by Eric Juneau
“Down here,” I call out.
Her orb-like eyes roll back and forth, scanning the area below her. When she sees us, she slips in-between the trees, dropping needles and the scent of fir on us. She bends down.
“Hi,” she says in a low voice. Too loud and people could hear her in the next county. Birds fall out of the sky if she screams.
“Jess, this is Seth.” Seth’s expression reminds me of my first time at a Florida theme park when I was eight. “Dude,” I chide.
“Hi!” Seth yells. “It’s nice to meet you!”
She smiles. “I can hear fine, thanks. I have a hearing aid.” She taps her lobe.
“Did you get the radio tower thing done?” I ask.
“Yeah, it was just lifting up the workers to the tower and putting them back down. I didn’t know you were bringing your friend.”
“I thought I told you I was,” I say.
“I thought you were just telling him about me, not bringing him.”
I look puzzled. “Is that all right?”
“I guess.” She holds her stomach.
Seth lowers his voice, but still sounds like he’s speaking to a hard-of-hearing grandparent. “I gotta say, I’m glad you’re real. I mean, I know you’re real. But, I mean, Tim was acting all weird. I thought he was becoming a serial killer. I didn’t know it was the new girlfriend phase.”
She laughs. It bubbles and echoes at the same time. “Heh, yeah.” She looks at some birds flying by.
Seth adapts quickly. He knows this is a ‘friends meeting the girlfriend’ get-together, which is what I was hoping for.
“So is this your job now?” he asks.
“Kind of. I do projects for the government. Mostly construction. Stuff like fixing the Hoover dam. Buildings.”
“You do windows?”
She laughs again. “No, more important stuff than that. Stuff that would take years to do.”
“Now she can cut the time down to weeks,” I chime in. “Remember relocating the waste dump?”
“Yeah, that was not fun.”
Seth asks, “What did you do before you got big? I mean, size-wise. Large.” He face-palms. I love Seth. He reminds me of some of my first conversations with Jess.
“I was going to be a journalist, but I mean, that was when I was eighteen. All I’d done was the school paper. But then the growth started, and I was pretty much under government surveillance until I got to my full height.”
“Oh, it didn’t happen all at once?”
“No, it took about a month. It was a once-in-a-million thing with chemicals and genetics and some artifact archaeologists found and even I don’t understand it all. Fast growth’s just in the movies. Then I was big enough and they couldn’t keep the secret anymore.”
“At least they didn’t blow you up with missiles, like Godzilla.”
We all laugh. “No, they’re pretty reasonable with giant things, as long as you’re not eating people or knocking down buildings.”
“Yes, only destruction where they say,” I comment.
She snickers, then rubs her neck as if it’s sore. Something seems off about her. She looks curled over, her cheeks are hollow.
“You okay? We can do this another time, if you’re tired,” I say.
She runs her hands through her hair—it sounds like a rush of wind through wheat. “Tim, can I talk to you alone?”
My jaw clenches. I feel like I’m in trouble in school, but don’t know why. “Uh, sure.” I look around—it wasn’t like we could duck out around the corner.
She holds out her hand and I step onto it, bouncing like I’m on a leather mattress. Her fingers wrap gently around me, squeezing me in a human sleeping bag.
I can’t hear anything after that. The pounding of her feet and rush of the wind blow out all noise, like riding a horse. It’s only a few steps for her, but we’re almost a mile away when she puts me down in a forest clearing.
“What’s up?”
She sighs, emitting a cloud of vapor the size of... well, a cloud. At first, I’m worried I said something stupid. Or Seth did and she needs me to mediate. “I think we should break up,” she says.
My heart freezes. “Break up? Why? Now?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do this now. I just realized I’m not at a place in my life right now to have a boyfriend.”
“Look, I know you’re giant, but I don’t care about that. I’m not one of those crazy-obsessed guys.”
“I know you’re not. It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s just not working out for us.”
“What? What do you mean? I thought we were having fun together.”
“We were. You’re sweet and nice. But I’m a fifty-foot woman.”
“I said I don’t care about that. If... if it’s because I’m too small, maybe we can try repeating—”
“No,” she quickly says. “No. Don’t do that. It’s not about that. I just don’t think we’re compatible, personality-wise.”
“Is there someone else?” I ask.
She chuckles, like the idea is ridiculous. “No, no. It’s just, we can’t have a real relationship. I know we have fun together. More fun than I’ve ever had. But that’s not a reason to string you along. You deserve someone more like you. I’m sure you’ll find someone else.”
“I found someone else. It was you.” I feel red—she’s doing this for me? She has the audacity to think this act is for my benefit?
Her big, brown eyes water. With a shaky breath, she says, “It’s okay. I know you’ll get over it.”
“I’ll get over it? Why do I have to get over it?”
“I’m sorry, but we just... I’m sorry.”
“Why? We were so great together.” I feel like I’m in a courtroom defending myself against a jury who’s already found me guilty.
“I think I oughta go now,” she says, adopting a flat, vacant stare. “I’m sorry. I can take you back to your friend now, if you want.”
She brings down her hand, but I shrug it off. “No, I’d rather walk.”
“Are you sure? Okay. If you want to talk, well... you know how to call me.”
I can’t imagine calling her after this. I feel like I’ve been kicked across the globe, woken up in a foreign land where nothing is familiar.
“Sorry,” she says again. She takes one step back, then turns around. The last thing I see of her is her giant heel, covered in a government-issued specially-constructed shoe.
¤
It’s a different bar now. More smoke, more skank. Sports on the TV, darts in the background. I hate it. The only reason I’m here is because this is the kind of place for guys with broken hearts.
A week has gone by and I still have a black hole in my gut. I should be drinking hard liquor, but I can’t stomach it. Too many binges in college, so I’ve got a large mug of strong beer. But even that is wrecking me. It’s supposed to make me feel better, but it’s making me feel worse.
My cell phone rings—Seth. “Hey,” I answer.
“Hey,” he says. “How you holding up?”
“Not so good,” I say.
“Oh. Where are you?”
“In a bar.”
“At least you got out. Is Travis with you?”
“There’s no one with me.” It hurts how true those words are.
On the TV in the corner, a preview for tonight’s news appears. Jessica, for the third time this week, is the feature story. They show all her best shots: her hair hanging in front of her hazel eyes, her humble smile, the way she looks when she’s reaching for something, the shape of her arm. Tonight it’s about how she signed a new contract for assisting the Chernobyl site proposal.
That was one of our bad fights. I told her the radiation levels would wreak havoc on her body, even if she could knock forty years off the clean-up. Was that why she broke up with me? She wanted to work on something I wouldn’t let her? We could have at least talked about it.
I can’t get away from her. It’s bad enough breaking up
with someone, they’re always in your thoughts. Replaying the last moments together, fixing the things that went wrong. Except I can’t find anything that went wrong.
“Tim? Tim?”
I forgot the phone was on. “What? I’m here.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“I’m fine. Not that much.”
“Listen, let’s go somewhere else. Where are you at? I can pick you up.”
“No, don’t bother. It’s all right.”
Seth says nothing for a moment. “All right, give me a call tomorrow.”
I say that I will and hang up.
This is not how a relationship ends. People don’t break up out of the blue like this. There’s build-up. There’s fighting. There’s screaming and needling each other about little things. Or there’s apathy and avoidance. Or cheating. Or something.
“God damn, that’s a huge bitch,” the bartender says. He’s staring at the TV, washing his glasses, trying to engage a couple of blue-collars with grimy ball caps. The truckers laugh. Part of a regular clientele.
If he was one of my friends, I would probably laugh. But he’s not. He is a boorish man making a joke out of her. Like making fun of a mentally challenged kid.
“She didn’t ask to be big,” I say. “She’s making the best out of it. She never did nothing to you.”
He gives me a look, but I’m not sure he heard me. It’s a “whatever” look.
“What do you think happens when she’s on the rag?” one of the truckers asks.
The bartender adds, “Do you think it’s like The Shining? When the elevator doors open?”
He motions his two hands opening like a gate, and makes a whooshing sound, then a liquidy splat.
The inebriation has taken me past the point of good judgment.
I get down from my stool, walk across, and lunge over for the bartender’s shirt. As he lurches forward, I punch him in the face. He reels back against the wall, knocking over valuable alcohol bottles. Blood gushes from his nose onto his chin.
“It’s more like that,” I say.
The truckers jump up and grab me, restraining my arms in a wrestling lock. I yank and pull, but they have years of honing their muscles from ditch-digging and dry-walling.
As they drag me in a direction I don’t want to go, I yank my right arm out and elbow someone in the face. With one side loose, I’m free to slam into the other’s solar plexus. All I want to do is hurt someone. Hurt them the way I feel.
Someone tackles me from behind. At some point, I’m dragged outside. But the fight still continues. Two others get in range of my flailing.
Then there’s the sickly sound and flash of a cop’s siren as he pulls to the curb.
¤
I’d never been in the drunk tank before. Nothing prepared me for what it’s like to be arrested. It’s both more boring and more exciting than made out to be. Too bad I don’t remember much of it.
My head is cracking like an earthquake, and vomiting into the plastic toilet doesn’t help. When I’m able to comprehend the world around me, I realize where I am. Across the way, two tan-uniformed cops are sitting at a table, watching TV. A celebrity gossip show is on.
And guess who they’re featuring? I can’t hear the audio, but I can see the bottom crawl as they run stock footage I’ve seen a hundred times. “Colossal Girl with Boy Toy?”
Now I know that they know. But the pictures they have are blurry and don’t identify me. It’s all rumor and guessing, which is more fun anyway.
In the shot, I’m holding out a bunch of balloons to her. I “borrowed” them from a marathon’s finish line and attached a big chunk of baker’s chocolate. To her, it was a Hershey’s Kiss.
“Hey?” I say. “I’m awake.”
The cops don’t say anything. They keep munching chips.
I knock on my door and clear my throat. “Sirs? I’m awake now.”
“Good for you,” one says.
“Can I get my one phone call now?” I ask.
“You still got your cell phone on you.”
I touch the outside of my jeans and, sure enough, my cell phone is there. As I pull it out, one of the cops approaches me.
“Fun night?”
“Am I under arrest?” I ask.
“Just a fine for public intoxication. Pay it, sign a form, and don’t do it again.”
I nod. He leaves and I call the one person I trust to stay discreet.
“Seth?”
“Where are you? I tried calling—”
“Drunk tank. Long story. Just come get me.”
Then I fall back on the cot and languish in the hangover agony. I deserve it.
¤
Light is not my friend. Even the partly cloudy sky looks like an exposed flood lamp.
“You okay?” Seth asks for the hundredth time as we walk down the steps.
“Fine. Already threw up.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Go home. Lay face down on the bed for about a hundred years.”
“All right, dude, you need to get over this. She’s just like any other girl.”
The ironic thing is that’s what I’ve been trying to tell people since we first got together. Only now someone gets it. “She’s not like any other girl, Seth. Obviously. That’s why I liked her. Not for what she is but who she is. I loved her, I really did. I’m still having conversations with her in my head.”
“I know, but she’s a giant girl, you’re a tiny man. Why did you think it was going to work out?”
“It was working out. That’s what I don’t get. I don’t know where I went wrong. I never treated it like that kind of relationship. Maybe she couldn’t get past all the letters from freaks or the fundamentalist groups that think she’s an abomination. There really are those people, you know that? They think she’s an affront to God. When she told me that, she said she was glad she had someone like me. Because I reminded her she was still Jessica. Isn’t that love?”
“Even if it is, she’s the one who broke up with you.”
“I just want one more try. I’ve got to show her we can be together. Make some ridiculous grand gesture where I sing in front of everybody or hold up a boom box with Phil Collins.”
“Tim, this is real life, not the movies.”
“Does real life have fifty-foot women?”
“Good point.”
We get into his car. I cringe at the door slamming.
“It’s got to be something big. Something that shows I’m at her level.” I laugh at my own unintentional joke. “I want to show her I can do the things she thinks I can’t. Like holding her, kissing her. We used to gaze up at the sky, not looking at each other. And I’d tell her stupid jokes and she’d tell me about when she was in high school and she made up dance routines to cheesy romance songs—”
“All right, all right, I’m convinced. You love her. So what should we do?”
I hold my temples, partially to simulate thinking and partially to block out the pain.
¤
Movies have a lot of fascinating ideas. They all work well, if you’re a director with a million dollar budget. If you’re a freelance photographer, options are more limited. You have to use the tools available. Fortunately, if you do your job right, you can make friends in freelance photography. Like the assignment I took on “farming in the Midwest” and the cloud seeder I met.
From my binoculars, I can see him coming over now. And Jessica is standing on the plateau, pushing at a large rock formation. She looks bored and sad. This is perfect.
The engine roars overhead and she looks up. Army men on the ground beside her are freaking out. Guess there’s something about violating airspace. I may have to make up for that later.
She looks interested, but not afraid. I don’t think she’s seen a plane fly so close to her. I bet if she reached out, she could grab it.
Then the side doors open. My first idea was roses, but that was way too expensive. And so were flowers of an
y kind. Plus they might feel more like pine needles falling on her. But the petals...
Like rain, tons and tons of flower petals, collected from floral shop sweepings, gardens, and wild flower fields, jettison from the plane. She grins like a delighted child as a rainbow of fluttering confetti covers her. Even if none of the rest of this works, seeing her smile was worth it.
And that’s my cue. I drop the binoculars back to my neck and begin my walk.
“Okay, okay,” my advisor says from below, muffled by my safety gear. “Remember, shoulder-width apart. Keep the legs straight. Just like walking on heels. And don’t catch—”
He says something else, but I’m already on my way. If I don’t start moving, I’ll miss my window.
Besides, I already know the routine. I practiced endlessly for the three weeks, gathering up flower material in-between times. Because it’s one thing to be a carnival clown in a parade. It’s another to be walking across a forest on fifty-foot stilts.
About halfway through, I feel shaky from the tension of walking across the uneven ground. But the sight of her holding up her hand to catch the petal rain, like stars from the sky, is all worth it. Then she sees me. I tense—her next reaction is the make-or-break-moment.
She smiles. Her eyes water a little bit.
Thankfully, she stomps along the forest the rest of the way. I continue walking (because if I don’t, I’ll fall), until we meet and she steadies me.
“Why?” she asks. “I mean, thank you. I mean...”
“Because I love you.”
“Tim, I... I told you. It’s not going to work.”
“I don’t care about your size. I know you’re not like normal girls. But if you think about it, there is no such thing as normal girls.”
“Tim, listen,” she looks away shyly. “I love you too,” she whispers.
“Then why did you break up with me? You broke my heart.”
“It’s... listen.” She sighs. “I thought I was protecting you. You see, the doctors. Right after we made it official they told me... I’m not going to live much longer.”
“What?”