Toro
To set the record straight, it's nothing like a can-do attitude. Sometimes I have a hard time just tying my shoes in the morning. Julie tells me to get Velcro, I tell her that Velcro is for monkeys in space. She says those monkeys are going to take over the world in a few years. Yeah, well, what can you do?
You know what else is out there, she asks me.
Yeah, I know.
I have no idea what else is out there. Odds are the space monkeys in those Russian satellites have evolved by now. I'm sure we'll find out about them a few years down the road. I, for one, am not worried. We'll have evolved by the time they accumulate the numbers necessary to launch an effective military strike. No more hangnails, acne or lockjaw; completely invulnerable to torn fingernails, clogged pores, and biting things that are too hard to chew. This is especially important if they put buck shots in our food. Unlikely, but even monkeys have heard that there are no rules in war by now.
Sometimes Julie reads me the paper. I tell her I don't care. I like the old wars better anyway, the ones with swords and cannons. The ones that were dignified and chivalrous. She asks me if I would want to fight in a trench. I wouldn't.
We fight civilized wars now, she says.
Maybe, I tell her, but I'm not the right person to ask.
She adjusts my bandages. They're damp and smell like sweat. I feel guilty every time she has to touch them, but she says it's her job. Why did you get into this line of work, I ask. For the adventure. So did I. Was it worth it? Not if I have to wear Velcro shoes.
I didn't know what I was getting into.
Now do you?
She says I am a hero. I blush and she kisses my cheek until it goes away.
Does it hurt?
It does, and she looks like she believes me, so I give her a pat on the head. It's nice when someone believes common sense. Belief reassures that you have control over the immediate, even in the midst of a tailspin. I can hear the stewardess on the intercom, oxygen masks on please.
Julie kisses my upper lip and I consider returning the favour, but it's too nice a gesture to reciprocate without a sense of unoriginality.
What are you going to do when this is all over, she asks me.
Go home.
That sounds nice.
Depends if we win or not.
I think we will, I just don't know what.
She pretends to cry, but I know she just wants to get me wet. I try to brush the tears off her cheek. It's a tricky manoeuvre when your hands are in bandages. Get a tissue, I say, you don't want to spread germs in a hospital. That's not going to make anything better, like cooking a porterhouse for a vegan.
She smiles and kisses my upper lip again. I kiss back to make her feel better. It's the same goddamn story, always fighting goddamn Russian space monkeys.
Julie asks me if I saw who threw it.
Yeah, I tell her.
What did he look like?
Like a seven year old.
She cries again and this time I can't break her of it. I tell her how bad airplane food is and how innately-evil dentists are and how hippos are the rednecks of the animal kingdom, but she keeps sniffing and wiping at her face until her nose turns red.
I ask her to take the bandages off.
She tells me she can't, that there's too great a risk of infection.
Are any fingers still there?
I'm not supposed to say.
Wouldn't you want to know in my position?
I suppose so.
Honestly, I don't want to know. Doesn't matter that much if you've got one finger or none, point is it's fucked. Julie reads my mind and leaves the bandages on.
Can I get a smoke?
No.
Why not?
That stuff will kill you.
Anything will kill you, at least this way I know who's the culprit.
She opens the drawer next to my bed and steals my cigarettes. I tell her I need them for the articles, she laughs, but I'm not getting them back.
Julie asks me if I'm angry.
No.
I'm angry at the kid for pulling the pin. I'm angry at myself for having slow reflexes. I'm angry at Julie for taking my cigarettes. I'm angry at the Russian space monkeys for being so fucking foreign. But that's not all. I'm bitter, confused, self-conscious, terrified, demoralized, disheartened, disillusioned, dismembered, and displaced. I'm underappreciated, feared, forgotten, and I'm in a foreign place where everyone says hate and I don't even know the language. I'm an activist of a different kind in a hospital bed that shouldn't be mine, and I claim that I'm me, but I'm all these things, and not one of them sounds right.
All I needed to say was no to make her understand.
I tell Julie I've made a time machine in my mind and she looks at me like I'm some sort of gimp, which is ridiculous because the world is spinning and I haven't had a drop to drink.
Now I'm reading poetry in the street from a full magazine. Every syllable is a call that doesn't wait for the response and reverberates in free verse, begging for more. The colours are annoyed because any colour will suffice, but all I see is red and all I hear is toro, toro. My voice trembles at the inhale then explodes at the exhale, and I can tell by the thunderous applause that the audience is hanging on my every word.
The boy approaches the stage when my magazine is empty. He tells me he's my biggest fan and asks for my autograph.
Julie isn't impressed by my time machine, it makes her nervous. She thinks I'm going to get lost back there. I tell her that's ridiculous and she takes off my bandages.
The boy tosses me a pen and I pick it up off the ground. I can't give him my autograph. He is my biggest fan.
An odour is slipping out of the left bandage before it is completely unravelled and Julie looks worried. Did you know Velcro was invented for the space shuttle, I ask her. No. It was, not for the monkeys, but I bet they use it too. They are going to base all their technology on Velcro when they evolve. Can you imagine, I ask, an entire civilization based on Velcro?
The boy is frightened and is standing too close. I'm a poet and I'm an activist and all I hear is toro, toro. He is my biggest fan.
They pass over us every hour and a half. I wave to the Russian space monkeys sixteen times a day. Julie asks why I bother. I don't know what else is out there. She doesn't know what I'm talking about, but I don't expect her to.
I hear an inhale from my hand, and I can't throw it back. The boy is standing too close. Move, I say, but all he hears is toro, toro. He is my biggest fan.
The bandages on my right hand are being unwound now. The left is rancid and I don't expect the right to be any better. Julie stops before the final twist. She says she doesn't want me to look for awhile.
The grenade is a dull lump resting against my palm.
My watch beeps an hour and a half later and I wave again. For the first time I take a good look at my hands. Julie cried at first, she is such a crybaby. She can't even tie my shoes without crying.
I remember the exact moment when the grenade exhaled.
Julie kisses me again and again and says how sorry she is. Sorry for what, I ask. She gives me a cigarette.
The boy is standing too close. I can't let go. He is my biggest fan.
I ask her why she changed her mind.
You need the articles.
Please don't let me die.
She is quiet, and for the first time in a long time she doesn't cry. Just read the papers, she says, all the other heroes did.
I can't let go.
Julie's lips whisk the sweat away from the dimple just below my nose.
I can't let go.
You know what else is out there, she asks me.
Yeah, I know. He is my biggest fan.
Now I'm reading poetry in the street from a full magazine and I can't let go, I can't let go, I can't let go
Ian Gammie is currently studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has had flash fiction appear in the Catalonian Review and authored a play performed at the 2009 Denver Thespian Conference. Next year he plans to study at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.