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EDITORIAL

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LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Story
by Alissa Nutting


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     “Hello,” I say. I am unsure of the duration of time it takes me to complete the word. The bat blood wine, I am beginning to realize, has another complication to its chemical makeup besides grapes and blood.
     “Oh Lord. Are you in outer space right now? I can call you back later, when it wears off. This is important.” I can hear her sliding blinds in the background and know that she is staring out the window looking at the sky with a deep frown on her face. Even though the sound is distorted–it sounds like the opening of the world’s largest Tin Can–another part of my brain knows those blinds well enough to recognize their sound through any camouflage.
     “I’m fine,” I say. “Just sleepy. Just terribly awake.” I hear Sis’ nervous fingers tapping on the glass of the windowpane, or maybe someone knocking on a really thick foam door. “Sis?” I ask, because there is such quiet except for the rustling of the bats and the gentle sounds of Gustav’s mouth and I can’t remember whether the conversation has ended and she already hung up or not.
     “Listen, maybe this doesn’t seem fair but I think it is. I want your share of Mother’s estate money. All of it. I want you to sign your half over to me. The reason I call you all the time and ask for money is because I’m not in good health and you’ve been paying my doctor’s bills. Sometimes I need medications very badly and quickly but I feel like I have to ask you every damn time I use some of your estate money, but you’re not that available. How can I put this delicately. I want you to give me the money so I don’t have to talk to you ever again.”
     The electronic vacuum cleaners, perhaps detecting CT’s new emission on the floor, all rush over to CT and Gustav, encircling them. It’s very cute, like the two of them are surrounded by a hungry brood of flat Maltese puppies. “Mine sweet bitter fruit,” Gustav is saying to CT, licking the stains of wine on CT’s suit of leather.
     “Sister,” I say worriedly, “you are hurt? Your health is failing? We shall heal you together! Think of us as spores on a large fern of compassion. We shall sail through the air, a powder containing life and promise, a vapor that makes substance where before there was void!”
     Her words take on this strained, metal colander tone. Her voice gets so tight that it will hardly even strum. “You don’t know anything about life or trying to live,” she says. “Would you like to call my insurance company and ask if they accept ferns of compassion or whatever the...what am I even doing. I only encourage you. Tell me where you are right now and I’ll come bring the paperwork and a few things of Mother’s that maybe you’ll like, and that will be it for us, OK? You have no idea how long I have wished for this peace. To be able to turn on the TV and see you walking down Rodeo drive leading a goat that you painted to look like a giraffe and hear Joan and Melissa Rivers screech about what a lunatic you are, and simply agree and change the channel. I can’t do that now. I can’t do that with you in my life; instead I have to call and try and tell you to hurry up and get the damn goat into a van or a limo or what-the-hell-ever, just away from the cameras.”
     “CT was actually the one who painted the goat–“
     "I DON’T CARE,” she screams, “WHERE ARE YOU. THAT IS ALL I NEED TO KNOW.” I pause. I’m fearful that Sis will not be satisfied with my location.
     “We’re in a bat cave inside of a cave-mansion somewhere in Nevada,” I say. Gustav looks up at me and waves a chiding finger. “No partiez, sweezheart. I have to be up early tomorrow. My friend in Milan is getting circumcised for his fortieth birthday and he commissioned ze codpiece you saw in my studio. Zat sort of ting, you deliver zat sort of ting in person.”
     “Wow,” I exclaim, “that’s so pretty, I had no idea it was a codpiece. I thought it was like, a jeweled urn for the ashes of someone really special, like your Father maybe.”
     “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT,” yells Sis, and then hangs up.
     “Ze ashes of mine Father, zat is a sad story.” Gustav points to the electric vacuums. “Zees hungry suckers, I love zhem, I have zem swarming in every room. But when my friend knocked over zee father, zey ate him before I could find zee remote to make zem stop.”

                                                                      *

     The next morning, Sis calls back. “Let’s try this again,” she says. “Where are you.”
     “We’re on the bus,” I tell her. I don’t remember how or why, but I know that we are. Me and CT’s bus-bed is so awesome; it looks like a large clam and can even shut. It’s not good to shut it for the entire night, though, because the oxygen we breathe starts to get a little too recycled and we wake up with bad headaches.
     “Okay,” she says, talking to me like I do not understand anything. This makes me sad, so I stare into the pearly whiteness of CT’s teeth. He consciously sleeps with his mouth very open. There is a complicated reason he does this but I think it might change a lot because whenever I start to say why he does it, it’s kind of hard for me to pin down. “Where is the bus headed to.”
     “I will have to let you speak to the driver, Sis.” She makes a tsking sound. “Thank God,” she says.
     “Sis,” I beg her, “please listen. Tell me what has stricken your body. There are so many things we can do to detoxify you.”
     “No,” she snaps. “You are a spoiled brat with no grip on reality,” she says. “We don’t all have rich rock-star boyfriends. The hardest part of your day is figuring out what substance you’re on and deciding what is real and what is imaginary.”
     “Sis, that is not the easiest thing in the world to do.”
     She sighs, and it is a loaded sigh, I feel leaves stirring inside of it, very dead, very dried leaves. They scare me, those leaves inside my sister’s voice.
     “Let me get you to the driver,” I whisper.
     Usually Sis’ words do not trouble my eternal waters, but this negative news about her health has weakened my immunities. I make a mental note that later on, I should put on the crystal helmet and get inside of the sensory depravation unit. Once Wolf Rainbow got sued because a fan in Idaho climbed aboard the bus without our knowledge, got inside the sensory depravation unit, and was not discovered until we were in Atlanta one week later. It took him a few months to speak but when he did all he could talk about was how totally grateful he was, so his family finally dropped the suit.
     “Here,” I tell her, “here you go.”
     “Finally,” she cries, “someone sane.”
     “Here, his name is Fractal Clymber, clymber with a y.” I tap him on the shoulder and he gives a great jump and spills a large thermos of purple tea. Because he is somewhat small, his arms have to stretch very wide to hold onto the bus’s large steering wheel, and because his eyes aren’t usually that open, he reminds me of a sleepy bird.
     “Sorry,” he stutters, “I thought you were something else.”
     “This is my sister,” I say, pointing to the phone.
     “My brother,” he nods, pointing to his phone on the dashboard. He lets out a short giggle, then looks really distraught.
     “No I mean my sister’s on the phone.”
     “Cool,” he says, nodding.
     “No I mean she wants to talk to you.”
     The phone is down at my side, but I can hear a sound coming from it, a scream-noise.
     “If it’s about that,” he emphasizes, “I don’t know anything about that. Whoever did that, I’m sure...like I’m sure that was a total accident.”
     “No she wants to know where we’re going.”
     “Oh.” He searches the many dials of the bus’s control panel for a moment. “A sign should be coming up soon or something? These roads are totally filled with signs.”
     I feel Tim, CT’s Press Agent, put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to her,” he says. I nod and hand him the phone.
     It’s daytime but the bus has really heavy black curtains and heavy tinted windows, so it always seems like the sun hasn’t come up yet. I trod back to our bedroom. The bus’s thick shaggy carpeting feels really good on my bare feet. At almost every stop we get the its carpet shampooed because no one wears shoes when they walk around on it. It feels so nice.
     I crack the clam open a little wider to get in and lower the shell down to where there’s still a safe amount of sliver, and nuzzle up to CT. His leather wine suit smells like bread. In his sleep, his fingers find my hair and kind of party a little.
     Moments later, there’s a light knock on the clamshell. Tim slides my phone through its crack. “We’re meeting her in Dallas,” he tells me. I whisper thanks.
     “Listen,” he says.
     The cracked-open clamshell bed kind of has a crescendo effect on sound, it’s even shaped like a crescendo, so when I’m inside it I barely hear the first few words in someone’s sentence but then their last few words are really loud. “if you want me to meet her, thAT’S FINE, SHE SEEMS REALLY ANGRY AND MAYBE...”
     “No,” I whisper. “The Worm Eternal values fortitude. I must pursue a final attempt to show Sis enlightenment, and prove my spiritual strength to the Worm Eternal.” Tim pats the top of the clam.
     “OK, kiddo.”
     Our conversation rousts CT. He turns and puts his lips on my neck. His lips are soft as olive oil; he decorates them like attractive women do. “I was having this dream that you were a kangaroo and I was feeding you tempeh bacon,” he says, and I shut the clam bed and we love each other; I let the whole thing with Sis be like grains of sand that just polish the softness of CT’s lips even softer.

                                                                        *

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