Nemo related
It could have been worse. She could have named me Aaron with pretentious double A's or violated a noun like Hunter or Cash for the sake of birth certificate originality. She could have forgone creativity all together and made me a Junior or stuck me with John or Christopher or Adam. Or a stupid name like Danny. She could have saved for me a name with unfortunate rude rhyming words or humerus initials. I could have been a Farnsworth or a Milton--archaic and best left to rot in obscurity. It could always be worse. It also could have been better.
Danny was all elbows with the X-box controller clutched between his hands. From observation, the left elbow went up and waved when the soldier on the screen failed to duck or run in the proper direction at the correct time. The right elbow was reserved for fire fights while both extended and flailed when combat lead to death. First person shooter gunshot wounds looked like a visor splashed with raspberry jelly. I wasn't impressed. He was enthralled. The headset he wore buzzed with voices from somewhere else, profanity the only things detectable and drawn out like a clothes line of expletives hanging from Danny's own lips with each crumpled death he received.
We sat in his apartment, avoiding the couch and its clutter of school related mess, cross legged on a stained beige carpet surrounded by small mounds and valleys of clothing and trash. It smelled like beer, smoke and sweat. He said it was because of finals. I said it was because he was a slob. The ashtray on the coffee table looked like a carnation in full bloom with its petals of snubbed out buds.
"You want a turn?" He asked, offered me the controller as the list of kills and deaths flashed on the screen of a large, out of place LCD television sitting on unmatched furniture.
I shrugged and looked away. "I'm not interested in video games."
"Rather do the real thing, huh?"
I nodded. He laughed. I cringed at whatever thought might cause him to find that amusing.
"You really are a violent little brat."
I gave him a sneer and took the controller from him. He kept the headset. I crawled through the virtual map, killed anything I saw, and he laughed with virtual friends whose comments I could not catch outside the context of his broken responses.
"Nah, it's not me man. Oh, shit, look ou-! God damn, that was--Oh shit! Did you see that?"
I ignored him, considered all conversation to be with the invisible people I hunted along side of. I die a few times. Kept my elbows down. Killed more than he did when the screen flashed the talleys and ranked me within the team: third. I handed back the controller while he chatted amicably. "No, that's just the Boy Wonder for you. I swear, he's a natural at damn near everything."
Boy Wonder. I rolled my eyes. I regret the day he caught my name on the library card in my wallet. I should have told him before then that my name was Rob or Robbie or any of those vaguely related nick names I despised growing up. The robins that used to perch on the bird feeder were always my favorite. My mother's voice--a memory from Nana's porch where the long tube of bird seed spun around at the end of a frayed fetch of rope from the dead branches of a tree in winter. Girl or boy, I wanted to name my first child after that bird. Free spirit with a red breast. Acrobatic ward to Gothom's caped crusader. Boy with blood on his sleeves.
Danny leaned over the space between us, X-Box headset no longer perched on his head. "Are you hungry, Robin?"
We ordered pizza, pepperoni and pineapple, spicy and sweet. I burped root beer bubbles and licked yellow, fatty grease from my fingertips. He wiped his chin and cheeks with a perforated rectangle of rooster print paper towel.
"The taste of root beer reminds me of Pepto Bismol." He said, biting down on another piece of pizza, powdered cheese floating in soaked up oils on the red crust of the pepperoni slices.
My nose wrinkled, tastes melding in memory, associations merging, sympathetic pangs rising from my full, bloated belly. I scowled at him. "Parmesan cheese smells like vomit."
Danny laughed and dipped the bone of his slice into the garlic butter. I left the collection of my own in the box like tally marks. Danny ate those too, mouth wrapping around my teeth marks and half circle bites on the edges of sauce and cheese without concern. My germs were his germs. These were the things cooties were invented to discourage.
I laid back on his carpet, lost socks and text books cushioning and stabbing at my back and shoulders, papers crumpling. I looked at the ceiling and the way the blades of the ceiling fan spun. One had a glow in the dark star stuck to it and as I focused on it, the blades seemed to slow down, separating from the blur into shapes. It made my eyes cross and my head feel light and cold behind my eyes like a headache on the cusp of existence. I let my eyes wander to other corners of the flat white slab, searching for more astral bodies that could light up like a false night sky. I found mostly the putty remains where they had been, white-grey blobs on an off-white canvas. Above the couch I found Saturn with her ears slowly coming unstuck from their bonds. That was all. A pale, lonely heaven with one star shooting around a dead light and a far off planet one humid day away from the clutter and chaos below.
My feet were picked up and placed in his lap. He pulled my socks off, slowly, tossed them away as part of his collected mess. My toes felt sweaty and cold without their cotton sheath. He rubbed his fingers against the arch of my foot. I kicked his hand, heard his knuckles crack.
"Ouch." He shook the pain from his hand, grasped my feet in the hollow of his overlapped fingers, palms warm and dry. "Ticklish?"
"No," I lied.
He rubbed his warmth into my feet, neglecting my sole, smart enough to learn through pain. "What do you think of me, Robin?"
"I think you're messy." I moved my arm, pushed away a can of beer and the empty DVD case for Independence Day.
"Do you like me?"
"No."
"Why are you here?"
I shrugged. He squeezed my feet.
"Are you going to stay the night?"
I shrugged. He grabbed my ankle and pulled me closer, leaned over me and pinned me down. He didn't ask any more questions and I no longer had to pretend I understood them.
Danny worked the overnight at the Circle K. He left his keys with me when he left, told me to lock up, come to the store at two a.m. when he had to close down to restock. I slept till one-forty with my face covered in his pillow. It smelled like his shampoo. Messy as his home was, Danny liked to shower before bed. I could smell it in the sheets before we'd gotten in them. I could still smell it in his pillow.
I borrowed an Arizona Phoenix hoody and a pair of sleep pants off the floor before walking out to the convenience store a block and a half away. I was ten minutes late but he was waiting for me at the doors, not yet having locked them, smiling like the big idiot he was. He held the open for me, ushered me in. He locked the doors behind us once inside.
It didn't look like my Circle K at that hour of the night. I could hear the humming of all the refrigerated appliances and overhead vents. Outside the windows the streets were too black. There were hardly any cars out to light up the night with their yellow-white stare.
Daddy chuckled as he flipped the hood of the sweatshirt up over my head. "Come on. Let's get started with the cooler."