Miranda July - The First Bad Man

“You going out?”

“No…” I said suggestively.

“Me either.”

It was a long night. She tidied the living room, she did her dishes. At one point I found her standing in front of the bookshelf with her head cocked to the side.

“Do you have a favorite one?” she asked.

“Nope.” Whatever she was doing was making me extremely tense. With the TV off there was no separation or sense of privacy.

“But you’ve read them all?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.” She ran her finger along the spines, waiting for a book recommendation. She had a decorative bobby pin in her straight hair. I had been looking at it without understanding what it was.

“Is that…?” I pointed to the pin. “Does that have a rhinestone on it?” It was not at all her style — the way it was placed looked accidental, like a piece of twig.

“What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing. I just wasn’t sure if you knew it was there.”

“How would I not know? Obviously I put it there.” She adjusted the bobby pin and pulled a book called Mipam off the shelf.

“That’s a Tibetan novel,” I warned her. “It was written in the eighteen hundreds.”

“Sounds interesting.”

She sat carefully on the couch as if it had only ever been a couch, never her bed, never a park bench or a car. The book was open in her lap and she read or pretended to read. After a while I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning she was dressed in her usual sweatpants and tank top.

“My friend Kate is coming to visit,” she said coolly. “She’ll sleep in the ironing room.”

“Great.” But it was not great. How could we do anything with her friend Kate here? It had been more than two weeks since we’d done a scenario. My globus wasn’t back but I felt tight everywhere, wound up and ready to snap. If we could just do it once, then I wouldn’t care who visited.

“She’s on her way,” said Clee. “She left Ojai an hour ago.”

I set up the cot in the ironing room. I laid out the towels with the sugarless mint.

“She should be here any second,” she said.

I dumped some baking soda down the garbage disposal.

“I see her parking,” said Clee. She stood behind me. I turned around. We faced each other. She laughed a little, shaking her head with disbelief. What? What was I supposed to do to make it happen? This felt like the fundraiser all over again, like there was some hip-hop thing that everyone else knew about.

“Holla?” I said.

Her brow furrowed with incomprehension. The doorbell rang.

KATE WAS A BIG ASIANgirl with a loud laugh and a tiny gold crucifix hanging between her breasts. Her truck had a strange vehicle hitched to it. As she came through the door, she said, “Give me some booty,” and slapped Clee’s butt. Then she stuck out her own butt and Clee slapped it back.

“That’s our version of a high five,” Kate said, coming toward me with a wide smile. I held my hand up in the air to show I preferred the regular version. She handed me a Tupperware container full of plain cooked spaghetti.

“Don’t feel like you have to feed me, I’ll just eat that.”

I hid in my bedroom until they went outside to look at the thing on the back of Kate’s truck. I set up the card table again, plugged in my computer, and began to work. A horrendous noise erupted in the driveway. I ran out to the porch expecting to see smoke but Clee and Kate were just chatting loudly next to the deafening vehicle as it idled.

“It’s just like a regular ATV but it’s legal anywhere,” screamed Kate. She was smoking.

“It doesn’t have the horsepower of a regular ATV,” yelled Clee.

“For its size it has the same amount — actually more. If you blew it up to regular size it would have more horsepower.”

“If you blew up just its back half it would look like you.”

They both laughed. Kate dropped her cigarette butt in my driveway.

“My ass is so huge.”

“It’s really huge.”

“Sean likes it. He says he likes to get lost in it.”

“I thought you weren’t hanging out anymore.”

“We’re not. He just comes over and gets in my ass for a while and then goes.” I looked to the left and right wondering how the neighbors were enjoying this conversation. “Honestly it’s so big I can’t even feel him. So my dad was right?”

“Yeah, she’s a full Beebe. Not as bad as Mrs. Beebe, but bad.”

“She sure looks like one.”

She meaning me? One what?

I ran down the steps, waving hello, and they fell silent. Clee kicked the vehicle’s large tire and then suddenly jumped into its saddle and took off with an earsplitting rumble. We watched her stop at the end of the block; she let out a whoop and yelled something we couldn’t hear.

“Who’s Mrs. Beebe?”

Kate laughed into the back of her hand in an oddly dainty way. She probably had a tiny dainty mother.

“You heard that? Oh shit, we were just kidding around!” She checked my face to see if I was mad. “Clee’s all right. She likes to act all tough, but she’s a total softy when you get to know her. I call her Princess Buttercup.” She laughed nervously and turned the ring on her pinky. “I think you know my dad. His name is Mark Kwon?”

Mark Kwon, the divorced alcoholic Suzanne had set me up with years ago. That was her dad. Kate Kwon.

Princess Buttercup came roaring back down the street. “That’s got some crazy go!” She did a few circles and then jumped off. Kate patted the seat. “Your turn, Cheryl.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think I have the right license for operating—”

Clee walked me over to the grotesque bug. “Ever ridden a motorcycle?”

“No.”

“It’s easier than that. Get on.”

I got on.

“That’s your gas, that’s your brake. Have fun.”

I pushed down on the gas the littlest possible amount. Kate and Clee watched as I very, very slowly pulled away from the curb, and then, like a woman astride a giant tortoise, gradually rolled up the street. It was interesting to be up so high and not enclosed. I’d never moved in such a leisurely way on my own block. My neighbors’ houses looked unfamiliar, almost bleached. The putt-putt of the motor overwhelmed all the usual sounds; I was enclosed in a bubble of noise. A dog barked silently; a young mom in a sun hat put sunblock on the silently wailing faces of two toddlers. They grew still as I slowly rolled by. Twins. I’d never seen them before. Except I had.

Where are you going? they asked in unison.

Up the block, I guess.

But you’ll be back for us?

I’ll be back, but not today.

They were crestfallen, both of them. Somehow both Kubelko Bondy. Why had this soul been circling me for so long? Did it stay young or was it getting older too? And would it eventually give up on me? This was the wrong question — obviously it was I who would eventually give up. It was just a habit, like memorizing license plates. A silly little tic, that’s all. I stomped down on the gas pedal and the mini ATV jumped forward, roaring up the next block. The noise shook everything out of my head. What a magical way to get around. I’d always thought of these types of machines as toys for uneducated people who didn’t care about the environment, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe this was a kind of meditation. I felt connected to everything and the motor volume held me at a level of alertness I wasn’t used to. I kept waking up and then waking up from that, and then waking up even more. Was everything redneck actually mystical? What about guns? I turned around. Clee and Kate were very tiny but I could see them, wildly gesticulating for me to come back. I tried pushing down all the way on the gas. In an instant I was zooming toward them and they were running out of the way, screaming.