Mike Meginnis - Fat Man and Little Boy

The house lights come up, star-shaped glowing glows. Everyone leaves, families holding hands to keep from getting separated in the crowd. Fat Man realizes when they are all gone that he is still there, with his family, who are waiting for him to let go of the arm rests and breathe again.

His wife whispers in his ear. He doesn’t know what. Little Boy and Maggie stand at a distance, holding hands.

In the hotel, Fat Man hides the gun behind their toilet. He’ll get it back next morning.

He dreams of handcuffs squeezing off his hands.

He dreams of the electric chair.

He dreams of wrapping his car around a tree.

He dreams of what it’s like to explode.

They go shopping. The store is three stories high. Escalators. Rosie directs Fat Man and the children to the third floor. Sunglasses for everyone. A pair shaped like stars for Maggie. Cheap-looking, costly, plastic yellow frames. A blocky pair of squares for Little Boy, green frames, almost too big for his head, though they do veil the weird bulge of his eyes. Blue and pink for Fat Man and Rosie, in that order, normal shapes. They need Coppertone sunscreen, the very newest in skin-protecting technology. They are a fair-skinned family. The little girl on the bottle looks coyly over her shoulder as the dog pulls down her swimsuit bottoms.

Fat Man notices the children have disappeared.

“They’re playing hide and seek again,” says Rosie. “Go find them before they get kidnapped.”

Fat Man stumbles through the store, feeling drunk. There’s so much merchandise. He turns a corner, confronts a wall of bags and luggage: umbrella bags, buffalo-bound luggage, fitted bags with clasped lips, luggage like upholstery, tobacco pouches, bags for athletic equipment, purses. He careens right, only to be confronted by a rack of shoes and slippers, laces in various states of undress, tongues hanging out, soft shoes with fur around their mouths and little red bows, shoes with nonfunctioning buckles, and at the aisle’s end emerging to a display of lighters, lighters endorsed by various brands and baseball teams, matches too, and tins of lighter fluid, to see them is to plan a barbecue, feel the pieces sliding into place, wonder where they keep the meat.

Down the escalator. Walking against the stairs, going the wrong way. He’s so wide people have to back down and let him exit before they can get back on, rolling their eyes. He nearly collides with a rack of children’s scuba gear, and avoiding that finds the lamp aisle: lamps shaped like dogs, lamps shaped like cats, lamps shaped like rearing horses, lamps shaped like bouquets of flowers with a lampshade held above them on an incidental metal rod, lamps with pipe racks for bases, pipe racks loaded with demonstrative pipes and pipe supplies.

He looks for Little Boy and Maggie in cosmetics, gathering uncomfortable glances like flies to flypaper, tucking in his chin, hands in his pockets, no harm meant here. Women can dye anything. They can pencil their eyes. They can paint their skin, and powder, to cover, obscure. He walks out into nylons. They don’t like him here any better. Goes to menswear. Finds ties piled like bodies. Finds a thousand argyle shirts, sweaters, vests, socks: dress socks and casual. Crosses the store, into sporting goods. A pile of boxed basketballs, laced or laceless. A pyramid of free weights. Racquets. Fishing rods and tackle. Fisherman hats. Those vests. Those rubber pants. Weird hooks with many snares. They could catch six fish at once. Vast spools of line. And here dog toys. It’s enough to make you weep. Chew toys you can’t imagine. Jerky for the animals. Biscuits, special cookies, bags of different-pastel-colored tennis balls. For playing catch.

In toys trains, electric or push. Toy guns. Solid metal model planes. Wooden horses. Horse heads on sticks. Plaster mammy pushing baby in stroller. X-ray glasses. Candy cigarettes. Spy decoder rings.

He finds them with the swimwear. Rosie too. She holds shorts like a circus tent up against him to test if they’ll fit.

He scolds the children. “Don’t you ever run away from me. Don’t you ever dare. You could get lost in here. Don’t you see you could get lost?”

“We’ll need nose plugs,” says Rosie. “Do you think that you can find us a four-pack?”

They leave the chiming row of registers loaded down with one full bag of stuff they meant to buy and several more filled with things they never planned on. As they approach the exit Fat Man feels the eyes of two security guards settle on his bulk. One guard fat, one guard small. One guard with a soup-catcher mustache. One guard clean-shaven. One guard with his shirt’s buttons aligned in a perfect column. One guard with his buttons all askew. One guard with mirrored sunglasses. A second guard with mirrored sunglasses. As they turn slightly inward to watch the Fat Man’s body, as they realign their shoes to point at his shoes, do their faces harden? Do they shift behind the sunglasses? Do their eyes narrow? Do their lips curl in contempt? As did those of the soldiers, as did the police, as did the once police? Do they reach for guns? Do they have guns? As Fat Man draws nearer the door, the small guard pulls his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose. He seems to have two pairs of eyes. One pair outraged and the other opaque.

Fat Man says, “Is there something the matter?”

“We’ve got to search you, sir,” says the fat guard. “Men of your girth often hide store items in their clothing, thinking we won’t notice. Frankly, sir, you look suspicious.”

“Now wait just a minute,” says Rosie.

Fat Man hides behind her. He holds up their bags in front of himself. Maggie pulls her mother’s skirt.

“My husband hasn’t stolen anything. I was with him the whole time we were in there,” Rosie says, though this is not true.

“With all due respect, ma’am,” says the small guard, “who are you supposed to be that you think we give a damn?”

“Is she somebody famous?” asks the fat one.

The small one shakes his head. He circles Rosie. Fat Man wonders what they’ll do with him if they find the gun. What Rosie would think. He’s straining to breathe. The artificial coolness of the air is stifling now in a way he never noticed before. He circles Rosie too, careful to keep the thin one on her other side.

“Sir,” says the fat one, approaching Fat Man from behind, “it looks suspicious when you try to avoid us. You’re upsetting your daughter. Don’t make her cry.”

Rosie says, “John, maybe you should let them do it so we can go. When they find you’re not a thief we can go to their supervisor.”

“Don’t let them touch me,” says Fat Man. He wheezes. “They hate me.”

Both guards reach for him from either side of Rosie. He drops the bags, spilling their contents, and pushes out his hands to stop them, to keep them at arm’s length.

“How’d your hands get like that?” says the fat guard, taking Fat Man’s left hand.

“Is it ink?” says the small guard, who takes the right hand.

Some crackle between all their fingers, which the guards do not seem to feel. The fat one’s eyes are still hidden. The small one’s eyes are wet and pink as if he’s been rubbing them too often.

“It’s just how they are,” Fat Man says. “Please don’t search me. Please let me go. I can’t stand to be touched.”

If they find his gun they’ll arrest him. They’ll ask him for ID. He’ll only have his passport. They’ll track him back to France, make some calls, learn he’s a fugitive. They’ll extradite him or lock him up here. The gun’s surface has warmed, is the same temperature as his body. It is harder than his body, though. If they pat him down they’ll feel it. He wants to take it back inside himself, to secret the gun in his folds.