The Anomalies (4 page)

Does anyone ever look at me and feel guilty for having legs that work? Do they count their blessings? Do they pity me? Or do they curse the fact that I’d make a lousy whore and that I’m a useless waste of ass?

I don’t have to worry about that last question with David. He treats me like he’d treat anyone. I might as well not have the wheelchair. Of course, he has his flaws, but none of them are tragic. His hair reminds me of a Backstreet Boy, he likes jewelry too much, and he dresses way too plainly. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’s one of those guys who went from liking country to rap between his sophomore and junior years and changed his wardrobe accordingly. But the superficial stuff doesn’t matter anyway. Just so he’s good to me.

“So I said, ‘I’d tell you…but then I’d have to kill you!’” says David. Oh yeah. His sense of humor is way average, too. The Mexican guy he’s talking to laughs at him anyway, though.

“All right. We’ll keep in touch, bro,” says David, doing what he calls networking. “You go help yourself to some chicken. Get one of the girls to pump you some beer.”

“Thank you,” says the Mexican guy. David turns to me.

“That reminds me—we should eat Mexican sometime. I know of a place that has phenomenal burritos.”

“Yum,” I say.

A guy eating a chicken leg runs into me. I guess he didn’t see me down here.

“Excuse me,” I say.

“Whoa. Sorry. Didn’t see you down there.”

I’m at a party at David’s apartment, or his “bachelor’s
pad” as he likes to call it. He has one of these parties about once a month for no reason and invites his workers and his old friends from high school. He has a really nice place, but half the party is always outside on the sidewalk where the smokers are.

A couple of the girls are trying to get to David, but I’m kind of in their way, so they have to maneuver around me.

“Oh, I’m just getting in everybody’s way—the story of my life.”

After hearing me say this, David doesn’t offer me any sort of reassurance, which kind of pisses me off. I roll back toward the wall, out of the way.

“Great party,” says one of the girls.

“Yeah. Kick ass,” says another.

“Thanks, girls. All I have to say is party hard tonight, ’cause you’re gonna have to work hard tomorrow. We’re gonna be up to our asses in alligators once the new liquid chicken special starts. But, uh, work hard, play hard. Right, girls?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s my girls. Now go eat some chicken.”

The girls walk away, and David notices me over by myself against the wall. He suddenly pulls from his pants one of those cheap disposable cameras.

“Hey—look sexy!”

I offer him a seductive but playful glance, and he takes my picture.

“I’m just gonna come out and say it. You are looking phalange-licking-good tonight,” he says.

“Thanks.”

He already said that once to me tonight.

David normally wouldn’t be so insincere and careless like that. This reinforces a theory I have about people. My theory
goes like this—if you want to be with a real person and experience that person’s essence, you must be alone with them. The eyes and ears of any additional persons subtract from his or her essence. If you go out to eat with two of your best friends, you will not be with two complete persons, and they won’t behave as genuinely as they would if they were alone with you. If you are at a crowded party with a friend, you only get a fraction of his or her real self. Apply the same idea on a national, global, or even evolutionary scale, and everything that has ever happened might make better sense.

To be honest, everybody is looking good tonight. I look around and see ass. Sweet ass. Sweet ass that I know for a fact to be sweet, if you catch my meaning.

“Hey, David, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something,” says Aurora. Oh, great. This better not be one of those talks like, Oh, I want to know where we are right now, and that sort of shit.

“Talk to me.” Her boobs rule. Too bad she’s in a wheelchair. Otherwise I’d be hitting it. I’d tear that up.

“Well, my band’s trying to get on a more consistent practice schedule.”

“Cool.” Cool. No relationship bullshit.

“I know. So, we definitely want to practice Thursday nights, and I was wondering—”

“Sure. You can have Thursdays off.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll give that shift to Candy.”

“Oh—are you sure she won’t mind?”

“Yeah. She owes me anyhow. It’s cool.”

“Thanks, David. You’re the best boss I’ve ever had.”

“Baby, don’t think of me as your boss. I’m also your boyfriend.”

“I know. Thanks for being so good to me. Most guys wouldn’t even take a chance hiring a girl in a wheelchair.”

Most girls in a wheelchair don’t look that fucking hot. Besides, she’s just the biscuit maker.

“Hey—you’re still beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

I’m the man. Now is the perfect time to pop her the question. I’ve been waiting for this moment since I hired her sweet ass.

“Hey, while we’re talking, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”

“Is it about the popcorn chicken special? I swear—I thought biscuits were included and—”

“No. Forget about that. It’s about this idea I have. How would you feel about posing for a calendar?”

“I don’t think I’d like that, if it’s the kind of calendar I think it is.”

“Oh—no nudity, baby. I’m talking about bikinis, maybe lingerie, and maybe sort of holding your own titties kind of stuff. Tastefully done, of course.”

“That’s what they all say. That’s something I may have done back when I was a stripper. But not anymore.”

This is what I was afraid of. Time to turn on the ol’ David charm. I act all bashful and shit.

“Um, well, um, what if you knew that I was the one making the calendar?”

“That wouldn’t make any difference…Why would you be making a calendar?”

“It’s for business. Here’s the deal: the Girls of Ken’s Fried Chicken Calendar. It’s the ultimate chicken promo!”

“Have any of the other girls agreed to this?”

“Yeah. All of ’em. But I’ve been saving December just for you.”

“But I’m in a wheelchair. That’s not sexy.”

“We can work around that, babe.” I lean down close to her, look at her right in the eye, and whisper, “You still have a great chest. So will you do it?”

“Just forget it. I’m not interested.”

Ungrateful bitch. This is, like, not cool. I can see that she’s gonna need some convincing, so I call over a couple of her co-workers to lay on the peer pressure.

“What’s up?” asks Christy.

“Girls, try talking some sense into Aurora. She doesn’t want to be in the calendar.”

“Why not?” ask both of my girls.

“I just think it’s kind of degrading,” yaps Aurora.

“Remember when we worked at the Busy Booty?” asks Kristie. “Now that was degrading.”

“Yeah. It was degrading, and that’s why I stopped working there,” says Aurora. “But I guess I might as well still be there if I’m still just a piece of ass even at a freaking Ken’s Fried Chicken.”

“Honey, the Busy Booty wouldn’t take you back now in that wheelchair.”

“Thank you for reminding me, Christy.”

“Look, I’m just giving you girls a chance to show off your bodies,” I tell them. “I figured you would like that, judging by
the way you dress, Aurora.” She’s wearing a sweet-ass dress that really shows off those useless legs of hers.

“You shouldn’t judge people by the way they dress, duh.”

“That’s true…So will you pose for my calendar?”

“No! God, David, I thought you were different! I thought you respected me!”

“Aurora, I do respect you. I mean—I haven’t even asked you for a blow job yet.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Oh, come on, Aurora. You’re a preacher’s daughter.”

“And an ex-stripper,” adds Christy.

“And a Satanist,” adds Kristie.

“Ex-Satanist. My dad blessed me last night. Anyhow, so sorry to disappoint you all. Am I the only woman on earth who finds the thought of having a dick in her mouth revolting?”

Kristie nods. Christy licks her lips and closes her eyes.

“Look, Aurora, I’m sorry, but like you said, most guys wouldn’t have even hired you. You’re doing well to make biscuits at my Ken’s Fried Chicken. Now don’t you want to continue working there?”

She looks up and sees me and the girls looking down at her. Then she gets up from her wheelchair and walks out the door.

“Stupid bitch. Not cool. So not cool!”

I’m glad to leave my wheelchair behind forever with that sleaze and those girls, the sluts whose most ambitious hope and only chance for greatness is to someday sleep with the President. The
wheelchair bit was good while it lasted but ultimately ineffective. It was like a morality joke that no one got, much like my stripping career.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was a fool for dating David. Anyone can look at him and tell what he’s all about, but I was trying to practice what I preach and be open-minded. I suppose Luster is right. You give people the benefit of the doubt, and they disappoint you every time.

“That’s my house,” I say to the cabbie.

“You live there?” he asks as he pulls up to the mansion, its gates emblazoned with wrought iron “B’s” for “Buchanan.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the ride.” I pay the man and get out and notice that he’s looking me up and down, at my slutty black dress, my leather jacket, and my prostitute-red lipstick.

“What?” I snap at the foreigner through his open window.

“Nothing.”

Dropping me off here was probably the highlight of his week.

The first thing I hear upon entering the front door is the excited voice of Luster.

Why he would be in my home, I have no idea.

“I agree, Reverend! God is inside all of us!” Luster affirms. Holy crud. He’s talking to my dad. “He or She or It reverberates in the power chords that hit the hammer, anvil, and stirrups. When I am rocking it like a man-child in love is when I am godlike. Rock music is my religion. I believe in rock music. Furthermore, I rock it impossibly. And Reverend, I believe in rock music to help me through the nightmare day, and someday rock music will lead me to my own private paradise.”

I can’t interrupt just yet. I have to listen to my father’s
response to this.

“Interesting,” says Father, or “Reverend Buchanan” as he’s known to the rest of the community. “That’s certainly one way to look at things.”

“It is,” agrees Luster.

“But now, Luster, I hope in your quest for your own private paradise, you’re not going to wind up choking on your own vomit like those rock stars tend to do.”

“No, Reverend. I am not a rock and roll cliché. I thought you would have noticed that by now. What I mean is that I want my heaven to be here on land. After all, as Vladimir Nabokov wrote, ‘The hereafter for all we know may be an eternal state of excruciating insanity.’ So why not have heaven on dirt?”

“You talk too much! Can we go now?” begs another voice. Ember’s here, too.

“Isn’t she precious?” observes my father. “I think it’s great that you all have found an outlet in music.”

“Outlet, inlet, call it what you will, will you?” says Luster. “They say that no man is an island, but I am a peninsula.”

It’s so funny to hear Luster and my dad conversing, listening to the mingling of two parts of my life that had until now been kept separate. It’s kind of like your favorite teacher having a drink with your uncle, or your therapist watching TV with your co-workers. I wish I could get everyone together, just to see what would happen.

It’s also funny just to think of Luster talking to anyone’s parent. Strangely, I’ve never heard him speak of his own parents. I’m pretty sure his older brothers practically raised him (or something to that effect), and that as the middle child of thirteen, he in turn helped take care of the younger six. But Luster is just one of those guys who you don’t even think
of as having parents. He couldn’t have come from a typical carnal union of two other people. A guy like that must have spontaneously generated.

“And what’s the name of your band?” asks Father.

“I do not know yet, but right now we are leaning toward Well Educated White Males.”

“Good deal,” says Father.

“Or the Fuxtables!” says Ember.

“The what?” asks my father, and there is my cue to enter the living room.

“Where are your wheels?!” Luster asks urgently.

“Screw ’em. I left them at David’s. What are you two doing here?”

“We wanted to see if we could help smooth things over with you and your dad.”

“Oh. That’s not necessary. Dad and I had a nice long talk last night.” This is how badly Luster wants this band to work out. He must have taken a bus from his end of town to this one in hopes of securing us a practice space. He even brought Ember and her irresistibly cute face.

“Yes. We talked everything out,” says Father. “We blessed her and have welcomed her back. We’ve put those dark days behind us. No more Satan, right?”

“No more Satan,” I agree. My Satanism was just a phase. All teenagers go through phases, but I like for mine to be momentous. Admittedly, I was pretty stupid.

“Dad, I’m sorry. I hope Luster didn’t frighten you.” I see Ember crawling out of the room, getting her knees all ashy like little kids do.

“Oh, we ended up having a great talk. Luster has to be the
most well-read young man I’ve ever spoken to. Luster, you are welcome in my home any time.”

Father doesn’t know how Luster weighs all words. He loves making people mean what they say.

“In that case, good Reverend, I will be staying the night tonight.”

I must change the subject immediately. If only a new topic will come. Ahh, yes.

“So! Rory! You’re walking again! Wasn’t that crazy, Luster? A perfectly healthy young girl choosing to bear the burden of riding around in a wheelchair? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

“Actually, it was Luster’s idea.”

“Oh?”

The young man nods. I should be resentful of him, I suppose, for leading the flesh of my flesh down such a crooked path. But I can’t conceive what wild place this man’s titillating thoughts come from, and I am interested in hearing his justifications. So I listen.