Copyright (c) by Dana Sambuco 2005

Goucher College Fiction Workshop

All Print Rights Reserved

Animal Control

by

Dana Sambuco

Evan writes to me from Idaho: I know you. You’ll sit on your ass all day drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and playing video games so much that your eyelids turn into miniature earthquakes. You’ll begin to develop a nervous twitch due to your incessant fantasies of killing the little army men in the video game; it' s not just a screen anymore, it' s your life. You keep your eyes peeled as widely as you can, trying your damndest to prevent blinking so as not to miss a fictitious villain shooting you in the crotch. And then you hope that you will do something productive the next day, but the truth is that you haven' t showered or changed clothes in six days and haven' t left the house in something like nineteen. You' re down to the last environmentally nauseating Cup of Noodles, sitting next to a Dostoevsky book you’ve sworn you would read for three years. Just like everything else, it has' t changed- it' s still a shitty book.

He' s away on business. More specifically, he' s building houses for the needy. I look and look for a flaw in him; I’ve been looking for the six years I’ve known him, and the only thing I can find is the way coffee dribbles down his chin when he' s reading the newspaper, and when he finally notices he’ll wipe it away with the back of his hand and shake it off. I’ve never seen him use a napkin. This is his only flaw, and it' s overshadowed by how absorbed he is in international business news. The rest of the flaws are mine. They' re for both of us.

And I think to myself, damn him. I hated writers. There' s something in their blood that makes them like that. I picture doctors trying to find a blood match for a writer: A Have you tested the blood for pretentiousness?

I rage and probably foam at the mouth, or maybe that' s because I haven' t brushed my teeth in a few days. He was joking in his letter, but he didn’t know how on point he was. I' d called out of work sick for the past four days and was dangerously close to getting fired, which was my personal goal. I was sick to death of being responsible.

"I wish you would get serious about something," he loved to say.

I wanted to spit, but instead I’d snap, "I’m serious about moving all the way up to head cashier one day. Just as soon as I can memorize enough sku numbers." And Evan would huff and say something parental like, "You’re better than that," and I would chomp on my gum defiantly, like a fourteen year old, and glare at him while reciting sku numbers from the produce aisle and raising my eyebrows. And the cycle would repeat.

It' s gorgeous outside, the kind of day you have an awkward conversation about with the UPS man while he pretends to not notice that you' re in your bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon. A Have a lovely day, ma’am, he always says. Ma’am.

Across the street, three little blond girls are playing in a sandbox shaped like a turtle in their front yard, their mother watching from the window. She waves at me, arms over her head stretching, and all I can think is: boob job. There' s no way they' re that firm after three shitty kids. My eyes wander to her stomach and I try to envision stretch marks all over it, like scars from chicken pox. I can’t.

The oldest girl is marching around the sandbox, waving a stick like it' s her magic wand. The two girls in the sandbox are digging contentedly. Digging a hole to China, obviously. One of them spits in the sand, and they all giggle and start spitting on their arms and spreading the sand on themselves until Perky Breasts runs out and yells, no no no, I just gave you all your baths!

Jared has a kid, Wendy. He' s got one jagged picture of her in his wallet. She' s nine. In the picture she' s a baby in the bathtub, biting her rubber ducky. When he showed me, I was slightly disturbed that the only picture he had of his daughter was both years old and a bath picture. I guess clothed nine-year-olds aren’t cute anymore. Funny, because that' s about the time when I can just begin to tolerate them. Everyone wants to remember their kids when they' re still young, back when they could be controlled, since babies just eat and sleep and shit and they can' t even control when they do it. When they start to talk, that' s when it goes downhill, because it' s not long before they realize what you' re up to and hate you for everything except what they should hate you for.

I asked Jared what she looked like now, and he just shrugged. A Like a fourth grader, he said. I wonder if he ever tucks her into bed at night, tells her stories, builds sand castles with her in the summer. I don' t really care, and I' m not ashamed.

In my mind what I' m doing isn’t as bad as what Jared' s doing. Jared is married, I' m not. Evan' s running around in Idaho playing the compassionate humanitarian, but really he' s just trying to meet people to exploit by writing about. There' s no excuse for any of us besides the fact that we' re all looking for something nonexistent. Searching is just something we' re wired for, like shitting and reproducing. Since we have to be in this perpetual state of searching, it can' t be for something we can actually find. It just results in a pathetic pattern of serial monogamy and boredom. It' s still gross, when I think about it hard enough, that I' m having an affair with someone' s dad.

When Jared leaves my house I picture him undressing his wife, touching her with his unwashed hands the same way he touched me. It makes me think of those paper chains they had us make in middle health class of our friends, then branches of their friends, and so on. The point was that if we all started having sex with each other we might as well have a massive orgy and give each other gonorrhea, because then it' d be over with quicker. He' s only mentioned his wife a few times, usually calling her A that cunt. I' d slept with him at least ten times before I figured out that her name was Ellen. She teaches the first grade.

I haven' t heard from him a few days, and I try unsuccessfully to convince myself that I care. Tonight my friend Maggie is picking me up.

A You gotta go out and do something, she said earlier on the phone, as if she’s a fucking activist. Maggie sits around smoking all day long, waiting for the next great American novel concept to fall into her lap. Using various substances that she believes promote her creativity have in actuality only hindered the process. She met Evan in some writing group that was advertised in the classified ads in the newspaper. Almost as pathetic, to sit around with people you met from a newspaper ad and share your shitty ideas and pretend to care about every else' s.

A She reminds me of you a little bit, Evan had said. I was surprised when I' d met her; she was wearing big sunglasses and dirty white flip flops even though it was raining. She was offensively unattractive.

A Hiding from the mob? I joked. She hadn’t cracked a smile and I thought she was a real stick in the mud for awhile.

I can forgive her for being a writer because she' s more of a catalyst than an observer. A I' m just a simple girl from Minco Oklahoma, she' d drawl in her faux accent that sounded more South American than southern. She' s been married for twelve years, but I have never met her husband. I just know his name is Rex and that he’s a professor. Economics, or something equally as dull.

Her car pulls up and I immediately zone in on her rainbow bumper sticker that says A marriage is so gay. Someone apparently disagreed and tried to peel it off. I guess it took too long so they bashed in her back passenger window instead, so for now she' s got it covered with duct tape. The bumper sticker is still there.

A It hasn’t caused you enough trouble? I tease, sliding into the itchy gray seat. Rex must be a frugal sort of economist, because Maggie drives a Toyota Corolla from the eighties.

A I need to have a token cause, she points out.

A But you' re not a dyke.

A How would you know? I' m a writer, honey, she says, as if that’s an alibi for everything. We’ve had conversations like this before, and normally she' d do something totally unexpected but not out of character, like lean over and jam her tongue down my throat. She felt me up once, too, but I drew the line when she tried to unzip my pants. I liked the idea of running off with Maggie, but it lost its allure when I remembered that neither of us really had anything to run from.

A I thought you were just a sweet girl from a trailer park in Minco Oklahoma?

A I never said anything about a trailer!

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were on the radio. I hate the song, but I turn it up. Maggie and I don' t have much to say to each other, really. Usually we sit in her car in a parking lot off 303 known for its hooker activity and critique the fashion faux pas of the whores. Tonight' s no different. A Oh no she didn’t, Maggie says. She says it' s part of her research to sit here and watch. She' s going to write about these women one day, maybe make a documentary about them and sell it to HBO for three million dollars. I tell her it' s been done but she doesn’t listen.

A I’ve already got sixty pages or so just on description of these two hookers I saw leaving this one man' s car.

A What makes them different than any of the other prostitutes?

She shrugs. A What makes us any different than them?

A Nothing?"

A Exactly, she says, and I groan inwardly. Just what television needs, more self righteousness.

She turns the radio up again, even though the song' s almost over and it will inevitably lead into nighttime commercials about condoms and true crime shows about missing children on Lifetime.

A I was a hooker once, she says, and blows smoke out of her nose.

A Yeah? I’ve learned to indulge her, even if I don' t believe her, like now. Sometimes the stories are worth believing just because of how she tells them. I wonder if I would even like her if she ever told the truth.

A Yeah, when I first left Oklahoma. She pulls her weed out of her glove compartment, and I remark on what a remarkable hiding place she has for it. "It’s not as glamorous as they make it out to be."

I motion toward the cars in the lot. "If nothing else, we’ve learned hookers aren’t so trendy."

"You know what I mean."

I don’t.

A Did anyone ever pay you to lick your feet? I ask as I fish through my purse for the bowl.

A That' s sick, man, she says, handing me the weed. A I wouldn’t do that shit.

A Some guy paid me to step on his back with stripper heels, I told her.

A Yeah, but there' s no tongue to foot action involved there. She shudders.

A Not very open minded for someone who brags about being a writer, I tease.

She snatches the bowl and takes a hit before launching into a warped story about a john who took her into the woods and tried to push her in a river, unoriginal for her storytelling abilities. I stare out the window. I’ve embarked on my secret game, an adaptation of Where' s Waldo, that I call A Where' s the tranny? I' m jealous of some of those male-born women. They wouldn’t be caught dead going out in their glasses, sweat pants and a t-shirt of a mediocre college that they didn’t even go to. Like me. They had something to dress up for. Even if it was something they would never see again.

We stare outside for what seems like an hour before Maggie pulls a plastic bag with an unopened jar of peanut butter and plastic forks out of her backseat.

A It looks like an ice rink after the big machine goes over it, I say stupidly, and she digs in with the fork.

A You' re gonna get diarrhea, dude, I tell her, seriously. She throws her head back and laughs through her nostrils, and I' m amused by staring up her nose.

A This was all I had left and hubby wouldn’t give me money for groceries, she says.

A Jesus, you drive a car from the eighties and you’re on an allowance? Why don’t you leave the guy already?" I say, only half teasing.

A Does it look like I have any pressing plans?

We are silent, except for the flicking of the lighter and our exaggerated exhalations.

A You still seeing that married guy? she asks.

A Sometimes.

A Is it serious? she asks. I want to laugh at the fact that the word serious is even in Maggie' s vocabulary.

A Yeah, sure, it' s some serious bullshit.

We sit quietly and smoke.

"Sometimes I get so alone it just makes sense," she says. "Bukowski." As if I’m supposed to be impressed.

On the way back, I try my best to memorize license plates of the cars we pass. She drops me off at the top of my street.

A I hate turning around in your driveway, she explains. A Is that alright? I nod and thank her, for what I' m not sure, but I guess for the free weed, even if she just took it from her husband, but I’ve never met him nor does he know I exist, so I can' t exactly thank him. I decide not to worry about it.

It seems like my house is million miles away. I take off my shoes and walk down the street barefoot, the gravel shooting an alarming coldness through my legs. Once I finally get inside I take off my pants and rub my legs against the sheets. It would feel better if I' d washed them in the last few weeks, but I keep doing it anyway, trying to push away the literal version of "bed bugs" that is engrained in my head. I am afraid of stillness. I call Jared.

A Ellen' s not in bed yet, he hisses. A I’ll call you back.

He doesn’t. Instead, he shows up at my door an hour and a half later, walking in and kissing me wordlessly.

I hear myself say, A Wait. Sweat trickles down my lower back and my feet are still cold. A I just want to talk, I blurt out. Jared bites my lip and I look down to see a drop of blood hit my sheets. How cliché, I think. His arms move awkwardly and deliberately as he pulls off my sweat pants. I move my leg to try and kick him, but it' s half assed and weak, just like everything else I do.

A Can' t we just talk? I ask, frantically, as he pushes me onto my bed, his elbow hitting me against my jaw repeatedly. He holds his hand hard against my collarbone and I try to hold my breath. My whole body is throbbing, and I can' t pinpoint where it starts. A I just need to talk to someone, I whisper. I try to move far enough up to kiss him, not on the mouth or even the face, just somewhere to pretend I have some kind of say in what happens, but his elbow keeps knocking me back down and finally I let my head flop back flimsily.

I count backwards from a hundred while trying to avoid his eye. He leaves without hesitating, and I' m surprised to realize that I feel less cheap than I do when he pretends to kiss me goodbye. Saliva forms in my mouth just as I hear the door slam, and I spit clear across my room.

For awhile I don' t get up, just stare at a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling. When I was a kid and couldn’t sleep I would count how many squares were in my room: the ceiling, floor, four walls, bookcase, the list went on. I lay in bed thinking about squares and rectangles and silently counting them.

When I get up it' s 3 a.m. I have to get up for work in three hours. The sheets are bloody and I don' t change them.

When I can’t sleep, which is often, I think about this old lady who lives next door to me, Mrs. Vahora. She has about 68 cats. Well, she used to before animal control came and took them. An animal collector, they called her. At least it sounds more interesting than coin collecting or stamp collecting or something equally as farty. I can' t imagine trying to scrunch up to sleep in a fortress of whiskers and claws and tails. There was this one cat, a scrawny gray one, who kept getting out and meowing at my front door. It had these huge eyes that were creepy even for a cat, but they were pleading for something. I gave it some milk in a Tupperware container because I ran out of bowls and I refused to like the stupid cat, or even to wash a bowl for it. Except in a way I did like the cat, I realized after it stopped coming to visit me. After a few weeks I never saw it again and kept trying not to think about Mrs. Vahora bent over a frying pan, cooking the cat and serving it to oblivious guests. My mind had really gotten away from me at this point; Mrs. Vahora wouldn’t filet a cat, and it was even less likely that she would have guests. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the little gray cat’s eyes.

Maybe I should get a cat.