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osprey_archerI think there are about two people on my f-list who have actually seen Wonderfalls, but don't let that stop any of the rest of you from reading this. It is a beautiful fic. Really!
The only things you really need to know are that our heroine, Jaye, has an attitude and a boyfriend-like person named Eric, lives in a trailer park, and gets ordered around by inanimate animal shaped objects on a regular basis. All American girl, really.
Also, the fic was both beta'd and bannered by the wonderful![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
visualthinker11, so many thanks for that.
Title: Homing Pigeon
Author:osprey_archer
Pairings: mostly Jaye/Eric
Rating: PG
Beta/Banner maker:visualthinker11
Summary: “I didn’t burn down my trailer on purpose. I just wanted to shut the face cards up.” Oh, that sounded so much better. She sunk into her ratty coat like a turtle. “They ruined my evening.”
Jaye fed the face cards one by one into her toaster. “This,” said Jaye, watching the cards curl and blacken and sputter into smoke and ash, “is the last time you ruin a game of strip poker. I’m telling Eric that graven images are against my religion, you demonic—”
The toaster exploded.
Jaye hated losing arguments with inanimate objects. Especially when they got the last word by burning her trailer down, and her car with it.
***
Aaron drove into the trailer park just after Jaye’s fingers went irrevocably numb. She couldn’t feel her toes, either. Or her nose or her ears. October in Niagara sucked.
She should have just let the trailer burn until someone came to pick her up. It would have kept her warm. But no, good-citizen Jaye called the fire department (without any animals telling her to—God, she was so corrupted), and her neighbors were too busy gawking for her to impose herself into their trailers, so she waited outside, freezing, for Aaron to pick her up.
Instead of letting her hop in and glue herself to the heating vents, Aaron climbed out of his car and surveyed the wreckage of her trailer.
“Did the cow creamer make you do it?”
“No!”
“The brass monkey?”
Jaye got in the car and slammed the door. Aaron got in too, and stared at her expectantly. “I didn’t burn down my trailer on purpose. I just wanted to shut the face cards up.” Oh, that sounded so much better. She sunk into her ratty coat like a turtle. “They ruined my evening.”
Aaron’s brow wrinkled, but, thank God, he reverted to big-brotherly mocking. "I didn't think it was possible for you to sink lower down the social scale, but you've dropped from trailer trash to homeless vagrant. I'm impressed."
Jaye buckled herself in excess force. “You still live with our parents.”
“So will you, as of now,” said Aaron, turning the car on and accelerating. His tires squealed on the gravel.
Jaye scowled at the seedy neon motel signs lining the road. Next time she was calling Mahandra. Assuming Mahandra had any extra room in her apartment. Could she and Mahandra survive living together? Jaye’s freshman roommate in college had chained herself to the dean’s office until the university got her a new room.
“Face cards,” said Aaron. “We should see if you can read tarot.”
The tarot would probably just order her around, like everything else in her life, except possibly in an even more creeptasticly prophetic way. “Do you think Mom and Dad would believe me if I said I just felt like coming home for an impromptu visit?” Jaye asked.
“I think they’d get suspicious about how you showed up with nothing to wear but pajamas and a coat.”
Jaye had warmed up sufficiently that she was suffocating in that coat, but her pajamas had embarrassing teddy bears on them. “I could pretend it was a clever ploy to make Mom buy me more clothes.”
“That sounds sufficiently mercenary that you might convince them.”
“I’m not mercenary,” Jaye protested. Aaron snorted.
A neon trout at Eddy’s Fish Fry called out to her as they swooped past: “Let it out!”. Jaye turned on the radio, pulled her coat up to her ears, and tried to lapse into a coma for the rest of the ride home.
***
Aaron couldn’t, or wouldn’t, keep secrets, so the whole family went to the Barrel for a conference the next day: Mr. Tyler and Sharon businesslike in gray suits, Mrs. Tyler elegant in yellow, Aaron in slacks and a long-sleeved maroon shirt—and Jaye dressed in a crumbled, stained white t-shirt with a rainbow colored skull, one of the few survivors from her mother’s culling of Jaye’s high school wardrobe.
Jaye propped the menu in front of her face in hopes that no one she knew would notice her. Onion rings, $4.99. Perhaps reading the menu could provide her a psychic shield against her family.
“We’re looking forward to having you back in your old room,” said Mr. Tyler, settling himself at Jaye’s left.
Six wings, $5.99; twelve wings, $10.99; twenty-four wings—“Perhaps we could even frame some of your posters and hang them on the walls,” Mrs. Tyler added from Jaye’s right elbow.
“Won’t Good Charlotte clash with pink and purple walls and fluffy lace curtains?” said Jaye, hoisting the menu higher and slumping into the wooden seat.
“Are you still bitter about the redecoration?” said Mrs. Tyler. “You said you weren’t coming back.”
“I’m sure Jaye will get over it if you stencil a skull and crossbones on her wall,” said Aaron.
Would the skull and crossbones talk to her?
“Aaron,” said Mr. Tyler, “I’m sure Jaye has gotten over her morbid stage—”
“Ha!” said Sharon. “And gone into a pyromania stage?”
Hamburger, $7.99. Organic hamburger, $10.99. Aaron was looking at her, eyes narrowed. He’d worn a shirt with a little eagle decal on it, the bastard.
“Of course it was bound to happen eventually,” said Mr. Tyler. “Even Jaye couldn’t be happy living in a trailer park.”
“I didn’t set my trailer on fire on purpose,” Jaye whined.
“I’m sure it was just an expression of your unconscious aggression, honey,” said Mrs. Tyler. “Maybe you should talk to Dr. Ron again.”
Jaye would have crawled under the table, but Mahandra appeared, clicking her pen on her order pad. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler. Jaye. Sharon. Aaron,” as if he were an afterthought. Aaron grinned at her, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler smirked, and Mahandra blustered, “Can I take your order?”
“One ritual disembowelment,” said Jaye. “With tartar sauce and no coleslaw.”
“Jaye!”
“Not after all the suffering I’ve already gone through, listening to Eric talk about you,” said Mahandra. “He wants to talk to you after lunch, by the way.”
Jaye turned, and there was Eric, watching her, his brow puckered. How embarrassing. She tried to smile (maybe he couldn’t see the blush from over here?) and gave him a tiny wave. Eric smiled, and it reverberated like firecrackers. God, love was making her so sappy.
“Anything to go with the ritual disembowelment?” asked Mahandra
Jaye’s family stared at her now too. Evidently they’d ordered while Jaye stared besottedly at Eric. “Oh. Um. Six wings. Really hot.”
Mahandra wrote it and clicked her pen shut against her order pad. “Talk to him,” she ordered, and left.
Jaye glanced at Eric again. He shook together a mojito, frowning pensively, and Jaye wondered if it was her fault. Ordering him out in the middle of a game of strip poker had to look bad. Stupid goddamn playing cards. “Get him out!” indeed. Losing her trailer was worth destroying them—
“If you think your old posters will be out of keeping with your room’s new decorations,” said Mrs. Tyler, “we could shop for something else. I think a reproduction of a Georgia O’Keefe painting, perhaps?”
—almost. “I like Aaron’s idea,” said Jaye. “About the skull.”
“See?” said Sharon. “She’s still seventeen. Morbid, over-emotional—”
“You could take my room,” said Aaron. “I’m moving out.”
Mr. Tyler dropped his water glass. “What?” he sputtered, as half the family dived at the spill with napkins and Jaye edged her chair away so she wouldn’t get the only pants she had dirty.
“I think it’s time to open up new horizons,” said Aaron. “Really find myself.”
“BS,” Jaye mouthed. He made a face at her, and continued:
“Open up to new experiences, you know? Get out into the world.”
“That’s wonderful, Aaron,” said Mrs. Tyler.
“I’m proud of you, son,” said Mr. Tyler.
“Where are you going to get the money?” Jaye demanded.
“Fellowship,” said Aaron.
The rest of the Tyler family crooned proudly. Jaye leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, and looked over at Eric again. She could see the muscles in his back when he reached up to get the tequila off the top shelf.
“Jaye!” snapped Sharon.
“What?”
“Why do we always come here?” Sharon asked. “All Jaye ever does here is stare at the bartender.”
“Hey!”
“He’s a very attractive bartender, dear,” said Mrs. Tyler, turning to ogle. Jaye attempted to apologize to Eric with one side of her face and threaten Sharon with the other.
“Mom!” bleated Sharon, twisting her napkin.
“Maybe he has a brother,” Mrs. Tyler said. “Jaye, dear, why don’t you ask him? It would simplify family reunions.”
“Not if Jaye goes all Aztec priestess on Eric like she did on her last boyfriend,” said Aaron.
“I’ll go ask him,” said Jaye.
“Jaye, don’t leave in the middle of lunch,” said Mr. Tyler.
“The food will come faster if she goes,” said Aaron.
“And we might have some actual conversation,” said Sharon.
Jaye had progressed beyond flipping Sharon off in the middle of restaurants. Truly.
Eric smiled when Jaye reached the bar: pleased, but with quizzical crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Jaye remembered suddenly that she was wearing a skirt with a rainbow skull and a tomato juice spill. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest and beamed at Eric a little too hard. “Get me a stiff one,” she said. “I’ll need it to get through lunch.”
Eric glanced over at her family. “Why don’t you introduce us?”
“Do I look like the Spanish Inquisition? I’m trying to spare you unnecessary pain.”
The quizzical crinkles deepened. Jaye crossed her arms tighter. “Eric, I’m—about last night—”
“Let it out!” gurgled an orange-eyed pigeon perched on the wall above the fish. Just what the Barrel needed: new hunting trophies to talk to Jaye.
Jaye clenched her jaw and didn’t answer it. Eric’s smile wavered. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “If we’re—I don’t want to push—”
“No, no, you’re not, I…I mean, I had a great time…” It’s just the king of spades started shrieking “Get him out!” Sorry, Eric, it could happen to anyone.
“Let it out!” the pigeon gurgled. Jaye closed her eyes, sucking in her breath.
“Jaye,” said Eric, leaning forward. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—”
“Do I have to kill someone to get a martini here?” demanded a blonde girl halfway down the bar. Eric jumped to. Jaye bared her teeth at her. She sneered back, sticking out a tongue ring.
Mahandra leaned a hip against the bar, balancing a tray on one shoulder and surveying Jaye in amused disappointment. “Either you killed Eric’s puppy or your date last night went bad in all the wrong ways.”
“It’s not my fault,” said Jaye. “I burned my trailer down.”
“You burned your trailer down?” said Mahandra. She rolled her eyes back. “Must’ve been some game of strip poker.”
“Shhh!” hissed Jaye. “Not so he can hear.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t know my trailer burned down yet.”
Mahandra raised her eyebrows eloquently. “Perfect excuse to move in with him.”
“No!” Jaye blurted. Mahandra’s brows rose further. “I mean,” Jaye stammered, searching for excuses, “he lives in the back of a bar, I can’t, um…” Jaye. Eric. Living together. Aztec priestess with a victim available 24/7. The blood would never get out of the carpet. “Don’t you have to feed people?” asked Jaye.
“This is for your family,” said Mahandra. “Aaron won’t dare let them cut my tip.”
Jaye would have replied, but a stinging slap suddenly landed on her cheek and spun her around. “You’re Jaye?” shrieked the martini blonde.
“Who the hell are you?” Jaye demanded.
“I’m Heidi’s sister, you stupid husband-stealing whore—”
“Jaye,” said Mahandra, but it was too late. Jaye already had Heidi’s evil twin pinned to the bar.
“If your sister wasn’t such a selfish idiot she’d still have a husband!”
“Don’t you dare blame his cheating on my sister!” screamed Evil Twin, and kneed Jaye in the crotch.
“Jaye,” pleaded Eric, reaching across the bar and trying to disengage Jaye’s hands from Evil Twin’s wrists. “Jaye, let go of Kylie—”
Kylie reared forward and crashed into Jaye’s nose. “You bitch!” she shrieked, grabbing Jaye’s wrists and slamming her against a convenient table. Jaye gagged and couldn’t breath. Eric vaulted over the bar, but Sharon reached Jaye first and hauled Kylie off her.
“Get your hands off my sister,” Sharon yelled. “I’m an attorney and I will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law if you don’t unhand her right now.”
“Your sister ruined my sister’s life,” Kylie cried, kicking ineffectually at Sharon’s kneecaps.
“Sharon, don’t cause a scene,” said Mrs. Tyler. “I’m sure this…interloper…can be dealt with.”
The rest of the restaurant was already staring, so it wasn’t like there could be more of a scene. Eric put his arm around Jaye’s shoulder and dug a tissue out of his back pocket for her nose. “You okay?”
“Next time, she’s not going to get me from behind,” said Jaye. She pressed the tissue to her nose and let Eric stroke her hair out of her face.
Mr. Tyler and Sharon manhandled Kylie out of The Barrel. Mrs. Tyler gave the gaping patrons a royal wave, then turned to Eric and Jaye. “Hello, Eric,” she said. “I suppose you’ve heard the terrible news.” Jaye tried frantically to signal her mother to shut up. Mrs. Tyler smiled, wiped a trickle of blood off Jaye’s chin, and ignored her. “My daughter’s home burned down.”
Eric glanced at Jaye, puzzled and growing concerned. She made faces supposed to express contrition, irritation at her mother, and I’ll-explain-later, and succeeded only in making her nose ache. “That’s terrible,” he said. “Jaye, are you okay?”
“I’m on my deathbed,” Jaye said. “Someone get me to the hospital.”
“She’s moving back home,” said Mrs. Tyler. “You’re welcome to drop by any time, of course. We have a family game night every Thursday.”
Jaye smiled weakly and tried to convey with her eyes that she was not as square as her family. Her shirt, with skull, tomato juice, and now blood, did not help her case.
“If you have a brother,” Mrs. Tyler added, “we’d love for you to bring him too. Jaye, dear, don’t sit there and bleed all over the young man.”
“I’ll bleed over whoever I want to,” said Jaye.
“Game night sounds great,” Eric said.
“Of course the last young man Jaye brought home didn’t work out so well,” Mrs. Tyler said thoughtfully.
“He was a charity case!” Jaye bleated.
“Of course, dear. It was very kind of him to agree to be seen in public with you.”
Sharon and Mr. Tyler stalked purposefully back in to the restaurant, saving Mrs. Tyler from imminent disembowelment by Jaye. “The cops took her away,” Sharon said grimly, wiping blood off a scratch on her cheek. “She’s coming to my office day after tomorrow. I’m going to sue her till her brains fall out.”
“I have a meeting with Kylie Gotts tomorrow,” Sharon complained, running her third stop sign. “I need a good night’s sleep. I don’t need to be hauling my baby sister around as she, yet again, runs away from home. I told Dad he should take out that rose trellis—”
“I haven’t climbed down the rose trellis since I was a sophomore,” said Jaye.
“Don’t you want me in top form for my meeting with Kylie Gotts? Don’t you want me to terrify her out of a few thousand dollars so we don’t sue her within an inch of her life for assaulting you in The Barrel? Don’t you realize that it’s just not terrifying if I spend half the meeting yawning because I was driving my little sister across town at three o’clock in the morning? I can’t believe Mahandra’s letting you in at this time of night.”
Mahandra didn’t know about it. Jaye had borrowed (stolen) Aaron’s key to her apartment, and Mahandra wouldn’t find out she had a house guest till morning. Running away had been kind of spur of the moment.
“Aren’t you too old to run away from your problems?” said Sharon, swerving the car around a curve far too fast.
“Look who’s talking,” said Jaye. “The grand master of the underha—aren’t you supposed to stop for red lights?”
Sharon scowled and lit a cigarette. She puffed, once, twice, thrice, opened the window and hurled the cigarette out. “I can’t believe I picked you up,” she said.
“Because otherwise I would be wandering around Niagara all on my own at three in the morning wearing flip-flops and a pajama pants with hippos on them?”
Sharon slammed on the brakes. “Mahandra’s apartment complex,” she said. “Out.”
“Thanks.”
“Out.”
“Let it out!” the air freshener emphasized helpfully.
Jaye retreated to Mahandra’s apartment post haste.
The neon seeping through the drapes didn’t light the apartment well, and Jaye nearly knocked over a table of flowerpots wedged between the wall and the sofa. Jaye cursed softly and edged in the other direction until she stumbled on the edge of a rug. Mahandra really ought to stop with the whole home decorating thing—
“Don’t move,” said Mahandra, her voice disembodied and menacing. “I have a baseball bat and I’m not afraid to use—” and Mahandra flipped the light on, sending Jaye stumbling into her flowerpots again. “Jaye?”
“Mahandra,” said Jaye. “Hi. I ran away.”
“It’s…three o’clock in the morning,” said Mahandra.
“Let me live in your apartment. I’ll be your slave. I’ll give you foot massages. I’ll lick the floor clean if I have to, just give me a place to stay.”
“Why did you break into my house?” asked Mahandra.
“It was an act of desperation,” said Jaye. “My parents drove me to it. They’re like Nurse Ratchet in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Home is Cool Hand Luke—‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.’ I’m going to go nuts. My family—”
“Your family drove you to it.” said Mahandra.
“At least it wasn’t the cow creamer,” Jaye said brightly.
Evidently Aaron and Mahandra hadn’t discussed the cow creamer, because Mahandra looked as confused as she did irritated. “Step away from my African violets,” she said.
Jaye grabbed a pot and held it high. “Let me stay here.”
“Are you actually holding a flower hostage?” said Mahandra.
“I’m an expert on hostage situations,” said Jaye. “I’ll go through your violets one by one if I have to. Desperate times—”
Mahandra looked unconvinced. Jaye attempted puppy dog eyes. “I hate you,” said Mahandra, capitulating.
Jaye set down the violet and flung herself over the back of Mahanda’s ratty brown couch to collapse among the pillows. “I’m already looking into trailers,” she said.
“Why don’t you ask Eric?”
“I told you, he lives in the back of—”
“He’s been searching craigslist for apartments,” Mahandra interrupted.
“Why can’t I have a normal boyfriend who just wants to use me for sex?” Jaye moaned.
“Is there anything normal in your life, Jaye Tyler?”
Jaye buried her face in an orange pillow. It smelled faintly of college: beer and marijuana. “Wonderfalls,” she said, voice muffled. “Retail work. Epitome of normalcy.”
“Yeah, right.” Mahandra’s feet swished on the carpet as she moved away. “I have work at noon. You’d better not wake me up early,” she said, and slammed her door.
***
Jaye’s phone woke her an abysmal few hours later. “Who are you, and how do you want to die?” she rasped, trying to twist the crick out of her neck.
“I have a ransom note for a Miss Key to Mahandra’s Apartment,” said Aaron. “If you’d spend half as much time practicing your communication skills as you do cutting up magazines—the newest issue of Newsweek, no less—”
“You’ve been talking to Dr. Ron again,” groaned Jaye, pressing her cheek into the pillows. The grayish light filtering around the drapes hurt her eyes. It did illuminate Mahandra’s Johnny Depp posters, which almost made up for it. “Why did you call me? The ransom note was clear. Drive my stuff over to Mahandra’s place.”
“I want to bargain.”
“I want my trailer back. But I won’t get it, now will I? My stuff is mostly packed anyway, Aaron.”
“Only mostly?” he said. There was a scraping sound. “Do you actually expect me to pack any of your stuff?”
“Welllll….Aaron, what are you doing?”
“Looking for stuff to pack. Do you want your My Little Pony, the one with a sparkly currycomb and a pony-licious hay bale?”
“Why are you in my bottom left dresser drawer?” Jaye demanded.
The door creaked. Jaye rolled over to see Mahandra standing in the bedroom doorway, hair sleep-spiked, hands on her hips, face set in the Wrath of God. “Got to go,” Jaye whispered, and clicked the phone shut. “Morning, Mahandra!”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Breakfast time?” Jaye chirruped weakly. “I’ll buy you coffee.”
“Girl, the sun hasn’t even risen,” said Mahandra. “The sky is still dark. The moon’s still out. Unless you’re having a traumatic flashback to the fifth grade you have no excuse for shouting into your telephone!”
No smart replies presented themselves. “Aaron called,” said Jaye, unusually soft.
“Does he know what time I get off work?” asked Mahandra. “Did he think about that before he gave you the keys to my apartment?”
“Actually, I kind of…borrowed them without permission.”
Mahandra glowered at Jaye before slamming the bedroom door shut so hard that it shook the couch. Jaye rested her chin on a cushion scratchy with beading.
Her phone rang again. She nearly broke it flipping it open. “What?” she whispered.
“Does the My Little Pony talk to you?” asked Aaron. “Did it start giving you evil instructions down the phone line?”
“Mahandra talks to me,” whispered Jaye. “You got me in trouble.”
“Did you get me in trouble with Mahandra?” whispered Aaron.
“I don’t think so.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Jaye wondered if Aaron was angry with her too now. Maybe she should just jump out Mahandra’s window. Three stories down, surely that could do some damage.
“Do you want all of your Babysitters’ Club books?” asked Aaron.
“Did I give you permission to go through my—” Jaye caught herself mid-snarl. Mahandra, fortunately, did not. “Bring whatever you want,” she said, and flipped the phone shut. “But if you bring it before Mahandra leaves she may kill you.”
***
Jaye attempted to rectify Mahandra’s anger by burning the pancakes. Really, she was just trying to cook the pancakes, but the fire alarm woke Mahandra up and the whole building ended up shivering on the sidewalk as firefighters wandered through the building and Jaye was too embarrassed to apologize. “I like my pancakes blackened.”
“Let it out,” chanted a small pink teddy bear. “Let it out, let it out, let it out.”
“They just aren’t as good if they aren’t crunchy, you know?” Jaye said.
“The only thing I know right now is that I want to strangle you with my bathrobe belt. Are you trying to burn down my apartment building too? Did you actually run away from home, or did you burn the place down in a fit of pyromania?”
“Let it out!” chirped the bear, burbling happiness.
“Let what out?” muttered Jaye.
“If you let anything out but your long dormant common sense I’m going to throw you over the falls,” said Mahandra.
“Let it out!” cried the bear. Jaye would have drop-kicked it into the nearest sewer grate, but it had a three-year-old attached.
The bear continued to chant. Jaye locked her hands under armpits. Being a good citizen was definitely overrated.
***
Mahandra left for work, leaving Jaye with a stack of back issues of Cosmo and stern orders to stay out of trouble, as well as the cupboards, drawers, and closets. And away from the entire kitchen and the violets and Mahandra’s lucky cat collection, for good measure.
Jaye huddled on the couch with her Cosmos and contemplated living in a box under a bridge. It would be very spiritual and minimalist, and it would save her the bother of replacing her stuff.
Maybe the inanimate talking crazy stuff was trying to drive her to the life of an ascetic recluse. Jaye shuddered and fastened her attention on the consumerist orgy that was Cosmo.
Aaron showed up around five. “Hello?” he called.
“Come in!” called Jaye, not looking up from “Find the Best Swimsuit for Your Body!” The door hinges squeaked, and Aaron started slinging cardboard boxes around in a distressingly loud way. “Be careful with that!” said Jaye. “Some of it has sentimental value.”
“Like what? Your Barbie collection?”
“You did not bring—!” Jaye cried, descending on Aaron with her Cosmo rolled into a club.
He took refuge behind Mahandra’s African violets. “As you’re up, why don’t you help carry?”
Jaye scowled but tossed the magazine back on the couch after one last menace. “It is my stuff,” she muttered, hefting a box. “Unless you’ve brought the Barbies. I’m telling Mahandra those are yours.” She dropped the box. “Did you hide a body in this box? It’s like hauling around a ton of bricks.”
“Books,” he said. “That’s Ahuramazda to Mandalas: Theory and Practice of. Put it in Mahandra’s room. Do you know where she keeps her toolbox?”
“Toolbox?”
“My old bookcase won’t fit in her room so I bought a new one from Ikea.”
“You went shopping at Ikea?” said Jaye, leaning on the back of Mahandra’s sofa for support. “Why…why are you bringing your books? I told you to bring my stuff. I can’t wear books!”
“The books are for me,” said Aaron. “Your stuff is...” he kicked a box. Something made a vague tinkly noise. “…here.”
“What did you just break?” Jaye choked. “Why are you bringing your books?”
“I’m moving in.”
Jaye collapsed all over the African violets. “Hey!” said Aaron. “Mahandra loves those flowers.”
“Nurse them back to health,” said Jaye, brushing dirt off her shirt and striding to the door. She stumbled over a box. “I have to go see Mahandra.”
“Jaye—”
“She’ll blame you for the violets!” cried Jaye, slamming the door in his face.
It occurred to her, after she’d stormed down two flights of stairs, that Mahandra was across town, and Jaye didn’t have a car. She stormed back up and flung the door open again. “Keys,” she demanded.
“Don’t talk that way in front of the violets,” said Aaron, patting the soil back into place.
“Keys!” Jaye roared.
“I’ll drive you,” said Aaron.
Jaye jumped out of the car before Aaron even parked it and stormed into The Barrel, roaring, “Mahandra!”
“You sound like Achilles at the gates of Troy,” said Mahandra.
“You’re lucky I don’t have a sword. My brother—”
“Your brother?” Mahandra interrupted, her voice too high and fast. “What about your brother?”
“He’s moving into your apartment!”
“Well, yes, he’s my boyfriend, and…”
“Mahandra!”
“…when you love someone you want to be with them as much as possible so when he asked to move in and may I note he asked, I didn’t ask him, and it was before your trailer burned down and I thought it sounded…”
“Mahandra!”
“…good, andIreallylikeyourbrothersopleasepleaseplease…”
“Mahandra! I can’t stay in your apartment with you and my brother having—” Jaye made frenetic hand gestures—“ten feet away! My brother! That’s practically incest!”
“It’s nothing like incest! I’ve only known him since I was seven! So what if we grew up together!”
“I wasn’t talking about you two,” said Jaye.
“Oh.” Mahandra pulled herself together, glancing around furtively, and Jaye suddenly realized people were staring. “Besides no one has sex like that,” Mahandra copied Jaye’s gesticulations, “unless they’re sixteen year olds on heroin.”
“Are you planning to drug my brother?”
“Jaye!” cried Mahandra.
“Which drugs?” asked Aaron, who had finally caught up. “Because I’m fine with peyote.”
Eric stuck his head of the back room. His hair was endearingly frazzled. “Everything all right out here?”
“Jaye’s just having a nervous breakdown,” said Mahandra.
“It happens a lot,” Aaron interposed.
Jaye kicked him.
“Jaye? How’s your nose?” asked Eric.
“Holding up. Any news about Valkylie?”
Eric made a face at the nickname. “Heidi called to apologize about her.”
“Down, girl,” breathed Mahandra, and Jaye relaxed the tension in her shoulders.
Jaye said, “Sharon says they can probably work out a settlement. She’s hoping to get Kylie to cough up a few thousand.”
“A few thousand?” said Eric.
“She did assault me,” said Jaye.
It was one of Eric’s magical qualities that, without any overt disappointment, he could make Jaye feel ashamed of her own selfishness. Jaye looked at her shoes—dirty and ripped; they had once been lawn-mowing shoes. “It would buy me a new trailer,” she said.
Mahandra saw an opportunity for revenge. “Have you found any apartments yet, Eric?”
“A few possibilities, but I’d like to look them over before I sign the lease. I want to make sure everyone’s happy with the arrangement.”
“Nice of you to take everyone’s feelings into account,” said Jaye, with a glare at Mahandra and Aaron. Eric missed the barb and looked pleased.
“Are you free tonight?” he asked. “I’d like you to come with me.”
“Oh, no, I have…work. At Wonderfalls. Where I work.” said Jaye, a little too high.
“I thought Wonderfalls was still closed for repairs?” said Aaron.
“I’m helping out,” Jaye said, tight-lipped.
Eric smiled his dopey ‘Jaye is such a sweet girl’ smile, the one that softened the corners of his eyes and dragged out Jaye’s pea-sized sense of romance, which she thought she’d buried forever in the back of her closet with her Barbies. “Do you want me to give you a ride over?” he asked. His eyes were soft and wide and Jaye realized, with some concern, that she’d been staring into them soulfully for a non-trivial amount of time.
The cobra caught in the mouse’s eyes, how ironic.
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“I think that sounds like a good idea,” said Aaron. “I have an evening class, so I can’t drive Jaye to work.”
“And I have work,” said Mahandra, smirking at Jaye as she sashayed away with a tray to prove her point. Jaye stuck her tongue out at Mahandra’s back.
“Great!” said Eric. “Maybe we can drop by some apartment buildings on the way?”
Jaye attempted to soften her smile. It didn’t work; the mirror behind the bar showed the constipated twist of her mouth. “Um,” she said. “Um. Well—”
Fortunately Sharon rushed in to The Barrel, her hair snarled and frizzed and one of her high heels clonking broken on the floor. “Jaye!” she cried. “Jaye, come here.”
“Sharon!” cried Jaye. “Anything!”
“Kylie is following me,” Sharon said, clutching the bar as she tried to remove her battered shoe. “She’ll be in any minute, she called Mom and Dad, what am I going to do?”
“Add a few thousand dollars to the lawsuit for attacking you?” Jaye suggested.
“Jaye!”
“Kylie attacked Sharon, too?” said Aaron.
“This is all my fault,” said Eric. “I’d better—”
But before Eric could finish his sentence, Kylie breezed in through the front doors, her combat boots smacking on the hardwood floor. Sharon cringed against the bar, her hand still clutched around her shoe, as Kylie rampaged toward them.
Kylie bent Sharon over the bar and kissed her thoroughly. A good proportion of the restaurant started clapping.
Kylie came up for air and glowered at Eric and Aaron, who were gaping like fish. “She’s a lesbian,” she said. “You would know that if you weren’t such close-minded evil repressive—”
“I am not! I’m being kissed against my will,” said Sharon. “This is sexual harassment. I plan to punish you to the full extent of the law—” Kylie thrust her tongue down Sharon’s throat.
“—repressive, vile family, not letting Sharon express her true sexuality,” said Kylie, as if she hadn’t interrupted her spiel for an epic make-out session. “All of you ought to be ashamed.”
“I’m not—” Sharon said, in a glass-cracking pitch.
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon. “Let it out, let it out, let it out! Out! Out!”
Jaye comforted herself that Sharon already hated her. “Yes you are,” she said. “You told me so.”
“Jaye!”
“Why did you tell Jaye and not me?” asked Aaron.
“I didn’t…”
“And who is she, anyway?” Aaron asked, pointing at Kylie.
“Kylie is Eric’s ex-wife’s sister and she has a grudge against me because she thinks I destroyed their marriage even though Heidi destroyed it first by servicing the bell boy on their wedding night,” Jaye explained.
“You bitch,” said Kylie.
“At least she knows who you are,” said Aaron. Jaye kicked him.
“We should run away together and get away from your cruel, slutty family,” Kylie said to Sharon.
“We aren’t that bad,” protested Aaron. “Sharon, you could have told me.”
“But what about Mom and Dad?” Sharon asked.
“We’re telling them right now,” said Kylie. “I called them up and we’re having a coming out party right here. Does he,” pointing at Eric, “have any confetti?”
Aaron looked concerned. “Maybe you should write them from your honeymoon in Tahiti. So they have some time to get used to the idea.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” said Sharon. “Kylie, let’s go to Tahiti. Right now. Before—”
Mr. and Mrs. Tyler came in. Sharon attempted to hide under the bar.
“Sharon?” said Mr. Tyler. “What are you doing?”
“I lost an earring,” Sharon squeaked.
“She’s hiding from you because you’re cruel, heartless, close-minded beasts and she’s afraid to tell you she’s a lesbian,” said Kylie.
“What on earth are you talking about?” said Mrs. Tyler.
Kylie hauled Sharon out from under the bar by the ruffles of her blouse and kissed her fiercely.
Mr. Tyler crumpled onto one of the bar stools. “Get him some scotch?” Jaye whispered to Eric.
“Isn’t that the girl who attacked Jaye, dear?” said Mrs. Tyler, swaying a little on her feet.
“Yes,” said Aaron. “I think Sharon thinks it’s part of her charm.”
“I do not—!”
“I expected Sharon to be just as evil as Jaye, but I’m so glad I was wrong,” said Kylie. “We’re running away to Tahiti together.”
“We are?” whispered Sharon.
“We can watch dancing girls with grass skirts and coconut bras.”
“But my job!”
“That’s just an evil capitalist plot.”
Eric returned with the scotch. Jaye tucked it into her father’s hand and he drained it without question.
“But you can’t run away to Tahiti with Sharon, dear,” said Mrs. Tyler. “Sharon’s not a lesbian.”
Kylie launched a tirade. Sharon looked about ready to cry. Mrs. Tyler turned to the rest of her offspring, eyebrows raised in question.
“Well…” said Aaron.
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“Yes,” said Jaye. “She told me about it months ago.”
Mrs. Tyler sank onto a bar stool next to her husband’s. Sharon whirled on Jaye, hand raised. “Let it out!” cheered Kylie, fists raised prize-fighter style.
The inanimate objects were speaking through people. Oh God, no—but then Sharon slapped Jaye and Jaye realized that Kylie was talking about Sharon’s anger and it sort of made sense and also, her cheek hurt abominably. “Ow!”
“Sharon!” said Mrs. Tyler.
“I feel so much better,” said Sharon, radiantly furious. Aaron retreated strategically over to Mahandra. Jaye, trapped between Sharon and Kylie, could only press herself against the bar.
“Don’t let your stultifying bourgeois family values cripple your anger,” said Kylie. “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Eric grabbed Jaye under the armpits and pulled her over the bar to safety. Jaye dropped down to hide so Kylie wouldn’t see her and Eric together and sic Sharon on them. Who knew Sharon had this depth of crazy? Jaye could hear her laughing, Kylie ranting, her mother attempting to interject sanity, and her father—she couldn’t hear him, but he was presumably lapsing into a coma from shock.
“What’s happening out there?” Jaye asked Eric’s knee.
“Your sister’s crying.”
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“Let out what!” cried Jaye. Eric squinted at her. “I mean, I’m glad she’s, you know, letting it—she sounds like she’s laughing.”
“Hysterics,” said Eric. “Do you think it will be more disruptive if I kick them out of the restaurant? Because the patrons are beginning to stare.”
“I think if you try to kick them out Kylie will try to kill you and I’d be really—I mean—don’t die, Eric. Maybe if she keeps going she’ll spontaneously combust.”
“I once heard her inveigh for three hours that Valentine’s Day ought to be called ‘Evil Corporate Capitalist Heteronormativity Day.’ No combustion.”
Jaye popped back up, like a soldier out of a foxhole. Her mother was trying to give Sharon a Kleenex, Kylie was attempting to pull Sharon out of the restaurant, and Jaye’s father was staring glassy-eyed into his scotch.
“Hide,” advised Mahandra, pressing Jaye back down with her tray of glasses. “I don’t want Kylie trying to rip your head off when she gets angry.”
“Even though I woke you up at four?”
“I’ll have you clean your blood out of the floor if she kills you,” said Mahandra. Then she turned, hands on hips, to face the conflagration. “’Scuse me. Do you want a table or a booth?”
“Not now, Mahandra, dear, we’re having a crisis.”
“You’re going to have to have the crisis somewhere that doesn’t block the door, Mrs. Tyler. Table or booth?”
In Mrs. Tyler’s momentary distraction, Kylie dragged Sharon out of the restaurant. The elder Tylers stared after her in perplexity. Aaron said, “Booth, please,” and smiled at Mahandra until she flustered.
Mahandra needed Eric’s help to settle them in a corner booth, because Mr. Tyler wouldn’t move without prodding. He sat in the corner cracking his knuckles mechanically. Mrs. Tyler nearly chewed one of her manicured pink nails. “Would you like anything to drink?” Mahandra asked brightly.
“Water,” said Jaye. Eric grinned at her, and she wondered if she flustered as embarrassingly as Mahandra did.
“Martini,” said Aaron.
“Does anyone else have any secrets they’d like to share?” Mrs. Tyler said, trying to sound business-like.
“I moved in with Mahandra,” said Aaron.
Mahandra hit him with her ordering pad.
“How nice,” said Mr. Tyler, glassy-eyed.
“I killed your goldfish when I was five because I poured my kool-aid into the tank,” said Jaye. Her parents didn’t appear to hear, but Eric and Aaron and Mahandra snickered. Eric put an arm around her waist and gently pulled her up and against him.
“I’m in love with your daughter,” he said. Jaye tried not to die.
“She’s a lesbian,” said Mr. Tyler.
“Your other daughter.”
“Unless you finally want to admit that I’m adopted,” Jaye said.
“Sorry, dear,” said Mrs. Tyler. She twisted her napkin between her hands. “Mahandra? I’d like a Gibson, please. Two Gibsons.”
Mahandra disappeared, and Eric kissed Jaye on the cheek and went back to the bar. Jaye sat down and tried to dust the sentiment out of her clothes. “Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
Mahandra brought the Gibsons. Mr. Tyler downed his in a gulp, Mrs. Tyler fiddled with her cocktail onion, and Aaron took the opportunity to escape the awkward silence by following Mahandra to the bar. Jaye considered bolting too, but then she’d have to talk to Eric. “Are you all right?” asked Jaye.
“I thought you were never going to speak to us again,” said Mrs. Tyler. “So does most of the neighborhood, given how loudly you shouted it. Your father was very upset that you damaged his rose trellis again.”
“I didn’t climb the rose trellis this time,” said Jaye.
“Did you and Mahandra have a nice slumber party?”
“She got mad at me for waking her up,” said Jaye. “Twice.”
“Did you play that ‘indie rock’ at her, too?”
Jaye ripped bits off her paper straw cover. Mrs. Tyler took a quick sip of her Gibson. “It’s only common courtesy to keep the volume down at two o’clock.”
“I had the volume at three,” Jaye said sullenly. “If you’d stayed in your room you wouldn’t have heard it at all.”
Mr. Tyler took Mrs. Tyler’s Gibson and drank that, too. Mrs. Tyler raised her hand for Mahandra. “Gin and tonic, please,” she said.
“Mrs. Tyler, I’m so sorry about not telling you about Aaron moving in before,” said Mahandra.
“It’s fine, dear,” Mrs. Tyler said distractedly. “Where is Aaron?”
“He went to unpack.”
“Ah. Two gin and tonics, dear?” She returned her attention to Jaye. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you follow a few simple rules when you’re living at home, Jaye.”
“I’m not living at home,” said Jaye. She stood up.
“Jaye Tyler—”
“I have to go to the restroom,” said Jaye, and stalked out of her mother’s line of sight. Mahandra gave her a look of sympathy as she crumpled against the bar. “Couldn’t you have waited another week?” Jaye asked. “Just long enough for me to get a new trailer. Why did you have to let Aaron move in now?”
“We’ve been planning this for weeks,” said Mahandra.
“But you could have postponed it a little longer.”
“And give ourselves a chance to get too nervous to go through with it?” said Mahandra. She piled six baskets of wings and a spinach artichoke appetizer onto her tray. “Grow yourself a backbone, Jaye,” she said, walking away. “Go talk to Eric.”
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“You want more honesty?” Jaye said, nose to beak. “Just look what honesty gets you. I’m being kicked out of my crash pad because Mahandra and Aaron had to go and be honest with each other. And my dad’s practically catatonic about Sharon.”
“Let it out!”
“And Sharon’s just a lesbian. I’m a paranoid schizophrenic who prostrates herself to her delusions’ bidding. I broke my dad’s leg for you!”
“Let it out!”
“You want to truth?” said Jaye, in her best threatening Jack Nicholson-voice. “They can’t handle the truth. I like Eric too much to be honest with him.”
“Jaye?”
“Hi!” cried Jaye, flattening herself against the wall and smiling at Eric too widely. “How’s my mom?”
“Making a list of nice Republican lesbians.”
“Of course she is.”
“I just got off shift…”
“Let it out!”
Jaye hit the pigeon.
“It was a noble bird,” said Eric, catching it.
“It’s an evil bird,” said Jaye, as the pigeon preened and caroled. “It’s talking to me.”
“And what’s it saying?” said Eric.
“I need to talk to you.”
She has his full attention. Why oh why did she have to love the one boy in the world who cared about communication?
“Jaye?” Eric prompted, as the silence stretched.
“Kylie’s going to be bad for her,” Jaye blurted.
“Hmm?” said Eric.
“For Sharon,” Jaye said. “She makes Heidi look like a fairy princess.”
Eric’s forehead creased. “Jaye—”
“And they shouldn’t go to Tahiti,” said Jaye. “They’ll be together all the time and you learn all kinds of things about people that you never wanted to know, especially when you’ve just—I mean, they’ve just met, and…I mean, living together rips people into tiny little pieces, especially when one of them is as loud and self-absorbed and crazy as Kylie and—”
“Jaye,” said Eric.
“Let it out,” cried the pigeon. Jaye clamped her hands over her ears and turned away, trying to block it out, but it just kept chanting and then Eric put a hand on her arm.
“I can’t move in with you,” Jaye blurted. “It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t mean that in the breaking up with you kind of way. I don’t want to break up with you, I really like you.”
“Let it out,” coaxed the pigeon.
“I may be in love with you,” Jaye blurted, as if admitting to an STD.
“Let it out,” said the pigeon.
“I did!” yelled Jaye.
“You did what?” said Eric.
“I admitted I’m in love with you. I don’t know what else—” she stopped, waving her hands incoherently around her head.
“That’s good enough for me,” said Eric.
“Not for the pigeon,” said Jaye grimly.
“Let’s leave the pigeon out of this,” Eric suggested, leaning forward. Jaye stared mesmerized at the flecks in his irises.
“Let it out,” said the pigeon.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Jaye, glaring at it. Eric looked wounded. “Not you, the pigeon.”
And now he looked exasperated.
“You don’t understand,” said Jaye. “I wouldn’t have told you if the pigeon hadn’t insisted. And now I think it wants me to tell you that to, because it finally seems to be shutting up.”
A pause to check. Yes, it was silent.
“Also the playing cards told me to kick you out of my trailer that night. And there’s this red wax lion and its evil brass monkey sidekick that sometimes team up to tell me what to do. I tried melting the lion but that didn’t work.” No wonder Sharon had looked so ecstatic. Honesty was intoxicating. “And that fish you have on the wall there spends most of its time telling me what to do, although it’s been silent since you got the pigeon. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“I like crazy people.”
“I mean like really crazy,” said Jaye. “I mean, Heidi was crazy, but she wasn’t insane, and I may be crazy-certifiable and Dr. Ron will probably create an entire new syndrome to describe me.”
“Do the voices tell you to lie?”
“No,” said Jaye, and then she realized why he was asking. “No! They make me tell the truth. They want everything to work out for the best in the end, but sometimes they think best is something kind of strange.”
“And are they in favor of you and me?” Eric asked, leaning forward again.
He was taking this well. “I really hope so,” Jaye whispered.
Eric grinned. “So you really like me, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad your voices are on my side,” he said, and took her hands in his, grinning like a loon.
He thinks I’m joking, Jaye realized. She glanced at the pigeon for help, but it was silent.
She could let it out all she wanted; that didn’t mean anyone else was going to let it in.
“Do you think I could live in your old room behind the bar?” Jaye asked.
“I don’t think Mr. Sloane would like that.”
“Only for a little while,” said Jaye.
Eric acquiesced. “Will you still have time to look at the apartments with me tonight?” he said. “Or are they expecting you at Wonderfalls soon?”
“Oh. Um. I’ve called—” what was the mouth-breather’s name again? “my boss, he said it’s fine.”
“Then let’s go,” said Eric, catching Jaye’s hand.
The only things you really need to know are that our heroine, Jaye, has an attitude and a boyfriend-like person named Eric, lives in a trailer park, and gets ordered around by inanimate animal shaped objects on a regular basis. All American girl, really.
Also, the fic was both beta'd and bannered by the wonderful
visualthinker11, so many thanks for that. Title: Homing Pigeon
Author:
osprey_archerPairings: mostly Jaye/Eric
Rating: PG
Beta/Banner maker:
visualthinker11Summary: “I didn’t burn down my trailer on purpose. I just wanted to shut the face cards up.” Oh, that sounded so much better. She sunk into her ratty coat like a turtle. “They ruined my evening.”
Jaye fed the face cards one by one into her toaster. “This,” said Jaye, watching the cards curl and blacken and sputter into smoke and ash, “is the last time you ruin a game of strip poker. I’m telling Eric that graven images are against my religion, you demonic—”
The toaster exploded.
Jaye hated losing arguments with inanimate objects. Especially when they got the last word by burning her trailer down, and her car with it.
***
Aaron drove into the trailer park just after Jaye’s fingers went irrevocably numb. She couldn’t feel her toes, either. Or her nose or her ears. October in Niagara sucked.
She should have just let the trailer burn until someone came to pick her up. It would have kept her warm. But no, good-citizen Jaye called the fire department (without any animals telling her to—God, she was so corrupted), and her neighbors were too busy gawking for her to impose herself into their trailers, so she waited outside, freezing, for Aaron to pick her up.
Instead of letting her hop in and glue herself to the heating vents, Aaron climbed out of his car and surveyed the wreckage of her trailer.
“Did the cow creamer make you do it?”
“No!”
“The brass monkey?”
Jaye got in the car and slammed the door. Aaron got in too, and stared at her expectantly. “I didn’t burn down my trailer on purpose. I just wanted to shut the face cards up.” Oh, that sounded so much better. She sunk into her ratty coat like a turtle. “They ruined my evening.”
Aaron’s brow wrinkled, but, thank God, he reverted to big-brotherly mocking. "I didn't think it was possible for you to sink lower down the social scale, but you've dropped from trailer trash to homeless vagrant. I'm impressed."
Jaye buckled herself in excess force. “You still live with our parents.”
“So will you, as of now,” said Aaron, turning the car on and accelerating. His tires squealed on the gravel.
Jaye scowled at the seedy neon motel signs lining the road. Next time she was calling Mahandra. Assuming Mahandra had any extra room in her apartment. Could she and Mahandra survive living together? Jaye’s freshman roommate in college had chained herself to the dean’s office until the university got her a new room.
“Face cards,” said Aaron. “We should see if you can read tarot.”
The tarot would probably just order her around, like everything else in her life, except possibly in an even more creeptasticly prophetic way. “Do you think Mom and Dad would believe me if I said I just felt like coming home for an impromptu visit?” Jaye asked.
“I think they’d get suspicious about how you showed up with nothing to wear but pajamas and a coat.”
Jaye had warmed up sufficiently that she was suffocating in that coat, but her pajamas had embarrassing teddy bears on them. “I could pretend it was a clever ploy to make Mom buy me more clothes.”
“That sounds sufficiently mercenary that you might convince them.”
“I’m not mercenary,” Jaye protested. Aaron snorted.
A neon trout at Eddy’s Fish Fry called out to her as they swooped past: “Let it out!”. Jaye turned on the radio, pulled her coat up to her ears, and tried to lapse into a coma for the rest of the ride home.
***
Aaron couldn’t, or wouldn’t, keep secrets, so the whole family went to the Barrel for a conference the next day: Mr. Tyler and Sharon businesslike in gray suits, Mrs. Tyler elegant in yellow, Aaron in slacks and a long-sleeved maroon shirt—and Jaye dressed in a crumbled, stained white t-shirt with a rainbow colored skull, one of the few survivors from her mother’s culling of Jaye’s high school wardrobe.
Jaye propped the menu in front of her face in hopes that no one she knew would notice her. Onion rings, $4.99. Perhaps reading the menu could provide her a psychic shield against her family.
“We’re looking forward to having you back in your old room,” said Mr. Tyler, settling himself at Jaye’s left.
Six wings, $5.99; twelve wings, $10.99; twenty-four wings—“Perhaps we could even frame some of your posters and hang them on the walls,” Mrs. Tyler added from Jaye’s right elbow.
“Won’t Good Charlotte clash with pink and purple walls and fluffy lace curtains?” said Jaye, hoisting the menu higher and slumping into the wooden seat.
“Are you still bitter about the redecoration?” said Mrs. Tyler. “You said you weren’t coming back.”
“I’m sure Jaye will get over it if you stencil a skull and crossbones on her wall,” said Aaron.
Would the skull and crossbones talk to her?
“Aaron,” said Mr. Tyler, “I’m sure Jaye has gotten over her morbid stage—”
“Ha!” said Sharon. “And gone into a pyromania stage?”
Hamburger, $7.99. Organic hamburger, $10.99. Aaron was looking at her, eyes narrowed. He’d worn a shirt with a little eagle decal on it, the bastard.
“Of course it was bound to happen eventually,” said Mr. Tyler. “Even Jaye couldn’t be happy living in a trailer park.”
“I didn’t set my trailer on fire on purpose,” Jaye whined.
“I’m sure it was just an expression of your unconscious aggression, honey,” said Mrs. Tyler. “Maybe you should talk to Dr. Ron again.”
Jaye would have crawled under the table, but Mahandra appeared, clicking her pen on her order pad. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler. Jaye. Sharon. Aaron,” as if he were an afterthought. Aaron grinned at her, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler smirked, and Mahandra blustered, “Can I take your order?”
“One ritual disembowelment,” said Jaye. “With tartar sauce and no coleslaw.”
“Jaye!”
“Not after all the suffering I’ve already gone through, listening to Eric talk about you,” said Mahandra. “He wants to talk to you after lunch, by the way.”
Jaye turned, and there was Eric, watching her, his brow puckered. How embarrassing. She tried to smile (maybe he couldn’t see the blush from over here?) and gave him a tiny wave. Eric smiled, and it reverberated like firecrackers. God, love was making her so sappy.
“Anything to go with the ritual disembowelment?” asked Mahandra
Jaye’s family stared at her now too. Evidently they’d ordered while Jaye stared besottedly at Eric. “Oh. Um. Six wings. Really hot.”
Mahandra wrote it and clicked her pen shut against her order pad. “Talk to him,” she ordered, and left.
Jaye glanced at Eric again. He shook together a mojito, frowning pensively, and Jaye wondered if it was her fault. Ordering him out in the middle of a game of strip poker had to look bad. Stupid goddamn playing cards. “Get him out!” indeed. Losing her trailer was worth destroying them—
“If you think your old posters will be out of keeping with your room’s new decorations,” said Mrs. Tyler, “we could shop for something else. I think a reproduction of a Georgia O’Keefe painting, perhaps?”
—almost. “I like Aaron’s idea,” said Jaye. “About the skull.”
“See?” said Sharon. “She’s still seventeen. Morbid, over-emotional—”
“You could take my room,” said Aaron. “I’m moving out.”
Mr. Tyler dropped his water glass. “What?” he sputtered, as half the family dived at the spill with napkins and Jaye edged her chair away so she wouldn’t get the only pants she had dirty.
“I think it’s time to open up new horizons,” said Aaron. “Really find myself.”
“BS,” Jaye mouthed. He made a face at her, and continued:
“Open up to new experiences, you know? Get out into the world.”
“That’s wonderful, Aaron,” said Mrs. Tyler.
“I’m proud of you, son,” said Mr. Tyler.
“Where are you going to get the money?” Jaye demanded.
“Fellowship,” said Aaron.
The rest of the Tyler family crooned proudly. Jaye leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, and looked over at Eric again. She could see the muscles in his back when he reached up to get the tequila off the top shelf.
“Jaye!” snapped Sharon.
“What?”
“Why do we always come here?” Sharon asked. “All Jaye ever does here is stare at the bartender.”
“Hey!”
“He’s a very attractive bartender, dear,” said Mrs. Tyler, turning to ogle. Jaye attempted to apologize to Eric with one side of her face and threaten Sharon with the other.
“Mom!” bleated Sharon, twisting her napkin.
“Maybe he has a brother,” Mrs. Tyler said. “Jaye, dear, why don’t you ask him? It would simplify family reunions.”
“Not if Jaye goes all Aztec priestess on Eric like she did on her last boyfriend,” said Aaron.
“I’ll go ask him,” said Jaye.
“Jaye, don’t leave in the middle of lunch,” said Mr. Tyler.
“The food will come faster if she goes,” said Aaron.
“And we might have some actual conversation,” said Sharon.
Jaye had progressed beyond flipping Sharon off in the middle of restaurants. Truly.
Eric smiled when Jaye reached the bar: pleased, but with quizzical crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Jaye remembered suddenly that she was wearing a skirt with a rainbow skull and a tomato juice spill. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest and beamed at Eric a little too hard. “Get me a stiff one,” she said. “I’ll need it to get through lunch.”
Eric glanced over at her family. “Why don’t you introduce us?”
“Do I look like the Spanish Inquisition? I’m trying to spare you unnecessary pain.”
The quizzical crinkles deepened. Jaye crossed her arms tighter. “Eric, I’m—about last night—”
“Let it out!” gurgled an orange-eyed pigeon perched on the wall above the fish. Just what the Barrel needed: new hunting trophies to talk to Jaye.
Jaye clenched her jaw and didn’t answer it. Eric’s smile wavered. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “If we’re—I don’t want to push—”
“No, no, you’re not, I…I mean, I had a great time…” It’s just the king of spades started shrieking “Get him out!” Sorry, Eric, it could happen to anyone.
“Let it out!” the pigeon gurgled. Jaye closed her eyes, sucking in her breath.
“Jaye,” said Eric, leaning forward. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not—”
“Do I have to kill someone to get a martini here?” demanded a blonde girl halfway down the bar. Eric jumped to. Jaye bared her teeth at her. She sneered back, sticking out a tongue ring.
Mahandra leaned a hip against the bar, balancing a tray on one shoulder and surveying Jaye in amused disappointment. “Either you killed Eric’s puppy or your date last night went bad in all the wrong ways.”
“It’s not my fault,” said Jaye. “I burned my trailer down.”
“You burned your trailer down?” said Mahandra. She rolled her eyes back. “Must’ve been some game of strip poker.”
“Shhh!” hissed Jaye. “Not so he can hear.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t know my trailer burned down yet.”
Mahandra raised her eyebrows eloquently. “Perfect excuse to move in with him.”
“No!” Jaye blurted. Mahandra’s brows rose further. “I mean,” Jaye stammered, searching for excuses, “he lives in the back of a bar, I can’t, um…” Jaye. Eric. Living together. Aztec priestess with a victim available 24/7. The blood would never get out of the carpet. “Don’t you have to feed people?” asked Jaye.
“This is for your family,” said Mahandra. “Aaron won’t dare let them cut my tip.”
Jaye would have replied, but a stinging slap suddenly landed on her cheek and spun her around. “You’re Jaye?” shrieked the martini blonde.
“Who the hell are you?” Jaye demanded.
“I’m Heidi’s sister, you stupid husband-stealing whore—”
“Jaye,” said Mahandra, but it was too late. Jaye already had Heidi’s evil twin pinned to the bar.
“If your sister wasn’t such a selfish idiot she’d still have a husband!”
“Don’t you dare blame his cheating on my sister!” screamed Evil Twin, and kneed Jaye in the crotch.
“Jaye,” pleaded Eric, reaching across the bar and trying to disengage Jaye’s hands from Evil Twin’s wrists. “Jaye, let go of Kylie—”
Kylie reared forward and crashed into Jaye’s nose. “You bitch!” she shrieked, grabbing Jaye’s wrists and slamming her against a convenient table. Jaye gagged and couldn’t breath. Eric vaulted over the bar, but Sharon reached Jaye first and hauled Kylie off her.
“Get your hands off my sister,” Sharon yelled. “I’m an attorney and I will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law if you don’t unhand her right now.”
“Your sister ruined my sister’s life,” Kylie cried, kicking ineffectually at Sharon’s kneecaps.
“Sharon, don’t cause a scene,” said Mrs. Tyler. “I’m sure this…interloper…can be dealt with.”
The rest of the restaurant was already staring, so it wasn’t like there could be more of a scene. Eric put his arm around Jaye’s shoulder and dug a tissue out of his back pocket for her nose. “You okay?”
“Next time, she’s not going to get me from behind,” said Jaye. She pressed the tissue to her nose and let Eric stroke her hair out of her face.
Mr. Tyler and Sharon manhandled Kylie out of The Barrel. Mrs. Tyler gave the gaping patrons a royal wave, then turned to Eric and Jaye. “Hello, Eric,” she said. “I suppose you’ve heard the terrible news.” Jaye tried frantically to signal her mother to shut up. Mrs. Tyler smiled, wiped a trickle of blood off Jaye’s chin, and ignored her. “My daughter’s home burned down.”
Eric glanced at Jaye, puzzled and growing concerned. She made faces supposed to express contrition, irritation at her mother, and I’ll-explain-later, and succeeded only in making her nose ache. “That’s terrible,” he said. “Jaye, are you okay?”
“I’m on my deathbed,” Jaye said. “Someone get me to the hospital.”
“She’s moving back home,” said Mrs. Tyler. “You’re welcome to drop by any time, of course. We have a family game night every Thursday.”
Jaye smiled weakly and tried to convey with her eyes that she was not as square as her family. Her shirt, with skull, tomato juice, and now blood, did not help her case.
“If you have a brother,” Mrs. Tyler added, “we’d love for you to bring him too. Jaye, dear, don’t sit there and bleed all over the young man.”
“I’ll bleed over whoever I want to,” said Jaye.
“Game night sounds great,” Eric said.
“Of course the last young man Jaye brought home didn’t work out so well,” Mrs. Tyler said thoughtfully.
“He was a charity case!” Jaye bleated.
“Of course, dear. It was very kind of him to agree to be seen in public with you.”
Sharon and Mr. Tyler stalked purposefully back in to the restaurant, saving Mrs. Tyler from imminent disembowelment by Jaye. “The cops took her away,” Sharon said grimly, wiping blood off a scratch on her cheek. “She’s coming to my office day after tomorrow. I’m going to sue her till her brains fall out.”
“I have a meeting with Kylie Gotts tomorrow,” Sharon complained, running her third stop sign. “I need a good night’s sleep. I don’t need to be hauling my baby sister around as she, yet again, runs away from home. I told Dad he should take out that rose trellis—”
“I haven’t climbed down the rose trellis since I was a sophomore,” said Jaye.
“Don’t you want me in top form for my meeting with Kylie Gotts? Don’t you want me to terrify her out of a few thousand dollars so we don’t sue her within an inch of her life for assaulting you in The Barrel? Don’t you realize that it’s just not terrifying if I spend half the meeting yawning because I was driving my little sister across town at three o’clock in the morning? I can’t believe Mahandra’s letting you in at this time of night.”
Mahandra didn’t know about it. Jaye had borrowed (stolen) Aaron’s key to her apartment, and Mahandra wouldn’t find out she had a house guest till morning. Running away had been kind of spur of the moment.
“Aren’t you too old to run away from your problems?” said Sharon, swerving the car around a curve far too fast.
“Look who’s talking,” said Jaye. “The grand master of the underha—aren’t you supposed to stop for red lights?”
Sharon scowled and lit a cigarette. She puffed, once, twice, thrice, opened the window and hurled the cigarette out. “I can’t believe I picked you up,” she said.
“Because otherwise I would be wandering around Niagara all on my own at three in the morning wearing flip-flops and a pajama pants with hippos on them?”
Sharon slammed on the brakes. “Mahandra’s apartment complex,” she said. “Out.”
“Thanks.”
“Out.”
“Let it out!” the air freshener emphasized helpfully.
Jaye retreated to Mahandra’s apartment post haste.
The neon seeping through the drapes didn’t light the apartment well, and Jaye nearly knocked over a table of flowerpots wedged between the wall and the sofa. Jaye cursed softly and edged in the other direction until she stumbled on the edge of a rug. Mahandra really ought to stop with the whole home decorating thing—
“Don’t move,” said Mahandra, her voice disembodied and menacing. “I have a baseball bat and I’m not afraid to use—” and Mahandra flipped the light on, sending Jaye stumbling into her flowerpots again. “Jaye?”
“Mahandra,” said Jaye. “Hi. I ran away.”
“It’s…three o’clock in the morning,” said Mahandra.
“Let me live in your apartment. I’ll be your slave. I’ll give you foot massages. I’ll lick the floor clean if I have to, just give me a place to stay.”
“Why did you break into my house?” asked Mahandra.
“It was an act of desperation,” said Jaye. “My parents drove me to it. They’re like Nurse Ratchet in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Home is Cool Hand Luke—‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.’ I’m going to go nuts. My family—”
“Your family drove you to it.” said Mahandra.
“At least it wasn’t the cow creamer,” Jaye said brightly.
Evidently Aaron and Mahandra hadn’t discussed the cow creamer, because Mahandra looked as confused as she did irritated. “Step away from my African violets,” she said.
Jaye grabbed a pot and held it high. “Let me stay here.”
“Are you actually holding a flower hostage?” said Mahandra.
“I’m an expert on hostage situations,” said Jaye. “I’ll go through your violets one by one if I have to. Desperate times—”
Mahandra looked unconvinced. Jaye attempted puppy dog eyes. “I hate you,” said Mahandra, capitulating.
Jaye set down the violet and flung herself over the back of Mahanda’s ratty brown couch to collapse among the pillows. “I’m already looking into trailers,” she said.
“Why don’t you ask Eric?”
“I told you, he lives in the back of—”
“He’s been searching craigslist for apartments,” Mahandra interrupted.
“Why can’t I have a normal boyfriend who just wants to use me for sex?” Jaye moaned.
“Is there anything normal in your life, Jaye Tyler?”
Jaye buried her face in an orange pillow. It smelled faintly of college: beer and marijuana. “Wonderfalls,” she said, voice muffled. “Retail work. Epitome of normalcy.”
“Yeah, right.” Mahandra’s feet swished on the carpet as she moved away. “I have work at noon. You’d better not wake me up early,” she said, and slammed her door.
***
Jaye’s phone woke her an abysmal few hours later. “Who are you, and how do you want to die?” she rasped, trying to twist the crick out of her neck.
“I have a ransom note for a Miss Key to Mahandra’s Apartment,” said Aaron. “If you’d spend half as much time practicing your communication skills as you do cutting up magazines—the newest issue of Newsweek, no less—”
“You’ve been talking to Dr. Ron again,” groaned Jaye, pressing her cheek into the pillows. The grayish light filtering around the drapes hurt her eyes. It did illuminate Mahandra’s Johnny Depp posters, which almost made up for it. “Why did you call me? The ransom note was clear. Drive my stuff over to Mahandra’s place.”
“I want to bargain.”
“I want my trailer back. But I won’t get it, now will I? My stuff is mostly packed anyway, Aaron.”
“Only mostly?” he said. There was a scraping sound. “Do you actually expect me to pack any of your stuff?”
“Welllll….Aaron, what are you doing?”
“Looking for stuff to pack. Do you want your My Little Pony, the one with a sparkly currycomb and a pony-licious hay bale?”
“Why are you in my bottom left dresser drawer?” Jaye demanded.
The door creaked. Jaye rolled over to see Mahandra standing in the bedroom doorway, hair sleep-spiked, hands on her hips, face set in the Wrath of God. “Got to go,” Jaye whispered, and clicked the phone shut. “Morning, Mahandra!”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Breakfast time?” Jaye chirruped weakly. “I’ll buy you coffee.”
“Girl, the sun hasn’t even risen,” said Mahandra. “The sky is still dark. The moon’s still out. Unless you’re having a traumatic flashback to the fifth grade you have no excuse for shouting into your telephone!”
No smart replies presented themselves. “Aaron called,” said Jaye, unusually soft.
“Does he know what time I get off work?” asked Mahandra. “Did he think about that before he gave you the keys to my apartment?”
“Actually, I kind of…borrowed them without permission.”
Mahandra glowered at Jaye before slamming the bedroom door shut so hard that it shook the couch. Jaye rested her chin on a cushion scratchy with beading.
Her phone rang again. She nearly broke it flipping it open. “What?” she whispered.
“Does the My Little Pony talk to you?” asked Aaron. “Did it start giving you evil instructions down the phone line?”
“Mahandra talks to me,” whispered Jaye. “You got me in trouble.”
“Did you get me in trouble with Mahandra?” whispered Aaron.
“I don’t think so.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Jaye wondered if Aaron was angry with her too now. Maybe she should just jump out Mahandra’s window. Three stories down, surely that could do some damage.
“Do you want all of your Babysitters’ Club books?” asked Aaron.
“Did I give you permission to go through my—” Jaye caught herself mid-snarl. Mahandra, fortunately, did not. “Bring whatever you want,” she said, and flipped the phone shut. “But if you bring it before Mahandra leaves she may kill you.”
***
Jaye attempted to rectify Mahandra’s anger by burning the pancakes. Really, she was just trying to cook the pancakes, but the fire alarm woke Mahandra up and the whole building ended up shivering on the sidewalk as firefighters wandered through the building and Jaye was too embarrassed to apologize. “I like my pancakes blackened.”
“Let it out,” chanted a small pink teddy bear. “Let it out, let it out, let it out.”
“They just aren’t as good if they aren’t crunchy, you know?” Jaye said.
“The only thing I know right now is that I want to strangle you with my bathrobe belt. Are you trying to burn down my apartment building too? Did you actually run away from home, or did you burn the place down in a fit of pyromania?”
“Let it out!” chirped the bear, burbling happiness.
“Let what out?” muttered Jaye.
“If you let anything out but your long dormant common sense I’m going to throw you over the falls,” said Mahandra.
“Let it out!” cried the bear. Jaye would have drop-kicked it into the nearest sewer grate, but it had a three-year-old attached.
The bear continued to chant. Jaye locked her hands under armpits. Being a good citizen was definitely overrated.
***
Mahandra left for work, leaving Jaye with a stack of back issues of Cosmo and stern orders to stay out of trouble, as well as the cupboards, drawers, and closets. And away from the entire kitchen and the violets and Mahandra’s lucky cat collection, for good measure.
Jaye huddled on the couch with her Cosmos and contemplated living in a box under a bridge. It would be very spiritual and minimalist, and it would save her the bother of replacing her stuff.
Maybe the inanimate talking crazy stuff was trying to drive her to the life of an ascetic recluse. Jaye shuddered and fastened her attention on the consumerist orgy that was Cosmo.
Aaron showed up around five. “Hello?” he called.
“Come in!” called Jaye, not looking up from “Find the Best Swimsuit for Your Body!” The door hinges squeaked, and Aaron started slinging cardboard boxes around in a distressingly loud way. “Be careful with that!” said Jaye. “Some of it has sentimental value.”
“Like what? Your Barbie collection?”
“You did not bring—!” Jaye cried, descending on Aaron with her Cosmo rolled into a club.
He took refuge behind Mahandra’s African violets. “As you’re up, why don’t you help carry?”
Jaye scowled but tossed the magazine back on the couch after one last menace. “It is my stuff,” she muttered, hefting a box. “Unless you’ve brought the Barbies. I’m telling Mahandra those are yours.” She dropped the box. “Did you hide a body in this box? It’s like hauling around a ton of bricks.”
“Books,” he said. “That’s Ahuramazda to Mandalas: Theory and Practice of. Put it in Mahandra’s room. Do you know where she keeps her toolbox?”
“Toolbox?”
“My old bookcase won’t fit in her room so I bought a new one from Ikea.”
“You went shopping at Ikea?” said Jaye, leaning on the back of Mahandra’s sofa for support. “Why…why are you bringing your books? I told you to bring my stuff. I can’t wear books!”
“The books are for me,” said Aaron. “Your stuff is...” he kicked a box. Something made a vague tinkly noise. “…here.”
“What did you just break?” Jaye choked. “Why are you bringing your books?”
“I’m moving in.”
Jaye collapsed all over the African violets. “Hey!” said Aaron. “Mahandra loves those flowers.”
“Nurse them back to health,” said Jaye, brushing dirt off her shirt and striding to the door. She stumbled over a box. “I have to go see Mahandra.”
“Jaye—”
“She’ll blame you for the violets!” cried Jaye, slamming the door in his face.
It occurred to her, after she’d stormed down two flights of stairs, that Mahandra was across town, and Jaye didn’t have a car. She stormed back up and flung the door open again. “Keys,” she demanded.
“Don’t talk that way in front of the violets,” said Aaron, patting the soil back into place.
“Keys!” Jaye roared.
“I’ll drive you,” said Aaron.
Jaye jumped out of the car before Aaron even parked it and stormed into The Barrel, roaring, “Mahandra!”
“You sound like Achilles at the gates of Troy,” said Mahandra.
“You’re lucky I don’t have a sword. My brother—”
“Your brother?” Mahandra interrupted, her voice too high and fast. “What about your brother?”
“He’s moving into your apartment!”
“Well, yes, he’s my boyfriend, and…”
“Mahandra!”
“…when you love someone you want to be with them as much as possible so when he asked to move in and may I note he asked, I didn’t ask him, and it was before your trailer burned down and I thought it sounded…”
“Mahandra!”
“…good, andIreallylikeyourbrothersopleasepleaseplease…”
“Mahandra! I can’t stay in your apartment with you and my brother having—” Jaye made frenetic hand gestures—“ten feet away! My brother! That’s practically incest!”
“It’s nothing like incest! I’ve only known him since I was seven! So what if we grew up together!”
“I wasn’t talking about you two,” said Jaye.
“Oh.” Mahandra pulled herself together, glancing around furtively, and Jaye suddenly realized people were staring. “Besides no one has sex like that,” Mahandra copied Jaye’s gesticulations, “unless they’re sixteen year olds on heroin.”
“Are you planning to drug my brother?”
“Jaye!” cried Mahandra.
“Which drugs?” asked Aaron, who had finally caught up. “Because I’m fine with peyote.”
Eric stuck his head of the back room. His hair was endearingly frazzled. “Everything all right out here?”
“Jaye’s just having a nervous breakdown,” said Mahandra.
“It happens a lot,” Aaron interposed.
Jaye kicked him.
“Jaye? How’s your nose?” asked Eric.
“Holding up. Any news about Valkylie?”
Eric made a face at the nickname. “Heidi called to apologize about her.”
“Down, girl,” breathed Mahandra, and Jaye relaxed the tension in her shoulders.
Jaye said, “Sharon says they can probably work out a settlement. She’s hoping to get Kylie to cough up a few thousand.”
“A few thousand?” said Eric.
“She did assault me,” said Jaye.
It was one of Eric’s magical qualities that, without any overt disappointment, he could make Jaye feel ashamed of her own selfishness. Jaye looked at her shoes—dirty and ripped; they had once been lawn-mowing shoes. “It would buy me a new trailer,” she said.
Mahandra saw an opportunity for revenge. “Have you found any apartments yet, Eric?”
“A few possibilities, but I’d like to look them over before I sign the lease. I want to make sure everyone’s happy with the arrangement.”
“Nice of you to take everyone’s feelings into account,” said Jaye, with a glare at Mahandra and Aaron. Eric missed the barb and looked pleased.
“Are you free tonight?” he asked. “I’d like you to come with me.”
“Oh, no, I have…work. At Wonderfalls. Where I work.” said Jaye, a little too high.
“I thought Wonderfalls was still closed for repairs?” said Aaron.
“I’m helping out,” Jaye said, tight-lipped.
Eric smiled his dopey ‘Jaye is such a sweet girl’ smile, the one that softened the corners of his eyes and dragged out Jaye’s pea-sized sense of romance, which she thought she’d buried forever in the back of her closet with her Barbies. “Do you want me to give you a ride over?” he asked. His eyes were soft and wide and Jaye realized, with some concern, that she’d been staring into them soulfully for a non-trivial amount of time.
The cobra caught in the mouse’s eyes, how ironic.
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“I think that sounds like a good idea,” said Aaron. “I have an evening class, so I can’t drive Jaye to work.”
“And I have work,” said Mahandra, smirking at Jaye as she sashayed away with a tray to prove her point. Jaye stuck her tongue out at Mahandra’s back.
“Great!” said Eric. “Maybe we can drop by some apartment buildings on the way?”
Jaye attempted to soften her smile. It didn’t work; the mirror behind the bar showed the constipated twist of her mouth. “Um,” she said. “Um. Well—”
Fortunately Sharon rushed in to The Barrel, her hair snarled and frizzed and one of her high heels clonking broken on the floor. “Jaye!” she cried. “Jaye, come here.”
“Sharon!” cried Jaye. “Anything!”
“Kylie is following me,” Sharon said, clutching the bar as she tried to remove her battered shoe. “She’ll be in any minute, she called Mom and Dad, what am I going to do?”
“Add a few thousand dollars to the lawsuit for attacking you?” Jaye suggested.
“Jaye!”
“Kylie attacked Sharon, too?” said Aaron.
“This is all my fault,” said Eric. “I’d better—”
But before Eric could finish his sentence, Kylie breezed in through the front doors, her combat boots smacking on the hardwood floor. Sharon cringed against the bar, her hand still clutched around her shoe, as Kylie rampaged toward them.
Kylie bent Sharon over the bar and kissed her thoroughly. A good proportion of the restaurant started clapping.
Kylie came up for air and glowered at Eric and Aaron, who were gaping like fish. “She’s a lesbian,” she said. “You would know that if you weren’t such close-minded evil repressive—”
“I am not! I’m being kissed against my will,” said Sharon. “This is sexual harassment. I plan to punish you to the full extent of the law—” Kylie thrust her tongue down Sharon’s throat.
“—repressive, vile family, not letting Sharon express her true sexuality,” said Kylie, as if she hadn’t interrupted her spiel for an epic make-out session. “All of you ought to be ashamed.”
“I’m not—” Sharon said, in a glass-cracking pitch.
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon. “Let it out, let it out, let it out! Out! Out!”
Jaye comforted herself that Sharon already hated her. “Yes you are,” she said. “You told me so.”
“Jaye!”
“Why did you tell Jaye and not me?” asked Aaron.
“I didn’t…”
“And who is she, anyway?” Aaron asked, pointing at Kylie.
“Kylie is Eric’s ex-wife’s sister and she has a grudge against me because she thinks I destroyed their marriage even though Heidi destroyed it first by servicing the bell boy on their wedding night,” Jaye explained.
“You bitch,” said Kylie.
“At least she knows who you are,” said Aaron. Jaye kicked him.
“We should run away together and get away from your cruel, slutty family,” Kylie said to Sharon.
“We aren’t that bad,” protested Aaron. “Sharon, you could have told me.”
“But what about Mom and Dad?” Sharon asked.
“We’re telling them right now,” said Kylie. “I called them up and we’re having a coming out party right here. Does he,” pointing at Eric, “have any confetti?”
Aaron looked concerned. “Maybe you should write them from your honeymoon in Tahiti. So they have some time to get used to the idea.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” said Sharon. “Kylie, let’s go to Tahiti. Right now. Before—”
Mr. and Mrs. Tyler came in. Sharon attempted to hide under the bar.
“Sharon?” said Mr. Tyler. “What are you doing?”
“I lost an earring,” Sharon squeaked.
“She’s hiding from you because you’re cruel, heartless, close-minded beasts and she’s afraid to tell you she’s a lesbian,” said Kylie.
“What on earth are you talking about?” said Mrs. Tyler.
Kylie hauled Sharon out from under the bar by the ruffles of her blouse and kissed her fiercely.
Mr. Tyler crumpled onto one of the bar stools. “Get him some scotch?” Jaye whispered to Eric.
“Isn’t that the girl who attacked Jaye, dear?” said Mrs. Tyler, swaying a little on her feet.
“Yes,” said Aaron. “I think Sharon thinks it’s part of her charm.”
“I do not—!”
“I expected Sharon to be just as evil as Jaye, but I’m so glad I was wrong,” said Kylie. “We’re running away to Tahiti together.”
“We are?” whispered Sharon.
“We can watch dancing girls with grass skirts and coconut bras.”
“But my job!”
“That’s just an evil capitalist plot.”
Eric returned with the scotch. Jaye tucked it into her father’s hand and he drained it without question.
“But you can’t run away to Tahiti with Sharon, dear,” said Mrs. Tyler. “Sharon’s not a lesbian.”
Kylie launched a tirade. Sharon looked about ready to cry. Mrs. Tyler turned to the rest of her offspring, eyebrows raised in question.
“Well…” said Aaron.
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“Yes,” said Jaye. “She told me about it months ago.”
Mrs. Tyler sank onto a bar stool next to her husband’s. Sharon whirled on Jaye, hand raised. “Let it out!” cheered Kylie, fists raised prize-fighter style.
The inanimate objects were speaking through people. Oh God, no—but then Sharon slapped Jaye and Jaye realized that Kylie was talking about Sharon’s anger and it sort of made sense and also, her cheek hurt abominably. “Ow!”
“Sharon!” said Mrs. Tyler.
“I feel so much better,” said Sharon, radiantly furious. Aaron retreated strategically over to Mahandra. Jaye, trapped between Sharon and Kylie, could only press herself against the bar.
“Don’t let your stultifying bourgeois family values cripple your anger,” said Kylie. “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Eric grabbed Jaye under the armpits and pulled her over the bar to safety. Jaye dropped down to hide so Kylie wouldn’t see her and Eric together and sic Sharon on them. Who knew Sharon had this depth of crazy? Jaye could hear her laughing, Kylie ranting, her mother attempting to interject sanity, and her father—she couldn’t hear him, but he was presumably lapsing into a coma from shock.
“What’s happening out there?” Jaye asked Eric’s knee.
“Your sister’s crying.”
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“Let out what!” cried Jaye. Eric squinted at her. “I mean, I’m glad she’s, you know, letting it—she sounds like she’s laughing.”
“Hysterics,” said Eric. “Do you think it will be more disruptive if I kick them out of the restaurant? Because the patrons are beginning to stare.”
“I think if you try to kick them out Kylie will try to kill you and I’d be really—I mean—don’t die, Eric. Maybe if she keeps going she’ll spontaneously combust.”
“I once heard her inveigh for three hours that Valentine’s Day ought to be called ‘Evil Corporate Capitalist Heteronormativity Day.’ No combustion.”
Jaye popped back up, like a soldier out of a foxhole. Her mother was trying to give Sharon a Kleenex, Kylie was attempting to pull Sharon out of the restaurant, and Jaye’s father was staring glassy-eyed into his scotch.
“Hide,” advised Mahandra, pressing Jaye back down with her tray of glasses. “I don’t want Kylie trying to rip your head off when she gets angry.”
“Even though I woke you up at four?”
“I’ll have you clean your blood out of the floor if she kills you,” said Mahandra. Then she turned, hands on hips, to face the conflagration. “’Scuse me. Do you want a table or a booth?”
“Not now, Mahandra, dear, we’re having a crisis.”
“You’re going to have to have the crisis somewhere that doesn’t block the door, Mrs. Tyler. Table or booth?”
In Mrs. Tyler’s momentary distraction, Kylie dragged Sharon out of the restaurant. The elder Tylers stared after her in perplexity. Aaron said, “Booth, please,” and smiled at Mahandra until she flustered.
Mahandra needed Eric’s help to settle them in a corner booth, because Mr. Tyler wouldn’t move without prodding. He sat in the corner cracking his knuckles mechanically. Mrs. Tyler nearly chewed one of her manicured pink nails. “Would you like anything to drink?” Mahandra asked brightly.
“Water,” said Jaye. Eric grinned at her, and she wondered if she flustered as embarrassingly as Mahandra did.
“Martini,” said Aaron.
“Does anyone else have any secrets they’d like to share?” Mrs. Tyler said, trying to sound business-like.
“I moved in with Mahandra,” said Aaron.
Mahandra hit him with her ordering pad.
“How nice,” said Mr. Tyler, glassy-eyed.
“I killed your goldfish when I was five because I poured my kool-aid into the tank,” said Jaye. Her parents didn’t appear to hear, but Eric and Aaron and Mahandra snickered. Eric put an arm around her waist and gently pulled her up and against him.
“I’m in love with your daughter,” he said. Jaye tried not to die.
“She’s a lesbian,” said Mr. Tyler.
“Your other daughter.”
“Unless you finally want to admit that I’m adopted,” Jaye said.
“Sorry, dear,” said Mrs. Tyler. She twisted her napkin between her hands. “Mahandra? I’d like a Gibson, please. Two Gibsons.”
Mahandra disappeared, and Eric kissed Jaye on the cheek and went back to the bar. Jaye sat down and tried to dust the sentiment out of her clothes. “Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
Mahandra brought the Gibsons. Mr. Tyler downed his in a gulp, Mrs. Tyler fiddled with her cocktail onion, and Aaron took the opportunity to escape the awkward silence by following Mahandra to the bar. Jaye considered bolting too, but then she’d have to talk to Eric. “Are you all right?” asked Jaye.
“I thought you were never going to speak to us again,” said Mrs. Tyler. “So does most of the neighborhood, given how loudly you shouted it. Your father was very upset that you damaged his rose trellis again.”
“I didn’t climb the rose trellis this time,” said Jaye.
“Did you and Mahandra have a nice slumber party?”
“She got mad at me for waking her up,” said Jaye. “Twice.”
“Did you play that ‘indie rock’ at her, too?”
Jaye ripped bits off her paper straw cover. Mrs. Tyler took a quick sip of her Gibson. “It’s only common courtesy to keep the volume down at two o’clock.”
“I had the volume at three,” Jaye said sullenly. “If you’d stayed in your room you wouldn’t have heard it at all.”
Mr. Tyler took Mrs. Tyler’s Gibson and drank that, too. Mrs. Tyler raised her hand for Mahandra. “Gin and tonic, please,” she said.
“Mrs. Tyler, I’m so sorry about not telling you about Aaron moving in before,” said Mahandra.
“It’s fine, dear,” Mrs. Tyler said distractedly. “Where is Aaron?”
“He went to unpack.”
“Ah. Two gin and tonics, dear?” She returned her attention to Jaye. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you follow a few simple rules when you’re living at home, Jaye.”
“I’m not living at home,” said Jaye. She stood up.
“Jaye Tyler—”
“I have to go to the restroom,” said Jaye, and stalked out of her mother’s line of sight. Mahandra gave her a look of sympathy as she crumpled against the bar. “Couldn’t you have waited another week?” Jaye asked. “Just long enough for me to get a new trailer. Why did you have to let Aaron move in now?”
“We’ve been planning this for weeks,” said Mahandra.
“But you could have postponed it a little longer.”
“And give ourselves a chance to get too nervous to go through with it?” said Mahandra. She piled six baskets of wings and a spinach artichoke appetizer onto her tray. “Grow yourself a backbone, Jaye,” she said, walking away. “Go talk to Eric.”
“Let it out!” cried the pigeon.
“You want more honesty?” Jaye said, nose to beak. “Just look what honesty gets you. I’m being kicked out of my crash pad because Mahandra and Aaron had to go and be honest with each other. And my dad’s practically catatonic about Sharon.”
“Let it out!”
“And Sharon’s just a lesbian. I’m a paranoid schizophrenic who prostrates herself to her delusions’ bidding. I broke my dad’s leg for you!”
“Let it out!”
“You want to truth?” said Jaye, in her best threatening Jack Nicholson-voice. “They can’t handle the truth. I like Eric too much to be honest with him.”
“Jaye?”
“Hi!” cried Jaye, flattening herself against the wall and smiling at Eric too widely. “How’s my mom?”
“Making a list of nice Republican lesbians.”
“Of course she is.”
“I just got off shift…”
“Let it out!”
Jaye hit the pigeon.
“It was a noble bird,” said Eric, catching it.
“It’s an evil bird,” said Jaye, as the pigeon preened and caroled. “It’s talking to me.”
“And what’s it saying?” said Eric.
“I need to talk to you.”
She has his full attention. Why oh why did she have to love the one boy in the world who cared about communication?
“Jaye?” Eric prompted, as the silence stretched.
“Kylie’s going to be bad for her,” Jaye blurted.
“Hmm?” said Eric.
“For Sharon,” Jaye said. “She makes Heidi look like a fairy princess.”
Eric’s forehead creased. “Jaye—”
“And they shouldn’t go to Tahiti,” said Jaye. “They’ll be together all the time and you learn all kinds of things about people that you never wanted to know, especially when you’ve just—I mean, they’ve just met, and…I mean, living together rips people into tiny little pieces, especially when one of them is as loud and self-absorbed and crazy as Kylie and—”
“Jaye,” said Eric.
“Let it out,” cried the pigeon. Jaye clamped her hands over her ears and turned away, trying to block it out, but it just kept chanting and then Eric put a hand on her arm.
“I can’t move in with you,” Jaye blurted. “It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t mean that in the breaking up with you kind of way. I don’t want to break up with you, I really like you.”
“Let it out,” coaxed the pigeon.
“I may be in love with you,” Jaye blurted, as if admitting to an STD.
“Let it out,” said the pigeon.
“I did!” yelled Jaye.
“You did what?” said Eric.
“I admitted I’m in love with you. I don’t know what else—” she stopped, waving her hands incoherently around her head.
“That’s good enough for me,” said Eric.
“Not for the pigeon,” said Jaye grimly.
“Let’s leave the pigeon out of this,” Eric suggested, leaning forward. Jaye stared mesmerized at the flecks in his irises.
“Let it out,” said the pigeon.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Jaye, glaring at it. Eric looked wounded. “Not you, the pigeon.”
And now he looked exasperated.
“You don’t understand,” said Jaye. “I wouldn’t have told you if the pigeon hadn’t insisted. And now I think it wants me to tell you that to, because it finally seems to be shutting up.”
A pause to check. Yes, it was silent.
“Also the playing cards told me to kick you out of my trailer that night. And there’s this red wax lion and its evil brass monkey sidekick that sometimes team up to tell me what to do. I tried melting the lion but that didn’t work.” No wonder Sharon had looked so ecstatic. Honesty was intoxicating. “And that fish you have on the wall there spends most of its time telling me what to do, although it’s been silent since you got the pigeon. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“I like crazy people.”
“I mean like really crazy,” said Jaye. “I mean, Heidi was crazy, but she wasn’t insane, and I may be crazy-certifiable and Dr. Ron will probably create an entire new syndrome to describe me.”
“Do the voices tell you to lie?”
“No,” said Jaye, and then she realized why he was asking. “No! They make me tell the truth. They want everything to work out for the best in the end, but sometimes they think best is something kind of strange.”
“And are they in favor of you and me?” Eric asked, leaning forward again.
He was taking this well. “I really hope so,” Jaye whispered.
Eric grinned. “So you really like me, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad your voices are on my side,” he said, and took her hands in his, grinning like a loon.
He thinks I’m joking, Jaye realized. She glanced at the pigeon for help, but it was silent.
She could let it out all she wanted; that didn’t mean anyone else was going to let it in.
“Do you think I could live in your old room behind the bar?” Jaye asked.
“I don’t think Mr. Sloane would like that.”
“Only for a little while,” said Jaye.
Eric acquiesced. “Will you still have time to look at the apartments with me tonight?” he said. “Or are they expecting you at Wonderfalls soon?”
“Oh. Um. I’ve called—” what was the mouth-breather’s name again? “my boss, he said it’s fine.”
“Then let’s go,” said Eric, catching Jaye’s hand.
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Date: 2008-11-12 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-12 04:58 am (UTC)