Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

I don’t know either, but I am willing to wait for it.

I saunter over to the bookshelf and run my hand over the spines of his books.

He sits upright. His eyebrows knitting. “Is there a title there of interest to you?” he asks a little too hopefully. Talk about nerdoid.

“Yeah,” I say, pulling out a bright yellow one, “Wasn’t this Magnus Hirschfeld dude known as ‘The Einstein of Sex?’ That so rocks. Didn’t he do dudes?” I turn to face him, waving the book in the air between us. “Do you do dudes? Siggy?”

Eyebrow drop. Hands between legs. Heavy exhale of irritation. More coughing. Score. Bought myself a speechless on that one.

Next I walk casually over to his desk and turn on the desk light and let him talk to my back for a bit. Blah blah blahbiddy blah repression repression repression. Blah Blah consciousness-subconsciousunconscious. Broken record.

That, my friends, is how I find the blow.

While he blathers on, I drag my finger dramatically across the surface of his desk. You know, that ol’ check for dirt number. Too bad I didn’t wear a little maid outfit. It’s just a gag. But when I look at my finger, it isn’t dirt. It’s white. Powder white. Very faint, but true. If you know what you are looking at. When I suck my finger, I smile the smile of a girl who knows things. Siggy. You old dirty dog.

Uh huh, I’m saying the Sigster is into booger sugar.

Well all righty then. He knows things about me, but two can play at that game. I turn slowly around, and in the middle of his gloriously wordy smarty guy sentences, I notice something he has not. With my finger still in my mouth, I say, looking at the clock on the wall just behind his head with its stuck cuckoo, “Um, Sig? I’m afraid our time is up.”

That’s right. Knockout walking out the door.

OCCASIONALLY AVE MARIA’S RICH AS FUCK MOTHER “treats us to lunch.”

On the top floor of some mega-lame high-rise downtown. About once a month. I’m pretty sure that’s how often Ave Maria sees her moneyspawner. But I don’t care. Rich people food is fun to photograph with your iPhone and you can steal drinks off of peoples’ tables when they get up to relieve themselves.

But check it: lo and behold, just on the other side of the faux indoor garden in the center of the restaurant … like a mini Eden but without the snake … through the shitty ass ficus leaves, is Sig. He’s with some slick-looking business joker with ferret hair, ferret eyes. Because their backs are mostly facing us, I can see him, but he can’t see me, so I do exactly what any self-respecting girl patient in my predicament would do. I pretend I have to go pee while Ave Maria’s mother sucks down her third Pomegranate Tini. I stealthily remove my Zoom H4n from my Dora purse and nonchalantly embed it in the river rocks at the base of the fake Eden. With a 32 Gb SD card, it can record for days. Or when the batteries give out, whichever comes first.

Nobody watches girls like me in restaurants like that. We’re somebody’s daughter they pay to leave home. Whatever it is Sig and the Ferret are talking about, I’m gonna get the sound.

Lunch proceeds retardedly as usual … Ave Maria chucks cold shrimps over her shoulder when her motherpuddle isn’t looking … one even hits some old bag whose earlobes look like they might fall off of her head from the weight of the pearls. Hey! Jewel drops! When the cold shrimp beans her, the gasbag looks up briefly at the ceiling fresco as if God has crapped on her. I sip on a white Russian I snagged off a table absent of humans on my way back from the pisser.

Ave Maria’s mother looks like a puffer fish. She is blowing bubbles at us … talking about something at us … something about travel abroad. Ave Maria is no doubt about to be shipped off to some private school far far away from the word “family.” I look over at Ave Maria. Ave Maria is bending and unbending her spoon and making her own spit bubbles with her mouth.

As often as possible, I steal peeks at the Sig scene. The slick business weasel is waving his little rodent hands around. Siggy’s shoulders look slumped to me. And his hair is all birds’ nesty. He puts his head in his hands. Is it bad news? Good? It’s so hard to read old people. Old men all look kinda like spent balloons to me. Happy just looks the same as sad on their faces. Wrinkled and sucked.

But then a whole man drama happens.

This other dude comes into the restaurant. I don’t mind telling you, he’s a head turner. Literally. You can see him coming from all the heads turning one by one to look at him. The kind of guy who looks like he deserves his own theme music. Basically to me he looks pretty much exactly like Paul Newman in “The Hustler.” Which Marlene showed me. Dang. Hotcha. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. Though it’s a tossup really … I could also go with Steve McQueen in “Bullitt.”

When this guy walks, he walks slowly, one shoulder at a time. His hands sorta … swing … not like your hands or my hands. Treasure hands. He has on a brushed silver suit coat and black pants and a crisp, white shirt. No tie. All the other mantards in the place have ties on. Not this guy. Silver hair cut close to his head. But what gives me a pinch of glee is, he walks straight into the Sig scene. He puts his treasure hand on Sig’s shoulder. I pull my iPhone out to short film it.

I kick Ave Maria under the table and lean over and go, “Hey. That’s him.”

She looks in the direction I’m pointing my iPhone. “Him who? Your grandpa?”

“My shrink.”

She turns to look. “The hot guy or the geezard?”

“Geezard.”

That’s when god really does crap.

Sig, bless his deflated balloon self, stands up, embraces the man in that weird guy on guy pretend hug way, stares into his eyes for a moment, sways slightly, and fucking faints.

Yep, you heard me. The Sig drops like a log to the floor.

I know. “Holy shit holy shit,” I go, slugging Ave Maria in the bicep.

“Awesome,” Ave Maria goes. Her lushofamother burps and looks around making fish lips in confusion.

I suddenly feel like jumping to my feet and yelling “Herr Doktor!” at the top of my lungs. Ave Maria gets a contact high from my excitement and starts her random high notes thing. I’m telling you, I almost pee my fucking pants.

The Sig … my Sig … is out cold.

All kinds of hell breaks loose in the swank restaurant as crowwaiters descend to clean up the scene. It’s easy to retrieve my beloved H4n. I’m invisible. I can’t fucking believe my luck. Whatever that ferret dude said to Sig, it was big. And whoever that silvery guy is, he made Siggy … swoon like a goddamned little girl. Whatever my H4n has on it is gonna be really, really good. I’m smiling so big it’s obscene.

You know what? Fuck the mix tape. Things have changed. What I’ve got is way bigger than that. That’s kid stuff. What I’ve got on my hands is real material. I’ve got … oh hell yes. I’ve got a roman à clef. And the key, is Sig. I’m not making a sound mix for a rave. I’m making a motherfucking man movie. Of him.

As we exit the room, Ave Maria’s mother swimming us to the door and Ave Maria shooting her high notes, I turn to face the eaters in Eden one last time, high kick the air for effect, and yell KAPOW.

IN MARLENE’S KITCHEN I TAKE THE ZOOM H4N OUT OF my Dora purse and stand there sort of bouncing from foot to foot like a tard kid. I’m excited. You know, excited like kids are when they wake up and see snow. The H4n — it’s black and sleek. It’s got a shock-resistant rubberized body. About the size of a spy rat. If rats were spy cyborgs. There’s a bitchin’ LCD display and the two mics are on the top — one points left and the other right — towards each other — two little silver cocks.