Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! (4 page)

A guy like that, it’s not fair to call him a cripple — or rather you could call him a cripple — in fact I must have called him a cripple at some point — but he’s more than that, he’s evolved beyond it. He’s trans-crippled … he’s Crippled Plus! Crippled Pro! A guy like that is an inspiration to a guy like me. I wonder how he lost his legs. I never thought to ask him … actually I never thought to speak to him at all, because he’s a dirty hippie with metal legs. But me, I’d be different: I’d be clean and well-shaven, and I’d wear long Armani slacks, and I bet people wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference. Because I’ve got
way
more legs left than that guy. In terms of legs remaining, that guy’s not even in my league.

I wonder if a bear ate his legs, too. I can’t wait to ask him!

It’ll go like this: After an absence of several months, all the café regulars and the hot lesbian barista chick will have been wondering for some time: what ever happened to that stylish, sexy, edgy ad executive who used to grace them all with his presence every weekday morning for ten minutes or so? And then I’ll just saunter right in with an air of mystery, nonchalance and trial-by-fire machismo, with a spring in my step and a smile on my face, saying nothing, betraying nothing, as if I’d never been gone. When the hot lesbian (bisexual?) barista chick asks where I’ve been keeping myself I’ll tell her: Oh, you know, up in Alaska, hunting bears.

And she’ll be strangely turned-on by the rugged, world-weary edge in my voice, the voice of a man who’s stared down death. She may feel momentarily confused about her sexuality, but she won’t notice my feet and the other regulars won’t notice my shiny new feet, not at all. But
then
, as I gaze penetratingly into the now-blushing face of the hot barista chick who’s sexually flexible, at the moment I drop a nickel suggestively in her tip jar … our old friend Super Cripple will clank through the front door on his metal legs, his relatively antiquated and somewhat dumpy-looking aluminum legs, to get his morning coffee. He’ll see me, and instantly, he’ll know. He will spot with my first step that something has changed about me, and he’ll look down at my shoes and see they’re brand new, polished and of a different size than they used to be. Our eyes will meet, he’ll raise an eyebrow, look me up and down and exclaim, “Dude … nice feet!”

And that might be the beginning of an unlikely but long and lasting friendship, the kind of friendship one might eventually parlay into film rights. But then again probably not. Because I’m a busy guy and he smells like wheat grass juice, and if I tell him how I killed the bear that ate my feet he might get all liberal and indignant on me, and when hippies weep it’s just embarrassing.

But still, he can give me some pointers in the early stages, as I learn to operate my new bionic feet, to walk and run and leap in them, to kick Wagner with them, to cross them up on my desk as I stretch out in my Aeron chair after a long day of creativity and delegation. I bet I could be a bad-ass kung fu master with my lightweight rock-hard titanium super feet.

I just have to somehow make sure they don’t graft negro feet onto me. I wish I had a Sharpie, I could write WHITE FEET ONLY PLEASE on my arm or some place on my body where neurosurgeons would see it. My forehead, even. Just in case. Just in case I’m not conscious when they rescue me.

Which they definitely will do. Soon!

Look, don’t get me wrong: negroes have excellent feet. Amazing feet. Look at Jesse Owens! Michael Jordan! (Actually it could be kind of cool to have Michael Jordan’s feet, if I could have them certified and really prove to people, “Hey, these aren’t just any negro feet, these are Michael Jordan’s!” Imagine the cachet of that.) And even if they just gave me the feet of some semi-famous pro or college basketball playing negro I’m sure they’d be excellent feet in the practical sense, not inferior in any way, not funny smelling. My concern is purely an aesthetic one. I just want to
match
. I’m a man who takes care of himself, who works hard to look good at all times. Having negro feet would be like walking on to the tennis court of life in black socks, every day. It’s beyond faux pas — it’s well into freakshow. I wouldn’t even know what box to check on the census any more. I’d be an other, a mixed. I’d be a decline to state.

Who was that detective with the claws instead of hands? Mister Claw? No … J. J. someone. J. J. Arms. Yeah, there’s a super-cripple for you. How did he lose his hands? Bears, probably. I wonder if he’s still alive, fighting crime, solving mysteries, stabbing bad guys in the face with his claws. I could be just like that only I’d use kung-fu high-kicks on bad guys and save my hands for getting freaky with Marcia from Product Dialogue, in a tender erotic embrace on the bear skin rug in the executive bathroom.

I hope Marcia isn’t along when they come to rescue me. I’d hate her to see me like this. Mauled, mud caked … and yeah, one of the many awful smells you smell is me. I have soiled my wool hunting slacks and my Calvin Kleins. It had to happen, didn’t it? I’m at peace with it, but I don’t want Marcia to see me this way. I am not looking my sexiest right now.
So
not sexy. The image of me, steeped in blood and shit and Slim Jim wrappers, trapped and … humiliated, really, by that dumb bear … If Marcia sees me like this she’ll never call me Daddy again.

4

I wonder if my darling Edna and Marcia from Product Dialogue have warmed to one another in my absence. They sure were frigid on each other in my presence. They didn’t say a word to or about each other from Seattle to yesterday. I had them both in the Rover from Anchorage to Camp Image Team, with Edna attempting to navigate in the shotgun seat and Marcia sitting in the middle of the back seat, where the rear view mirror gave me an excellent view of her independent front suspension absorbing the off-road shocks. Marcia was quiet — one of her many luxury features. Edna was not quiet. She moaned and complained and worried and told me I was doing it wrong, whatever
it
happened to be.

“Marv, we are
not
on the map,” she whined as I piloted my unstoppable Rover over fallen logs and mid-sized canyons. “You’re going to get us stuck in some tree! What was wrong with that trail? It was a fine trail.” I explained to her that a Range Rover creates its own trail automatically, by crushing objects directly beneath it. The in-dash navigation and luxury-management screen displayed an attractive nipple of concentric red rings undulating dead ahead of us, across a field of calm grey-green pixels and occasional suggestions to relax. Who needs trails when you’ve got Global Positioning? We were closing in on the agreed-upon spot, and it was important that I reach it first, both to humiliate Frink, who claims to know this area, and to win a certain bet over who sets up camp versus who sips cold beer on the self-inflating couch.

So we crushed our winning way through the undergrowth and overgrowth, efficiently trampling the scrawny brush and wetlands that passed for nature, making a bee-line for the prize. But Edna would not shut up about the “danger.” I told her: baby, I had this car danger-sealed. Danger cannot enter, so baby, shut up.

Marcia from Product Dialogue whined: “Aren’t you worried you might run over a squirrel?” Marcia has a weakness for small furry things. Which is great when those small furry things are sweaters or lingerie, but sometimes her weakness is just weak.

“Marcia,” I explained, “just by driving a fossil-fuel burning car from the ferry station in Anchorage to here, we must have already killed twenty or thirty squirrels with global warming. Not counting all the bugs on the windshield, or that cat that Frink ran over at the Chevron. I mean, did you go vegan or something?”

“No,” she said, submissively, the way I like. She pouted a little.

“Are you going off Atkins and switching to a crueltyfree diet?”

“No.”

“Good. Cruelty looks good on you.”

“Marv!” Edna complained. “What are you … that’s a
cliff
, Marv! You’re driving straight down a
cliff!
”

“Edna, do you even know what four-wheel drive means? Do you grasp the concept?”

“It won’t mean
poop
if the car’s upside-down, Marv!”

“We have a very low center of gravity, Edna. We’re Velcroed to the land.”

Looking in the mirror I noticed that quiet, stoic, beautiful Marcia from Product Dialogue appeared a little pale. She has such a delicate constitution, like a bird really, and it occurred to me that while Edna would be the one to complain and critique, Marcia would be more the type to spill her Alaskan motel breakfast all over my Oxford leather upholstery. So I stopped the car.

“Why are we stopped? What are you doing?” annoyed Edna.

“Rest stop. Map check. Piss break.”

“On the face of a
cliff
? If I open this door I’ll break my ankle and
die
!”

“It’s not a cliff, baby. It’s a ravine.” I clambered out the drivers’ side, onto about a 45 degree gravelly incline covered with saplings and scrub and big natural-looking rocks. When I slammed the door, the whole car slid downhill about a foot and the women inside screamed and clutched their seat belts. Priceless. I gave them a wink and a thumb up and hiked up the hill and back a bit, just far enough so a sudden wind wouldn’t blow my urine on the Rover.

God, what a beautiful car I own. It’s really in its element out here, gleaming chrome and gunmetal grey against the blue sky, a lovely patina of authentic off-road mud on its flaps, undergrowth caked beneath the real chrome bumper like the rouge on a lawnmower’s lips, and a long flat trail of subjugated vegetation and churned turf blazing off into the distance behind. I’ve never seen my car looking happier than it did that day, like a free-roaming alpine goat perched on a rocky bluff, sniffing the wind for other goats’ vaginas. I wish I could find another really hot car for my car to mate with, I love it so. It’s got a look that screams
Money!
but it screams in a classy, operatic voice that’s also rugged and Teutonic, sort of a Conan the Singing Barbarian scream, if you follow me. Basically, it makes everybody inside of it seem wealthy and sophisticated, yet violent. Through the polarized rear window, even Marcia and Edna looked poised and regal, sitting still, clutching their seat belts, leaning uphill, doing and saying nothing. Except I knew Edna was seething. She likes to seethe. And when Edna seethes, Marcia pouts. It’s cute, really.

I finished peeing all over nature and returned to the Rover. We slid a few more inches downhill when I slammed the door.

“Marv, are you
trying
to get us killed?” Edna bitched.

“Not entirely,” I said.

“Remember? Remember what the doctor said about
impulses
? Don’t you think you’re acting just a
teensy
bit selfinflictive?”

I threw it in low gear and put the hammer down. The wheels spun as we slid farther down the ridge, flinging rocks and twigs in all directions. Marcia from Product Dialogue let out the tiniest little whimper, like she does when she comes. Sexy!

“That’s crazy talk, baby. I love me. I would never hurt me.” I rocked the steering wheel left, then right, sort of randomly plowing around the gravel we were swimming in, trying to drill down into something bite-able. The car slid and twisted around in place like a hovercraft, throwing up an epic cloud of dust around us as the engine roared with automotive excellence. Finally we snagged something and sprang, caribou-like, up the side of the so-called cliff and back on to boring flat land — where I just barely spotted some little surprised animal dart under the front wheels, a beaver or dog or something, I don’t know what exactly but the girls had their eyes closed so I decided to neglect to mention it — and there we were, horizontal again, “safe.”

Marcia squealed with delight and clapped her little hands together. Edna rolled her eyes.

Edna: “Maybe
you
should go vegan, Marv. Just drive to the supermarket and back, hunting tofu.”

“Baby? Did you smoke crack while I was out there with Walter?” Edna huffed. Marcia giggled. (I should explain: Walter, obviously, is my cock; Edna knows this; Marcia also knows this; Edna does not know Marcia knows this. Or maybe it was dawning on her, but that was starting to matter less and less as we got deeper into Bear Country.)

“Vegans have ethics, Marv. They care about others.”

“I care about others. I care how they taste!” Badda-bing! I crack myself up. But no giggle from Marcia … no, I suppose Marcia actually cares about others from time to time herself. Silly girl. In the mirror I saw her little mini-pout, eyebrows slightly furrowed, head bent forward, chin pointing down toward her slender neck and her big, tight funbags jutting from the underwire bra and the camo lycra action halter I bought her. Her body said Fuck Me Sideways, but her face said Apologize First.

“Hey, ladies, listen, I have a lot of respect for nature,” I lied. “Why do you think I brought you out here? Look out the window! This is nature! The grandeur and the mystery and the cuteness all here in front of us now. We came here to pay our respects to Mother Nature, and to rediscover our human relationship with her.”