* * *
"Hector, you all right, baby?"
This voice was different than the others. It arose from behind him and was chock full of his mother’s sing-song lilt. Before Hector could respond, someone laid a smooth hand on his crown and stroked his fine, short brown hair. Then, feeling the slickness of his scalp, the hand pulled away.
Debbie wiped her palm on her shirt and placed it on her son’s forehead. "You’re burnin’ up, hon. Hector, wake up. Hector?"
"I’m awake, Ma," he said. "It’s hot in here, that’s all."
But it wasn’t hot. Like all exam rooms everywhere, it was freezing cold. A silent but consistent cool breeze blew from the AC vent in the corner of the ceiling, raising the goose bumps on Debbie’s arms and legs higher than they had been in the waiting room.
"Just relax, hon." She began petting his head again, ignoring the sweat. "The doctor will be in soon."
"Did you feed Lola?" Hector asked, sitting up, concern growing in his freshly-opened eyes.
"Yes, dear," she lied, "right before we left. Now lie back down and try to relax."
Surprisingly, he did exactly that. Debbie had readied herself for another tantrum, like the one he’d thrown in the car, but the storm never came. He must really be sick, she thought. Please don’t let it be rabies. Please.
"Ma?" Hector said from his supine position.
"What, dear?"
Turning onto his side and propping his head up with his left hand, Hector asked flatly, "Why does everybody hate me?"
He stared at her with big brown eyes—cow’s eyes, bull’s eyes—waiting for an answer.
Debbie swallowed, and in her best don’t-be-ridiculous voice, replied, "No one hates you, Hector. Why would you ask that?"
He continued to stare directly at her. The eye contact proved too maddening for Debbie, so she averted her gaze, ironically, to an eye poster on the wall, where about a hundred different eye balls stared lifelessly back at her. She listened, though, to Hector’s answer. Even as she went to rub a grease spot from the poster, she listened.
"Well, because…" Hector started, "…because I just know.”
"What about your friends? They like you."
He chuckled—chuckled—and it sent shivers down Debbie’s goosefleshed back.
"What makes you think they’re my friends? Huh?"
"Well, they—"
"I know what you’re thinkin’. Just because they come over when I barbeque and do whatever I tell ‘em—except Rusty—that that somehow makes them my friends."
Debbie still had her back to him, working the poster with her shirt sleeve.
"They don’t give a shit about me, Ma. O’Brien just wants my food; Pete just wants my protection; and Rusty just wants to pound on that pie-ann-uh of yours."
"That’s not true," she said timidly, turning to face him. She wanted to scream at the fat slug laid out like Jabba the Hut on the puke-green examining table. She wanted to scream: You want to know why everybody hates you? Do you really want to know? Well, I’ll tell you!! You’re a rude, fat, arrogant redneck who cares only about getting drunk and getting laid! You can’t keep a job. You excel at absolutely nothing. You have no hopes, no dreams. You lack any kind of discernable talent. Your girlfriend dumped you because you called her a slut when you were drunk—oh, you better believe me because I know you sure as hell don’t remember—and the next day I was the one stuck taking the calls from her parents asking me, "What the hell did you’re son do to my daughter? She’s been crying all day and won’t tell me why." And where were you when the phone was ringing off the hook? Conveniently missing—out doing whatever it is you do when you’re by yourself. Getting drunk again or getting stoned, shooting off Black Cats and bottle rockets. You skip school, nearly flunk tenth grade, and then punch in the stomach the one kid who helped you pass Algebra. I mean, how do you punch Pete? For the love of God, you lack decency. You’re barely human sometimes. You seek out people to degrade and then threaten them when they defend themselves. If you think O’Brien, Pete, and Rusty aren’t your friends, then keep on thinking that, because it will be your loss when they finally come to their senses and drop you from their lives. Besides me, they’ve been the only ones with enough kindness and…charity…in their hearts to put up with your bullshit. In my eyes, they’re not your friends, they’re saints.
Hector must have sensed something during the brief pause before his mother spoke again, because the corners of his lips dropped and his brow furrowed.
Finally, Debbie said what any mother would have said in her shoes. She uttered it with the urgency of one trying to eruct some swallowed morsel of poison. "They are your friends, honey." She stared at the door as she said it, foolishly hoping the doctor would open it and save her from her son.
But she would have to wait awhile, it seemed. The door didn’t open on cue (they do in the movies, but never in real life), so Debbie retreated to one of the blue plastic chairs in the corner of the room. She picked a copy of Cosmo off the small table to skim through. None of the words or pictures registered with her brain: they all meshed into one revolving, gray blur. Then again, she wasn’t really trying to see what was printed on those pages anyway. What she was doing was avoiding Hector. And the best way she knew to do that was by pretending to be busy.
"Ma?"
Debbie continued to bluff.
"Ma?" A little louder this time.
Still pretending.
"MA?"
"WHAT?! What do you want?"
"Do you smell something?
Debbie sniffed the air indifferently. "No."
Hector hopped off the table and began moving about the small room, stopping intermittently every few seconds to sniff. The way he wriggled his nose, like a chipmunk, wasn’t so much cute as it was terrifying. Debbie couldn’t help but think of a bull revving to charge a matador.
Please don’t let him attack me, she prayed. Please, God, don’t let him attack me.
Next will come the foot stomping, then the lowering of head and pointing of horns (what horns?), and, finally, the gaze. They always stare you down before they charge. And the stare is worse than the goring that shortly follows. Far worse. Because terror trumps physical pain. And that is what the bull wants most: Fear. The good news is that, while he’s staring you down, you can still get away. But you gotta do it before he starts charging, because once that starts, it can’t be stopped. For the love of Jesus, Debbie, get the hell out of this room! Go! What are you waiting for? GO!!!
She remained in her blue chair, watching her son stride back and forth across the length of the room. As his pace quickened, so did the doughy clapping sounds his inner thighs made as they collided and slid past each other. Hector began sniffing the corners, not only where the walls met at nose level, but up and down the juncture as well. He paid close attention to the planar triad of wall-wall-floor, as if whatever scent he was homing in on had aggregated there in high enough concentrations to be discernable from the other astringent medicinal odors.
After a full minute of kneeling and sniffing, Hector stood, his tendons creaking and joints popping, and went to the medicine cabinet. He swung open the metal door and removed two glass jars—one of cotton balls and the other of swabs—then climbed onto the examining table and opened them.
"Hector! What are you doing?"
Ignoring his mother, Hector stuck his nose in the cotton ball jar. He inhaled deeply and, clearly dissatisfied, moved on to the swabs. Again, disappointment.
"I swear to God, Ma. I smell somethin’."
"Put those jars away right now," Debbie scolded feebly. "What’s the doctor going to think?"
"Fuck the doctor. I smell somethin’."
"Hector, language, please."
"Sorry, but I’m tellin’ ya: something stinks." He slid off the table and placed the jars back inside the medicine cabinet. "Did you step in one of Lola’s piles?"
"What?" she asked, knowing full well what he was talking about. For what
felt like the hundredth time that day, fear released its grip on her throat and relief flowed through her body, starting in her solar plexus, then radiating out in waves of endorphin ecstasy to her fingertips, toes, and, finally, her head. He doesn’t have rabies; he’s just smelling some dog shit on my shoe. Ha! All this time I’ve been worrying about rabies. Rabies?! Give me a break! Just my stupid imagination running wild again.
Debbie smiled, a real smile, and checked the bottom of her Keds. The first one was clean. So was the second one. Fingers of doubt began to creep back in. "Maybe it’s yours."
Hector sat on the table, grabbed his right calf and hefted his tree trunk leg over his left knee. He craned his neck to look at the bottom of his Nikes. The first worn-down sole was clean. He repeated the process with the other leg, and the shoe on that foot was clean as well.
"Huh? It ain’t my shoes either."
"Maybe you’re just smelling things." Debbie chased the nervous joke with a titter of equally nervous laughter.
Hector either didn’t get the punch line or didn’t hear it, for he quickly resumed his sniffing and said, "I swear to God, I smell dog shit."
"Hector, language," Debbie snapped.
He hopped off the table and continued his olfactory search. By now, the butcher paper on the table looked more like discarded wrapping paper on late Christmas morning than a crisp, clean, examining surface. Hector returned to the corner by the window and knelt there, pointing his huge ass directly at his mother’s beautiful, disgusted face.
"Stop that right now!" Debbie said, looking away.
"It’s strongest right here, but I don’t know why."
"Listen to me, Hector. You need to get back onto that table, and I mean it when I say right now."
Hesitantly, Hector stood and sulked back to the exam table. Along the way, he turned and shot his mother the stink eye. (That’s the gaze, Debbie. Next comes the charge. Get the hell out of here.)
Hector plopped down on the crumpled paper. He neither sniffed nor looked at his mother, who still sat in the little chair next to the end table. In Debbie’s lap, she rested her ladylike hands—perfect, save a deep gash in the palm of the left one. They edged toward blue, it was so cold in the room.