But You Scared Me the Most

by John Manderino

  I get the hell out of there.

  I don’t come back until late, with an overweight hippie chick in tow. She’s wearing a long glass-beaded necklace over one of those tie-dyed psychedelic T-shirts, her hair in two long braids like an Indian maiden, and she definitely danced like a hippie, flinging her fat self around like she was having a conniption fit. I did some flinging around out there myself tonight—I didn’t feel like doing the fucking twist or anything halfway civilized.

  Her name is Bridget—or Brenda, I’m not sure. We undress each other, staggering around a little, giggling about it, and get into bed. I don’t even look at the little golfer guy, even glance at him. Not interested. She opens her chubby legs and I climb inside. Then everything is fine.

  Afterwards I roll off her and over to the edge of the bed, to the nightstand, to the trophy, to the little man, just curious.

  I give a groan.

  “What’s the matter?” she says.

  “This is way too fucking weird,” I say.

  She sits up. “What is?”

  I hold up the trophy. “Look at this.”

  “Yeah? So? Congratulations.”

  I hand it to her. “Look at the little man, at his face.”

  She looks. “What about it?”

  I tell her about earlier today, how happy he looked, all smiles. “I’d been out golfing, right? But now look at him.”

  “I am. What’m I suppose to see?”

  “How sad he is again, like he’s gonna start crying.”

  She hands him back, shaking her head: “Man, you must be on something. Are you?”

  I check the face again. “For fuck sake, the guy is practically—”

  “Please stop? You’re freaking me out, okay?”

  “Well I’m sorry but we’re talking here about my father, y’know? My dead father. Where you going?”

  “I forgot, I’m supposed to be somewhere,” she says, getting up.

  “Aw, come on, don’t go.”

  “I completely forgot.” She’s grabbing her clothes from the floor and yanking them on as fast as she can, scared of me.

  I tell her, “Stay, come on. Will you? I don’t feel like being alone, okay? I’m not dangerous, Brenda. Honest.”

  “It’s Bridget,” she says, dressed now. “And I mean this sincerely: you need help, my friend.”

  “So stay and help.”

  “Professional help,” she explains, and wishes me luck.

  After she’s gone I sit there on the edge of the bed, still holding the trophy, thinking maybe she’s right. Maybe what I should do is just check myself in somewhere, you know? Watch Days of Our Lives in my pajamas, along with the others.

  —Insanity’s a cop-out, Ben.

  The tiny face looks angry now.

  —Show some character, for God sakes.

  I decide to.

  I get up and take him to the closet, dump him in the box with the others and close the door. Heading back, I think I hear him holler “Attaboy,” but I’m not sure. I mean, we’re talking here about a fucking golf trophy.

  I don’t have to be at work the next morning until eleven, so I’m out there teeing off by eight, not too badly hung over. I don’t bother with a scorecard. It’s a nice morning and I just want to play a few holes, hit the ball around. There’s this feeling when you meet it just right, this clean, sweet feeling. That’s all I’m after.

  I use a pull cart.

  NANCY DREW AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING SLIPPER

  CHAPTER I: A STARTLING DISCOVERY

  “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four . . .”

  The elderly, white-haired sleuth stood in front of the microwave in her quilted housecoat, heating a bowl of canned prunes for thirty seconds, counting out loud the final ten.

  “. . . three, two, one.”

  The boxy apparatus gave a cheerful ding, as she knew it would.

  After yanking open the small door she reached in with both hands, lifted out the bowl, and set it on the countertop—quickly, for it was hot. She then stepped back to the microwave, shut the door, and returned to the prunes. Once again taking up the bowl—which had already cooled off enough by now—she carried it carefully toward the living room, where, thinking ahead, she had already set up a small folding table in front of the couch, with a spoon and paper napkin.

  Her intention was to eat the prunes while watching the Weather Channel.

  But as she was leaving the kitchen she noticed something curious. The tile floor felt quite cool under the sole of her right foot but not cool at all under the left one. She stopped walking and looked down at her feet.

  Her right slipper was missing!

  CHAPTER II: A CURIOUS CLUE

  Nancy immediately turned around and, still holding the bowl of prunes, began retracing her steps, carefully searching the floor for any sign of the missing slipper.

  She had a strong suspicion who was behind this: her long-deceased father, the famous attorney Carson Drew. He frequently challenged her from beyond the grave, setting up mysteries designed to keep her sleuthing skills in A1 condition. The other day he hid her hairbrush.

  She still hadn’t solved that case.

  Once again Nancy set the bowl of prunes on the countertop, then returned to the microwave, where she hesitated for just a moment, then with both hands pulled open the little door.

  No slipper.

  Nancy continued standing there, staring for a long while at a soup stain on the back wall of the microwave. The shape of the stain was very intriguing. The longer she stared the more she realized what a striking resemblance it bore to a Chinese dragon. Could that be a clue?

  Chinese dragon . . . Chinese New Year . . . firecrackers . . . crackers . . . crumbs . . .

  “Of course!” she said to herself.

  CHAPTER III: A PAINFUL MEMORY

  Nancy closed the microwave door and began making her way toward the yellow plastic garbage container at the other end of the kitchen. Earlier, when she had swept the floor after spilling some crumbs from her toast and raspberry jam, her father must have somehow caused her right slipper to detach itself from her foot. She then must have unwittingly swept the slipper into the dustpan along with the crumbs and tossed it in the garbage!

  She smiled to herself, picturing her handsome father, the way he would so often shake his head, telling her, “Nancy, you’re amazing!”

  In fact, everyone said so.

  She stopped walking.

  Everyone, that is, except her ex-beau Ned Nickerson.

  Oh, he agreed she was an amazing, brilliant sleuth. But in bed? Not so amazing, not so brilliant. “A cold fish,” that was what he had called her. Was there anything in the world less appealing than a cold—presumably dead—fish? He didn’t deny that she was very attractive: her titian hair, her ripe little mouth, her creamy skin, her perky breasts. “But you’re stuck in here,” he told her, tapping her forehead with a meaty finger. After the breakup, Nancy’s father tried to comfort her, acknowledging that Ned was indeed a fine young man. “But let’s face it,” he added, “the lad’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed,” and his daughter laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Nancy walked the rest of the way to the garbage container.

  CHAPTER IV: AT A CROSSROAD

  But upon arriving at the garbage container, instead of removing the lid, Nancy stood there, afraid of not finding the slipper after being so sure about the dragon-stain clue. It would mean that she was losing her touch. It would mean she had disappointed her father.

  On the other hand, she was even more afraid of finding the slipper in there, for that would surely mean she was losing more than just her touch.

  For a moment she considered not opening the lid at all. Her prunes were getting cold. Why not forget the whole business and go watch television?

  But Nancy Drew was never one to give in to fear.

  Taking her flashlight from the large pocket of her housecoat, she switched it on, then slowly lifted the li
d. And there it was: her hairbrush.

  “Oh, Father,” she cried to the ceiling, “I miss you so!”

  JAMEY’S SISTER

  My dad hit me last night, twice, one side of the head and then the other—not very hard, but it was awful. He never hit me before, ever. For one thing I’m a girl, plus I’m already fifteen, so it’s too late. Anyway, after those two little clouts he went over and took it out on the wall, making these horrible choking sounds.

  I added it to the letter I’m always writing in my head to the president:

  Mr. President, I wish you could have seen my dad last night. I wish you could see what he is going through, what we are all going through because of you.

  Me and Jamey wrote to each other a lot before he died, not e-mails but regular letters in envelopes with stamps and all that. It was so exciting when one would come. Sometimes he put all our names on the envelope, in his bad handwriting: MR. AND MRS. CARMICHAEL AND MELANIE. But a lot of times it was just my name. He wrote about how hot it was over there, especially with all the stuff they had to wear and carry around, and about the guys he was with, his buddies he called them, and some of the things they would do to pass the time, goofy games they made up, because it got pretty boring a lot. He never talked about battles and such. He didn’t want to worry us. All he would sometimes say was “Today was pretty bad,” but he never went into details. He asked me a lot of questions to answer in my next letter, about school and such, basketball and such, and how he hoped I was having a lot of fun, that I should try to have enough fun for us both because he wasn’t having much. Now and then, though, he’d say something about the way he felt being over there, how proud he was, serving his country, protecting it from another 9/11.

  But Mr. President, Iraq wasn’t the one. Saddam Hussein wasn’t the guy. So why do you keep pretending like he was? What are you up to?

  This girl at school, Miriam Holbrook, keeps telling me stuff. She’s on the basketball team, our center. She’s a senior and I’m just a sophomore but we ended up talking a lot after practice. She takes the same bus home and we got to talking about Iraq, especially after Jamey got killed. She’s been telling me stuff you don’t get from the news, the news on TV anyway. At first I didn’t want to hear. She gets everything from her parents and they’re both college professors. Those people are always against the government, always thinking they’re smarter than everyone else.

  Liberals.

  My dad hates liberals. He thinks they should all be put in camps until the war is over so they won’t be out there saying stuff that gives the enemy encouragement and gives our troops discouragement. After the war is over they can come out again and shoot off their mouths all they want, but not until. Which is how I felt at first about Miriam and her parents. Lock them up. Shut them up.

  But let’s face it, Mr. President, you’re the one who should be locked up. You’re the one. You know you are.

  At first, like I said, I told Miriam I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t call her a liberal or anything, I just told her I didn’t want to hear it. She said she understood how I felt.

  I told her no she didn’t.

  Jamey was the sweetest, most wonderful person I ever knew and I’m not just saying that because he was my brother but because it’s totally true. Anyone who knew him would tell you the exact same thing. But Miriam never even met him. So when she said she understood, I looked at her and told her, “No, you don’t.”

  She nodded. “You’re right.”

  Well, I liked Miriam. She was a liberal but she shut up when you asked her to. So for a while we went back to just talking about school and basketball and Coach Murray’s mood swings.

  But I started noticing the president’s eyes.

  My dad has him on TV whenever he’s on. Dad likes him a lot. He says we’re lucky he was president when we got hit on 9/11. He says somebody like Bill Clinton, some liberal like Clinton, or Al Gore if he had won, they’d go running straight to the United Nations and there’d be a lot of meetings and then they would have meetings about the meetings they had. But this president said, “Let’s go get ’em.” Dad had a picture of him on the living room wall above this little shrine he built to Jamey. He had this table against the wall with Jamey’s picture in his marine dress blues, all his medals and documents laid out, even his varsity letter for baseball, little American flags all around. And up on the wall, smiling, a framed photograph of the president.

  He has these eyes, did you ever notice?

  He has these shifty little eyes. Know what he looks like? When he’s up there in front of people, or talking into the camera, do you know what he looks like? A little boy, a naughty little boy telling lies, with a little trace of a smirk because he’s getting away with it.

  I told Miriam about his eyes. She just nodded. She knew what I meant. But then she changed the subject. We had a major game coming up and she talked about that. But I didn’t care about the game coming up or Coach Murray or school or anything except the president and his shifty little beady eyes.

  Or how cheerful he was.

  I was watching him on my little TV in my room one night. He was answering questions from a roomful of reporters and I just kept praying, I actually had my hands pressed together, praying so hard for one of them to stand up and ask him how it feels when he thinks about all the people who are dead because of the lies he told. But they just asked about this and that, and he looked so cheerful up there, and used a nickname for someone he called on, calling him “Stretch,” and everyone laughed, and he laughed too, kind of bobbing around with this smirky little chuckle, and I started screaming and couldn’t stop. My mom came in and turned it off, then grabbed me and held me and I held her and we ended up crying together, just rocking and crying really hard.

  But Mr. President, I don’t want to cry. That’s what everyone does, they just cry, all heartbroken but proud, so proud because their son gave his life to save his country. But as you know, Mr. President, that is bullshit, excuse my language but that is total fucking bullshit.

  I told Miriam about being tired all the time.

  We were on the bus. I was really bad at practice that afternoon, really sloppy. I couldn’t focus. I felt so worn out. I told Miriam how hating the president was wearing me down. She didn’t say anything. She just took my hand. No girl ever did that before, and a month ago I would have snatched it back, thinking she was a lesbian or something. But I let her hold it. We held hands all the way to my stop without talking.

  They were watching a movie, Mom on the couch, Dad in his chair. I said hi and went to my room and laid on my bed on my back in the dark.

  Jamey got blown up by a land mine. He stepped on a land mine and it blew his legs off. They helicoptered him to the hospital but he died on the way. That was what it said, “died en route.” The last letter I got from him he talked about how soon he was going to be home, only six more weeks.

  Mr. President, I don’t know if Jamey knew about you and your lies. I hope not. I hope he still thought he was over there trying to keep us safe. I hope he died thinking he was protecting me, instead of how he got tricked by you, how we all did.

  I fell asleep. I had this dream that Jamey was back. He was dead but he was allowed back, just for a visit. Then he would have to leave again, go back to being dead again. I kept asking him why he had to go back. I kept pestering him about it. I was totally ruining his visit. Then I woke up.

  I was still in my clothes. It was late, after eleven. They were in bed. I got up to go pee. I was on my way to the bathroom, passing the Jamey shrine. It was lit up so you could see it no matter what time, Jamey in his uniform looking so proud, looking like a sucker, the president grinning from the wall above.

  I took down the president and flung him across the room like a Frisbee. Then I swept my arm across the table, sending Jamey and his medals to the floor. Then I pulled the table down. Then Dad was there. He grabbed me and dragged me into my room and hit me with his open hand on one side of the head, then the oth
er. Then he went over to the wall and started punching it and punching it, making these sobbing, choking sounds.

  My mom came in and we went over to him. He had his forehead and his hands against the wall now, just crying, loud and horrible. We stood on either side of him, patting his shoulders and saying things.

  Mr. President, do you know what you are? You are a monster. You don’t have horns or hoofs or fangs or fur, but that is what you are, a monster.

  That’s how I try to think of him now. I try to think of him as some kind of monster instead of an actual human being. It’s better that way. Otherwise I can’t stand it. Otherwise I hate him so much I don’t think I can stand it.

  ABDUCTION

  I was sitting there on the couch, a Saturday afternoon, feet up on the coffee table, watching the Cubs lose another one. It was only the third inning and already they were trailing the Braves 8–1. Do you realize the Cubs haven’t won a pennant since 1945? Do you realize the Cubs haven’t won a World Series since 1908? This is 1980. That’s seventy-two years. And I’ll tell you what, they’re sure as hell not going to win anything this year, not the way everyone keeps swinging for the goddamn fence instead of just trying to get on base, instead of trying to manufacture runs. I don’t know why I bother watching these losers, I really don’t. But anyway, like I was saying, the game was in the third inning, bottom half, Cubs batting, two outs, nobody on, then all of a sudden a bunch of skinny little men with big bald heads and gigantic eyes come marching and mumbling up to the couch and start tickling me, digging their long bony fingers in my ribs until I’m wiggling and giggling so hard I black out. Next thing I know, I’m waking up and it’s the ninth inning, Cubs down 10–3.

  I called up Jane.

  “What do you want?” she says.

  That’s how she speaks to me these days. I deserve it. I fucked up. That’s why I’m here in this little apartment. There was this lady barber, named Laura. I don’t go there anymore, not since four haircuts ago. I go to this guy Lou or his partner Ted, whoever’s there, it doesn’t matter—they don’t press their tits against my arm and whisper in my ear what a beautiful head of hair I’ve got, or finally one day go to the door and flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED and come walking back with a little smile on their face. By the way, I’m forty-one years old and although I still have all my hair I wouldn’t necessarily call it beautiful, I’d call it gray. But who am I to argue with a barber?