Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

“Not until six a.m. I just need to go home first and take a shower.”

“Cool. Is there any beer left?”

“No. Sorry,” she said. “Should’ve brought more.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got this. Want some?”

“Why don’t you leave?”

“Why go wait tables in some other place? I like it here. This is where I grew up. It was a good place to grow up. I like all the trees. I like the people. I even like how the tourists drive real slow between here and Boone. I just need to find a new job or Mom and I are going to end up killing each other.”

“I thought you were getting along.”

“Yeah. As long as I do exactly what she says.”

“I saw her at the parade. With some little kid.”

“Yeah. She’s been babysitting for a friend at the restaurant. Mom’s into it. She’s been reading the kid all these fairy tales. She can’t stand the Disney stuff, which is all the kid wants. Now they’re reading The Wizard of Oz. I’m supposed to get your autograph, by the way. For the kid.”

“Sure thing! You got a pen?”

“Oh, shit. It doesn’t matter. Maybe next time.”

It got dark slow and then real fast at the end, the way it always did, even in the summer, like daylight realized it had to be somewhere right away. Somewhere else. On weekends she came up here and read mystery novels in her car. Moths beating at the windows. Got out every once in a while to take a walk and look for kids getting into trouble. She knew all the places they liked to go. Sometimes the mutants were down where the stage used to be, practicing. They’d started a band. They were always asking if she was sure she couldn’t sing. She really, really couldn’t sing. That’s okay, the mutants always said. You can just howl. Scream. We’re into that. They traded her ’shine for cigarettes. Told her long, meandering mutant jokes with lots of hand gestures and incomprehensible punch lines. Dark was her favorite time. In the dark she could imagine that this really was the Land of Oz, that when the sun couldn’t stay away any longer, when the sun finally came back up, she’d still be there. In Oz. Not here. Click those heels, Bunnatine. There’s no home like a summer place.

She said, “Still having nightmares?”

“Yeah.”

“The ones about the end of the world?”

“Yeah, you nosy bitch. Those ones.”

“Still ends in the big fire?”

“No. A flood.”

“Remember that television show?”

“Which one?”

“You know. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even Mom liked it.”

“I saw it a few times.”

“I keep thinking about how that vampire, Angel, whenever he got evil, you knew he was evil because he started wearing black leather pants.”

“Why are you obsessed with what people wear? Shit, Bunnatine. It was just a TV show.”

“Yeah, I know. But those black leather pants he wore, they must have been his evil pants. Like fat pants.”

“What?”

“Fat pants. The kind of pants that people who get thin keep in their closet. Just in case they get fat again.”

He just looked at her. His big ugly face was all red and blotchy from drinking.

She said, “So my question is this. Does Angel the vampire keep a pair of black leather pants in his closet? Just in case? Like fat pants? Do vampires have closets? Or does he donate his evil pants to Goodwill when he’s good again? Because if so then every time he turns evil, he has to go buy new evil pants.”

He said, “It’s just television, Bunnatine.”

“You keep yawning.”

He smiled at her. Such a nice-boy smile. Drove girls of all ages wild. He said, “I’m just tired.”

“Parades can really take it out of you.”

“Fuck you.”

She said, “Go on. Take a nap. I’ll stay awake and keep lookout for mutants and nemesissies and autograph hounds.”

“Maybe just for a minute or two. You’d really like him.”

“Who?”

“The nemesis I’m seeing right now. He’s got a great sense of humor. Sent me a piano crate full of albino kittens last week. Some project he’s working on. They pissed everywhere. Had to find homes for them all. Of course, first we checked to make sure that they weren’t little bombs or possessed by demons or programmed to hypnotize small children with their swirly red kitten eyes. Give them bad dreams. That would have been a real PR nightmare.”

“So what’s up with this one? Why does he want to destroy the world?”

“He won’t say. I don’t think his heart’s really in it. He keeps doing all these crazy stunts, like with the kittens. There was a thing with a machine to turn everything into tomato juice. But somebody who used to hang out with him says he doesn’t even like tomato juice. If he ever tries to kidnap you, Bunnatine, whatever you do, don’t say yes if he offers you a game of chess. Try to stay off the subject of chess. He’s one of those guys who think all master criminals ought to be chess players, but he’s terrible. He gets sulky.”

“I’ll try to remember. Are you comfortable? Put your head here. Are you cold? That outfit doesn’t look very warm. Do you want my jacket?”

“Stop fussing, Bunnatine. Am I too heavy?”

“Go to sleep, Biscuit.”

His head was so heavy she couldn’t figure out how he carried it around on his neck all day. He wasn’t asleep. She could hear him thinking.

He said, “You know, someday I’m going to fuck up. Someday I’ll fuck up and the world won’t get saved.”

“Yeah. I know. A big flood. That’s okay. You just take care of yourself, okay? And I’ll take care of myself and the world will take care of itself, too.”

Her leg felt wet. Gross. He was drooling on her leg. He said, “I dream about you, Bunnatine. I dream that you’re drowning, too. And I can’t do anything about it. I can’t save you.”

She said, “You don’t have to save me, baby. Remember? I float. Let everything turn into water. Just turn into water. Let it turn into beer. Tomato juice. Let the Land of Oz sink. Ozlantis. Little happy mutant Dorothy mermaids. Let all those mountain houses and ski condos go down, all the way down and the deer and the bricks and the high school girls and the people who never tip. It isn’t all that great a world anyway, you know? Biscuit? Maybe it doesn’t want to be saved. So stop worrying so much. I’ll float. I’m Ivory soap. Won’t even get my toes wet until you come and find me.”

“Oh, good, Bunnatine,” he said, drooling, “that’s a weight off my mind”—and fell asleep. She sat beneath his heavy head and listened to the air rushing around up there in the invisible leaves. It sounded like water moving fast. Waterfalls and lakes of water rushing up the side of the mountain. But that was some other universe. Here it was only night and wind and trees and the stars were coming out. Hey, Dad, you fuckhead.

Her legs fell asleep and she needed to pee again, but she didn’t want to wake up Biscuit. She bent over and kissed him on the top of his head. He didn’t wake up. He just mumbled, Quit it, Bunnatine. Love me alone. Or something like that.

She remembers being a kid. Nine or ten. Sneaking back into the house at four in the morning. Her best friend, Biscuit, has gone home, too, to lie in his bed and not sleep. She had to beg him to let her go home. They have school tomorrow. She’s tired and she’s so hungry. Fighting crime is hard work. Her mother is in the kitchen, making pancakes. There’s something about the way she looks that tells Bunnatine she’s been out all night, too. Maybe she’s been out fighting crime, too. Bunnatine knows her mother is a superhero. She isn’t just a waitress. That’s just her cover story.

She stands in the door of the kitchen and watches her mother. She practices her hovering. She practices all the time.