Willie patted the tight curls of her hair. “Well, bless your heart. My hair’s just the same as it ever was.” She was a good deal older than us, somewhere north of seventy, and she used phrases like this. “Did y’all have a good weekend?”
Kirk smiled. I was pretty sure he winked. “We did indeed, Willie. Church in the morning, then we stayed in all last night watching a movie.”
“Which one’s that?”
“Little Women,” Kirk said, quick as you please. “The one with Katharine Hepburn.”
“That’s the best version,” she said, and I felt my heart soar in my chest. I knew she’d like old movies, and not just because she was around when they were new.
Kirk must’ve felt my joy, but instead of squashing it in his usual way, he asked her, “Why don’t you join us for lunch today?”
She pressed her hand to her large bosom. Bosoms—there was something I thought I could work with. One arm, one face, two breasts. What more did a man need?
Willie said, “I’d be delighted.”
“We’ll see you at lunch, then,” Kirk told her, and I guess I must’ve been caught up in staring at her bosoms, because I have no idea what went on before that. Kirk practically had to drag me down the hall.
He told me, “Easy, right?”
I could barely speak. I felt like I was floating across the floor instead of walking. “She’s never talked to me before.”
“Today’s your lucky day, Wayne-o. A new day. Whatever happened last night is over, right? It’s just lunch with Willie, and maybe lunch with her tomorrow, and who knows what will happen after that? You might be holding hands by the end of the week.”
He was right! My head was buzzing with delight. Was this what it felt like to have a woman in your life? Was this what it felt like to know that you were going to have lunch with someone who had bosoms? “We actually spoke, Kirk. We had a conversation with her. We’re going to have lunch with her!”
“We are. She really likes you, Wayne. Did you see how she was looking at you?”
“She was looking at me, wasn’t she?”
“You tiger. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He patted me on my half-shoulder. I can’t lie about this part. I walked past those cubicles lining the operations center with my head held high. I’d never felt so proud of myself before. It’s like my ball dropped or something. I was the King of Dixie.
We sat down at our desk. Kirk opened his briefcase and took out his headphone and pen. I opened my drawer and took out my headphone and pen. It wasn’t until the middle of my first call that I realized it was Kirk who’d talked to Willie. Not me.
“What is it?” he asked, turning his head my way. He had his hand over the mouthpiece on his headphone.
I covered my mouthpiece, too. “You talked to her.”
“She’ll talk to you at lunch. You can even stare at her tits.”
“She’ll talk to you. They always talk to you.”
“Stop sulking like a baby, Wayne. She likes you. Just roll with it. Take advantage of the situation. Think about the future.”
I could hear someone screaming in my earpiece. A woman yelling at me for waking her toddler during his morning nap. I pulled out the jack from the telephone console. In a flash, I saw myself pulling the jack out of the Town and Country’s entertainment system last night. Marmee was crying about Beth’s scarlet fever, and then Wayne was yelling at Mindy about touching me.
Had she touched me? Maybe it was an accident. Maybe her hand had trailed down my chest without her realizing what she was doing. Non-conjoined people probably did that all of the time. A body was a lot to keep up with on your own. Two arms. Two legs. One brain. Maybe her hand brushed my nipple by accident. Let’s face it, no one expected a nipple to be there.
But she had looked at me while she was doing it. She had looked me in the eye, and then…Kirk had killed her. He had beaten her with his fist. He had screamed so loud that our stomach clenched and our heart trembled.
I said, “You talked to Willie so I wouldn’t call the police.”
“She talked back to you. That’s the important part.”
“She barely even knew I was there.”
Kirk started shaking his head. “We’re not turning ourselves in. You’ve been in prison before, Wayne. Do you want to go back?”
“It was jail. Not prison.”
“And you had a good time?” He saw my expression and snorted a laugh. “Hell, Wayne, if you think that’s the only way you’re gonna get laid—”
“Mindy Connor has a family. She said she had a brother. Surely there’s a mother and father. They’re probably wondering where she is right now.”
“They probably think she’s out blowing guys for dime bags.”
“Don’t talk about her that way. She was a human being.”
He went quiet. I could hear the murmur of operators around us, cubicle-bound, solitary people calling young mothers during nap time and asking them if they were happy with their car insurance carrier.
Kirk’s low rumble vibrated in our chest. “She called us freaks.”
“She called you a freak.”
He was quiet again. The hum continued, and I had this image in my head of Mindy Connor and her family. It was Christmas. They were all wearing red and green matching sweaters with reindeer stitched onto the fronts. Their grandmother had knitted them. She was in the old folks’ home now, but they were going to visit her after they said prayers and carved the turkey.
Kirk cleared his throat. “Wayne, just listen to me. It was a mistake. We have to put it behind us.”
“She has a family. A family who wears matching—”
“They look retarded in those sweaters. Come on, the sleeves are too long and the neckline’s a mess.”
He had a point.
“She was a junkie. You saw her arms.” He gave me a meaningful look. “You saw them when she was stroking your shoulder.” I chewed my lip as I straightened my paperclip dispenser. He added, “You’d better be glad I’m not making you go halfsies with me. Twenty-five bucks.”
“Shut up,” I snapped. “And it would be twenty-two-fifty.”
“You felt something, didn’t you? I could feel you feeling it.”
“No.”
“We had a deal. Sunday nights are mine.”
“I went to the club with you.”
“You’re supposed to leave me alone. It’s my only time to be alone.” I could tell he was getting angry again. His fist clenched. His voice became strained. “How many times, Wayne? How many times was I with somebody, but she was secretly with you?”
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Do I?” he demanded. “Is that what you’re really telling me? All those women, and you never felt anything?”
“Now is not the time to discuss—”
“Because I felt something just now, Wayne. I felt it when you were looking at Willie.”
My head snapped around.
His lips were twisted in a nasty grin. “You think I don’t know what you feel when you stare at Willie’s tits?”
“I would prefer you didn’t use such coarse—”