The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (25 page)

Holly watches him retrieve these from a box beneath the bed. She doesn’t question. The Minotaur carries it all—the uniform of his past, his impossibly wide horns—into the impossibly small bathroom. He closes the door. He strips down. He begins to wash himself in the sink. He doesn’t know if she will stay.

She does.

The Minotaur puts his soiled Confederate uniform in the tub and turns the spigot on. The Minotaur hears Holly move about his room. Hears her approach the door. Hears her lean against it. Breath and heartbeat.

“Is it true?” she asks through the thin wood panel. “What asshole said? What he heard?”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. “Sort of.”

And he bumbles (through the thin wood panel) through something like an explanation. He’s sure, at the end, she’ll just leave. Almost hopes she does. It would make things simpler.

The Minotaur opens the bathroom door. Holly stands right there.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Sometimes we all make bad choices.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. He knows.

“You’re misbuttoned,” she says, reaching to fix his coat.

Holly backs away. Moves into the room.

“Took’s getting edgier by the minute,” she says. “It’s like he knows something is about to happen. Something is changing.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. He shrugs and wriggles inside the new coat.

“Just a few more days to kill,” Holly says. “I just have to keep Tooky occupied until Monday. To find some way to pass the time.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, wishing he had something to offer.

“I just wish I could know for sure,” she says. “Sometimes I don’t make the best . . .”

“Mmmnn,” he says.

“I’m trying not to think about what happens after I drop Tooky off,” she says. “To him or me.”

Release. The Minotaur wishes he could say the word.

Holly tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear and moves another inch or so. The Minotaur moves, too, but he’s not so surefooted. The Minotaur kicks the musket. The musket clatters to the floor, its useless barrel aimed right at Holly, who jumps out of the way, thinking maybe it’s loaded, having no reason to believe otherwise.

Holly sucks her breath and stumbles backward into the doorknob.

Holly grimaces. Her face contorts.

“Owwwww-waa!”

Holly lays a hand on her backside. Room #3 contains Holly and all of her pain.

So much hurt for just a bump against the doorknob,
the Minotaur thinks. “Okay?” he asks.

“Listen,” she says. “I need a favor. I think . . . I think I need your help.”

Anything. The Minotaur is ready. His readiness surges through the very marrow of his bones. And when the Minotaur leans close to the cloth-and-wire lampshade, that readiness pops, arcs in a minuscule blue bolt from his fingertip. No. It is just static electricity. The light flickers.

“Mmmnn?”

Holly looks at the Minotaur. Looks like she’s unsure of how to proceed. It is late April, inside and outside Room #3. May is in the wings. In the offing. Just over Scald Mountain, maybe. Primping. Preening. Stropping its beak and whetting its claws. Spring’s wild rumpus has already commenced. The lunatic moon champs at its bit. A car speeds by out on Business 220; all the tiny American flags in the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge’s brick planter flutter on their tiny wooden skewers.
Anything
, he thinks.

“A splinter,” the redhead says, and commits fully to her confession.

“I think I have a splinter,” she says, unbuttoning those tight blue jeans.

“I think I have a splinter,” she says. “In my . . .”

Holly turns sideways to the Minotaur. She eases the jeans down over one haunch. It hurts her to do so.

“I don’t know how I got it,” she says, cocking her hip.

Holly lays a hand on the television set, steadies herself, hooks a thumb in the waistband of her underwear, reconsiders, slips a finger under the thin strip of lace around the leg hole, pauses.

The Minotaur falls into the abyss. Almost.

“We need some light,” Holly says, then hops the short patch of carpet to the bathroom. Flips the switch. Pulls up the fabric of her underwear ever so slightly, but nothing in the world can be seen in the pale wash of insipid fluorescent light. The Minotaur could have told her as much.

“Come here,” Holly says.

“I don’t know how I got it,” she says again.

“Come here,” she says again.

The Minotaur knows.

“It’s too dark,” she says.

The Minotaur could have told her as much. He knows. He knows where the splinter came from.

“Can I trust you?” Holly asks. It’s a rhetorical question.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. “Yes.”

Holly brushes past the Minotaur; their two reflections briefly inhabit the lifeless television screen. Noir. Holly stands at the foot of the bed, looks at the Minotaur, takes a breath, pulls her pants halfway down, lies on her belly. The bed creaks. The Minotaur could have told her as much.

“I think it’s right here,” she says, and with one crooked finger folds the cotton panties in on themselves, tucking the bunched fabric into the deep, arched cleft of her ass, exposing fully one glorious white freckled mound of rump.

“Can you see anything?” she asks.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

He sees the birds. The birds. Delicate and impossibly small against the white of her panties. Birds in flight. Birds at rest. A cardinal, an oriole, a jay. A cardinal, an oriole, a jay. Over and over again.

“Can you see anything?” she asks again.

The Minotaur has to get closer. He has no choice. He tries not to breathe too hard, the tip of his long snout, the deep black wells of his nostrils, so close to her bared thighs. Nevertheless there is his breath, and the sudden goose flesh up and down the backs of her legs.

“I don’t know how it got there,” she says.

The splinter is half an inch—longer, even—and angles deeply smack dab in the middle of her cheek. A quarter-sized patch of inflamed flesh surrounds the point of entry. Its tip is too deep to see.
Cedar
, the Minotaur thinks. He thinks he smells cedar. He knows for sure he smells the black Pennsylvania mud caked in the soles of his boots. Smells, too, blood and the potent urine of a rutting buck. Smells gunpowder, maybe, and through it all Holly. All of Holly. The splinter is cedar. He’d bet money on it. There are probably thousands of such splinters on the floor of the Pygmalia-Blades trailer.

The Minotaur’s hands are capable of great tenderness. He could, with the tips of his thumbnails, his knuckles resting on her behind, pressing, he could pinch and squeeze the splinter out. But his nails are so dirty, and her flesh is so white, so clean.

“Birds,” the Minotaur says. “Umm . . . I mean tweezers.”

Holly chuckles. The Minotaur bumbles into the bathroom, fumbles the first-aid kit; several small things clatter across the tile floor: scissors, a spool of white tape, a pencil.

“You okay in there?” Holly asks.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, kneeling to retrieve the tweezers from behind the toilet.

He washes the tweezers, and washes his hands, too. The Minotaur stands at the sink looking into the mirror. He leans just enough around the doorjamb to see, to see if she is still there on her belly, on his bed. The Minotaur does this again two, three, four times, surprised each time by Holly’s present and half-naked backside. A cardinal, an oriole, a jay. Holly lies, her chin resting on her clasped hands, humming. Humming. The red hair that drapes her face burns against the bedspread’s looping gray pattern.

The Minotaur steps bedside. Holly looks up, smiles, picks at something on the blanket, flicks it away.

“Have to touch,” he says.

“Yes,” she says.

“Of course,” she says.

“Go ahead,” she says.

The Minotaur bends closer; he needs to see better. The Minotaur gets down on one knee. It’s too close. Too something else. He pulls up the chair. Sits.

“Okay,” he says.

The Minotaur cups his hands and blows into the well. Warmth. The Minotaur is capable of warmth. Holly is (almost) perfectly still.

“Touch,” he says, but doesn’t. The Minotaur’s quandary is ancient.

Holly waits. Will wait as long as necessary. Scald Mountain turns a blind eye.

The Minotaur gets to work. At the first brush of his fingertip her muscle flexes. The white gluteus tightens involuntarily. Grows taut inside its flesh, though a fine and freckled jiggle remains. The Minotaur appreciates much this looseness, this fullness. Can’t help himself. Can’t stop himself (man or bull) from brushing her flesh one more time, just to watch the reflex.

“What’re you doing back there?” Holly says, laughing.

“Tweezers,” he says, then nudges the delicate tips against the angry red flesh where the splinter went in.

“Oww-oww-oww!” she says.

“Mmmnn, sorry.”

It’s too deep. The skin is too inflamed. The Minotaur knows what to do. His sewing kit is within reach. He slips a needle from its paper sleeve, needs something to sterilize it. The Minotaur remembers an Old Scald Village butane lighter in the medicine chest.

“Back in a m-minute,” he says, and true to his word returns to the squeaky chair quickly, thumbing at the lighter’s flint wheel. He waves the needle in and out of the sputtering flame, then waits a few seconds for it to cool.

“You know,” Holly says in the wait, “I’ve fucked up so much. With Tooky. And I want to get him there safe and sound.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

What he means is that every past is littered and scarred. What he means is that the present moment is the only moment that pulses, that breathes. What he means is that he himself is capable of great tenderness but has also done great harm. The Minotaur knows that sometimes mercy requires expedience. Haste. Sometimes it can’t be about how much a thing hurts.

The Minotaur lays his palm on Holly’s bare ass cheek, fingers splayed on either side of the splinter, and with his other deft hand drives the needle home. Holly squirms. The Minotaur puts his forearm down on her thigh. Lickety-split, he ferrets out the splinter’s gnarly end with the needle and, forgoing the tweezers, pinches the splinter between his thumbnails and plucks it out.

“It’s a fucking two-by-four,” Holly says, looking at the splinter lying in the Minotaur’s open hand. “Thanks,” she says. “You’re a lifesaver.”

He wants to thank her. He wants to keep that splinter. Wants, really, to push it deep into his own flesh. Anywhere. To make it his. Forever. Silly boy. Holly reaches back to touch the spot.

“Wait,” the Minotaur says. There may be more splinters. He wants to look. To help. Doesn’t. “Band-Aid,” he says.

Holly takes his advice. She waits, and something in the waiting inspires her.

“Hey,” she says, “I just had a great idea.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

He daubs a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol onto the small wound. The redhead winces against the sting. The Minotaur blows gently. A rustle of wings. Sometimes Room #3 is so full that it could not hold even one more breath. Sometimes Room #3 is so empty that whole centuries get lost inside it.

“What is the name of that festival?” she asks.

“Unngh?”

“The pirate dude, at the junkyard,” Holly says. “The guy who was drooling over you. He told us about a festival this coming weekend. That’s where we’ll go.”

The Minotaur puts the needle back, puts the tweezers back, puts the other things back.

“What is it called?” Holly asks. “Fag Day? Ag-Day? No, Ag-Fest. That’s it.”

Everything in its place.

“We’ll solve the mystery,” she says. “We’ll see us a real live sea shanty.”

Everything.

“Come with us!” Holly says. “You! Come with us!”

The Minotaur’s final gesture is to tug the panties back into place. He untucks the rolled fabric, and the flock of printed birds settles over her cheek. A cardinal, an oriole, a jay. Holly gets quiet. Holly is blushing.

“I have to get back,” she says. “To Tookus. I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll go in the morning.”

And that’s it. She’s up, zipped, and out the door. The Minotaur watches her go.

The Minotaur goes to the tub and in the dim light washes his filthy solder’s uniform by hand. Rinses, washes, rinses again until there is no more mud, no more blood. The Minotaur wrings out the pants, the coat. Drapes them over the shower rod. Goes to bed. All night long the water drips into the tub. All night long, against the porcelain. The Minotaur dreams of anvils ringing. All night long.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“H
ORNY HORN HORN!”
Tookus says, then tugs on the yellow shoestring he’s lassoed the Minotaur’s horn with.

The Minotaur feels the tug. He’s glad the boy came out of the maze. Alive. The boy sits behind him, in the Odyssey’s middle seat. Holly drives. The Minotaur rides shotgun. So much movement of late. The Minotaur is discombobulated but doing fine. Rejuvenated, even. He’s staved off the labyrinth one more time.

Tookus removes the loop of string, twirls it, and tosses again. Catches the Minotaur again.

“Horny horn horn!”

In the night the Minotaur heard Danny Tanneyhill return, heard the chainsaw huffing and puffing, hard at work, heard the thumping and cursing of the woodcarver as he loaded something in his truck, heard the truck drive away. No matter.

In the morning the Minotaur found on his doorstep a Tupperware container full of
gulab jamun
, so sticky and dripping they held the early sun captive. A gift from Ramneek. An offering. A note as well: “Our Becky will be coming home in a few days. We will have you over as dinner guest, Mr. M. You will like her.” The Minotaur knows better. But the Minotaur is moved by the undying hope.

In the morning, in the van, Tookus unlaced his sneakers and began the game. The Minotaur is patient. The boy means no harm. The Minotaur knows well the lure of a yellow thread. Knows the impossibility of not following it.

The Minotaur thinks about the previous day, the previous night, the hours just past. Change is afoot. Always afoot. Even the Minotaur has to dance sometimes. Rope-a-dope. The tub of
gulab jamun
sits open on the van’s center console. Everybody’s fingers are sticky. Holly checks on her brother in the rearview mirror. Then checks again. And again. The boy is in constant motion. His arms and hands will not cease. His eyes will not settle. The boy is handsome. Or near enough. His deep scar blazes. Tookus chews on something. It’s the tail of the stuffed mermaid.