Mosquitoland(19)

Go, Mary. Now.

I regain motion, stuff everything back in my bag, and start for the door. “I’m leaving.”

He steps in front of it, blocking me in. “Not yet.”

Breathe, Mary. I push my bangs out of my eyes, push the panic down, push, push, push . . . “I’ll scream,” I say.

“I’ll tell on you.”

I flinch. “You’ll what?”

“I overheard your little convo with Ed out there—you wouldn’t drink Hills Brothers Original Blend if your life depended on it. Which means that coffee can I just saw”—he points to my backpack—“isn’t yours. Ergo, what’s inside probably isn’t either.”

His words are ice. They hit my gut first, then spread in all directions, filling my ears, elbows, knees, toes—the extremities of Mim, once a balmy ninety-eight point six, now a glacial effigy. Until this moment, the uncomfortable nearness of Poncho Man had been held at bay by other passengers and locks on doors. Now, it’s just us. There are no devices, no buffers. He stands there, taller than I remember, bulkier, blocking my way to the safety of my pack. I feel his eyes on me now, trailing from my hair, down my body, lingering in places they don’t belong—and for the first time in a long time, I feel like a helpless girl.

He steps closer. “You are beautiful, you know.”

I’m shivering now, my bones and blood on full alarm—it’s a primordial instinct, Predator versus Prey, passed down from a thousand generations of women who, like me, feared the inevitable. We’d seen the footage of the hyena and the gazelle, and it always ended the same.

“So beautiful,” he whispers.

I close my good eye. In my mind, the bathroom dissolves into a reddish hue, the corners dimming like the vignette of an old art house film. The metamorphosis begins at Poncho Man’s feet, his mismatched shoes bursting open at the toe, revealing short, sharp claws. His pants bulge at the knees and thighs, every pulsing muscle defined beneath the cheap fabric. His poncho stiffens, hardens, ripples into a spotted fur coat; matted and dirty, the blacks and oranges and browns of his mangy hide reflect the red light of the room, and behold! The metamorphosis of Poncho Man is complete, with one last addition: Fangs. First one, then another, sprouting forth like two young oaks in fertile soil.

“Nothing will happen,” he says, his voice thick. “Nothing you don’t want.”

And in that tone, I understand—I know—I’m not his first. “Fuck you. Move.”

He reaches out, grips my arm just above the elbow. It’s firm and painful. “Why would you say that to me?”

Scream, Mary.

“You’re too good,” he whispers, leaning his head closer. I can smell his breath, every ounce as ashy and deceitful as I’d imagined. “I know you.”

A scream had been boiling in my stomach, and was about to take flight, until . . .

“I know your pain,” he said.

My pain.

“I’d like to be friends, Mim.”

I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay.

“You want to be friends, don’t you?”

I am a collection of oddities . . .

His grip is aggressive. “We could be more than friends, too.”

A circus of neurons and electrons . . .

His breath is warm.

Ready . . .

His lips are cold against mine.

Set . . .

His tongue—

Go . . .

Reaching down deep, my misplaced epiglottis locates a certain milk-soaked hockey puck; it gathers every ounce of the semi-digested beef and dairy, then, with pure force and accuracy, launches a vomit for the ages directly into Poncho Man’s mouth.

He chokes, gags, growls . . .

Spinning, I unlock the door and exit the bathroom, breathing in the freedom of the rarely savvy gazelle.



September 2—noon


Dear Isabel,

A quick note: I don’t think a vivid imagination is all it’s cracked up to be. I’m quite certain you have one, but if not, thank the gods of born-with gifts and move on. However, if you’re cursed as I am with a love of storytelling and adventures in galaxies far, far away, and mythical creatures from fictional lands who are more real to you than actual people with blood and bones—which is to say, people who exist—well, let me be the first to pass on my condolences.

Because life is rarely what you imagined it would be.


Signing off,

Mary Iris Malone,

Storytelling Lackey





NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE


   (526 Miles to Go)





12


Anomalies

IN SIXTH-GRADE ADVANCED English, my teacher presented a challenging assignment: find a single word to best describe you, then write a paper as to why. During the two weeks leading up to the paper’s due date, I pored over the dictionary each night, searching for that one word which might perfectly define Mim Malone. In the end, I chose the word anomaly. (I had it down to that, or cheeky, and by my reckoning, it would be far easier to define my many moods with a word whose very definition was a person or thing that couldn’t be defined by any one thing. This, I thought, was irrefutable logic at its finest.) I remember the last paragraph of that paper like it was yesterday.

“In summary, I am 110 percent Anomaly, plus maybe 33 percent Independent Spirit, and 7 percent Free-Thinking Genius. My sum total is 150 percent, but as a living, breathing Anomaly, this is to be expected. Boom.”