Read Online Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan - Free Book Online

go,” was all she ever said.
    Still, after a few Tuesdays, just from sheer repetition, the sex had marginally improved. We were still dead fish being swung by an off duty clown, but we weren’t just any kind of fish. And even if we weren’t two majestic salmon, glistening in the sun as we leaped up a waterfall into the mouth of a huge fucking grizzly bear, we were at least tuna. Someone, somewhere would be glad to catch and eat us. And on rare Tuesdays we were canned tuna, fitting together, stackable, on sale two for one if you had a coupon. For a few moments at least. And the off duty clown yawned as he put us on a high shelf in his kitchen and fixed himself a drink.
    I didn’t mind so much lying around afterwards, watching the ceiling fan, waiting for her to tell me to leave. Of course I wanted to know what the fucked up situation between her and Bryce was, and why I’d become a part of it, and if I should start fearing death again, but I wasn’t about to ask. I was in no hurry to find out really. This was good enough for me. I’d already stiffed Bryce $300 on the rent instead of two, figuring he wouldn’t want to haggle over the price we’d agreed upon for me to fuck his wife. And he didn’t. If I was still alive at the end of the month I wouldn’t pay at all. Until then I’d keep coming back every Tuesday just to see what would happen. All I knew was that soon I’d be told to go home, which was reassuring.
    Then one Tuesday, after some fleeting canned tuna sex, she said, “So tell me about yourself.” Matter of fact, like we just happened to be sitting next to each other at a dinner party. Like we were meeting for the first time. And maybe we were.
    Luckily it was dark and she couldn’t see the shock on my face, or the panicked happiness that came after it. She wasn’t looking at me, but I was still glad it was dark.
    “When I was seven years old,” I said, “I thought I was a superhero. My name, was Leaf Man.”
    “Clever,” she said.
    “I wasn’t the brightest kid on the block, but I had the most faith.” I let that stand alone for a few seconds. It sounded like it was supposed to. “My superpower was that I could jump from the top of a tree and float down like a leaf, even if there wasn’t a breeze.”
    “Your superpower was floating?”
    “Have you ever watched a leaf land? They don’t even bend a blade of grass on impact. They’re like ninjas. They’re better than cats.”
    She said nothing.
    “So I’m up in the top of this tree in my back yard, the kind that has the helicopter seeds that fall in October, and I’m just about even with the roof of my house, two stories up. Until then I’d only been Leaf Man jumping off my bed or the coffee table into a pile of pillows, but I wasn’t afraid. I remember being absolutely sure that I could float. So I stepped off the branch, and I was gone. Everything came real fast and I was getting slapped by branches and tumbling like a fucking pinball and my head was spinning and then wham I hit the ground. I busted some ribs and broke my leg in two places. The doctor said I was lucky. My mom said I was a horse’s ass. And I knew I wasn’t a superhero.”
    She was silent for a long time.
    “Did you have a costume?” she said finally.
    “Just my GI Joe Underoos. I didn’t wear a shirt. I had a cape though.”
    “Did your mom sew it?”
    “No, I made it out of taped together St. Patrick’s Day napkins.”
    She was silent again.
    “Did you really jump out of a tree?”
    “Yes,” I lied.
    She was silent again. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t until she told me to. So I waited. This was all making a statement of some kind and I knew I’d figure out later what it was and tell myself that I’d done well under the circumstances, and that I was still cool.
    “You should go.”
    I was careful not to hesitate or betray anything more as I got dressed and left, and I don’t think that I did.
    I stole fourteen saltshakers that night and woke up