Phil's tires and such

Cogito Ergo Hunchback

Nine

It sucks being fifteen, Tommy thought as he sat in his boring tenth grade history class, drawing little faces in circles on a piece of paper in front of him, paying no attention to the teacher droning on about something, listing the names of the kings of some country. Margaret Garfield was two rows in front and one row to the left. Her long, thick black hair was most of what he was able to see of her, also a little bit of the side of her face, some of her long straight nose, and a bit of eyelash. He had her pretty much memorized, though.

He wanted to say he was sorry, for the things he had said about her in the story that went through his mind. He didn't really mean any of it. He even liked George Capelli, her boyfriend, the captain of the school baseball team. Capelli was really good. He could hit a line drive like nobody's business, and then he was fast, really fast. Tommy wished that he was George Capelli. He wished he was anyone else. It was why he told stories. It was why he spent most of his time living in daydreams. Anywhere but here.

Anywhere but here.

Eight

"It's not what I wanted!" Tommy shouted.

"Poor old coot." That would be Jimmy, sitting there in the hallways, clucking his tongue and trying to catch the attention of a nurse, any nurse. Maybe that's why he was even there in the first place. Did Jimmy have a thing for nurses? Was he lonely? Was he dying for a little attention, a little affection? There in the hospital were all those nurses, a captive audience almost, nearly all female and having to work to get out of the way, stay out of the way of unwanted attempts at conversation. They were plenty good at it, though, and down at the nursing section they'd already talked about Jimmy, best to ignore him, keep moving, move along. Jimmy straightened himself up in his seat and thought that maybe he should have brought a magazine or even a book but now it was too late because if he got up for even a moment, he knew that they would seize the moment, and seize the chair, and then what would he do? Maybe the old man would just die already.

"I knew you were watching me," Margaret said, "how could I not know? All I had to do was turn around, look over my shoulder, and there you were. That one year, you were even outside my apartment building half the time where you didn't belong, pretending like you were going somewhere, or visiting someone else, or had something to do on the block but you didn't. You were staking me out. Gaping at me in the cafeteria. Poor little Tommy. Poor little Tommy Turtle, because even though you weren't so little anymore like you'd used to be, you were still kind of little inside of your head. Am I right? You still felt small, and weak, and maybe even invisible, like no one could see that you were standing right there, walking over there, doing this and doing that. You got tall but only on the outside, and you were still pretty damn ugly. Not me. I was right there. I was perfect, and everybody knew it."

"You were perfect," Tommy repeated. "Every time you noticed me I pretended you didn't. I kept up believing it was all in my head. A whole lot of stuff was all in my head at the time, so why not you seeing me too? I could have told a billion stories about you, and I did and they were all in my head. I made up your life story a hundred thousand times, about the college you went to, or never did go to, about the children you had, or never did have, about your lovers and husbands and friends and enemies, about the people you met, the jobs you had or never did have, the lifetimes you lived and all your regrets. If I couldn't have you, and I couldn't, then what chance did you have? You see? If you were all mine, then the story would work out all right. We'd get married and then we'd have a boy and a girl. The boy would be first, because then he could protect the girl as she needed him to later on. He'd be a really good boy, a boy boy, big enough and strong enough and smart, really smart, but not so brainy that he wouldn't have friends. The girl, now she would grow up to be exactly like you. Perfect in every way but maybe not as sexy. Beautiful but wholesome, right? You know what I mean. Everyone would want her, but only the right guy could get her. Like me getting you. That's how it went in the one version that could never be real."

"Instead, you turned out all wrong because you didn't choose me. Junkie and whore. I don't know where that skater guy came from. Why'd I ever think of a skater dude?"

"Because you never could do that?" Margaret suggested.

"I was never any good at any of that stuff," Tommy agreed.

"You especially sucked at baseball," Margaret added.

"God, don't I know it," Tommy said. "The only thing I ever wanted to be good at, too. How I loved it! I saw myself, standing up there at the plate, taking my time and aiming my bat at deep center field, right where I was going to knock that ball right over everyone's head, and then I was going to run, run like you wouldn't believe, an inside the park home run every time. Every time! I didn't want the easy glory or bashing it over the fence. No, and anyway I knew that I wasn't that strong. A nice, sweet line drive right over their heads and then running, all me making it happen, all around the bags, in the bottom of the ninth of course, a tie game and two outs and two strikes and all that. Inside the park all the way."

"You didn't even make the team," she helpfully reminded him.

"I never even made any team," he corrected. "Because somehow the bat never wanted to come close to touching the ball. I was too small, and too weak."

"Even when you weren't anymore," she said again, "you still thought that you were."

"All my life," Tommy said. "I kept thinking that way. It's crazy how strong your self-image gets stamped in your head. You can go around believing for yours that this is how you are, and you're not."

"I didn't like that version," Margaret said. "The one I just told you. The one you made up in your mind. Or the earlier one either. Why couldn't I have a normal, boring life? Why couldn't I be a chemist, or a pharmacist, or a university professor? Why couldn't I have a house in the suburbs and take the train in to work every day? Why couldn't I be like your niece, with a book full of appointments and things I like doing, too busy to check in on the dying old uncle that none of us really liked anyway? I did have a brother named Jimmy, you know."

"I know," Tommy said. "That's where this one came from. I never liked your little brother. He was a weasel, always whining and wanting more. More of everything and more all the time. He'd come up to you in the school cafeteria and if you offered him half of your cookie he'd take the whole thing. And nothing was ever good enough either. He'd be munching that whole cookie and complain that it tasted like crap."

"I loved my little brother," Margaret said.

"No, you didn't," Tommy told her.

"Now you're telling me how I felt, how I feel."

"Why not?" he nearly shouted. "Why shouldn't I? I'm making it all up, aren't I? Don't I even get to choose what you're like? In my story you're mine, and you'll be what I want you to be. You'll feel what I want you to feel. If I say you're a slut, you're a slut. If I tell you to bend over, you do that. If I say that you hate your own brother, then you hate him. That's the whole point of it, isn't it?"

"Is that how it ends?" she asked. "Is that your idea of love?"

"No," he replied, after he thought for a minute. "I just want you so bad."

"We're only still kids," Margaret said.

"I know," Tommy said. "I guess I've been watching too much TV. All the drama, you know. Their idea of love is conflict resolution. People get passionate, like they ate too much chocolate. They're buzzing around all intense. You look at your own life and it seems nothing happens, it's too slow and not at all like a show, where emotions run high and violence is the path and the way and the truth. There's this dark side we're all required to have! If you don't have a dark side, then hell, you're a joke."

"Most of our dark sides aren't really that dark."

"No, they're not," he agreed. "They're pretty much beige, like the buildings we live in. Predictable, arranged, all part of a plan, designed by leading experts and affordable too!"

"Ghosts do not live in mold," Margaret said.

"As if there even are ghosts," he said to himself. As if hospitals even have mold on the walls. As if they even let people lie out in the hallway to die. Well, maybe they do. I know that they do. I've seen it myself. That's where I got the idea."

Seven

"They weren't all middle-age," Margaret said, "and they weren't all men, neither."

"What?"

"You heard me. That's why what they said about me isn't true. Middle-age men and all. Of course there were some of those too, the ones who paid the best. And the mormons. Bring 'em young, they say. They liked me young, not so much later on, but high school was a premium for those guys. Sure I took their money. Why shouldn't I? What'd I get from George Capelli? Nothing, that's what. It's why I did it, why I started doing it, I mean. I figured I might as well get something. They were going to get theirs, so why shouldn't I get mine?"

"I guess," Tommy started to say, but Margaret didn't stop to acknowledge his remark. She was going now.

"So I heard some girls talking and they said the best places were the commuter stations down the line, out there in the neighborhoods, you know, outside the center city. There the guys, and women too, were the loneliest and the horniest and the ones most ready to pay. Downtown you were asking for trouble, violence even, for sure getting ripped off. Out there in the open they didn't dare. Someone might see. Someone might talk. But there was no harm in giving a ride home to a schoolgirl, it was friendly even, being a decent citizen. Young maiden in distress out there by the tracks without a ride. I'd wear my shortest skirts and tightest tops, just a little bit of lipstick to look like I was still, you know, learning the ropes, becoming a young woman, blossoming or blooming or whatever. All innocent like. Twirling my hair around my finger, stepping up to the edge and stepping back, didn't take long for someone to get to talking. What's a nice girl like you and all that kind of thing. Men coming home from the office, but not so eager to get straight home, and why should they be? Back there they knew there was that woman who'd been cooped up all day watching the kids or just watching the tv, slowly going crazy and just waiting to take it out on the man who at least got to get out in the world, meet some real people, have some lunch with friends or whatever. And the kids, if they were little, would be all over the poor guy, couldn't even get a minute's rest before he'd have to crawl around on the floor and play horsey or play with blocks, or if they were older listen to them complain and bitch and moan about that asshole at school or those idiot teachers or too much homework and nobody cares and nobody listens, and if they were even older then it was money and plans and the car and parties and boyfriends and girlfriends and him being just a clueless old man who was hopelessly out of touch and utterly pointless. Better to put it off for a while and fuck some pretty schoolgirl and give her the money he might have otherwise just given the damn kids. And she'd make him feel better, all right. She'd suck him like the wife never did anymore and let him do most anything he wanted, but not everything, of course, even if there was a lof of cash on the table because after all, a girl has got to make the rules or else she might as well be a fucking robot."

"With the women it was worse. I always hated it, but they were lonely too, I guess, and sometimes just for the sake of variety I'd let one eat my pussy and I'd go down on her with my eyes shut tight and my mind on the drugs I was going to buy that night. I wasn't a junkie, not exactly, but I liked my high, and I tried to keep it going as much as I could, which was most days, now I think of it, most days for about seven years, from fifteen to twenty one or so, when I had my first baby. That's when I gave it all up. All of it. I don't care what they told you about me after all that, because I only lived that life until my first one came around. She totally changed my life. After Angel was born there was no way I was going to do any more drugs, or any more drinking or even smoking and I even stopped eating meat, did you know that? Did the vegan thing for a long time after that. Kept myself all skinny and hungry all the time, just to remind myself, just to stay who I was for as long as I could."

"I never told you about their father, now did I? You might have known him. Cameron Hawk his name was. He was a skater dude. Really fucking good at riding a skateboard. Pretty fucking useless at anything else. I liked his body, I really did. He smelled awesome and he looked good, always got me hot. I could have had more than the three kids with him because I never let him use a rubber, always wanted him raw inside me, huh. Always wanted him, you know. He got sick of all that after a time, left me for some brutally ugly fat chick who didn't like to fuck as much, so that's what made him happy. Never had much money. Not from him, not from anyone. We lived on the government, pretty much, me and my kids. I could have still been out there working, you know, but I had my babies to look after, and I wasn't going to let anybody else do that. I loved it. I really did. Didn't need much money. We had our little old one bedroom down below street level. The kids had the bedroom. I had the rug on the living room floor. Lived like that a long time, you know. It's funny how we never met after high school. Did you move away? I pretty much stayed around the whole time."

All the time she was talking, Tommy was picturing her story in his mind. It was easy enough to do. He'd seen a lot of it, after all, seen her at those railroad stations, seen her getting into those cars. It was what she didn't know but she'd know now if she really could read his mind. He determined to say nothing of it. That way he'd find out for sure. What did she know about it? How he'd spent half a year doing nothing but staring at her, or looking for her in order to stare at her, and thinking about her, and dreaming about her, always dreaming, whether asleep or awake, about her and her long black hair and the way she would twirl it around her finger just like she said. He could make up stories forever about Margaret Garfield, the way she looked, the outfits she wore, the places she went and the people she met and the things she did with the people she met, and what happened after she passed out of view, and how she'd take her clothes off, bottoms first for some reason in his active imagination, skirt or pants, then panties, then socks, still with her top on he'd picture her narrow ass and her slick sparse bush, though he had to admit that the state of her pussy was always varying in his mind. Sometimes she'd have more hair and sometimes it'd be all wet, and sometimes there'd be none at all, and sometimes she'd be pink, then red, then glowing, and really tight or wide, wide open, depending on how she'd position herself, how the guy would want her to be. The middle age guy. It usually was, he knew, no matter what she said now. He'd been there often enough. He'd seen them following the same pattern. Usually they knew it from each other, they passed her on from one to the next, talked about her on the morning train, deciding which one would get her on the return trip later that day. They called her names, affectionate pet names like "the cunt", or "the little slut". He listened in on them on his way to school in the morning. They were all such creeps, with their oily hair and their salesmen shtick and their stupid frat-boy faces. Twenty. Twenty bucks was all it took to get her to suck their dicks in the alley behind the men's room at the station. Tommy had twenty bucks but he didn't have the nerve. He'd never had the guts. And after all, he was in love with her. That wasn't at all what he had in mind.

Six

"What? What did you say?"

"Nothing," Tommy hurried to add. "I didn't say anything."

"You hear that?" Jimmy Blanks reached out and caught the bulky nurse by the hand to make her stop and pay attention to his uncled for a second.

"I didn't hear anything," she replied, pulling her hand free and moving along.

"I know what you said," the voice identifying as Margaret Garfield snapped. "Who said that, huh? Who said that about me?"

"Nobody," Tommy tried to backtrack again. "Um, I mean, I don't know. I don't remember. Nobody. It was nothing. I don't know why I said that," but he did know why he said it, because there were only a few things he remembered about Margaret Garfield. Her hair, mainly, and that she called him Tommy Turtle and was his lab partner in eighth grade science class, and that she'd gone out with the Captain (like every other girl in the class or so it was said), and that later he'd heard these rumors about her, that she'd gone on heroin, that she was selling her body to middle-aged men down beneath the railroad bridge, and that she'd had some abortions and that during one of them she died, and that was all he knew, the sum total of all the accumulated stories about her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "it's just the way I am. I say things I shouldn't say. It's probably why I never had a girlfriend that stuck around. Saying the wrong thing. Not thinking. Not using my head."

"I don't care about any of that," Margaret said, "I want to know who said those things about me, and yes, those other things too. Middle-aged men? Abortions? What's all that about?"

"I didn't say anything like that," Tommy protested, meaning he didn't say any of it out loud, but he had no idea what he was saying out loud and what was only thinking.

"Where do you think I am?" she snorted. "I'm inside your brain, genius. I don't know if you realize that."

"I've seen flashes," he said, guessing that maybe those peripheral lights were actually her.

"Of course they are," she answered. "I know everything you're thinking, everything you've ever thought, which isn't saying much, you know. I've been in some brains you wouldn't believe, full of formulas and heavy thoughts, meditations even. There was this buddhist priest they had dying in here one time, man that was deep. I could almost wish I'd been in some kind of coma like that myself. Talk about taking it to another level! And there were cops, you woudn't want to know the things they've seen, but I saw them too. Maybe you'll get your turn. Maybe your luck will run out and you will end up dying right here, and then you'll be like us, waiting around, just waiting for someone familiar, and then when you find them, maybe they'll say mean things about you like you just said about me. I hope you do. Then you'll know what it's like."

"I'm really sorry," he said again. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

"Feelings? Who's got feelings anymore? I'm just annoyed by the factual misrepresentation. Is that real phrase? I think I picked it up from some old lawyer's brain. You do get an education floating around in some of these heads that come in here."

"It was the Captain," Tommy tried to deflect the blame.

"No it wasn't," she sneered. "I just told you, I'm right here inside your head. I know when you're just making stuff up. You're a terrible liar, by the way. You ought to know that. You were right the first time. You don't remember where you heard it, any of it, about me being a junkie and a whore and all that. You don't even remember. Somebody said something mean one time and it just stuck in your head like a post-it attached to my name. Every time my name comes up, there it is, those other things, they come up too, and it's been that way for what now? Sixty years?"

She was quiet for a few moments, and Tommy began to worry that maybe she'd gone away, flown out of his nose like the rest of them had. He was racking his brain for the right thing to say, knowing that she'd know what he was trying to do and coming up with the words before he even knew what they were. When she did speak again, it was in a calmer and quieter voice, more like the tone she'd originally used to contact him.

"It's the same thing with me about you. Every time your name comes up it's Tommy Turtle all over again."

"My name comes up?" was his immediate thought, and he imagined he could hear her instant laughter.

"Not so much," she replied, "but when it did. I'm just saying."

"I don't want to die here," he sighed.

"I can't blame you, honey," said the bulky nurse on her way back from wherever it was she kept going to and coming from. "Do you know your name?" she asked again.

"Tommy," he said. "Tommy Turtle."

"Tommy Turtle?" That would be Jimmy guffawing. "Did you hear that?"

"I heard Tortelli," the nurse said. "That is his name, isn't it? He still knows it. I didn't think he did. I thought he was a lot farther gone than that."

"He's a tough old coot," Jimmy said. "He's been hanging in there a long time now. Beat cancer three times already. Had skin cancer, prostate and liver, and none of them could bring him down." He sounded proud of his mother's older brother. She hadn't even made it past a single one.

"You just rest easy," the nurse was saying to Tommy, patting him on the arm. "I'll bet they'll be sending you home before you know it."

"Wouldn't surprise me none," Jimmy said, somewhat dejected. The moodswings were wearing on him almost as bad as that rotten cup of coffee he'd snagged from the place they called a cafeteria downstairs. That was when he was sure the old man's time was almost up, and he was prepping for the transit home. If they did release the old guy now, he'd have to fork out for another taxi and go even farther out of his way. He might even be up all night. It was driving him crazy.

"Make up your mind," he muttered at the potential corpse lying beside him.

"I don't want to die here," Tommy was thinking again.

Five

The voice that said it was Margaret Garfield, and the face that went with the voice, were swimming around in his brain now. At least it felt like it was swimming around. He tried to follow its movements with his own inner eye, but he only caught glimpses, like one of those peripheral vision tests where they never tell you where the little green light is going to flash next, but you see it, here and there, now and then, as it briefly appears. So too with the voice that said it was Margaret Garfield. He didn't know whether or not to believe it. After all, so far it had only told him about things he knew, the things he remembered about her specifically. He would have to ask her some questions, that only she would be able to answer outside of his knowledge. The trouble was, the questions he wanted to ask her weren't necessarily pleasant, and he didn't want to upset her.

"Tell me about you," Margaret said, but Tommy didn't want to talk about himself.

"I didn't do anything ever," he said and it made him feel sad. "It seems like nothing ever turned out the way that I wanted it to."

"We're all facing an ending we're not going to like," she said. "Believe me. You're probably ahead of the game. Happy endings aren't for living creatures."

"How did?" he started to say, but then he stopped himself. She guessed at the question.

"Cancer," she said. "Skin cancer. I guess I must've gone out in the sun way too much, or something like that. I spend a whole lot of time trying to be tan. Pretty stupid, huh? Well, I was pretty damn tan when I died. Fifty seven years old but tan as could be."

"Fifty seven?" he asked. "You don't look that old."

"Thank you," she said, and it seemed like she genuinely meant it.

"That would have been what? Sixteen years ago now?"

"You could tell me," she replied. "I've got no way to know. I'm just here. Apparently you stick wherever you are when you go. That's the rumor among us. No one really knows."

"Damn," Tommy said. He was already annoyed at his nephew for not letting him stay home and die like he wanted in the peace of his own proper surroundings. He was missing his couch and his own traffic noise. He didn't like all the sounds going on all around him in there, and the smell, except for the lavendar, was making him want to throw up.

"I know," Margaret said, "I wanted to die in my own bed, too, but my daughter, she thought they were going to fix me right up. She said 'never lose hope, mom, never give up'. I say give up and lose hope. It's easier that way. The ending's going to suck either way so you might as well grow a pair and deal with it. Sorry to be vulgar. I get riled up just thinking about it. Kids never listen. What about yours? Is he?"

"My nephew," Tommy said.

"Almost as bad," Margaret told him. "Believe me, it's worse when your own kid does it to you."

"I never had any," Tommy said.

"Oh, that's too bad," Margaret said, contradicting herself. "I mean, I enjoyed being a mom when the kids were still kids. It was later, once they began to grow up, and they wanted to take over. Especially when I got sick. Then it was all them trying to boss me around."

"I never knew you had kids," Tommy said, carefully broaching the subject of her past, promising himself to tiptoe around the possible bad stuff, the stuff that he thought that he knew about her.

"Oh yeah, right after high school. Me being stupid again. Married at nineteen, mother at twenty. Then again at twenty one, and twenty three. After that, who had any time to do anything else? Stayed at home, raised the kids, volunteered at the school, drove a pack around to all those 'activities' that were supposed to make them all healthy and well-rounded and stuff. Mostly it just filled the time. Next thing I knew I'm there in my forties and nothing, I mean nothing, to show for it all. Thought about maybe I should go back to school, to do what? But anyway, that couldn't happen. Had to get a job all at once. Husband, you know. Dear old hubby, found himself a new life, even tried to put it on like he was doing me a favor. Sorry again. You don't need to hear all this? Bitterness just goes with being a ghost."

"I guess I should just grow a pair and deal with it then," Tommy joked. She continued to flash around in his skull.

"Can't you sit still?" he said.

"What do you think I've been doing?" That would be Jimmy Blanks. "I've been sitting here all night."

"They said you were a junkie," Tommy blurted out all at once, "and a whore."