Authors: Jason Erik Lundberg
Strange Mammals (4 page)
Great Responsibility
Spider-Man jerks awake behind the wheel of his parked Volkswagen Squareback, his sudden jolt into consciousness the effect of a voice shouting on the other side of his driver’s side window. Spider-Man has been sleeping in his car a lot lately, anchoring his vessel along whichever Los Angeles street he can find that is overlooked by the Parking Violations Bureau. He’s forgotten the name of the desolate road on which he is now located, but he’s never been good at remembering L.A.’s thoroughfares, so far from his native New York City.
“Hey,
chica!”
the voice yells again, having moved up the street ahead, attached to a brawny young tough in a sleeveless white shirt and low-slung jeans, his muscled arms rippling with tattoos. “
Chica
, I say, I’m talking at you!”
The young black woman the tough follows is dressed in business attire and carries a leather satchel, just the type Spider-Man would expect to see in a Hollywood executive production office elsewhere in the city, her high heels and tight black skirt a detriment as she hurries away from the aggressive Chicano at her back. Her clacking steps, audible even within the interior of the Squareback, take her toward the strip mall just up ahead, toward the supposed safety brought on by the presence of other people, but this hope is an illusion, and Spider-Man knows that it won’t save her.
Spider-Man steps out of his car, blinking in the harsh afternoon sun, then shuts the door carefully and quietly so as to avoid detection by the tough, as well as to prevent any dislodging of the five thousand brightly-colored strips of duct tape plastered all over the exterior of the vehicle in patterns designated by her, the young biracial girl—
No, no time to think about that, it’s time to get to work. He locks the car door, pulls on his mask and silently pursues the pursuer.
As expected, the tough soon catches up to the young exec with a sharp laugh. “Hey,
puta
,” he sings, drawing the sound out,
pooooooooo-tah
, “dint you hear me back there? I’m talking at you, girl.” He grabs her by the elbow and she recoils at the touch, causing him to lunge forward and grip her at the triceps. “Bitch, gonna learn you some respect,” he growls and pulls her into the alley between a McDonald’s and a Jiffy Lube.
Spider-Man’s heartbeat thunders in his head and sweat trickles down behind his ears under the stuffy mask, but he does not slow his pace as he follows them into the alley. At the far end, the tough—whom Spider-Man can now see is white rather than Latino, a poseur, play-acting the part of the
machote
—has pinned the exec to a Mickey-D Dumpster, and is whispering something intently in her ear, still unaware of Spider-Man’s presence.
“Stop, criminal!” Spider-Man shouts, the words slightly muffled behind the mask, and the
machote falso
looks up with a start. “Unhand that young woman, scoundrel!”
The tough just stares at him for a moment, then barks out a laugh.
“Why don’t you go mind your biz elsewhere,
ese?
Eh,
araña loco?
This don’t concern you.”
“I’m afraid all law-breakers are my business,” Spider-Man says, striking a heroic pose with fists on hips. “Now, unhand her or suffer the consequences.”
“Ah, fuck this noise, yo,” the tough says, then reaches into his pants pocket, withdraws a revolver, and fires. The impact knocks Spider-Man off his feet, and he crashes to the concrete, landing on his back hard enough to rattle all the bones in his body, vaguely aware of the tough now yelling, “Ha! Spidey-sense not tingling now, eh, motherfucker?”
Spider-Man lies on the ground for a long moment, dazed, slowly regaining his wits, then with a grunt he rises to a sitting position. His right arm doesn’t seem to work anymore, and a dull throbbing pulses from his shoulder, but he is otherwise unharmed. There is no pain. Spider-Man doesn’t feel pain.
The image of another white man with a gun abruptly imposes itself onto his mind’s eye, a different tough, older and unshaven and twitchy, a year-old image that won’t go away no matter how much he blinks or shakes his head. The likeness of the twitchy tough was accompanied by the recalled report of an accidental gunshot, an aural rupture in the world, an incongruous sound that at the time he thought was a car backfiring, but then in his memory the ten-year-old biracial girl who was standing next to him tumbled slowly to the ground and the gunman was running away and the primal roar of grief and disbelief that erupted from Spider-Man’s throat sounded as if it were coming from all around him.
And now, as Spider-Man rises from the concrete and charges the
machote falso
, the roar comes again, his entire body filled with rage and vengeance even as he watches the tough raising the gun once more, not caring not caring because his little Thalía is dead dead dead and he couldn’t do anything to stop it and he doesn’t deserve to live in a world that would cruelly snuff out a being of such light and humor and love, and he braces himself for the second bullet to punch through his body, when the black woman suddenly throws an elbow into the tough’s throat and he drops the gun in surprise. She sweeps his leg from under him, and he topples to the ground of the alley just as Spider-Man arrives to give the tough a sharp kick to the ribs with his booted foot. The tough screams and Spider-Man kicks him again, harder, feeling something give way in the young man’s chest. He steps back, the energy abruptly drained out of him, and the woman takes his place, aiming and then driving the pointed toe of her expensive executive shoe into the attacker’s balls.
Spider-Man pulls off his mask and leans against the alley wall, watching as the tough just writhes on the ground, his face turning purple at the pain. Spider-Man uses the mask to mop the sweat from his face, and breathes heavily. He feels quite exhausted. His shoulder aches and he still can’t move his arm. The woman steps into view with the
machote falso
’s revolver in her hands, aiming at its former owner. She glances at Spider-Man.
“Nice pajamas,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“That was really fucking stupid what you did. He could have killed you.”
“Yes. But he also could have killed you, citizen. And I could not let that stand.”
“Well, thank you for that.” She adjusts her stance. “Do me a favor, web-head? My bag’s over there on the ground, and my cell phone’s inside. Why don’t you call 9-1-1 and get the cops here quick before this
bastardo
recovers, yeah?”
Spider-Man does as he is told, and within fifteen minutes both police and paramedics have arrived. The
machote falso
is unceremoniously cuffed and thrown in the back of a squad car. Spider-Man sits down on the curb next to a row of newspaper pay-boxes as a female paramedic attends to his shoulder and a male police officer takes his statement. He doesn’t know where the young exec has gone.
“Lucky for you,” the paramedic says, taping gauze over both the entry and exit wound, “it went straight through and didn’t hit any bones.” She jogs over to the ambulance and returns with a blister pack of little white pills and a support strap for his arm; he refuses the latter.
“It will interfere with my web-slinging,” he says.
“Suit yourself,” she says, and drops the strap into his lap. “You’re going to need to get checked out at the hospital.”
“I will be fine,” he says. “Spider-Man does not go to the hospital.”
The police officer interjects: “Do you have someone who can take you home? Anyone you can call?”
And before he can tell them both that Spider-Man does not have a home, he has rattled off the memorized series of digits that was once his home telephone number. The officer steps to his patrol car and relays the number to the dispatcher.
“Would you happen to have a cigarette?” Spider-Man asks the paramedic. “I don’t normally smoke, but this is not a normal occasion, and I’m craving one right now.”
The paramedic looks around her, then digs in a pants pocket, produces a pack of Salems, shakes one out for him, and then lights it. The smoke expands within him, but does not fill all of the gaping holes of his self. Still, a slow wave of calm cascades through his body.
Some time later, after everyone else has left, Spider-Man still sits in the same spot as a black Saab stops in front of him. A beautiful Latina in a very expensive pinstriped pantsuit and long-sleeved doctor’s white coat steps out and approaches him.
“Daniel? Can you hear me?”
Spider-Man doesn’t look up. The name is unfamiliar, so he assumes she’s speaking to someone else.
“Danny? It’s Liliana, your wife.” At his continued silence, she sighs and says, “
Papi?”
At the mention of his old pet name, he finally raises his head and says, “Spider-Man doesn’t have a wife. Or a daughter.”
“No,
papi
,” she says, her voice catching in her throat, “he doesn’t, not . . . not anymore.” She reaches a hand down and helps him to stand. “Look, you’re staying with me tonight. I told the police I’d take care of you. You’re coming home with me. Do you understand?”
Spider-Man looks into familiar brown eyes flecked with gold, the same eyes as those of the ten-year-old biracial girl who won’t stop falling to the ground. Thalía. He makes himself say the name out loud, and the Latina’s face drops, and then she is hugging him close and asking where he has been for the past year and saying many more words that he can’t catch because they come out in such a rush of both English and Spanish, and he finds himself gripping her back and inhaling the clean insistent smell of her.
“Come on,” she says, stepping back to wipe at her eyes and then taking his left hand in her right. “Let’s go home.”
Strange Mammals
The wombat stood on its hind legs, four feet tall, eyes set wide on its head. Its whiskers twitched as it waited for me to invite it into the apartment, dark brown fur matted in places and twined through with leaves and nettles in others. The animal smelled faintly of fish and vodka.
“So who are you then?”
“My name is Parasch Zee,” the wombat said, its voice full of gravel, and pushed its squat muscular body past me into the apartment. “You will call me P.S.”
“Parasch Zee? That’s a strange name.”
“Not strange for a wombat. Would you rather I be called Craig or Anthony? Now
that
would be fucking strange. Anything to drink?”
I closed the front door, walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Bottled water, chrysanthemum tea, grapefruit juice, and an open bottle of Perrier Jouet.”
“How old’s the Perrier Jouet?” the wombat called from the living room.
“Vintage is 1995, but it’s been open for, I don’t know, six months or so? At least since my divorce was finalized.”
“All right, fetch it here.”
I brought the champagne into the living room, and the wombat snatched it out of my hand. It sat on the couch upright like a person, instead of the expected way: on its belly, like a dog or some other pet. It guzzled the bubbly in great gulps, polishing it off in less than a minute.
“Shit,” the wombat said. “Pure shit, but it’ll tide me over until we can find something better.”
“So, aren’t you a little far from home?”
“Yes. That’s so observant. What an observant monkey you are.”
“What did you say your name was again?”
The wombat sighed. “Just call me P.S., like I said.”
“P.S.? Wouldn’t it be P.Z.?”
“No. Moron.”
“Right. And, uh, are you a boy or girl wombat?”
“That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. You’re stupid.”
P.S. then lengthened out along the cushions and yawned widely, showing me a better view of its rodent-like front teeth. It spread its fingers and stretched, revealing nasty-looking dark-colored claws caked with mud. “Get me a pillow,” it said.
“There’s a pillow right there,” I said.
“No, you idiot, that’s a couch pillow in the shape of a hamburger. I want a real pillow. Bring me it.”
I kept an extra pillow in the linen closet in case of guests, and carried this over to the wombat, who stuffed it underneath its head.
“Fine, now fuck off, I’m sleeping.”
“But I wanted to watch TV. One of my favorite shows is on now.”
The wombat growled and bared its teeth. “Fuck off, I said.”
I hurried back to the bedroom, banished. I read several chapters of a novel before my eyes began crossing. I dozed for a bit, and when I woke it was dark outside. My stomach gurgled. Tiptoed into the living room, frosty since the wombat had turned the thermostat way down, and picked up the phone quietly to order a pizza, but the wombat opened its eyes and looked up.
“What are you doing?”
“Ordering a pizza.”
“No,” it said. “Pizza is shit. You’re shit. Take me to the mall. We’ll get Greek food. I also need a phone card.”
“But I didn’t want to go out tonight.”
“Fuck that, we’re going. Greek food. Phone card.”
“But—”
“Grrrrrrreeeeek foooooood,” it growled. “Now.”
“What does a wombat need a phone card for anyway?”
“Shut up. Let’s go.”
The ride to the nearest shopping mall took only fifteen minutes in my Mini, but the wombat fiddled with every single button and lever and switch, adjusting the air conditioning, changing the radio station presets, flicking the lock back and forth, activating the hazard lights, switching on the windshield wipers, honking the horn. It couldn’t keep still, and refused to wear a seatbelt.
“This car is stupid,” it said. “You’re stupid.”
At the Mediterranean food stall in the mall food court, the wombat stretched up on its back legs to be seen over the counter and ordered a gyro with extra tzatziki sauce. I opted for a falafel pita. P.S. tried to eat its food right there at the counter, but I grabbed the tray with one hand, told it to find a table, and paid with the other hand. It chose a circular six-seater near the center of the food court, and was snapping at a white family of five who had approached the table at the same time, making this strangly barking noise and calling the blonde twin girls a couple of cunts.
“Sorry,” I said, approaching, “when it gets like this, there’s not much you can do. Sorry. There’s another large table over there by the fake palm tree.”
“Cunts!” barked the wombat. “Fuck you, you’re all stupid.”
“Would you knock it off? Here, eat your damn Greek food.”
The wombat ripped off great chunks from its gyro and chewed with its mouth open, uttering soft
ummph ummph
sounds as the detritus of toppings piled up on the floor around it. P.S. had stopped talking as it ate, and I took the opportunity to tuck into my falafel. Crunch and the soft green of chickpeas.
As it finished the last of the gyro, its mouth smeared with gobs of tzatziki, it said, softly, “Him.”
“What?”
“Him, not it. You called me an it. I’m a him.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to find a phone card. Let’s go, stupid.”
“But I just started my dinner.”
P.S. rolled his eyes. “I’ll be right back. Give me money.”
I handed the wombat a ten-dollar bill, and he looked at the paper as if it was a turd.
“This isn’t enough,” he said. “Give me more.”
Another ten, and the wombat ambled off in the direction of the shops without even a thank-you. Once he was out of sight, I inhaled the rest of the falafel and snuck out to the car park. I started up the Mini and drove home before I could think about it too much.
Back at the apartment, couch reclaimed, and I watched a Discovery Channel rerun about giant man-made structures. Apart from the TV, the room was quiet. The wombat had left the pillow on the couch, and it was smeared with a brown that I could only hope was mud. I’d take care of it later. I exhaled in relief, reveling in my restored solitude.
But before the show was even over, there was a knock at the door: the wombat.
“Idiot,” he said. “You think I couldn’t find my way back here? Don’t fucking do that again.” He pointed back behind him. “And take care of this.”
A taxi idled at the curb. The wombat stepped into the apartment, said “This is stupid,” and turned off the TV. I paid the cabbie, then went back inside.
~
When I woke the next morning, an ocelot was curled up at the foot of my bed. The shock of the big cat in such close proximity startled me into a huddle, blanket up around my face. At the sudden movement, the ocelot awoke as well, looked at me sleepily, and performed a full-body yawn. Were ocelots carnivores? I couldn’t remember, but its canines were certainly sharp enough.
“Damn,” it said in a throaty female tenor, “I’d just gotten to sleep. Why’d you do that?”
“Where the hell did you come from?”
“Where do any of us come from? I started as atoms, accreted into molecules, cells, nerves, muscles, limbic system, all that. There’s not much difference between you and me when you think of it that way.”
“No, I mean, how did you get into my apartment? Into my
bed?
”
The ocelot yawned again. “Look,” she said, “I’ve been up all night. Ocelots are nocturnal. Can we maybe talk about this later?”
“Um, but—”
“Later,” she said, her tone short with finality, performing a maneuver with her paws that looked as if she was kneading dough for biscuits, then she turned away and promptly fell back to sleep.
I crept out of the bedroom and closed the door as quietly as I could. Into the living room, hoping that the wombat had disappeared in the night, but no; all over the walls P.S. had scratched out rambling and incoherent phrases, carving them into the drywall. It must have stayed up all night to do this. Also, most of the living room furniture – sofa, end tables, lamps, coffee table – had been pushed against the front door, a makeshift barricade. Standing now to the right of the television, patiently embedding its thoughts, its fur covered with dried dirt and mud, and it looked up at my approach.
“Hey, the ignorant monkey is finally up. Get me some food.”
“What . . . what the fuck—”
“
Food
, monkey.”
I needed to go to the grocery store. All that was left in my pantry was a packet of bacon-flavored crackers. A tentative sniff: they still seemed to be okay. I brought the crackers out to the wombat; it started to eat, noisily, cramming handfuls of crackers into its mouth, four or five at a time, crumbs everywhere.
“
Him
,” the wombat said. “You’re still thinking of me as an it. Idiot.”
I looked closer at his most recent scrawlings.
1:34: Stupid apt claustrophobic. Take walk thru neighborhood.
1:50: Followed by cop car for three blocks. Working with DHS?
2:03: Cop says something in squawk box. Run. They chase.
2:15: Dig a tunnel from one random lawn to another. Lawns are stupid.
2:30: Cops gone. Lost them. Two drunkfucks walking home. They know. Run again before they can report position. Don’t wanna go back to GB.
3:15: Back at apt. Front door not secure. They know where I am.
The wombat finished the crackers and ate the foil wrapper as well. I was worried that all the noise would wake the ocelot, but there was no indication we had disturbed her. He belched, then wiped down his whiskers; I hoped he would extend the cleaning to the rest of his body, but he seemed comfortable with the layers of filth.
“Not enough,” he said. “Pancakes. I want pancakes.”
“I’m going to lose my security deposit, you know.”
“Fuck you. Pancakes.”
The IHoP down the street was crowded with the morning rush, and we had to wait twenty minutes for a table, the wombat all the time picking at a large grey scab on its left leg, rimmed with yellowish pus. Escorted to a booth in the back corner, and the wombat ordered a Western omelette; just coffee for me. Sat in silence as families and construction workers and corporate types broke their morning fast, the din of conversation making it difficult to think. The omelette arrived and the wombat ate with its bare hands; I didn’t even bothering reminding him about the fork and knife right there in front of him.
Back at the apartment, and the wombat locked itself in the bathroom, muttering loud enough to himself that I could hear through the door. After ten minutes or so, he called out, “Don’t you have a stupid job to get to?”
“No,” I said. “I was fired yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Do you really care?”
“You really are an incompetent fuck,” he said. “Don’t forget to put all that shit back against the door. We’re not safe.”
I had moved the furniture out of the way so that we could leave before, and I now pushed it back into place. It wouldn’t keep anyone out if they really wanted to get in, but I did have to admit that it made me feel a little more secure.
Suddenly exhausted, the coffee apparently not having done its job, I stepped into the bedroom. The ocelot still slept on the bed, but had moved up more toward the middle, aligned along its length like a person would sleep. There was just enough space for me to lie down. I sat gently and rolled over onto my back. The ocelot went
mmmmm
, but gave no other indication of waking up; her body was warm and comfortable next to mine, and her soft purring put me quickly to sleep.
I dreamt of the ocelot. We were in bed together, as in real life, but she had removed my clothes and was licking me all over with her rough cat tongue, my face, my neck, my chest, my arms, my legs, and all my secret places. Purring loudly all the time, and me intensely aware of her carnivorous teeth, close enough to rip into me if she wanted, and I shivered, the fear adding to my excitement. She did things with her tongue to make it not-so-rough, and began licking my genitals.
At one point, she lifted her head and said, “By the way, my name’s Edie,” and I realized this was no longer a dream, that it was happening for real. She licked and licked and licked, and I shuddered and exhaled, and then she licked me clean.
“There,” she said. “Feeling better, are we?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel about that.”
“You could say thank you.”
“You know,” I said, “I haven’t been able to have sex for almost a year.”
“I hate to point out, sweetie-darling,” she said, “but you still haven’t.”
“My ex-wife Alice hated it for some reason. It was always such a chore. Even when we were actively trying to get pregnant, it was just something to get over with. It’s one of the reasons we split up. After a while, I got tired of begging, and my libido just sort of went away.”
“Fascinating,” Edie said. “Look, I’m famished. You wouldn’t have any crickets, would you?”
“Crickets? No. Why?”
“Never mind. Be back in a little while.”
She climbed off the bed, and padded out of the room. The sound of breaking glass. I soft-footed out to the living room, still naked. One of the two front windows had been broken, its hole vaguely ocelot-shaped; a breeze drifted lazily in, stirring the hairs on my body.
“What the fuck was that?” the wombat yelled from the bathroom.
~
Several hours later, I don’t know how many, the ocelot hadn’t returned yet, and the wombat opened the bathroom door. I’d been staring at my reflection in the television screen, and the sudden sound made me jump, my heart quick-thumping, the base of my skull crawling with imaginary ants. I still hadn’t dressed. My legs wobbled as I got to my feet. The wombat stood half in view, the rest of his body hidden behind the door, tapping absently on the wood with his dark claws.
“Come here,” he said.
Filling the entire space inside in the bathtub was an enormous creature, the size of a bull, covered in bright pink scales like a fish, its head hanging downward and obscured by a frill of stiff blond bristles that surrounded its neck like a collar. The smell of the creature was incredible, as if a sewer main had been opened directly beneath it. It sighed heavily and the smell intensified; breathing seemed laborious. Irrationally, I wanted to hug it.