Random Acts of Love (Random #5) (21 page)

“Darla,” Maggie said in a slow voice, the kind you use to cover up deep panic. “Can you come over here? Walk to me, honey.” She stretched her arms out like I was a baby learning to walk, her finger tips just inches from my body. 

I took one step toward her because
of course
I could walk to her—what was she talking about? My muscles did their thing where my brain said ‘go’ and they said, ‘how far’? 

And...nope.

Now, Josie’s bathroom has one long wall that is covered by that crazy ’70s foil wallpaper. It appeared that the entire innards of my ass cheek to the very teeny, weeniest folds of my anus, were stuck tight to the wallpaper via rapidly-cooling wax.

Damn. Those gnomes really spread that shit everywhere, huh? Fucking efficient, thorough gnomes. They deserved to choke to death on Spongebob’s blended remains and all that wax.

“I can’t move,” I told Maggie. “I’m, uh, killing gnomes.”

“Are you,” she asked in a fake calm voice, “stuck to the wall?” 

Amy and Charlotte stopped their bitching and caterwauling and looked at me, eyes wide and mouths open.

“No.”

“Yes, you are,” Maggie insisted.

“I am not.”

“Darla, you can’t deny reality.”

I looked at Maggie like she was a stupidhead. “Of course I can. Half of all human beings do. It’s how most of them function.” 

“But—”

“If there’s ever a time to deny reality, it’s now. And no,
I
am not stuck to the wall. My anus opening is, technically, stuck to the
wallpaper
.”

“Oh, God,” Charlotte moaned.

Amy stood and looked at me, grinning. She looked like the clown with fangs. With a trembling arm, she pointed at me and said, “We are now
so
even.”

“What does that mean?” Charlotte and Maggie said in unison.

“Nothin’,” I muttered. When I had fallen backwards, my knees had been bent slightly, and so now my thighs started to ache. Maybe those trainers on that Biggest Loser show should just wax up the contestants’ assholes and shove them against a wall with their knees bent. Like forced squats. 

“Hey—that’s a good idea,” said the evil clown in the mirror. “You should patent that.”

I closed my eyes and he stopped talking.

The gnomes finally quit their wailing and died in my ass.

I stretched my arms up and tried to square my shoulders, but you only have so much range of motion when you’re adhered to a wall by your ass skin. My head couldn’t stretch properly and my thighs started to cry a little. If I stood up, the pain in my butthole was too much. If I tried to drop closer to the floor, my ass screamed.

My anus was like that little kid’s tongue in the old ’80s movie,
A Christmas Story
. You know, the kid who got triple-dog dared to put his tongue on an ice-cold flagpole and it got stuck?

Only that kid’s predicament made sense. When someone triple-dog dares you, you do it.

When someone dumps you and you eat drunk ice cream pie filled with a psychedelic drug of undetermined origin and you decide to immortalize your anus, you tend not to garner much sympathy when you find yourself stuck to a bathroom wall that was last renovated when your mama was still a virgin.

I was fucked.

Stucked, fucked and—wait. Stucked isn’t a word.

“Yes it is,” said the clown, smiling with blood on his fangs.

“Stop him!” I shouted, pointing to the mirror.

“You mean Elvis?” Amy asked. “You don’t like his singing?”

“That’s not Elvis!”

“Yes, it is!”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Yes, it is!”

“Look, I am the one stuck to the bathroom wall by my poop chute. If anyone gets to decide which man is hiding out in the mirror, it’s me! An evil clown with blood dripping off his fangs is standing there and now—oh, great. Thanks, Amy! Now he’s singing ‘Love Me Tender.’”

“Clowns,” Charlotte said, grabbing Maggie for support. “I hate clowns.”

“Of course you do,” Maggie soothed.

“They’re too colorful,” she continued.

“Right.”

“And you kissed Tyler,” Charlotte added.

Amy, me, and Elvis the Evil Clown all turned at once and gaped at Maggie.

“You tongue fucked Frown?” I declared. Tyler, aka Frown, was the substitute bass player for Random Acts of Crazy whenever Joe was stuck in Philly at law school. He was tatted up, silent, and kind of brooding. Not at all the guy I’d pick for Maggie, but then again, what the fuck do I know? I’m stuck to a bathroom wall by my ass.

“We kissed at your last concert,” Maggie said in a no-nonsense voice like Mary Poppins declaring we all need our spoonful of sugar.

“Maggie tried to do more but Tyler was a gentleman,” Charlotte added. 

“I am too sober to talk about this,” Maggie groused, giving Charlotte a death glare.

“Was he any good?” I asked.

She turned red.

“Your face answered for you,” I teased. My thighs started screaming again.

She sighed. “I suppose I can talk about it now, because the three of you are so high you won’t remember a damn thing in the morning.”

“Which is the criteria by which Maggie opens up to people,” Charlotte explained.

Maggie gave her a laser-sharp look. Charlotte kissed her sweetly on the cheek.

So did the evil clown. He left a smear of blood on her face.

“We, um, hit it off,” Maggie started. “And I had decided it was time to just get over myself and sleep with someone.” 

Charlotte snorted. “You two hate each other.”

“I hate him now. I didn’t that night after Sam proposed to Amy,” Maggie added. 

That’s right. I remember, after Sam proposed and we were partying on the rooftop, Frown came and joined us. Maggie, too. We got kinda shitfaced and the guys took me home for some awesome sex. We left the party early. A little too early, from the sounds of it.

The guys.

No longer
my
guys. 

Ah, shit.

“Hate can be a great start of a relationship,” I said. “Joe hated me when we first met.”

“And look at how well that turned out,” the evil clown muttered in a British accent.

“It was really weird,” Maggie explained, eyes kind of glazing over like glazed donuts. Oh, my God, her eyes
were
glazed donuts. My stomach rumbled.

“He’s such a calm guy—”

“You wonder if he has a pulse,” Amy added.

Maggie snorted. “Right. So I decided I needed to sleep with someone after seven years of not—”

“Seven years!” Amy and I shrieked in unison. 

Maggie and the clown gave us a middle finger. “You want to hear the story or do you want to judge? You can’t do both.”

“Sorry. What happened then?” Amy asked, breathless.

“I touched his tats and kissed him.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why did I kiss him?” 

“Why Tyler.”

She shrugged. “I’ve caught him looking at me a few times at concerts.”

“Which means you were lookin’ back.”

“Right. Anyhow, I drank enough to start talking to him and kissed him and tried to have sex with him.” Her face burned redder than the clown’s cheeks. 

“On the rooftop?” I said with a low whistle. Or maybe that was the clown. It was getting harder to tell.

“I was drunk and had made a decision to just get it over with and have sex after a long dry spell.”

Charlotte started to cry.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, horrified because the clown in the mirror was crying, too, and it was coming out as cotton candy.

“I’m just so happy for Maggie,” she explained as Maggie rolled her eyes. 

“You’re happy I got rejected by a guy who has a vocabulary of seven words?”

“I’m happy you tried to have sex.”

There was clearly a long story behind all this I didn’t know. Seven years.  

“So we’re all happy people are having sex an’ shit,” I summarized. “What happened with Tyler?”

“I jumped him,” Maggie said with a shrug. “And he declined.”

“He had a hot, liquored up woman ready to fuck him on a roof top in Boston and he turned you down?” I marveled.

“Is he gay?” Amy asked.

“Not gay,” Maggie said. “A
gentleman
.” 

“Oh, shit. That’s worse,” I said.

“He said, and I quote, ‘You’re drunk. I’m not into necrophilia. Try me again some time when you’re sober’,” Maggie recounted.

“That’s more than seven words,” Amy helpfully pointed out.

“Shut up,” the three of us muttered. Make that four. A gnome revived and started talking out of my ass.

“Whadja do?” I asked. 

“I stormed off.”

“A guy you’re hot for kisses you and you leave?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m not arguing with someone who is the human equivalent of a Post-it note, Darla.” 

“Yeah, um, speaking of that—I need to get down. My legs are killing me.”

Amy grabbed one arm and Charlotte grabbed the other. It was like popping a knuckle only it was my shoulders.

“OW STOP NO!” I screamed as they set my joints in place like orthopedic surgeons. “Jesus Christ, that hurt. I am
never
going to a chiropractor.”

Maggie bent down and sort of squished her hand under my hip to where the wax began.

“An inch further and two minutes of wiggling and I’ll need a cigarette,” I said.

She snatched her hand back.

“Amy! Charlotte! Get over here.” She got them to pull on me.

Nope.

“I am going to starve to death attached to the bathroom wall like one of those Facebook pictures of toddlers duct taped to a bathroom stall!” I wailed. By now, the edges of my skin around the wax were starting to burn. Gravity is a bitch, and it was pulling on my sensitive bits. 

The three of them just nodded.

“What about nail polish remover?” Maggie suggested. 

I shrieked. The clown shrieked. A dead gnome in my ass came back to life and shrieked.

“Okay, cancel the acetone,” Maggie mumbled.

“How about a box cutter?” Charlotte ventured.

“You ain’t cutting my ass off with no box cutter, you sick freak!” That’s the Jeffrey Dahmer method of weight loss. He was from Ohio, too. 

“I’m just trying to be helpful.” 

“Use my fang,” said the clown. “Please.”

“I can see the box cutter idea,” Maggie said, walking around me and evaluating me like I was a piece of IKEA furniture they were assembling. “We could cut the wallpaper and free her.”

I perked up.

“Could you hurry it up? ’Cause I need to pee real bad.” 

Charlotte rummaged around in a big duffle bag under the sink.

“That’s Alex’s special doctor bag,” I explained. “Ain’t no box cutters in there.”

“But he has scalpels,” Charlotte said. “Voila!” She held a shiny silver sharp thing up high, like a serial killer, and lowered it slowly.

“Put your arms out,” she said.

“Why?”

“Remember in kindergarten how you made turkeys by tracing your hands on paper?”

“Yes.”

“I want to make a Darla out of—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Maggie snapped, snatching the scalpel from Charlotte’s hand. “Let’s just get her unstuck.” And with that, she made a few quick slashes, tossed the scalpel in the sink, then reached around my ribcage and pulled.

Hard.

My anus screamed. I screamed. Something ripped. Please, God, let that be the wallpaper.

“I see blood!” Amy shrieked. “No, wait. That’s just the unicorn pooping.”

“I’m going to kill Joe,” Maggie mumbled as she peeled me off the wall like a sugar dot candy on a roll of white paper.

Except my ass wasn’t sweet.

“There’s no way she’s getting her butthole molded now,” Charlotte wailed, sobbing hysterically and pointing. “Our plan is ruined!”

“Oh, honey, your plan was ruined way before this,” Maggie said.

I reached for my pants and bent down, my butt cheeks making a funny peeling sound, like a Star Trek holodeck door opening after being sprayed down with the jizz of a thousand Klingons.

Slipping one leg, then another in, I felt my pants adhere to every little bit of cold wax left.

And then, sweet merciful deity, the world went dark.

C
HAPTER 6

Trevor

I did not exist for three days.

C
HAPTER 7

Darla

The biggest gnome on the fucking planet was sitting on my head and screaming at me.

Or maybe that was Josie.

“What happened?” she screeched, her face inches from mine. Her cat, Crackhead, shot under my dresser. 

“Can I join you?” I muttered. My voice sounded like broken teeth sliding around in a kaleidoscope.

“What are you talking about?” Josie asked. A warm, dry hand grasped my wrist gently but firmly. It went still for a few beats, then retreated.

“Her pulse is fine,” I heard Alex say.

“She looks half dead, and the apartment is trashed,” Josie said, fuming. Why was she hitting me over and over in the head with her shoe?

I peeked one eyeball open.

White light.

I closed my eyelid and willed the world to go away, including the decaying corpse of the gnome that had lived in my mouth for the past two days.

“How long have you been passed out?” Alex asked me, his voice soft like silk.

“How long ago was Saturday?” I rasped. “And did you bury the gnomes or did the evil clown eat them out of my ass first?”

I heard twin sighs, one frustrated, one amused.

“What is she on?” Josie questioned.

“Something that looks like it was a lot of fun,” he answered.

“But the bathroom! There’s a four foot section of wallpaper that is just missing! And your medical bag is destroyed and the scalpel was embedded in the aloe plant.”

“The
remains
of the aloe plant, you mean.”

“All of our potato chips are gone and someone put a pair of thong panties on poor Crackhead’s little butt.”

“That was the clown,” I explained. 

“You had a clown?”

“Some party,” Alex said in an admiring voice.