Adventures with Max and Louise (8 page)

“Wait for me!” Chas says. Or at least that’s what I think he says. The din in the hearing room is so loud, I am reading his lips. I can’t be sure. It is all so confusing and, yes, humiliating, being escorted out in this manner. Was he talking to me? Did he really want me to wait for him? There’s not enough time to mull things over. Denise and I are hustled out the door and told that if we come back, we’ll both be thrown in jail. When I politely inform them that I did nothing wrong, they smirk.

“Yeah, you did,” Dumb replies. “You sat by her.”

Laughing far too hard for such a lame joke, they leave us on the steps.

While I glare at her, Denise coolly lights a cigarette

“Assholes,” I mutter as the cops disappear inside City Hall building.

Denise turns to me. “I thought that went pretty well, don’t you?”

“No, Denise, I do not call getting kicked out of a court room going well. I call it lousy. How can you yell like that? How can you insult people and swear your head off like that in public?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. It comes naturally.”

“Well, you’re very gifted at creating public scenes.”

“Thank you.” She smiles, pleased.

“Next time, I’m staying in bed,” I grouse. Chas’s image pops into my mind. Maybe this wasn’t such a bust after all.

A reporter follows us out, asking for a picture. Denise hands me her cigarette, smiling prettily. The flash pops. “You want a shot of me in front of the Colony? We’re walking over there right now.”

I grind the cigarette out with my heel, pick it up and grabbing Denise’s arm, deposit it in her hand before she can see what I’m doing. “I’m not.”

“Come on, Molly, they want a photo.”

“I’m waiting here,” I reply with some misgivings. It’s a lot colder than I thought. There’s a swift wind blowing up from Elliott Bay, and I’m coatless.

“For what?” Denise gives me a curious look, as though realizing I might have a life beyond bailing her out of jail. There ought to be a school where they teach the youngest sibling that she, in fact, is not the planet around which others rotate.

“None of your business,” I sniff, happy to have a secret. Chas wants to see me. Anyway, that’s what I think.

“I thought I’d give you a ride home.”

Denise is a horrid driver, slow, indecisive, and paranoid. “No, thanks. I’m fine,” I say evenly.

She tilts her head like a spaniel, flipping from bold provocateur to my playful kid sister in an instant. “Come on; tell me who you’re waiting for.”

“No.”

“Pu-lease?” The kooky outfit and red curls make her look like a Groovy Girl doll come to life.

“Your potential photo op is leaving.” I gesture to the photographer, who was hurrying toward a coffee shop.

She waves at me as she leaves, walking backward in her clunky shoes, almost tripping. “Hey, I forgot to thank you for bailing me out! You sure you don’t need a ride?”

“Positive.” This time, nothing will get between me and Chas Bowerman.

A
HALF HOUR
later, I’m regretting my decision. I should have taken Denise’s offer of a ride, or at least had her wait with me at the bus stop. It’s late fall. Most people are buried in down coats. I’m shivering in my shirt, pacing, rubbing my arms, and all but lighting a fire to keep warm. And what am I doing? Waiting for a phantom lover, the unwitting lead actor in
Life According to Molly,
who in reality is still more interested in my hot older sister. I’m a twenty-five-year-old woman, not some pathetic high school girl with a crush. I’m going to call a cab.

I wave my hand into traffic. Three minutes later a yellow cab dashes across two lanes of traffic, almost causing an accident. The driver scoots over to the passenger side, eagerly rolling down the window.

“Hop in!” he says, addressing my breasts.

I wait for him to look at me in the eyes. When he doesn’t, I shake my head.

“That’s okay. I changed my mind. I’m going to walk.” I step back. “Thanks anyway.”

The scowling driver guns his cab into oncoming traffic. Lesson number two: big breasts, when positioned correctly, can get you cabs. Not that I’d want to ride with a man who talks to my breasts, but three minutes to hail a cab is a personal record.

As I continue to pace, I decide that Chas was probably talking to someone else, the man beside him, no doubt. It’s more likely that he’d been watching Denise’s little tantrum, saw me, and while trying to put a name to my face, told his associate to wait for him. How stupid, assuming Chas’s words had anything to do with me.

If I stay here, he’ll see me, loitering coatless and shivering for no reason. He’ll hurry past, late for a meeting, vaguely aware that we ran into each other a while ago. It will be high school all over again, except that I haven’t learned a damn thing in ten years. Perfect men like Chas don’t date women like me, even if I do have breasts bubbling out of a borrowed shirt. As far as I know, Chas thinks I’m dating that spider monkey of a man, Wolf.

If I hurry, I can catch Martin as he arrives at work. I’ll talk him into skipping lunch. He can take me shopping for more appropriate clothing. Great. I have, at twenty-five, become my middle-aged mother. “More appropriate clothing” was something Mom would hum under her breath whenever Trina came skipping down the stairs dressed in a night-clubbing getup for high school. Taking off at a brisk pace, I am certain I’ve avoided humiliation. My new shirts will be variations of the turtlenecks I’ve worn in the past. Why change my life just because a surgeon screwed up? I don’t want to be Trina.

Reaching the first half block, I swing my arms with resolution and purpose. I’m not going to fall into a dithering mess just because of a high school flame. I have a career, a cookbook languishing in my drawer, waiting to be published. I’m a grown woman who will not be sideswiped by some juvenile crush. While I’m shopping, I’m going to see if Jockey for Her has some sturdy cotton bras in my size in beige and white. My comfort zone might not be the most chic address, but it sure feels good to be going back.

“You moight as well be a giant flippin’ chicken,” a man’s voice says. A thick Cockney accent booms nearby. I recognize it.

I spin around.

“Who is that? Where are you?” I stick my finger in my right ear, rubbing it. I’m hearing things.

“Big yellow feavers is all you need. Runnin’ away from him loik you was scared of the very sight. You saw what ’e said. A direct invitation, and you’re runnin’ off, wings flippin’ an’ flappin’.”

The voice must be coming from above; maybe from someone hanging out an apartment window. Looking up, there is no one, just windows closed against the cold. An old couple in a Kinko’s storefront stare at me. There isn’t a soul within twenty feet on the sidewalk, save an old panhandler bundled against the morning cold in a ratty sleeping bag. Gazing around suspiciously, I continue walking.

“Buck, buck, buck-buck-buck.” He clucks like a chicken.

“Who are you?” I scream. The couple in the Kinko’s eye me cautiously. They exchanged worried comments. Probably something about the budget cuts at Western State Psychiatric Hospital.

“Max,” the voice says quietly.

I stop, examining every doorway, sewer grate, window cornice, anywhere a speaker could hide. “Okay, Max. Where are you hiding?”

“I’m ’ardly hiding.” Max grumbles. “You got me pushed up ’ere loik a puppet at a bleedin’ Punch and Judy show.”

Glancing down at my breasts, immediately I know that this was where the voice lives. My legs shake. I have the weird sensation of having been here before, but it can’t be possible. This is the voice of the man who was talking to me on the bus.
Holy mother of God, I’m going crazy. Those nut jobs on the bus; I’m one of them.

“You’re . . . you’re in there, in the implants?” My heart races; I might as well make myself a pair of foil antennas right now. Maybe insanity is contagious. Maybe I caught it on the bus.

“Knockers, breasts, tits, boobies, whatever you want to call us, we don’t really loik to be called implants; such a cold, impersonal word. I prefer Max, meself. Maximilian if you’re a bit of a toff, which I’m not.”

My head spins.
This is the voice who said, “You’re jealous” about Gwen when I was lying in bed. This is the voice on the bus.

“You said ‘us.’ There’s more than one?”

“Well, of course there’s more than one. You don’t see many lasses runnin’ round with one right smack in the center, do you? I’m the left one; always partial to that side. Louise is the other. Yer lucky she’s not talkin’. Once she starts, she won’t bleedin’ stop.”

Stumbling forward, I nearly trip on the sidewalk. I need a stiff drink or three. I glance at my watch. It’s still far too early to slip into a bar.

“No need to get yourself all in a tizzy. That’s a girl, have a sit-down.”

Collapsing on a bench in a bus shelter beside a woman dressed for the office, I take long, deep breaths.
Get a grip, Molly. Get oxygen to your brain, and this hallucination will go away
. It has to be a hallucination, or I am going mad. Is this the way it happens? First you notice the bits and pieces of insanity, a voice in the bed, a stranger only you can hear talking to you on the bus, and later you fall completely apart on the sidewalk?

“ ’ere’s the thing,” Max says. “You’re at a juncture roight now. The road forks; you choose a paff. The first option is that you keep trottin’ roight up that hill, go shoppin’ with your mate. ’e tries to talk you into some fashionable clothes, but you insist, no, they’re not my cuppa. In the end, you win because ’e knows you been froo a lot, and ’e doesn’t want to push. Life goes on pretty much as before. Not too bad, but then again, not a ’ell of a lot of giggles neither.”

I’m actually listening to Max, feeling interested, if not downright fascinated. Yes, I might be completely losing it, but this guy seems to have given my love life, or lack thereof, a fair amount of thought.

“Path two: you with me now? You scoot roight back down to the courthouse, and you find your man. Make no mistake, girly, ’e’s your man; every cell in your body is sayin’, ‘I want ’im.’ I’m not sayin’ it won’t be a job to get ’im. But I can tell you what’ll ’appen if you keep runnin’ away: you’ll both go back to work and feck all will change. ’e’ll be single, and you’ll be lonely. Listen to me. I can get ’im for you.”

“I’m going crazy.” I have to say it aloud. The woman next to me stares dead ahead, clutching her briefcase. Checking the bus schedule, she stands.

“Oy, that’s just another excuse. Fear, loneliness, grief. You can find any excuse for me if you want. In the end it’s your choice.”

“And what if I just want you to go away?” The woman sidles farther away from the bus stop, keeping an eye on me as if I am a solitary suitcase in a New York subway.

“You don’t want me to go away,” Max says calmly.

“Oh, yes I do! I really, really, really do!”

“Luvey, when you decided on surgery, you lit’rally opened yourself up. You can’t cut open a body loik a melon and expect no change.” He lowers his voice to a confidential tone. “You know, people who ’ave open ’eart surgery cry loik babies after they ’ave the operation. Openin’ up the ’eart, it is.”

“I didn’t open up my heart. I opened up skin.”

“Still an organ. Biggest one in the body, in fact.”

“It was a mistake.”

“Luv, there ain’t any mistakes. Only fate.”

I run a hand through my hair. I’m not cold anymore. I’m so freaked out, I can’t feel anything but a creeping sense of panic and fear. “You’re just a regular expert, aren’t you? Where’d you go to school, Harvard?”

“Oim more of a street philosopher, if you will. But I spend a fair time thinking on matters of the heart. And you, my dear young lady, chose me, whether you like it or not.”

“At what point did I say I want talking breast implants, because I don’t remember that part of the paperwork.” I’m back to pacing again, trying to shove this all into some category of familiar experience. But there is no category for this, unless you look it up in a clinical reference for personality disorders. Delusional, isn’t that what it’s called?

“Your ’eart chose for you, luv. You opened up yourself.”

“I didn’t open myself up to talking boobs!” I hiss.

“Meanwhile, luv, your Prince Charming is ’eaded back to work and forgotten all about you.”

A reticulated blue-and-yellow Metro bus arrives. Briefcase lady leaps inside. I don’t blame her. I’d run away from me if I could. The bus driver waits expectantly. I shake my head, and he closes the door. I’m enveloped in a cloud of exhaust, coughing. After I rub my eyes, I close them and count to twenty. Another trick Mom taught me. Count to twenty, and maybe your problem will just go away. I open my eyes. The bus snakes around the corner, disappearing behind a brick building. A passing bike messenger checks me out as he whizzes past.

I take a deep, cleansing breath. “Are you still there?”

“I know it’s ’ard at first. You’re not going crazy.” He waits a couple of moments. “Maybe the rest of the world, but not you, dear.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’re a talking boob.” Standing, I face one direction, then the other. Should I walk back to work and ask Martin for the name of a good psychiatrist? Other than the voice in my head, I don’t feel crazy. Laughing, I say aloud, “Yes, Doctor, other than the voice in my head, I’m perfectly healthy.” But it’s true. Ever since Mom died, I’ve been floating in time, waiting for something extraordinary to happen. Could this be it? If so, next time I’ll have to be more specific. Last time I woke up with an aching chest I’d lost Mom. This time, everyone’s still alive, including some guy named Max. When I put it in those terms, this isn’t so bad. Is it?

Turning west, I stride slowly toward the courthouse, gaining speed with each step. It is exhilarating. There has to be some very logical explanation for Max: the stress of surgery, the anxiety of my new figure, a fear of undergoing surgery again. For the moment, I’ll embrace the weirdness, see where it gets me. After a few moments I cross my arms, cradle my chest, and break into an exhilarating run.

Chapter Nine

B
Y THE TIME
I make it back to the courthouse, it is empty, an echoing hallway of dirty marble. A chubby security guard is slouched at his desk, reading the newspaper.