Paquita's Gumballs in A cappella Zoo #12

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The party was over, the gumballs gone, and scraps of Paquita’s childhood littered the floor like spent confetti. Some of the scraps rustled when she moved as if trying to grab her attention, others just sat, waiting to be discovered. These were the patches of the past that attracted her most - the cool, still memories. The gumball memories...

Bail

Peachfuzz called Kitty from jail.

     “What? Where? What happened?” Kitty said. She was standing in the kitchen. Her mother sat at the table drinking hot Ovaltine and pretending to read a Woman’s Day magazine she’d brought over for Kitty.

     Kitty moved into the next room and shut the door, knowing her mother would be monumentally pissed by this simple, isolating action of ensuring privacy. Her mother didn’t like to be excluded from anything. She would act insulted.

     Kitty said, “So you’re in jail. What do you expect me to do about it?”

     Peachfuzz was crying and Kitty wished she could slap her through the phone. What a terrible time for this shit. Terrible.

     Peachfuzz’s sentences were punctuated with hitching, breathless sobs: “Can you come get me?...Huhn-huh...Please? Get me out of here! Huhn-huh...Can you? Please?”

     “Okay, calm down.”

     “...Huhn-huh...”

     “What were you arrested for?”

     “They said I was publicly intoxicated and resisted arrest... Huhn-huh. But I wasn’t. I didn’t.”

     “So what do you want me to do?” Kitty asked again.

     “Can you come and bail me out? Can you bail me out and take me home?”

     “How much is bail?”

     “A thousand.”

     “Dollars?”

     “No, Spanish doubloons.”

     “Do you really want to be a wise-ass right now? Do you really want to test my patience at this critical juncture?”

     “Sorry, Kitty. But I’m scared!”

     “Calm down, Peach. Anyway, I don’t have that kind of cash. I’m sorry...”

     “But you haaaaaaaave to get me out of HERE!” Peachfuzz screamed and Kitty pulled the phone away from her ear.

     “Okay, okay, relax. Jesus. I’ll do the best I can. Where are you?”

     “Woonsocket. At the police station.”

     “Woonsocket. Were you dancing last night?”

     “Just get me out, Kitty!”

     “Okay. Sit tight.” She hung up the phone, went back into the kitchen.

     Her mother raised her gaze from the magazine and looked at Kitty with a knowing smile on her sideways, stroke-mouth.

     “Whull what issit nis tine?”

     “Um. Mom? Could I borrow five hundred dollars? It’s kind of an emergency.”

     Her mom’s smug smile turned into a lopsided grin.

     Oh shit.

Later that afternoon, Kitty walked Peachfuzz out of the police station. She was still crying and hanging onto Kitty as if unable to stand on her own. Seeing her this way humbled Kitty’s heart. Peachfuzz’s hair was oily and flat, her makeup smudged and streaked. Her bottom lip was swollen and a scrape on her chin had dried to a tough, rust-colored scab. Her T-shirt was torn in several places, the knees of her jeans spotted with dark, ground-in dirt.

     What the hell had happened to her?

     “What the hell happened to you?”

     Peachfuzz had curled up in the backseat. “I can’t ride up front now,” she’d insisted. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her eyes closed. She’d finally stopped crying, but sucked up a sniffle every couple of minutes. Her guilt and shame were a third presence in the car.

     “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

     “Peach, I just spent a thousand dollars on your ass. Do you know what I had to do to get that money? I won’t go into it but it was a lot. I think you at least owe me an explanation.”

     “Where’d you get the money?”

     “I drained my savings account for some - so long rent money - and borrowed the rest from my mother.”

     “Oh shit. Your mother...”

     “Yeah. I know. See?”

     “Thanks, Kitty. I’ll pay you back. I promise.”

     “Damn straight you will. But first you’re gonna tell me what the fuck happened to you last night.”

     “I feel sick.”

     “Peachfuzz. Spill it.”

     Peachfuzz whooshed out a long, weighted sigh. “One of the customers tried to rape me.”

     “What? Where?”

     “At the Pink Lady. In the parking lot.”

     “You got into his car?”

     “...”

     “I said, you got into his car?”

     “Yeah, but...”

     “So you were turning tricks again. You got into a strange man’s car and he attacked you.”

     “Well, yeah but no...”

     “But nothing. What did I tell you? Didn’t I say how dangerous that was? To do that? You know how many psychos hang out at that place?”

     “Yeah, but he wasn’t a stranger. He was one of the regulars. Ray. He seemed like such a nice guy. Just a sweet, lonely guy.”

     “You know what? If I’d known you got busted for turning tricks I never would have bailed you out.”

     Peachfuzz started sobbing again.

     “Oh shut up.”

Quarantine

I run into my friend Tommy at Subway and ask him about our mutual friend, Gary, whose sorry-ass I haven’t seen in a while.

“Where’s he been lately?” I ask. “Homeless?”

“Didn’t you hear? He’s in the hospital, under quarantine.”

“Quarantine? Really? What for?”

“I dunno. Something he picked up in a swamp, I think.”

“Is it serious?”

Tommy shrugs. “It must be for them to isolate him like that.”

Tommy’s wife Janice comes out of the bathroom holding their one-year-old son, Jeremy, whose shrill screams echo around the restaurant. 

“Thomas!” Janice says. “Come on, let’s go!” She marches toward the exit with the squealing baby.

Tommy puts his hand on the side of his mouth, leans toward me and mutters, “Wish I could catch whatever Gary has. I could use a little isolation myself.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” I say only because it’s expected of me.    

“Thomas! Now!” Janice yells. 

I want to wish him good luck but don’t want to get him into any more hot water with the missus.

THE GREAT HARVARD HEIST

This is one minor memory of a deceased friend. I have many, but not enough.

It was March and we were both drunk, walking across the cold campus of Harvard University. Neither one of us belonged there. I felt conspicuous. He felt like a spy. We were in our early 20's.

“I want to steal something,” my friend said. “I want to steal something from Harvard.”

“Like what?”

“Come on. Follow me.”

We sneaked into a building. I followed him straight to the basement.

We walked down the hallway until,“Aha!” he found a lightbulb he wanted. He unscrewed it and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

“Come on let’s get out of here,” I said. Committing crimes always made me nervous.

Then we were back outside and passing a building with tall windows that went straight to the ground. A library. Books and students behind a wall of thick glass.

We noticed a pretty female student sitting at a cubicle, studying. 

My friend walked over and tapped on the glass. She turned. He 
pulled the lightbulb out of his pocket and held it up for her to admire. Then he gestured, `From me to you,' and placed it on the ground by her feet.

He bowed and we walked on to the nearest bar.

It was a small, poetic gesture befitting a small poetic crime.

The girl probably thought he was a creep and a weirdo and has no memory of his gift.

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Ride from a Stranger

It had become urgent. He had to see her. Now. The idea of driving out to her house had been steeping in his mind all day and now it was too strong to ignore. Although Royal had let several absurd fantasies play out in his imagination, he had no intention of trying to put moves on her, or trying to impress her (not that he could, he reminded himself) he just wanted to see her. Or, to put it more accurately, look at her. Her face and body were starting to deteriorate in his memory, and now he felt a kind of helpless, overwhelming urge to look at her. He wanted to study her. He wanted to stare at her while she slept. He wanted to wallpaper his bedroom with her image, psycho-style - thousands of candid snapshots showing her every mood and movement, from childhood to the present: The History of Loletta Winters in infinite detail, all around him.

     Jesus, he thought, get a grip on yourself…

     He crushed another beer can, dropkicked it into the woods, then slid into the Malibu.

     And then another pull of doubt. Was it too soon? She’d said to drop by anytime, but the next day? Crazy, crazy…

     Oh, what the hell, he thought again, she lived in a goddamn commune - a house full of inhabitants - people must be dropping in all the time. 

     He started the car, drove around a steep sand cliff, then back to the dirt road that led out of the sand pits - his old drinking spot. The perfect place for underage kids to get safely trashed.  How many times had he come out here with his buddies? A hundred drinking parties blurred through his mind: crackling campfires filled with blackened, melting beer bottles, rambling, keg-induced debates and bent philosophies, endless bottles passed around. Drunken fights, laughter and the sound of rookie vomiting. Stumbling and crashing through the trees while police lights flashed blue and white spears into the dark woods…

     Years and years, over and over.

     It was getting near dusk and the humidity was finally pulling back. For a while it had looked like the sky was promising to let loose a thunderstorm, but it eventually cleared and now the moisture in the air was starting to evaporate. Thank god.

     As he drove, Loletta’s face began to strengthen in his memory, urging him on and by the time he reached the highway he was speeding, anxiously gripping the wheel with locked fists. It felt good to have the Malibu back (though he did miss the AC in his mother’s Volvo) and he had spent most of the day tooling around Willowburne, enjoying the feel of the road, revisiting scenes of his childhood. All the sweat he had poured over the engine had been more than worth it.

     At the border of Brightstone he spotted a hitch-hiker. A girl, just a kid. The alcohol in his head and the big fine car around him made him feel generous, brave. He pulled over.

     He watched her in the rearview mirror as she ran toward the car, slipping out of a large canvas backpack. He turned when she reached the door. She tried the handle, and then knocked on the window. He unlocked the door and the first sting of doubt hit him. He fixed a friendly smile on his face anyway.

     “Hi, thanks,” she said, stuffing the backpack into the backseat. She shut the door and sat straight in her seat. Now that she was close to him he saw how young she was. She looked twelve years old. She also looked sick. Her eyes were tired, underlined with dark smudges.

     “No problem,” he said, sure now that picking her up had been a bad idea. “Where you going?”

Sorry, Wrong Number

“Why did you hang up on me?” says a woman caller. Her voice sounds familiar. And angry.

     “I didn’t hang up on you,” I say. It’s an automatic denial. A reflex.

     “Don’t treat me like I’m dumb! I’m not that dumb!” she says and I suddenly realize she sounds like my great-grandmother Judith, only meaner.

     The thing is, Granny Judy died twenty-two years ago. So it’s probably not her.

     “I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong number,” I say, which is true.

     “I told you not to treat me like I’m dumb!”

     “Sorry,” I say and hang up on her, sort of again.

     I think, Boy, the real guy’s going to get an earful now!