Feral Boy Meets Girl

by William Jablonsky

  But Mandy is in her own world and does not seem to notice.

  Day 9

  Three times, Alison has taken her turn on the warehouse floor and, with Mannheim watching, has stared intensely at a paper clip, a plastic spoon, a pencil. Concentrating until the muscles in her forehead ached from the strain, she focused on each object, touched it with her thoughts, willed it to move across the coffee table, certain that this time she would finally do it. She swears the pencil wobbled once, but Mannheim failed to see it.

  “Keep trying,” Mannheim reassures her. “It will come.”

  She watches others fail after her. The young man with the glasses and shaggy black hair begins to cry after his third attempt, falls weeping into Mannheim’s arms. Alison allows herself a tiny smirk when Mandy also fails, though the bleached whore doesn’t seem too disappointed.

  The last to try the pencil is a thick, hairy young man with a jutting brow—Brody, she thinks. He squints hard, purses his lips, and the pencil rolls across the tabletop and onto the concrete floor. It takes a minute to sink in, but when it does, she feels herself leaving her cot, her hands clapping of their own volition, so hard they hurt. The others follow suit.

  Then Mannheim glares, raises his right hand high in the air. The pupils fall silent, as if he has reached out with his mind and sealed their lips shut.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he says to Brody.

  “I did it,” the young man says, discomfort evident in his smile. “Just like you wanted.” He takes a cautious backward step.

  Untouched, the table turns over with such force, it echoes like a gunshot.

  “Are you mocking me?” Mannheim’s voice is low, threatening. “You blew that pencil off the table. You think this is all about sideshow tricks?”

  “Um...no?” Brody says, his voice high and cracking.

  Mannheim sighs, stares at the cowering young man, and Alison is sure that he is about to squeeze Brody’s head until it caves in like a beer can—he has said in interviews that he could kill a man with his power if he wished, but has vowed never to so abuse it.

  “Get out,” Mannheim snarls.

  “But Mr. Mannheim....” Brody pleads.

  “Out.”

  Brody runs to his cot, gathers up his coat and backpack, and smashes through the steel doors into the snow.

  Mannheim glares at the remaining crowd. “Anyone else want to try something cute?” Alison feels crushed by the force of his voice, and wonders what would happen if he were truly enraged. Though she is not to blame, she feels a terrible pang of shame, as if Brody’s deceit is her own.

  The freight train rolls past, breaking the silence. The windows rattle. Mannheim turns away.

  “We’re done for the day,” he says, heading for the steps to his room. “I’ll order pizza. Eat. Rest. We’ll try again in the morning.”

  When the pizza arrives, Alison is famished, as are the rest. As they gorge themselves straight out of the boxes on the buffet table, she notices Mandy slinking quietly up the stairs, two plates in hand, and suddenly she loses her appetite.

  Mannheim is sitting in the dark, in the middle of the floor in his room, an overturned bookshelf and bedside table on the floor beside him. He should’ve cracked open the little cocksucker’s head like an eggshell. Everyone on the floor is probably still laughing at Brody’s clever little joke. The moment he exposed Brody as a fraudulent little twat, he could see that speck of doubt in their eyes.

  He hears a soft knock on his door. It opens without his invitation, and Mandy sticks her head in. “Hello?” she says. “Food.” She flips on the light, sees the mess. “Oh.”

  “Sorry,” Mannheim says. “I was a little pissed.”

  “I’ll say,” she says. She bends over and tilts the bookshelf back into place. “That kid was a prick. Everybody knows it. They still believe in you, though. You should go down and talk to them.”

  Mannheim nods. “In a while.”

  “Want pizza?” she says, offering him a plate.

  He shakes his head.

  “Anything I can do for you?” she says.

  He nods, reaches up, runs his hand up the inside of her thigh. “Yes,” he says. “Close the door.” Later, he will probably regret this. But for just this moment there is only the girl and his lonely room, and as she unzips his pants, he is certain this is all the comfort he needs.

  Day 10

  It is early morning, the sun not yet risen. Mandy is asleep on Mannheim’s cot, and from his wicker chair he watches her soft flat belly rise and fall, rise and fall. She is naked, the blanket pulled up just past her waist, her right arm draped over her eyes. A good night’s sleep and some cold pizza in his stomach has dulled his rage, enough to know this might have been a bad idea. The others are downstairs, if any of them are left after yesterday, and will think a pair of very lovely tits is all it takes to distract him from sharing the bounty of his gifts.

  He gently pokes her arm.

  Mandy opens her eyes and smiles. “Hi,” she says.

  “I think you should go back downstairs,” he whispers. “Before anyone notices.”

  She runs her hand down his bare arm. “They already know.”

  He clears his throat. “What I mean is, I don’t think we should do this anymore. It’s distracting me. I think that’s why I haven’t gotten through to them yet. Maybe afterwards....”

  “Oh,” she says, sitting up in bed and pulling the sheet over her bare torso. “I see. I guess I’ll be going, then.”

  Mannheim feels a pang of guilt, something he is unused to. “Of course I want you to stay....” he says.

  Mandy gets up, throws her clothes on in the darkened office. “Sorry,” she says. “I never really bought into your act. I was just here for you.”

  “I thought you believed,” he says. “What about the worm in the apple?”

  He cannot tell if the look she gives him is one of sadness or pity. “Lucky guess.” She slides her stockings and shoes on. “Can you call me a cab? It’s freezing out there.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  She giggles sharply, and it hurts him. “Not much to stay for, is there?” She heads for the steps down to the warehouse floor. Mannheim drapes his coat over his bare shoulders and follows her down in his flannel pajama bottoms.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he whispers, just loud enough to be heard above the snoring.

  “I think I do,” she says, and gathers up the duffel bag beside her empty cot. She swings open the steel door and heads off into the heavy, wet snow. He follows her, the fresh sharp crystals stinging his bare feet; she stops less than a yard from the black van.

  “Go back inside,” she says. “You’ll get frostbite. Or pneumonia.”

  “I don’t care,” Mannheim says, his voice quivering.

  She shuffles toward him through the fresh snow, reaches for his coat lapel, pulls him down to her height and kisses him softly. “It was fun,” she says. Then she turns and walks away from him, across the train tracks and toward the glow of streetlights.

  Mannheim turns toward the van. The orange light from the streetlamp is shining on the tinted windshield, just enough for him to make out a man holding a camera, pointing it right at him. He presses his face up to the driver’s-side window.

  “Did you get that?” he says, and trudges away.

  Someone gets out of the passenger side—a young man with blond hair in a black off-the-rack suit. He is holding a microphone. “Mr. Mannheim!” he says, breathless. “Daniel Toovey, TV-6 news. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Mannheim does not stop or look back.

  The reporter follows. Mannheim lifts his right hand, raises his index finger in the air; Toovey falls face-first into the snow.

  Everyone is awake when Mannheim trudges in. They rush to his aid like parents racing toward an injured child. “It’s okay,” he says. Someone puts warm slippers on his feet. Everyone stares. Their concern makes him feel warm again.

 
Alison peels off his coat, wraps her blanket around him, seized by electric joy. “Here,” she says. “You’ll catch your death.” She hugs him tight as the others watch, wishing they could be so bold. “I’m so sorry,” she tells him, though she doesn’t mean it.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  “Let’s get you to your room.”

  This is her moment. She helps him out of his wet pajama bottoms and into red striped two-piece pajamas. He falls into the wicker chair, saying nothing, occasionally looking up at her like a lost child. She does up his buttons, her knuckles gently brushing the soft down of his chest. Her heart races.

  She helps him into bed. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks.

  Mannheim nods.

  She begins to crawl into bed beside him, but he raises a hand, shakes his head. Instead he takes her hand in his, holds it tight. Her elation quickly turns into a sour feeling in her stomach, but she stays until her hand hurts and she can see the edge of the sun just beneath the windowsill. Then, when he begins to snore, she tiptoes downstairs.

  Everyone is watching when she comes down.

  “Well?” asks the spectacled young man, whose name is Randy.

  “He’ll be all right,” she says.

  When Mannheim awakens, just after eleven, he comes down the stairs in his bathrobe. “No exercises today,” he says. “Go out, take the day off, do laundry, whatever.” He goes back upstairs, slides the Johnny Walker Blue out from under the bed, pulls out the cork stopper, lifts the bottle to his lips. The burn is good.

  Day 12

  Mannheim drinks.

  When he has finished off the Scotch and burgundy in his room, just after noon, he sends Randy on a liquor run, then drinks some more. Down below, on the warehouse floor, the pupils hear an occasional grumbled “Bitch,” or, “Fucking groupie.” They are frightened—at any moment, the window could shatter and rain jagged glass on them. Or perhaps the roof will cave in. Some consider leaving while it is still safe, but no one does. They are awaiting something spectacular, even terrifying, and no one wants to miss it.

  Alison looks to Mannheim’s window for any sign of movement: curtains jostling, books and papers flying about. At the first sign of tumult she will march up the stairs, brave the debris, hold him until his tormented brain is at peace.

  Up in his sanctum, Mannheim cries for a while, drinks more. He is sorely tempted to tell everyone to go home, to slip away quietly and start fresh somewhere new, under a new name like Eisenstein or Heisenberg, something German and severe.

  After a while, when he has cried and drunk and pissed enough, he peers out from behind the blinds, sees the concern in the faces looking up at his window. It seems genuine. Real.

  He takes a deep breath, picks up the whiskey bottle, empties the rest into the toilet.

  Then, just before sunset, he comes downstairs, dark circles under his eyes, hair flat and lifeless.

  “I’m sorry, everyone,” he says. “I’m okay. Tomorrow, we’ll get back to work.”

  Mannheim’s students stand at their cots and applaud, because they feel they should.

  Day 13

  Mannheim’s new theory, which came in an epiphany this morning while he showered, is that his followers’ innate telekinesis will be activated by sudden danger; their sleeping brains will need to be jumpstarted by a sense of imminent physical harm. This, he explains, is how he stopped the eighteen-wheeler on the interstate last Christmas, and the train just a couple of months ago. This will work. The poor stupid boy in Minnesota was too drunk to sense the danger he was in.

  “It’s simple,” he tells them. “Focus on what’s coming toward you and concentrate all your will on it.” He is animated, alive. “Then you put out your hand, like so....” He extends his right hand like a policeman halting traffic. “...and push with your mind, hard as you can. That should be enough to stop just about anything.”

  “Can you stop bullets?” asks a pudgy, pimply, spectacled college-aged boy in a Superman T-shirt.

  “I suppose you could,” Mannheim says. “With enough concentration.” He always wanted to try it, but Marty, ever the unbeliever, would never let him.

  “Cool,” another boy says. “Can you show us how you did the train trick?”

  Mannheim raises an eyebrow. “I told you, no parlor tricks. This isn’t a show.” He smiles devilishly. “So who’s first?”

  Randy gets up from the floor. “I’ll go,” he says.

  Mannheim instructs Randy to stand still and close his eyes while he picks up a metal folding chair stacked against the wall. “No peeking.”

  Randy shuts his eyes tight.

  “You can look now,” Mannheim says, and swings the chair at Randy’s face.

  For a second Randy’s eyes go wide and white in his head, and before the chair connects, he ducks.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Reflex.”

  Mannheim sighs. Randy clearly has unresolved self-confidence issues. “I understand. We’ll try again later. Next?”

  The pimply boy gets up, assumes his position. Mannheim swings the chair. The boy’s hands come up and stop the chair mid-swing.

  Mannheim glares, but recovers himself. “You’re not focusing on the chair.” He sends the boy back to the floor. “Anyone else?”

  Alison gets up. Mannheim rests a hand on her shoulder; it feels warm, forceful. Good.

  “Are you ready?” he asks her. “Focus on the chair.”

  She nods.

  Mannheim backs up, raises the chair, swings it.

  The next fraction of a second goes by like slo-mo on a DVD player. Alison sees the metal chair coming toward her and reaches out with her mind, all her thoughts on the chair, the air swirling in its wake, her own distorted reflection in the dull metal. She focuses all her will on it, extends her arm like a Tai-Chi instructor, preparing to make the chair recoil in Mannheim’s hands as if it’s struck a wall.

  The chair hits her flush in the forehead with a crash loud as a snare-drum hit. For a minute everything goes black, then Randy and a few others are standing over her, dabbing at her face with toilet paper. Something feels warm and wet under her nose.

  Alison hears Mannheim’s disembodied voice above the ringing in her ears. “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry. I really thought you were going to stop it.” Though her vision is blurry and her legs wobble, she looks long and hard into Mannheim’s face, and for the first time she notices acne scars on his cheeks, his uneven stubble, the split ends in his hair. So ordinary.

  Murmured voices break the silence: “Well, I’m done here,” someone says. Someone else whispers, “Waste of time.” And a fat middle-aged man says, “I can’t believe I left my wife for this.”

  Alison lifts her head to see Mannheim glaring across the room. “Nobody asked you to.”

  Randy starts to say, “Umm, actually....” But Mannheim silences him with a glance.

  The fat man reaches under his cot and gathers up his rucksack and a small Igloo cooler. “This is bullshit,” he grumbles. “I’m catching the next bus out of here. Anyone care to join me?”

  One or two begin to follow him, sweeping their belongings into backpacks and suitcases, then several more.

  Mannheim’s irritation turns to alarm. “Wait,” he says. “Just wait. Please. I want you all to stay.”

  “Why?” the fat man says. “You’re a goddamn fraud, just like that reporter said.”

  Everyone grumbles in agreement; Mannheim feels a heavy weight in his gut. “Go, then,” he says. “I won’t stop you. But I’m no fraud.”

  Alison picks herself up off the floor, holds a wad of tissues against her bleeding nose. “Prove it,” she says through blood and spittle. It takes her a second to realize the voice is her own, not her mother’s.

  Mannheim turns around, winces at the blood on Alison’s face. A broad purple bruise is already forming on her freckled forehead. “That’s not what this is about,” he insists.

  The fat man interrupts. “You prove you’re not a fake and we’ll stay. Am I ri
ght?” The rest nod.

  Mannheim’s shoulders sag. “Fine. What do you want me to do? Knock over this chair?” He waves a hand; a folding chair in the corner falls to the floor with a clack. “The cot?” He snaps his fingers and an empty cot tips over.

  “Not good enough,” says the fat man. “You could have had that set up from the start.”

  “Show us a miracle,” Alison whispers, but everyone hears, and when they do the whole room erupts into cheers.

  “Name it,” Mannheim says flatly.

  “The train trick,” the fat man says, and the room falls silent.

  Mannheim nods.

  The next train is due in ten minutes. Mannheim leads them outside into the snow, his Army trench billowing behind him like a cape. This is how he has appeared in Alison’s dreams since the first time she saw him on The Tonight Show, years ago, when she was just a child.

  “Don’t follow me,” Mannheim says, and steps onto the tracks. They hear the roar of train wheels against the track, the warning bells as the wooden barricades come down at the crossings. Soon, they see it.

  Alison’s nose has stopped bleeding, and she can almost feel her face again, and for just a minute she considers jumping up on the tracks with him, telling him he doesn’t have to do this. Then her forehead starts to throb again, and she thinks, yes, he does. She’s already missed out on one miracle and won’t be denied another.

  The train nears Mannheim on the tracks; the engineer sounds his horn in three quick bursts. Too late to stop.

  Mannheim raises his right hand, palm out. There is still time to walk away. Maybe he should. But this will convince them beyond doubt. He notices the black van’s doors opening, the reporter and cameraman scrambling out. He senses the train, feels its metal contours, its wheels, its pumping pistons, the rush of air in its wake. He pushes.

  The screeching is tremendous; Alison covers her ears and turns away—this is the end of him, she cannot watch. When she turns back, everything is sparks and smoke and noise, the train’s gears and wheels spinning in place on the rails. And there, silhouetted in smoke and close enough to reach out and touch the engine, is Mannheim, expressionless, face glistening with sweat.