Weird Girl (5 page)

If she just followed the fence, Cleo knew that she would
find the house eventually. She just had to decide which direction to take in
order to make her journey as short as possible. Unfortunately, “short” is
relative when it involves a really long fence and a child who has been hiking
and playing all day. Cleo got tired.

She decided to sit against a tree and rest her eyes for a
minute. When she woke up, she was in a very uncomfortable wooden chair in the
tiniest room she had ever seen in her life. It was so cluttered, it took her a
full minute to figure out where the window was. She squinted through the
dimness and decided that not only was the window filthy, but it was also dark
outside.

5

“Oh, so you’re awake now,” said a voice from the shadows.

Cleo tried to stand up, but her ankles were tied to the legs
of her chair. Across the room, a large, dark blob started to move. A match
flared, revealing a man that Cleo had never seen before. He lit an antique oil
lamp and carried it toward her.

The first thing that she noticed was that he was shirtless.
The second was his odor, a combination of tobacco smoke, alcohol, and sweat
(with underlying notes of perfume and gasoline). He had the hairiest chest that
Cleo had ever seen (not that she had seen very many in her lifetime).

“Well, aren’t you a pretty pretty?” he said. She noticed
that his teeth were mustard yellow, and his breath was intensely bad. She
leaned closer and sniffed. Sardines, she decided, and black coffee. The man
cocked his head to one side and looked confused, as though this scene wasn’t
playing out the way he’d imagined it.

He reached out and quickly swept the contents off of a
crooked pine table. Cleo flinched as glass shattered on the floor. He pulled
the table closer to her and put the lamp on it. “So’s you can see what I’m
doing,” he said with a sneer.

Cleo found her voice. “What’s your name?” she asked.

The man leaned in closer, until his nose nearly touched
hers. He caught a lock of her hair between his filthy fingers and caressed his
cheek with it before replying, “Santo.”

“Saint,” she whispered.

“What?” asked the man.

Cleo cleared her throat and started again. “Santo means
“saint,” or actually, it describes a wooden figure of a saint.”

The man again looked confused for a few seconds before
recovering his sinister expression. “Oh, I’m no saint,” he said. He moved
closer, until his mouth was right beside Cleo’s ear. “I’m a nightmare for
little girls lost in the woods.”

“I wasn’t lost,” replied Cleo. “I just got tired.”

Exasperated, Santo stood up and ran a hand through his
greasy black hair. “Aren’t you afraid yet?” he asked.

Cleo thought for a moment before replying, “Not really.”

He suddenly dropped to his knees and grabbed the arms of
Cleo’s chair. “Well, you’re gonna be!” he screamed.

“Did you get my backpack?” Cleo asked.

He pointed to an overstuffed chair in the corner. The
backpack was there. “Nothing in there is gonna save you, pretty,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t need anything,” said Cleo, “but I would like to
offer you a breath mint. Or twenty.”

He stared at her.

“They’re in the front zipper pocket, in a little metal box,”
she said sweetly. “Help yourself.”

Santo clenched his fist as though he was going to strike
her, but stood up and backed away slowly. He pinched the bridge of his nose
between thumb and forefinger, and Cleo wondered…
Why do adults always do
that?

With a deep sigh, he opened his eyes and looked at her. His
tongue darted out of his mouth and he licked his lips slowly, all the while
maintaining eye contact. “I’m gonna teach you about fear, little pretty,” he
said as he reached for a scarred wooden tool box. He put the box in the seat of
the overstuffed chair and opened the latches. He reached into a pile of clutter
on a nearby shelf, hit a button on an ancient black stereo, and upbeat techno music
suddenly entered the room. He grinned as he slowly opened the box and reached
for a small metal tube, his head moving to the beat of the song. Turning toward
her, he unbuckled his belt with one hand. He held up the tube and twisted the
bottom until a bright red cylinder emerged from the top. Then, in three expert
strokes, he applied the lipstick to his mouth before pressing his lips together
to even the distribution of color. He put the lipstick on the table and then
quickly drew his leather belt from the loops of his pants and snapped it
against the table like a whip. Cleo jumped at the sound, and Santo smiled. “Are
you paying attention, little pretty?” he asked.

“I don’t think red is your color,” she replied.

He scowled and unzipped his trousers. “Oh, I beg to differ,”
he said with a sneer. “I think red’s gonna be a special color for both of us
tonight.” He reached back into the tool box and withdrew another metal
container. Moving with the beat of the music, he dipped each index finger into
the container and, making sure that Cleo was watching, moved both fingers in
concentric circles on his pectorals.

“What are you doing?” asked Cleo. This seemed to break his
concentration a little bit.

“I’m rouging my nipples! What does it look like?” he
screamed.

“You really don’t have to yell,” replied Cleo. “I’m just
right here.”

This time, Santo clenched both fists and closed his eyes. He
muttered something under his breath, and then returned to the wooden box. The
song changed to something a little slower, and he adjusted his movements to
match the new rhythm. “I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but you’re never
gonna be the same after we’re done here,” he said as he skillfully applied
turquoise shadow above both of his eyes. He dropped the makeup onto the table
and seductively removed his pants. Cleo was a bit surprised at the pink
underwear, but she decided not to say anything about it.

He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. The music
changed again to something fast and exotic, and one shoulder began to twitch to
the beat of the song. Soon, the other shoulder joined in. The music started to
crescendo, and suddenly, Santo’s chest was quickly shimmying back and forth.
His pelvis started to move in slow figure-eights.

Wide-eyed, Cleo couldn’t help but stare at the pink satin
covered bulge as it gyrated in front of her face. He was covered in a light
sheen of sweat by now, his ruby red nipples standing out against the mat of
dark chest hair. When he caught her looking at his chest, he winked and ran a
finger down the trail of hair that ran to his belly button and down to the
waistband of his panties. The song changed again, this time to a hip hop beat,
and Santo turned and furiously booty-popped for three and a half minutes
straight.

“Now do you know what fear smells like?” he asked, panting.
Sweat trickled through his chest hair, making red rivulets down his abdomen as
it liquefied the nipple rouge.

“Where did you learn to dance?” asked Cleo.

He put in a different CD and started a one-man rumba. This
segued into salsa, and soon Santo was languidly dancing a tango with a kitchen
broom. Every time he would stop to ask if Cleo was afraid, she would respond
with a question, and Santo would begin a new dance in reply.

“Why did you rouge your nipples?”

“Do you always wear underwear like that?”

“Have you been to college?”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Do you like dogs?”

“How do you feel about shrunken heads?”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Do you have any bananas?”

This last one caused him to lose his footing halfway through
a complicated Irish step dance sequence. “What?” he gasped. Then he realized
that the girl was sitting cross legged on his kitchen counter, eating a bowl of
cereal.

“I like bananas on my cereal,” she explained as she took
another bite.

“How did you get over there?” he asked. “You were tied to a
chair.”

“You tied my ankles, but not my hands,” she replied around a
mouthful of cereal. “Kind of a dumb move.”

His oxygen-starved muscles were screaming, and his brain was
having trouble keeping up. How had he missed her untying herself, walking to
the other end of the room, and making a bowl of cereal for herself? “How long
have you been loose?” he asked.

“About two hours,” she said, milk running down her chin.

“Two hours?” he squeaked. “You’ve been eating cereal for two
hours?”

“No,” she said, very slowly, as though she were speaking to
a child. “First, I went to the bathroom. Then, I poked through your medicine
cabinet, dresser, closet, and the pockets of all of your clothes. I spent a
little time moving the furniture out of your way so that you wouldn’t keep
knocking things over, and now I’m eating cereal.”

Santo thought about this, trying to put together a mental
picture of the entire sequence of events. “Wait,” he said. “If you untied
yourself two hours ago, then why are you still here? Why didn’t you escape?”

Cleo slurped the last of the milk from the bowl and wiped
her chin with the back of her hand. “I liked watching you dance,” she said.

This was almost too much for Santo, who had spent the last
six hours trying to dance the child into a frenzy of fear. She was supposed to
be crying, cowering, worrying about what he was going to do to her. He was a
grown man with no pants, who had kidnapped a little girl from the woods. It was
supposed to be about sweat and terror, not a child calmly eating what looked to
be the last of his crispy rice cereal.

He was trying to dredge up some sinister dialogue to get
this thing back on track, when she spoke again. “That one you did in the
middle—can you teach me how to do that?” She mimicked some of the movements so
that he would know which one she was talking about. All other thoughts fled
from his mind. He straightened his spine, walked to the stereo, pushed a few
buttons, and turned up the volume, until a popular nineties song erupted from
the speakers. And they danced.

***

Later, Cleo scribbled furiously in her notebook while Santo
cooked breakfast. When he put the steaming food beside her, she looked up and
said, “Wow, those are really nice plates. Is that real gold?”

He smiled proudly and said, “Yeah, I stole these from a
wedding once. I have a twelve place setting.”

“Do you steal from weddings a lot?” she asked.

Santo started buttering his toast. “Not really,” he said. “I
used to break into houses, mostly.”

He passed a piece of toast to Cleo and slid the butter dish
across the table. She was quiet as she applied butter to bread, but then she
asked, “So, how old were you when you first started stealing?”

“My dad taught me to pick pockets when I was five,” he
replied around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

He swallowed and wiped his mouth with a monogrammed linen
napkin. “It means I took people’s wallets and keys and stuff.”

“Don’t people notice when you take stuff out of their
pockets?” she asked. Santo smiled nostalgically. “Not if you do it right.”

Cleo took a deep breath while she considered her next
question, but before she could ask it, he interrupted her. “So, what’s with the
notebook?”

She looked down at her shorthand. “I like to write down
everything that happens,” she said.

Santo took another bite of eggs before asking, “But, what do
you…
do
with it?”

Cleo shrugged. “I write in it until it’s full, and then put
it on the shelf and start on a new one.”

“So, you don’t let anyone read it?” he asked nervously.

“Well, I read from it every night at dinner with my
parents.” She took a bite of food. “This is really good. What kind of meat is
it?

Santo watched her chew before replying, “Well, there was
this stray litter of puppies that wouldn’t quit making noise under my porch.”

Wide-eyed, she just opened her mouth and leaned forward to
let the partially masticated wad drop back onto her plate. Santo burst into
laughter and took another bite, wiggling his eyebrows and moaning. Cleo just
stared at him, her mouth still open.

Finally, he swallowed the bite and took a sip of juice.
“Really, it’s rabbit,” he said. “I put out traps.”

She narrowed her eyes, gauging his sincerity. “Is that why
your pillows are all made of fur?” she asked.

He pointed at her with his fork. “Hey, I deserve luxury just
like anyone else. I even made a vest.” He jumped up from the table and dug
through a pile of clothes before extracting the item, a patchwork of the varied
shades of rabbit. He put it on. “I like to rub myself,” he said, while running
his hands up and down the front of the vest.

“I like it,” said Cleo. “It especially looks nice with the
satin panties.”

Santo beamed with pleasure and sat back down to attack his
food. When they had finished the meal, he began clearing the table while Cleo
once again updated her notes. After a few moments, she noticed that the room
was extremely quiet. The hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention, and
she slowly turned her head to look over her shoulder. Santo was standing there,
stroking his vest and watching her.

“You know,” he began, “I really kind of like you.”

Cleo’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I like you, too, Santo,” she
said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Santo smiled. “Good. Then maybe you won’t hate me for this,
but I just have to….” He took two quick strides forward and looped his arm
around her neck, cutting off her air supply while his other hand stroked her
hair. “I wish we could have been friends,” he whispered. And then Cleo’s world
turned black.