Miss Bo Peep

            by Genevieve Mather

 

              Small, slender fingers were outstretched in exasperation and his fur stood on end. His whiskers twittered as his tiny  pink tongue darted over a milky fang. The ferret always became nervous when she started to tap. The tapping usually started when his mother was disturbed, and she was disturbed often. She was pacing back forth across the room. The persistent beat of her heel on the polished, mesquite wooden floors made his looped ears flinch at every footstep. She turned on her stilettos as the clocks struck 8 o’clock precisely in cacophony.

             “Garbanzo, my darling, my lovely, my baby, this won’t do. No it won’t do at all my handsome princely darling. At least I’ll have you. I’ll always have you,” she cooed as she slipped her wasting hands under him and picked him up swiftly. With head cocked to one side, he swished his ashy tail in agitation. In response, she said, “Ah nap time again isn’t it? Can’t have my princely go without his beauty sleep, now can we?” And with that, she placed him in his urban den, lavished with newspapers, toys, blankets and pillows. He looked up at her, feet perfectly still, before making a mad dash in a few circles, then freezing again to look up at her. Not a second passed before she was upon him bounteous with tender kisses while petting his charcoal sable fur. She straightened and sighed, “Sweet dreams, little one. We have a big day tomorrow.” With an audible click, off went the lights.

        One arm through the sleeve of the jacket, then the other. The belt goes through the loop, out, then repeat process with next loop. Apply cover-up. Looking into the mirror was sickening to her.  Crinkled into her once dashing face were now signs of aging, which she tried her best to smear away with product. When she was younger, she was not horribly attractive, but she didn’t look as if she belonged in a bell tower either. However, this was obscured, as her peers saw nothing past the ’weird.’ Except for him, but he didn’t matter now. She believed it to be considerably bizarre for a living person such as herself to pine so readily for a dead person such as himself. One sterling ring goes on the fourth finger. Two rings on the second. Two on the thumb. Open the mahogany door.  She lingered in the frame for a few moments before running into the closet to grab her beret. Her heels dug into the wood as she stalked out the door.

****

        Tick, tock, tick, tock went the rickety wheels of her cold shopping cart. The people, the fluorescent lighting, the smells, they were all unnecessary aspects to be sprinkled into her life. She added another can of tuna to the pile. A man in his late thirties in an ebony-colored, leather jacket twisted his lips into a grin once he caught sight of her. With a single hand raised, he gestured toward her. When he saw there was no response from the woman, he called, “Hello? Nickee?” She turned toward this man with a slight twinge of an eye.

     “Shopping. Can’t be bothered, very busy. Goodbye.” To this, he smiled and placed a burly hand on her shoulder.

    “Haha you crazy old hoot. Are you really going to not even ask about my new promotion? Oh what’s that? That’s right! You are now talking to the manager of-” a sharp breaking noise interrupted him, soon followed by the sound of her shopping cart crumbling to the floor. Her breath shortened as she muttered incomprehensible swear words and hurried past him.

    She stalked back into her car, frazzled and frustrated. Meditating in a closed space was always best for times such as this. He would have been that man’s age by now. But to her, he would always remain that precious seven-year-old boy stored away, through the noise and the hodgepodge of her mind. She poked a Cherry Black Stone cigarette between her teeth and lit it. The smoke twisted above her head as she went though the list. Turn on headlights, release parking break. Can you drive in these heels? Crack the window and peel off the jacket. Turn on the engine. The car ground into consciousness before slipping back to sleep. Turn on the engine. Again the car ground lazily. Ten minutes passed before she gave up and broke open the car door to search for a phone booth.

     A sneaker tapped the wall of the supermarket. When he was lost, he remembered being told to stay in one place until he was found. The boy twiddled his thumbs in boredom as he watched passersby go about their business.

    Nickee challenged herself to go back into the building to use the phone, if only she could have some way of knowing that her ferret wouldn’t be lonely or starve without her immediate presence.  Tink. A quarter dropped to the cement of the sidewalk and rolled tantalizingly past the boy. Only three more steps and the hard part would be behind her. She felt her shirt being tugged upon. Glancing downwards, she saw an outstretched hand. It was small, but tender and sweet. She was six when she grasped the dandelion in her hand and laughed happily. Her eyes, heavy with mascara, following the curve of the arm and up the sylphlike neck to an impatient-looking face.

     “You dropped this, I think?”

   She searched for any familiarity in his voice. It was a nonchalant melody that held little sincerity. The slightly pudgy-cheeked boy tugged on her shirt once again, thinking she had not heard him, before she turned and walked back to her car. This time the engine awoke with clarity. She drove back to her apartment with her stolen cans of tuna spilt in disarray in the backseat, leaving the quarter in the boy’s hand.

****

      The tightly coiled ball of fur was gently inflating and deflating. Twilight began to creep through the paisley patterned curtains as the grandfathers, the cuckoos, the quartz and the pendulums gossiped. Warm light licked at his eyelids, causing them to flinch more tightly closed before slowly opening. He greeted the amiable warmth the same every morning, with a steep arch in his back while he yawned. When Garbanzo’s glassy brown eyes met hers’, his stubby snout snapped shut in surprise.

      “Good morning little Garbanzo, did you sleep well?” Her silhouette was sloped slightly and soundlessly as dormancy began to filter through the room. A discontent was beginning to rise again before the ferret’s stocky legs scampered out of the den, over her lap and under the table as fast as they could muster. A snicker echoed after him. Her face contorted into a grin as she crawled under the table and lowered her head to peck each of his wispy whiskers with a kiss. He tumbled onto his back and playfully slapped at her sheltering cheek with a paw. Snatching his paw between her forefinger and thumb, he struggled as she started her excuses, “Sorry I didn’t wake you when I got back. Were you worried? In your dreams I mean… Does that happen to you? Having a terribly unsettling feeling binding you in your dreams? Well I‘m glad you are awake now. Mother loves you with all her heart, you know that?”

        Garbanzo was devoid of comprehension of her words, but the uplifting tone in her voice made him unbearably excited.

      “I met him again last night. He didn‘t remember me. But I suppose that’s to be expected after twenty years.”

   Lifting herself up from under the table, she turned her head and looked at the mantelpiece. Upon it was his broken and cracked pocket watch. He was wearing that the day his variegated insides splattered the asphalt. Luckily the watch itself, the little fragment of him that she could use to prove her was never a figment of her imagination after all, was still more or less in one piece. The only boy that ever looked twice at her, his own eyes piercing right through her social ineptness with a gaze that held fast to her memory. He hadn’t been looking at her when she had grasped the fallen pocket watch that laid next to him.

     “Garbanzo? Garbanzo!?” Anguish constricted her throat and she felt as if she was about to seep tears. She fell back into her rocking chair.

        “I have to see him again. I know he remembers me. I‘ll make him remember.” The shrill piercing of the puffing pot told her the water was at a crucial boiling point. She snapped off the stove and poured the steaming water into the tiny teacup. It quickly clouded over as the leaves soaked the liquid into a rust-colored abyss when she picked the harness off from its hook on the wall. With deft fingers, the harness was snapped onto the struggling animal. The sound of the door slamming did not disturb the miasma of steam leaking from the cup.

       There was only one elementary school in the small town where Nickee lived. The tinted windows of the car made it easy for her to observe the scene around her. In the passenger’s seat, Garbanzo restlessly shuffled in the confines of his leather harness. She placed a hand on his head as she rested her chin on steering wheel, waiting. The clutter of the many children that discharged from the school sent her mind into discomposure. Anxiety gave her cheeks the slightest hue of pink as she became more and more aware that through the multitude of screaming children would be him.

     Something was wrong. The shrill crowd cleared, and there was still no sign of the boy. Gasplessly, she left the car and allowed herself to be pulled wherever her running feet took her.

****

    Two hours of searching to no avail. She decided she would try again another day. The pungent heat seemed to breathe an outward breath as she cracked open her car door. She sat with her makeup in leaky disarray as she pulled on her seat belt. She cast a  casual glance over to the passenger seat. The little ferret had stopped moving long ago. A single limp paw hung off the seat like a sock hanging off the edge of a bed. His dull, glassy brown eyes were unfocused and the tiny pink tongue hung effortlessly out of his agape mouth. She stumbled back out of the car and vomited. The 23^rd Garbanzo had left her.

      She was being watched.

“Hey are you alright? Oh wow, I think we have met before. Why did you run off last time so suddenly?” The boy blinked as he took a hesitant footstep closer. This was it, it was either now or never. She lifted a brick that was near her feet and hurled it at his head.

****   

      Unconscious, his body lay with its limbs spilt in an awkward position in the back seat. She turned off the car and withdrew a deep breath. Everything would be alright now that he was back. She was so close, all she had to do was make him remember that she was real. The Black Stone cigarette was lit with its smoke convoluting and convulsing in the already thick atmosphere of the car when she opened the compartment in the dashboard. She reached for the sledgehammer sleeping in the far back of the compartment, grasped the handle and held it firm in one hand as she took another drag from her cigarette with the other. The boy was like a puzzle, and if she could re-arrange his pieces the way he was when she saw him twenty years ago, then everything would become real again.