At two in the afternoon, she hears a bang like a gunshot. Eugenia peeks out her bedroom window. What’s visible to her: the Tangs’ barbecue pit, their garden shed, their kidney-shaped pool. She counts dead oval leaves trapped on the water.
Must be the Tang brothers lighting firecrackers behind the shed again, she thinks. They’re always plotting to give the birds a heart attack. Forefingers stuffed in her ears, she wonders why the brothers aren’t studying, and from where do they get their sadistic toys? But if the Gohs across the street managed to smuggle in flamingos to chain to a tree in their backyard, what’s a few firecrackers? What about the Xias down the road who somehow had the Deputy Prime Minister over for durians and macarons? Mummy has warned that she must never mention this to anyone.
Eugenia exits her room.
By right she isn’t supposed to come out until she’s confident of acing tomorrow’s English test, but how to concentrate when tonight Daddy’s appearing on live TV, all fake-tanned and dressed as Aladdin, kissing a poisonous cobra?
Never mind grammar; she’s going to pray.
She hops down the marble staircase. She strides over to the kitchen. She seeks out strawberries and blueberries and Hershey’s chocolate bars from the fridge. She loads up her plate and sock-slides into the living room where she taps Spotify’s icon on the iPad mounted on the wall.
The air-con hums alive and the lights dim. John Mayer, her one and only, starts plucking at his electric guitar, singing Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. Eugenia sighs. She plops on the sofa and closes her eyes and clenches her fists as if she’s in church.
Please don’t let anything bad happen to Daddy.
Eugenia takes in a deep breath.
Daddy’s a really beautiful human being. No thank you, is what Daddy always says when Mummy offers him a cigarette.
Eugenia knows she is lucky; she can’t recall the last time Daddy raised his voice at home. What’s more, Daddy invites grandma over for dinner on Sundays and prepares her favourite PuEr tea. So sweet! Eugenia pictures everyone sitting in her own living room in the future. Sitting crossed-legged on the carpet will be Johnny M, who should be an old man by then, and she’ll pay him handsomely to teach her music so she can sing for her parents. Because once Eugenia was rushing homework upstairs when she heard music downstairs: it was Daddy with grandpa’s old harmonica on his lips. Daddy was blowing softly, filling the house with sweet but melancholic tunes, making Grandma weep; he’d played it in a way you either caught all of its tenderness or none at all. It was more or less the most beautiful thing she’s ever witnessed.
Eugenia opens her eyes again, smiling.
She extracts a yellowed copy of Frankenstein from under Daddy’s Jodi Picoults and Danielle Steeles stacked on the round, heavy coffee-table.
She bites into a fat strawberry and a seed gets stuck between her teeth. She dislodges the seed with her tongue and spits it onto the carpet, which prompts the Roomba to dart out from under the sofa—suck-suck-suck. She squeezes the bookmark. She narrows her eyes. Soon the plot thickens, and things turn creepy; the icky-yucky monster with a bolt through his head feels hated and lonely; it didn’t ask to be born!
Eugenia looks away from the page.
Silent in the driveway is Daddy’s three-month-old Ford Focus. Has rehearsal ended early? she thinks. He’s back to say good-bye-I-love-you?
She touches wood and shuts her eyes again.
But still, she sees so vividly Daddy purpled with snake poison and gasping for air, and the teeth-gritting fanfare refuses to stop. Why can’t he just quit? she thinks. Year after year. Why the need for fear-factor? It used to be just singing and dancing. She remembers Mr. Tang next door, who runs the charity show, talking about star power on the TV news. First, they immersed Daddy in an ice-filled container, which took months and months of endurance training. Donations, the newspaper said, struck a new record. Talking about five point eight million Singapore dollars, that sort of record. All her schoolmates started calling Daddy a hero, and for a while, Eugenia got some precious attention.
But she knows that her Daddy has been taking glucosamine pills for his knees, and that last year he had a bypass done, and that same year they made him balance atop a five-storey pole for two hours! If only outsiders realise how tough it gets at home; Daddy always loses his sense of humour during training season. She recalls him sitting through four SpongeBob SquarePants episodes with her, and he didn’t even laugh once! All he did was nod. He nodded when Mummy said, “I love you?” Eugenia was spying on them from behind the fridge. She saw Daddy spill a little whiskey into his coffee.
Is nodding good or bad? she asks herself. Daddy said that nodding too much could sometimes annoy people, even if your intention is to preserve the peace. What was Daddy hinting at? Was it wrong of him to have nodded when Mummy woke up one fine August morning those many years ago and said she wanted a child but didn’t want to go through pregnancy and labour? That was how Eugenia came into the picture. Also, is it even humanly possible not to find SpongeBob funny? she thinks. It’s like sneezing with your eyes open!
Oh no.
Is Daddy back early because he’s found out that she’s been using his credit card to shop online? But only because it’s so boring at home. So quiet always. Jumping, jumping to see if she could touch the ceiling fan with her fingertips. Yesterday afternoon was spent like this, so lacking in definition, and she wonders why Mummy has to slave at KPMG, always coming home late, like twelve-midnight late, even when Daddy’s already famous and makes quite a bit. Nobody has time to take her to places of interest her classmates often advertise in class: Mandai Zoo, Jurong Bird Park, Sentosa Island, Botanic Gardens, Haw Par Villa. Eugenia wants to watch Disney on Ice. She wants to catch Lion King Live. But suppose word from the grapevine’s true that Daddy might earn a bit-part role in a new Hollywood film—which would make him the first local actor ever—then it’ll be a year of filming in the USA. That means he won’t have time to take her anywhere. And it all depends on whether he wins Best Male Actor at Star Awards this year. Daddy totally deserves the award, Eugenia thinks. Even the pundits agree with her. Because he recently played this anorexic with kidney failure battling demons, and it seemed so real! He’d worked so hard for it; he ate so little that his hair started falling out! So much so that Uncle Jerry—Daddy’s buddy and long-time agent—started booking hair transplant sessions for Daddy.
Eugenia wants to laugh: maybe Uncle Jerry doesn’t understand what Daddy was trying to do, but it’s called method acting. Like what Dustin Hoffman did for Rain Man. Eugenia Googled it. Gotta buck up, Uncle Jerry! She can’t always be the one coming up with fresh ideas. Like suggesting Mummy and herself go on a keto diet at home so Daddy won’t feel so alone. She doesn’t get why Daddy would say no, no, no—no keto diet, zone diet, vegan diet, and whatnot. He said it would give him more sleepless nights to think about his Queen and Princess not eating as they please. “Stop this nonsense,” he said. “Stop it right now. Damn it!” Look at the shadows under his eyes, darker than coffee stains, heavier than storm clouds. “Listen,” he said, “Listen. Something’s seriously wrong with this fucking industry. Let’s pack up and go. We’ll start anew. Yes?”
“No,” said Mummy.
“Is Uncle Jerry coming with us?” asked Eugenia.
The whole multi-purpose hall is wrapped in the smell of sweat. Out of all four corners boom Eye of the Tiger on repeat. Jerry is slouched, snacking on an Old Chang Kee curry puff and watching the Honourable Tang go up and down the hall, saying to one actor and then another, I admire you. I admire you and the goodness of your heart—Jerry imagines that is what Tang would say.
Jerry turns his gaze to Maximilian Hao, his buddy, who is whispering to an actor nursing rope burns, and both actors shoot glances at Tang, who is now saluting the portrait of the President and First Lady hanging high up on the wall. Tang then wiggles his finger at his PA, and the young, buck-toothed man hurries over, dropping his notebook, picking it up, and then dropping it again.
“Cancel golf and Jujitsu,” Tang’s voice echoes through the hall, over the music. “And my lunchtime auction. Get Fahmi to bring the car outside.”
Jerry studies his watch and mumbles to himself, Nap time. He stares at the PA’s lips as they move, and he thinks the PA might drop the notebook again.
“You young people,” Tang suddenly shouts, and the music stops. Everyone turns to stare. “Can’t you take one simple instruction without asking a thousand and one questions? You’re like my boys at home. When I tell them to stop posting pictures of expensive shit on Facebook, they have to first ask me why. Is it so difficult? To just listen? When I shot your grandmother to the top of my waiting list, did I ask any questions? Did I? Maybe now I should ask a few: Is she in possession of some regenerative superpower I should know about? Has she miraculously grown a new kidney? She no longer needs dialysis? If so, you must tell me. I have thousands waiting to replace her.”
Jerry gets onto his feet—but someone fear-farted—and Jerry sits down again. He scans the hall, looking for the culprit, who is none other than a pretty actress about to get shot in the back with blow darts.
The woman sinks to her knees and covers her face with her hands. Her PA hurries over with a cardigan and drapes it over her shaking shoulders.
“Mr. Tang,” the actress says. “Can you assign me to do something else? Please? I can talk. I’m good with the mic. Let me host the show. How much are you paying that Taiwan guy? I’ll pay you back exactly, and then I’ll host for free.”
“You’re telling me this at final rehearsal?” Tang says.
“Or how about one thousand jumping jacks? It’s funny. I swear. I read somewhere that humour can spur people to donate. No, actually I’ve seen it. In—in the UK. Red Nose Day? Two thousand jumping jacks?”
“We’ve gone through this, Jeen.”
“Please.”
“You and blow darts have to go together.”
“But why?”
Stop asking questions, Jerry thinks of shouting across the hall. He knows that Tang is about to take out her contract and tell the actress to suck a thumb. And she would have to suck her thumb. Because Tang would ask her to. Jerry shakes his head. Why can’t these people see that they’re the ones being done a favour? The more sickening the stunt, the higher their popularity rating shoots. By-product? Lucrative endorsement deals. It’s a no-brainer. There are young newbies willing to jerk Tang off under a table just to do pull-ups over a tank of swimming piranhas on Tang’s charity show. Next thing they know, they’re on prime-time serial drama. The newbies win Best Newcomer, and they come back again for more stunts and win Best Supporting Actor. Maxi had understood this early in his career. And these days Maxi appearing on screen alone guarantees a thousand calls, the show’s statistician had informed Tang, who then clued Jerry in. The moment Maxi’s lips touch the cobra’s head? Double the figure? Triple? Who knows?
Jerry wonders if the actors have heard: Tang is taking a hiatus. Someone else will have to come up with the bombastic innovations now. A claw-machine? Jerry can feel tears in his eyes: he was the one who tipped off Tang that an audit was coming, that The Straits Times smells something. Sure enough, Tang’s CCTVs captured journalist and cameramen snooping outside his home, where his wife and children eat and sleep. And Tang had to pay Jerry and Fahmi extra to muscle those pests away and drive all six cars out to some warehouse to hide them.
Hello, California.
Hello, brand-new start.
Jerry was at Tang’s family dinner when Tang announced to his boys the grand plan.
“Fuck O Level,” Tang said. “You’re taking SATs. And fuck your friends. You’re making new American friends. Pick up an accent, go ahead. Whatever. Play nice, learn to play baseball. Forget the ninth of August. We’re going to celebrate Fourth of July. As a family.”
Tang then flashed a pair of tickets to the Super Bowl and ComicCon, just in case. He promised the boys Mustangs when they hit sixteen. But the boys started cursing at their father. And Tang just sat there with an abalone in his mouth, unable to swallow, and Jerry excused himself to the bathroom where he sat on the toilet and listened to the shouting and screaming and shattering of plates.
Jerry spots Maximilian leaving his station and striding over to Tang.
“Maximilian Hao!” Tang screams, “If you leave your station without permission one more time…”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Jerry puts away the curry puff and touches his hair. Maxi is going kamikaze! Jerry tries waving at his buddy but gets no response.
Maximilian removes Jeen’s cardigan.
“This is the reason,” Maximilian says, pointing to the scar on her back which looks like a decayed leaf. “Top Dog here wants the audience to think you got it from stunt training.”
“I got this at a playground when I was twelve.”
Maximilian smacks his forehead.
“All right, all right. Enough.” Tang pulls Maximilian aside. “Is this about the cobra? I gave you a choice, remember? Between that and—and—what’s the other thing?”
“Tongue and spinning fan,” Jerry whispers.
“Tongue and spinning fan,” Maximilian says.
“You trying to tell me something, Max? At least you had a choice. You think I didn’t see you kick the water cooler just now? Really think I didn’t see?”
“Was just trying to get it to work, Boss.”
“Oh, is it? Not trying to cause any trouble at all?”
“Why would I? We’re neighbours. Practically friends. Are we not?”
Now Jerry can hardly breathe. He looks out and sees Fahmi parking the car downstairs, next to the bonsai trees. So close, he thinks and hangs his head. He mumbles, Bastard. What good is it to burn bridges now? What about Hollywood? Jerry had fought hard for tongue-and-fan. And he can’t understand why Maxi wants to stick with the snake. Why don’t clients ever fucking listen? Is Maxi able to predict what the snake might do at the critical moment? What if the snake suddenly decides it’s sick of Maxi’s face, bites him on the lips? Lots of capillaries there. Sensory nerves. That’s why kisses feel so good on the lips. Maxi must have forgotten how it feels. Maybe Maxi should stop trying to play hero and pay more attention at home and shower his wife with honeyed words every once in a while. Maybe Maxi needs marriage counselling. Or are celebrities too high and mighty for it? Sometimes it’s easier not to take yourself too seriously, Jerry thinks. There’s no need to kick up a fuss every time Sammi compares him to a bowl of gloopy porridge in front of the therapist—all you need to do is nod. Look at how perfect things are now: he gets to kiss Sammi in the morning and actually enjoy it.
He knows that Sammi can’t wait to relocate to Malibu; she’s been yapping nonstop about waking up in a house by the sea. In the not-too-distant past, Jerry would have brought up Africa and its starving children, and, waving a hand, told her to get some perspective. But now, having seen her so brave, not collapsing like a rag doll when she found out she had breast cancer four days after her father’s funeral, Jerry tells himself he would lie on a bed of broken glass for her. Or—or samurai swords. He’d pull himself up twenty-three storeys using rope and pulley. But he can’t. He’s only an agent. Who, contrary to popular belief, despite his glamorous job title, couldn’t even afford his wife’s mastectomy, and so he had to work part-time jobs, and on top of that, borrow money from Tang. And now Tang expects to be kept in the loop about what Maxi has up his sleeves.
“Let him be,” Jerry told Maximilian. “Don’t poke the hornet’s nest.” Because if Tang looks over now and gives Jerry the signal, well, that’s it.
Over. Finito. Habis.
“I got your contract Xeroxed upstairs,” Tang says. “And you know what it spells? Let me clue you in. Word starts with O, ends with an N. Or you need me to get Jerry to bring it down here?”
“Why don’t we both go to your office?” Maximilian says. “I’ll get Jerry to buy us some bubble tea. We’ll sit down, and we’ll talk.”
“You want to talk to me?”
“Problem?”
“You have any idea what kind of operation I run? You know how many people I save each year?”
“Tang,” says Maximilian. “Get this straight. This—what I’m doing here—is a courtesy call.”
Jerry watches both the men staring at him. He receives the signal like an arrow to the heart, and he is scratching at his cheek, craving for a cigarette. Sweet, sweet cigarettes. He bites his knuckles and thinks hard about Sammi. What kind of asshole is he if he still can’t properly quit after what happened to his wife? Just one puff? Surely she’ll understand the amount of stress he’s under right at this very moment; the weight of the world was resting on his shoulders. He’d agreed, shook on it, to do what Tang wanted to be done when Tang wanted it to be done; he knows what The Signal means. This man you do not burn, Jerry thinks. This is a man who has put half the nation’s talents on annual suicide missions and received awards for it. Also, what Tang wanted to be done could be done to Sammi too. Tang has other lap dogs—that PA who walks around with two left feet?
Jerry chucks the curry puff and dusts his hands and puts on his shoes. He does nothing for a moment or two, except watch Tang and Maximilian march out the hall, heading upstairs to Tang’s office. Then he rummages inside Maximilian’s backpack. He pulls out the face towel, the change of clothes, the 100-Plus, the Ziploc containing plasters and lip balm and hypertension pills and inhaler, dumping them all on the floor.
He finds Maximilian’s keys, the whole gamut: locker, car, gate, letterbox.
Clouds block the sun. The street is empty and largely in shadow. The dogs neglect to bark as he drives past the gates. Are those flamingos? he thinks. What the hell?
He hears thunder rumbling in the sky.
Good.
He clears his throat before turning the key.
He pushes the door gently.
Eugenia is on the sofa with a book on her lap. She stares up at him with big Tweety Bird eyes. Chocolate smudge on her chin.
“Hullo, Uncle Jerry. Where’s Daddy?”
Jerry bends down to remove his shoes, but thinks, why the hell bother? What if he needs a quick escape? His hands are shaking. How quickly can he fix his laces? And if his laces aren’t done properly, how soon will he trip and crash and black the hell out? And when he wakes up, he’ll wake up in the hospital, and one of his wrists will be cuffed to the bed frame, Sammi will be staring at him, her lips trembling, waiting for answers, waiting for him to explain why as of now two police officers are standing in the room. Which can only happen if they caught him lifeless like a scarecrow and were able to remove the balaclava he was wearing—
Oh, fuck me.
“Your daddy’s still getting ready,” he looks up and says. “Tonight’s the big night, remember?”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Yes of course,” Jerry lies. “Your daddy trained really, really hard.”
Why are her eyes closed, fists clenched? Oh my god. Is she praying?
“Oh, Eugenia,” he whispers, and adds an affectionate shake of his head.
He leaves her alone and hastens to comb the bedrooms, toilets. To play it safe, he checks under the beds, spaces that have been converted to graves for squeaky toys orphaned by the girl.
“Anybody else home?” he shouts from the pinkest bedroom in the house.
He goes downstairs. “Where’s your mummy?”
Eyes pinched, Eugenia shrugs.
“Seriously, tell me. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to think harder, Eugenia. Did she leave a note on the fridge or WhatsApp you? Can you find out for me?”
The girl opens her eyes. “I’m not allowed to call her unless it is really an emergency.”
“This is urgent.”
“But I’ll get a scolding,” Eugenia mewls. “Mummy already said she’s busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy with some big audit. I don’t even know what that means.”
Jerry rests his burlap sack on the coffee table and sits next to the girl. He pats her head. “Nom, nom, nom. Looks like someone’s having a private party.”
Eugenia blushes and offers him strawberries.
“Is that John Mayer?” he asks.
“Yup.”
“He’s got some mad skills.”
“I know, right?”
“Did your daddy ever tell you that he and I met Mr. Mayer before? If I recall correctly, it was about two years ago. When he came to perform in Singapore. And your daddy got Mr. Mayer to autograph his guitar.”
Eugenia grabs her skirt. “Why he never tell me?”
Yes, why not?
Because it was the right thing to do.
Because Maxi always does the right thing, doesn’t he? Choosing to auction the guitar for charity instead of giving it to his daughter. Jerry stares at the poor girl biting her lip. Why the hell is he telling her this? What kind of monster does that? As if the physical harm he’s about to do isn’t enough, he has to amp it up with psychological ones. Now the poor lamb’s going to think her daddy doesn’t love her. Now—
Jerry’s phone beeps.
A message from Mr. Tang: Chop-chop.
Jerry, with a heavy heart, opens the burlap sack.
“What’s that?” Eugenia asks.
“Halloween costumes for us.”
“Halloween is still like months away.”
“Yes, yes. But you know how your daddy prepared for months and months for his acting the last time?”
“Until it was perfect.”
“Exactly.”
“So what we gonna be?”
“We’re gonna try hostage.”
“Okay, I’ll be Kidnapper. You be Hostage.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t be Hostage.” Jerry shows the girl his fists. “Look, they are big like rocks. The cable ties I brought are too small. Come, gimme your hand. Let me see if it fits.” And he fastens the cable around her wrists. “Perfect. Now your legs, please.”
Eugenia tips to the side like an egg. She giggles.
“Okay, now open your mouth.”
She opens her mouth.
“Bigger.”
She widens it until her jaws hurt.
“Some more.”
“Uh-uh.”
A bundle of firecrackers goes in.
Jerry pops his Zippo and strikes the wheel. He floats the flame as close as he can to the fuse without igniting it. “Say cheese!”
“Heeee.”
Jerry snaps a picture and sends it over to Tang.
Meanwhile, John Mayer is allowed to sing another song or two. But when the music stops, Jerry doesn’t refresh the playlist. He doesn’t like that Mayer fella, actually, who’s so smug. All Jerry wanted was a photograph together, but this snob would rather die than give. And Maxi gets to be on a first-name basis with him? Jerry squeezes an orange cushion shaped like a spaceship and rises from the sofa. Why is life so unfair?
“Don’t move, okay?” he tells Eugenia and helps himself to chilled cucumber water in the kitchen. He drinks in silence, reads the to-buy list pinned to the fridge. Steak, cheese, fish, ice-cream, scallop, chocolate, nougat, macadamia nut, cherry tomato, olive, strawberry. “Scallops,” he says to himself. He washes his own cup, for old times’ sake, while staring at the list—
Thud!
He hurries back to the living room.
Eugenia is on the carpet, wriggling, cheek flat on the carpet.
He flips her and holds her by the shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asks and heaves her back onto the sofa and watches her tiny chest rise and fall. Her calves and feet are cold. “You want a blanket?”
He tries to sound cheerful and easy-going. But the girl shakes her head, sniffling and clearing her throat. She must be so confused that her brain hurts, he thinks. The pain in her jaws must be insane.
She’s tearing up!
Jerry can’t quite make out what she’s trying to say to him. She’s making sick-puppy sounds! He considers turning the music back on. He looks for the time and tries to shut out the whimpering noise by focusing on the clock’s hard ticking.
At six sharp Jerry snaps the TV on.
The show’s fanfare gives a warm welcome, promising a feast. Everyone, please, do not try this at home. Camera pans over to the live audience, zooms in on a B-lister walking across beams placed sixty-six storeys high. There is a burst of applause, and the donation hotline blinks on the screen. Meanwhile, another actor readies himself over a container swarmed with honeybees. A couple video montages come up: stricken-faced patients, contorted with worry. What will their victory be? A couple more reminders to dial and dial and dial. Then blow darts are driven into Jeen’s bare back as she shivers, her toes curling. Paramedics are on stand-by. Donations pour in. Jerry bites his lips. Another household name chains herself in a glass tank that is slowly filling with water while her sweaty colleagues jump through fire hoops and scale a scaffolded structure to retrieve the keys before she runs out of air. But still, the amount hasn’t quite reached Tang’s target. Climb motherchook climb. A commercial break. And finally, Maxi comes on stage. His face paler than a cauliflower. The numbers spring up a little, but then stagnate.
Jerry strikes the wheel, and the flame comes on.
The girl’s eyes are red and goggling. By now she knows they’re not actually goofing around. She has intuited what to look out for on screen.
Come on, brother.
Maxi kneels on stage.
The cobra is taken out from its basket.
Come on, brother.
Maxi crawls towards the cobra. They are now only a couple of inches apart, facing each other like hunter and prey.
Come on, brother. Hollywood is waiting.
* * *
Maximilian’s hair is wet with rain. He is exhausted but still makes his way to pick his daughter up from school. He smiles to himself, thinking of Eugenia at the breakfast table this morning.
She’d asked him, somewhat nervously, “Daddy, what is an intransitive verb?”
And he’d said to her, “Princess, it’s okay if you don’t pass this time. No one will blame you.”
Eugenia had looked at him funny and said, “But an exam is an exam.”
He sees Eugenia coming out now, dragging her feet, and she confesses to him right away that she couldn’t answer several open-ended questions in her English paper.
“I think I’m going to fail,” she sighs and starts for home.
Maximilian follows his daughter but struggles to keep up. He struggles to understand why she’s upset over this, but not a word at all regarding yesterday’s assault. He stays two steps behind and thinks of how his daughter has yet to see lions and orangutans at Mandai Zoo, and how her friends must have teased her about this. And yet she has never complained.
His daughter is tough, he suddenly realises, and perhaps more so than he is. This makes him so, so happy.
Eugenia stops and turns around. “Don’t tell Mummy?”
Maximilian smiles and nods. He sees a guard stationed outside the school waving at him, giving him the thumbs-up, and it takes him a while to understand what it’s for. Maximilian stands motionless for a few minutes, breathing deeply through his nostrils. He rubs the raindrops off his cheeks. He looks up and sees a plane and his eyes trail it until they begin to ache. He takes out his phone, checks it, and puts it back in his pocket. Then he quickens his pace and catches up with Eugenia.
We were going to scrape that possum off the road because somebody had to do it. That’s what our Dads said, trucks rattling in neighboring driveways, complaining about the borough workers, asking nobody in particular where their taxes went, if not to cleaning up a dead possum right in the middle of the intersection. The Biology teacher had even joked about dissecting it for class, because it was the intersection right next to the high school and so every student and every teacher saw it, curled up and still in the mornings then somehow more freshly dead in the afternoons.
It was my idea, but I’d only thought of it because I was trying to impress Gina.
“No, no sorry. Maybe I wasn’t clear” Gina said.
A garden shovel dangled from the Walmart cashier’s limp wrist.
“We meant like, one of the orange ones. One for snow shoveling. Wide like.” I spread my hands out past my shoulders.
“In May? Okay well, I’ll go check the back, we might have some left over from last season.”
Behind us, the claw machine was a swirl of hot pinks and bubblegum blues. A carnival song crackled from its speaker.
Gina tore open a bag of peach rings and we yanked them apart with our back molars. I watched her lips suck on the pale yellow underbellies of the candies and wondered, again, how Duck could have ever dumped her for a mousy-looking, furniture modeling sophomore.
We still weren’t clear on the specifics of furniture modeling. Neither of us understood how placing a fifteen-year-old girl next to staged warehouse sectionals made them look any more appealing. When we talked about it, which was at least twice a day, Gina said it had to be the trashiest modeling job you could get around here, and that was saying something because there were lots of girls modeling bikinis for vape shops.
I reached for another peach ring but Gina rolled the bag up and shoved it in her back pocket.
“I think we’re good for now.” Her tiger-striped belly button ring glinted at me from between her cropped tank top and rolled-up Soffe shorts. She was always yanking food away and making me feel embarrassed for wanting it in the first place.
She’d done it when we were kids, best friends who got our ears pierced together at Claire’s and then shared Auntie Anne’s pretzel nuggets to celebrate. Yanked them to her side of the table and said I was eating too much too fast. And she was doing it now, since we’d reconnected two months ago.
We stopped being best friends in December of fifth grade. From their weather sealed deck, Gina’s family watched as my dad scaled a pine tree in our yard and sawed the top clean off. He said it was our Christmas tree for the year and he didn’t want to hear another word about it. Her dad laughed, gave a thumbs up. Her mom kept a French manicured hand to her mouth. The next day during indoor recess we played M.A.S.H. It was my turn and the game said I’d marry a plumber. The verdict was out on how many kids and whether we’d live in a mansion or a shack. Gina brought up the tree in front of everyone. It’s gaudy, she said, gaudy and trashy. I knew the words weren’t hers. They globbed on the desk like spilled oatmeal, stuck there and burned my cheeks up. What’s gaudy mean? A boy asked. Tacky, she said, proud of herself for remembering her mother’s synonym. And ugly, she added after a pause, that word all her own. I snagged the hall pass, sped walked to the bathroom. After that I was too ashamed to knock on her door anymore and she didn’t seem to miss playing with me.
Then last month, Gina was knocking on my door again, asking for rides to and from school since Duck dumped her. In exchange, she let me borrow Cosmo magazines, taught me about matte lipsticks and bikini waxes, told me my butt looked good in American Eagle jeans, and said I was too smart for any of the guys at school. I lived for those compliments.
Duck also happened to be in my Physics class. She would pry for information as I drove us home from school, taking the backroads so I could smoke half a Marlboro Gold and shove the other half back into the pack. I strained my ears during Physics and wrote everything Duck said about the furniture model in the margins of my notebook. They got sushi at the mall, they were going to the party at Kandace’s house, he’d found a tie to match her prom dress.
The cashier emerged from the storage room doors thrusting the snow shovel in the air like a splintery trophy.
It was a twenty-minute drive back to the possum. Cherry blossom petals fell onto my windshield like fat, pink snowflakes. Gina’s thighs were splayed out to the sides, the shovel propped on the passenger’s mat in between them. If I squinted and unfocused my eyes just right, it was winter, it was snowing, Gina and I were kids again going to make some money with our shovel. We didn’t know anything of heartbreak or the lengths you go to make it stop.
I’d never dated anyone for as long as Gina dated Duck. Eight months. But in ninth grade, I smoked weed for the first time with Chris and he fingered me so hard in the woods behind the park that it broke my hymen. When he dumped me for a more popular girl I wrote the lyrics to “Cut Here” by the Cure on my arms in Sharpie and hid them under my black long-sleeved shirts. So I did know something of heartbreak, even if it wasn’t as freshly snapped as Gina’s.
Gina passed me our plastic water bottle of Pinnacle Whipped. I gulped and felt her eyes on me and clenched my face muscles so they wouldn’t grimace then handed it back to her.
She took a medium-sized sip and screwed the cap on, paused, opened it again, and took another sip. I wiggled my hand and she handed it back.
She started to flick the window control lever with her index finger, making a thwack-thwack-thwack sound. I turned up the music.
“What the fuck even is this?”
I turned it back down and took another sip.
She kept flicking her finger against the lever. Thwack-thwack-thwack.
The edges of the road smeared like oily pastels. The mud into the spruce, magnolias into the last bit of orange at the base of the sky.
Thwack-thwack-thwack.
Gina was always attempting to rid herself of the pain in pathetic spurts like this.
I’d watched her furiously apply mascara to her top lids like she was trying to rip them off. Seen her accidentally breaking pencil tips, grinding them into stubs at the sharpener, conveniently located by the door, waiting for Duck and his new girlfriend to walk down the hall. Slam the passenger side door so hard like she could trap her pain in my Jetta if she just shut it fast enough.
There were easier ways, I knew. I could have told her about pressing a shaving razor into my thigh and how it had a much higher payoff than her minuscule leaks of rage. But I was worried she’d call me a freak so I kept my mouth shut.
I put it in park in the middle of the intersection and flipped the hazards on. We approached the possum in silence out of respect for the dead or fear of people peering out of their closed curtains, or both.
Eighteen-wheelers rattled past on the interstate, jostling what was left of the possum’s fur. Its guts were mostly flat now, organs indistinguishable, just one small sheet of deep pink. Mouth open with razor teeth lurched forward. I’d seen it only in quick glances from cars. Now, it started to transform into something more real and more dead than I’d previously imagined. Above us, the traffic light switched colors, green light splashed over Gina’s babydoll face. The vodka squirmed in my stomach.
I squatted on the ground, held the black trash bag open with both hands. Gina pushed at its body with the shovel, slowly peeling it from the road. One string of guts stuck to the asphalt. I had to bury my hands in the bag and break the cord while Gina held the shovel still.
The possum teetered on the edge of the bright orange shovel. I was floating over my body, the burning tendons in my calves from squatting the only thing tethering me to it.
“Shit, car,” Gina said, and flung the possum into the bag. It made a smooth, crinkle sound when it landed. I was suddenly all too aware of my arms, the weight of the blood pumping through them, the thickness of my skin held somehow together, keeping me from leaking out into the world.
I stared up at Gina, sandy brown hair wisped by trails of diesel fumes, perfect bare nails clenching the now brown blood-stained shovel. The light turned red. I bunched the top of the bag, tucked it down, made a loop, pulled it through, and stood up.
“Nevermind. Turning.” Gina didn’t look relieved, but she hadn’t looked stressed at the sight of the car to begin with. I hoped a car would come, that we’d have to toss the garbage bag to the side of the road and high tail it out of there. Maybe Gina hoped that too.
“I guess… the trunk?” I shrugged my shoulders a little to make the question seem more casual, like this was just another bag of clothes for Goodwill.
Gina was like I’d never seen her before. She folded her thumbs over and over each other in her lap. No thwacking now, just the slick sound of her skin rubbing against itself. The air in the car tasted flat, like all the bubbliness had leaked out while we were scooping up the possum.
She’d heard all about Duck and his new girlfriend from me, but she’d never actually seen them together. They had all different classes and lunch periods. I could tell she was thinking about how sick she might feel when she really saw the furniture model’s house.
“We should finish this bottle, yah know, in case we get pulled over or something.” I lit one of my half-smoked Marlboro Lights.
“Literally not gonna ever happen with how slow you drive but, okay.”
Gina sipped, then handed the bottle to me to finish off, her saliva glistening on the rim as I wrapped my lips around it.
It was supposed to be simple. Identify the furniture model’s house by her car: A white Nissan Maxima with a tye-dye girls volleyball sticker on the back windshield. Open the trunk. Grab the possum. Drop the possum on her front porch. Run.
Gina twisted her torso towards the window as we pulled into the development. This was it. She was going to rid my car of the possum and with it all of her anger and bitterness and heartache over Duck.
My foot hovered above the gas pedal. We circled through cul de sac after cul de sac of beige siding and gaudy fake stone houses.
Nearing the end of our first complete circle around the development, I rutsched around in my seat trying to squash the tingling in my bladder.
“Maybe she parks in the garage?” I offered. Gina’s iPhone glowed a pixelated blue as she made the rounds: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
“Nothing. Nothing from either of them all night.”
No posts meant they were holed up in Duck’s bedroom, wrestling around on his waterbed, or watching Fight Club and making out on his futon. It didn’t matter exactly what they were doing, just that it was precious and private enough to keep them off the internet on a Friday night.
Gina let her phone drop face down onto the grey floor mat.
I circled us around again, trying to manifest the Nissan into existence, trying to ignore my growing need to pee.
On the third go-round, a porch light whipped on. I steered us to the other end of the development and switched the headlights off. Blood thudded in my ears. Gina bit at her index finger for a few seconds until she realized she’d used that hand to touch the shovel that touched the possum and she rolled down the window to spit. The whole of my existence seemed reduced to the burning in my bladder.
“I have to piss”
“So do it” Gina kept her head turned away from me.
The grass covered my flip-flopped feet in sludge as I walked towards the trees. I squatted down and steadied my head as the sound of my car idling and my pee hitting the grass and crickets swelled all around. I watched Gina’s silhouette swat tears from her eyes. I knew we weren’t going to find her house and that after this Gina probably wouldn’t care all that much about hanging out with me and that I’d be stuck with the possum, left to dispose of it on my own.
“Let’s go around one more time?” Gina said when I got back to the car.
I drove us even slower this time, pretending to look closely at each house for any evidence that a furniture model might live there, trying not to think about Duck or Gina or the dead possum or having to go back into school on Monday or how embarrassed I felt that my plan failed and how bad I’d want to use my razor later or how now Gina was going to keep slamming my car door for the foreseeable future since she couldn’t get her revenge, trying to focus instead on the swing sets and Mercedes Benz’s and lifted trucks and well-manicured lawns and stop signs. I could tell Gina was trying not to think about things too because her right leg was bouncing up and down really fast.
I officially gave up on looking for the furniture model’s house. Her car wasn’t there. Everyone’s blinds were shut and lit from behind by the glow of flat-screen TVs. I wished we had brought more vodka. Gina’s leg suddenly stopped shaking and she held up a dainty wrist.
“Here is fine.”
I pulled the lever and the trunk popped. Gina slid out. In the rearview mirror, I watched her heave the bag up and hold it to her chest. Glossy black glinted under the street light. She walked up to the front porch and kneeled on the slate steps. She patted it once, like she’d reached some kind of truce with the possum. Gina knew, and I knew that it didn’t even matter whose house it was. Then she stood, pivoted on the heels of her mustard yellow flip-flops.
Back in the car, Gina switched on the overhead light, dug around for the peach rings.
“Yours if you want them,” she tossed the bag into my lap.
The ridged bottom landed on my thighs. I opened them, let the bag slip down just a little and then I squeezed together until it scraped me.
She isn’t the most beautiful woman I have ever seen but I haven’t seen a woman in eight months or more and am turning, quickly, to dust. By haven’t seen a woman I mean haven’t seen Leanne, though either way it’s hot sand, glass and friction. It’s a wonder my cabin doesn’t go up in flames, everything made of wood as it is, working on myself at night as I do. It would only take one spark.
She is sitting out on a small mound of grass that I think of as the stoop, her back turned to me. It faces a dirty strip of road that leads to a potholed road that leads to a regular road that leads to the motorway. Here there are the caravan cabins, as I have come to think of them, given their oblong shape, their tendency to live where the caravans pitch. It’s autumn now. Gales of leaves, holidays over, wind a growing penetration. Almost all the cabins are empty. Caravans all dragged out of sight.
She’s wearing a dress that looks like a potato sack, but I realise it’s supposed to be that way. Despite its form, stiff and consuming, it has an honesty of colour which tells me it is brand new. Simple haircut. No shorts. Goosebumps surely. I squint.
The wind disguises the click of the door, so she doesn’t hear me coming. She is focussed on the maple tree in the grove just in front of her. It spits seeds to the ground like helicopters crashing. She watches their blades as they twirl. I am focussed on the back of her head, her short hair – mousy brown turning peroxide dead at the ends. Another helicopter bombs to the ground, only to be blown up to the sky again. Disaster here is bright. It plays constantly, on loop.
‘Ahoy’ I call, unsocialised. There is an owl who spends the nights screaming in my chimney. The blunt confusion of the sound has obliterated many things.
Potato Neck turns. ‘You,’ she says, and I get a proper look.
Freckly skin. Short eyelashes. Her features gnarled and dented. Intense. Almost troll-like, honestly. Her nose is a language I don’t understand. It has a mole. Not necessarily on it, but beside it. Around it. An ominous darkness, in the crevice of her nose and cheek. It pulls at my pupils like a black hole.
‘Me?’ I ask.
She nods, playing with the fringe of her sack. ‘I was just about to come over and ask you something.’ She points to the cabin beside mine. ‘We’re neighbours.’
‘Right.’
‘But I can’t really think of how to say it.’
‘Okay.’
‘I think I’m going to put it bluntly. You seem like maybe you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Alright.’
‘It’s just that I have a bit of a habit…’
I accidentally tune her out. She turns and bends in the middle, reaches down to the stoop and returns with a new look in her eye. Her irises are a heinous pale blue; the skin beneath them yellowed; her hands are lavender; the bold bones of her knuckles, harsh pink; her palms are open and somehow… green.
Potato Neck is covered in goosebumps. I look down and realise she is holding the biggest jar of weed I have seen in my life.
‘… so, please don’t think I want to tell you this, I promise you, I hate this, but I just have to know – Do you have any tobacco? And does your stove have a light?’
The air waits and hangs. Prematurely begins to slow. I nod.
‘Yeah. Follow me.’
*
I set the jar down on the coffee table. It’s the only table I have, and the only thing that differs my cabin from the others. Sitting low on the floorboards, in front of the two-seater sofa, and the fireplace I’ve never lit. It’s oval shaped, made of strong mahogany and embellished round the edges. Bright little birdies painted in gold. It was Leanne’s and I took it when I left.
‘Oh my fucking god,’ Potato Neck says, staring at the jars, standing on my rug.
‘I know.’
‘They look good.’
They look weird because they look like siblings. Glass-eyed. Gleaming. Matching orange lids on their heads. Identical, in size, shape and amour, perfectly opposite in every other way. Her jar, sweaty, reeking and ripe. It taints the air. Mine, weathered, old, and brown – dry like everything else.
‘Why do you keep it like that?’ she asks.
‘I buy it in bulk, and I hate the plastic packet. The pictures of lungs. The guy with the throat.’
‘Is yours a Rossini’s jar?’
‘Sorry?’
She’s pointing.
‘The lid. Pasta sauce. Rossini’s, no?’
‘No.’
Potato Neck is slumped into my sofa and I am standing in front of her.
‘What then?’
I start: ‘I used to work in a sweet shop, part time. I took home some bonbons,’ but she speaks over my final word.
‘Ash, I think we need to roll a spliff.’
I ask her, ‘Sorry, how do you know my name?’
But she’s gone. Already moved on. To the jars, to pinching and mixing. A pack of papers appearing from seemingly nowhere. Her sack has no pockets. No bra straps, so no way for her to hold things like Leanne. It isn’t until later when I am lying in my single bed and my head feels like the concept of a plum and my hands like two spiders who love me in turns, that I realise actually, they were probably mine.
*
One of us has one thing, and the other has the other, and neither of us has both. We live in holiday homes in Scotland, where summer is irregular, near a loch that is not Loch Lomond. October when it rains can be lonely. Circumstance makes life feel miraculous.
It has been ten months, ten, not eight, since I have seen anyone without pork breath and an Adam’s apple. My friend, Barry, lives next to a big supermarket, about forty minutes away. He brings me goods on a three-week rotation because I don’t know how to drive a car. Groceries, tobacco, a hell of a lot of soup. When Leanne’s heart froze and I went away, Barry offered to do the drops – because Barry is a good friend that way.
I do not know why Potato Neck is here. I ask and she doesn’t tell me.
The green tint sets in. The cherry glow at the end of a joint, the harsh vibrance of my burning throat – these things come, and they never leave. Everything that we do is either pre-smoke, post-smoke or during. My memory works without beginnings or ends.
The world falls out of its tight and inscrutable order.
*
The door slams open. Potato Neck tramps out from the bathroom, aghast. That distance, from the tiled square of shower, toilet, sink, to the part outside the door, dubbed ‘hallway’, is tiny. Still, she makes it look like a stride.
‘What?’ I say. I have a banana in my upturned palms, and I am impressed by its skin, velveteen, and stunned by the strange weight of it. You are a fruit, I think, and giggle. Potato Neck is wearing pyjama shorts patterned with watermelon seeds and my t-shirt, but I don’t know how. She doesn’t like to stay over. It has a bat on it. I ask her, ‘Did you take that?’
‘There’s a spot on my tit.’
‘Wha-at?’
‘A spot on my tit. A pimple on my breast.’
‘You’re telling me about your breast?’
She swipes me over the back of the head as she walks back into the living room, crossing the wires on the ground. I don’t know why I brought it with me, but I have a Gamecube here. A bunch of games. Even two controllers. We’re playing right now. I forgot that’s what we’re doing. She asked me – can we play your Gamecube?
‘Ash.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Can you not be a weird fucking man for a moment.’
But I’m not distracted about her breasts. I’m distracted about the whole world. This is all new to me. This flavour in my mouth. Not unfriendly. Like spoons and bitter leaves. I didn’t realise how fucking huge a thought could be. I didn’t realise how much space there is between any two things. I am walking down a long hall of mirrors, shooting myself the finger guns and there’s one million of me, finger-gunning back. Potato Neck is still talking about her breast.
‘What’s wrong with your breast?’
She huffs. I’m leaning a little far to the left.
‘It has a spot.’
‘So?’
‘It’s a boob. I’ve never had a spot on my boob before.’
‘You can get spots everywhere. No one ever told you you can get spots everywhere?’
‘No. No one ever gave me the tit spot talk. I thought it was cancer. Then I popped it.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Oh, sure.’
Potato Neck crushes me at Mario Kart, whizzing around corners, dropping bananas as Toad. I thought she would have chosen someone more like Bowser, on account of her eyebrows, but what is that supposed to mean? I was right at least that she doesn’t play Peach. I’m Luigi but I’m not doing well. I’m finally catching up to the conversation we’ve just had. There is no outfit in which Potato Neck has breasts and so I think of them like a washing board. One single raspberry smooshed through slanted sides. She’s lapped me now, whizzing round the track without needing to control. She’s waiting. Has been waiting for a while.
*
Blood flows down my face. From the wound on my head to the corner of my mouth, as if I am both drink and straw. Potato Neck is touching the sweat on my back.
‘I think you’ve cut your spine.’
‘And my head?’
‘Obviously your head.’
We were sitting down on the stoop having our morning first when I said: We sit down here every day. Why don’t we go and sit up there? And Potato Neck grinned like I’d finally managed to be interesting. She stood up in her gummy sandals, put the joint to hold in her mouth. ‘You’re right,’ she said and climbed up the maple like a monkey.
I stayed sat for a moment, trying to look up her limp purple skirt. I thought I saw stripes, exactly like this pair of boxers I own, but I checked and I’m wearing those.
‘You hit every branch.’
‘I know.’
Potato Neck helps me back to the stoop. Her hands are stained green from moss.
‘It’s funny because I had a dream like this as well.’
‘I’m not interested in your dreams.’
‘Except it wasn’t me. It was you that fell, and I had to carry you. I had goat legs.’
The stoop rises up beneath us. Potato Neck puts the cardboard roach back into my mouth. It’s made from a jaffa cake box. Blood pools, ruins my clothes. She sets fire to the ashy end. I feel like a cowboy. I tell her.
Potato Neck doesn’t respond.
I push the bitter end into the dirt of the ground and discover that I am woozy – but like two kinds of woozy that rub on each other. My thumb reaches out to hold the hem of her sack. I recover but it leaves a rusty stain.
*
‘What have you got? I’d kill for pizza.’
Potato Neck’s hands in my cereal box.
‘I don’t know. I don’t really use the fridge.’
‘Let me have a look.’
I’m zoned out on the sofa, legs dangling over the side. I’m having a waking nap. I haven’t had one in a long time which is weird because I used to have them always. Lying on Leanne’s loft bed, where the light had to bend to meet the ceiling. It was so nice up there, with all her stuffed animals, lined up like a marching band. My favourite was the elephant with the knob shaped nose – his name was Brian. Leanne herself could be gone for hours.
Potato Neck stomps into the kitchen, cupboard bang, bang, banging as she roots through each one thrice.
‘You don’t have basil?’
‘I don’t have fucking pepper.’
‘Fair point.’
Sometimes Brian would stare at me when I wanked in Leanne’s bed. He looked like he understood. The rest I’d have to pluck by their scrawny necks and turn to face the wall. Leanne had this duck with mean little eyes, like he always had something to think. I was fond of Brian though.
‘I keep finding bruises all over my body,’ Potato Neck says. It’s true. I’ve been spotting them too. Rotten blooms all over her toothpick legs.
‘Are you clumsy?’
‘I don’t think so.’
She is.
She is clearing the table around me, bringing plates, knives, forks, water in a tumbler because I don’t own a jug. She takes our bonbon and Rossini’s jars and puts them on the windowsill. They look redundant and therefore purposeful. Like old lady potpourri.
‘Sit up.’
Dinner is presented, made broadly of tortillas, found in the back of the cupboard; half a tube of tomato puree spread across the top. And what would be a pizza without grated cheese? It oozes slowly. A tranquilising vision. Potato Neck sets down a bowl of scabs.
‘For toppings. You don’t have any vegetables and I figure scratchings are still pork. I thought they should be optional.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
She is wearing a bright red turtleneck and some ratty jogging bottoms. We sprinkle our pizzas liberally with scabs. I fold my first slice and put it whole into my mouth.
‘Uh fuh-hin luh fooh.’
‘You love me?’ she nips, sparkling.
‘Uh luh FOOH! FOOH!’
Potato Neck leans over and pokes the big bulge in my cheek. She tilts her slice above her head and the toppings go sliding into her mouth.
‘When did you buy cheese?’
She shakes her head.
‘It was in that fridge you don’t use.’
My jaw stops.
‘This is my cheese?’
‘Well, yeah. I mean, I didn’t think you’d care.’
My stomach and my mouth separate. I can taste so much fat and suddenly the foulness of the pork. It’s in my teeth. Coated like sand on the inside of my cheeks. That cheese has been there longer than I have, wrapped in cellophane, condensation growing, lit up by the fridge bulb. Behind a thin veil of plastic, I have been watching the mould. It blooms and then it sweats. I gag.
Potato Neck watches me. ‘What’s your fucking problem?’
‘I can’t eat that.’
‘It’s cheese. It ages. I cut the mould off.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
I stand and the cabin is a boat. Stumble drunkenly from dining room to hall.
‘Pussy,’ she mutters, as I shut the bathroom door.
*
When the smoke is inside of my body, nausea becomes an abstract thing. A thing that is held by my body but not is my body, not anymore. It’s stronger, more competent at ripping down my defences – but it can be spoken to. Persuaded. I wet my face and the excess drips onto my jeans. Yank them down and then fold in the middle. My asshole puckers and puckers and cannot shit. In front of the toilet there is a mirror. Desire has darkened my eyes.
The most beautiful thing I’ve ever eaten is Leanne’s custard tart. Her own warped recipe. It tasted only of nutmeg and eggs. The feeble hope of an erection helps to lever the ache of my bowels.
‘You’re fucking disgusting,’ I murmur, and wipe.
*
When she does stay, she’s awake before I am. Hands dipping from jar to paper to jar.
‘That owl is a fucking cunt.’
*
One night we listen to the same album three times in a row because it is very good. Potato Neck makes us go top to tail because she wants to lie on the bed. She lights up and gets ash all over my blankets.
‘Are you a lesbian?’ I ask her.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m just wondering.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I thought maybe I was getting a… vibe.’
‘Do you hate women?’
‘Whoa.’
‘You’d fucking love it if I was a lesbian.’
‘I didn’t mean to ask.’
Potato Neck sits up. She’s sitting on my pillow. A song is playing now that an hour ago we almost cried at.
‘Ash, you know I’m not even remotely attracted to you, don’t you?’
I don’t know why she feels the need to say that. I turn my head in disgust.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘Your feet.’
*
We’re walking back to the cabin from the stoop and all of life is flashes and frames, strung out like the film of a film. Dirt road. Shaking tree. My shoes. The memory of Leanne’s ass, like a heart with a hole. A helicopter lands safely on my shoulder. I am looking into the night shadow of Potato Neck’s mole and at none of the space around it.
She grabs onto my wrist.
‘Don’t grab me. I might throw up.’
She grabs anyway. Drops.
I ask, ‘Are you okay?’
She’s crouching on the floor. On the slidey wooden step before the door of my cabin. She’s clinging to my leg.
‘Are you okay? I’m gonna fall.’
She doesn’t listen. Soles skidding.
‘No, seriously.’
Is she crying? I yelp, ‘Potato Neck, stand up.’
She looks up. Eyes tearless except for laughter.
‘Potato Neck?!’ she shrieks.
I don’t understand what’s funny. I shove through the unlocked door.
‘I need to lie on the floorboards.’
My knees collapse to the floor. Body flopping. Potato Neck crawls over and hangs directly above my head while I try to look up at the ceiling.
‘Potato Neck? What does that even mean? Poh-tay-toe Neck.’
Her hazy pupils have turned her eyes into eight balls.
I ignore her. ‘What were you laughing at?’ I whine.
‘Every time you smoke – you shit, or you puke. I think you’ve got IBS. Are you crying?’
‘No!’ I am. I’m crying.
‘Do you have chocolate?’ she asks.
‘No. I don’t know how to breathe.’
‘Stay on the floor.’
And then she abandons me. Sprints away, leaving the front door open. I rip my socks off, sobbing now, and the cool air soothes the soles of my feet – but something about that comfort is devastating to me. My body is confused and hard again. Leanne, Leanne, Leanne. Drinking vodka ginger, heavy on the ginger. Kneading me when I needed her. Now I can’t get anything out. Now I’m stuffed up and rancid. And when I try to think of her voice, I think wub, wub, wub and when I want to cum, I can’t. Was I so terrible? Potato Neck reappears with something purple in her freakishly small hand. Shining, crackling wrapper stripped easily to reveal the treat. Chocolate. Dairy milk. She kneels and drops a piece into my mouth.
I ask her, indistinctly ‘Will you sleep on the sofa?’
Potato Neck shakes her head no, but says, ‘fine.’
*
It’s late. I wake halfway, disoriented, inside a cloud that is not soft like hamster fur, but nauseating like smoke. They’re thick in the haze together. The heavy rub of a man’s voice reveals the needling crack of Potato Neck’s.
‘But why do you do that? Why pay for him like that? You could rent the place out and do anything. I don’t get it.’
It makes sense to me that she is saying these words.
‘I know – but it’s Ash. I’d do anything for that man. We’re like brothers.’
‘There’s no one I’d do that for.’
‘What about Francis?’
The sound of her sack, mid-shuffle. ‘Hmph.’
‘He’d do it for me,’ he says, ‘You have to be that person if you ever want someone to give you good back. That’s how that shit goes, you know?’
‘Still.’
‘You don’t understand Ash. I don’t care how long you’ve spent with him. Around me he’s open, but he’s a little wimp around women.’
‘Maybe that’s the problem.’
‘Well, how about this? One time, I got my drink spiked at this weird disco night we went to. I was on the light-up dance floor when this wave hit me. I couldn’t breathe. All this shit was coming up through my nose. I had a panic attack that felt like a stroke. But Ash was on it. Holding me up. He saw it before I did. Didn’t miss a beat.’
Sounds of smoking, passing, smoking.
‘Then – right as we’re about to leave, his neck swivels and he turns like some fucking hawk to this table by the door. There’s a man with his fingers in a drink. Same drink as mine: pink lady cocktail. I think – makes sense. Who the fuck is trying to spike me? The cunt was having his second try.’
He takes a deep and shuddering breath. ‘You know what Ash did?’
‘What?’
‘Ash punched him in the face. Lights out. Goodnight. Bye bye. So, if it wasn’t for him then me and that girl could have died. That’s who Ash is at his centre.’
He reaches down and fondly pats my foot.
‘But, Barry…’ she says. The words wince with frustration. I never get to know what that thought was going to be. Instead, she tells a story of her own, about the day I fell out a tree, about blood and smoke and how I looked something like a cowboy.
She says, ‘You know. That didn’t really touch the sides for me. All the tobacco, I think. Shall I just roll a straight blunt?’
And without questioning her reasoning I fall back asleep. In the morning, she, and the weed, are gone. She does not leave me a note.
*
Alright, in fairness, it isn’t like I haven’t noticed her. Of course, I have – as disturbing as she is. I put my hand on her leg.
We were sitting in her cabin at the time, the only time I went. Waiting to smell this candle she had. The wax was the pale morning blue of her sack. It was scented A Calm & Quiet Place.
‘Where did you get the dress that looks like that?’
Her sofa was the same as mine, but she fit more easily into it. Her hands a little pile in her lap. Fingers heaped indelicately. Scraps.
Potato Neck watched the wick of the candle.
‘Do you mean the colour?’
‘I do.’
‘I don’t remember.’
I nodded. The air wanted us to stay so still, and we did. Shoulders pressed together.
‘You must have gotten it from somewhere. It looks new.’
‘Maybe it was my sister’s. She gives me clothes all the time.’
‘You have a sister?’
‘I have three.’
‘Oh. I’m an only child.’
‘That makes sense.’
What else? She didn’t keep her clothes on the floor, so nothing for me to see there. She didn’t have a TV. There were some books, but no titles I recognised. I didn’t use her bathroom because I couldn’t work out how to say I wanted to. She didn’t care about stuffed animals. Her bed sheets were cream. There was a candle and a constant creak.
‘If I knew how to fix pipes, I would help you with that.’
‘My pipes are fine.’
‘They don’t whine like that if they’re fine.’
Potato Neck smiled, but with scrutiny. She considered me for a moment.
‘I’ll show you.’
She stood and led me round the sofa, up the hall and into the nook that was the bedroom. Beside the bed she had shoved a little table, dingy and covered in stickers peeled off. Atop the table, a bright red tray... white grate, spinning wheel. Hamster cage.
I gasped like a small boy, sat down and then stood up from her bed.
‘Can I sit?’
‘You can.’
She knelt and ran a nail along the grate. The hamster came running. His fur was the softest grey, not like smoke, but like a cloud. His ears, brown and speckled, were made of a skin so thin so you could see the veins within like tiny purple rivers. She opened the door. He climbed into her palms.
‘He has petal ears,’ I said.
‘His name is Tomahawk.’
‘Tomahawk!’
Tomahawk traversed Potato Neck’s fingers as if they were rungs on a ladder. He had bean paws and they clung to her wrist. His nose twitched and it made his whiskers vibrate. Before I could ask to, I was holding him.
‘He has the biggest balls I’ve ever seen! His fur!’
‘Now smell him.’
I cupped Tomahawk tentatively under the bum, lifted him up to my nose. I inhaled. Like printer paper and corn. I inhaled again. Tomahawk walked into my sleeve.
'You’ve kept him a secret,’ I grinned.
‘He’s mine,’ Potato Neck said – and she didn’t look pretty, but she looked something else instead. Can a girl be handsome? I had something of an urge to touch her, since we started smoking all the time, but I also had urges to touch everything. We faced each other. Cross legged on a military-style single bed. Tomahawk emerged from the hem of my jumper.
‘That’s my crotch, Little Tommo. Come here.’
I put my open hand on Potato Neck’s thigh, then left it there, upturned. Tomahawk crawled off. I left it there longer. Potato Neck gazed at her son. Beneath the sagging neck of her jumper, she was wearing my t-shirt again.
‘Ash,’ she said.
I moved my hand.
‘How do you afford to be here?’
I sniffed, ‘I used to work really hard.’
But it didn’t feel like the end of the question.
We stayed there with Tomahawk for a long time, passing him back and forth. Eventually the scent of peace had warmed to the air. Eventually we were tired of each other. We turned the lights on to destroy the flickering darkness. I walked back to my cabin alone.
*
All at once we’re running low on marijuana.
The tobacco levels are steady, but the weed is just powder. She’s crying. There’s a bloody tampon floating high in my toilet, too. When Leanne’s monthly came around, she would sob until I brought her chips and cheese. Earlier, I accidentally stubbed my toe and had to spend an hour in bed. I understand.
I go outside and ring up Barry, climbing up onto my roof for signal. I haven’t spoken to him in a while. I tell him only what I need to.
‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Dude, that’s so cool you’re making friends. I saw Leanne with her girlfriend the other day. I was like, oh what the fuck – dyke from hell! They were buying lottery tickets.’
‘That’s cool. Listen, I also need something else. Do you still know that guy, Dean?’
‘Man. Dean’s in the fucking Emirates. I know Kyle now. He’s alright. Good man. We play Warcraft sometimes. I place my orders on there. Right in the middle of Thunderbluff!’
Barry laughs at himself and it widens the phone line. A throaty friendly sound. I look inside my chimney and find a nest with three eggs.
I tell him my order. I tell him exactly how much.
Barry whistles in awe. His cheek and his stubble are close in my ear.
‘Fuck, Ash. Man, you’re living in the woods.’
*
Potato Neck emerges with me when Barry arrives in his big red van. He parks, making dust on the drive, outside of her cabin instead of mine. He drags open the door and my groceries appear, along with two stacks of flat boxes. They smell strongly of barbecue sauce.
Potato Neck leaps on them. ‘Oh my god, I love you.’
Her eyes are red from the J’s of the day. She’s wearing her potato sack – rusty thumbprint slightly darker on the hem. Her neck looks just as inhuman as it did when we first met. I’m proud, but then she looks up.
‘Barry!’
‘Phoebe!’
They’re hugging.
‘How’s Arthur? How’s Katie?’
‘They’re great. They’re living with Arthur’s dad. He’s a mountaineer. He helps with their business. Katie started taking her t-shirt thing seriously.’
‘Good for her!’
I am standing with two grocery bags, one in each hand. They’re filled with soup cans and again he has only chosen tomato.
‘You two know each other,’ I say.
Potato Neck shrugs, body floppy and happy. She explains, ‘Out of touch friends.’
Barry wraps her up in bear hug number two. She seems perfectly contented in his sweat.
*
Leanne’s table is moved so the pizza boxes can be laid like a tapestry. For some reason, I didn’t think that Barry would stay for dinner. He’s raking through my cupboards now and the wood sounds ugly and thin.
‘Where’s the spirits?’ he asks.
‘Don’t have any.’
‘Shit. Not even beer? Not even poof juice?’
Potato Neck emerges from the bathroom, grins momentarily at the pizza on the floor. ‘No alcohol. Only weed. And don’t call it ‘poof juice’. She collects the jars from the windowsill. ‘Do you want me to roll? It’s tight for three but I can manage.’
I stare at Barry hard until he catches my drift, and his eyes light up.
‘Actually, Phoebe… me and Ash got you a gift.’
He points drastically to one unpacked bag. I can see the orange lid. Potato Neck shrieks.
Barry’s jar is poorly washed, still scummed with smears of tomato – but it is packed. Full to the fucking brim. Barry knows what Rossini’s is. Barry knows Kyle.
*
We eat pizza in three sessions across the course of the night. We each smoke our own massive blunt, and then another, and maybe another. Barry says don’t worry, I won’t drive, I’ll sleep on your floor, I’ll borrow a pair of your underpants. I want to say, ‘you wouldn’t fit them’, but I can’t because she’ll think I’m a leaching cunt. She probably already does – she knows by now that this cabin isn’t mine. I barely even rent it because Barry is a philanthropist. I didn’t tell her as such, but it makes sense that she’d figure it out.
I don’t know why but I’m not in the mood tonight for some big, fun thing like this. I feel frigid, uncomfortable, covered in goosebumps. None of my tokes seem to go all the way through. Barry and Potato Neck talk sporadically about the people that both of them know and I deduce, through listening, that they once worked in some Mexican place together – and that means Barry has probably once spoken about her to me. Potato Neck nudges for a story but I don’t have one. I tell her that he never mentioned a Phoebe and Barry says, ‘I definitely did.’ I have been sitting in one position on the floor for a very long time and I realise I’m scared to move from it. I’m cold and my organs ache. Conversation is wandering probably towards Leanne. My eyes are closed and my head is by the leg of her table.
I make a decision to give up and pass out.
Most days I wish it was tomorrow.
*
I have IBS. The jars are still nearly full. Somehow the first comes last. Potato Neck demands a walk.
She dons my trousers, my jumper and my second pair of boots, pausing at the door to take my good coat. We press out across the turning dirt. Down to the forest and the spitting maple tree. It’s a helicopter elephant graveyard.
I point.
‘It’s a helicopter elephant graveyard.’
She snorts at me. ‘Feeling good?’
I nod a lot.
She says, ‘I’m glad.’
‘Woods are kind of spooky though.’
I look up and the sky is only an inch away from black and that means it is still blue. The night air is sweet down my stained throat. The moon is gripped by the trees, empty-handed. Wet leaves have been falling for weeks. They’re wadding under my shoes. Potato Neck’s hands look almost like the bare trees, but softer. Less spindly. Not spiderlike.
‘Little arms,’ I say.
‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m dizzy.’
She puts her hands on me. Steers me to the ground.
‘Sit in the mulch,’ she orders.
‘If I needed to vomit, would you judge me?’
‘No.’
‘Weed makes you sick too?’
‘No.’ But she says it kindly.
I keel over, getting mud up my wrists, gripping sopping handfuls of leaves for their coldness. My body heaves but I don’t let it puke. Instead, a negotiation. I’m in the foetal position. Here. In this random patch of land, somewhere nowhere. Previously inconsiderable. Who knew that could happen? The nausea passes and I grin up at the moon, grin up at the whole sky and at all the tall trunks that occupy it, but especially the moon.
I’m so stoned.
Above me, Potato Neck laughs. ‘You’ll get over it.’