China Knowles—Friday Evening—Tommy
I am China—the girl you saw passed out and naked on Facebook. I stand three gates away staring at Shane, but he is turned into the man’s chest. Not too close, but close enough. They’re at gate #26 waiting to board a bus to New Jersey.
I walk toward him and say, “Shane?”
He looks up and his eyes are the color of saffron. He is a lizard. His long, sticky tongue snaps out and says, “Who are you?”
The man seems amused. He is wearing a suit that cost a lot of money. I don’t understand why he is taking a NJ Transit bus and not a limousine in that suit.
I stare into Shane’s reptile eyes.
Nowhere in them do I see recognition. He doesn’t know who I am even though we’re soul mates. He’s become something else now. In a short week, he has turned himself inside out and we can see his lizard.
“Sorry,” I say. “I thought you were my friend Shane.”
“His name isn’t Shane,” the man in the nice suit says.
Shane stares.
I hold up my bus ticket. I say, “Shane?”
“You have the wrong boy,” the man says.
You have the wrong boy.
I back away from them both. Shane is a lizard. I’m a digestive system. One of us is right side in and the other one is right side out. The man is grinning about something and I don’t know what it is. He seems to not know Shane. This isn’t his father or his caseworker or his uncle or…
There is a gate call for their bus.
My bus doesn’t leave for another fifteen minutes.
I stand frozen, Shane’s yellow eyes blinking vertically at me, blinking in code.
He doesn’t want to go to New Jersey with this man. That’s what the code says. The man met him on the Internet. On the site where we met—our safe place.
I swallow myself right there in the lower level of Port Authority.
It’s a taste like nothing else. It hits all the taste buds. Bitter. Sour. Sweet. Salty.
I’m a pulsating stomach staring at a lizard boy.
This is when he recognizes me. His lizard eyes blink more code.
Help me. That’s what he says. He says, Help me.
He has a small suitcase at his feet. Not his. It’s expensive and it has wheels. As he and the man in the suit start to move forward with their tickets, I follow them and Shane keeps eye contact as he panics, his vertical lids snapping open and closed so much I can’t keep up with what he’s saying. Help me. Help me. Help me.
As the man in the suit takes care that his luggage is stored under the bus in the right bin, I move.
I grab Shane by the arm and we run back into Port Authority. I don’t look back and I head for the stairs. We hear the man yelling “Tommy! Tommy!” behind us.
My Screen Name Has More Self-Esteem Than I Do
I chose Olivia
not for any reason
except that it was
late at night and
I wanted to feel normal.
You chose Tommy
because you said it
sounded masculine
and childish
at the same time.
We can hear him from where we are huddled in the handicapped stall in the Port Authority women’s bathroom.
“Tommy! Tommy!” the suit man yells. He says something about how the bus is waiting. Something else about taking back all the things he’d given him. Something else about the night before.
At that, Shane starts to cry. He’s sitting on the toilet and I’m standing by the door in case anyone trusts the man in the suit more than us.
They always do.
They always trust the man in the suit.
Shane’s head is in his hands and his tears start to drip down onto the old red tile. The man in the suit asks a woman to check the stalls for him. The woman says, “Get out of the women’s bathroom!”
I want to call security. I want to call 911. I want to call anyone, but there’s no one to call. Just like last time. No one to call. So I rub Shane’s scaly lizard back and tell him it’s okay. And he rubs my duodenum and tells me it’s okay.
And we sit there for an hour.
When we leave, he’s afraid the man will be waiting for him. I tell him we should turn right side out again and he tries, but can’t do it, so I stay digestive and buy two new tickets back to Pennsylvania.
Next bus is in ten minutes.
“Why did you come?” Shane asks me.
“I was going home. I gave up. You never answered my calls. I figured… you know.”
“I’m a lizard,” Shane says.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m a stomach.”
“Not beyond repair.”
“I’m not sure,” he answers.
“Trust me,” I say.
We walk toward the stairs back down to the gates, each of us looking for the man in the suit.
“He’s not here,” I say.
Shane says, “He probably wants his money back.”
I don’t ask Shane what the man in the suit paid him for. I know enough about Shane to guess.
“I’d like to hear him argue that in a court,” I say.
“Where will we go?” Shane asks.
“I’m taking you home.”
He sighs. “I’ve never lasted at home. Not mine. Not anybody’s.”
“Then you tell me and we’ll leave the minute you can’t last anymore.”
We get into line for the bus and Shane turns toward the wall. The line starts to move. We get onto the bus. I have my backpack. Shane only has his phone and the clothes he’s wearing.
“Can we go shopping when we get there? I need some clothes.”
“Sure. Until then, I’ll borrow some clothing from Gustav. You’ll like him.”
“Is he damaged?”
I say, “We’re all damaged.”
“Oh.”
I say, “You’ll fit in nicely.”