Ivan's Goblin

By Rachelle King

“Penny for your thoughts?” Diane obviously noticed a lapse in my usual verbal outpour. She tossed a penny up meaning to send it somewhere in the vicinity of my reach. It plopped onto the beer-stained and cigarette burned carpet and landed without rolling or bouncing. I thought to myself that it was odd for a penny to just land flat on its head without bouncing up or rolling on its side to an undisclosed location, never to be found again.

“Well, almost a penny, right?” I snickered.

“Yeah, almost,” Diane countered. “So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong or do I hafta pelt you with pennies all night long?”

“Yah,” I said picking up the penny and tossing it on the dilapidated mattress she was perched on, “if you could aim straight, you would.”

“Braw-ha-ha, smart-ass,” she bantered. “If you don’t want to show and tell you can just sit there and fester in all your pretentious contemplation.” She abruptly folded face down into a fetal position and tugged her depraved quilt up over herself. The faded crimson stains from when she cut her arms last year was heaving up and down on her back, mimicking her strained breath. Every time I spotted them I remembered all the shit we have been through together. The cigarettes, the alcohol poisoning, the reasons for the alcohol poisoning, the rationalizing of the alcohol poisoning.

“I was just thinking about my Grandpa,” I retaliated fully expecting her to feel bad about joking around. Diana poked her head out of her blanket shield.

“Oh, that again,” she squawked to the ceiling. “Why did I even bother?” She assaulted me with a raspberry and buried her head back into her covers.

“Ew, I guess you really didn’t care,” I accused flaring my nostrils and dramatically maiming the wall with the backs of my hands.

“It’s, I don’t care,” she corrected, “not I didn’t care. If I didn’t care it would have happened a while ago, wouldn’t it have? And by the way, aren’t you an English major?”

“I’ll have no backtalk from you, minion,” I retaliated bug-eyed and lecturing with my pointed index finger. “Besides, the conversation started awhile ago, so that means when you first asked, you didn’t care."

Before Diane had a chance to return an argument, Ivan burst in, assaulting the room with his usual fanatic presence. “Well, I don’t give a shit about either of your useless bantering,” he boomed. “What I do care about is wasting away my youthful essence at this show tonight, so let’s vamos my dear gringas.”

. . .

“Ouch! Ivan, that’s my foot,” Diane bellowed, pushing Ivan into me.

“Oh God, I am sooo sorry,” he replied rolling his eyes. Generic brand Vodka dribbled down his chin from the last swig he took. He wobbled over to Diane. “Besides, it’s more important for my foot to have a place to stand then it is for your foot, so move it jaína,” he countered while rubbing his butt into her, simultaneously bumping her into me.

“I know you did not just call me a jaína!” Diane jabbed him in the backs of the knees with her talon sharp fingernails.

“Will you two shut the fuck up and stop attempting to plummet us to our deaths,” I interjected while I fumbled to grab hold of the swollen wooded rails as the bridge rattled and swayed. Paint chips peeled off in my hands as I caressed the wood trying to soothe away my anxiety. “That’s comforting,” I said rubbing the paint chips into my palms.

“What are you trippin’ off of?” Ivan replied. “Is you a-scared-ed of heights?” He continued as he transferred the weight of his body back and forth from left to right leg, forcing the bridge to convulse with his movements.

“Stop it, dumb-ass!” I screamed. “This bridge is old and crusty as it is. I don’t want to give it a reason to break to pieces and take us with it.”

“Naw, I know why your panties are twisted all up in ya butt-crack,” he concluded. “Your mad cause we ran into you know who at you know where with that other you know who-type person,” he continued as he collapsed the entire weight of his body around me, squeezing my breasts into my lungs. My eyes began to water at the scent of him.

“No, that’s not why I am pissed, Ivan,” I countered. “I am pissed off because you two freaks are gunna get us killed and shit. You need to put away that damn bottle and sit ya happy-ass down.”

“And sit ya happy as down…blah, blah blah,” he mocked shaking his finger at the vodka bottle. “Fine, I will purge these possible toxins from my body and say farewell,” he continued letting the bottle slip dramatically from his grasp.

“Ivan!” Diane and I both protested. We could hear the bottle croon on its journey to the canyon below until it meant its undeserved death with a shatter.

“Oops,” Ivan gurgled.

“Damn-it, Ivan,” Diane scolded in a lowed voice. “Come on, let’s get the fuck outta here before someone calls the cops and shit.” She grabbed his limp arm and tangled her arm in it. “Help me, Rachelle,” she commanded.

I blew the hot air out of my mouth I had saved in case I needed it to run from some disgruntled bat-wavering home dweller, and hustled over to them. Ivan threw his arm over my shoulder and began chortling as if a little goblin was standing on his shoe mooning us. I could not recall the last time a night out with Ivan had not ended up this way. I felt partially responsible for it. Ivan was a luminescent winter breeze intoxicated, and St. Joseph’s doppelganger sober. I couldn’t blame him: His own brother had called him a fag. When he finally told his parents, his father stormed out of the kitchen screaming blasphemies and his mother began to plead to God and the Virgin Mother for Ivan’s forgiveness. She could never be mother to Ivan if he was not one of God’s children and God’s sons did not sleep in the same bed with God's sons.

“Will you forgive me in the morning, Rachelle?” Ivan asked me. He wrestled with his body weight, leaning hard on me. “Will you still love me?” He pleaded, wrapping his arm around my face and caressing my cheek with his damp fingertips.

“Don’t I always forgive you?” I answered. “And if I didn’t love you, I would leave your ripe ass out here to rot.” I added squeezing his waist.

“That could just be pity, though,” he began. “You can show someone pity without actually loving them, you know. For instance, I pity myself,” his words began to trip over his tongue, “but I don’t think I have enough love to give out like chocolates in a paper box and keep some for myself. I don’t have any chocolates left for me.”

“Uh-oh,” Diana started, “he’s starting to theorize his miserable existence. This is the part where he tells us that God cannot exist without our love,” she mocked, “but he has no love left for him self.”

“Oh no, I am in no shape and way saying to you that,” he rebutted, squinting his eyes as if an invisible sun were attacking his vision. “First of all, A- there is no Go-d,” he continued, his voice rising in a crescendo of contempt. “And second of all, B-” he began as he chocked me to count on his fingers. “B-okay, if there was a God, he would have struck me down like my mother wishes he would.” He let his head fall limp on his back and began sputtering out distorted laughter.

“Ivan,” Diana scolded quietly as not to disturb the sleeping neighborhood. “Will you stop before we get thrown into the drunk tank again?” Her pace began to quicken and she pulled us with her.

Finally, we reached Ivan’s faded blue early 80s Volvo. A prehistoric mammal amongst the neighborhood’s lightening white beemers and lava red mustangs. I propped Ivan up on the dew-covered hood. He benignly ran his fingers through the water and began dropping the dew on his cheeks.

“Forgive me father!” He bellowed dropping to his knees. “I am forsaken to you and to your mighty kingdom! Oh Mary and the Saints, forgive me my sin!” He buried his face in his hands and pretended to sob.

“Damn-it!” I yanked him up and started to drag him into the car through the passenger side door Diana had just opened upon seeing my plight. He laughed the entire time. I crawled into the driver’s seat and caught him as Diana pushed him in. She punched the door shut, narrowly missing Ivan’s foot, and swung open the back door.

“Shit!” She screeched cradling her finger while plopping down. “I just bent my finger nail back on your rusty tin can of a car. I probably need a Tetanus shot now.”

“You,” Ivan commanded pointing to Diana, “Shut-up. You,” he continued pointing to me, “Drive.”

The car started with a gurgle as I turned the key in the ignition. I yanked the shifter into drive and dropped my lead-like foot unto the gas pedal. Reaching the empty intersection, I could see that notorious black and white cornering a block some ways down the lifeless street. I remembered that I hadn’t turned the headlights on yet.

“Lay down on the seats, you two,” I calmly instructed placing my left hand on the switch for the lights. “Take off your seat belt, though, Ivan,” I explained tugging it out from under his head.

“Oh, shit,” he snickered, “I guess that would help.” He unbuckled himself while staying out of view. The moisture from his hair began to soak through my jeans. I clicked on the lights and put both hands on the wheel, forgetting to even breath as I made a left. The cop car loomed slowly towards us on the other side. Ivan’s goblin reappeared on the cup holder and he began to choke back snarls of laughter.

“Ivan, stop. You’re making me nervous,” I pleaded running my hands though his tangled hair. He smothered his mouth and nose with his jacket, squinted his eyes shut, and pushed his head into my outer thigh. Our rival car drifted closer like a piece of dead wood being pulled along a placid ocean current. I expelled the remnants of my suffocated breath as the car passed. I waited to tell them it was okay to sit up until I saw the dead drift wood float out of sight in my rearview mirror.

. . .

“Bum me a drag?” I asked taking the cigarette from Diana’s hand as if I she had already given me her permission. She didn’t even seem cognitive of my sarcasm. “Hey,” I solicited, “are you alright?” I placed my hand on her shoulder and she jumped.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” She quivered as if the sound of her own voice had caused her panic. “Do you think Ivan’s going to be okay. I mean, I’m really staring to get worried about his drinking and hysterical spasms of laughter.” She snickered.

“He’ll be fine, sweetie,” I consoled. “He just needs some time to get over the initial shock. There’s no way his parents could hate him. I mean, they have to get over it some time. And if they don’t, he’s always got us.”

“Yeah, Rachelle, but we aren’t his family,” Diane argued. “He needs his family. He needs his dad to be able to look him in the face again instead of passing him in the house each day pretending not to see him,” she continued as she pulled the covers up to Ivan’s chin. He flinched and began twisting around as if the blankets were an assaulting nemesis. A fruit fly landed on his cheek and began to investigate the newfound territory. Ivan smacked his face, annihilating the intruder. He then smeared the dismantled remnants down to his chin and drifted back into his tranquil paradise.

Strange that Diane would question Ivan’s drinking and not our own. We could guzzle beers and knock back shots like the best of San Diego’s finest drunks. Intoxicating ourselves with elixirs that promised to us an escape from peace of mind and reality. Like us, Ivan could not dig his way out of the grief that had built up around him: From unabsolved transgressions to the unresolved grief from the deaths of friends and family. Sometimes the ache builds up walls of comatose cellulite around your body. It makes you soft and pleasing to the touch, but pads you from the real important blows. The more padding you accumulate the more you can’t feel the hard knocks hit. You numb yourself to the world and let a viscous entity control your reactions to it.

“Well, I don’t have a penny,” Diana started placing a coin from her pocket on my leg. “So, how bout a nickel for your thoughts?” She continued grinning at her display of wit.

I smirked and picked up the coin to examine her offer. The icy nickel brought goose bumps to my limbs. “He’s gunna be okay, you know,” I offered. “We are all going to be fine.”

“I know,” she confirmed. “I know.” She stretched out on my dilapidated king size mattress next to Ivan’s limp body. I stood up, fumbled over them, and made my way to turn off the lights. I didn’t have far to go, the mattress on the floor occupied much of the fraction of a room. My swollen fingers descended on the switch and I strained my eyes to allow the darkness to sink in. Stumbling back to the bed, I tripped on one of my lonesome pink high-top chucks. It glowed gray in the moonlight and its laces seemed to be luminous serpents threatening, at any moment I wasn’t looking, to attack my bare ankles. Maybe our little goblin friend was inconspicuously hiding inside the shoe waiting to chase me around the room with his pants down at his ankles. I didn’t care to stick around and find out. I leaped over the shoe like a gazelle over a landmine, landing on the floor next to the bed.

Tactfully, I inserted myself into the leftover space next to the wall. After crumpling up an extra blanket for my head, I laid on my back observing the tiny veins adorning my ceiling. Unknown portraits and paintings began revealing themselves to me from within the stucco medium. My heavy eyes began to burden me with their weight.

“Grandpa, I honestly don’t know that you would be proud of me. I can’t stop drinking. Sometimes I hate that you died without a fight. Then I realize that it wasn’t your fault. Who am I to criticize you while I drown away my problems? I don’t know why I think your presence in my life would make any difference. But that look you gave me, that unconditional acceptance of my infantile ways. Maybe you would have. I’ll never get to find out.”

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