I called up Cindy. “He’s dead.”
“Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. This is so upsetting.”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“He had some good points, Sid.”
“Name one.”
“He had a nice smile.”
“A lot of people have a nice smile. I have a nice smile, for crying out loud.”
“You think?”
“I’ve been told.”
“Not by me.”
“You don’t think I have a nice smile?”
“I’m trying to picture it. Are you smiling now?”
“Cindy, I just killed a man, a fellow human being!”
“Well, how do you think I feel? He was my husband!”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He forgave me.”
“Good old Carl.”
“Don’t start.”
“Sorry.”
“I just hope they don’t find out who did it, that’s all.”
“He’s not gonna tell.”
We laughed pretty hard at that one.
“You’re a nut,” I told her, “you know that?”
“Why don’t you come over and crack me open?”
I did.
Afterwards we sat up and watched a courtroom drama. One of the lady lawyers made Cindy look like a bag of last week’s dog shit. But what can you do? Love, explain love. Hell, explain anything.
Has the jury reached a verdict?
“Turn it off,” Cindy told me.
We have, Your Honor.
“Turn it off!”
I turned it off.
“Sid, I’m scared. Hold me. Hold me.”
I held her.
“Promise me we’ll never part!”
I promised.
“Promise me you’ll say it was all your fault, I had nothing to do with it!”
I promised. I told her I didn’t care if they gave me the hot seat, let ’em.
She laughed. “‘The hot seat.’ They’ll give you an injection, Sid. You won’t even feel it.”
“Yeah? Here’s an injection,” I said, and pounced on her. “Can you feel this?”
“Oh, Sid, oh yes, oh God, oh yes, oh darling yes, oh fuck me hard, oh Sid, oh yes!”
Afterwards I accused her of faking it.
She accused me of murder.
We decided to get out of town. We couldn’t agree on the direction, though. We were in Homewood, Illinois, and she wanted to head to Southern California: movie stars roller-skating under palm trees. I wanted to go to Maine: rocks and lobsters. I was driving, so we headed east. “When it’s your turn to drive we can head for California, that’s up to you,” I said. “But right now I don’t want to hear any more about Johnny fucking Depp. Is that understood?”
Cindy loves it when I get bossy. She started working on my zipper. So now I’m driving along the highway on a lovely summer evening getting slurpy road-head, thinking This is living! This is what the TV commercials are all about! And now I’m not even thinking because the top of my head is coming off.
Then I hear the siren.
“Aw shit, Cindy, get off! Come on! We gotta make a run for it!”
“No, Sid! Don’t!”
“We’re wanted for murder!”
“We’re wanted for speeding!”
She was right. I pulled over.
“Sid.”
“What.”
“Your dick is out.”
“Christ.”
The officer came up and bent over so his big freckled face was at the window saying something I couldn’t hear, so I rolled down the window, which was probably what he was saying.
He asked me if I knew how fast I was going.
I told him, “A whole lot faster than I should have been, sir, I know that. And I just want to say how sorry I am. I mean that sincerely.”
“That goes for both of us, Officer,” Cindy told him, leaning over me. “We’re ashamed of ourselves.” She started crying into my lap really hard.
“There, there,” I said, patting her head. “He understands, honey. He understands.”
“Can I see your license, please?”
I said, “Sure thing, Officer.” Cindy got off my lap. “Let me just . . .” I had the gun in my coat pocket, but then I thought Nah and gave him my license.
He went back to the car with it.
Cindy whispered, “Jeez, it’s not like you killed somebody.”
We started giggling.
“Shh!”
“Shh!”
We couldn’t stop. By the time he came back we were helpless, like a couple of drunks. So now he told me to step out of the car please.
Which wasn’t quite so funny.
I told him, “Sorry, gotta run,” and took off, spitting gravel in his face, Cindy giving a whoop and a holler.
“This is it!” I shouted. “This is it!”
I’m doing seventy . . . I’m doing eighty . . .
“Fuck me, Sid! Fuck me!”
“Not right now, honey!”
I’m up to ninety, ninety-five, nudging a hundred, laying on the horn, letting Jesus know we’re coming, letting Him know we’re on our way!
THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
Eve honey, dear fiancée of mine,
I’m going to call you as soon as I’m allowed, but meanwhile I want to say some things I can’t say over the phone. First of all, honey, do you know how I feel right now? Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Remember that movie? Sitting on the couch together, sharing a bowl of popcorn, thinking this will be good for some laughs? Remember, though? How sad it was?
Anyway, please apologize to your family for me. Explain how drunk I was. And mention what I just said, about feeling like a monster.
I can hear your mother: “Well, he is a monster.”
Tell her I agree, completely.
You might add, however, that an actual monster probably wouldn’t be calling himself a monster. So I guess maybe I’m not a complete monster, although to be honest I almost wish I was—no shame, no remorse. Might be kind of nice.
I want to explain the way it happened, Eve.
Swimming around like that in your parents’ pool, back and forth underwater, while you and your mom and dad and Adam were all sitting at the patio table looking through photos from the happy days before I came along, I began feeling like—you guessed it—the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Remember how he looked in the water? So beautiful and wild and free. But alone. So alone. Okay, so then I happened to come up for air and you’re all laughing hysterically over some picture, and I just wanted to be a part of it, in the picture so to speak, that’s the only reason I took off my trunks and swung them over my head shouting “Woo-hoo” like that, just to be part of the general hilarity. The water was up to my waist, so I wasn’t actually exposing myself and I honestly thought you would all just laugh and shake your heads at what a lovable nut I was. Instead, the four of you sat there with the exact same look on all your faces—outrage, anger, and disgust—your father ordering me out of the pool and off his property like I was some kind of intruder, which, let’s face it, I was. And please believe me, sweetheart, I had every intention of putting my trunks back on before getting out, but the way your brother followed up your father with “Right now, mister,” I decided fine, have it your way.
I hope your mother has recovered, I mean that sincerely. But I have to say, it did seem a little theatrical, her crying out “Oh dear God in heaven” and fainting? Actually fainting?
Also, just for the record, when your brother got up and came after me, the only reason I hurried to the car like I did was because, as you well know, I do not believe in violence as a way to resolve differences. Good thing, too. Desperate naked creature from the water that I was, I’m pretty sure I would have seriously injured him.
Anyway, if it
helps at all, let me once again repeat how sorry I am, how truly, deeply, profoundly fucking sorry. I just hope you’re able to see things a little bit from my perspective, that’s all, from down here in the Black Lagoon.
Long story short, driving home I got pulled over for speeding, tried to get into my trunks in time, didn’t make it. So now I’m wearing orange pajamas.
Eve, do you remember the end of the movie? After they shoot the creature and he goes staggering back to the water, swims a little distance, then sinks to the murky bottom—do you remember what you said?
“All he wanted was to be loved.”
Do you remember saying that, Eve?
—Gordon
FRANKENSTEIN AND HIS MOM
Dumpy Mrs. Wilcox and her scrawny eighteen-year-old, Paul, watched the 1931 Frankenstein in the den one night. At the end of the movie, when the peasants set fire to the windmill with the monster trapped inside, Mrs. Wilcox said, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
But Paul felt like weeping.
Later in his room before going to bed he searched in his closet and found the rubber Frankenstein mask he’d worn for Halloween several years ago and put it on in front of the dresser mirror.
How pitiful he looked, how sad and tragic. He held out his arms as if to say, I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this.
“Yoo-hoo,” his mother called from the kitchen the next morning. “Pauley, breakfast, let’s go, come on, get out here, now.”
He walked in wearing pajama bottoms, T-shirt, and Frankenstein mask.
Mrs. Wilcox gave a cry, dropped the box of Alpha-Bits she was bringing to the table, and stepped backward against the countertop, holding her heart.
Paul sat down.
His mother picked up the box of cereal—none of the letters had spilled out—and set it on the table. “Are you trying to kill me, hon? Give me a seizure?” She sat across from him. “Or simply drive me out of my mind, send me right around the bend—is that your intention? Because if it is, I can tell you right now, you’re doing a marvelous job.”
He poured milk over his Alpha-Bits, then inserted a spoonful of letters through the mouth-opening in the mask.
Reaching for the box she told him, “You’ve got milk on the chin.”
He used his napkin.
Later he was at his desk with a pen and notebook number seventeen of his journal, “Reflections in a Broken Mirror”:
Been wearing a Frankenstein mask since I got up, not sure why. Watched the movie last night. Boris Karloff. So sad! At the end Mom says, “Good riddance.” I had the mask on when I came into the kitchen for breakfast, scared the shit out of her. She couldn’t see me smiling.
Mrs. Wilcox knocked on the locked door. “Paul, I’m going to the store. Did you want anything?”
“Corn chips, big bag.”
“I might be a while. I’ll probably stop at Saint Pat’s to light some candles to Our Lady.”
“All right.”
“Three of them. Would you like to know what for?”
“That’s okay.”
“One for myself, for peace of mind. Then one for your father, for his soul. And then a candle for my son, that someday he gets himself a job. That’s my number-three candle. Number one, peace of mind. Number two, your father’s soul. Number three, Paul gets a job.”
“I’ve been looking.”
“No, dear, you haven’t. You haven’t been looking at all. You went to that interview a week ago Wednesday for that night watchman’s job and that’s been it.”
“I’m waiting to hear from the guy.”
“Meanwhile you could be out looking somewhere else.”
“I want to be here when he calls.”
“Didn’t you give him your cell phone number?”
“I forgot to.”
She was quiet out there for a moment. Then: “Paul, I’m beginning to think you don’t really want to find a job.”
“No, I do. I’m very hopeful. Got my fingers crossed,” he told her, crossing his fingers.
“Then how about this? Call the man today and tell him—or better yet, go in there today and say to him, ‘Look, sir, am I going to get this job or not? Because if I’m not, I need to be looking elsewhere.’ Put it to him like that. He might admire that kind of attitude.”
“That’s a good idea. I should probably wait until next week, though. Don’t wanna start pestering the guy too soon, jeopardize my chances.”
“Oh, Paul . . .”
“What.”
“You’re so full of it.”
“Right. Fine. I’ll go in there today. I’ll get dressed and go in and piss the guy off—”
“You haven’t dressed yet?”
“—and lose whatever chance I’ve got—”
“Are you still in your pajamas?”
“—so you can keep me here under your wing—under your thumb, I should say.”
“Oh, stop it. Nothing in this world would please me more than to see you in your own apartment feeding yourself and you know that.”
“The guy said there was a definite opening.”
“The newspaper said that much.”
“And—if you’ll let me finish?”
“Listening.”
“He said he liked my attitude.”
“Oh?”
“He said I seemed like a real . . . you know . . .”
“A real what, hon.”
“A real go-getter.”
Mrs. Wilcox burst out laughing. It took her a while to stop. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say.
“Glad I amuse you.”
“That you do, hon.”
“Corn chips, big bag.”
“Paul?”
“What.”
“Are you still wearing that Halloween mask? Your voice sounds like you still have it on.”
He didn’t answer.
“Are you in there wearing that silly mask, hon?”
He still didn’t answer.
“Paul?”
“Go to the fuckin’ store, Ma, will ya?”
Silence.
“Sorry,” he said.
Silence.
“Bad word,” he admitted.
She finally spoke, quietly and carefully: “I know you’re probably not very happy, Paul. I know that.” She paused. “But, hon? Don’t ever use that word in my house again. Ever. Do you understand? Or else, do you know what, Paul? I won’t let you live here anymore. You’ll have to live somewhere in a cardboard box. You’ll have to be a big, potty-mouthed monster out on the sidewalk in a box: no electricity, no running water, no TV, no corn chips. I don’t think you would like your new home.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“I know you did and I know you are, but that word, Paul. Not in my house. Not from my only child . . . whom I nursed at my breast . . .”
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
“Oh, hon . . .”
“Please?” he whispered.
“Remember how I used to sing to you? Do you remember? Ohhh, the itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout . . .”
Paul got to his feet and stood there making angry Frankenstein sounds toward the door, stiffly swinging his arms around. Then he sat down again.
She was quiet. Then she asked him, “Was that supposed to be Frankenstein, hon? Is that what you’re doing now, turning into Frankenstein?”
“Corn chips, Mom,” he said, weakly. “Will you?”
“I’m going, I’m going.”
“Big bag.”
“Right,” she said, walking off. “Big bag for the big monster.”
He returned to his notebook:
Interesting little exchange with her just now . . .
He had finished writing and was carefully drawing a lanky naked woman with heavy-lidded eyes when his mother knocked and sang out, “Got your corn chips, hon.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you want them now?”
“That’s all right.”
“Listen, Paul,
I was thinking. What if we had a dog? A great big friendly dog. Would you like that? You could take him down to the park and throw things and he would bring them back in his mouth—what’s the word for that?”
“‘Fetch.’”
“He would fetch things, sticks and rubber balls and things. I was thinking you could call him Buster. Paul and his dog Buster. Would that . . . you know . . . help, do you think? If we had a dog?”
Paul turned in his chair and spoke toward the door: “I would kill it.”
“No, you wouldn’t, honey. Don’t say that.”
“I would kill it and eat it.”
“You’re not like that, Paul. You know you’re not. This is just a phase you’re going through. All young people go through phases. This is just your . . . well, your Frankenstein phase, that’s all. You wouldn’t kill an innocent dog, Paul.” She paused. “Would you?”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“Oh, it’s nice to hear you laugh, hon.”
They sat across from each other eating lunch—La Choy chicken chow mein—Paul still in his pajamas, T-shirt, and Frankenstein mask, dumping salt all over his plate.
“Why don’t you taste it, hon, before you . . .” She sighed.
They ate.
Paul stabbed a nickel-sized disc and held up his fork. “What’re these?”
“That’s a . . . what’s it called . . . a water chestnut.”
“Is it food?”
“Of course it’s food, what do you think?”
He put it in the mouth slot of the mask, chewed, and shook his head. “Hundred percent taste-free.”
“Well, dump another pound of salt on your plate.”
He did that.
“Just thought I’d try making something a little different,” she said. “You don’t have to eat everything. I know how scary new food can be.”
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