Amelia Gray - Museum of the Weird

“That’s illegal,” I say.

“I reject law,” she says. “This fountain has no laws.”

“What about gravity?”

“That’s just a good idea.”

The tostada grows three times larger in my stomach. I have the brief sensation of the woman shooting far away, into the trees at the edge of the park, me tied to the bench without hope of pursuit. The feeling passes before I think to move my arm.

“That money goes to charity,” I say.

“What do I look like?” the woman says.

I tilt my head to look up at her. She’s wearing blue linen pants, wet at the calves from the fountain, and a white shirt. Her hair is tied up with a yellow kerchief, which has the effect of pulling her features up and back, lengthening her neck, brightening her face. I feel heat like a rash. “The Virgin Mary,” I say.

“The Virgin Mary?” she says. “That’s strange.”

“No, it’s not.”

She stands up. Her zippered pouch drips water down her leg. She is unusually tall.

I have to shut my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m disoriented.” “Story of my life,” she says. When I open my eyes, she’s vaulting over a line of bushes on the other side of the park. I think, good. The world needs tougher religious artifacts. Everything you find on Sunday morning is too delicate. Candles burning over white linen. Transferring the wine from vessel to vessel, chasuble sleeves hanging perilously close. You can buy all this stuff from a catalog, but it’s expensive. Sometimes, it comes blessed.

The fountain is very close to my home and at my home’s heart is my medicine cabinet. Something feels very strange about the container of my body. As I was getting up, the corn disk hardened into a circular saw blade and went to work on the flesh of my organs. It consumes and spins faster and threatens my spinal cord. My brain howls in protest. I want darkness and my bed and the calming mechanism of a great deal of medication.

My brain says, careful what you wish for!

The next day, Jeannie serves me King Ranch chicken at the café. She has her hair pulled back.

“Your hair looks nice like that,” I say.

“I wear it like this every day,” she says. This sounds a little accusatory and I feel like apologizing for not noticing and then I resent the desire to apologize for not noticing because it’s not as if noticing her is my responsibility. I have lately been thinking about responsibility. The chicken is congealed to my plate under a solid grease-mound of cheese.

“What are your responsibilities?” I ask Jeannie.

She glances at her other table, two women who are also having the King Ranch chicken. It is the special. “I take orders,” she says, looking back. “And I bring out water and I serve plates and sometimes I say ‘that plate is hot.’ I roll silverware, I cut lemons and limes, I clean the women’s restroom and I wash the windows and I change the specials board and write receipts and make change.”

“That sounds like a great deal of responsibility,” I say, thinking of lists—1. bring out water 2. serve plates 2a. that plate is hot 2b. I hope you enjoy the food 3. roll silverware 3a. this silverware is heavy and right 3b. what am I going to do about my problems 4. cut 4a. lemons 4b. limes 5. clean 5a. windows 5b. restroom 5c. specials board—“but I meant in your whole life.”

“That’s a lot more,” she says, smiling.

“I imagine so.”

She picks up my menu. “What are your responsibilities?”

“To keep my body alive, and my mind well.”

“That’s it?” she says. “Well, you’re lucky.”

I cut through cold cheese with the side of my fork. “I am the luckiest man alive,” I say. “I am the luckiest man in the history of the free world.”

“Don’t you have a job, though? Don’t you have any goals?” These questions make me uncomfortable. There is a poster behind her of peppers from around the world and I wonder which pepper would be the worst on the tongue. Then, if you swallowed them, which pepper would be the worst in the gut, and how would the burn differ. Jeannie would not be interested in me if I told her that I got checks from my mother and from the government and, though I respect the necessary existence of each, that I dislike both as sources of revenue, and that my goal is her, or someone like her. These are normal ways to think but no way to talk to a religious woman.

“My goals are to be alive and well,” I say, “and to be closer to God.” “Those are good goals.”

“I want to get so close to God that God has to file a restraining order.”

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: Why does Jeannie like you?

A: Jeannie appreciates my honesty and understands that there is not nearly enough of it in men in the world these days. She has not given it much thought.

Q: Is it possible that she will break your heart?

A: She would need a much larger magnet.

Q: Do you expect us to believe you?

A: You have absolutely no choice.

Q: We resent this, Arnold. Please give us a reason to trust you.

A: The reason is that you have absolutely no choice.

Q: Don’t you feel that God is so beyond caring what is going on down here?

A:

The fountain is broken. The water in the concrete basin is still, and the pumps are shut off. A man in work clothes is bent over an electrical box I never noticed, twisting wires. I think of the electrical box in my chest and feel a little sorry for myself.

“The water is powered by electricity,” I say to the man. “Doesn’t that seem like a cop-out?”

The man pulls a crimping tool out of his box. “I’d be out of a job if it wasn’t,” he says.

“What are your responsibilities?”

“To keep food on the table,” he says, turning his attention to the electrical box.

“You’re lucky you don’t live on a boat.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re lucky you don’t live on a boat on the ocean. It would make things difficult.”

“Fishermen make a lot of money these days,” the man says. “I was watching a show about it. It’s profitable but dangerous.”

We live in a world where fishing is sexy. “My responsibilities are to keep my body alive, and my mind well,” I call out to the man working in the electrical box.

“That’s hard to do on your own,” the man says. He’s hiding in his work clothes. All I see is blue denim and brown belt. This man is a novice practitioner of the electrical box and is growing smaller by the second. This is terrifying to me and I call out, “I’m doing the best I can!”

I’m very worried that the man will become the electrical box and that the fountain will never be repaired. “Please be careful!” I yell desperately towards the smooth denim, a hanging curtain now, over the electrical box. My hand comes up, my wrist, and I start the generator in my chest. The battery is tiny and creates a small alien warmth as I am brought back hard to the world.

From my brain, an urgent message:

Why did you do that? We were all about to have a good time. If it weren’t for you and your precious medical science, we’d be orbiting Saturn right now and watching the stars fall. You call this keeping your mind well? We’re all well on our way to crushing boredom, that’s all. But don’t worry about us. It’s not as if we power your dirty shell through this world. It’s not as if we spend all day waiting for a nap in the sun, only to find you jogging us back to your own pointless day-to-day. We have nothing better to do. Please, continue.

My brain is diseased with logic.

Jeannie tells me that the daily specials in the café are always the food they didn’t sell enough of from the day before. She points at my sloppy joe.