She said, “What?”
Her buckteeth looked like tombstones as if it weren’t obvious.
I said, “You can cut the crap. You a ghost?”
“A ghost? No, I’m not,” she said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Her hair was brown and thin against her skull, like she just got out of the hospital. Her ears stuck out of her hair like making a part in the curtains to wave with embarrassingly large hands.
“Is everything okay?” we heard.
We looked and saw the little boy standing on the sidewalk with his chest puffed out, faking the extreme concern he assumed someone older than him would show. He was standing on his boot heels like Darron.
“Yes, I think so,” Wendy said.
“Okay,” he reported. “Just checking,” he said and ran at the couch and started bouncing again.
“I seen that you don’t have a tape in your Walkman and I got spooked,” I said to Wendy.
She exhaled in relief and kept walking.
“I found that Walkman in the office, but there aren’t any tapes. I still have to buy one.”
“So why do you wear it?” I said.
“Because you sit over there quiet and never say anything. I wanted to give you privacy.”
“Psh!” I said. “I don’t care about you.”
A couple cars clapped past on the highway. She put her purse down on the bus stop bench and leaned into the road to see if the bus was coming.
“I’ve been caretaker here for ten years. You’re not the first person I’ve used my Walkman on,” she said, and crossed her arms to make a shelf for her turquoise breasts. The sky behind her set like it had makeup on.
“Why don’t you quit?” I said.
“Why would I quit? Tending land is my passion. Besides, none of the bars would hire me.”
I said, “Why wouldn’t they hire you? You’re not that tall.”
She looked down and said, “Never mind,” embarrassed of some secret I didn’t care about.
“Have you always lived in Ten Sleep?” I said. “I used to work at Brother and Son’s and I’ve never seen you.”
She uncrossed her arms and her breasts relaxed into their skin sacks—she had a nipple poking out on one of them as if to say I see you lookin’.
“I’ve lived here for fifteen years, but I wash my truck myself,” she said.
“Where’s your truck?” I said.
“I like taking the bus better. It’s just me, I don’t need a big truck.”
“Psh. What, do you not have a husband?” I said.
“No,” she said.
I looked at her empty wedding finger and the crushed bee was beside it on her sweatpants looking equally kindergarten.
“Where’d you live before fifteen years?” I said.
“In the country at my farmhouse. It’s where I grew up, but it fell apart so I can’t live there now.”
“So fix it up,” I said.
She said, “That’s my dream in life. It’s on good land, but I don’t want to live there alone.”
“So get a boyfriend to fix it up,” I said.
“I don’t have any of that, it’s just me,” she said.
We stuck our necks out to look for the bus and saw my mother driving towards us, her Fair Fare van sliding across the highway in the wind.
“Do you mind giving me a ride home? It’s right at the start of town,” she said.
I said, “Sure, okay.”
“My name’s H.C.,” I said, and we shook hands.
Patty crackled to a stop and rolled her window down, “Hello?”
“You got a client here. But don’t charge her, it’s a favor,” I said as we got in.
Patty bleated like an accordion she was testing. “How tall are you?” she said.
“I’m six six,” Wendy said.
“Good lord,” Patty said.
We rode in silence.
Wendy clutched her pocketbook and sniffed without taking her buckteeth into her mouth. I saw her face turn red.
“What address you at?” Patty said.
“Oh sorry—it’s the Rodeo Inn. 335 West.”
“The Rodeo Inn?” I said.
“Yes.”
“You live at the Rodeo Inn?” I asked.
“Yes,” Wendy said.
I rode like a derailed train paused midair between a bridge and a frozen lake so someone could run to the bathroom and then they died on the toilet and someone important kept ringing the bell on the porch again and again and again …
The Rodeo Inn. Room 104. How in the HELL could I not have recognized her? That overbite? That unnecessary extra foot of height? How do you forget a seven-foot-tall woman?!
When we got to her “home” she said, “Thank you very much for the ride,” and got out.
“Wait till she gets her door open,” I said to my mom.
She went to Room 104.
She opened the door and I saw it had pink carpet with vacuum lines. She shut the door before I could make out anything else.
We drove through the streets that led to our house.
Patty said, “She had a cute unit.”
........................................Wendy!........................................
Five minutes later, I said, “What—the pink carpet? MAN, women are suckers for pink! You couldn’t even see inside it!”
She said, “What?”
I said, “You think her unit’s cutesy?”
She said, “No, it’s that store with matching sweat tops and bottoms that are all really cute. It’s called Units. She had a good one. Was that jade-colored, or …”
I said, “Oh, that turquoise thing she’s wearing? Psh. Had a bee on it.”
Oh my god! Wendy! ........................................
A newspaper blew across an intersection, unfolding itself again and again to reveal the news!
Back at home, I turned down honey mustard chicken wings to pace my room. Darron came up with a drumstick in his hand, making his lips shiny while he stood in the doorframe and I sat on the bed.
“Mom said you wanted to pace?” he said.
“Why’re you always so nosy?” I said. “I just gave a ride home to the gravedigger woman from the cemetery.”
“Oh, you made a friend?” he said. “You sure do hang out there a lot.”
I said, “Ach.”
I didn’t want to tell him the rest about Wendy, because then he’d get all these ideas in his head. He looked around my room as he snarfled on the chicken, trying to find something to comment to me about.
He said, “How are you doin’?”
I said, “Why’re you always asking that?”
“Well, because now you don’t have Carol,” he said.
“Thanks for pointing that out!” I said.
He pulled on a tendon from the chicken’s leg and realized he couldn’t bite it off unless he gnashed his teeth together, so he did, and then swallowed the tendon whole in a slurp.
“Are you gonna go back to New York?” he asked.
“Psh!” I said.
He said, “Yeah. You don’t give a rodent’s derriere. You don’t care about nothin’.”
“You’re the one wearin’ lip sheen,” I said, snuggling up protected to my headboard with a paper pad ready to make some lists.
He swiped at his lips with his forearm and kept eating.
“You don’t wanna make any more art?” he said.
“I never wanted to make art!” I said. “I made a friend, didn’t I?”
“Is she a potential romantic partner, do you think?” he said.
“Crimeny, Darron!”
“I’m just sayin’,” he said, “I think Carol would want you to keep goin’ in life.”
“The gravedigger’s ten feet tall!” I said.
He nodded and hung his chicken arm down in an exasperated swing, then swung it up cause he missed it and kept eating.
“Then you should just go back to Brother and Son’s and s
tart makin’ your lists again like you’re back at square one,” he said. “And I’ll stop sellin’ Imitation Cowboys and go back in the closet. And we’ll both turn ten again for our next birthdays and get matchin’ cowboy boots, which you’ll never wear cause you like your tennis shoes.”
I spat on the ground and it landed between us as an ocean of divide.
“I’ll do whatever The Haircutter pleases” was the closing remark to our conversation. The closing action was Darron inserting the chicken’s bone into his mouth and then pulling it out sucked clean while he looked at me.
As soon as he left, I looked at my blank piece of paper and wrote Wendy! Then I pointed at it so hard my fingertip glowed.
The phone started ringing. The familiar sound of a deranged woman gargling electronics.
“Junior!” my mom called.
My hand twitched like a hunk of heart on the exclamation mark in Wendy!
I went downstairs and passed Father John in his TV spot with his dinner plate on his lap.
My mother was holding the phone to her milk jugs in the kitchen.
“It’s someone named Finn,” she said.
“Finn?” I said.
“H.C.! Oh my god, it’s so nice to hear your voice!” he said as I was putting the phone to my ear.
“What’re you callin’ me for?!” I said.
“Sorry! I just thought I should tell you—something’s been happening. I went to a party at PS1 last night, and I saw something that I thought I saw once before, but I wasn’t sure, but this time I saw it clearly and I’m sure. It’s Scott Harp?”
My puffy white sneakers creaked from my toes fanning out.
“What’re you weird or somethin’?! I don’t care about this stuff!” I said.
“I saw him cut someone’s hair. He’s totally copying you,” he said.
I saw the reflection of fat H.C. in the kitchen window holding an avocado-green childhood phone to his ear.
“I don’t care!” I said. “Aw FUCK—yes I do! Fuck you! How’d you get this number?”
“I work for Christmas! He hired me to look after your apartment. But wait—the worst part,” he said. “I had a party when I first moved in—I’m so sorry—your scissors are missing from their plush pillow in your sock drawer.”
[.................]
“Didn’t you know I was staying in your apartment?” he said.
“No I didn’t!” I said, and ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it through the kitchen window. The glass shattered three times louder than I’d ever bet it would. I heard my mom scream for the first time in my life. Father John’s boots walked toward the kitchen. And down the block, the yellow-suited cowboy spun with his bird shit-eating grin.
“Oh whoa!” I said. “I’m sorry. Hey Mom! I’m sorry! I’ll pay for it. I don’t know what just got into me.”
I remembered Harp and started shaking.
“Look at cher hands shaking,” Father John said, pointing at them.
“I’ll get out of your hair soon. I just need time to make a plan.”
“Better tape that window up,” he said.
“Tape’s my middle name,” I managed.
I got tape out of the utility cupboard and a cardboard box from the recycling. Father John hovered around me because I was doing a project. He took a new toothpick out of the toothpick holder, which was a pewter fish standing on its tail, and he widened his stance like the fish to watch me work. He came out back to see how I was doing it when I went out back to do it.
“John Tape Reilly Junior,” he said.
Neither of us laughed—we were busy with our project. We discovered a way to make a nice seal happen by inserting a stick into a gap and taping it in, and we walked away from the project when it was done. Father John put the tape away in the utility cupboard, wanting to have played a part. He checked his cell phone for the tenth time that day to see if any hired jobs had come through.
“Sorry, Ma,” I said.
“I just hope everything’s alright, Junior! I know you got a big life over in New York!”
I walked up the stairs and Darron was in his doorway seeing if I’d tell him what the crash was about.
“I’m going back to New York,” I said.
“YES!” he went.
That night, I lay in bed shaking so hard the bed skidded across the room. I wanted to walk to New York in a straight line, upturning every card table I saw on my way there. But I couldn’t go yet, because—Wendy! When I remembered Wendy, I’d smile with a paralyzed face and the skidding would stop and I’d sink into the mattress. When I remembered Harp, the skidding would start as my eyeballs shook within their paralyzed frames. The bed touched the closet wall and came back to where it’s supposed to go as I spiked and stopped between Harp and Wendy thoughts. I got up and checked the little window that showed out onto the street—there was that same newspaper unfolding more fucking news!!! Harp and Wendy, Wendy and Harp! I fell asleep in an armchair with half of me a woman and half of me a man, like a Halloween costume.
The next morning, I woke Patty up at five and had her drive me to McDonald’s where we did the drive-thru for some hashbrowns and breakfast sandwiches. The Fair Fare headlights licked the highway toward the Rodeo Inn.
Room 104.
“Bye, Mom,” I said.
Knock-knock. The cold tightened the skin on my face like a serial killer.
Wendy answered the door wearing a long floral nighty gown. The room was flashing blue from the end of a late-night Western on her TV.
I switched the McDonald’s sack to my other hand and then back again as I said, “What are those, Oleanders? Lilies?” looking at her dress.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
I said, “I’d like to continue our conversation.”
She overbitically said, “Is that McDonald’s breakfast?”
I realized I was holding my breath, so I exhaled and it blew her hair back.
I walked onto the pink vacuum lines and looked around the room. There was a kitchenette area in back with floor-to-ceiling windows that showed a foggy ditch where there were mule deer grazing. Everyone was getting shot on TV. There was a framed picture of galloping horses above the bed. Cigarette smoke seeped through the walls on both ends. I heard a man cough next door. Heard his news reporter squawk when Wendy put her sound on mute.
“Let me change,” she said, and went into the bathroom. And as she was shutting the door, I saw a white sheet taped up to cover the mirror.
“Huh?” I said under my breath.
I started putting our sandwiches and hash browns on the kitchenette table using the flickering light from the TV. There were globs of purple jelly, but I put the sandwiches on them, pretending I didn’t care or didn’t see. One of the windows wasn’t closed and a crack of cold came through. I heard Wendy peeing, which sounded like hissing cats, so I gave her privacy by looking around the room. There was a small crystal wolf figurine beside her bed!, along with a Holy Bible open face-down so as not to lose her place. There was a bag of chewy peppermints and wrappers on the nightstand and floor. There was a laundry basket next to the front door full to the heap with muddy laundry. There was a Better Homes and Gardens magazine on her desk with a scissor that she apparently used to cut out pics of her favorite floral ideas—there was a notebook with some clippings glued in it. There were reading glasses and a half-drunk glass of milk like she was watching a Western and gluing flowers into her notebook at five in the morning before I came. There was a basket of colorful yarn on the banquet next to the TV. And when I checked the ceiling, I saw the glow-in-the-dark stars. I remembered wishing upon one of those stars. “Please let me know what to do,” was the wish, which hadn’t come true.
She came out of the bathroom wearing a Unit—this one had red and grey. I scurried to the kitchenette table and started shaking our orange juices.
“You like wolves?” I said.
“Oh, my crystal coyote? No that’s a coyote. Up at my farmhouse you hea
r a lot of them, so I ended up liking them a lot.”
She turned on a floor lamp behind the mini fridge and we sat down at the table. The mule deer looked up at us and waited. Wendy waited for me to pick up my sandwich so she could pick hers up too. Instead, I took a deep breath and pointed a finger at her and said, “You know what? You look familiar, but I didn’t recognize you at first. I think you hit on me in a bar once when I was twenty-five, do you remember that?”
She said, “I think so, yes.”
“You had short blond hair back then?”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“Willie’s Bar.”
“Yes.”
I said, “And then we …”
She said, “Yes.”
“Right there on that bed,” I pointed at the bed.
She wrapped her teeth in her lips and nodded.
I said, “Cool. I just wanted to point that out.”
It was a hot and rainy night in May. I was picking up Father John from Willie’s. He wanted to have one more drink, so I played pinball while I waited. A seven-foot-tall woman approached.
She said, “I have to tell you this straight, I’m attracted to you.”
I said, “Whoa.”
Wendy had short blond hair curled under her chin at twenty-five. She had a short purple skirt on. She hunched to talk to me.
“Is that okay with you? If I’m attracted to you?” she said.
I said, “Hell, what? Who are you?”
She said, “I saw you walk in and you made me do a double-take. I’ve been watching you play pinball—you know you kind of hump the machine?”
“I do?!”
“Yeah, and it’s not sitting well with me—I’m about to get my period so my boobs are all full and heavy—it makes my nipples hard constantly and they rub on my shirt when I move, and it turns me on. It’s the worst time of month to be teased by someone like you. I love big men. Do you want to come back to my motel room with me? To be honest I’m tired, but I’m not ready to fall asleep for at least another thirty minutes.”
I was very taken aback and all that, but I was also nearly blind with lust at her perverted description of what her nipples were doing to her coital drive. My mouth watered.
She said, “I have a truck.”
I said, “I’ll meet you outside.”
I thought it would be the normal thing to do, and I wanted to do it.
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