Mosquitoland(36)

“Walt”—I point toward the fat guy—“you see him, too, right?”

The man’s blubber shakes as he laughs. He sips his daiquiri through a crazy straw, looks from Walt to me. “Nah, I’m just a figment of your imagination, kid. What, you were expecting a hookah-smoking caterpillar?”

Walt, ignoring us both, bounces up and down on the heels of his feet. “Where is he, Al, where is he?”

I cross the roof, joining them in the partial shade of a fake palm tree, doing my best not to throw up on the Pale Whale’s third circle of blubber. “Walt, we gotta get off this roof, man. We’re sitting ducks up here.”

“Who the hell are you?” asks the Pale Whale.

An image, from the most vivid quarters of my imagination: a car changing this man’s oil. “Mim,” I say. All I can muster.

“Ma’am?!” he blurts. “What kind of name is that?”

I find it hard to believe this man could criticize anybody’s anything. “You find the bottom of that daiquiri yet? What is it, eight a.m.?” I turn to Walt. “Listen. We don’t have time for this. Caleb’s insane. It’s only a matter of time—”

“That’s just bad manners, see.”

Spinning, I see Caleb round the circular tank, holding a sizeable hunting knife. A trickle of blood drips from his hands onto the gravel roof. He coughs, then pulls a cigarette from his back pocket and lights it. “Sorry, Al—had to bust a double-paned window to get in.” Inhaling, his eyes dart around. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

Gas station plus boyfriend.

“Karate class in Union,” says the Pale Whale, smacking his lips around the straw.

An odd smile spreads across Caleb’s face. He steps closer, the sharp end of the hunting blade shimmering in the light of the morning sun. “Like a f*ckin’ six-year-old,” he mumbles.

Al pinches one nostril, blows snot out the other—just like a whale’s blowhole. Sliding his meaty hands behind his head, he sighs, and for a moment it’s quiet, as if none of us are entirely sure whose turn it is to talk. Then, with the subtlety befitting a man of his stature, Albert breaks the silence. “You’re a freak show, you know that, Caleb?” The folding chair squeaks under his weight. “Seriously, you should sell tickets. People would come from miles around to see you talk to yourself. Speaking of which—when you do that, is it a natural, everyday sort of thing, like putting on socks?”

Caleb’s eyes twitch, but he doesn’t answer.

“I shouldn’t make fun,” continues Albert, rubbing his aviators on the bottom of his shorts. “I suppose that’s a brand of bat-shit crazy you just can’t help.”

Caleb stands frozen, blood still dripping from the cut on his hand.

Al raises his daiquiri to his lips. A stubborn slice of strawberry gets stuck in the straw. He sucks harder, squeezing it like Augustus through the glass tube in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He swallows it down, tilts his head at Caleb. Like an old-fashioned pistol duel, it’s not about who draws first, but who draws quickest.

“Get the hell off my roof,” says Albert, each of his stomachs rising, falling.

Caleb pulls back his shoulders, and once again, I notice his red hoodie. The same as my own. I picture my Abilitol in the bottom of my bag, shrouded in the darkness of its canvas tomb, screaming a promise of normalcy.

“I’m not crazy,” whispers Caleb, twirling the knife in his hands.

And suddenly, from months ago, my father’s voice: “Here, Mim.” I take the bottle and roll my eyes. “Don’t look at me like that,” says Dad. “I’m trying to help. Just get in the habit of taking one with breakfast every day. Habit is king.” I glance at the label on the bottle, wondering how it got this far. “Dad. I don’t need them.” He pulls orange juice out of the refrigerator, pours a glass. “I need you to trust me on this, Mim. You don’t want to end up like Aunt Isabel, do you?” That’s when I know he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, searching for anything to get me to cooperate. Taking the glass from his hand, I pop a pill in my mouth and drown it down with the rest of his juice. Every last drop. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand, stare him dead in the face. “I’m not crazy.”

“Sure you’re not crazy, Caleb,” says the Pale Whale. “You just keep living your little fantasy life, son. Lord knows, I’ve been there.” He slaps his belly. “But damn it all, I wouldn’t trade these rolls for your level of crazy, not for all the rotisserie chickens in Kentucky. You know why? ’Cause at the end of the day, when my fat ass tumbles into its king-sized waterbed, I sleep like a baby. I know who I am.”

“Oh yeah?” Caleb twirls the knife again, arching one eyebrow unnaturally high. “And who are you?”

Albert the Pale Whale sips his daiquiri, smacks his lips together, then leans back and sighs. “I’m Albert, motherf*cker. Who are you?”

As Caleb steps toward Albert, I grip the war paint in my pocket and picture the long blade piercing those layers of blubber. Gallons of fluid would gush from the wound like a fire hydrant; hidden arteries, having spent the last two decades being stretched and filled to their fullest capacity, would now be exposed, severed, freed from the heaviest of loads. The wailing, whaling mess would pool around his bloated ankles, gather under the folding chair, then rise up and up, lifting the leviathan carcass off the roof, spinning him like a top, and tossing him off the edge of his own broke-ass, off-white gas station. We’d be swept up in the Blood Flood, too, Walt and I, carried away like Noah’s Ark, or rather, like the animals of afterthought, left to fend for themselves in the apocalyptic precursor to the rainbow.