with the best of them. A deep breath, one through ten. My face flushes, and for once, I care nothing for Beck’s eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mim, I wasn’t—”

  “You don’t.”

  Somehow, I’d imagined our first fight would be different. (Something like . . . while honeymooning in Venice, we polish off a tiramisu at some world-renowned restaurant that none of the other stupid American tourists know about. We order a second bottle of Cristal, then argue about whether to open it in the gondola on the way back to Hotel Canal Grande, or wait, and open it from the hotel’s rooftop balcony. Something like that.)

  The second song ends. Good riddance.

  “You still good with the plan for tomorrow morning?” asks Beck. “It’s not too late to back out, you know.”

  “Beck. I need you to say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Say you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He looks away, and I honestly don’t know what’s coming. He nods once, then says quietly, “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  If possible, I feel even worse. For a few seconds, we lie there, not talking, just taking in the sheer distance and scope of the stars. I think about how quickly things have changed for me. But that’s the personality of change, isn’t it? When it’s slow, it’s called growth; when it’s fast, it’s change. And God, how things change: some things, nothings, anythings, everythings . . . all the things change.

  “Beck?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know what you want?”

  A second’s pause. “What do you mean?”

  I don’t answer. He knows what I mean.

  “I thought I did,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, I thought I did.”

  “Yeah.”

  I always figured, if love was in the cards for me, I’d find it, or capture it—never did I think I’d fall into it. Falling in love is boxes of chocolates and carnations, will-he-or-won’t-he, fumbly kisses, awkward pauses, zits at inopportune times, three a.m. phone conversations. In other words, not me. But listening to Walt’s snores in the bed of a pickup named Phil, I can’t help but think, of course. This is the only way it would happen for me. Imperfect. Supremely odd. Fast.

  A love born not of growth, but of change.

  Mom’s voice rings in my ear. Are you in love with him?

  I turn my head without moving my body. With my good eye, I take in his silhouette, and begin to feel that timeless combination of jubilation, perspiration, and indigestion.

  Are you, Mary?

  “So,” I whisper. “A junior in college. That makes you . . . what, twenty? Twenty-one?”

  “Jeez, Mim. Just like that, huh?”

  Too nervous, too cold, too a-thousand-things to smile, I pull the blanket up to my chin. “Willy-nilly. The only way.”

  He leans up on one elbow and looks at me, and . . . God, people are wrong when they say eyes are the window to the soul. Windows don’t effect change, they reveal what’s inside. And if Beck’s eyes aren’t changing me—and I mean really stirring every ounce of Mim right down to the bottom of the barrel—then I don’t know a thing.

  “What difference would it make?” he asks.

  He knows what difference. “Don’t say that. You know what difference.”

  Sighing, he lies on his back again, putting one hand behind his head, the other on his chest.

  “You do,” I say.

  His breathing slows. I see it in the rhythm of his hand rising and falling. I see it in his warm breath, plunging into the night air. I watch that breath take shape, and form two short, lovely words: “I do,” he says.

  29

  Architectural Apathy

  “FIFTY-TWO, FIFTY-FOUR, FIFTY-SIX . . . fifty-eight.”

  Beck turns into the driveway of 358 Cleveland Avenue and shuts off the engine. The sun has only just risen; a dim morning mist somehow adds an extra serving of strange to this heaping pile of peculiar. I rub the back of my neck, reminding myself never to sleep in the bed of a truck again.

  We’re in Bellevue, just across the Ohio River. On the way through town, we passed one stop light, one gas station, a Subway, and the most rundown downtown I’ve ever seen. All the shop windows were either boarded up or smashed in, each storefront more dank and depressing than the last.

  “Okay,” says Beck. “I guess, I can just—okay—I’ll just . . . I’ll go on and . . .”

  “You want us to go with you?” I ask.

  He smiles, but for the first time, it’s unnatural. “No thanks. Actually, definitely not. You guys stay in the car. I’ll just—go ring the doorbell a
nd take it from there.”

  “Piece of cake,” I say.

  Beck stares through the windshield. “Piece of cake.”

  “Cake?” Walt lifts his head, emerging from his Rubik’s fog. I swear, as much as I love the kid, sometimes I forget he’s even around.

  “There’s no cake, Walt.”

  Beck laughs harder than the situation warrants. After quieting down, we sit in silence for a minute.

  “Beck?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have to, you know, get out of the truck, if you wanna ring the doorbell.”

  Wiping sweat off his forehead, he opens the door. “Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck,” I whisper.

  “Good luck!” shouts Walt.

  In keeping with my detours-have-reasons theory, I’d decided after the game that helping Beck was imperative. This is his Objective. Like Arlene’s box, or like my getting to Mom.

  Cleveland Avenue is Beck’s Cleveland.

  On the front porch, he fumbles for the doorbell, finds it, rings it, waits. Number 358 is sandwiched between 356 and 360. I suppose these townhouses are economical, but this sort of cookie-cutter design just oozes architectural apathy.

  “What’s Beck doing?” asks Walt.

  “He’s checking in on an old friend.”

  “How old is he?”

  “No, not old, just—never mind. It’s a she, and she’s probably in her twenties.”

  Having never seen a Claire, it’s hard to know what to expect. Typically, I hear a name and immediately know what I’m dealing with. Walt, Beck, Carl, Arlene . . . these are good people. As opposed to Ty and Kathy and Wilson. But Claire . . . Claire is a tough one. I watch from inside the truck as my first Claire opens the door, and I have to say, it doesn’t bode well for the Claires of the world. She greets Beck with a frown which I understand to mean, this isn’t an especially awful day, and this isn’t my especially frowny face, but I’ve frowned for so long, this is the face my face now makes. Her eye sockets are sunken and dark, and I’d bet all the cash in the can (what’s left anyway) that Claire is an avid smoker.

  Beck disappears inside the townhouse.

  I have to do something. Anything.

  “Yo, Walt.”

  “Yes?” he asks, cubing it up big time, just click-click-clicking away.

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  “Yes?” He shakes his head no.

  “I need you to stay here while I check the tires.”

  “The tires?”

  “Yeah, I thought I heard a noise back on the interstate. I just need to make sure they’re still . . . filled with air and whatnot. Can you do that? Can you stay right here?”

  He throws his head in the air and mixes up the squares. “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I hop out of the truck and jog around the back of the end unit, number 350. Hopefully Walt stays focused on those colors. Knowing him, if he sees me, he’ll follow. And if he follows, I’d have a better chance at a covert operation by riding in on a moose’s neck. Lucky for me, the house’s lazy design is only outmatched by its diminutive size. In no time, I’m in the backyard of 358. My only real plan had included inching open a sliding glass door, or possibly just all out breaking and entering, but luck is on my side apparently. Even though it’s chilly, a window is open just next to the outdoor AC unit. Crawling around a thorny thicket, I position myself under the window and listen. Beck’s voice is unmistakable.

  “—don’t buy it. I just don’t.”

  “Why would I lie about this?” Frowny Claire’s voice sounds as sad as she looks.

  “After the shit we’ve been through, that’s a really great question.”

  “Beck, like I said on the phone, I’m seriously sorry.”

  The click of a lighter, and then—smoke. Coming in a billow out the window, just over my head.

  I knew she was smoker.

  “Would you like some lemonade or something?”

  “What? No.” The conversation comes to a brief silence. Then, Beck’s damaged voice again: “I really thought—I don’t know. I mean, I know it’s been a while, but I thought when I got here . . . if you could just see me . . .” More silence. Then, Beck in a whisper: “You really don’t remember me?”

  Another billow of smoke.

  “I was in a number of homes. It was a hard time for me. My therapist says it’s normal, you know, to block out the pain.” Another beat, another billow. Then, Claire’s voice again, this time, quieter. “Listen, I didn’t . . .”

  More silence, then Beck says, “Are you okay?”

  “No. I mean, yes, it’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “It’s probably nothing, but—did I make a promise or something?”

  Another beat.

  “Like what?” asks Beck.

  “Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. Would you like some lemonade?”

  Beck sighs. “I gotta go.”

  Hunched over, I backtrack around the townhouses, scurry over to the truck, and start kicking the tires just as the front door opens. As Beck crosses the lawn, I stick my hands in my pockets like I’ve been here the whole time.

  “What’re you doing, Mim?” His voice is shaky.

  “Just making sure the craft is seaworthy.” I clear my throat and throw on my most casual, super-optimistic, non-spy smile. “So how’d it go?”

  “Fine,” he lies, opening the driver’s door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Back in the truck, Walt clicks the last green square into place. “Are the tires still filled with air and whatnot, Mim?”

  “Sure, Walt.”

  “Hey, hey, I’m Walt.”

  “Damn straight,” whispers Beck, pulling out of the driveway.

  We make our way back through downtown Bellevue in silence. I can only guess what’s going through Beck’s mind right now. He came all this way only to be offered lemonade—twice—by a frowny-ass-chain-smoking amnesiac. That’s a shit hand right there.

  In front of a boarded-up ice-cream parlor, a little boy stands alone, crying his eyes out. I can’t help but think that’s about the only thing a little kid can do these days. I can’t help but think that’s the only thing that even makes any damn sense.

  30

  Kung Pao Mondays

  WITHOUT POMP, WITHOUT circumstance, I wipe off the war paint. There are no balloons, confetti, or plastic-wrapped roses. Even so, staring at myself in yet another grimy mirror, there is a sense of I-don’t-know-what . . . nostalgia, I suppose, whirring in my heart. I’ve never been much of a runner, but with Cleveland mere hours away, this sure feels like the homestretch.

  In all likelihood, that was my magnum opus.

  Like most everything else in this restaurant, the bathroom door is constructed entirely of bamboo: the faded Berber carpet is its soil, the flowery wallpaper is its oxygen, and—behold!—the perennial evergreens of exotic Southeast Asia sprout forth like so many common weeds right here in ho-hum Northeast Ohio.

  Basically, I hike back to our table through the Asian outback.

  “Are you blushing?” asks Beck, gnawing on a piece of red chicken on a stick.

  Damn. Even with the makeup remover, the lipstick leaves a reddish afterglow. “No,” I say. But yeah, I probably am. And if I wasn’t before, I am now. “Where’s my duck?”

  Beck chuckles. “You know you sound ridiculous, right?”

  Walt, without looking up from his plate, cracks up.

  I slide into the bamboo booth. “If I want duck, I’m getting duck. Anyway, I’m not the one who suggested Chinese before eleven a.m.”

  “You don’t like Chinese food?” says Walt. Having consumed his own red chicken, he’s now using the stick to stab a green bean.

  “Love the food
, Walt. Hate the restaurants. Well. All but one.”

  Beck and Walt both ordered the buffet and have now moved on to sweet and sour chicken. You gotta hand it to the Chinese; they’ve really perfected chicken varietals.

  “Which one?” says Beck.

  “What?”

  “You said you only eat at one Chinese restaurant. Which one?”

  “What difference does it make? They aren’t all the same. Most are like—” I point to the buffet in the middle of the restaurant, where a line of wild-eyed, overweight white men are jockeying for position.

  Beck munches a piece of broccoli. “You’re quite mad, you know.”

  “Pardon me for preferring my food unsullied.”

  “Unsullied?” says Walt.

  “Fresh. Untouched by gross, deformed strangers who pay five ninety-five a pop and eat enough in one sitting to last a week. A buffet is just—it’s not food, see. It’s a feeding.”

  “I like feedings,” says Walt, just as my duck arrives. After finishing the last bite on his plate, he gets up and heads back to the buffet.

  Beck watches him go, sips his water, and frowns. “I wish we could do something for him.”

  I take a bite. It’s tough for duck, but all things considered, I don’t regret my order. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—the kid is homeless. What’s his endgame?”

  To say I haven’t considered this would only be a half-truth. I’ve considered Walt’s endgame, just as I’ve considered Beck’s and my own. But until now, I’ve only let myself consider the fantasy. In the movie of my life, Beck and Walt and I form our own weird little family, where love and honesty trump all. We take Uncle Phil and drive coast to coast, picking up odd jobs where we can find them, flipping a burger here, mowing a lawn there. We stay in remote mountainside villages, and at night, we drink in pubs, rubbing elbows with innkeepers and artisans, local farmers and woodsmen, simple folk, folk of value, the kind of folk you read about in tales. Folk. Not people. Fucking folk. And if, in time, Beck falls madly in love with me, so be it. That won’t change anything (save the sleeping arrangements). Our love for each other would only increase our love for Walt. Under our roof, he would have fresh Mountain Dew aplenty. Under our roof, he would never miss a Cubs game. Under our roof, we would laugh and love and live our mother-effing lives. Under our roof . . .