My Escapee: Stories

Shelter

142 Shelter / After the guests left,the bride floated for a while above a table covered with half-eaten pieces of wedding cake and flower petals.Her face narrowed to a knotted chin,around which was tied a length of white ribbon. Norman stood up and flicked her cheek, then cupped it more gently. “Come here,” he said. But she rotated just as he tried to kiss her. “Is something wrong? Didn’t you have fun tonight?” She turned back to look at him.The smile that he’d drawn on her with lipstick was not a good indicator of how she felt. It was actually quite misleading. “I’ve done this before, I admit. But this time it’s going to be different,” Norman said. “You’re not like my exes, you’re quiet.They were—how can I put this?—deluded by ideas of their own necessity. But not you, baby. Do you understand me?” He pulled on her ribbon and she bobbed vertiginously. “Is that a yes? Do I see a yes? Listen, you’re my one and only. They might as well have never existed.” She remembered lying in the bin with the others.There was a red one with Hip Hip Hooray written on it, and a white Shelter / 143 one with You Did It! written on it, and she was plain yellow. She knew what they said though she could not see the letters until they were inflated. She knew the type—red was always Hip Hip Hooray.The feeling in the bin was of consequence and closeness.Then fingers lifted her and tugged at her nozzle,and she was filled with helium. Norman tied her to his wrist and left the rented hall. He bounced along in his tuxedo shirt, bidding good evening to everyone who passed. There was greediness in his desire to engage,however briefly,with these scissor-legged beings.Her head hit the branch of a tree. “Oh god, sorry,” he called. “My fault, my fault.” She began to sink. By the time they reached his apartment building,her head was even with his. She had no bodily functions or fluids to speak of. He had chosen her especially because she was not human, but he’d hoped to discover some secret little compartment anyway.He knew to untie her—to create an opening—would be her demise, so that first night he made a wild grab for her and rubbed her with a swift, heretofore-unseen part of himself. There was a fuzzy sound, like the party store radio between stations. Suddenly she realized what he was doing.The songs had sung of this, something charged with electricity.Then he released her, and she bobbed to the far side of the room. The next day, she was even with his shoulders.The next, his knees. Now when they met each other in the hallway, the living room or kitchen, Norman made a show of sidestepping her, or bowing and extending his arm to indicate she should go Shelter 144 / first. He wanted her to know nothing, and everything, like a charming puzzle. He wanted her like a bauble, a child’s toy.“I guess we’ll just have to be friends,” he said. Finally she lay on the floor with the dust. One afternoon, while he slept on the couch, she skittered to his side. His face was lush, alive with dreams. My girl, he murmured, and she ducked beneath the couch. Next to her was a slim black box with pretty rows of buttons. “You too?” she asked. It said nothing. She realized Norman had believed in her, if only briefly. Held against that, what was escape?And how would it even be done? A draft from the open window, perhaps—she cast her eye upon it, which shimmered like water made square.Then what? Flight had never interested her, though she knew some balloons who longed for nothing else. No, flight had been out of the question but she had landed anyway. ...