“You don’t know anything, he didn’t let you see but there was never a single second when he didn’t have a beer in his hand and he went through a six-pack a night easily. That is why he was always in front of the TV in a catatonic stupor and plus he kept a bottle of bourbon going on the side – look, he wasn’t the worst guy in the world and I know you’re going to miss him –”
“I’m not,” says Tahnee, “I don’t even remember him already. It was like having a stuffed pig –”
“Okay, that’s enough. Anyway, we’re all going to have to be tough and strong. I’m thinking, we’re going to get out of this dump and travel and have an interesting life.”
“But I like it here,” says Julie. “My friends are here.”
“Not me,” says Tahnee, “let’s get out of this dump. Anyway, you don’t have any friends, remember, Julie?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what you said, you don’t have any friends, remember? When was that, Saturday?”
“Yeah, but –”
“All right, stop it you two. Tahnee. I tell you what. As a celebration, I’m going to order us a pizza, how do you like that?”
“Yeah, yeah! Pizza. I want mrango,” says Julie.
“I’m gonna have to borrow some credit from you kids. Who has money left on their micro-chips? I’ll pay you back, I’ll have cred tomorrow. My chip is over the limit.”
“I hate mrango,” says Tahnee. The two girls begin to squabble. Apparently they have already forgotten about Slawa’s absence. But whether that is due to indifference, or some type of brain damage, Murielle can’t determine.
Around midnight Murielle wakes with a start. Someone has come into the house. “Slawa,” Murielle says, “Is that you?”
There is no answer. She doesn’t even have the money to have the locks changed, with twenty-four credit chips maxed out and she can’t keep up with the monthly interest as it is, even if they let her have more credit. In the morning she will have to figure out how to get another chip, people do that all the time. They can’t go without groceries, can they? She should have asked Slawa for his set of keys, but that would have been awkward, he was in a rage when he drove off.
Murielle looks out the window, maybe it’s someone outside? But there’s no one there. All she can see is the almost full moon, with its sneering face – a Happy Face gone wrong. Long ago a conceptual artist had a grant from a non-profit arts foundation to go up there to make a face out of richly hued pigments (influenced by Anish Kapoor); only, after dumping two mile-wide circles to form the eyes, and almost completing the mouth, an explosion blew up the shuttle – and the artist – and turned that happy smile into the snarl of today’s moon.
She remembers Slawa keeps a baseball bat under the bed and now she fumbles around and, holding it in one hand, a flashlight in the other, goes down the stairs. Her hands are sweating, so slippery she can barely hold the bat. If a burglar has broken in, she really doesn’t see herself hitting him over the head. What can a burglar take, anyway? Nothing that would be missed.
She flicks on the light in the living room. Tahnee is lying on the couch, without panties, her legs spread and with the Patel boy from next door – the older one, Locu – and then Tahnee stares at her, with those cat-eyes, dilated, not even startled. For a second Murielle is about to say, “Oh, excuse me,” and turn off the light.
Her daughter has an expression on her face of pure… contempt, irritation, that someone is disturbing her and the boy. How old is that little punk Locu, anyway? He is kneeling on the couch in front of Tahnee’s parted legs, he turns and looks at Murielle with a sopping face like a dog feeding on a carcass, about to have rocks flung at him. “Pontius fucking Pilatés,” she says, dropping the bat, “what are you doing, get the hell out of here, Locu, I’m going to call your parents –”
Eyes without guilt
Tahnee sits, her eyes huge, sleepy but cold, without guilt. “Oh, don’t call his parents, Mom.”
“You’re only fourteen years old, you filthy little bitch,” she says. “I’m going to call the police!”
Locu, in his pajamas, bolts out the door.
Lazily Tahnee pulls up her panties. It is hot and her thin nighty, printed with a pixyish, mop-headed cartoon tot, only comes to the top of her legs, baby-doll style. Murielle grabs her daughter by the arm and slaps her across the face. Tahnee barely winces. “I’m almost fifteen, Ma. Don’t do dat shit.”
There is a reek of aerosol, or spray paint, in the air, sickly as glue. Something was knocked over? Or more of the weird polluted marsh fumes. “I’m going to puke,” Tahnee says and runs to the toilet.
“What am I supposed to do with you, how long has this been going on?” Murielle shouts at the bathroom door.
On the other side Tahnee is gagging, then vomiting, so loudly she can’t imagine what it is her daughter has taken. Or done.
Shoe repair is something he knows from childhood, he had worked in a shop – his mother’s brother? He can’t remember. Maybe it was because he had joined the Tsar’s Club Kids Party and they had gotten him the job? Has he even been telling the truth, about his PhD in physics? More and more is coming back to him, but it is fragmented and torn.
He had been so happy to have his own stupid business – shoe repair, for crying out loud! – and totally surprised when, a short time later, the PADTHAI-NY train entrance closed for repairs and the casual pedestrian traffic he was counting on utterly vanished. There has never been any sign of work about to commence and years have passed.
His head smells: stale dander, scurf; beer comes out of his pores, sour yeast and hops, like the floor of a bar after closing. God, what a loser; is it something genetic? His fault? But no, it had been his first wife’s family who owned the swampy marsh – two, three hundred years ago, maybe, back then it was apple trees, or potatoes – and let it be used for chemical dumping.
After this the property was sold for this cheap-o housing estate, and his wife’s family were then promptly sued for clean-up costs, and stripped to nothing. All he had ended up with was the tiny house. And now he didn’t even have that, only kept the hybrid petro-sucremalt fuel car. He punches in his destination and sits back to watch TV while he waits for traffic to move.
“The Amazing Hair-A-Ticks! This breakthrough in medical science is a genetically engineered hair grown by a tiny tick. The tick attaches easily to your head, it burrows under the scalp while numbing and sucking teeny amounts of blood. Totally natural, these hairs will grow more profusely than that which with you were born! Never fear, these tiny ticks are more the size of mites! Side effects may include a slight itching no worse than an ordinary case of dandruff. If side effects intensify, see your doctor at once. A product of Bermese Pythion.”
Slawa
