The Indifference League (20 page)

BIZARRO WORLD

“Us do opposite of all Earthly things!”

— Bizarro (the “opposite” Superman),
from
Adventure Comics
, 1961

T
he Statistician leaves SuperKen outside on the front steps of the cottage. Inside, he strides past the closed bathroom door, past the empty dining table, around the sofa in the living room, and up the stairs that he tumbled down just yesterday morning.

He is going to tell his wife the truth. He is going to ask her to forgive him. He is going to ask her if maybe they can start again.

When he reaches the top of the staircase, though, three of the four bedroom doors are wide open, including the one he is sharing with Time Bomb. She's not there. The zippered plastic bag that her tiny bikini came inside, labelled
Wicked Weasel
, is empty on the bed. Her beach towel is missing, also.

Miss Demeanor and Mr. Nice Guy are gone, too. Perhaps Mr. Nice Guy has convinced them to take him on the raft ride he missed out on yesterday.

The Statistician descends the stairs and waits in the living room. When his wife returns, he will tell her everything. It cannot go on like this any longer.

*

Outside, a sunbeam breaks through the clouds. Inside, intense white light streams through the window and onto the floor where SuperBarbie lies, curled up, naked, sniffling, and gasping.

When she feels the warmth of the sunlight on her skin, she stops crying. She kneels on the floor, illuminated. She closes her eyes, folds her hands together, and prays out loud.

“Please God, please. I want to be a mother more than anything in the world. My baby cries out to me in my dreams, ‘I'm waiting, Mommy, I'm waiting!' Please, Lord, bring my baby to me. Please. I can withstand anything else, but I need my baby now.”

When she opens her eyes again, the sun is once again hidden behind a curtain of cloud.

*

Hippie Avenger lays back in the antique oval tub, surrounded by steaming, oil-scented water. She feels slippery and sexy. She presses her knees against either wall of the wide bathtub, curls her toes around the
X
-shaped hot and cold water taps. She snakes the middle finger of her right hand through her wet tangle of pubic hair, and submerges the Purple Pal in the grip of her left hand.

She hums along with the sounds of the submerged vibrator humming, “Mmmmmmm,” and is grateful that she spent the extra money on the waterproof model.

She bites down on her bottom lip to keep from screaming out loud.

“Mmmmm, mmmmmmMMMMMMmmmmmmm,
mmMMMMMMMMMMmmmm
,” she moans, as her
feet twitch and kick above the rolling skin of the water. “MmmMMMMMMMM, mmMMMMMMMM,
Ouch! OWWWW.
”

She has accidentally rammed the big toe of her left foot into the opening of the water spout, and now it is stuck.

The Purple Pal floats to the surface of the water.

She tugs on her toe. A drop of blood hits the water with a blip.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” she says.

It's
sharp
in there!

She pushes her toe farther inside, and then tries to gently pull it back out. A warm crimson stream runs down her leg.

“Ow, ow, OWWWWW!”

Hippie Avenger glances frantically around the room for the something that might help her get her toe unstuck from inside the water faucet. Every move she makes splashes water everywhere, and causes her toe to bleed more.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, OW!”

She grabs her foot in both hands and pulls. Warm blood gushes. The toe is even more stuck now; the lacerated skin is folded over the sharp edge inside the spout.

Tears run hot down Hippie Avenger's cheeks. This is so painful. This is so embarrassing.

There is no other choice.

“Help!” she cries out. “Help!”

*

From the living room, The Statistician hears Hippie Avenger's cries. He rushes to the bathroom door and asks, “Are you okay in there?”

“No,” she says, “I'm not okay.”

Through the closed door, she explains what has happened. Well, sort of. She leaves out the orgasm part.

Hippie Avenger tosses the Purple Pal behind the toilet, where it is mostly concealed from view. She tucks a white washcloth between her legs, which covers her pubis more thoroughly than Time Bomb's bikini would, and she holds her breasts in her hands.

“The door is locked,” she says. “You'll have to break it open.”

With a blow from his shoulder, on his first try, The Statistician smashes the solid wood door right off its hinges. He is stunned for a moment, partly from the shock that he has just knocked a down a door with his own body, and partly because right before him lies the naked and wet body of Hippie Avenger.

When the door came crashing down, Hippie Avenger covered her eyes with her hands. Then she slipped inside the tub, thrashed her free leg to recover her balance, and sent the white washcloth flying.

The Statistician has always wondered what Hippie Avenger's body looks like beneath those Flower Child smocks. Now he knows.

His mouth drops open. Blood dribbles from where a flying hinge bolt smacked his bottom lip.

Hippie Avenger grabs her breasts, then lets one go so she can place one hand between her legs. Three assets to protect, and only two hands to cover them with.

“Can you, um, toss a towel over me or something?” Hippie Avenger says.

“Ah, yeah, sure,” The Statistician says, handing her a beach towel, pretending to be fascinated by the faded photo on the wall beside the towel rack.

When her body is more or less covered, The Statistician kneels next to the bathtub and examines Hippie Avenger's trapped toe.

“Ouch,” he says.

“Yeah, that's what I said,” she says. “Do you think you can get me out of here?”

“I'll try.”

He turns on the hot water tap.

“Metal expands when it's heated,” he says. “And, thankfully, these fittings are made of iron, which has a much higher expansion rate per degree than, say, brass. Is this too hot for you?”

“I can take a bit hotter, if it will get me unstuck faster.”

The Statistician watches the steaming water spiral around Hippie Avenger's leg, clinging to her glistening skin. Her blood has turned the bathwater pink.

“That ought to do,” he says, twisting the valves closed with his right hand, and realizing that he's still holding the paper bag from the drugstore in his left. He reaches inside and removes the tube of antibiotic cream, squirts some up inside the water spout.

“This will provide some lubrication,” he says, “and maybe help slow the bleeding, too.”

With the palm of one hand nestled into the arch of Hippie Avenger's trapped foot, The Statistician takes a firm hold. With the other hand, he grips her captive leg around the ankle. For a guy who uses his brain all day, his hands are surprisingly strong.

“This may hurt a bit,” he says. “Are you ready?”

*

SuperBarbie is sure that she just heard a voice.

“You are ready, Gilda Jane,”
it said.
“You are ready.”

She will cry no longer. She has been unwavering in her faith, and finally God is going to reward her.

“Soon,”
the voice reassures her.

Gilda Jane lifts the window and tosses out the contents of the paper cup, which she crumples and places in the wastebasket, along with the negative pregnancy-test wand.

She sits down on the bed, with her feet flat on the floor and her back straight, like she's sitting in a pew in church.

She closes her eyes and waits for the miracle.

*

“I'm ready,” Hippie Avenger says. By the time she says “I'm ready” again, her toe is free.

The Statistician sits back on the tile floor. “Whew,” he says.

Hippie Avenger sits up in the tub, pulls the waterlogged beach towel against her body, and says, “Thanks, mister.”

“Any time,” says The Statistician, who rises to his feet. His lip is bleeding. His hair is wet. His clothes are soaked from his shoulders to his socks.

Hippie Avenger stands up and steps out of the bathtub, limping on her lacerated foot.

“Do you need some help to walk?” The Statistician asks.

“Well, actually,” she says.

He steps toward her. She pulls herself against him.

“I'm getting my blood on you,” she says.

“I don't mind. I'm getting my blood on you, too.”

“I don't mind, either.”

She looks up at him.

He looks down at her.

The wet towel hits the floor with a slap.

Fragrant steam licks from her skin.

She stands on her uninjured foot, wraps the other leg around him.

Their eyes close, but his lips manage to find her lips, her tongue finds his tongue.

He tastes her minty toothpaste.

She tastes his irony blood.

He feels her warm, damp curves.

She feels his …

Wow
, Hippie Avenger thinks.
This makes the Purple Pal seem kind of insignificant.

He pulls away.

“No. I can't do this to her again. I'm sorry. I can't.”

He rushes out of the bathroom.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

KRYPTONITE

“And Kryptonite will destroy him.”

— Lex Luthor, on Superman's only vulnerability,
from the movie
Superman
, 1978

H
ippie Avenger drapes the wet beach towel over the doorframe in the bathroom.

She kneels on the bath mat, reaches down with her middle finger, and twirls herself the rest of the way to the crescendo, trembling violently, tears running down her face and dripping onto her goosebump-speckled flesh.

“Oh, Gary,” she cries, not caring now if anyone hears her, “Oh, Gary, Oh, Gary, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

*

In the bedroom upstairs, The Statistician unzips his pants, unleashes his erection, and strokes it furiously.

“Oh, Karla. Oh, Karla oh Karla oh Karla. Oh God, oh God, oh God!”

The Kleenex box is empty. He grips his penis just beneath the head right before it spurts, and frantically glances around the room. His eyes land on the empty Wicked Weasel bag atop the bedspread, and he pries open the plastic zipper just in time.

“Ohhhh, Karla,” he moans. “Oh, God.”

*

When she hears a voice crying out for God, Gilda Jane opens her eyes.

Through the slightest crack in the door, she sees Gary in the bedroom across the hall, ejaculating into the plastic bag.

Tears pool in her eyes; they are the opposite kind of tears to the ones she was crying earlier.

Once she's sure that Gary is gone, Gilda Jane tiptoes across the hall and delicately plucks the bag from the garbage can. She lies back on the bed that Gary and his wife have been sharing, and opens herself wide to receive this gift.

When she is finished, she sighs, “Thank you, Lord.”

She will never despair again. To despair is to doubt God.

*

Outside, Gary is searching for his wife.

He is going to tell her the truth. He is going to ask her to forgive him. He is going to ask her if maybe they can start again.

She is not sunning on the beach.

She is not swimming in the lake.

The rubber raft sits empty on the line where the grass ends and the stony beach begins. His wife is nowhere to be seen.

But then Gary thinks he hears her voice, making noises he hasn't heard in a long time. He follows the sounds to the cottage driveway, to Miss Demeanor's Subaru Outback.

In the rear window, Gary can see the inflamed tattoo of Wilma Flintstone, swaying back and forth like she's doing a hula dance.

At first he thinks it's a guy with a spiked blue punk haircut who is pleasuring his wife like this, but after he hears a second voice cry out, he knows that it is Miss Demeanor.

Miss Demeanor's tongue and fingers are moving inside his wife. And his wife is pleasuring Miss Demeanor in a similar fashion.

He doesn't want to watch this, but he can't look away. She lifts her head to gasp, and her face appears in the window. He has never seen her wearing this sort of expression before.

Then she sees him.

“Gary!” she shrieks. “Oh my God! Gary! Gary!”

He is already walking away. By the time he has finished walking, he will not know where he is.

His wife wants to kick open the car door and run after him, but Miss Demeanor stops her, holds her in her strong embrace.

“Jessica,” she says, “you know it has to end this way.”

“I know, Ramona,” Jessica cries. “I know.”