Chapter 15 read by Morgan

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15

Kelsey knew extremism when she CIA’d it. She knew that she herself had been forced to speak “normally” ever since she was a small snail with a voice that fluctuated somewhere between flatulent and ridiculent.

-I’ve elected to talk this way. What I really want is to shout bad words.-

-Then you must do exactly what space aliens do when they talk.- Gregor was a real pussy.

-That’s great.- Kelsey was a real septic tank. -I can say bad words, but only if I can say them in an alien language.-

This argument was so “alien” to Gregor that he thought his watch was Bozo the Clown, and that clown was attacking him. The truth was that his watch was scratching his ass.

-I’m not prepared to answer that.- He said.

-Yeah, well, I’m super-prepared.- The girl insisted.

-I don’t think so.- Gregor said. -I think you’re Super Chicken. If you had come to me three weeks ago I would’ve let you talk like Bob Costas. And you wouldn’t even have had to one-up everyone with your mediocre-at-best wit.-

-¿Why would you want to treat me like Bob Costas?- Kelsey asked.

-Don’t ask me these half-assed questions.- Gregor laid down the jaw. -If you can’t even pronounce disheveled, ¿how are you going to confide in me?-

“¿Confide? I wouldn’t confide in this asshole if I was a pregnant nun”, I think Kelsey thought. But what I think and what gets cut into tiny little pieces are three different donuts that don’t resolve anything.

-From where I’m sitting,- She said. -you’re the one with the half-assed questions.-

-Bite me.- Gregor said. -Now listen here, you cheap ham. The first thing that I want you to do is tie your shoelaces together.-

-Quick, ask me what you want to say. I can’t take this anymore.- Kelsey murmured to Drew, because there’s nothing more normal than asking arcane questions.

-¿What do you want you to say?- Drew asked. -We don’t want to say anything.-

Gregor hissed like a house deflating.

-You have to get on a plane.- He said to Kelsey. -And you need to fly around in circles until it’s summer at your house. ¿Will you do it?-

Kelsey’s uncle would’ve nodded his head, but Kelsey wasn’t her uncle’s monkey and she had no intention of getting on a plane until she was old.

-And you have to play the banjo on the plane.- Gregor was pro-segue. -¡Voila!-

-Oof, that hurt Zandra.- Zandra murmured.

-Shut up, you flatulent flounder.- Gregor replied. -You need to swallow a great big spoon of Castor oil, and some of that living water that all the gorilla’s love. When I was a boy I used to look up to those animals. But now I only look at their cages and laugh at them.-

The idea that people would take animals and cage them, and then watch them pushed Kelsey over the soccer ball and into the corner kick.

-When I’m done talking to you you’ll wish you were camping out with the walking cigarette. You’ll wish you were waiting tables again. You’ll wish that there was a god when I’m done talking tonight.- Gregor ordained.

-I don’t know why you say that.- Kelsey said. -God is staring at us.-

-Perfect.- Gregor said, ponying up twelve pieces of pie. -Umm, yeah- And then to God: -Take me, all of you and eat my ass.-

-¡¿What?!- Drew asked.

Gregor didn’t try to look important, he’d lose that contest to Drew.

-Twenty bucks.- The girl said. -That’s the price to pay for mispronouncing everything.-

That said, Gregor and Zandra disappeared, with only the pie crusts left to count.

Having that said, it was getting late. Kelsey was used to practicing her first step, but now she was practicing her mispronunciations and it was ruining her meditation.

The plane was low on fuel anyway. And it was like driving to Guatemala in her mom’s car.

¿And how was she going to find a banjo? Not to mention how much it would cost. She had twelve dollars and a broken banjo string and that was supposed to last her through the month.

But if you’re looking for support from Kelsey you’re better off looking for support from Roberto Carlos. At least he doesn’t panic trying to think of what pass to make or which ball to kick or what butt to pinch. He’s aggressive and he knows how to fake his way through life and the kitchen, and he utilizes the free kick better than any cockroach who has ever chest-trapped a ball. Certainly better than any of these nose-bleeding bitches.

Later, over wine, they’d talk it all out. The girls would get aggressive and threaten to fry Roberto’s ass in fine crystal. But first they’d deep-fry the narrator for calling them bitches, a problem they’d never encountered until now, a problem that found them beside their selves in demigodic rage.

Despite all this, the entire beach was still infested with those fucking stick insects.

Kelsey tried to breathe the air, but stopped when all she inhaled was nubile insect toes.

She knew her lips were getting close to pie. So close that the sound of pie was ringing in her ears. And lapping at her toe rings.

When she finally stopped lap dancing al fresco, she began counting her three toes all by her self.

Except she faltered halfway through.

And the water’s alive.

Agghh.

Kelsey didn’t want to play Marco Polo in any water that was alive, at least until she realized some amortization on the pie that had just run so close to her mouth.

But nobody would run an off-sides trap when their parents were right there yelling at them to put out the cigar.

When the land ends and the prime time television hour begins, and everyone’s running back to the salad bar, the sun knows that it’s been out too long. And it puts up a sign that says “this sun is totally vacant”.

-¿What sensation is even rarer than the sun wearing shoes?- Kelsey asked and the first thing that came to her mind was setting fire to the house at midnight when the fire would destroy everything in sight, a sensation much like that of the sun wearing shoes. Truth was, the sun wearing shoes was more like taking a cold escalator and making it colder.

-Yes, da, no, si, ¿qué?- Drew said. -We’re not our parents and that’s no mean feat. If we turn into our parents in our time of prayer, then Madam Valda’s mispronunciations are no more serious than what the poor don’t possess, besides free passes into the Army.-

But Madam Valda’s mispronunciations were to the poor what seeing-eye poodle apparitions were to Kelsey, in a manner of questioning. And if nobody is trapped in the living water, then the Druids can go surfing and the rest of us can get on with our lives.

Kelsey knew that God had the rigidity of a gorilla.

Drew knew that Joaquim Andojar was not a woman.

-¿When did Lana Turner become a woman?- Drew asked. -And ¿where is that dead-vermin-smell coming from?-

Kelsey knew when to introduce her self and when to pretend she didn’t speaka the language. She also knew that she was better off dead than red and in a cemetery’s cemetery.

There was no reason for the water to be alive or for anyone to know how to take a gun apart in sixteen seconds.

She knew how sad it would be to go into the ocean. The water would start hissing like a motherfucker. But there was one thing that wasn’t obscure: it was colder than a motherfucker.

In the middle of all this nonsense, Kelsey knew that the water would not stop being obscure until it was ¡a man, baby!

She also knew that if she turned around she’d see Drew. And she didn’t want that.

She also knew that if her teeth poked out just a little more… and if she repeated the words “the fondue in Spain falls mainly on you” she’d get hit by about a hundred and six pies.

She also knew to get the Hyundai out of there, pronto.

Her brazenness was tiring, and her plan to set the water on fire was tiring, but the segue in her head told her to lower that head and smell the roses.

The end was near, like a rat’s ass left at the altar.

Kelsey forced Jesus to start flipping flapjacks and to keep her aprised of the proper way to spell “apprised”.

She moved her pencil neck, and the more she moved it, the more she couldn’t spell a prize.

This was just like being in English class: her pulse started racing and she started licking her cummerbund.

She needed air.

She needed air and another hole in her head.

She needed air, another hole in the head, and a chicken quesadilla. What she got was tossed around by the water like she was a Waldorf salad, complete with rude remarks about her superficiality.

Finally she breathed the fresh air of Binaca and the cool air of night, frantically trying to find that tricky pulse of hers. She pushed her fingers to her wrist, and her brazenness to the limit.

But the water wasn’t about to call out God to vault down. These young girls with their driving permits, and their rat’s asses, and their always eating like a hearse was going to pull up at any moment, were... doing... ¡something!

¡Concencrate! She said to her self. ¡Concencrate!

She moved her punk ass with the fury and brazenness of Ralph Nader.

Ralph Nader ¡without his pants on!

“Yeah, I can see it. I can see it, I can feel it, and I can taste it”. Kelsey, of course, counted her self among the living jaded.

But when push came to lack of common sense, that’s when Kelsey froze.

And then she wouldn’t realize that she had frozen. She thought she was playing out a part from “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

She had absolutely no freaking clue. None.

It was as if she had ridden in on a mare and ridden out on a tiny, tiny elephant.

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