Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

Arty and I were sitting on the exercise bench to watch because Chick had come chirping about his “new way!” My mouth hung open as I thought about setting the Chick on my own cleaning chores. Arty looked steadfastly at Chick, whose proud grin began to weaken and slide off into doubt. “Show-off,” said Arty quietly.

Chick’s face crumpled. “I didn’t mean it, Arty. I’m sorry.” Arty dropped to the floor and crawled into his room, thumping the door shut behind him.

For obvious reasons “show-off” was no insult in our family, but Arty had a way of turning “sweetheart” into a thumb in the eye.

I sat looking at Chick. I knew what he felt. The huge buoyant air sack of love that filled his body had just exploded and the collapse was devastating. Poor little stupe. He was just a baby. He hunkered down against the tank with the side of his soft face against the cool glass for comfort. He didn’t dare look at me for sympathy. He didn’t cry. He just crouched there and ached.

I squinted at Arty’s door. He had his radio turned up loud. I got up and walked over to the Chick. His eyes swiveled at me in fear. He thought I was going to pinch him or say something nasty. That proved he couldn’t really read minds. I put my arms around him. I rubbed my cheek against his curly ear. He slung an arm around my neck. I whispered, “It’s a great way to clean.”

“Truly?” he whispered. I could hear the tears in his throat.

The dumb little fuck was supposed to be so goddamn sensitive, how come he couldn’t figure it out? All he had to do to make me like him was need me. All he had to do to make Arty like him was drop dead.

Papa and Chick left with great fanfare. We all went along when Horst drove them to the airport. I can’t remember where we were except that it was not Atlantic City, because that’s where Papa and Chick were going. They were planning to stay for five days — a long trip but Papa wanted to break Chick in to the game slowly and delicately. Chick had heard that there was a swimming pool in their hotel. Chick was sure he was going to learn to swim like Arty. Arty was utterly charmed to hear this, of course.

That night the show closed down peacefully, but when Lil went to give out the tills the next morning she discovered that the entire take from the two days before — around $20,000—was gone. The alarms had been cut at their source and the safe — a silly, tinny affair anyway — had been popped open like a melon on pavement. Old-fashioned plastique , Horst said, and crudely handled.

Horst went out to the airport for Papa and Chick early on the morning of the sixth day. Papa had looked bad the last time he’d come home from picking pockets. This time he looked like deaths rectum. He hugged us all fervently, which was awkward because he wouldn’t let go of Chick and carried him the whole time. Chick himself was white and still and didn’t smile.

Papa collapsed into his big chair with Chick in his lap. We children arranged ourselves discreetly while Mama fussed in the refrigerator and Horst lit his pipe.

“You both look worn to shreds,” Mama was clucking.

Papa gave a walleyed look around at our waiting faces and I was afraid he was going to send us out so he could talk to Mama and Horst. The clink of ice cubes distracted him, and then Mama handed him a tall glass of her famous lemonade.

“Al, I want Horst to explain about the safe,” Mama began. Horst actually reached to take the pipe out of his mouth but Papa cut them both off.

“Lily, I gotta tell you. Horst, I got to get this out. I don’t know what in creeping Jesus to think.”

Horst waved his pipe, but Mama twisted her hands, anxious. “Are you ill? Whatever happened?”

“I came within a gnat’s ass of losing Chick,” Papa said. “That’s what happened.” Chick whimpered on Papa’s chest and got a pat. “No. I wouldn’t really lose you, honey. It’s O.K.”

I grimaced at Arty but he was hunched over in his sofa-bunk, watching Papa, and didn’t notice.

It took a while for Papa to get it all out. He hadn’t got it organized as a story yet. At first, he said, they’d taken it slow and easy.

“I didn’t lay any bets at all the first night. Just watched and had him practice. Gave wins to the good faces and grief to the apes and assholes. It was fun, sending some poor hack driver on the roll of his life with his skinny wife hanging on his arm in a faint, thinking ‘Shoes for Junior.’ Then watching their eyes as they stood under the chandelier and I say ‘Red 26’ into my button and pay off their mortgage, and whisper ‘Red 19’ and send their baby to college with twenty minutes at the wheel.

“The fat pricks with the diamond teeth are going off in fits. I was there awhile and then all of a sudden we went dead. Scared the crap out of me. Nothing. I turned in to a quiet corner and I’m practically screaming into the mike, but the wheel goes its own merry way. I go running for the elevator thinking the receiver’s broke or he’s sick or he’s been playing with matches. A million things. But the little turd is crapped out in his chair with the receiver buzzing in his lap. Asleep. I got him into his jammies and tucked him into bed and he didn’t peep. With the trip and everything he was just burnt out. He’d never done that before.…”

They had done well for a couple of nights.

“I’m percolating with forty thousand in the kick, and Chick’s eating big soft pretzels and floating in the pool every day and learning to paddle a little. Then, by the fourth night, I’m down the strip. This is no shit, Horst, three blocks. Three from the hotel room and the kid’s still got it. No problem. I took him there one time only and he had no problems. Not with the crowds or the distance or anything else.

“So I’m leaning on the table doing a quiet gosh-and-golly hick routine over my roll, when this punk in a red sweat suit, carrying a tennis racket, comes up beside me. He’s been there awhile, just watching, and I swear I was smooth as glass, Horst. Slicker than snot on a rock. Nobody would guess. Well, this punk in the sweats could have been a boxer to look at him. Broad on top, narrow ass. Skinny legs. He lays a hand on my arm and says, ‘You’re doing very well tonight, Mr. Binewski.’ He’s calling me Binewski when I’m traveling as Stephens. A young guy. Clean-looking. Short hair, face like a baby’s butt. Blond. You tell me, Horst, what the fuck should I have done? Am I supposed to say, ‘You must mean some other guy. I’m Stephens’? He’s easing me away from the table, his hand on my arm, out to the lobby saying, ‘Wonderful run you’ve been having, Mr. Binewski.’ And I’m thinking it’s another house-dick roust. The crew from Tahoe must have fingered me to every hotel on the planet. He says, ‘How’s your little boy?’ Cyanide-sweet, leading me along. Out by the door I finally ask him for bona fides. I say, ‘Are you with the casino?’ He says, ‘No. I’m with a larger organization.’ It’s not clear, you see, Lily? When the house dicks jumped me before there was nothing mysterious about it.

“But I don’t want to talk tough or panic because the Chick can maybe hear me and get scared. Then the guy asks where Chick is. Taking a nap, I say. This guy says, ‘Are you sure?’

“I just took off running — out the door, three blocks — left my chips on the table. Had nine heart attacks getting back to the room, but there’s Chick, calm in front of some old movie on the TV, eating a cucumber sandwich on wheat, and the receiver in his lap dead and cold.

“I just about died of relief. Give the kid a pat and sit down to look at my transmitter. Finally figure out the thing is dead. Something’s wrong or been done to it. I’m diddling with it when Chick looks at me and says, ‘Those other guys are coming,’ through his mouthful of sandwich. And I say, like a numbnuts, ‘What other guys?’ And the door opens and three guys come in. Chick ignores them and starts eating the carrot slices off his room-service plate.