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not going to get to me.
I'm a stupid, callous, scheming bastard. End of story.
This old Mrs. Tsunimitsu. Paige Marshall. Ursula. Nico, Tanya, Leeza. My mom.
Some days, life just looks like me versus every stupid chick in the whole damn world.
With one hand, I grab Paige Marshall around the arm and yank her toward the door.
Nobody's going to trick me into feeling Christlike.
"Listen to me," I say. I shout, "If I wanted to feel anything, I'd go to a frigging
movie!"
And old Mrs. Tsunimitsu smiles and says, "You can't deny the goodness of your true
nature. It's shining for everyone to see."
To her I say, shut up. To Paige Marshall I say, "Come on."
I'll prove to her I'm no Jesus Christ. Anybody's true nature is bullshit. There is no
human soul. Emotion is bullshit. Love is bullshit. And I'm dragging Paige down the
hallway.
We live and we die and anything else is just delusion. It's just passive chick bullshit
about feelings and sensitivity. Just made-up subjective emotional crap. There is no soul.
There is no God. There's just decisions and disease and death.
What I am is a dirty, filthy, helpless sexaholic, and I can't change, and I can't stop,
and that's all I'll ever be.
And I'll prove it.
"Where are you taking me?" Paige says, stumbling, her glasses and lab coat still
flecked with food and blood.
Already, I'm imagining junk so as not to trigger too fast, stuff like pets soaked in
gasoline and set on fire. I'm picturing the dumpy Tarzan and his trained chimp. I'm
thinking, here's just another stupid chapter in my fourth step.
To make time stand still. To fossilize this moment. To make the fucking last forever.
I'm taking her in the chapel, I tell Paige. I'm the child of a lunatic. Not a child of
God.
Let God prove me wrong. He can nail me with a lightning bolt.
I'm going to take her on the frigging altar.
Chapter 25
IT WAS MALICIOUS ENDANGERMENT THIS TIME or reckless abandonment or criminal
neglect. There were so many laws the little boy couldn't keep them straight.
It was third-degree harassment or second-degree disregard, first-degree disdain or
second-degree nuisance, and it got so the stupid kid was terrified to do anything except
what everybody else did. Anything new or different or original was probably against the
law.
Anything risky or exciting would land you in jail.
That's why everybody was so eager to talk to the Mommy.
She'd been out of jail for only a couple weeks this time, and already stuff had started
to happen.
There were so many laws and, for sure, about countless ways you could screw up.
First the police asked about the coupons.
Somebody had gone to a downtown copy shop and used a computer to design and
print hundreds of coupons that promised a free meal for two, a seventy-five-dollar value
with no expiration date. Each coupon was folded inside a cover letter that thanked you for
being such a valued customer and said the enclosed coupon was a special promotion.
All you had to do was eat dinner at the Clover Inn Restaurant.
When the server presented the bill, you could just pay with the coupon. Tip included.
Somebody did all that. Mailed out hundreds of these coupons.
It had all the earmarks of an Ida Mancini stunt.
The Mommy had been a server at the Clover Inn for her first week out of the halfway
house, but she got fired for telling people stuff they didn't want to know about their food.
Then she just disappeared. A few days later, an unidentified woman had run
screaming down the center aisle of a theater during the quiet, boring part of some big
fancy ballet dance.
This is why the police got the stupid little boy out of school one day and brought him
downtown. To see if maybe he'd heard from her. From the Mommy. If maybe he knew
where she was hiding.
About this same time, several hundred very angry customers flooded into a fur salon
with fifty-percent-discount coupons they got in the mail.
About this time, a thousand very scared people arrived at the county sexually
transmitted disease clinic, demanding to be tested after they received letters on the county
letterhead warning them that some former sex partner had been diagnosed with an
infectious disease.
The police detectives took the little stooge downtown in a plain car and then upstairs
in a plain building and sat with him and his foster mother, asking, has Ida Mancini
attempted to contact you?
Have you any idea from where she's receiving funds?
Why do you think she's doing these awful things?
And the little boy just waited.
Help would come soon enough.
The Mommy, she used to tell him she was sorry. People had been working for so
many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it
would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and
taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded.
Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. On a
roller coaster. At a movie. Still, it would always be that kind of faux excitement. You
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