Baby Geisha (2 page)

“What's all this shit about turtle marriage?” Kitty asked, and the siblings laughed.

“Iggy claims that turtle had a wife,” Jody said to Kitty, elbowing him to ad lib from there.

“That punk turtle probably had AIDS anyway,” Kitty said.

Seriously?
Iggy thought. He could have foreseen minor aggression, sure, or maybe some pinhead cousins emerging from the basement, but AIDS jokes? These people were morons. Iggy had lost several friends to AIDS, had gone to the community clinic to get tested himself more than once, and thought it was far from humorous.

“You and your AIDS have a good night then,” Iggy said, stomping towards the car.

“Aw, come on,” Jody said, following Iggy to his car door as
he opened it and sat down in the driver's seat. “Kitty was just joking.”

“The problem with people like you,” Iggy said, “is that you live your hick lives and still manage to believe there's a God up there who will forgive your idiocy.”

“Why bring God into this?” Jody asked.

“It looks, from my angle,” Iggy said, “like you have to be pretty fucking dumb to have faith, and that's why I don't have any.” Iggy reclined in his seat, rectified but dizzy from alcohol, thrust his key into the ignition, and started the engine. He didn't care what he said at this point, or if he provoked a fight.

“So, you're too smart for God,” Jody said. “Too pompous to believe in him and above hanging out with the low-lifes who do.”

Iggy had not put the car in reverse yet, because he was really drunk. Some part of him, too, was still remotely interested in how the fight would play out. The scenario in which he got his ass kicked as badly as the turtle's had something heroic in it.

“You're too smart for your own good,” Jody said. “That's the only tragedy here.” Iggy's chest hurt, because he knew Jody was right. He tasted sour vomit in the back of his throat.

“It was obnoxious to kill that turtle,” Iggy said, trying to parse out the original offense. “How can you reconcile God with cruelty like that?”

“If you really want to know,” Jody said, “cut that motor. You're too loaded to drive.” Kitty, in the meantime, had gone back to sorting what looked like the grand finale: ten fountains alternating with M-80s, to be lit in succession.

Was that poor turtle's death God in a hideous costume?

 

Jody led Iggy into their kitchen, opened a drawer in a desk occupying the breakfast nook, and handed Iggy a photo of a mashed-up car. She turned a ceiling fan on and Iggy noticed under the light that she'd changed her eyeliner color from green
to blue, and had obviously re-made her face for the evening. Jody lit up a cigarette and offered one to Iggy. He took it although he didn't smoke.

“'84 Mustang,” Jody said, bowing her head. “I wrapped it around a tree.”

“I'm sorry,” Iggy said.

“Barely survived,” Jody said, then proceeding to chronicle the details leading up to her gruesome crash, including everything from the suicidal thoughts that compelled her to build a 30-beer tall Wizard Staff as part of a drinking game by which you tape empties together into a staff before battling dragons, a.k.a. liquor shots, until the Wizard topples or triumphs—to remembering the tree slam and her face, bloody and upside down, in the rear-view.

“Fourteen broken bones later,” Jody said, “I was in a body cast for two months.”

Midway through the story, Iggy became suspicious: Jody had had a near-death experience when she found God.
Oh no
, Iggy thought.
Next, she'll bust out the Bible tract
. But he listened, again cutting his judgment off at the pass to make way for remote sympathy. He wanted someone, by whatever means necessary, to crack open his hard shell. If he couldn't empathize with this girl, Iggy was certainly not above her turtle-dropkicking routine.

“I almost died a few times,” Iggy confessed, feeling out whether or not he should mention getting AIDS-tested for needle sharing back in the day. “Can't say I was always happy to have survived.”

“Why'd you really come out here?” Jody asked, sitting down on a barstool and lighting another smoke.

“I'm going nomadic,” Iggy said.

“What does that mean?” Jody asked.

“If I'm in one place, I'm missing out somewhere else,” Iggy said.

“What is it you think you're missing out on?” Jody asked.
She hadn't yet pulled a tract out, and Iggy settled in. Maybe she didn't have an agenda; maybe she wasn't even Christian. He pulled up a barstool at the counter next to her. Her mullet was clean and fluffy, and her bangs had been de-plastered as if they'd been washed and brushed. She, too, was wearing a clean t-shirt and probably underwear.

“If I knew that, I wouldn't be missing it, would I?” Iggy asked rhetorically. He admired the stalwart way Jody held her cigarette, between her forefinger and thumb as if in some survivalist militia.

“All I know is that once I got that body cast sliced off with the doc's pizza cutter, I wanted to find a man to settle down and have a kid with. Life's too short,” Jody said.

“I hear that,” Iggy said. “The only way I can slow it down is to hijack myself to random places like this.”

“This place is random!” Jody laughed. “I saw you, almost speeding off in your car, bored stiff. So, you managed to slow it down after all, good for you.”

Another wave of despondence about the turtle, in the form of nausea, rushed Iggy. Maybe batting that creature back and forth had been Jody's way of slowing a moment down. It had operated as a slow-motion nightmare. Iggy couldn't help but mentally replay the event. He had burned through quite a few horror films in his time, and it crossed his mind that maybe that's what he had liked about them—the way time suspended in nascent cataclysm followed by the predicted trauma. Hell, even his past drug use was likely tied to this.

Kitty marched in to wash his charcoal-blackened fingers in the sink.

“What are you two lovebirds up to?” Kitty asked. “You missed a fine finale. Five Black Diamonds in a row. I wore sunglasses.”

“We traumatized Ig with our turtle rugby,” Jody said. “And I think we owe him an apology.”

A sobering shock circulated through Iggy like hot coffee.

“Sorry, Miss Sensitive,” Kitty said. “But you have us to thank for saving your big toe, which that turtle might have snapped clean off.”

“Thanks, but I can care for my own toes,” Iggy said, looking down at them, snug in hiking boots. “I'd better head out.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kitty said, followed by Jody. There had been no expectation to hook up, which also made Iggy feel better, as Jody was not the most attractive girl he'd ever seen. The siblings waved Iggy off, and shot one last spray up in the air to light his path down the obscure, rocky driveway to pavement.

 

The next day was sunny on the Meramec, and Iggy had a hangover. He decided to float. He pulled on his trunks, rented a tube, and headed out, wading off shore into deeper water flow and getting snagged along the way on Missouri's thorny equivalent to asparagus fern, the nasty plant that used to plague his childhood home's yard. Iggy wondered if his mother had named him in honor of that irritating plant, because Iggy rhymed with
spriggy
and that sounded a lot like
prickly
. Iggy's mom loved singing and rhyming like that—always the poet. Iggy then flashed back to his ex-girlfriend, Finnegan, who had claimed his name reminded her of an opera-singing bear bathing under a misty waterfall. Iggy liked that idea better, having no idea what it meant but missing Finnegan, who had left him for a woman. What could he have done about that?
All the women I fall for are lesbians,
he mused, wondering why. In fact, the very idea of lesbians aroused him on the spot, and he got a pup tent in his trunks despite the cold water as he plunged in. Too bad there were no women to be seen for miles, and that he was a total chicken when it came to propositioning them. He spinned his tube around to catch sun sparkles on the innocuous rapids. He would float all day down to another tube rental place, and shuttle back to his camp where he could jostle his pup tent in the privacy of his own larger shelter.

Iggy drifted alone for the first hour, contemplating the night before: his fury inflamed by savagery only to be tamed by a glimpse of authentic human decency, the unexpected sincerity of Jody's confession. Then, he came upon a group of people whose tubes were tied together with ropes, and who had also tied nets to their tubes as makeshift beer coolers.
Hey!
they hollered,
Float this way!

Iggy wafted down.
Welcome!
They yelled like cheerleaders at a varsity game.
Whoo hoo! High fives!
The likely homecoming queen was not Iggy's type but was gorgeous in that wholesome midwestern way with long chestnut hair streaked blond. As she tossed him a can, Iggy caught it then dunked his head in the river, flipping his hair while forgetting that he had none.

“Where you headed, Wet Look?” she asked.

“Down to Minks Pass,” Iggy said. He made small talk with the girl, holding their tubes together to stay connected. People were mostly amicable in these parts, at least, but he didn't know what it all added up to yet.

The tube crew snaked along, catching currents, hitting occasional rocks and diversifying, only to reconvene around the next bend. Twice, people flipped and everyone scrambled to get the man down back on board, a wobbly affair. Iggy rolled off his tube periodically to swim, and in shallower water he let his tube buttress his buns against boulder collisions. It was nice, this living in the present, listening to kids talk about their latest dramas without having to think back to being dumped by Finnegan, or of his parents, who he hadn't called back in six months. Iggy was the youngest in his family to have declared bankruptcy after having maxed out seven credit cards. He was avoiding a permanent address to evade creditors, really, and badly wanted a second chance but didn't know how he'd ever pay down the bills, though reduced from bankruptcy, without a decent job as opposed to the odd jobs he'd taken in recent years due to his meandering, itinerant schedule. If he stayed in one place, he'd be
paying the government back into his forties. Then again, moving made it nearly impossible to meet another woman, not that he'd have the confidence to date with so much debt. He felt he had nothing to offer; he'd shaved his head to start anew but it actually made him feel even more denuded. The Wet Look nickname, ouch. All of this crossed his mind as the kids high fived and hollered, carousing until they swirled into the Minks Pass River Company's eddy spot.

“Nice floating with you!” the girl said to Iggy, releasing their tubes for independent floats to the beach. Iggy accidentally spun into some shore grasses, but pretended he was checking for river life.

Snap
. Iggy yanked his foot out of the water to find the whole tip of his big toe mangled. Blood dribbled down his throbbing foot. A snapping turtle got him after all.
Fucking Meramec
, he cursed under his breath, limping ashore, dragging his raft behind him. He was often verging on lithe, soulful summer days, literally bumping up against them, but never could quite pull off a single day of carefree tranquility.
I'm out of this deadbeat place first thing tomorrow morning
, Iggy told himself. The horror of enlightenment was too painful, and all Iggy immediately craved was a beach towel and a band-aid.

MILLENIUM CHILL

Sweaters dangled from every surface. I had three maxed-out dressers, but sweaters still cascaded down everything. Sleeves were falling off my bookshelf ledges, and a sweater pile in the corner collapsed silently to the floor like a dead knitted octopus. Sweaters were shoved under the bed's covers, and they lined the bathroom towel rack. I found a sweater wedged behind the wok in the kitchen cabinet, and two were plopped on the entryway table. There were three sweaters slung over my desk chair, if I needed one while seated. Four sweaters hung on the coat rack, and one was stuffed between some couch cushions.

From any location in my house I could reach a sweater just in case
. In case of what?
I asked myself.
How many sweaters does one woman need?
I looked around my apartment and decided I'd gone crazy owning so many sweaters. There are only so many sweaters a body can pile onto itself.
Am I really that cold?
Grabbing and folding a sweater out of respect for this remarkably comfortable knittery, I peered under the bed and saw a sweater bunched up, collecting dust bunnies.

It was the middle of winter but it was time for spring-cleaning. I'm sure people who are used to winter often clean in the cold, that this is not a novel idea. But I'd never had gray skies for months straight or considered so often what to wear. I needed more sweaters than I used to. I felt like I'd just moved to Antarctica, though I'd only moved cross-country. I couldn't then bear to part with any sweaters, because their warmth reminded
me of the golden sun. I drank some pomegranate juice to prep for major sweater folding.

 

After folding ten, I wanted an icy shot of vodka to cheers myself for surviving winter. I looked to the clock; only noon. I don't take vodka shots that early; I'm too paranoid about getting drunk in winter daytime. People in northern countries are notorious for passing winter in drunken stupors, and I don't want to fall prey. But what else is there to do, when it's dark half the year, than to toast the melancholy sky until it disappears?

I put on some Cajun music, chugged two glasses of water instead of vodka, and aimed to work until all sweaters were hidden from view. I hadn't heard Cajun music in a while, but it always gets me fired up. It made me want to sit on the porch, stare at alligators, and sweat. It sizzled. I took two aspirin with two more glasses of water. I stretched. I wanted to kill the headache induced from my noticing the sloppy sweaters. Then I put quite a few more away.