Balloon Animals

Latex has a taste. If you don't know it, it's because you've never put it in your mouth.

I did. Eight times an hour. Ten. Fifteen. The rubber tip between your lips, you blow, you swell it, you twist. By the third balloon your lower lip splits. By the fifth it bleeds. You swallow without thinking. Rubber and blood. The taste of a coin heated against the gum. You keep going.

The kid across from you is waiting for his dog.

You twist. You knot. The balloon squeals under your fingers. A high, strangled sound. Your fingertips go white. The shape appears. Dog. Sword. Giraffe. It doesn't matter. The child isn't looking at you. He's looking at the thing being made. Three dollars. That's what you're worth.

The kid takes the balloon. He runs off.

Sometimes he says thanks. The same thanks you give a door you push. Sometimes he says nothing. He snatches it and runs. You watch him cross the lawn with the balloon raised over his head. Thirty seconds. The balloon pops against a branch. Or under a knee. The kid doesn't even stop.

What's left at the end of the day: the burn on your lips. The stiffness in your knuckles. The iron taste at the back of your throat that the first bourbon doesn't touch. It takes a second.

My name is Lyle Fontenot.

I do birthdays in Lafayette, Louisiana. House-call clown. Card tricks. Balloon animals. Face painted white. The kids laugh. The dogs growl. No one looks long enough to see what's under the paint.

I knew it was her before I saw her.

The door moved. Almost nothing. And the perfume came through.

Pleasant Wound.

It hit me in the gut. The gut, not the head. It wasn't a perfume. It was a high school hallway. Lockers slamming. The party at Tyler DuBois's. All of it in a single breath.

She wore it at sixteen. She wore it now.

Audrey Bellcamp.

Audrey Bellcamp-something. A husband's name stuck onto hers. I'd read it on the contract. You don't hold onto the name of a street you know you'll never live on.

She opened.

— Oh great, the clown's here.

The voice you use for a delivery guy.

She didn't recognize me. No reason she would. I'd put on weight. The white covered everything. But even without makeup you recognize the people you really looked at. She had never really looked at me.

She was looking at the costume. The suitcase. The gear. Her gaze went through me and moved on.

She was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that costs a lot to maintain. The kind you don't see being maintained but you know. Everything had been given care no one in my family had ever given to anything, not even a car.

She wasn't holding the door. She was occupying it. Me, I was on the porch with my shoes too big.

Yellow summer dress. Wrinkled at the left hip. The fabric clung to her thigh. At the edge of the hem a dark mark. A pulled thread. Almost nothing. The kind of flaw you only see if you're looking.

I was looking. With her I had always looked.

She had a son. Five years old. Brandon or Brendan. A B name.

The kid orbited her leg. Cardboard pirate hat. Split plastic sword. He was barking orders at nobody. Audrey's hand passed over his head the way you straighten a cushion.

— Come in. They're in the yard.

I went in.

The house smelled like cake but not butter or sugar. The idea of cake. The surfaces were empty. The angles sharp. Nothing lay around.

On the fridge, magneted photos. Audrey. The husband. Square jaw. Polo shirt. The B kid. A golden retriever. Four faces. The same smile.

The yard was something else.

Lawn cut close, watered on a timer. Kids screaming. Cups everywhere. Balloons. A cooler sweating in a corner. Three kids fighting over a can.

The mothers stood along the fence in groups of two or three. They spoke low. A laugh fell now and then.

I set the suitcase on the patio. I took out the pump, the balloons, the cards, the scarves. Everything fit in a suitcase bought for twelve dollars at the Goodwill in Breaux Bridge. It still closed if you didn't insist on the left latch.

First balloon. Yellow. The latex rubbed against my split lips. I twisted. I knotted. A dog.

The B kid went woooow.

I said for you, champ.

He took the balloon the way you take what you're owed. Five years old and already the reflex of holding out your hand without looking at the one who's giving.

The kids pressed up against me. Warm shoulders against my legs. Fingers on my sleeve, on the suitcase.

Audrey stood three meters away. She smiled. But it wasn't a smile. She was monitoring her own party.

I had loved her at fourteen.

It settled in the gut, in the throat. At night you lay there with the smell of Pleasant Wound in your nose. She wasn't there. The smell wasn't either. It was your body remaking her from memory. Like a magic trick nobody taught you. And you lay there listening to the trucks on the 90 and you thought about the way she set her bag down on the cafeteria table.

She was a sophomore. I was a freshman.

She had that thing. A gravity. Boys fell apart. Girls went rigid. Audrey existed and the others went into orbit.

I watched her in the hallways. It was my main activity. I watched her cross the parking lot, get into her mother's car, slam the door, disappear.

She knew I existed.

If she hadn't known I could've told myself I was invisible. But she knew. The way you know there's a stain on a wall.

When she looked at me it was for the bit.

Forrest Gump.

Because I ran funny. She threw it out without effort. The girlfriends laughed. The table laughed.

And I laughed too.

You learn early. You put the laugh before the pain and the pain looks less serious. You laugh first. You laugh louder. I laughed and I told myself: I'm holding the wheel. I'm in control. Look at me controlling it. Look how I take the hit and smile and how nobody knows.

One night in November. Sixteen. Three warm beers swallowed fast in Tyler's car in the parking lot.

At Tyler DuBois's. The music too loud. The pool's blue light on the walls. Chlorine. Sweat. Beer on the concrete. Bodies everywhere.

Audrey near the pool. Two girlfriends next to her. A red cup in her hand.

I walked toward her.

The beers had lied to me. You can. You're ready.

— Audrey. I love you.

Like that. Raw.

For half a second I believed it would work.

She laughed.

Not a surprised laugh. A laugh for the others.

— Oh my God, Forrest Gump is in love with me.

The laughter took off. The girlfriends. The circle. Further off the ones who didn't even know why they were laughing. In thirty seconds the whole party knew.

Two weeks later Trent Guidry cornered me in the basement of his brother's frat house.

Trent Guidry. A linebacker body on short legs. Shoulders that entered rooms before he did.

The concrete sweated. Bulbs hung from bare wires. Stale beer. Mold. And underneath it, the concrete that sweats.

He slammed me against the wall. His hands on my shoulders. The concrete in my back was cold and rough through the T-shirt.

— You love my girlfriend, Forrest?

Softly. It's the softness that kills.

He lit a Marlboro Red. The Zippo went clack. He smoked slowly watching me.

The ember swelled. Bright orange. Almost white at the center.

He pinched the cigarette between thumb and index, flipped it, and set it on my chest. Just under the left collarbone. Not fast. He set it down like you set a finger to mark a spot.

The cotton melted first. Then the ember touched skin.

It smelled like meat. Living meat. And over it the tobacco.

The pain was a white point. A one-centimeter circle.

I smiled.

Not a choice. A reflex.

Trent stepped back. Something moved in his eyes. Disgust.

He crushed the cigarette into the concrete.

— You're a fucking freak, Fontenot.

He went back upstairs. The door opened at the top. Music. The door shut.

I stayed there. My cheek against the cold wall.

A few months later a bottle went around at Tyler's. Smirnoff. Label half peeled off. A circle of red cups.

The bottle landed on me. Then on Audrey.

A silence. Eyes slid from the bottle to Audrey, from Audrey to me.

Audrey looked at me.

— No.

One word. No sorry.

Someone laughed too loud. The bottle spun fast. The circle breathed.

Ten minutes later the bottle landed on Audrey and some guy from another school.

— OK.

They went into the closet under the stairs. They took their time.

I stared at the hardwood floor. My cup of warm beer in my hand.

I made a joke.

Nobody laughed.

College crumbled. One missed class then another then a letter from the registrar set on the table without being opened.

Then a warehouse. Night shift on Evangeline Thruway. Pallets. Splinters. A foreman named Dale who said faster. The air smelled like wet cardboard.

Then Subway. The green apron. The smell of bread that wasn't bread.

Then jobs without names.

One night I opened YouTube. A guy set a quarter in his hand, closed it, blew, opened. The coin was gone.

I watched twenty times.

After enough something happened. Not in the head. In the fingers. The coin's tilt. The quarter-turn of the wrist. The moment the eye goes left and the coin goes right.

I spent the night in front of the bathroom mirror. Buzzing neon. My hands worked. Miss. Miss. Miss. Then not miss anymore.

The coin vanished when I told it to. It came back when I told it to.

It was the only thing that obeyed.

At the end of the birthday Audrey paid me in cash. Four twenties in a white envelope. She handed it to me with her fingertips.

— You were great. The kids loved it.

She added a twenty. A tip.

A hundred dollars.

She said she'd recommend me to her friends. I packed up the gear. I closed the right latch. Not the left. The left hadn't closed right since Easter.

— Can I use the bathroom?

— Of course. Upstairs on the right.

I went up.

Upstairs the house held its tongue. Clean hallway. Light carpet. Frames with sailboats.

The master bedroom at the end. Door ajar. Bed made. White pillows. Photos: Audrey and the husband in Cancún.

I touched nothing in the bedroom.

The bathroom. White tile. Oatmeal soap.

I knelt in front of the bathtub.

The drain had a chrome cover. I lifted it. Soap scum and hair. I pulled. A long hair. Blond.

I separated it with my work fingers. Under the light it had a golden sheen.

For her that hair was trash.

I wound it around my index finger. I slid it into the inside pocket of my clown jacket. Where I keep the gaffed cards.

I flushed. An alibi sound.

I went back down. I said thank you, happy birthday to the kid. My voice was normal. My hands were normal. My smile was painted.

Audrey waved at me from the yard. Four fingers.

I got into the Civic. The engine coughed.

I went home.

It was Jean-Marc who taught me certain things.

Jean-Marc Sylvain. Jérémie, Haiti. Roommate for seven months. Apartment on Duson Road. Mold. Reheated gumbo. Laundry forgotten in the machine.

Jean-Marc worked nights as a nursing aide in a nursing home on Ambassador Caffery. He left at ten in blue scrubs, came back in the morning smelling of disinfectant.

In the evening before work he did what he called his service. He said houngan the way you say plumber. Rum poured on the floorboards. White supermarket candles. Creole words murmured low.

One night I heard someone crying through the wall.

Not Jean-Marc.

Someone else.

A sound you explain in the morning with a faucet. A sound you can't explain at night.

One evening I was drunk. Not much. Enough. I laughed.

Jean-Marc looked at me.

— Make fun of me if you want. But not of that.

No anger. A line drawn.

Later he talked. He said you negotiate with forces that don't owe you anything.

— The universe is a scale. You put something on one side, you get something on the other. But you're not the one who sets the exchange rate. You think you're giving a coin. They take an arm.

I kept the sentence. I always keep what scares me.

That night I sat on the kitchen floor.

Cold linoleum. Back against the cabinet under the sink. I shoved the bills, the cans, the pizza box aside.

I drew a vévé with a black marker. In the center, Audrey's hair. A white candle from Dollar General. Salt in a circle. A bowl of tap water. The bottle of Maker's Mark.

I drank.

I took a small kitchen knife. Black plastic handle. I set it on my left pinky. I flipped the blade. Edge against skin.

I pressed.

The skin opened. The red inside showed.

The pain came after. A hot buzzing in the finger.

Blood ran onto the wood. Reached the bowl. The water turned pink.

I said the Creole words. I pronounced them wrong. I pronounced them the way you pray when you've never prayed.

The candle trembled. A draft. Outside a dog barked once.

Nothing happened.

The kitchen stayed the kitchen. The forty-watt bulb. The salt. The blood in the bowl. The blond hair in the middle of the drawing. And me on the floor with a bleeding finger clamped in a dish towel.

I lay down on the linoleum.

Cold under my cheek.

The finger didn't heal.

On the fifth day the cut was still open. The edges went purple. A yellow ooze appeared. Thick.

I didn't have gauze. I made a bandage with toilet paper and black electrical tape.

I worked. I blew up balloons with the other fingers. The pinky folded in. The kids saw nothing.

On the eighth day the finger was black.

Not dark. Black. The skin had stopped being skin. The nail came loose.

And it stank.

Sweet.

That's the thing about rotting flesh. It isn't honest. It's cloying. The smell stuck to my clothes, my hands, the Civic's steering wheel. I put Old Spice over it. The smell went through.

I kept going.

On the tenth day I drove past Audrey's house.

There was yellow tape.

Police tape.

Shutters drawn. A cop car parked crooked.

A neighbor on the opposite sidewalk. Filthy white poodle. Pink leash. Puffy eyes.

I parked. Lowered the window.

— What happened?

— The husband. He woke up in the night. He killed them. Her and the kid. With a kitchen knife.

A kitchen knife.

— He called 911 after. He said he didn't remember anything.

She shook her head.

— You could hear them screaming from the street. Terror screams. We thought it was a fire.

I rolled the window up.

I sat there a moment. Engine running.

Under the bandage my finger throbbed.

I went home.

Jean-Marc was sleeping. Or praying.

I sat on the bed. I took off the bandage. The toilet paper was stuck to the skin. I pulled.

The finger was black up to the second knuckle. The smell filled the room.

Fresh toilet paper. Tape. Three layers.

At the ER the doctor said gangrene. He said necrosis.

— You should have come earlier.

He asked why I'd waited.

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

They cut the finger off on a Tuesday.

I woke up with nine fingers and a white dressing.

A week later the dressing stank.

The black line had passed the stump.

Same waiting room. Same plastic chairs.

The doctor said they had to amputate the hand. Maybe the forearm. He said the blood was poisoning.

— We have to operate fast. There's a risk.

— What risk?

A percentage.

The operating room was cold.

Neon lights in the ceiling. The same as in the warehouse. The same as at Subway.

The anesthesiologist arrived. Small. Precise gestures. She put a hand on my right forearm. The one that wasn't dying.

— Count down from ten.

— Ten.

She put the mask on.

The rubber touched my mouth.

Latex.

— Five.

I thought of Jean-Marc. You think you're giving a coin. They take an arm.

— Four.

I had wanted harm. You can strip away the ritual, the candle, the salt, the words. This remains. I had wanted it to fall.

Audrey is dead. The B kid is dead. The husband in the polo is in a cell.

And I was there with an arm rotting.

— Three.

The ceiling slid. The neon left trails.

— Two.

My mouth moved against the latex.

— One.

All my life I've blown. Into balloons. Into jokes. Into smiles. The world took every breath and made shapes out of it. Dogs and swords and giraffes and laughter. I blew. So much. Until blood. Until there was no breath left. Every shape ended up disappearing.

Now the world blows into me. Now you know.