Excerpt: Screw the Carrot, Take the Cart

A SIDESHOW'S FOOTSTOOL

And then one night everything changed. In the middle of the weekend rush, on date night, I was compelled to retreat to my van and shave it all off. Every single strand. My career, down the drain because of one person. One scornful glance that had stabbed me more than my mother’s glances could have every dreamed of. I had heard of this happening before. People becoming irrational. People sacrificing everything for someone they cared about. I thought it was a load of bull shit, especially when the fortune teller told me that one day I would understand. She was a crappy fortune teller and half of what she said was completely backward. We were at a bar, and she’d had too much to drink, and some strange man was dragging her away, his breath reeking alcohol, and she’d blown me a kiss and said I’d understand someday. I wouldn’t be able to refuse. I’d feel like there was nothing more I needed in the world than to be held by a man. And though, in a way, she knew what was in my future, it was the little details she’d got wrong. As usual.

Her name was Margaret. I knew because I heard her lover whispering sweet nothings in her ear after they’d left the sideshow and I’d abandoned my post to be with her. She was older than my mother, a ring on her finger and worn eyes that screamed of the presence of children. She was, I thought, game for anything. A risk taker, maybe—most likely—a cynic. I could tell by the way that she recoiled that she had an acute dislike of Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg. She moved like the mermaid; her feet never seemed to actually touch the ground, and when her hands moved from her side they landed airplanes. And yet she went unnoticed by all except her lover, the clutch, and I, her shadow.

I never heard her speak that night. There was only that flash of hatred and superiority that I had so many times flashed at my peers. The same look, I decided, that led me to believe that she saw me as her equal, only one to be despised. Margaret glanced at me once as I trailed her, at the entrance of the fun house. This time however, it was not a sneer, not a disappointed twinkle in her lantern eyes. No, she rolled her eyes, let her lover go in before her, and smiled weakly at me. I was a gazelle. She was a lioness. I let her devour me with those half-starved eyes, as I was sure she devoured everyone. I was just someone to gawk at, to pity, a freak. And Margaret turned and led her man through the fun house, because surely it was she that was the leader. There was not a following bone in her body. She set the trends. She set the pace. She molded life and didn’t let anything come between her and that predestined path.

Which is why I set her up.

MOB STORIES

One problem with growing up in a family that owned the local pickle store was that it always smelled like brine. Wherever you were, however many air fresheners you had, it smelled like pickle juice. When I went to sleep, I dreamt of eating pickles. I went to school smelling of pickles. My car smelled perpetually of mustard seed and garlic. I never had a date. I did go to prom, but the only reason I was allowed to stay was that alcohol rolled off my tongue. That, and my parents had done the catering.

I grew to hate society.
I grew to hate scenery.
I grew to hate rhetorical questions.

I picked up my first gun when I was three. I learned to shoot before I could talk. My first word, not surprisingly, was ‘bang.’ I had one pet, a turtle, but I shot it. I couldn’t help it. Its shell had too many concentric circles. I never could resist a target and the shards the shell shattered into once I’d fired were much more elegant than the slow reptile had ever been.

I liked life lived fast.
I liked to speed.
I liked drifting through stop signs.

BIRD WATCHING

She would be a blond. Young and flirtactious, wearing a V-neck with more V and less neck. She would flop down with a light, annoyed sigh, leaving a seat between them, and he’d look over and feel sorry for her, and notice how “nice” she looked, and then when she ordered her girly drink, he’d strike up a conversation. He would interrogate her about her rough day at work, or whatever it was that she’d been sighing about. And it would be okay, because as an honest gentleman he would just be trying to help her out. And it be okay, because when he pulled out his handkerchief, carefully covering all the other numbers on the fraying edge, he would just be trying to help her. And it would be okay, because when he left the bar with her, he would have no intention of going back to her place except for tea, because that was what all nice gentlemen did when they escorted women to their homes and up the stairs, through the door, and into the foyer.

And if I ever so much looked at an honest gentleman who came into the bar, I was a whore. If an honest gentleman sat down next to me, there was always a cock fight, a sudden exclamation from my companion that he had something he wanted to show me, or a suggestion that we should go somewhere else. It happened once, that an ever persistent one tried to pick me up anyway, and my companion dragged me away. I was accused of being provocative and attracting unnecessary attention to myself. There is no excuse for a jealous man.