Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

When it was all over and their eyes were open and Marta, agape, gripped her windowsill equally terrified and turned on, Lucas and Florence both held a glossy brown stone the size of a billiard ball. The Fincastles took turns sniffing the stones, turning them this way and that, and rubbing them over their tear-stained cheeks. After some time, they held the stones up like cocktails and toasted one another. Then they caught each other’s gaze and flung the stones to the floor, grabbing one another in desperation. Lucas pressed Florence’s face to his own like she was his last, good hope. Florence clawed at Lucas’s back and buttocks as if set on devouring him. A lamp was kicked over. A series of ecstatic screams ensued. Marta removed her glasses and stepped away from the window. These were not the neighbors she knew from over the fence, the bird-bath-and-begonias people who had once traded mulching tips with her father. These animals, these Fincastle freaks, were suddenly both monsters and gods. They were everything that Marta—now, for the first time ever—had ever wanted to be.

In the morning, a new day dawned as if nothing extraordinary had taken place. Marta woke and looked at the Fincastles’ drawn bedroom window and second-guessed herself. She went downstairs and opened the freezer and brought out three frozen pancakes for breakfast. She took a glass of tap water and her mother’s pink pills to her bedside. And then, back in her room, set on a game of tic-tac-toe, she saw them, out the window, the two brown stones, perched with toothpicks over water jars, on the Fincastles’ side porch. They glowed like polished mahogany in the morning sun, and Marta stared at them until they stared back—the sad, soulful, brown eyes of God.

Over the course of the next two weeks, Marta watched the stones sprout, then grow, into a pair of intertwining, spindly palms, each with a white, wheel-sized blossom that smelled of sex and citrus. And over the course of the next six months, Marta watched the Fincastles repeat their ritual nearly thirty times, each time appearing to grow not only closer in love, but to some sort of universal truth, as well. Their eyes and bodies glowed with an inner light that Marta came to assume was wisdom, materialized. By the time Marta’s father seduced his chiropractor and Marta’s mother had her stomach pumped, the Fincastles’ porch was a jungle, the Fincastles’ lives seemed complete, and Marta, the spectator, sensed something brown and round taking hold within herself.

That night, at Forever Together’s orientation dinner, Marta and Dean sat with a couple named Alex and Alex. They were of indeterminate gender, both dressed in white, and both with short hamster-colored hair and triangular sideburns. When Marta looked at them across the table, she thought of two saltshakers. She thought of a life without pepper. She felt a flicker of envy for what it must be like to love someone so similar to yourself.

“So, Alex and Alex,” Dean said with emphasis, as if pointing out to Alex and Alex that they shared the same name. “What do you two do for fun?”

Alex and Alex looked at one another and then at Dean.

“That’s why we’re here,” the one on the left said. “We’ve forgotten how to have fun.”

“Yes,” the one on the right agreed. “What Alex said.”

Marta could see Dean was trying to contain himself, so she mashed her foot on top of his beneath the table.

“Well,” Dean said. “What did you used to do for fun?”

The Alexes shrugged in unison, like two synchronized swimmers. “We don’t remember,” they said.

Dean looked down at his bean cakes and radish salad. The retreat had cost nine hundred dollars and Marta could tell this was what he was thinking about.

“We come here every year,” one Alex said. “Which means it’s either working …”

“Or it’s not,” the second Alex said.

Marta picked up a piece of parsley and twirled it between her fingers. “Well, we’re here because …”

“Because I have too much fun,” Dean interrupted.

Marta frowned and opened her mouth but nothing came out. Dean took a big gulp from his water glass. Marta watched him drink, then she narrowed her eyes. Somewhere nearby, perhaps in one of his new hiking socks, there was a flask.

“See, Alex and Alex,” Dean went on, “according to Marta, she lives on the Island of Reality and I live on the Island of Denial. You know, Destination Head-in-the-Sand. Marta thinks I’m not facing my demons and, truth be told, Alex and Alex, I don’t have any demons except her.”

Marta felt as if she’d been slapped. Normally when Dean drank, he became ridiculous and she became surly. She leaned forward at the table to defend herself when she noticed Dean’s flannel shirt was unbuttoned one button more than usual. Right in the center of his chest, just above the first buttoned button, something round surged to get out into the light. Marta pressed her lips together.

“Sure,” Dean said, “my father was a prick. Maybe even a dick. And my mother was—how to say this nicely— habitually unreasonable . Maybe there were some people in my life who even died when I was a kid. Maybe my sister was missing a leg and a teacher touched me where the sun never shined and my dog fell in a well and starved to death.” Dean tossed back the remainder of his water. “But these are not things that I carry around with me. I’m a big boy. What’s gone is gone, Alex and Alex. There is nothing to unload, so to speak. I am a happy person.” Dean jerked a thumb at Marta. “Unless, of course, someone keeps insisting that I’m not a happy person, in which case I may eventually not be one.”

Alex and Alex and Marta didn’t respond. All three of them looked at Dean and then at their plates. “So. Which Alex is the bad Alex and which Alex is the good Alex?”

“Dean,” Marta said.

“No, seriously,” Dean said, flopping his fork left and right. “One of you is the wrong one and one of you is the right one. Tell me which one of you is the wrong one, and I’ll show you how to have some of that fun you don’t know how to have anymore.”

Marta had had enough. “I think what Dean’s saying is,” she interjected, “is that he will introduce you to someone named Mackenzie who has no real opinions or needs. He’ll find you someone blank to bone.”

Alex and Alex both went wide-eyed and Marta felt instantly ashamed. Dean smirked and shook his head. He brought a bottle of what appeared to be spring water out from under the table and untwisted its top. “No,” he said. “What I was going to suggest was that Bad Alex come with me tomorrow. Whichever one of you that is, I’ll walk you over to that remote-control airfield across the street where people still know how to enjoy life.” Dean took a swig. “For what it’s worth, I never boned Mackenzie, Marta. I never boned Mackenzie, Alex and Alex. All I did was talk to her for a while. It was nice to talk to someone who believed me when I said I was happy.”

Marta looked at Dean’s chest. The lump was visibly growing. She searched for what to say to make it finally emerge. “Pfft.” Marta rolled her eyes. “You’re not happy, Dean. Alex and Alex, trust me on this. Dean is not a happy person.”

Dean banged a fist on the table and the four bean cakes gave a startled jump. His chest bulged. Marta went on. “No one drinks like Dean drinks if they’re really happy.”

Dean thumped his other fist. “You’re to blame for that,” he nearly roared.

Marta felt a sharp pain in her heart. “How dare you,” she whispered. “How dare you blame me for your refusal to grow the fuck up.”

Trembling, the two of them rose to face each other. The entire dining room of Forever Together had fallen into a hush, as if Dean and Marta had been hired to put on a show.