The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (30 page)

The boy looks up at the Minotaur. Surprisingly there is no fear in his face. The Minotaur knows boy behavior. He understands the desire to burrow, to hide, to root, to creep. He knows, too, the consequences of flawed judgment. Many times over the centuries the Minotaur has been caught unaware in the zippers of the hand-me-downs, the habits, the vestments of strangers.

The boy flinches a little when the Minotaur reaches out, but within seconds the hair is untangled and he is free. The boy grins, then disappears between the rows of pants.

The Minotaur hears the mother greet him.

“Goddamn it, Kenny! Where you been?”

The redhead rounds the aisle again.

“This should do us,” she says. “Come on.”

“Goddamn it, Kenny! Get back here!”

The Minotaur stands to follow the girl, then feels a tug on his pant leg. It’s Kenny. The boy is holding up something for the Minotaur. It’s a Minotaur. Tiny. Plastic. Wielding a bloody ax. Well muscled and wearing very little.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

The boy clearly intends the toy as a gift, so the Minotaur takes it, reaches to pat him on the head.

“Aww,” Holly says. “So sweet.”

“Kenny,” the mother shrieks from the end of the row, “get away from that!”

Kenny smiles then runs to his mother.

“Bitch,” Holly says. She winks at the Minotaur. “Ready?”

He’s not sure what to expect. He says yes anyway.

The lone Goodwill employee is at the register by the front doors checking out Kenny’s mother, who seems to be haggling over every price tag. Holly leads the Minotaur to the rear of the store, to the
Fitting Rooms
sign. The door is open, flanked on one side by a pegboard wall hung with mismatched crutches and on the other by bookshelves densely packed with pulp novels, pages yellowed, spines cracked and peeling.

“Hubba hubba ding ding,” the girl says, and it makes as much sense as the rest of his day, so the Minotaur doesn’t question.

They go through the door to find themselves in a narrow windowless room with another door on the opposite wall that opens to the delivery lane at the rear of the shopping center. For the Goodwill this back door serves as the port for all donations.

“Look at all this,” the girl says with no small awe. “So much . . . stuff.”

Indeed,
stuff
, the donations, nearly fill the room, spilling out through the open door and into the drive. Furniture, electronics, an old aluminum walker sitting atop an old aluminum adult potty chair. Baby goods galore. Boxes of this, stacks of that, all waiting to be processed, to be valued and either priced for sale or discarded.
Humans
. The Minotaur thinks it but doesn’t speak.

Holly, distracted, fascinated, pokes around while the Minotaur clings to his several pairs of blue pants. Holly picks up Bronco Bob from a cluttered Formica table. It says so on his cowboy shirt. Bronco Bob is a cowboy doll made of rubber and cloth. Bronco Bob wears boots and jeans and a red bandana. He sits on a plastic bull, the bull’s face frozen in a perpetual snort. Bronco Bob sits on the bull with one arm raised high. A thin metal axle runs through the bull’s belly and into Bronco Bob’s boots at the ankles. The bull is mounted on a post that also runs into its gut and into a faux stone base, and Bronco Bob is upright because of it. An on/off switch is on the bull’s haunch.

Holly flips the switch. Bronco Bob is in trouble. Something has gone awry in the circuitry. Bronco Bob starts jumping spastically, furiously, up down up down up down, shrieking manically from a tiny speaker inside his cowboy shirt, “Yee-haw, yee-haw, yee-haw!” Up down up down. “Yee-haw, yee-haw!” Holly startles, laughs, and drops the toy to the floor, where Bronco Bob continues to twitch.

The Minotaur puts his boot down and grinds his foot until Bronco Bob is still.

“Sorry,” Holly says. “I couldn’t help myself.”

The Minotaur understands fully.

“Are you ready?” Holly asks.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. He is.

She isn’t. The redhead’s focus is taken hostage one more time.

“What the fuck?” she says.

She lifts a tattered and mud-colored bath towel from whatever it drapes. It’s a display case, a cabinet of three wooden shelves and a glass door, meant to be hung on a wall but leaning instead against one. Practically hidden, intentionally so.

Holly lifts the case and props it on a table. Dust billows. Dust settles. Holly peers in. The Minotaur waits. That’s the point.

“Ha!” she says. “They’re shitting! Look!”

The Minotaur looks. It’s true. The cabinet shelves hold a dozen or so figurines, all squatting with pants down or skirts hiked, all hovering over tiny brown coils. Holly is so excited she can barely contain herself.

“There’s the pope!” she says. “And Betty Boop. And Jesus. Michael Jackson. Darth Vader!”

True. They are all there, squatting and defecating.

“That’s Marilyn Monroe, I think,” Holly says. “But who’s that? And that? And that?”

A little brass plaque is tacked to the case’s top edge. Holly licks her thumb and wipes the tag.

“El Ca-ga-ner,” she reads, then again. “El Caganer.”

“I wonder . . . ,” she says.

“People are so weird,” she says.

“God love a freak,” she says.

“We might have to come back for this,” she says.

Okay. The Minotaur will come and go as often as she asks.

“Okay,” Holly says, and winks. “Stop your dillydallying.”

She points to the fitting rooms, three stalls lining the far wall. The dividing panels don’t quite reach the floor and leave substantial gaps at the ceiling, but they provide a modicum of privacy. How much more is needed? The door to the first stall stands ajar.

“In you go,” she says.

In he goes. Narrow benches span both of the side walls. A cloudy mirror hangs opposite the door; half a dozen wire hangers rattle on a hook when she closes it. Everything is pale white except for her toes. The Minotaur can see them, in all their celestial glory, poking beneath the door. He wonders if she can see his horns overtop.

“Give ’em up,” she says, one lean and freckled arm reaching over the door panel.

“Unngh?”

“Your pants,” she says. “Give me your pants.”

The stall is tight, corral-like. But the Minotaur’s balance is good. He drapes the torn trousers over the door.

“These first,” she says.

To accommodate the span of his horns the Minotaur stands sideways in the stall. Even so, it is a small balancing act to get them on. He grunts into the task, and as soon as he tugs the zipper up she opens the door.

“Let me see,” she says.

The Minotaur stands as still as possible.

“No,” she says. “You look like an old man.”

She closes the door, and they make another exchange.

“Nope,” she says. “Boy Scout if I ever saw one.”

The third try gets close. The Minotaur opens the door to the stall himself, clutching at the waistline.

“Not bad,” she says, “but way too saggy. Hang on for minute, I’ll get you a . . .”

Holly speaks as she leaves the room, so the Minotaur doesn’t hear what it is she’s gone in search of. He is hopeful. Expectant, even. And a little disappointed when she returns with just a belt. A leather belt. He buckles it.

“Oh, no,” she says. “Now you look like a really old-man Boy Scout. Give them to me.”

When the door is closed the Minotaur strips down again.

“Wait there,” she says through the panel.

Where would he go? The Minotaur is not ashamed of his human side, his man half. But walking around in his underwear, socks, and shoes seems unwise. The Minotaur sits on one of the benches and lets his heavy head lean back against the dividing wall. He hears laughter out in the store; he’s pretty sure it’s Holly. He sits. He doesn’t look in the mirror. He worries briefly about Tookus at the gates of hell. He sits still. He sits. Still. Until Holly returns.

The Minotaur expects a pair of blue pants to appear overtop. But she shoves open the stall door, laughing.

“I love this place,” she says. “Let’s stay here forever.”

“Mmmnn, okay.”

“Look!” Holly says with unfettered glee. “I found the best stuff.”

Holly comes into the stall where the Minotaur sits. The stall cannot possibly contain her big energy, her real body, all motion and scent. There is no room for the Minotaur to breathe. He drowns willingly. She stands facing him, puts a shopping basket on the opposite bench. Her leg brushes the Minotaur’s bare thighs.

“Ta-da,” she says, reaching into the basket, pulling out a hand puppet. “It’s Picasso! Tooky loves puppets.”

Holly parts the puppet’s fabric orifice, squints, peers inside. She blows two hard puffs into the opening.

“Oooo,” Holly says in a strange accent of dubious origin. “Meester Pablo likes it when you do that.”

She puts the puppet on her hand, oohing and cooing in the voice.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, not sure how best to participate in the charade.

“Well, hello there, big boy,” the puppet says. “Pablo likes your horns. Much much. Very much.”

She reaches out. The little puppet hands stroke the Minotaur’s horns from base to tip. First one, then the other. Then again. The Minotaur sits very still, watches her toes, watches the soft paunch of her belly shift beneath her white shirt. Picasso gives him a quick peck on the snout, then gets impaled fully onto a horn.

“Perfect,” Holly says, adjusting the puppet’s face. “Perfect. And for my next trick . . .”

This time, she has a shiny black sphere and another affected voice.

“The Magic 8 Ball knows all, tells all. Quick, think of a question, but don’t tell me.”

She upends the plastic ball, and they both watch the die float to the little round window, its answer bobbing gently in the ink-black liquid:
REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN
.

“Hmmm,” she says. “Very mysterious.”

But there was no question. The girl moved too fast for the Minotaur.

“My turn,” she says.

She doesn’t tell him the question, nor does she share the answer, but she laughs loudly and looks hard at the Minotaur. Holly sets the Magic 8 Ball on the bench opposite him.

“Are you ready for the next?” Holly asks.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

She reaches into the shopping basket. Hesitates.

“Are you really ready?”

The Minotaur has every intention of answering. He wonders what the Magic 8 Ball would say. He wonders how many freckles her body carries. He wonders when she last bathed.

“Are you?” she asks. “Guess what it is.”

The Minotaur is not good at guessing.

“No,” she says. “Don’t guess. Close your eyes.”

The Minotaur is good at closing his eyes.

But the Minotaur is slow, and Holly is eager in her command. She is already unbuttoning and pulling her pants down before she finishes speaking. “Don’t guess” comes as the pants are somewhere down her long thighs, their apple white flesh. By “Close your eyes,” the Minotaur sees, without meaning to, the absence of panties, the thatch of red hair bursting from between her legs, nothing less than a conflagration. The Minotaur is good at closing his eyes. He does so.

Rustle, rustle.

“Now,” she says. “Now you can look.”

The Minotaur is okay at looking.

She stands before him in full nun’s regalia. White coif, holy habit, the scapular. She stands, palms up and out, fingers cocked precisely in the gesture of wonder.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” she says in her Picasso voice. “Something about fruits and wombs.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

“One at a time!” another voice says, from outside the stall. “That’s the rule! Only one at a time!”

The Minotaur sees the thick-soled black shoes of the Goodwill employee beneath the door.

“We got rules,” she says.

Her wide splay-footed stance makes the Minotaur want to be nice. To follow the rules.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” the girl says, trying hard not to laugh.

“Let me beat you with my rod.”

“We got rules,” the employee says. “Only one at a time!”

The Minotaur starts to speak, but Holly puts her fingers to his lips. The gesture of declamation.

“My boyfriend,” she says, cocking her head upward, speaking over the partition. “My boyfriend’s crippled. My boyfriend, he’s blind.”

They hear the employee grunt. She stays just outside the stall door.

“He’s a soldier,” Holly says. “A veteran of war. The things he’s sacri ficed for this country . . . You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The woman harrumphs. “We got rules,” she says, but she says it on the way out of the room.

“Shhh,” the girl says to the Minotaur. “I think she’s gone.”

She takes up the Magic 8 Ball, consults it again, and once again keeps the results to herself. But she seems both surprised and pleased.

“One more,” she says. “I’ve saved the best for last.”

“Close your eyes,” she says. “Don’t look.”

The Minotaur listens to nun’s habit come off and pool on the floor. He knows those long legs are there, and the rest of her body. Naked and right there. The Minotaur will not look without permission.

“Mind your p’s and q’s,” she says.

“Forgive us, Father, for we have . . .” She laughs. “Shhh.”

The stall door opens, then closes quickly. The Minotaur hears her chuckle, rustling into the next incarnation.

“Don’t look,” she says.

The Minotaur feels her hand under his chin. She lifts his head, his long snout. She steps close. She steps between his open legs, but it is not her naked flesh against his bare thighs. She steps closer, takes him gently by both horns, pulls his face into her body. But it is not her naked breasts that he nuzzles. Then she steps back, out of his touch.

“Now,” she says. “Look.”

It’s a fur coat. Long and brown. Mottled and splotchy. But her red hair, the finch eggs, those green eyes, painted toenails, the body whole, contained by the coat: the beast is stunning.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“They’ve got rules here,” the redhead says, smiling. “Forgive us our trespasses.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“Close your eyes,” she says. “Don’t look.”