On the third call someone answered the phone. I said, really fast, that I loved him, and that I was sorry for making him upset and saying that he didn’t know how to use a condom. But it wasn’t Marxy.
“He needs time,” Pearl said. “Stop calling, Zelda.” Then she hung up.
The next time I called, the phone kept ringing.
More memories started coming, and when they did I started to feel ashamed.
For example, one rule is that you are not supposed to make fun of how people look when they are naked. And I accidentally did that to Marxy. He had also worn his Batman tie, which was not very sexy, and I had worn my underwear. When I thought about it, I was angry that he did not try harder to be sexy, and then I felt bad again for laughing at how his penis looked.
AK47 brought me coffee with chocolate powder in it and told me to breathe.
I asked when we were going to tell Gert. “I have no idea.” We sipped our chocolate coffees. “Not yet, anyway. I need a game plan.”
* * *
AK47 told me to let her handle Gert, and when we got home they got into a fight, though not as big as when Alf came into the apartment and Gert went Berserker. There was not much yelling this time. Instead of yelling, Gert got quiet and seemed more sad than angry.
Gert was mostly sad because we didn’t tell him that Marxy and I were having sex.
“It’s like you cut me out,” he said.
AK47 plopped next to him on the couch. “Well, we sort of did. You don’t exactly have the best track record for calm under fire.”
I said, “It was my decision to have sex. I am not a car you drive. You do not control me.”
Gert got quiet.
Neither of us told him how it went badly. He did not need to know everything, AK47 said.
Gert calmed down and then apologized to AK47 and apologized to me.
“I just…” he started saying, “I don’t like not being able to help. You know?” He was picking at a string on his jeans.
AK47 nodded and said she knew that. “It’s okay. We know you just want to do what’s best for Zelda.”
“But sometimes I have to decide what’s best for me,” I said. “Even if it’s wrong.”
Gert sighed and sat up. “So how did it go?”
AK47 and I exchanged glances. “Well, nobody’s first time is all that great,” she said.
Gert nodded and said, “You can say that again.”
* * *
All that week Marxy did not call or come to the Community Center, which made me sad. None of the things I liked to do were fun anymore, including basketball.
On the court I decided that I wouldn’t play any basketball games, any real games, until Marxy came, since I didn’t want to be playing when he walked in and my heart kept hurting. I wanted to be able to run toward him, like in movies.
I had a present for Marxy, a printed paper from the Internet of his favorite basketball player, Larry Bird, making a shot to win a game. In Kepple’s Guide to the Vikings I learned about people called þræll, who were basically slaves who owed people debts. They worked for the person until they didn’t owe anything anymore. I wanted to show Marxy that I was willing to work as a þræll until he was ready to forgive me. Slavery is evil, which is something I learned in school. But when someone owes something, they should pay the person they owe back. I wanted to pay Marxy back.
I wanted to be moving really slowly, running toward Marxy, holding the Larry Bird photo in my hand. His face would light up and he would say, in Viking, that he loves me and isn’t mad and that we are two Vikings, just like always, in battle together.
Instead, I sat on the side of the gym, on the bench, while everyone played. There weren’t enough spots on the teams for everyone, so people subbed in and out. I was the only one who didn’t want to get subbed into the game. I just held on to a ball and squeezed it, moving my fingers all along it, along the skin, which felt like an old crusty orange.
Hamsa subbed out of the game and sat down next to me.
“You aren’t playing,” Hamsa said.
“I’m watching the game.”
Then he got serious and punched my shoulder. “Marxy’s not coming back because of you. That’s why Marxy isn’t here. He’s my best friend and you fucking fuck-dicked him.”
There was a ball near the bench we were sitting on, so I got up and threw it at Hamsa so hard it hit him in the arm. His hands didn’t go up fast enough to catch the ball. The ball bounced off of him and hit the ground and he said something not in English.
“Fuck-dick,” Hamsa said, and pushed me.
Before anyone knew anything, we were fighting. Not like Vikings, not honorably. We were grabbing onto each other and pushing and pulling. When Hamsa’s arm came close to me I bit it as hard as I could. Hamsa screamed and pulled his arm back.
I don’t know if Vikings bit others in battle or not, since they had swords and didn’t need to. It did not seem like the honorable thing to do in battle, since animals bite, not warriors. Berserkers would do anything to win, though, so in the end biting Hamsa to win the fight was okay. Gert says that in a fight there are no rules.
“Break it up,” Big Todd said.
One of the volunteer adults took Hamsa to get his arm fixed and to stop the bleeding. People have germs in their mouths, just like animals, and Hamsa’s arm needed to be cleaned so that he wouldn’t get the germs from my mouth and get sick and die.
“Come on, now,” the volunteer said. He was the father of one of the retards who I didn’t know. He put his arm around Hamsa and told Hamsa to hold his hand over where I had bit him. “I know it hurts,” he told Hamsa.
Yoda and the others were watching Hamsa cry. Then they watched me. Their mouths were open, like they had questions to ask and couldn’t remember how to ask them.
“Stop looking at me,” I said, since their staring made me feel like I did whenever Gert and I would go somewhere new and people would look at me and think, What is wrong with her?
Big Todd ran a hand through his hair. No fighting was one of the Rules of the Community Center that was near the top.
“He called me a fuck-dick,” I said.
“Zelda. The office. Okay?”
I sat in the office until the end of the hour, in the same chair with Larry Bird. In that time Big Todd came in and told me that I had wounded Hamsa, and I had hurt his feelings too.
“You acted like a villain,” he said. “Right?”
He was correct. But it was actually worse than being a villain: I had acted like a Berserker, like Gert when he attacked Alf, who is smaller and not able to defend himself. I had acted like Uncle Richard when he smashed the bottle on Gert. My list of THINGS LEGENDS NEED was becoming a list of THINGS THAT VILLAINS DO.
Before Hamsa left, I wanted to make sure that I apologized. Hamsa was waiting by the Community Center door with his uncle. He had a Band-Aid on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Hamsa,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Hamsa’s uncle gave him a push. Hamsa looked at his uncle and then said, “I accept your apology.”
Hamsa’s family knows what it’s like to be different, according to AK47. People have even bigger problems with Muslims than they do with gay people like Big Todd or people who dress like thugs, the way Gert dresses. Hamsa has two problems: he is retarded, and he is Muslim. Ever since villains flew the planes into the towers, everyone has started hating Muslims.