Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

When she looked over, she saw that he’d put his silly outfit back on inside out. How often did that happen? There was an ant in her underwear. She made the decision to find this erotic, and then realized it might be a tick. No, it was an ant. “Margaret Hamilton, baby,” she said. “I’d do her.”

He was watching her wriggle, of course. Too drunk at the moment to do anything. That was fine with her. And she was too drunk to feel embarrassed about having ants in her pants. Just like that Ella Fitzgerald song. Finis, finis.

The big lunk, her old chum, said, “I’d watch. But she turns into a big witchy puddle when she gets a bucketful in the face. Not good. When it rains does she say, Oops, sorry, can’t fight crime today? Interesting sexual subtext there, by the way. Very girl on girl. Girl meets nemesis, gets her wet, she melts. Screeches orgasmically while she does it, too.”

How could he be drunk and talk like that? There were more ants. Had she been lying on an ant pile while they did it? Poor ants. Poor Bunnatine. She stood up and took her dress and her underwear off — no silly outfits for her — and shook them vigorously. Come out with your little legs up, you ants. She pretended she was shaking some sense into him. Or maybe what she wanted was to shake some sense out of him. Who knew? Not her.

She said, “Margaret Hamilton wouldn’t fight crime, baby. She’d conquer the world. She just needs a wet suit. A sexy wet suit.” She put her clothes back on again. Maybe that’s what she needed. A wet suit. A prophylactic to keep her from melting. The booze didn’t work at all. What did they call it? A social lubricant. And it helped her not to care so much. Anesthetic. It helped hold her together afterward, when he left town again. Superglue.

No bucket of water at hand. She could throw the rest of her beer, but then he’d just look at her and say, Why’d you do that, Bunnatine? It would hurt his feelings. The big lump.

He said, “Why are you looking at me like that, Bunnatine?”

“Here. Have another Little Boy,” she said, giving up, passing him a wide mouth. Yes, she was sitting on an anthill. It was definitely an anthill. Tiny superheroic ants were swarming out to defend their hill, chase off the enormous and evil although infinitely desirable doom of Bunnatine’s ass. “It’ll put hair on your chest and then make it fall out again.”

“Enjoy the parade?” Every year, the same thing. Balloons going up and up like they couldn’t wait to leave town and pudding-faced cloggers on pickup trucks and on the curbs teenage girls holding signs. We Love You. I Love You More. I Want To Have Your Super Baby. Teenage girls not wearing bras. Poor little sluts. The big lump never even noticed and too bad for them if he did. She could tell them stories.

He said, “Yeah. It was great. Best parade ever.”

Anyone else would’ve thought he was being one hundred percent sincere. Nobody else knew him like she did. He looked like a sweetheart, but even when he tried to be gentle, he left bruises.

She said, “I liked when they read all the poetry. Big bouncy guy / way up in the lonely sky.”

“Yeah. So whose idea was that?”

She said, “ The Daily Catastrophe sponsored it. Mrs. Dooley over at the high school got all her students to write the poems. I saved a copy of the paper. Figured you’d want it for your scrapbook.”

“That’s the best part about saving the world. The poetry. That’s why I do it.” He was throwing rocks at an owl that was hanging out on a tree branch for some reason. It was probably sick. Owls didn’t usually do that. A rock knocked off some leaves. Blam! Took off some bark. Pow! The owl just sat there.

She said, “Don’t be a jerk.”

“Sorry.”

She said, “You look tired.”

“Yeah.”

“Still not sleeping great?”

“Not great.”

“Little Red Riding Hood.”

“No way.” His tone was dismissive. As if , Bunnatine, you dumb bunny. “Sure, she’s got a costume, but she gets eaten. She doesn’t have any superpowers. Baked goods don’t count.”

“Sleeping Beauty?” She thought of a girl in a moldy old tower, asleep for a hundred years. Ants crawling over her. Mice. Some guy’s lips. That girl must have had the world’s worst morning breath. Amazing to think that someone would kiss her. And kissing people when they’re asleep? She didn’t approve. “Or does she not count, because some guy had to come along and save her?”

He had a faraway look in his eyes. As if he were thinking of someone, some girl he’d watched sleeping. She knew he slept around. Grateful women saved from evildoers or obnoxious blind dates. Models and movie stars and transit workers and trapeze artists, too, probably. She read about it in the tabloids. Or maybe he was thinking about being able to sleep in for a hundred years. Even when they were kids, he’d always been too jumpy to sleep through the night. Always coming over to her house and throwing rocks at the window. His face at her window. Wake up, Bunnatine. Wake up. Let’s go fight crime.

He said, “Her superpower is the ability to sleep through anything. Origin story: she tragically pricks her finger on a spinning wheel. What’s with the fairy tales and kids’ books, Bunnatine? Rapunzel’s got lots of hair that she can turn into a hairy ladder. Not so hot. Who else? The girl in Rumpelstiltskin. She spins straw into gold.”

She missed these conversations when he wasn’t around. Nobody else in town talked like this. The mutants were sweet, but they were more into music. They didn’t talk much. It wasn’t like talking with him. He always had a comeback, a wisecrack, a double entendre, some cheesy sleazy pickup line that cracked her up, that she fell for every time. It was probably all that witty banter during the big fights. She’d probably get confused. Banter when she was supposed to POW! POW! when she was meant to banter.

She said, “You’ve got it backward. Rumpelstiltskin spins the straw into gold. She just uses the poor freak and then she hires somebody to go spy on him to find out his name.”

“Cool.”

She said, “No, it’s not cool. She cheats.”

“So what? Was she supposed to give up her kid to some little guy who spins gold?”

“Why not? I mean, she probably wasn’t the world’s best parent or anything. Her kid didn’t grow up to be anyone special. There aren’t any fairy tales about that kid.”

“Your mom.”

She said, “What?”

“Your mom! C’mon, Bunnatine. She was a superhero.”

“My mom? Ha ha. ”

He said, “I’m not joking. I’ve been thinking about this for a few years. Being a waitress? Just her disguise.”

She made a face and then unmade it. It was what she’d always thought: he’d had a crush on her mom. “So what’s her superpower?”

He gnawed on a fingernail with those big square teeth. “I don’t know. I don’t know her secret identity. It’s secret. So you don’t pry. It’s bad form, even if you’re archenemies. But I was at the restaurant once when we were in high school and she was carrying eight plates at once. One was a bowl of soup, I think. Three on each arm, one between her teeth, and one on top of her head. Because somebody at the restaurant bet her she couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I remember that. She dropped everything. And she chipped a tooth.”

“Only because that fuckhead Robert Potter tripped her,” he pointed out.

“It was an accident.”

He picked up her hand. Was he going to bite her fingernail now? No, he was studying the palm. Like he was going to read it or something. It wasn’t hard, reading a waitress’s palm. You’ll spend the rest of your life getting into hot water. He said gently, “No, it wasn’t. I saw the whole thing. He knew what he was doing.”