Full Frontal Fiction by Jack Murnighan Page A

the walls with black electrical tape. Tall and bony with a big bald head and very red lips.
    â€œAnita,” I said.
    â€œWe ain’t going out anywhere today,” he said, looking out the window. You could totally tell he hated going outside.
    â€œOkay,” I said. “I made breakfast for you.”
    He turned his head toward me and clapped his hands in an exaggerated, almost sarcastic way, but his voice seemed for real. “How nice,” he said. “Don’t smoke around me. I have asthma.”
    I said okay.
    Tom B. was the last one, as his room was at the end. There was Michael Jordan staring at me. His door opened as soon as I got there, and he was in a pair of dress pants and a wrinkled mint green dress shirt, feet in brown vinyl slippers. He looked uptight and yet really wanting to please. His eyes still had sleep in them. I saw him from last night, naked, going down on Tom A.
    â€œBreakfast is ready,” I said.
    â€œTanks,” he said. Speech impediment.
    â€œYou’re welcome.”
    His smile was unnerving, shaky around the edges, and it almost made me angry at him.
    â€œTanks berry much,” he said, and then started walking toward the kitchen.
    I followed behind him. All of the retarded people were seated at the picnic table now, and the shock on all their faces almost made me burst out crying. It was like Thanksgiving with breakfast food. I know I’m sounding like some sentimental idiot, so I won’t go on, but they really loved what I’d done, and it had been a while since I got that kind of reaction from anybody.
    â€œLook at dis Tommy,” Tom B. said to Tom A. “Look what she did fow us.”
    Tom A. smiled bigger. He grabbed his fork in one hand and his knife in the other, like any minute, any minute.
    â€œMona Lisa,” Damon said, his voice very low. “Mona. Lisa.”
    My relief came in at eleven. She seemed a little drunk too. A lot of drunks work in group homes, like it’s their way of paying penance: a vodka binge, then they go in and wipe up a retard’s ass and they think they don’t have to quit drinking. But this woman, named Raquel, could be drunk but it didn’t seem obnoxious, even at eleven in the A.M.
    Right when Raquel walked in and went down to the basement to clock in was when Archie called me, my drug-dealing ex-fiancé. This job was sort of my antidote to all I had just gone through with him, kinda like I was paying penance too but just for being a total fucking fool. But Archie kept following me. I mean, I was living with my dad, and I was moving all my stuff out of the town house we were at one time sharing, and every time I went to get more stuff he was there, hangdog in the face. Sometimes when I was going around doing my business and shit, I would see him in his Escort in the rearview mirror with that same hangdog, stalker look. Like he was having his picture taken for the cover of
Pathetic Small Town Dope Dealer
magazine.
    â€œWhat? How did you get this number, you son of a bitch?” I was whispering, hoping Raquel wouldn’t hear. Everyone was out in the living room, watching VHl, doing whatever. Tom A. and Tom B. were sitting on the love seat, of course. Holding hands. Sally was in her pink sweatsuit, on the floor, talking to a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Larry was really the only one watching the TV, while Damon rocked in his lounger with his eyes closed, kind of like Stevie Wonder does.
    â€œI hired a private detective,” Archie said. He laughed.
    â€œBullshit. Listen, I’m at my new job, and I am trying to make something outta myself.”
    â€œOkay, okay.”
    â€œSo it’s over.”
    â€œI love you so much.”
    â€œGo smoke your crack, Archie. Just fucking go smoke your crack.”
    I hung up. As if she’d been waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me to finish, Raquel marched up, her hair all ratty-looking, in a pair of nylon sweats and flannel