by Sam Tranum
Gregory Wolos
The tall, pregnant woman with the dark curls spilling around her pie-dish face sat alone in the back row of the chairs arranged for Leonard’s Barnes and Noble reading. In front of her, an audience of a dozen tired mothers and wriggling children watched and listened as the author read from Mend My Tail, Doc, the latest in his series of Emergency Vet picture books. He’d retired from his veterinary practice and now lived a nomadic life on the road, promoting his stories. Leonard displayed the illustrations: here was the cat being fitted for a prosthetic leg; here the pig with its snout stuck in a peanut-butter jar; here the monkey with its hand super-glued to its tail.
The expecting young woman remained for the question-answer period.
‘How long did it take you to make the pictures?’ a chubby boy asked around the finger in his mouth.
‘I don’t do the illustrations. We have an artist for those,’ Leonard explained.
‘But how long? And what’s the matter with your eye?’
‘Shh, Jake, be polite,’ his mother hushed.
‘It’s okay, ma’am.’ Leonard was wall-eyed. He’d been born with the imperfection his mother had reassured him a thousand times was ‘slight’. Frown lines framed her smile whenever she patted his cheek and called him ‘my handsome boy’. Leonard’s gaze flitted to and from the pregnant woman. She wore a yellow raincoat. ‘I keep an eye pointed to the side so I can see if anyone’s sneaking up on me,’ he told the boy. ‘Did you know that a chameleon’s eyes work independently? Can you imagine looking at two different things at once?’
The boy blinked, spun his eyes around the room, shook his head and groaned
‘Do you have a pet?’ a little girl called from her mother’s lap.
‘Nope,’ Leonard said. ‘Travelling around to talk about my books, I can’t really keep an animal. Sometimes I think a companion for the road would be nice, though.’
‘What about children?’ It was the pregnant woman. Leonard flinched when she batted her eyes at him: on one of her lids, the left, an extra eye had been tattooed.
‘No children, no pets,’ he said. ‘I’m not married.’
*
The pregnant woman stood nearby as Leonard signed his books for mothers whose children were tugging them toward the exit. Her belly swelled out of her yellow raincoat, stretching her orange maternity shirt as smooth as a pumpkin. She held a large paisley bag by its strap. When he finished, she approached. She was tall – taller than Leonard.
‘Your book title’s a pun.’ Her hands slid over her stomach as if she were polishing it. ‘Doesn’t docking a tail mean to cut it off? Like for cocker spaniels? So, “doc” is a pun, right? You can’t mend something and cut it off at the same time.’
Leonard wagged his head, a nervous habit. He was trying not to stare at her eye tattoo. ‘The publisher titled it. But good catch. You’re the first to notice.’
‘I saw you on Denver Today this morning. You told the monkey story. Loved it! Would you want to get some coffee? If that doesn’t cross some kind of author-fan boundary. Not here, though – somewhere more private. You drive us, and I’ll treat. It’s hard for me to squeeze behind a steering wheel these days. I’m Mindy.’
She held out her hand, and Leonard shook it. It was dry and cold and strong.
*
When they’d settled into Leonard’s Escalade in the mall parking lot, the sun was setting. Mindy rummaged in her bag and pulled out a pistol. She held it by her belly, so it couldn’t be seen through the SUV’s windows, and angled it at Leonard’s face. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to give me everything in your pockets,’ she said. ‘Keep your keys for now. But I want your phone, wallet, everything else.’ The gun didn’t look like a toy. ‘I’m not joking, Doctor Friedman.’
‘You’re robbing me?’
‘No. You won’t lose a thing. This isn’t a robbery. It’s a kidnapping. Or no, a doc-napping.’ She paused, licking her lips as her attention dipped to her swollen stomach. ‘Though I guess it is a kidnapping, too. That depends on who you think this baby belongs to.’
Her eyes flashed at Leonard, and she grinned.
‘I’m a surrogate mama,’ she said. ‘Somebody else’s zygote has grown to full-term inside me. But I’m calling it mine. I’ve got a promise of fifty thousand for it in Mexico City. That’s double what my contract here calls for.’
She extended a palm toward Leonard.
‘So the wallet and the phone–and whatever else you’ve got that identifies you. Keep the keys in the ignition. Start up and get us out of here – take the interstate south.’ Without lowering the pistol she took in the SUV’s interior. ‘Nice car. How’s it on fuel? It’s about ten hours to the border and twenty more to Mexico City.’
Leonard couldn’t think of the questions he knew he should ask. He tugged his wallet out of his back pocket and his phone out of his front and placed both in Mindy’s hand. He started the Escalade.
‘So – you want me to be your chauffeur?’
‘Oh, you’ll be that and maybe much more, doctor. I’m going to call you “Doc”,’ okay? Listen, I could have picked anybody to drive. But I chose you after I saw you on TV and heard you were going to be reading right here in town. What you are is my insurance policy.’ She glanced around the parking lot, clutching the gun like it was a small animal needing restraint. ‘Just get us out of here. We’ll get food and gas on the road. There’s a long way to go. I pee often, by the way.’
*
An hour later, Mindy pinned her gun between her knees while she peeled the plastic wrap from the sandwiches she’d bought with Leonard’s cash. It was dark. The only light in the SUV was the luminescence of the dashboard and the occasional swimming beams of northbound cars and trucks.
‘Do you ever use your four-wheel drive?’ she asked, with a full mouth.
‘No,’ Leonard said. ‘I don’t even know how it works.’
Mindy swallowed, then rested her sandwich on her belly. ‘You got what I meant by “insurance policy”, right? You understand your purpose?’
Leonard wished he were taller – long-legged Mindy had pushed her seat back to its limit, and, because his right eye was weak, he had to screw his head like an owl to see her face. He hadn’t much of an appetite for his sandwich and chewed mechanically. He’d been thinking about a coincidence: Mindy was a surrogate, and he had once attempted to donate his sperm.
‘Is it because being in the car with a celebrity will help if there are border issues?’ he asked.
Mindy laughed. ‘You’re not that well-known, Doc. You think customs guys read? I guess they might watch talk shows, though. And they are trained to recognise faces. But, no, don’t you get it? You’re a doc, Doc! I’m due any second – what if my time comes before Mexico City?’
‘I’m a veterinarian, not an obstetrician.’
‘A baby animal is a baby animal, a delivery’s a delivery. I’ve got towels and alcohol and scissors and a threaded needle in my bag here. I hope we don’t need them. There’s a clinic waiting for me in Mexico City – if I hold out that long.’
‘You could just take some of my money for a plane ticket,’ Leonard said.
Mindy patted his shoulder – he felt the thrum of each long finger. ‘That’s a nice offer, Doc. Really. But why would I pass up an opportunity to travel with the Emergency Vet? I love your stories! The truth is, I’ve got passport issues. As in, maybe I’ve misplaced mine. Or I never got one, I guess. Besides, air travel’s unsafe this late in a pregnancy.’
‘You’ll need a passport to drive into Mexico, or a passport card. I have one in my wallet.’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, so to speak. It’s funny – we’re sneaking somebody into Mexico when everybody else is sneaking out. But keep both eyes on the road, Doc!’
Leonard had edged onto the shoulder and eased the SUV back into the centre of the lane. ‘I’ve got a problem with my eye,’ he murmured.
‘Yeah.’ She purred a laugh. ‘I saw.
For a minute there I thought you were getting a little crush on me, sneaking peeks, getting a little Stockholm-ish. You know – Stockholm Syndrome? Everybody falls in love with their captor, right? I’ve got an eye thing, too – this extra one on my eyelid – I got it when I was fifteen. It’s supposed to be spiritual.’ She touched Leonard’s shoulder again. ‘We could get matching eye-patches. Like a couple of pirates. Ouch!’ She wrenched herself back in the seat, and her huge stomach rose beside him. The gun was still between her knees. ‘Christ, it’s hard to get comfortable.’ Her pale hands floated like lily pads on her belly as she settled herself.
They drove in silence through the tunnel that the Escalade’s headlights cut through the darkness. The tattooed lid made it impossible for him to tell if Mindy slept. An excess of stars swam through the sky – like crystallised sperm, Leonard imagined. Would he share the story of his failure on the long drive to Mexico City? He’d been warned by the clinician: ‘Only five percent of potential donors are approved. Frankly, most are college students, much younger than you.’ Leonard had continued doggedly through the process – physicals, paperwork, interviews. One night, he had dreamed that he’d been chosen: he’d been ushered into a gleaming white bathroom where, with the aid of Penthouse magazine’s Miss October – a petite redhead wielding a glass dildo – he’d ejaculated into a plastic cup. Upon exiting, product in hand, he’d been greeted by a crowd of a thousand children, boys and girls who resembled his third-grade photo, the one his mother had framed because his eyes were shut. He’d awoken full of hope, only to receive his blunt rejection in the morning mail.
Mindy’s voice startled him. ‘This little monkey inside me is a blondie.’
‘Excuse me?’ Leonard shivered himself alert. He’d need to rest soon.
‘This baby I’m carrying – there are rumours about him.’ Mindy said. ‘I’m not supposed to know who the parents are. Sometimes that’s part of the agreement. But I heard nurses talking at the fertility clinic. Sperm from a dead actor, they were saying. I didn’t recognise his name, so I googled him. He was old – he died two years ago. But he was blond and very handsome when he was young. I never saw any of his movies. Wikipedia said he was married to a model I never heard of either, much younger than him, also a blond – natural, I think. I read that she had cancer, but recovered. I know chemo makes you sterile, so I figure she had her eggs harvested first, then they cooked up a zygote for the widow with her husband’s sperm, and voila!’ She patted her stomach. ‘But this one’s mine now. She’s got more frozen zygotes, I’m sure. I wish I could advertise this baby as Hollywood royalty. Can you imagine what he’d be worth?’
Leonard shrugged.
‘I saw the way those young mommies were looking at you in the bookstore,’ Mindy teased. ‘Is that what you’re thinking about? Can you tell which moms are single? Or don’t you care.’
Leonard face warmed. His head wagged. ‘Never—’
Mindy sighed. ‘Doc, here’s what’s going to happen next.’ She hoisted herself up as if she were pinned under a boulder and, when he glanced over, he saw that she had again aimed the pistol at his head. She cupped it in both hands as if it were a kitten. ‘The next cheap motel we come to, we’re going to get a room. Both of us need to sleep. I’m going to handcuff you to the bathroom sink. Underneath. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a pillow and some blankets. It’ll probably be a little uncomfortable – sorry in advance. I’ll be stepping around you to pee in the middle of the night. Or maybe I’ll need you to deliver the Hollywood royalty. That’d be a riot. Think I can keep the gun on you while that’s going on? This is my third pregnancy, you know. First one I gave up for adoption. The second was a surrogacy like this one. But that baby had something wrong with it. They never told me what. I did my part and was paid in full even for a defective—’ The sudden illumination of a carcass on the side of the road stopped her short. ‘Ugh, what do you think that used to be?’
Leonard blinked at the body as they flashed by – only a long torso, really, its head long gone, its legs crushed to a ruby froth. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. His joints ached. He’d be sleeping on a bathroom floor? But escape was out of the question – he was too weary. ‘A coyote, maybe. An antelope?’
‘Save that one, Emergency Vet.’ Mindy yawned. ‘Yuch.’
*
The Blue Daisy Motel had one room left with a private bathroom. In it, Mindy offered suggestions for Leonard’s comfort: ‘You’ll have to lie on your back, and we’ll cuff your right wrist to the pipe. Wedge your pillow in the corner there. See – you can stretch your legs around the toilet.’ The cuffs she pulled from her bag and snapped around his wrist pinched slightly. She grunted as she kneeled to fasten the other end to the drain pipe. ‘My stomach’s in the way,’ she puffed. ‘You do it.’ After Leonard locked himself up securely, Mindy lurched to her feet. A meaty odour wafted from under her skirt and mingled with the cool air beneath the sink. Leonard stared up at the filthy underside and closed his eyes. How many more bathrooms before Mexico City?
‘I’m leaving the light on and the door open. I’ll try to tiptoe around you,’ Mindy announced. Leonard could only see her legs. Her blue running shoes looked new, and her ankles were swollen and chafed. A quarter-sized bruise yellowed on her shin. The bed springs squeaked under her weight. ‘Oh,’ she called, ‘if you need to go, just give a shout. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, though. Maybe you’d better hold it.’
*
Leonard woke, stiff, unsure of where he was. His wrist touched something cold and metal, and he jerked it, thinking gun – and then he remembered that he was chained up and why. He strained for sounds of Mindy’s breathing, but heard only the faucet dripping above him. Mindy liked his stories, she’d said. He imagined that she couldn’t sleep and called to him: ‘Tell me a story about a time you wanted to save something but couldn’t – or you didn’t want to save something, but had to.’ Leonard thought hard. Absent from Mend My Tail, Doc were the more lurid stories he’d been saving for an adult version: a frantic, semi-carved steer savaging a slaughterhouse; a manatee with an anchor through its head; a shih-tzu and an eagle locked in a thousand-foot death plunge. Then he remembered a rural emergency from his internship: a distressed cow with Madonna eyes suffering through a breech delivery. The cow stood trembling, and the twig-legs protruding from the leaking opening beneath her tail shook with her.
‘Pull!’ Leonard’s supervisor had shouted, and Leonard had grasped a warm, slick leg and yanked. The calf slid free, and, as he and the newborn slipped to the floor, he’d hugged it to his chest. The smell of blood and raw flesh washed over him. Then his supervisor and the dairy farmer swore at the same time: there was a second calf, a twin, left in the womb. ‘Stillborn,’ his supervisor had determined with a plumbing arm. The cow and the senior veterinarian struggled to deliver the dead calf while its sibling shivered next to Leonard on the barn’s dirt floor, waiting for its mother to lick it to its feet.
*
Mindy’s legs! Her greeting dropped from above: ‘Morning, Doc. You sleep okay? You were dead out when I came through to pee. Both times. I’m going to wash up, then I’ll give you the key so you can free yourself.’ She straddled his hips. Water hummed through the pipes and splashed in the sink over Leonard’s head. A hand descended with a wet washcloth, and she washed her legs. Her skirt rose and fell with each stroke. He caught a glimpse of her pale underbelly and closed his eyes, opening them when he heard the jingle of the handcuff key.
By the time Leonard released himself, Mindy sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. He craved a long, groaning stretch, but resisted, unwilling to admit his discomfort.
‘Hurry up and do what you’ve got to do,’ Mindy said. She clasped her paisley bag under one arm. ‘Leave the door open, please. Any funny business and you’ll be sorry for it. I’ll shut my eyes – that’s the best I can do for privacy. What’re you staring at?’
The tattoo of the eyeball was missing. There was only a dark smudge on Mindy’s lid
. ‘Your third eye – it’s gone.’
She snorted. ‘Oh, yeah, that was washable marker. You don’t think I’d really tattoo something on my eyelid, do you? Who’d do that to themselves?’ She picked up her gun and looked at its muzzle. ‘This is all the “third eye” I need, right, Doc?’
Leonard didn’t answer. He washed his face and rinsed his mouth, then used the toilet, peeking now and then at Mindy, who, to her word, didn’t open her eyes. A smudge instead of a tattoo on her lid was a disappointment – no twin patches; no pirate gang.
*
Back in the Escalade, Leonard behind the wheel, they breakfasted on Twinkies, corn chips and Mountain Dew from the machines in the tiny lobby of the Blue Daisy Motel. The morning sunlight sharpened the borders of the black highway that sliced through parched land. The broken white line leapt at them like machine-gun flak as they made their way south, and the blue sky spread over them as if they were in an enormous tent. Mindy’s thumbs fluttered over Leonard’s phone.
‘I’m going to crack your access code,’ she said. She bent over her beach-ball belly, her unwashed curls hiding her face. ‘What’s your date of birth?’
‘Why don’t I just tell you the code?’
‘No, I want to figure it out. I’m good at it.’
‘My birthday’s June 28, 1970.’
‘6-28-70, no, no,’ she grunted as she tested permutations. Leonard peeked at the gun in the folds of her skirt. ‘Hey, that’s tomorrow! Happy birthday, Doc.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, surprised. He searched for a birthday memory, but found nothing. Instead, the moment when he realised he’d never marry rose: he’d just finished neutering a ferret and was transferring it to a recovery pen. Its limp body hung from his gloved hands like a necktie. He’d looked at its tiny, shut eyes and thought, ‘I will never have a wife.’ The words had struck him like a chest punch, and he’d had to sit down, the ferret still dripping from his hands. His failed sperm donation had come soon after.