by Brian Hodge
Bertha-Lou finally reached daylight, staggered across the gravel lot, and vaulted behind the steering wheel of the Bellaire. She fired it up and laid a patch out of there.
High-balling down the highway, Arlie could feel the buffet of the wind against his faceless areola, the gusts flapping the fabric of the blouse, drying the sweat on his bulbous body. Bertha-Lou was mumbling to herself, things like “where are you, Arlie” and “what in God’s name happened in there” and other phrases inaudible under the roar of the Bellaire. Arlie’s entire rubbery form began to rash with goose bumps. Was it possible? Could it be? He felt the resilience of his flesh, the tremors passing through him every time the car hit a pothole; he was jiggling, dear God in Heaven, he was jiggling in such a familiar way.
I’m here, Bertha-Lou! I don’t know how it happened, but I’m down here, mute and sweaty, in your off-white 39D Playtex Cross-Your-Heart Underwire!
The revelation shivered through him. This was not a dream; this was as real as his father’s new brick barbecue, as real as Sputnik, as real as one of Mister Gibbons pop quizzes. Arlie was a boob. Period. And for some horrible, intuitive reason, Arlie got the feeling there was no turning back. He would have to adapt, just like in Missus Cockenlacher’s biology class when they studied Darwin and natural selection. Arlie would have to make the best of it.
A barrage of uninvited images assaulted his mammalian brain. People gathered inside a filthy canvas tent in the bowels of some carnival sideshow. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, meet Boob Boy, the Human Breast, he’ll lactate on command! Arlie tried to scream, tried to wriggle free of the elastic bondage, but the D-cup held firm. He was damned, damned to ride the rest of his life, a flabby passenger on a very attractive chest.
It took Bertha-Lou twenty minutes to get back to town. Arlie wasn’t sure, but from the sounds of traffic and the smell of pine needles, he guessed she was heading home. Bertha-Lou Bizzel lived in a ritzy neighborhood on the north side of Kingman, a new development called a suburb, complete with manicured lawns, immaculate hedges and borders of young western pines. Arlie strained to see through the tunnel of his puckered eye. Every time Bertha-Lou twisted in her seat, or reached down to shift, Arlie felt the fabric itching his face, prickling hotly, maddeningly. The underwire had gotten bent in all the excitement, and now it was digging into Arlie’s side. It was torture. And the weight! Arlie felt like a balloon filled with sand, like Fatty Arbuckle after a six-course meal. His lower regions were still sweating profusely, sticking to flesh of Bertha-Lou’s ribs.
If only she had been a flat-chested girl.
Moments later, Bertha-Lou arrived home. She pulled quickly into the circular drive and slammed on the brakes. Arlie plunged forward, nearly spilling out of his cup. He wanted to cry now, as Bertha-Lou got out of the car and rushed up the picket-lined walk, he wanted to die.
Now slow down, Bucko, cool your pits and think this over.
The Russ Tamblyn voice was back.
Maybe this ain’t such a godawful mess after all, you dig? Like, maybe this is whatcha call one of your blessings in disguise, if you catch my meaning, Bucko. Just think of the fun, the kind of life you could lead down here in this dark, warm, groovy place. Bouncing around, smelling great, carefree. Like dig: You wouldn’t even have to worry about coppin’ a feel anymore, know what I mean? You could just feel yourself up —
“Mom? Dad? Anybody home?!” Bertha-Lou’s anguished voice was splashing the empty silence of the living room of her house on Maple Drive.
The Bizzel house was one of those new deals they call tract homes. Single level ranch, with a bunch of spacious rooms and all the modern conveniences. Electric oven. Eight inch black and white tv. Boomerang tables everywhere. And the color scheme was pure contemporary, aqua blue and mustard. Arlie bounced along from room to room, as Bertha-Lou looked for Mom or Dad or Brother Johnny or anybody who might listen.
The house was deserted.
“Probably all at church,” Bertha-Lou muttered to herself, going into her room, and peeling off her clothes.
Then it happened.
The Playtex came off and freed Arlie. The cool air and light of the bedroom engulfed him, and it felt wonderful. It was almost as though Arlie could breathe again, although he had no breathing passages anymore. His pores tingled. Maybe Russ Tamblyn was right, maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. He blinked, and gradually grew accustomed to the light and the strange portal through which his vision coalesced.
There was a full-length mirror across the room. Covered with clippings of Ricky Nelson and Tab Hunter, the mirror reflected a narrow slice of Bertha-Lou. Through his constricted field of vision, Arlie saw his face in the upper left corner. The face of a frightened young man, shrunken, embossed onto Bertha-Lou like molded white chocolate. Arlie’s eyes, nose and mouth created a strange little cameo around her nipple, as though some demon god had literally sculpted Arlie into her flesh.
But why hadn’t Bertha-Lou noticed him? Couldn’t she tell that one of her breasts had mutated?
She was moving again, over carpet, then tile. The light got sharper, and her footfalls took on a sibilant quality. Wait until she looks in a mirror, Arlie thought. She’ll surely notice her new friend then. Arlie blinked and blinked and blinked. He could detect the faint odors of dampness, soap and shampoo. She was in the bathroom. God help him, she was going to take a shower! The squeak of a faucet, then the rush of water as she adjusted the temperature.
Then the warm spray in Arlie’s face.
It was a remarkable feeling, like being immersed in wet clay and yielding to the gentle touch of the sculptress. The soap blanketed him, frothed over him, and all at once, everything was okay with the world. Russ Tamblyn had been right. This was the greatest possible thing that could have happened, and Arlie began to silently thank God.
There was a sudden crash out in the living room. Glass breaking, and shuffling sounds.
“Oh my God!”
The water stopped. Goose bumps crawled across Arlie’s face. An arm smashed up against him, covering him with a towel, and then Bertha-Lou was moving toward the window. “Ohmygod — NO!!” She tried the bathroom window, but it was welded shut with coats of paint and calk. “It’s him, it’s him, IT’S HIM —!!” She shrieked and ran out of the bathroom.
Arlie struggled to see the monstrous figure coming down the hallway.
Coming into focus through the tunnel of Arlie’s vision was the worse thing he had ever seen. A figure in a soiled tab collar shirt, wrinkled chinos and brand new saddle shoes, staggering blindly down the hall, zombie arms outstretched. It was human in every way except the head. Rooted on the stalk of its neck, melded in some unearthly graft, was a great fleshy orb. A breast. Bertha-Lou Bizzel’s left bosom, to be exact. It came forth like a pathetic, mute supplicant, seeking its goddess.
“LEAVE ME ALONE —!”
Arlie could hear the madness in Bertha-Lou’s scream, as she lunged through her bedroom door, clawing at her clothes and the things on her dresser. Bottles of Estee Lauder and Kewpie dolls and Jerry Vale records skittered to the carpet. The monster was coming through the door. Bertha-Lou finally managed to grab a Zippo and a spritz bottle of Evening in Paris cologne.
She aimed the aerosol spray at the thing with no eyes and sparked the lighter.
“DIE YOU FUCKER!”
A tendril of blue fire leapt from the cologne bottle and bullwhipped the monster. The thing staggered. Flames curled around its fleshy, globular head, and a spurt of agony hissed from its teat. Then the fire bloomed, licking down its shirttails and trousers. The thing collapsed and sparks geysered off cross the doorway.
Run, Bertha-Lou!
Arlie’s silent scream reverberated down through the woman’s marrow.
Bertha-Lou spun, scooped up a terrycloth robe and lurched at her back window. It took her a split second to pry open the pane and climb out. She pulled the robe on and staggered across the finely trimmed lawn toward the tree line. The sound of wood crackling a
nd flames gobbling up the air came trailing after her. She got another few feet and tripped on a log.
She went down hard.
It wasn’t until the inferno was out of control, filling the air with violent noise and light, that Arlie realized Bertha-Lou had fainted dead away. In her frenzy, and subsequent fall, her robe had slipped open. And now Arlie was exposed for all the neighbors and fireman to see. That wouldn’t do, that simply wouldn’t do.
Cover me, Bertha-Lou, please, it’s cold.
Nothing, no movement. The sounds of sirens were looming now, and the voices of neighbors were gathering across the fence. Soon the place would be crawling with people. Arlie concentrated carefully, thinking the words.
Cover me up, please, Bertha-Lou.
The fingers fluttered for a moment, blindly, then the arm swung up and shoved the robe closed. Just like that. Then the hand fell like a dead bird on the lawn.
Arlie silently thanked God, and rejoiced.
As the emergency units arrived and the neighbors gathered and the scene erupted with voices and noise, Arlie let the invisible tears of joy come for his new life. There was no turning back now. His secret dream had come true.
At last, he was whole.
STASH
Let’s get the names out of the way:
Douche bag
El Douche
Douchey-Douche
Son of Douche
Douche Junior
These were the ones he remembered.
There were more, although he’d blocked most of them out of his memory. His gym teacher in the sixth grade, Mr. Blundy, called him Lil Douche, which, at the time, was as humiliating as any of the others, but over the years had kind of grown on him. Lil Douche has a certain hip-hoppy ring to it. Like an opening act for P-Diddy or Old Dirty Bastard. Or maybe the Massengil Summer Reggae Festival. All of which would be great were he not the whitest dude you’ll ever meet. A man without roots, without an identity.
A product of state orphanages, Guy Fox was adopted as a toddler and grew up in Caucasian Land (actually Grand Rapids, Michigan). He was weaned listening to the New Christy Minstrels and eating Baloney sandwiches slathered in mayonnaise. He went to an expensive Episcopalian prep school where the only black student was a light skinned Cuban boy named Pierre LaFontant whose blackest act was wearing a Sears Dashiki and playing Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song” after lights-out. By the time Guy had made it to the University of Michigan, he was a fully fledged honky motherfucker, from his Ivy League haircut down to his I-zod chinos and top-siders. He looked like an ad for Eddie Bauer’s Young Republican Resort Wear.
Maybe that was why he eventually came up with the Porno Pal System. Maybe it was all about rebellion. Or maybe he wanted to do something black. Something earthy and dangerous and subversive and cool.
Chances are, though, it was simply a way to thumb his lily white nose at his adopted dad.
“Where are you?” Guy snapped at his cell, gripping the phone tightly with one hand as he steered the car with the other. He was on the outer drive, skimming over parched pavement, heading north, preparing to clean up another mess in a home on the north shore of Chicago.
It was a gray September day, the sky low and scudded with dark clouds. To Guy’s right stretched the endless mercurial waters of Lake Michigan, and to his left the canyons of cloistered condos known as Lincoln Park. Guy had both the air conditioning and a Korn CD blasting, and the cumulative din was making it hard to hear his partner.
“I’m almost there,” the voice crackled. It belonged to Bobby Dutchik. Guy’s Pal Friday since high school, Bobby made up for his room temperature IQ with a certain kind of sweetness that Guy had yet to encounter in any other straight, white, middleclass, horny males.
“Well don’t do anything until I get there,” Guy instructed, glancing at his watch. “It’s not even 2:00 o’clock yet.”
“Didn’t the contract say the funeral was like from 1:00 to 4:00?”
“2:00 to 4:00,” Guy corrected him.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it, I’ll be there in a nanosecond. Just sit in your car, do some crossword puzzles.”
Bobby assured Guy that he would do just that, and Guy disconnected the cell.
It took Guy a little over twenty minutes to find the address. Working off the contract, as well as the attached map, he located the huge Queen Anne at the end of a tree-shrouded street near the lake. Way upper class neighborhood. Cobblestones, mansions, security systems up the ying yang.
Guy parked his car half a block away and strolled over to the client’s wrought iron gate with his official-looking blue uniform shirt buttoned to the collar, and his official-looking clipboard tucked under his arm. It was standard work attire. Never failed to blend in. Guy was just some guy showing up to install a satellite dish or change a furnace filter. Rich people are used to this kind of crapola. On top of that, Guy Fox’s physique had become about as non-threatening as a physique can be. Soft, pale, a little paunchy around the middle, he looked like an accountant or an actuary who’d been staring at so many spreadsheets, his own sheets had started to spread.
“Hey, G, you made it!” Bobby Dutchik called out as Guy approached the entrance gate. Bobby was leaning against the wrought iron fence in his own fake blue uniform, whistling absently, a tall, rangy man, his buggy eyes magnified by Coke bottle glasses.
“All set?” Guy said as he looked for the key pad that was supposed to be a few inches to the left of the gate’s lock. Bobby said sure, everything was copasetic, as Guy consulted the contract for the proper code.
They opened the gate, strolled up the gorgeous herringbone brick sidewalk, and entered the house through the front door using the key that had been enclosed with the contract packet.
It’s strange: When there’s a death in a family, an empty home somehow seems to be more silent than your average empty home. Guy never mentioned this observation to Bobby —Guy wasn’t even sure Bobby would get it—but Guy noticed it every time he entered a client’s domicile. This house was no different. The front foyer was huge, with a soaring vaulted ceiling and sky lights, and as quiet as a pharaoh’s tomb. The rest of the house was straight out of Architectural Digest. Expensive furniture, meticulous decor. Lush greenery everywhere. Guy couldn’t remember what the client’s job had been: Heart surgeon, CEO, something like that. It wasn’t important.
They put on their surgical gloves and went about their business with minimal conversation or fuss. Guy kept the floor plan handy, and Bobby carried the canvas tent bag. (Over the years, they had learned through trial and error that plastic garbage bags are woefully ill-suited for this work; pornography can be heavy, and have sharp edges.)
On the second floor, at the end of the hall, as notated in the contract, they found the client’s home office. The air smelled faintly of stale smoke and aftershave in there, and there was something vaguely poignant about the clutter. This was another thing Guy had noticed over the years: Old, white, rich, married men always have home offices, or rumpus rooms, or dens, or whatever, where they go to be alone. Maybe this was the secret to a happy marriage. A husband having a masculine place in which to retire after dinner each night, a place of dark leather upholstery and English fox hunt wallpaper within which a man can smoke a cigar and drink a Scotch and think deep thoughts about sports or cars.
This office was a prime example: The decedent’s big oak desk was front row center, surrounded by golf trinkets, bowling trophies, model trains and framed prints of Norman Rockwell paintings. Behind the sofa, under a false floorboard, Guy found a cardboard file box full of Hustlers, Barely Legals, Screws, Beaver Hunts, Naughty Nymphs, School Girl Pussies, and Awesome Asian Ass’s. He carefully transferred the well-thumbed magazines to the canvas bag, and moved on.
The whole removal session took less than half an hour. In the basement powder room, behind a cadenza brimming with photos of grandchildren, Guy removed a peach crate filled with dozens of videotapes, mostly fetish stuff, Or
iental Ass Reamers 17 and Butt Man Goes to College Volumes 1 through 23. In the attic, nestled in the bottom of a moth-ball redolent trunk, underneath long forgotten sleeping bags and musty hunting gear, Bobby found vintage magazines and paperbacks with titles such as The Big Suck-Off and Mona Takes a Pony Ride. By the time they were done, the canvas bag was filled to the straining point. Bobby guessed it weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds. Which was about right for a man who had lived a full life well into his seventies. A couple pounds of porno for every year. That was just about the norm, Guy had noticed: a magazine a month.
They made their final sweep, and everything looked good. They left the house just as they had found it.
On his way out the front door, Guy felt a wave of satisfaction rise through him. The day had turned mild, the sun burning off the clouds, and now the sky was high and blue over the north shore as he walked back to his car. But best of all: Guy had completed another job without incident. He had removed a deceased man’s pornography promptly and professionally, before his wife or mother or daughter or granddaughter had a chance to stumble upon it and suffer mixed emotions about their dearly departed. Guy had discreetly cleansed a man’s home, leaving behind nothing but Norman Rockwell, grinning grandchildren, and mothball perfumed trunks. And for the survivors, Guy had insured a period of simple, focused, undiluted, healing grief.
Grief without embarrassment.
“You going back to the office?” Bobby asked, tossing the canvas bag into his trunk. Bobby was supposed to stop at the dump incinerator on his way back to the shop, destroying all the smut—which Guy referred to in his company literature as ‘retrieval materials’ — in order to insure that no evidence would survive. But Guy was painfully aware that Bobby often stopped off at his apartment first to cherry pick whatever goodies might be of interest to him. He thought he was pulling a fast one on Guy, but Guy didn’t care. Since becoming impotent a couple of years ago, Guy Fox couldn’t begrudge a man his vices.