Dora: A Headcase (16 page)

I pull my covers over my head. Ugh. Why do I even come home anymore? I fucking hate this godforsaken place. I live in a Fellini movie. Under the covers, everything looks black and blue. Cool. It’s kind of peaceful. I should film under here.

“Now, Ida,” the she vixen goes.

I roll out of bed and into my skinny black jeans. Not sure how many days I can wear this same underwear. Starting to smell a little too much like apples. I rub my head. Feels like … Astroturf. I check my face in the computer screen. Wow. I guess that’s what insomniacs must look like. Like someone spooned out little hollows under their eyes. Cave eyes. Fuck. I don’t mind telling you. I am no way looking forward to this. But later today I
get to see my Sig. For reasons I can’t even begin to explain, it gives me strength. He ain’t my grandpa and I sure as shit ain’t Heidi, but you got to take what you can get.

I open my bedroom door. I walk down the hall of family. At the end is my parents’ bedroom – but that hardly seems like a good thing to call it these days. It’s the fucking father room. Where everything that will happen next gets born. As I walk down the hall toward the fucking father room the floor seems to pulse. Ew. It smells like middle age.

Propped up in bed with a gazillion pillows I’ve never seen before, underneath a bizarro Asian design comforter my mother would have eaten glass before ever buying, is the man formerly known as dad. He’s clean shaven. Mrs. K. is standing next to him holding a towel and the safety razor I used to give myself this bitchin’ head. She looks so proud of herself. Her lipstick is gleaming. Her eyes give her away though. Here comes Ida’s ass whoopin’, I bet she’s thinking. Are her tits saluting something?

I don’t know how else to say this but to just say it. That clean shaven guy in the bed? The one with the sunk in cheeks and knotty throat and silver hair? That’s not my dad. I mean it is, it has to be, right? But I don’t even recognize him. It’s like aliens replaced my dad with some Frankenstein they cooked up in a spaceship to look human. Um, clearly someone needs to buzz trim that ear hair, people. He’s got an oxygen thingee in his nose. A tank next to his bed. His pajama shirt is unbuttoned and I can see a giant red railroad track going from his sternum down toward his belly button. Open heart surgery scar. When I look at it I can’t feel my legs and my breath jackknifes and I get the spins. I look immediately away from the red railroad track between me and his internal organ and up at the ceiling.

Up on the ceiling? Of fucking course. A dong shaped crack. Huge. Like a giant dong spying on me. Told you, Fellini movie.

“Ida,” my father says. I look not at him, but kinda to the left of his ear. Where did my dad’s voice go? This guy sounds like …
like Alan Arkin. No shit. Soft and nasal and a little like he’s just hit puberty.

I got no voice, so I just try to look at his … jesus, when did the color blue leave my father’s eyes? Steel color piss holes. Could the alien theory have merit?

“I’ve been meaning to speak to you.”

I look back up to the ceiling. Then at my own belly. Wonder how long that sentence has been true. Years, I’d wager.

Mrs. K. wipes the razor up and sets it down on the bedside table. She pretends to pull the covers up around this guy in the bed playing the role of my dad. He smiles. Is it true all men just want a series of mothers?

“Look,” he says, adjusting himself against all that poofiness, “this is a difficult time.”

No. Fucking. Shit. Sherlock. I look at Mrs. K. I look back at the alien.

“I’m going to need you to be a little more adult,” the alien says.

Adult. Right. Like you two?

“Until I’m up and about …”

I shoot a set of eye bullets over at Mrs. K. She’s grinning with no teeth. I half expect some mechanical tongue to shoot out and slit my throat. Fuck her for smelling good. That dang Lancôme perfume.

“Please, can I count on you to … please help Peppina – “

BRAIN STOP. Oh my fucking god. I suck in a breath and hold it. Peppina? Her name is Peppina? What the fuck kind of name is Peppina? I laugh. Luckily nothing comes out sound wise. All they see is my shoulders sort of spasming. Peppina stops smiling. Pretty sure she’s grinding her teeth. I want so badly to go S’up, Peppina Peppilepticpepperonina? right this second. But I can’t.

“ – as much as possible,” he continues. “She is giving of herself quite a lot to be here with me at this time. Ida. Do you understand me?”

Oh, I understand you all right, daddy. I nod my head slowly up and down. I shove my hands in my jeans pockets. I shrug, and tilt my teen head, giving them the universal ’sthat all? gesture.

“You may go,” my father says.

Peppina looks disappointed that I didn’t get swatted. Or rolled in butter and set on fire.

I exit the fucking father room. It’s right then and there that I decide. I’m not using Vivaldi as the soundtrack in the Sig movie when his wang shoots blood. I’m using the recording of my father breathing from when he was in the hospital. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. In a loop.

My real father’s been abducted by aliens and captured by a strange big-titted demon vixen. My real mother’s in Vienna turning more and more beige. Pretty soon she’ll be transparent.

Which pretty much makes me an orphan, I figure. My cell vibrates. Well hell. It’s that weird number from before. I don’t answer. I go into my bedroom. I throw my backpack onto my bed. I pack the SD cards with all the audio and video of my Sig movie. I pack a few new pairs of underwear. I pack my Mantegazza book, my purple Sharpie, Xanax, Vicodin, and Percocet. Two joints. A tiny bit of blow I have left from dosing the Sig. I pack cigarettes, a Pixies T-Shirt, my earbuds. I pack my Swiss Army Knife Elite. I check the voicemail on my iPhone. This time I sit on the edge of the bed and listen.

“Hello Ida. I’ve been trying to reach you. Through certain … mutual channels, shall we say. It has come to my attention that you have something … well, I’m very much interested in something you have. Some video footage, I believe? Could you perhaps return my call – I can assure you, I can make it very well worth your while.”

What the fuck? Pervola? Somebody’s dad? A cop? Mutual channels, what the fuck does that mean? I make a pit stop at my computer and do a reverse phone number look up. Odd. What comes up? Hill and Knowlton Inc. Big time PR agency in Seattle. Um, they do Microsoft. What the fuck would they want with me?
Gotta be a wrong number. A hoax. But I really like the idea of using it for soundscape loops so I hope the dude calls back and calls back.

How does he know my name? Whatevs. Doesn’t matter. Life is a Fellini flick. No time.

I don a pair of Steve McQueen mirror shades. I put on a black leather biker jacket. Quick search of the pockets reveals more Vicodin and hey! A barely touched box of Hot Tamales. Ave Maria will cream. On my way outta the hellhole, I see Mrs. K.’s purse. I nab her wallet and take all her cash and a couple of her credit cards. Christ. She’s got pictures of the midget demons in her wallet. Could there be two uglier children? Spawn gone wrong, that’s for sure. Are their ears pointed? Then I spot something else on the kitchen counter – pearl drop earrings – undoubtedly Mrs. K.’s, double undoubtedly a gift from the alien formerly my father. I snatch ‘em up and put them in my mouth like sugar cubes and flee.
I’m sucking on the pearl drops, Siggy
. Smile.

Luckily, I have a shrink.

ON THE BUS FROM CAPITOL HILL DOWN TO PIKE I LOOK around at my fellow mobile inmates. Why is it that people on buses look like tired sacks of shit? Literally – like someone shat sacks of us onto these ass shaped plastic seats that smell like rank old monkey balls. No one on a bus looks cool. And you can bet your bottom dollar that there is always a whack job just waiting for his perfect moment to go bus fuck mental. Don’t even get me started on the fat-assery of the drivers. You know they got a Pabst hidden down by the gears somewhere. Christ. Last year some middle-aged gasbag driver actually ran over two people and dragged them half a block before noticing. Everyone on the bus screaming their heads off for her to stop.

I’m sweating the sweat of not knowing what to expect. I’m on my way to see Sig. I’m all fucked up. I can’t talk, I’m homeless, I’m an orphan, I need to change my underwear. What am I gonna do when I get there, write him notes for an hour? Do a tap dance? Strip naked and masturbate?

Hell, maybe he’s got cops there waiting for me. It’s a possibility.

I look out the shitty window at the passing city crap. Then I have a pop-up thought: I wonder if Marlene would let me crash with her for awhile?

Marlene works at Sea-Tac Airport as a security officer three days a week. She, well, OK “he,” since we’re talking about her man job, works at one of the full body X-ray huts. You know, the
ones for international flight folks where you have to stick a chunk of lead in your pants if you don’t want them to see your junk.

When he’s a she, she sings Eleanora Fagan songs at a tranny jazz club cabaret on the south edge of Capitol Hill. Holy shit does Marlene have some pipes. In her voice Eleanora Fagan comes back from the dead. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Marlene sing “What Is This Thing Called Love” or “Summertime.” In fact, I’ve got her on the Zoom H4n right now. In my Dora purse. God Bless the Child. I ease up the volume. I feel slightly less deranged.

Poor Eleanora Fagan though. Marlene told me all about her. You know Billie Holiday died in a hospital room where police were waiting to take her to jail? Fucking typical. Cirrhosis of the liver and drug addiction is what it said on her death certificate. What it should have said is that her life was the suck. The only beautiful thing about it lived in her throatsong.

The bus is pointed straight down hill. Always makes me feel like I’m gonna get a nose bleed. The guy across from me has a soiled crotch and a ski parka the color of puke. He’s wearing a hair nest. The woman two seats up has a big weird mole right in the center of the back of her head poking through what’s passing for her hair. Then there’s a DING and we stop and some whitey middle aged corporate dude with a Dolce & Gabbana black leather man shoulder purse gets on. Is he fucking lost? Yeah. Where YOU gonna sit Mr. Corporate Shiny Pants? Oh. Nice. He’s wearing sunglasses. He sits directly in front of me. Blocking my view of mole head. His hair has a weird silver sheen to it and smells like … important flowers.

I reach into my Dora and pump the playback of Marlene singing “Strange Fruit” – low enough that people look up a bit, but not enough for them to figure out it’s coming from the lump that is me. Marlene’s voice calms me a little. Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh. Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. It’s the kind of voice you wish would sing you to sleep at night. I rock in my seat. Sure, a little autistic. But who cares.

Fancy man figures out where the voice is coming from and turns around so his sunglasses are looking at me. Can you imagine? The nerve. I pick the hell out of my nose for no reason. Big drill. Wipe it on the window. Yeah that’s right, turn the fuck back around, guy made of reflective surfaces. We bus mutants way outnumber you.

Then it hits me. I’ve seen this dude before. In the restaurant. With Sig. The day I recorded the exchange where Sig fainted. Right after this dude told him he was going big time – the show – television megastardom. The guy who said, and I quote, “we need your teen monster girl.” Why didn’t I see his ferret ass before?

Silverhead turns back around and leans over till he’s nearly in my lap. “Hello Ida,” slickster says, taking off his man shades, “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Thoughts roll around in my noggin like dice in a cup. The phone messages? This guy? But why? Ew. I shoot a desperate glance out the bus window – at the bottom of the hill is my stop, my Sig, my escape. Thirty seconds tops. I pick my nose some more and laugh like I’m high on THE DOPE and make chimp faces at him. Most people are scared shitless of out of control teens.

He’s unfazed. He stands up like he’s gonna come sit with me. Gross. He’s wearing black leather gloves. In no situation is a man wearing black leather gloves a good thing.

I stand up too and do an improv chimp dance in the aisle. Chimps can be deadly, remember.

“Please take your seat,” the Pabst bus driver says over some shitty bus mic, but really all we hear is static: “peeeezzzzz-zshhtaaaaakeshrrrrrummmfrah.”

My upper lip sweats. My rib cut stings. My head itches. Cartoons from my bullshit childhood populate my skull. Stranger danger! Stranger danger! OK homeboy, I got about thirty seconds till my stop. You got something for me? Bring it. I take a defensive posture – kind of a mix between Bruce Lee and Harry Potter. My hands in menacing shapes. Savage chimp grimace.

“My dear girl, there’s no reason for alarm,” silverslick says, putting his hands out like to the sides either like a rich well dressed Jesus or like he’s gonna grab me, but the bus is jostling too much and the bus driver is yelling “Sssssshiiiiiiiitooowww-wwnpeeeeesssshhhzzz” and the hill we’re barreling down makes it so we’re all just this side of falling and –

DING.

I’m a girl gone.

HONESTLY, I’VE NEVER BEEN MORE GLAD TO SEE SOMEONE I just fucked over royal in all my life.

When I get up the elevator to Sig’s office the door is already open so I tumble in. I’m out of breath from running. The way we’re standing there – it feels like we are in a movie. Zoom in. I look at Sig. Sig looks at me. Fuck. I whip out my cell from my Dora purse. I quickly text:
lost my fkg voice. weird guy chsed me off bus.
His pants buzz. He pulls his cell out of his pocket and reads.

He reads. “I see,” Sig says, “let’s just calm down a minute, shall we? Come sit down.” He guides me to the couch and then closes the door to the office.

I sit on the dreaded black leather couch to catch my breath, the pad of paper and Sharpie in my hand. Sig sits in the camel back chair. He crosses his legs. He pulls a cigar out from his pocket. A silver lighter. We sit and stare at each other. It’s awkward. Bordering on creepola. He looks like he’s waiting for something. A whole fucking minute of silence passes. Is he waiting for me? I’m so far beyond an anxiety attack I could power a bus. Fuck it. I make an executive decision. I jam my hand into my skinny jeans pocket and pop a Xanax. I madly chew it like baby aspirin. Sig doesn’t move or comment. I close my eyes. I hold my breath for seven seconds. I blow out for seven seconds. I do it seven times. Sig doesn’t move or comment. When I open my eyes, he’s still waiting. For me.