24. Forgetting All That Should Be Remembered
"I'd say something like, 'He tasted salty,' but I don't want that put into the official record. So let's go with 'badabing badaboom' instead."
-- From the official government transcript of government employee Savjetna Pennywise
Fear of discovery by the two new prisoners faded into a somnambular state for Larry sometime after seeing a searing sun set into a wash of reds and oranges, painting the insides of his apartment with the colors of retreat and comfort. As he settled into his large, comfortable chair, Larry remembered tomorrow’s weather called for rain, the first he could recall during his time in the colony.
Relaxed moments like this still reminded him of Earth. And he longed for some of the creature comforts Earth provided. He didn’t miss political turmoil or haggles with his boss about the length of his articles. He didn’t really miss the constant barrage of advertising or the stress caused by Los Angeles traffic. Rather, he missed some of the satisfaction of being human again and not having to conceal his identity constantly save to a handful of people.
Seeing the last lashes of crimson in the sky gobbled by the inky black of night and the clouds rolling in, Larry felt more melancholy than usual. First he thought of his cat, Eddie. Not that Larry stood up as some sort of "cat guy," but now that Eddie could talk, something more existed than cleaning out the cat box and dumping a can of food onto the plate. Larry wondered where Eddie ended up.
And again he thought of Jetta. So close. His eyelids closed and he stretched back into the chair, letting the comfort of the thing absorb him. Just a few more minutes with her. Just some time to get the words out. Just a conversation to say … but then Larry caught himself.
Larry had never been very good at that sort of social expository. Small talk felt more like dynamite going off in his head. Small talk, Larry felt, was always a poor substitute for a man simply clubbing a woman over the head and dragging her off. Well, perhaps not something that primitive. Maybe a drink first. Still, both parties usually had it figured it out quickly. “Oh Yeah” met ovaries, and that was that.
Really, Larry always believed, men and women knew whether or not it was going to happen in about 45 seconds. Everything after that was sizing up wallets, automobiles and level of crazy. The perfect example of this came just after Larry graduated college. Larry swore never to utter her name again, so he called her “Crazy Rose Girl.”
Crazy Rose Girl bumped into Larry during a conference for music industry reporters and the like. It seemed Crazy Rose Girl fancied Larry. And she’d vowed to get him. But when Larry met her, he realized it wasn’t meant to be. Still, Crazy Rose Girl persisted and, within about three hours’ time, convinced him to return to her room and stay for a while. One thing led to another, and Larry ate breakfast with her the next morning.
Still, Larry didn’t feel anything. Worse, he’d begun to realize Crazy Rose Girl’s crazy quotient was way above average. Way above any of his former girlfriends or even above any of his near-miss relationships that usually ended in the phrase, “Go fuck yourself, Larry.” Rather, Crazy Rose Girl’s crazy quotient equaled Courtney Love discovering she had a weekend of with a stash of heroin, crystal meth and three bags of Cheetos in her kitchen cupboard. Just plain nuts.
For example, when Larry left the conference and went back to Los Angeles, Crazy Rose Girl returned to her home in Utah. However, she felt it fitting to call Larry fifteen to twenty times daily. And his email box overflowed with notes scribed with such random text as “I’m slathered in mayonnaise and wrapped in Saran Wrap ... for you. Want pix?” or “Hey baby, you must be a sweater, because you got me feeling warm all over!” or, the keeper of the bunch, “Sex is evil, sex is a sin, sins are forgiven, so stick it in!!!”
Soon after, the bouquets of roses started showing up. For fifteen consecutive days, Larry accepted delivery after delivery of a dozen long-stemmed roses, his own Berlin Airlift of pseudo-affection. On the sixteenth day, the roses stopped. Larry figured she’d just run out of money or the florist ran out of flowers. Either way, Larry got tired of tipping the delivery guy by the fourth day. So, he started handing the guy single cans of Miller Lite instead.
Now, in examining this relationship (with Crazy Rose Girl; not the floral delivery guy), the Larry of today would have been long gone using the 45-second rule. However, this was the Larry of 18 years ago. And not only did Larry define “desperate male” back then, he also served as the poster boy for insecure men across the globe. Worse, he’d also come off a couple of bumpy relationships that set him up for Crazy Rose Girl’s madness. He was a meek, accepting wunk. And so, as a result, not only did he eschew all of the email, the phone calls and the army of roses, Larry also put himself into an almost untenable relationship. He became caught in that relationship black hole of “Wow, she’s doing all this … there must be something to it that I don’t see” and “If I run now, I may miss something important or regret it.” So, he did something about it.
Larry decided that, since they been physically apart so long, he should confirm if any bodily attractionstill existed beyond their one night of corporal, sexual wiggling. So, Larry bought a ticket to Crazy Rose Girl’s Utah craziness headquarters. But instead of following his numbed senses over the edge and into the brink, Larry gave himself an ultimatum. If he arrived at Crazy Rose Girl’s apartment, and nothing but crazy lined the walls, infested the carpet and played on her television, he’d hop on another flight and spend the remaining time with his mother in New England. If it worked out (and even as he boarded the flight, he calculated the odds of the relationship working about the same as Lindsey Lohan becoming a nun), then Larry would be no worse for wear. He'd simply get on with all the things his mother guilted him into from his thirteenth birthday.
Larry, however, discovered the former to be true. From the moment Larry stepped off the plane until the moment she barricaded him quite literally, in her tiny apartment, nothing made sense. Still, he tried to makr it work. But sometime in between moving his hand up to squeeze her breast or trying to pull the black thong from her waist to her knees, something … didn’t happen.
Then came the epiphany. Larry never experienced a no-kidding, dictionary defined epiphany before. But, at the very moment, his hand wrapped in thong, reality suddenly silent, cold and dead; with Larry incapable of finding his “Oh Yeah,” up smacked the epiphany like a sledge hammer; a tree blown into a building during a hurricane; a tank round to his chest. Here it stood, this manifestation deity, one that say before him, and gave him a “sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”
Larry then took his clothes, moved out to her couch without a word, and fell asleep.
The next morning, he explained his reasoning to Crazy Rose Girl. In summarizing what he felt, he also explained the moment of clarity he experienced. “I’m just not attracted to you. I thought I was. But I’m not.” He told her that he felt like she had some things she needed to work out. After that, if she felt comfortable with herself, maybe they could look at it again. He started to pack his bags.
Crazy Rose Girl stared at Larry and then walked to the refrigerator, where she removed a bottled of vodka. She found an empty highball glass, filled it halfway and drank it down.
“Well, I don’t know if there’s a need for that,” Larry said. “I’ll … I’ll just pack.”
As Larry started packing, he felt something latch onto his right thigh. Then, the scream. “PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE don’t go … I NEEEEEED YOU!” Crazy Rose Girl clutched at his leg as though Larry planned to steal all the food from her apartment, set it in flames and hand her remaining gold pieces to the evil tax collector. Larry stared at her like he’d been thrown into some Saturday Night Live skit without cue cards.
“I think you need some real help,” he said. “I’m just going to finish packing and call a cab. That’s probably for the best.”
And Larry did just that. However, Crazy Rose Girl drove him to the airport, contemplating how she “might have to figure out some other solutions to get over this pain” along the way. Larry asked if he should call any of her friends. She said no. Larry climbed out of the car, and in about six hours sat across from his mother, drinking a beer.
“I mean … she was just nuts,” Larry said.
“We’re all crazy,” Larry's mother said, a lit cigarette waving in the cool blue twilight. “It’s just that some of us are less crazy than others. Remember that.”
And Larry did. In the same way he remembered that small-talk usually accomplished little in the way deciphering whether or not a woman he met would lead to something grander. He did, however, wish he’d taken the time to talk to Jetta before the airship crashed down, along with almost everything he thought about this planet and its realities.
Larry probably would have been long-asleep by now. Resurrecting this memory always caused him some anxiety, but once it passed, the thought of solving it usually knocked him out with the efficiency of an elephant tranquilizer.
Then came the knock on his door.
“I’m sleeping,” Larry said.
“I’m not.” Savjetna sounded troubled.
“You can’t come back tomorrow?” Larry asked, rubbing his face.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
Larry rose and opened the door.
“So?” Larry said.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
Larry moved enough to allow her to pass. She wore her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore blue spandex leggings and an oversized t-shirt, and took a spot on Larry’s couch. Except for the four arms, she looked like she’d just climbed out of the bed of her sorority house and snuck over.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Savjetna said. “I’ve been rather abrasive with you almost since the day we met.”
“It’s what you do.”
“It’s what I do during the day. I can’t help it.”
“So, all right. That all? I’m tired.”
“Well, I mean, if that’s the way you’re going to be about it …” Savjetna bounced up and darted for the door.
“No … I mean. Look,” Larry said, touching one of her arms. “I’m tired and you’ve obviously got something else to say.”
She stopped and looked at the floor.
“Please. Sit down,” he said.
She found the same spot again.
“There’s been … a lot of pressure lately. Things are changing. And … I’m …”
“What is it?”
“I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“No. Really. It’s okay. What is it?”
“My partner … he’s become an Emteeveen prisoner.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “About two months ago. As you know, this is mostly a ‘soft’ conflict. A frozen one. So, it’s not like we’re piling bodies up for the toll of war. But not for the people behind the scenes. The ones gathering information or projecting their voices for change. He was one of those. And I mostly thought him safe.”
“And he got caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing by the wrong people,” Larry said.
“Look, uh, the thing is … since you’ve been here, I’ve appreciated everything you’ve done for the colony. The little things no one sees. You’re a natural leader. And everyone here really respects that. They talk all the time about you.”
“Do they?”
“And so, the thing is, I’ve, umm … well, you see, my partner and I, we’d been on a bit of a downward trend for some time. Started seeing things from a perspective I didn’t like, but neither of us had the heart to really break it off. So, when he got captured … well, I think you can understand.”
“Mixed emotions, sure,” Larry said.
“The problem is also compounded by the fact that, umm, while our relationship started to fracture, I’d turned my eyes to someone else. Someone I could admire from a distance and yet see up close almost every day. No danger either. And then, like I said, that fool goes and gets himself captured.” Larry heard sniffles. Savjetna’s voice changed tone.
“Why are you telling me this?” Larry asked.
Suddenly, Savjetna bounced up and wrapped her arms around Larry and pressed her lips against his. Larry felt the warmth of her body wash over him. Wet and full her lips pressed into his, wrapping his arms around hers. For a few moments, he succumbed to her, and she felt as though something burst inside her, releasing this emotion.
Savjetna finally pulled away from the kiss, just inches from Larry’s face. She smiled.
“Because you’re not sleeping and neither am I,” she said and started tugging him toward his bedroom.
Thunder rolled in the distance and the first drops of rain pattered on the rooftop. Savjetna dragged Larry in, and closed the door.
In the dark, Larry wondered whether or not his prosthetic arms would go the distance.
