“—Exciting?”
She narrowed
her eyes at the twilight sky, as if the answer to whatever he’d just said was
spelled out up there in the clouds. It was bright, violet, but soon it would be
full dark, and whatever answers were up there would be unreadable and lost.
“What did
you say?” she mumbled, trying to bury the fact she’d just spaced out for the last
couple of minutes.
“That Flip
whatsamadoojit.”
She opened
her mouth to say something, then frowned and shut it again.
Stuart just
chuckled in that good-natured way of his.
“Annnnd
I’ve lost you. That’s okay.”
He reached
one hand over from the steering wheel to pat her knee; the gesture devoid
entirely of flirtation or sensuality, and she tried to force a smile, but it
came out too tight. Stuart was so like a big brother sometimes, too much so. He
was safe, and what was not to like about that? But he wasn’t…What?
They parked
the car around the side and followed the footpath to a big, garish yellow
Pombaline trying-to-be-Mediterranean restaurant, and former Hotel. It was
called the ‘Portugina.’ Not ‘Geena’. ‘Jai-na.’ Everyone who had a shred of
dignity left in this sun bleached, skater-kid town hated the name and just
called it the ‘Portugal.’ The place was too pretty and quaint and made her feel
antique and womanly, and not in a good way.
Out the
front, children were running and weaving around the ‘rustic’ (meaning cracked)
pillars of the portico. Her mood slumped a little further, reclining into the
fantasy of the now booked-up Le Bistro
Rablais and its elegant lack of shrieking kids.
Why did
people bring their kids to a party? You went to a party to get away from kids. Depressing to think the
dreariness of settled suburban life was encroaching into the party scene now:
there was no escape.
There was a
back entrance with a fountain that lit up beautifully at night, they should
have snuck in that way, but too late now, up the landing steps and they were
inside.
It was
packed to the walls, people chatted, laughed, loitered. She took Stuart’s hand
and pulled him out a side door onto the al fresco area where buffet tables were
lined up with an array of appetizers and snacks. Food was a good place to start
if they didn’t recognize anyone, and the catering was decent: if the world was
going to explode, a last meal of salmon canapé and a cocktail was nothing to be
upset about.
The two of
them remained there for a little while, catching the eye of some people they
recognized, and chatting in between drinks. Then, direct vision sharpened and
the peripherals hazed out. Her eyes had seemed to radar out in that direction
and pick him out of the crowd without her even knowing how her brain had done
it. A buried part of her brain lit up like a forgotten instinct, so fast and
familiar it was scary. As soon as she saw him she quickly looked down,
distracted herself with the tendons flexing on the back of her hand, pretending
to admire her nails. She turned, brushing her hand against Stuart’s arm to get
his attention.
“Over
there,” she indicated, keeping her voice smooth. “That’s Scott – he invited
us.”
Of course,
Scott wasn’t alone.
“Well then,
let’s say ‘Hey’!” said Stuart, and accompanied her over with an eagerness that
secretly pleased her, because it made it look like going over was his idea.
Scott
greeted the two of them. Jerry did not.
Wanting his
attention, she looked at Jerry to catch the precise moment he figured out she
was there, but he seemed to be working out who Stuart was.
The voices in
the background had receded. She could hear her own voice, speaking, and calmly.
The
conversation burbled back into awareness, as if it had skipped ahead. The two
men seemed engaged in other things, they were quick to part again, almost like
she and Stuart had buzzed in and pulled them away from something more
important.
As she and
Stuart passed between the dining tables, searching for a place to sit for a drink,
she had the disgruntled feeling of being overlooked. He didn’t even ask her how
she was. Yeah. Ouch.
“Did you
know that other guy?” Stuart asked.
“That,” she
said, trying to sound casual, “was Jerry.”
“Oh. Jerry.”
He chuckled.
“He’s
little shorter than I pictured.”
“What did you
picture?” she inquired. She had herself pictured a flattened, 2D, almost
cartoonish character from irascible post-breakup memories, only to be met with
the unstoppable, indescribable rush of warm, fuzzy nostalgia…
“Me? The way
you talked about him…”
How did I talk about him?
She didn’t
ask.
They
migrated past the tables to the garden area, where they found Scott’s
girlfriend Tasha and some of her female friends. The women chatted for a little
while Stuart went to hunt down a non-alcoholic drink for himself. Tasha and Scott
were relocating; by implication, circling in on marriage. She replied: oh, how
nice, and all that—
“—and,
Jerry’s here,” said Tasha.
A waiter
stopped by with a tray of mouth-watering samples: miniature, bite-sized
Tiramisu cheesecakes. Tasha and the other females each took one, but she had to
pass–lactose intolerance.
“We’ve
crossed each other,” she finally replied, composing herself.
Tasha
didn’t say anything; as if waiting for elaboration. There was nothing to say.
Jerry was obviously healthy and looked well and nothing seemed out of shape in
his world. Now she was staring intently at the tiny cheesecake Tasha was
eating.
“He looks
delicious!”
She’d
blurted it out.
“I mean, that looks delicious. Jerry looks like
he’s well.”
“Does he?”
Tasha was eyeing her, squinting. “Well, that’s interesting.”
Stuart
seemed to be taking a while, so she left Tasha and the women and went back in
search of him. He was at the bar trying to decipher some weirdly named
cocktails. Something made her turn and found herself suddenly watching Jerry –
now alone – and she marvelling at how her quick reflexes kept pulling her into
this trouble.
Actually he
wasn’t alone, but chatting up some woman who was probably drunk; throwing her
head back every time she laughed, which was a lot.
Oh dear, she thought. Jerry flexing his game? Dinner
and a show…
He was in
the deep end, engaging a woman who was an intimidating package, had to be over
six feet natural, plus heels. Meanwhile, the tall girl’s friends stood off on
the side, also tall and having a mini convention critiquing their friend’s determined
– or crazy – admirer.
Watching
their smirks and tittering, she didn’t feel so amused anymore.
Now Stuart
had turned to watch too, plus other people along the bar, while the drunk woman
had begun to raise her voice, and Jerry was raising his voice in response.
There was something of a slinging match coming on and she suddenly didn’t want
to be standing there, playing voyeur to this coming Hindenburg. But if it was
the Hindenburg, she had train wreck syndrome: she couldn’t look away.
From the
raised voices, it sounded like Jerry’s height was being torn into with gusto.
God knows she herself had uncorked a few zingers at his expense in that
department. Jerry’s height insecurities were like the gift of comedy that just
kept giving, (‘let’s make out; I’ll even let you sit on my knee…’), but he was
only a tad shorter than her, barely noticeable, unless she wore big heels,
which was like all the time, and with relish.
This
woman’s ultimate crime was, she just wasn’t very smooth or funny at turning
down a guy. Just mean. And the woman wasn’t about to stop, in fact, her friends
finally had to swoop in and extracting her like a decaying tooth.
Trying to
look disaffected, she and Stuart collected their drinks, found a table, and sat
down, but almost as soon as she put her drink on the table, she was stretching
to her feet again.
“Bathroom,”
she said. “Don’t wait up.”
She pivoted
away, and wandered as if looking for the bathroom, even though she knew exactly
where it was, scanning tables vaguely, even asking herself what she was doing,
and replying again to herself: she just wanted to talk. She wanted to see if he
was doing okay. He didn’t always know how to shake himself off and just laugh,
like she did. He went into himself and it concerned her, and she’d feel the
need to reach in and pull him out.
Now Stuart
would be wondering where she was. She returned to the table.
The live
music cranked up, the two of them moved in for a better seat, but instead of
sitting back down, started dancing in the paved garden beyond the tables with
the festoon lights strung up. Here, Stuart actually surprised her; he knew how
to dance! – if only a little, and taking it slowly, and with her firm guidance.
She fixed
her gaze at Stuart and kept it there, trying to filter out the crowd. Her eyes
were smoky and her lipstick very dark, burgundy, and Stuart he was tall, pale,
soft spoken and academic.
He got
flustered at the prolonged eye contact and concluded it by kissing her brow and
looking away as if bashfully.
A brow
kiss? She wasn’t lying on her death bed just yet.
“Hey,
where’s the bathroom?” he mumbled. She pointed it out and he went off.
Jerry must
have scurried home by now. Well, she was here with Stuart, she was enjoying
herself, and not in a wild way but just enough to keep sane.
Later,
after dark, parents mercifully took their kids home, the crowd thinned some,
and Scott invited them to his house for eleventh hour drinks.
They sat
out on the patio, while she went into the kitchen to top her drink up and, on
impulse, started rooting through the cupboard, suddenly recalling the cocktail
shaker she’d once gifted Tasha with,
curious to see whether it was still up to the task of carrying out its
life-sustaining duties. Then Jerry walked in on her.
She was
struck by that lightness of earlier, like exhilaration, the feeling of dropping
suddenly, tinged with frustration like contained panic. Maybe she hadn’t given
him enough credit, thinking the tall lady had defeated him. He didn’t look cut
up or anything.
But he
still didn’t look at her.
“Staying
for the Flip?” she enquired. You couldn’t be certain; Jerry loved his nightly
hibernation, and while she loved sleep too, she loved being awake more, and it
won out every time she had any choice. Eight hours was a heck of a long time
without some reminder that you were still alive.
“Of
course,” he replied. “Can’t miss it.”
She asked
him what he was planning and he made a joke that everyone would get ‘flambéed’
by cosmic radiation. She only wondered if he was taking cooking classes. It
would have caused her jealousy meter to spike. Then she laughed before she
could help it, a laugh of relief. Was that a note of bitterness she detected
from him? Did it sound like he was still nursing break-up wounds? Was that why
he avoided her this whole time? She hated to be smug, but…well, no she didn’t,
it felt good.
They
exchanged some words, and her voice didn’t even sound like her own. He got a
glass of water. It was like he needed a millimeter of space between them at all
times; he was so close he should have been touching her but she couldn’t feel
it. He left the room again.
Damn that
guy. She’d laughed at his dumb cosmic flare joke, why couldn’t he humor her
now? Meet her eye, show interest in Stuart, be a grown up. And he’d sounded
smug, like he was going places and she wasn’t. He always sounded like he was
subtly making fun of her, talking down to her, and it was infuriating.
She felt
angry and seriously turned on, and wanted his attention. Not for him to look at
her like a used toy, like he’d had his fun with her and was now looking for
someone serious.
The
homebrew cocktail – an improvised lime Daiquiri with no lime, but slices of
orange and lemon and white wine vinegar – ended up startlingly more alcoholic
than intended. She couldn’t take it out to the others, it was too much. She
drank it all.
She still
had the baggie, too. The one Stuart had asked her to dispose of. The party
wasn’t over…
She slunk
into the living room, where the TV was on, but the room was empty. He must have
been in here; on a small table by one of the chairs there was a glass of half
quaffed rum.
She wanted
his attention and she was going to get it. She felt crazy, in a good way. Or
did she feel good in a crazy way? Hard to tell. The seconds snapped along like
separate frames, she saw herself acting ahead of time before she could stop it.
Saw the baggie in her hand.
Next second
the powder had tumbled into the drink, melted into the deep dark liquid void of
rum.
Suddenly
she was back in the kitchen, like Alice come out of Wonderland, wondering if it
was real. Only one way to find out.
There was
some sherry in the pantry. Fully wild, she tipped the bottle back, letting the
bitter syrup spill into her mouth until it nearly induced her to gag.
A short
time later she hovered at the living room entranceway, very drunk, and saw
Jerry out of his seat, standing as if dazed. His face was stonier, eyes glazed and
unfocused. But she wasn’t looking into face anymore, and was no longer
interested in whether he was looking at her. She was looking at his body, his
groin.
She leaned
around the entranceway and beckoned him with her hand, and put a finger to her
lips to shush him. He stumbled across the room after her, looking totally out
of it.
The house
was still empty, they were all out on the porch. Down the hallway, she met him
in a bedroom. She leaned against the wall, folding her arms, trying to look
casual, like they’d just bumped into each other by accident. He didn’t play
along, but stared at her with foggied expectation.
“You look
beautiful tonight,” he slurred. She smiled. He reconsidered: “You always do.”
“Come here,”
she said, pointing right at her feet. He stepped in front of her. The drug had
kicked in, his view of her seemed misaligned.
“You came
alone didn’t you?” she said.
“What?” He
paused. “New perfume.” He sounded enticed. “Different.”
He was
wrong. It must have intermixed with other scents at the Hotel, but it hadn’t
changed at all.
“It’s hard
meeting new people,” she sympathized. And with a small smirk, added:
“Especially girls.”
She ran her
hands under his shirt, letting his torso glide against the flat of her hands. It
struck her how much she loved the feeling of his body against her palm. Not hugely
toned, but familiar, an old chair she wanted to sink into.
“You’re
drunk,” he said, somewhat stupidly.
Speak for yourself, she thought.
She kissed
him, trapping his voice in his throat. One hand slid down the crotch of his
pants, capably surrounding his shaft and squeezing, and slipping further until
she was cupping his balls. She took one of his hands and passed it against her
breast for a teasing instant, just long enough to tell him her nipples were
erect, before drawing it back again.
“Get on the
bed.” Her lips vibrated against his. “Now.”
“Jenfff—”
he grunted, but she kissed him again, and bit his lip and held it.
“You were
looking for action all night,” she said plainly, holding her face oppressively
close to his. “You got it. You want me. Now you’re going to fuck me.”
“We are
not—” his voice stopped as she rolled his balls in her hand. Gripping them, she
felt like she had him on a leash, and if he kept refusing her she could twist
him until he relented. Her heels had her looking down upon him.
“Just a
kiss.” Drunk or not, he knew her too well to believe that. She was waiting for
him to pass out, and she would keep going. Easing her hand around his balls,
she was already dipping her head again, puckering her lips, but he turned his
head at the last second. His reflexes were terrible, and her lips smeared
across his cheekbone.
“No.” For
an instant he looked panicked. “This is Scott’s house.”
“What if it
was my house?”
Her hand
had tightened around his balls again. He gulped in air.
“I’m going
to pass out.”
Without
warning he shoved her off him, surprising her with his roughness. Before she
even realized what she was doing she slapped him hard across the cheek. He
staggered a little, screwed his eyes, and after a little start like he’d come
out of a trance, he blinked and, like he can’t remember what just happened, left
the room.
Her eyelids
dropped, shutting the world behind a curtain of black, orange and blinding
blue.
Composing
herself, she went and found the others on the patio, and didn’t want to be
alone anymore, but wanted to melt into the group like she’d belonged the whole
time. So when they all left their seats and traipsed into the living room for
the countdown, she went too, tangling her thoughts in abstractions like; since
when did geomagnetic polar reversals have countdowns, to the second? They were
unpredictable. It didn’t make any sense.
The glass
tumbler by the chair – now empty.
“Everyone,
please be quiet.”
Right at
that moment, Jerry walked in front of the TV, flourishing a strange looking
machine, affecting this pretence of profundity like someone about to unveil the
secrets of the universe:
“You are
about to witness something incredible.”
He was
grinning in an un-Jerry-like way.
“He’s not
fooling around,” said a guy called Remy, a friend of Scott’s.
“We need
witnesses,” Jerry went on in a rush, his eyes flicking around at everyone
wildly.
There was a
ripple of anticipation: Remy was jabbering on, but fell silent once Jerry
switched on the machine. It made a low frequency buzz that was soothing and
sinister at the same time. The TV continued to play, a mindless noise in the
background.
Someone
nudged her arm. It was Stuart, at her side. She’d barely noticed he was right
there.
“This looks
like it’s going to hurt,” he muttered. “Hurt someone, anyway.”
There was
something lofty, parental, in his voice. She had the flash of inspiration that
Jerry was trying, bizarrely, to get her back, and maybe prepared to hurt
himself in the process. Bad.
“What are
you doing, Jerry?” she barked.
His face
was blank again, the grin had gone, as if he didn’t know the answer himself.
She waited a moment but he didn’t reply. The silent treatment again. He was
hiding from her in the one place she could not get him – inside his own skull.
“Jerry, look at me.”
Stuart
nudged her arm again.
“Has he
ever done this before?” he muttered, sounding faintly concerned.
She just
shook her head. She didn’t even know what ‘this’ was, only that she didn’t like
it. It must be the machine causing her flesh to prickle and hairs on her arms
to stand up.
“Don’t do it,” she said, but her voice came out breathless;
even as she said it she saw in Jerry’s determined stare he wasn’t listening to
her, all his focus was on the machine and there was no stopping him.
In the background, the TV was chanting with the countdown. She recalled the horror stories
about people taking bad trips, doing incredibly stupid things. Yet none of the
horror stories prepared her for the kind of trip Jerry made.
He held out
the machine like he was presenting it to some invisible person as a gift, and
at the last second his hand wrapped around what looked like a gun trigger,
squeezed, and there was crackling snap around the room, like static. Jerry’s
stare became focused on something in the distance, but there was no distance;
just empty air.
The room
acquired a strange resonance like a huge cavern, but it was only for a moment,
and as the countdown reached its end, Jerry took steps forward – where he was
planning on going wasn’t clear; there was just blank wall opposite him – but it
didn’t matter, as he never arrived.
It was the
most ludicrous thing she’d ever seen. He tripped and in the same instant, there
was a bang like a firecracker and his body seemed to pull inward at all sides,
all at once. At the same time, he dropped to the floor. Or, what was left of
him lying on the floor; a single thumb wrapped in a scrap of cloth.
They all
stood there and it seemed, somehow both like ages passed and time had stopped.
Remy
launched forward first, breaking the collective trance of wonder, and dropping
beside the machine that had tumbled over the floor after Jerry had disappeared.
He tilted it between his hands, examining its condition, muttering darkly.
Dazed, everyone
else traipsed over to the tiny object lying where Jerry should have been lying.
She didn’t
want to get any closer but she was drawn, as if magnetically, step by step over
the carpet. Stuart’s hand swept around the crook of her arm, trying to hold her
back, but she brushed him off, crossing the room until it lay at her feet. As
she stared, the features on the tiny object grew by perspective, sharpening
into something familiar; something she dared not believe.
The object
on the ground was Jerry. The whole thing, all of him. He was miserably tiny.
And his clothes, and they were tiny too. Was he still alive? There was no way.
Minutes
passed as they stared, asking hollow rhetorical questions. Remy babbled with
projected assurances while Scott peppered him with questions that hung in the
air without answers.
The room
swam, the gasps and alarmed protestations of the others, now crowded around
Jerry’s body, deepened into a muffled drone, like she had plunged underwater.
The chunk wedge heels on her feet suddenly felt like toothpick-narrow stilettos
as her balance faltered—
—then
caught herself and the world cleared up again. She took a deep breath, trying
to dispel the horrifying notion that if she’d fainted, she would have squashed
Jerry flat under her incredible weight.
His now tiny
head shifted to the side like he was trying to roll over while asleep. He was
still alive. The relief was like
jumping out of the way of a speeding train; she felt good only because she’d
narrowly escaped feeling much worse. She had been certain he was dead – worse
than dead, body obliterated. It was as if he’d been spared, like by divine
intervention or something. What other explanation was there?
While she
was trying to hang on to her breath, the others were remarking in stunned
voices, also realizing Jerry was alive.
On the
ground, the Jerry-shaped person let out a faint, breathless whimper and
vomited.
“Jerry?”
said Scott. “Can you hear me?”
Jerry
didn’t respond; his head had flopped back down against the carpet.
“I don’t
think he can hear us,” said Tasha, sounding worried as she exchanged glances at
the rest of them.
Another
small, pained squeak came from the floor.
“Is he
awake?” Tasha went on. It wasn’t clear; he was shifting in an uncoordinated
way, and his eyes were closed.
“i said i can hear you!”
A tiny
voice had projected up from the floor. Realizing what it was, her lips pursed
while her chest suddenly felt tight. Not in a bad way, but in a ludicrous,
inappropriate way – she found herself trying to hold back incredulous laughter.
Only some of it was from her earlier, giddy relief. Mostly, the voice coming
from Jerry’s mouth was just so unbearably cute.
“Oh my gosh,
did you hear that?” Tasha exclaimed. “Was that him?”
The tiny
voice came from the floor again:
“scott? tasha?...remy?”
“What’s that on the ground?” Scott pointed out, “Is
that…vomit?”
She’d noticed it, too, but she was too distracted by Jerry’s
size. Now something got
through her head: Jerry was alive, but was he sick? She was, after all,
herself, a little sick just looking at him.
“Yeah,”
Remy said, squinting down at the floor. “He threw up.”
He said
this in a strange, clinical, slightly fascinated way, like the whole thing was
a spectacle, and she remembered: hadn’t he been the one to set Jerry up to this
in the first place? She glared at him and all her anger and giddiness and fear
tumbled out into her voice:
“You! – What
the fuck did you make him do?”
The others
all stared at her. Even some part of her own mind shrunk away: the part
subconsciously comparing the thunderous volume of her own voice to the delicate
voice that had come from the floor.
Remy
cowered under the look she shot him.
“I didn’t
do anything.” Previously babbling calculations and estimations previously, now
this was all he could utter.
Her glare
softened as she stared back down
“Jerry, say
something,” she said. “Please.”
Say you’re fine, sweetie.
A part of
her just wanted to hear that tiny, cute voice again, just to make her feel
better; the sound of it was like an instant rage soother, an acoustic
stressball.
But Jerry
didn’t reply. He had sat up; his eyes were wide open and he was staring up at
each of them in shock, utterly unable to comprehend. He now looked on the verge
of screaming.
Scott went
very still as if something had just occurred to him. Then he said:
“Does
he…Does he know who he is?”
Jerry’s
eyes found Remy:
“remy,” he said. “what the fuck happened?”
Hearing
that tiny voice say ‘fuck’ nearly made her laugh again. He was obviously in a
state of panic but she had the sudden urge to grab him and lift him up to her
ear, let that sweet trill lullaby down her ear canal.
Remy then
said some things that honestly made no sense, and only confirmed her hunch that
neither he nor Jerry had known what they had been doing. On top of that, it
became clear Remy didn’t know how to fix the situation. When he heard this,
Jerry’s tiny body was wracked with trembling sobs.
“the solution is just going to come to you
while you’re goggling at me like an idiot?” he screeched up from the floor.
She
couldn’t suppress the urge anymore. It was clear none of them had a better idea
about how to handle the situation.
She stepped
closer to the tiny figure, trying not to alarm herself at the insane size
comparison between either of her wedge heels and her ex-boyfriend’s miniature
stature, and crouched, saturating the gesture with gentleness so she did not
frighten him into mental breakdown. She couldn’t even imagine the terror he was
in right now, but his tearful eyes and tiny chest quivering in and out rapidly
gave some indication.
“Jerry,”
she said, as steadily as possible, “calm down. You’re tired and sick. Let’s get
you off the floor.”
He couldn’t
be trusted at that size; the powder was still in his system and he wasn’t
thinking clearly. He could still make a berserk run and, in the stampeding
chaos of a pursuit after him, accidentally end up so much mulched grit under
someone’s tread.
That
thought invigorated her more than anything. Without thinking about it too hard,
she cupped her fingers around him, drawing his entire body against her palm,
and – so he could not thrash and spring free – kept him wrapped there in a
gentle fist, before lifting him.
He was so
incredibly light that it almost made her panic; there was so little of him,
barely anything. He separated from the floor so easily she almost had to check
he hadn’t slipped from grasp.
Her entire
ex-boyfriend was wrapped up under her fingers, she thought, stunned, and her
own feelings confused her. There was the sheer cuteness of it: holding her ex
in the palm of her hand – literally. And she was self-conscious of the full
power over this tiny person; his whole body was subject to the manipulations of
her fist. His whole world was her
fist. Amazingly, he wasn’t even struggling, wasn’t fighting against the inside
of her hand to get free. He totally trusted her. Or he was too tired to resist
her. She was swamped by the affection she felt towards him, as if in picking
him up she’d staked a claim of ownership. She was utterly dizzy with disbelief.
She held
him protectively to her chest, turning her hand so she could see the top of his
head in the crook of her thumb, and on impulse, touched the soft hair on the
crown of his exposed head with the fingers of her other hand. His body had
relaxed now, and she could feel his tiny heartbeat pulsing against the inside
joint of her middle finger. It was so – lame as it sounded, there was no other
word for it – precious.
And he felt
good inside her hand; fitted, contoured. She was tempted to squeeze him out of
pure contentment, but refrained.
The others
were debating what to do with him, and she let them; feeling there was nothing
for them to debate: if someone had tried to lift him out of her hand right
there she would have slapped them, or worse.
*
“Tonight
did not go the way I thought it
would,” she said quietly and with such a serious tone that Stuart laughed,
thinking she was deadpanning, but she was serious.
They were
in the car, driving away from Scott and Tasha’s. Jerry was curled up asleep in
her hand, which she kept rested on her lap, as Stuart drove.
She kept
staring down at him in disbelief, while cupping him and stroking him; couldn’t
keep her anxious fingers away from him; he was so tiny and delicate looking,
and his hair was so soft and felt so good rubbing and forth against the
sensitive pads of her fingertips. It was weirdly therapeutic and somehow
totally right; she’d been running after him all night and here he was,
literally in the palm of her hand and not going anywhere.
“We’ve got
to get him to the hospital,” said Stuart.
“And what?”
she looked up, eyebrows drawn tight. “Does this look like something a doctor
can fix?”
“Well, no,
but…” the rest of the reply never came.
She noticed
they were taking the road home, like Stuart was heading there by default, sans
any better idea. She didn’t complain.
They had to
take Jerry to get checked over by someone.
But the thought of normal sized medical equipment poking and tapping around his
tiny body bothered her. And what if the doctors admitted him as an inpatient
for investigation, or a science lab? But what other choice did they have? Who
else was qualified to medically examine him, just to sign off on his health
status, without wanting to take him away from her..?
“I’m about
to say something utterly ridiculous,” she admitted. “But what about the vet?”
“You really
think so?” Stuart flashed a glance at her.
“Stuart. Look. He’s the size of a mouse.”
“That
doesn’t mean you show him to a mouse specialist.”
She stared
fixedly out the window.
“First
thing tomorrow, I’m going to make an appointment.”
It was 1 AM
when they arrived back at their place – rental – no time to sit around and have
a languid tea party over the ‘Jerry question’. That would have to wait. But
first, they needed to figure out where Jerry would sleep.
With
spontaneity that even surprised her, she perked up:
“He would
fit on the bedside table!”
It was so
cute, and a crazy thing to wake up to every morning; Jerry’s tiny face tucked
up in—
—Every morning? Whoa there, girl. Just
how long would he be staying with them?
Stuart just
gave her a puzzled, strained smile.
“Honey, I’m
not sure how he’d feel about that.”
But she was
only joking. Half. Sort of. Not.
After
rustling around the laundry and spare cupboards, he came out with something
else.
She raised
an eyebrow.
“A sponge?”
“Got to
admit,” he half shrugged, “it works for size, right?”
She said
nothing as he placed it on the table in the space dividing living room and
kitchen, and close to the master bedroom. Close enough, she thought, that if
Jerry screamed out in the night she would hear him from the queen bed.
This was
insane, she chided herself. He was tiny, not a child. And she was sure as hell
not his mother.
Still, she
didn’t want to leave his side.
They both
stared at Jerry, lying on his side on the sponge, with a hand cloth for a
blanket. He looked peaceful, at least. The ‘blanket’ was wrapped around him,
except for one of his bare feet, which stuck out. She stared at it, utterly
charmed.
Then, to
her amazement, Stuart extended a pointer finger down and gave Jerry’s exposed
foot a tickle. Jerry snorted in his sleep, kicking his foot away, but didn’t awaken.
Stuart stepped back, chuckling.
“What do
you think, Jen?” he murmured. “What have we got ourselves into?”
With a
bewildered sigh, he retreated into the bedroom.
She remained
a moment longer, running her eyes over his miniaturized features, still telling
herself that the tiny person didn’t just uncannily resemble her ex-boyfriend in
miniature, like a perfect replica doll, it was
him, in every way. Everything that Jerry was previously was contained in
that minute frame. She rolled his top up and thumbed his chest, searching for
his heartbeat. He looked so peaceful she wanted to be certain he wasn’t depressing
into cardiac arrest. The incomprehensibly tiny heart beat into the sensitive
pad of her thumb. Satisfied with his pulse rate, she smoothed the blanket back
over him.
With
another of those impulsive moments of hers, she bent and kissed the side of his
head, not so much wanting to kiss him as wanting to see what it would be like
at that size. It wasn’t weird or self-conscious at all like she’d expected; his
cheek fit into the crevice between her lips and it was totally natural. His
head shifted against her lips as he stirred in his sleep. She quickly drew
back, not wanting him to wake.
Stuart
called from the bedroom. She turned and left, switching off the light,
meditating to herself on everything. She had survived the night’s misadventures
and decided it wasn’t a disaster after all.
In the bedroom, Stuart was good for one roll in the hay, but
it took some cajoling and was over quickly. He seemed disturbed that, in the
midst of everything, she would even be in the mood.
But, for her, the sex was so outrageously inappropriate in
the circumstances and somehow that made it unbearably erotic, perverse and
thrilling. She was startlingly wet, even after Stuart had come and finished. He
went to sleep and while he snored softly, she gave herself a second helping in
record speed: it was as if her sex drive was a firecracker that had been lit up
by a match. What was happening to her? What was this? It was kind of…
…exciting.