How to Get Along with Women (14 page)

Here at Midway you go along the north side of the park until the houses start to break down and then at the light you turn up.

You don't run all the way to Englewood, not if you're white, not if you're a lady, not if you're wearing anything that can be stolen. On 63rd there's no houses, no park, just signs and signs and signs: Lavandería, Secadora. 7 Día Adventencia Filadelfia, two hands gripping each other in friendship, hands with no bodies attached. On the seventh day we painted these shaking hands; these hands, shaking.

Super Carnicería. The butcher's sign hand-painted: a cha-cha of laughing, well-fed pigs and advancing, dancing cleavers. American pomp and broken-down Mexican joints. Valentina's. Los Poncho's. Mis Tacos.

How many Mis Tacos you make, lady?

Anna speeds up, her stride shortens. On West Marquette there's a low-rise and a one-armed black man outside it with his dachshund. The dog gets up and goes for her a little.

Cheeto! This is the one-arm, booming. Get back here!

The man is fat. He's probably younger than Anna but lives harder. He's wearing Adidas pants and a t-shirt, with nothing coming out the sleeve of the t-shirt on the west side; so, his right arm.

How often does a one-arm man get laid?

How do you lose an arm in the twenty-first century?

A soldier, right? Home now in Bedford Park with his dog, standing out on the broken sidewalk and looking across at Marquette. Was left- or right-handed before. Blocks away, Anna thinks about slipping a hand up his empty sleeve, the feeling of the stump. It's not too late to turn around. She wants it raw and textured, but can't imagine anything that's not the sealed, plastic feel of a bent knee. The joint, coated. This fat man in her bed.

At a boarded-up store Anna sees the hollow between broken glass and plywood and thinks Who lives there? Lures her black man through, fucks him a moment in the debris, her mouth on the stump, his stomach hard and bloating against her.

Blinks him away.

She used to read to him. At his school the doctor told them Zoran was as smart as a normal boy, but he couldn't do normal things. All the smartness was caught, folded up inside his brain, and what came out was torture. He could swear. He said No to things he wanted. He said the opposite.

She scooted him down the marble hallways in his wheelchair.

If she got him alone he yelled, Let's be international! and she yelled back, Shall we travel the world and sleep in tents?

No! We'll sleep in grand hotels!

Will our fame precede us?

The doctor said the biting was not as simple as self-injury.

By the time he was eight, most of his lower lip missing, a piece of the inside of his cheek, a chunk gone from his tongue. When he started on his fingers, they strapped his arms to the arms of the chair. They locked the chair brakes on and it lurched with his impulse to get hand to mouth.

They do things they don't want to do, the doctor said. We're here to help.

Whenever Anna came to visit, Zoran wore a red shirt with no collar.

X-linked.

Anna tells this to Aubrey, later, in bed, her sweaty clothes and wet towel bunched up in the armchair where he was sitting when she got back to the room.

It means a girl can't get it. But my mother had it on her gene.

He's got his fingers in her hair, tangled still from the shower, picking through the damp knots.

I can't have babies, she says. I'm never doing that.

Jeannie rubs her belly in the back of the shuttle. They're stopped at the light at W 65th. They've got a 6:40 report and a 7:55 wheels-up. Aubrey taps a hand off Anna's knee like it's his own knee.

The hand wants the light to change, the shuttle to move, the wheels to roll.

A little kid gets out of a car and crosses the street, heading for McDonald's. It's wearing a denim jacket and has long, curly hair. It's carrying a doll's umbrella. The mother is regular-size, towers over the kid. They don't hold hands.

That's the smallest fucking midget I ever saw, Aubrey says. They've turned their bodies to the back window now. His hand goes still and heavy on her leg. The walking baby is like a magnet to them.

Jeannie says, Primordial dwarfism.

She looks at Anna and Aubrey like, What?

I used to babysit this kid and now he has a kid that has it, she says, that's the only reason why I know.

She flips her back against the seat and pulls something out of the pocket of her trench. A little book. She plays her thumb against the edge and lets the pages ripple.

What you got there. Aubrey leans forward, his arm across Anna's body as though the van might throw her forward.

I don't know, Jeannie says. I found it in the bar, when we were in the Sault. It's kind of demented. It's kind of gross. It's like this kid was normal and then someone just cut him and cut him. People are sick.

She tosses the photos onto the seat beside her, then picks them up again and turns the booklet over in her fingers. Aubrey looks at Anna.

Anna just looks out the window.

It's not real, she says. You'd get arrested. It's just a promo for some movie, some whatever, indie-Sault low-budget horror movie.

Jeannie shrugs, slides the book back in her pocket.

The shuttle heaves forward with the green light. Outside the dwarf walks into McDonald's. Where it will order what?

Anna turns to Aubrey.

A Happy Meal, she says. Half-a-Happy-Meal. Half-a-half-a-Happy-Meal.

You have a happy meal, he says. He's got yesterday's flight plans out of their envelope and keeps his eyes down on the weather map.

Jeannie reads the street names off their signs and calls them out loud. South Kolin, South Kenneth, South Kilbourn. She's a pretty-girl-getting-older, blue eyes, the kind of straight hair you only get with an iron. A little bulge under her uniform, barely noticeable. You'd never notice. Soft arms, small feet, fingernails painted creamy white.

And her pink glossed mouth, South Cicero South Cicero South Cicero.

I think you're showing, Anna says.

She says, I can see your baby's head.

Jeannie stops then, her lips soft and gaping.

The kind of mouth you can really get your teeth into.

Jim and Nadine, Nadine and Jim

They were watching the earthquake news and she jumped up out of her chair.

Don't start! Jim said. Don't start!

I can't watch! Nadine said. The orphanage! They need help! Her brown hair was short and ragged next to her face and she hopped up and down from one foot to the other to keep herself from running away.

Stand still! Jim said. He sank his hand into the bowl of cheezies and crunched his fist closed. The hand was orange with cheezie dust right up to the wrist.

Nadine stepped onto a nearby beanbag cushion and stood absolutely still.

I'm fine, she said from her cushion. Don't worry, Jim, I'm fine, I'm fine.

On the television, babies were stacked on bakers' racks because there were no more mattresses. Their little blankets were damp and streaked with grime, but overall the babies did not look any more unhappy than regular babies. They were tucked in close on the shelves. The orphanage had been knocked down by the earthquake.

Smashed flat, Nadine said, and she punched herself in the chest—a double-fist punch.

You're all mixed up! Jim said. You don't know what's going on! Rest and relax, rest and relax, that's what I always say! He leaned forward in his armchair, elbows on knees, hands out flat. There wasn't much meat on him. He was a tall enough guy with big hands.

It's my heart! Nadine said. She coiled down onto the cushion like a little warm bun.

Chrissakes, Jim said, his flat hands wavering back toward the cheezie bowl. Run a tub.

Nadine scooped her knees into her chin and held onto her ankles.

Don't cry! Jim said. You know how that upsets me! His mouth was all orange. Don't cry, do your grounding! Jesus, feel your feet!

In moments of panic Nadine had been taught to stand up and feel the pressure of her whole body bearing down through her calves and feet. This was called grounding. She was meant to feel grounded as opposed to, Nadine thought, airborne. Nadine found more comfort in an airborne self, a self that could float up and away from frightening things, but the therapist said No, Nadine needed to push all the fear out through her toes.

I'm turning off the TV, Jim said, but he didn't. On the screen, a white doctor was talking about all the legs he'd cut off since the earthquake. If a person's leg was caught under a rock or a piece of broken concrete, it was the doctor's job to cut off the leg, and there wasn't any anaesthetic because the wrong boats had got to the island first.

Aren't you traumatized? the reporter asked and the doctor said, Yes, yes the screaming was very hard to ignore.

He doesn't even look like a doctor, Jim said. Where's his coat?

Nadine pulled up and fixed her feet flat on the ground.

I feel my feet, Nadine said. She was already crying.

Nadine flattened both hands over her mouth to hold the crying down. I feel my feet, she said into the hands.

Just don't look! Jim said. Look out the window. He took off his t-shirt and tied it in a big knot, pulling tight on the two ends, and he walked up the stairs like that, tearing at the ends of the shirt. When he got to the bedroom, he stood under the doorjamb and bounced on the balls of his feet. Nadine! he yelled down the stairs. Are you still crying?

Nadine pressed her fingers harder against her mouth until she could feel her teeth, flat and even, on the other side.

Out the window, the school bus stopped and all its flashing lights were on. Cars lined up behind. A little girl with dark hair and a blue backpack stepped off the bus and crossed the street in front of it. The girl was only about as tall as the bus tires, but the driver saw her, so it was okay. He didn't run over the girl. No other cars squashed the girl, either. On the other sidewalk, there was a woman with long hair and a little dog on a green leash waiting for her.

On the television, three men were beating a fourth man for stealing a bag of corn.

What if I stay upset forever? Nadine said to her hands. She used her imagination to build a wall in the hallway, halfway between her body and the bedroom. She laid the wall brick by brick and licked the mortar off her finger. It was white and coarse, like the rock dust on the people's legs on television.

Nadine sat down on the couch and picked up the remote and shut off the TV. She pulled her knees up tight to her chest and rubbed her shins. The bumpiness of the shin bone always made Nadine think of her spine. The shin = the spine of the leg. She rubbed downwards, so any leftover fear would know what direction it ought to travel.

That brick wall calmed her right down.

Jim came pounding down the hall wearing his jacket.

It's supposed to be me that makes you feel better, he said. His keys jingled in his coat pocket where his hand was shaking them around. Why won't you let me make you better?

He stood with his thighs against the arm of the couch. Nadine looked at the waistband of his jeans, slumping low over his hipbone. The hip looked like a horn. Jim held out his big hand and Nadine let him wrap it around her small one. She thought about the bricks in her wall. Their crumbling weight, the sharp edges and grainy mortar. It didn't matter now about the earthquake because at least Jim wasn't mad. She leaned her cheek against his hip.

Jim said, Nadine! What if you stay upset forever?

Jim had not always been Nadine's boyfriend. He had first, and for a period of some months, been the boyfriend of Nadine's sister, until the sister decided to hone her skills as a shell game practitioner. She moved to the coast based on the quite reasonable assumption that it would be easier to acquire shells in an oceanic environment. Now of no fixed address, she housesat on houseboats when the owners came ashore for bungalow vacations, and lived very well like this with a new boyfriend and a trained black parrot named Hollister.

Jim first met Nadine at Christmas, the family dinner.

Nadine is sen-si-tive, the sister had whispered across the table to where Jim sat. Nadine, next to him, wearing a crown made of red tissue paper, had flashed him her tiny teeth. Jim patted Nadine's shoulder and then her knee and, later on, when the sister stepped out for some soothing ginger ale, he patted most of the rest of her body as well. It was a good arrangement and suited them fine, and when the sister climbed into her car and pointed west, it only made sense for Jim to come and live at Nadine's house full time.

Nadine offered him her keys and Jim put them in his pocket.

Now Nadine showed Jim that she was not upset forever. She did this by smoothing his eyebrow hairs until they were silky and stray-free as little eye-toupées. Jim took her panties off and they settled in. He jumped forward a little with his hips and every time he did she gave a little equal-and-opposing jump. She bit his beard. Things went on like this for some time. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed her fingers against his tailbone, the boniest place on his whole bony body, and pressed down, holding him inside her.

Nadine thought about how Jim tasted. How he tasted all the same—his mouth and tongue were no different than his cum. His shoulders slammed downward and she thought, Your inside parts taste the same as your outside parts. I will never get tired of fucking you. But then after a few minutes she went back to repeating words in her own head. She bites his beard, she bites his beard, she thought to herself. She was too tired to come, anyway. The earthquake had exhausted her. Jim pulled out and wiped some blood off his dick and Nadine said, Oh would you look at that, then swung her legs onto the floor and went to mark the calendar.

They went to the pub for dinner. Nadine turned the newspaper over so that the front cover lay flat against the table. Whatever the cover has to show, Nadine said, the table can look at it. She liked to read the horoscope and the Ann Landers reprints. On her way to the bathroom the bartender smiled at her. He had brown eyes and was eating curry chips. Nadine could smell the curry. His mouth curved and he licked the gravy from his thumb.