Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

It embarrassed her to see how small her hand was in his. As if he’d grown up and she just hadn’t bothered. She still remembered when she’d been taller. “Really?”

“Really. Robert Potter is your mother’s nemesis.”

She took her hand back. Slapped a beer in his. “Stop making fun of my mom. She doesn’t have a nemesis. And why does that word always sound like someone’s got a disease? Robert Potter’s just a fuckhead.”

“Once Potter said he’d pay me ten dollars if I gave him a pair of Mom’s underwear. It was when Mom and I weren’t getting along. I was like fourteen. We were at the grocery store and she slapped me for some reason. So I guess he thought I’d do it. Everybody saw her slap me. I think it was because I told her Rice Krispies were full of sugar and she should stop trying to poison me. So he came up to me afterward in the parking lot.”

Beer made you talk too much. Add that to the list. It wasn’t her favorite thing about beer. Next thing she knew, she’d be crying about some dumb thing or begging him to stay.

He was grinning. “Did you do it?”

“No. I told him I’d do it for twenty bucks. So he gave me twenty bucks and I just kept it. I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to tell anyone.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah. Then I made him give me twenty more dollars. I said if he didn’t, I’d tell my mom the whole story.”

That wasn’t the whole story, either, of course. She didn’t imagine she’d ever tell him the whole story. But the result of the story was that she had enough money for beer and some weed. She paid some guy to buy beer for her. That was the night she’d brought Biscuit up here.

They’d done it on the mattress in the basement of the wrecked farmhouse, and later on they’d done it in the theater, on the pokey little stage where girls in blue dresses and flammable wigs used to sing and tap-dance. Leaves everywhere. The smell of smoke, someone farther up the mountain, checking on their still, maybe, chain-smoking. Reading girly magazines. Biscuit saying, Did I hurt you? Is this okay? Do you want another beer? She’d wanted to kick him, make him stop trying to take care of her, and also to go on kissing him. She always felt that way around Biscuit. Or maybe she always felt that way and Biscuit had nothing to do with it.

He said, “So did you ever tell her?”

“No. I was afraid that she’d go after him with a ball-peen hammer and end up in jail.”

When she got home that night. Her mother looking at Bun natine like she knew everything, but she didn’t, she didn’t. She said: “I know what you’ve been up to, Bunnatine. Your body is a temple and you treat it like dirt.”

So Bunnatine said: “I don’t care.” She’d meant it, too.

“I always liked your mom.”

“She always liked you.” Liked Biscuit better than she liked Bunnatine. Well, they both liked him better. Thank God her mother had never slept with Biscuit. She imagined a parallel universe in which her mother fell in love with Biscuit. They went off together to fight crime. Invited Bunnatine up to their secret hideaway/love nest for Thanksgiving. She showed up and wrecked the place. They went on Oprah. While they were in the studio some supervillain — sure, okay, that fuckhead Robert Potter — implemented his dreadful, unstoppable, terrible plan. That parallel universe was his to loot, pillage, discard like a half-eaten grapefruit, and it was all her fault.

The thing was, there were parallel universes. She pictured poor parallel Bunnatine, sent a warning through the mystic veil that separates universes. Go on Oprah or save the world? Do whatever you have to do, baby.

The Biscuit in this universe said, “Is she at the restaurant tonight?”

“Her night off,” Bunnatine said. “She’s got a poker night with some friends. She’ll come home with more money than she makes in tips and lecture me about the evils of gambling.”

“I’m pretty pooped anyway,” he said. “All that poetry wore me out.”

“So where are you staying?”

He didn’t say anything. She hated when he did this.

She said, “You don’t trust me, baby?”

“Remember Volan Crowe?”

“What? That kid from high school?”

“Yeah. Remember his superhero comics?”

“He drew comics?”

“He made up Mann Man. A superhero with all the powers of Thomas Mann.”

“You can’t go home again.”

“That’s the other Thomas. Thomas Wolfe.”

“Thomas Wolfman. A hairy superhero who gets lost driving home whenever the moon is full.”

“Thomas Thomas Virginia Woolfman Woman.”

“Now with extra extra superpowers.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“Didn’t he die of tuberculosis?”

“Not him. I mean that kid.”

“Didn’t he turn out to have a superpower?”

“Yeah. He could hang pictures perfectly straight on any wall. He never needed a level.”

“I thought he tried to destroy the world.”

“Yeah, that’s right. He was calling himself something weird. Fast Kid with Secret Money. Something like that.”

“What about you?”

She said, “Me?”

“Yeah.”

“Keeping an eye on this place. They don’t pay much, but it’s easy money. I had another job, but it didn’t work out. A place down off I-40. They had a stage, put on shows. Nothing too gross. So me and Kath, remember how she could make herself glow, we were making some extra cash two nights a week. They’d turn down the lights and she’d come out onstage with no clothes on and she’d be all lit up from inside. It was real pretty. And when it was my turn, guys could pay extra money to come and lie on the stage. Do you remember that hat, my favorite hat? The oatmeal-colored one with the pom-poms and the knitted ears?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they kept it cold in there. I think so that we’d have perky tits when we came out onstage. So we’d move around with a bit more rah-rah. But I wore the hat. I got management to let me wear the hat, because I don’t float real well when my ears get cold.”

“I gave you that hat,” he said.

“I loved that hat. So I’d be wearing the hat and this dress — something modest, girl next door — and come out onstage and hover a foot above their faces. So they could see I wasn’t wearing any underwear.”

He was smiling. “Saving the world by taking off your underwear, Bunnatine?”

“Shut up. I’d look down and see them lying there on the stage like I’d frozen them.” Zap. “They weren’t supposed to touch me. Just look. I always felt a million miles above them. Like I was a bird.” A plane. “All I had to do was scissor my legs, kick a little, just lift up my hem a little. Do twirls. Smile. They’d just lie there and breathe hard like they were doing all the work. And when the music stopped, I’d float offstage again. But then Kath left for Atlantic City to go sing in a cabaret show. And then some asshole got frisky. Some college kid. He grabbed my ankle and I kicked him in the head. So now I’m back at the restaurant with Mom.”

He said, “How come you never did that for me, Bunnatine? Float like that?”

She shrugged. “It’s different with you,” she said, as if it were. But of course it wasn’t. Why should it be?

“Come on, Bunnatine,” he said. “Show me your stuff.”

She stood up, shimmied her underwear down to her ankles with an expert wriggle. All part of the show. “Close your eyes for a sec.”

“No way.”

“Close your eyes. I’ll tell you when to open them.”

He closed his eyes and she took a breath, let herself float up. She could only get about two feet off the ground before that old invisible hand yanked her down again, held her tethered just above the ground. She used to cry about that. Now she just thought it was funny. She let her underwear dangle off her big toe. Dropped it on his face. “Okay, baby. You can open your eyes.”