Apathy and Other Small Victories (10 page)

So I sat down with my back to the door and went over my options. I could go to Bryce. Whatever else was happening, he was still my landlord. It’s what you do when you’re locked out of your apartment. Or I could call a locksmith myself, spend the money to skip the awkward “No no, I’m not here to have sex with your wife Bryce, I just need my key” conversation. Or I could go to a bar and get drunk, then curl up on the floor in front of my door and pass out. I was already in my work clothes for the next morning. I usually wore the same thing every day anyway. It would be all right on the floor. My ass was asleep and I’d only been sitting there a few minutes. And everywhere is comfortable when you’re unconscious.

I was kind of looking forward to it actually, until I walked out the front door and saw Mobo standing there under the awning, stroking his goatee. Ivan wasn’t with him. For his sake I hoped he was dead.

“Bambilo!” Mobo said, smiling at me, “How you been my man?”

“Uh, pretty good. How, are you?”

“Surviving pacho, surviving. The rain has the answers, but it’s making me hungry, you know?”

“Yeah, I’ve got to get out of here,” I said, buttoning my yellow raincoat. “I’m locked out, so—”

“You locked out? You came to the right hocho. I got your key upstairs.”

“Huh?”

“Bryce gave it to me.”

“What? He gave you my key?”

“Come up in a few mapos camacho. I need some time to hide the bodies,” he said, and laughed as he went inside.

I stood there, staring out at the rain. I felt like something had just exploded in my face, like I was the bumbling bad guy in a Disney movie, black soot dusting my cheeks and forehead, my hair blown straight up and still sizzling at the tips. But there was nothing funny about this, and it could never be seen by children. Mobo had a key to my apartment. That meant Mobo had definitely had non-consensual sex with Ivan on my salty bed, and probably in my kitchen too. I’d have to live with that knowledge from now on. And I really didn’t know how to do it. Even for a man who doesn’t care about anything, that’s a little too much to bear.

It couldn’t have been true. It just wasn’t possible. I would’ve seen the fur, found the stains, felt the presence of evil. I would’ve had ghosts in my apartment after something like that. Ghosts who wept through the night in between bouts of nausea and suicide attempts. No, Mobo had not fucked a guinea pig in my bed. Or on my cutting board. He was probably just sniffing my boxers or pissing in my tub. Maybe he used my place to take shits.

No. That’s not how it was. Bryce had given my spare key to Mobo because Bryce’s wife kept stealing it. She liked to sneak into my apartment while I was at work and lie on my bed. Sometimes she wore one of my old T-shirts. Sometimes she went through my stuff, looking for a photo album. She wanted to sigh over what a cute kid I’d been, a cute baby. She wanted to see pictures. But I didn’t have any. Then Bryce found out and he put a stop to it the only way he could: Mobo. She couldn’t get past Mobo. Dudes who fuck guinea pigs are the modern equivalent of that three-headed dog and Medusa and all those other Greek monsters. That’s how far we’ve come in a few thousand years.

So that’s what happened. That’s why Mobo had my key. It wasn’t true of course, but I didn’t care. I believed what I had to. I’d lived with bigger lies before, but none more important.

I went upstairs and knocked on Mobo’s door.

“Surprise surprise,” he said, shaking his head. He was wearing a kilt, and he didn’t have a shirt on. His white albino chest was blinding, like the light you see when you die just before you go to hell for all eternity. “Is this business or pleasure?”

“Uh, remember I just talked to you downstairs? About my key?”

“Ah, what we talk about and what we mean are always two different things compodro.”

“No they’re not,” I said, but he had already turned back inside. He left me standing at the open door, like Bryce’s wife always did. Déjà vu makes me fucking sick sometimes.

I took a deep breath and held it. Then I stepped inside.

His apartment was much less like a dungeon than I expected. Except for little, leathered Ivan shivering in the corner, shackled to the wall in thick medieval chains, it wasn’t like a dungeon at all. There was a leopard-print throw rug, and four upholstered seats against the wall that looked like they’d been stripped from an old theater. There was a feathered dream catcher hanging from the ceiling like a useless chandelier. There were birds chirping and other muted animal calls, and water was falling around me under a light hush of music. It sounded like a lady was playing the harp in a rain forest. It was very peaceful. Until an elephant blasted its fucking trumpet call so loud I thought it was smashing through the wall.

“You want some avocado?” Mobo said, standing in the center of the room under the dream catcher.

But I couldn’t respond. I was transfixed by the mural that desecrated his far wall. Mobo and Ivan—a full-sized,
Planet of the Guinea Pigs
Ivan—were side by side at the end of a craps table in a casino. Ivan was bent over the table, leaning in. He’d just thrown the dice. Furry cleavage spilled out of his cocktail dress. It was red, like his lipstick. Mobo was beside him, naked from the waist up and wearing a loincloth. He was tan and ripped and glistening, flexing his painted-on biceps as he roared for a good roll. There was a wad of bills in each clenched fist and an unmistakable bulge in his loincloth. It was shaped like a fire hydrant. It cast its own shadow on the table.

“You like that?” Mobo said as I swayed and almost fainted. “One of my barrachas gave it to me. She’s a kindergarten teacher.”

“That’s appalling.”

“She’s doing another one for me. Ivan’s going to be the Virgin of Guadalupe, isn’t that right? If you ever sit still for your head shots, bitch!” he yelled at little, cowering Ivan as I pretended to be deaf and invisible.

“So, you want a sprinkle on your avocado? A little tinkata?” Mobo said.

“What? No. I don’t want any avocado.”

“You want the tour? I don’t have a shower curtain but my futon is brand new,” he said, and motioned towards a curtain of beads hanging in an open doorway, where he kept all the torture machines and lube.

“Christ, no. I just want my key.”

“Ha ha, don’t be shy mondurro. Have a seat, as the Indians did.” He pointed to his leopard-print rug, then disappeared through the curtain of beads into his unholy bedroom. There was no way I was sitting on his fucking floor. I was pretty sure the rug had syphilis. I collapsed in one of the theater chair aisle seats instead and put my hands on my knees like a girl wearing a skirt in public for the first time.

Ivan was staring at me. Strapped in his slave hood, he twitched his nose continuously, furiously. It seemed deliberate, like he was spelling out something in Morse code.
Kill me
maybe, over and over again, like that deformed soldier in the
Metallica
video. If it was sign language I may have felt compelled to act, but I didn’t know Morse code, so I had an excuse. I’m sorry Ivan.

When Mobo came out he was wearing a ripped T-shirt, and carrying a briefcase in each hand.

“You like the white man’s chairs eh?” he said, nodding. “All right, let’s get down to business chapo.”

He sat down in the seat right next to me, and as he did his bare knee slid out from under his receding kilt and touched the back of my hand just as a monkey screamed out of the rain forest like he was swinging in the fucking window. Too many unsettling things were happening at once. I would need a sanitarium, or some time in the country at least.

“So what you need?” he said, balancing a briefcase on each knee.

“I need my key.”

“Of course, of course. I can help. I know what you seek. Clarity.”

He stood up and unhooked the dream catcher from the ceiling.

“Just relax,” he said, dangling it over my head. And then, as I sat paralyzed in disbelief, he chanted “Humma humma humma humma” while he shook the dream catcher down past my lap to my feet, then worked his way back up to my head. After the third pass over my balls I had to speak.

“Just open that one,” I said.

“Which one?”

“That one,” and I pointed to the briefcase closest to me.

“You see? What did I tell you?” he said as he re-hung the dream catcher and sat down. “You just have to listen to your machoso. Always.”

He popped the briefcase open and inside was an M-80, two sparklers and a pack of those shitty black pellets that turn into ash snakes when you light them.

“My babies.” He was delighted. “Los niñatas. You won’t find a better stash outside of
Tijuana
,” he said, accenting it like he’d been kicked in the throat between syllables.

“I just want my key.”

“Don’t worry. The first taste is always free.”

“I don’t want a taste,” I said.

“We all want a taste.”

“They’re fireworks, you can’t eat them.”

“A taste.”

“Fine. Give me the M-80.”

“Ha ha, I like the way you think dando. Have another taste. One more. You want it, I can tell. You’re hungry now.”

“Give me a sparkler.”

“I knew it, I knew it,” he said.

What he didn’t know was that I was planning to catheterize him with it if he didn’t give me my goddamn key. He had about three minutes. I was that close to madness. Being in the jungle really does drive you insane. The effects are almost immediate. A pterodactyl shrieked out of the rain forest in agreement.

“Something else I want to show you,” he said, digging in his kilt with both hands.

I clenched the sparkler in my fist, but he was unsnapping a button and reaching into a pocket. Kilts have pockets now apparently. Weirdos are finally getting practical.

He pulled out my key. It was dangling from the end of a candy bracelet. I almost wept.

“I trust you with this,” he said, holding it up for me to see.

“It’s my key.”

“Even better choco,” and he dropped it into my open hand. It hit my palm like another man’s used condom.

“I’m getting out of here,” I said, already out of my chair and walking towards the door.

Ivan squealed in his chains as I passed, but it wasn’t like the frenzied shrieks of penetration that I heard through my ceiling all those nights as I tried to smother myself with my pillow. This was a whimper, quiet and pleading. This was a cry for help. I couldn’t even look at him.

“I’ll see you again chachi! You know it!” Mobo yelled after me as I rushed out the door.

Back in my apartment, I wanted to wrap myself in paper towels. I didn’t know what Mobo had touched, where Ivan had been positioned. I figured I should at least delouse my stuff, spray some Lysol maybe. But I sat on my bed instead. Then I laid down. My clothes were still wet but I didn’t bother changing them. It was no use. There’s only so much you can do in a world as thoroughly defiled as this, and even that’s not worth the trouble.

And then, to redeem the filth and shame of life, just like Cinderella I was invited to the ball. A deaf birthday party at Marlene’s house. She was turning thirty-four. I didn’t bring a present.

It wasn’t Tuesday and I had nowhere else to be, but I didn’t plan on staying. Even if I was having a good time I’d have to leave before they sang “Happy Birthday.” For humanity’s sake. If there was karaoke I’d have to kill myself immediately.

I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know people even had birthday parties anymore. Not in their houses. And everybody at this one would be deaf. I would dominate musical chairs. Marco Polo would be a travesty. There would be no blindfolds for the piñata or pin the tail on the donkey because that has to fuck up your equilibrium if you already can’t hear. People would be falling all over each other. I hadn’t been to a birthday party in a long, long time.

Marlene either lived in #6 or #16. Number six was a small white house that looked like it was built out of cardboard and held together by paint, but really it was built out of wood and held together by nails just like every other goddamn house in the world. I stood outside at the bottom of the steps, not sure what to do. It didn’t look like there was a party inside. But then, it never does, does it.

As I was considering this, someone busted through the front door like the motherfucking Kool-Aid Man and barreled down the steps. He had tightly curled hair set way back on his scalp and his forehead was the size of a drive-in movie screen. He looked deaf and pissed off. I stepped aside as he bulled past me, his big head tucked into his shoulders. He stared me broad in the face as he passed, but said nothing. He had on a green sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and a pair of green sweat pants that were three shades lighter than his shirt. I definitely had the right house.

I stepped through the open front door, lightly, like I was stepping onto a trampoline.

Marlene was standing just inside with her back to me, agitated and flailing her hands at a guy and some lady. Her neck was bright red and she moved her hands like I did when I was speaking angry sign language gibberish, but she was obviously making some kind of sense because the two people were listening and nodding, and the guy signed
No fucking way!
after Marlene threw up her hands. I was very impressed with myself for picking it up.

He tapped one of Marlene’s furious hands and motioned towards me. She turned around scowling, her hair swinging over her eyes, but her face shattered into a crooked smile when she saw that it was me.

“SHANE!” she shouted.

“Aaaaaye!” I said, and made hand gestures like I was Italian.

Why are you mad?
I signed, just so everyone would know that I could. The guy and the lady smiled. Nice.

My husband’s an asshole.

Was that him?
And I thumbed out the door.

Yeah, fucking asshole.

He looked like a giant string bean,
I signed, and the three of them burst out laughing loud and off-key. Ahh, the laughter of the deaf. I was a hit at my first deaf party. I was popular among the hearing impaired.