Geek Love (32 page)

Here I am trying to make a case for healing powers or mental fingers or some such hog wallop. The kid's a colorless little drudge with an inferiority complex at not being a freak like his brother and sisters. He overcompensates with an idiot sensitivity halfway to martyrdom. The perfect patsy. Anything to please. Christ knows, anybody with Arty for a brother is in deep water trying to preserve his self-esteem.

So the kid says he thinks when he dies all the creatures he has ever hurt will be waiting for him, looking at him, still hurting from the hurt he laid on them ... Says he was walking along “just now” and stepped on a lone ant before he noticed it. “Failed again as usual” seems to be his feeling. So he flips off the rails and goes berserk on the anthill.

Ike Thiebault, the guard, sits on a folding yellow plastic deck chair next to the door of the twins' van. He nods peaceably at everyone entering or leaving the Binewski van or Arty's van. The portable “porch” or platform on which Ike sits has steps at one end, a ramp for Arty's chair on the side, and is supposed to have a reticulated flex tunnel over it to keep out the weather. The Binewskis never get around to setting up the tunnel.

Today -- 10 A.M. or so -- Jouncing Jenny, the redhead who complains about having to color her “honey-blond” hair, comes up the step with an armload of magazines and catalogues.

“Ike, honey, these are for the twins. I got to deliver 'em,” she says. Ike, who is halfway through a self-help book promising him a method for making money in his spare time, stands up, embarrassed.

“Nobody goes in, Jenny. That's my orders.”

“These are catalogues that just got here in the mail bag. It's just clothes and knickknacks. No harm. The twins want 'em to shop from.” Jenny is rolling her bare golden shoulder at Ike and being gently provocative. Ike is far from immune but locked into his duty.

“Only ones can go in or out is Miss Oly and Mr. Arty. That's my orders.”

“Well, Ike, you take 'em in. It don't matter. The girls want them catalogues. Ordered 'em six weeks ago. You take 'em in.”

“Jenny, you'll think I'm a fool but I can't. I can't go in myself.”

“You can't knock on the door and stand outside and hand in a few catalogues?” Jenny's eyebrows, plucked to whispers, are expressing delicate but scornful disbelief. Ike takes offense.

“Listen, you knock on Arty's door and ask him.”

Jenny backs down immediately. “I'll just leave 'em here, Ike. If Miss Oly goes in you ask her kindly would she take these catalogues to her sisters.”

2 P.M. Midway swinging noisily in background.

Crystal Lil trips eagerly out the door of the Big B van with a hunk of sea-green cloth in her hands. Lil has recently gone over to “sensible walking shoes” as part of her “Grandma” image but she hasn't adjusted to the low heels and still tends to tiptoe. This is the first time I've seen her wear her spectacles out of the van. She looks energetic and cheery and has, no doubt, just popped an upper or two. She reaches to knock on the twins' door and poor Ike, the guard, hauls himself out of his deck chair stuttering.

“Beg your pardon, ma'am ... ” and the rest I can't hear. It's obvious he won't let her in to see the twins. She's incredulous. He's embarrassed. It's one thing to turn away a redhead and another thing entirely to refuse the Boss Mom. Her body stiffens as his message becomes real to her. She is suddenly very old, three hundred years' worth of iron-spined Bostonian motherhood. He withers, shuffling, unable to look at her, apparently referring her to Arty. She marches to Arty's door with the blue-green cloth trailing, revealing its form as it flaps behind her -- a two-necked, four-armed maternity dress, its hem pinned sketchily in place, its seams unfinished. Arty's door stays closed. No answer. Lil bunches the dress in her fists and lurches back to her own van. Her hair strikes me as grey today, rather than white.

Nose Spites Face, Lip Disappears

Arty ordered the twins' tent broken down. Zephir McGurk set to figuring how to use the materials to enlarge Arty's tent. The twins' stage truck remained, closed up for travel. The big piano gathered dust.

Crystal Lil was upset. Papa spent hours trying to calm her. She said the twins had been “closed down.” He used the word “sabbatical.”

“They'll have their hands full with the baby.” He'd say, “Remember how tired you got? They're strong enough, but, Lily, they're beginning to show. They can't be on stage with a bulging belly. We'd have riots in the tents. Investigations.”

“Al, they're not yet nineteen years old. If they stop working now, they'll drift. They shouldn't be idle. And why can't I see them? They need me.”

“It's an adjustment period for them. Settling to the idea of motherhood.”

“Sounds like something Arty would say.”

The security booth looking into Arty's big room was my responsibility again. The cot had been moved out and only the tall stool and the gun occupied the bare cubicle. I could still smell the medicine and sweat and the faint reek of decay that the Bag Man had left behind. I arranged myself on the stool and stared through the one-way glass into Arty's big room. Gradually my legs, in fact my whole ass, went to sleep. Numb and useless. But I was lucky. It was spewing rain outside and Arty's cuddler for the evening was sitting on the propane tank under his window holding a soggy hunk of newspaper over her hair. By the time he let her in she would look like a smeared possum rather than the tight-bunned little cunt notcher she was. I forget her name. They were all Didi or Lisa or Suki in those days. He'd pick them out of the norm screamers at the gate when he came through after his show. They'd be jumping and howling for a look at him as he came out the back of the stage truck in his golf cart. He'd lean back, grin lots of teeth around the control bulb in his mouth, and drive past the chain-link fence to let them see him. If he stopped the cart I, or one of the security guards, would get his instructions.

“The one in the pink halter top,” he'd say. Or, “They're all cows in this town. Where are we again?”

“Great Falls,” I'd say.

“Well, get me that rhino in the sequined jump suit and the ostrich in the red skirt.”

I'd stump over to the fence as he drove off to his van.

“Me?” they'd squeal when I waved for them to come up to the fence.

“Me?”

I'd leave them to wait, either in the “green room,” as Arty called McGurk's station wagon, or on the propane tank outside Arty's window. It was the only chore for Arty that I preferred letting someone else do.

This particular Lulu was stuck in a filthy January rainstorm for three hours by my reckoning, because Arty was in conference with his chief technical advisor, Doc Phyllis.

“What I'd really like ... ” Arty was wallowing on his satin bedspread, wearing only cotton briefs. His fins plucked and smoothed the satin. He rolled the bare skin of his head against the slick, warm fabric and arched his back, digging his shoulder blades into the softness.

“Do tell,” murmured Doc Phyllis. She lounged in her chair, one white-stockinged leg and her squeegee shoe flopped over the arm. Her glasses glittered between her white cap and her surgical mask. She had a straight shot at Arty and was probably dissecting his hip and shoulder joints in her head.

“I'm curious about the possibility of separating the twins,” Arty said. Dr. Phyllis grunted.

“Can't be done. I told you that years ago.”

Arty yawned, wiggling. “Well, I thought you'd be keeping up with new techniques and developments.”

Doc P. was not to be goaded. “Nothing to do with technique. It's the way they're built.”

Arty flipped over on his belly and looked straight at her. “What if I was willing to sacrifice one twin to keep the other?”

“Which one?” inquired Dr. Phyllis sweetly.

Arty smiled. “It doesn't matter.”

Miz Z. was leaving as I came into Arty's place a few days later. She waved a folder at me by way of hello and I caught the words “Dime Box” on the fly. Arty was in his crisp young executive mode but I asked him about it when she was gone.

“You remember Roxanne? The motorcycle mechanic in Dime Box?”

“Horst's leather-tit girl with the laugh?”

“She's managing the P.I.P. home in Texas. Nine acres outside of Old Dime Box. It's only been open to guests for three months but it's already getting popular.”

Doc P. and Chick were on their way over so I went into the security room. I arranged myself on the stool and tried breathing through my mouth to dilute the medicinal smell.

Doc P. was sitting so straight that her plump white spine never touched the back of the dark padded visitor's chair. Chick was lolling on the carpet with one shoe untied and both socks crumpled down. A small pencil stood on its pointed tip on his bent knee. The pencil rocked steadily like a metronome, broke rhythm for a tiny jig, and then lapsed into a four-four waltz in the space of a thumbnail on his denim-covered knee.

Arty leaned forward against his desk and examined Chick thoughtfully. Arty in his grey vest, Arty in his white collared shirt and black silk tie. Arty with his slim fin bones touching the gleaming wood of the desk. Arty with his pure round skull clearly visible beneath the skin and a blue vein ticking above his ear. He spoke tenderly to Chick.

“Dr. Phyllis tells me that you aren't happy about my plan for the twins.”

Chick's eyes flicked briefly away from the dancing pencil to Arty's face, then back to the pencil. Arty lowered his own eyes. “Tell me about it, Chick.”

Doc P., with her white-gloved hands asleep in her big lap, blinked calmly at the wall behind Arty and sat very straight in her chair. The pencil fell off Chick's knee to the carpet. Chick sat up and hugged his knees.

“Not good. Not good, Arty. You know.”

Arty's face was hot and still with knowing.

“If you do that,” Chick stared, amazed, as though he had just discovered a wonder, “I'm not even going to like you, Arty!”

What amazed Chick was no surprise to Arty. Not being liked was familiar ground and all his usual contrivances went into gear. His face slid smoothly into a cartoon of sympathy.

“Why, Chicken Licken, my boy, that's O.K. That's quite all right. Of course your little sensitivities are offended. You can't help being a norm, and I sympathize. But it doesn't matter at all. No, it doesn't matter whether you like me or not, my Chick. Because I like YOU!”

After Chick and Doc P. left I asked Arty what the hell he was letting Doc P. do to the twins anyway. He answered in an offhand, easy way that she was just going to “get rid of the parasite.” I assumed he meant an abortion and that it was killing the baby that bothered Chick.

I told him about Chick feeling the baby reach out. Arty leaned back in his chair and gave me a dose of silence. When I remember it now I think he was laughing inside as he watched me argue in a half-assed and maybe halfhearted way on the wrong track entirely.

“Go away, Oly,” he said. He turned to the pile of papers on his desk with an exhausted look designed to put me lower than slug slime. It made me mad.

“Are you swallowing your own line of shit, Arty Binewski? Aren't you forgetting that you're just a two-bit freak with a gimmick?”

“Get out,” he ripped back at me. I went.

Chick explained sadly that he could not talk to me about the plan for the twins. Could not and would not. “You can make me cry,” he said, “but you can't make me talk about that.” Ashamed, I left him alone.

Arty wouldn't let me in for a solid week. Miz Z. or one of her apprentices would come to the door and tell me, “Arturo does not wish to see you.”

The guards wouldn't let me see the twins during that time. When I brought their meals, Ike or Mike, or whoever was perched in front of the twins' door, would take the tray from me and give me the dirty tray from the last meal. The notes that I slipped under the plates, and once actually into a turkey sandwich, were methodically searched for and found before my eyes-handed back to me without a word. One of the Arturan ladies was inside with the twins. The guard would knock and the ghostie would open the door and trade trays.

Finally I wrote “Uncle” on a piece of paper and gave it to the novice who answered Arty's door. She came back and told me to go in and make sure the twins were eating and not flushing their food.

Arty let me do chores again. He didn't talk to me, though. He was completely taken up with his ass-sucking followers. I didn't try to push him. It had struck me hard that he didn't need me, that he could shut me out permanently and completely and never miss me. He had all those others dancing for him. For me there was only Arty.

He didn't need us.

I watched that message sink deeper and deeper into the twins. Elly had always known it but it was news to Iphy. Not that they talked to me.

They didn't.

I tried to warn them at first. “Listen,” I begged, “he's planning an abortion.”

They looked at me. Elly barked. A harsh mock of a laugh. “Fat chance,” she said. That was the last she spoke to me.

I was the enemy, or as close to the enemy as they were able to get for the time. They were silent when I was there. Elly never spoke. Iphy said “please” and “thank you” when I brought food and did the cleaning for them. They never ate in front of me. They were getting very thin. Their eyes had a bludgeoned depth, burrowing into purple caverns in their faces. They didn't dress. They wouldn't bathe. I didn't tell Arty. I didn't want to bring more trouble on them. As far as I could tell, all they did was sit up against the pillows in their big bed all day. They didn't read or practice or study. But I saw knowledge grow in Iphy's face and harden in Elly's. They knew more than I did.

I never thought about how wide the twins would be, lying side by side. A regular stretcher would leave their heads and shoulders dangling off the sides. Doc P. sent four novices to take a rear door off a van.

We were strapping them onto the door when Elly opened her eyes and looked at me. A fearful question pushed her dark eyebrows high. Her pupil contracted in the purple iris but her lids were heavy and sank, pulling her grooved forehead smooth as they closed. Doc P. bent over to touch Elly's throat with a gloved hand.

“I wonder,” I piped nervously, “if this is the same door you did that horse on.”

Doc P.'s white-wrapped head swiveled toward me like a turret gun.

“You remember that horse with the rotten feet?”

She nodded at the novices. With one white-robed man at each corner of the door, they moved forward. They had to tip the door onto its side to get it out through the door. The twins hung slack, hair trailing, as they left the van.

Arty was outside, waiting in his chair with a guard beside him in the dark.

“Wait. Put the light on them.”

A flashlight clicked a cool white cone into the blackness. Arty leaned forward to look at the sleeping twins.

“What's wrong?” His voice was harsh. “They look terrible! They're sick!”

“What did you expect?” snapped Doc P. “They've been locked inside for months!”

“But their hair. They could bathe.” He sounded shrill and fragile. The novices looked at him anxiously.

“Arty.” I touched his shoulder and his face turned away from the sprawled sleepers. The light went out and then reappeared further on. Doc P. led the jostling novices down the ramp. Arty's chair followed them and I went along.

We waited outside while they tipped the twins again to slide them through the surgery door. Doc P. stepped down for a last word.

“I'd like to state again that I consider this an improper hour for work of this type. I prefer to work at nine or ten A.M. These predawn hours find the vitality of most patients at its lowest.”

“Yeah, well, I wish you hadn't cold-cocked them!” Arty's voice was ragged.

“Sedatives.”

“Get on with it.”

The door closed behind her and Arty's chair began to roll in the dark.

“They'll take a while to scrub up and get ready,” he muttered, “but I want to get up in place so I can watch the preparations.”

“Ah, Arty!” I groaned, hobbling behind. “We can't watch! Not this!” I was still thinking abortion. “I can't watch it.”

But he'd rammed his chair wheel into the truck bumper and was clambering up onto the first step of the narrow stairs that led to the little theater above the surgery.

“You don't have to. I do.” He hurried upward.

I went away and paced round and round the home vans, wishing for Mama and Papa, who were snoring in deep counterpoint. I could hear them through the closed windows. I'd slipped the same drops into their bedtime cocoa as I'd put into the twins' milk glasses.

From the personal journal of Norval Sanderson:

Lovable Dr. Phyllis is quite undismayed at having bungled Electra's lobotomy. Having reduced that bright creature to a permanent state resembling the liquid droop of a decayed zucchini, the good doctor is inspired rather than chagrined.

Dr. Phyllis has a voice like the breeze of Antarctica but it is a young voice-younger than her body, perhaps from being used so little and so carefully. Now she is talking more often, to more people. She's become a glacial evangelist in her new cause. I see her stalking the Arturan office staff, lecturing stiffly to the novices, delivering admonitions to the more elevated.

Her message is succinct and pithy: Lobotomy is the ultimate shortcut to P.I.P. Arturo, she claims, is torturing his followers with prolonged, expensive, gradual amputations. He is denying, to those who have striven to emulate his ideal, the efficient, painless, virtually instantaneous access to Peace, Isolation, and Purity that it is in her power to bestow. Why wait? asks Doc P. Why itch in places you've no longer got? Cut once! Cut deep'. Cut where it counts!

And I'm damned if she isn't kicking up quite a ruckus. The novices are mumbling bewilderedly. The elevated are waving their stumps and asking belligerent questions. Doc P. is fomenting radical schism in the Arturan church.