He snorts a lot, probably more than he should, but it works, and he’s a crab again. Muzi scuttles down the hall, trying to look nonchalant in case anyone sees him, then he’s out the door. Two of his girl cousins, Molly and Daphne, are playing in the front yard, both in pigtails and matching dresses though they’re two years apart. They squeal as he passes. At first Muzi thinks that maybe his hallucination isn’t a hallucination after all, but then he remembers that his cousins squeal at just about anything.
“Penis! Penis! Penis!” says Molly, the younger of the two. “My mum said you had a penis!”
Muzi glowers, then shakes his crab head. That’s Auntie Lindi for you, explaining circumcisions to a six-year-old. But when you’ve got three kids, sometimes it’s just best to answer their questions candidly and deal with the fallout later. Especially with Molly. She’s never met a question she was too shy to ask. All talk and no filter.
“Molly,” Daphne scolds, arms crossed over her chest. Eight going on thirty-eight. “You shouldn’t say that word to boys.”
“Muzi’s not a boy, he’s my cousin.”
“I’m a man,” Muzi muses, and he’ll be damned if anyone tries to tell him otherwise.
“Did it hurt when they chopped your penis off?” Molly says in all seriousness, now. And then her eyes grow wider. “What did that man cut it with? A scissors? We got a scissors we use at school, but it’s not like Mum’s scissors, because you know why? They’re too sharp for little kids, but you know what?” And wider. “You want me to bring my scissors next time I come? In case your penis grows back? Will it grow back? Just like hair grows back? Or will it stay cut off like Mr. Jacob’s arm?”
“You know what Mum said about talking to Mr. Jacob about his arm,” Daphne says, giving Molly a stern look. “Well, you shouldn’t talk to Muzi about his penis getting cut off because it’s not nice to remind people that they’re handicapped.”
“What?” Muzi says, their nonsense cutting through his buzz. The pressure in his loins rears its head.
Molly shrugs her sister off. “Well, Muzi, can I see it at least? Mum wouldn’t let us in the tent because she said we was girls, but you know what she always says, too? That girls can do anything boys can do, so don’t you think I should be able to see it?”
“No!” Muzi throws his claws up. “Why don’t you go play by yourself, Molly, and stop asking me questions!”
And with that, Molly turns, goes down the stone walkway, and starts drawing hopscotch lines on the pavement with a piece of white rock. Daphne and Muzi exchange flabbergasted looks. Never since he’d first met Molly had he ever seen her do anything that involved being quiet. A colicky infant crying nonstop, a two-year-old whose vocabulary consisted only of the words no and mine, a four-year-old who loved to make up fairy tales about pink horses on the spot and tell them to you whether you were listening or not, and now with the questions, questions, questions.
“How did you do that?” Daphne whispers as if she’s afraid she’ll ruin the silence. Poor Daphne. Muzi only has to spend major holidays and birthdays with Molly, and that’s bad enough, but Daphne’s the one who has to share a room with the girl.
Muzi shrugs. “Lucky, I guess. Maybe she ran out of questions.”
“She never runs out of questions.”
“That’s true. Maybe we should enjoy the moment while it lasts.”
“It’s so nice to hear my own thoughts,” Daphne says, then sits down cross-legged in the grass.
“I’ll leave you to them then.” Muzi clicks his claws together. “Hey, do I look any different to you?”
“Shhhh . . .” Daphne tilts her head up, enjoying the breeze, the sunshine, the quiet.
Fair enough. Muzi skitters across the pavement, and when he’s gone a few houses down, white light flashes from behind his eyes, the kind you get from looking at the sun. There’s a small something in his mind that hadn’t been there before, the tiniest bit of grief for a hamster he’d never seen, accidentally squished in a game of bed hopping.
“I shouldn’t have let him out of his cage,” Muzi says, phlegm catching in the back of his throat. The feeling subsides, but the memory of it is still there. Two sisters, bouncing from bed to bed, and a beloved pet caught in the cross fire.
Muzi shakes the thought, hops Elkin’s wood fence, and knocks on Elkin’s window, careful so his claws don’t shatter the glass.
“Go away,” Elkin says, voice muted by the pane.
“Please, let me in. We need to talk.”
“I don’t have a word to say to kak-lipped skunk fuckers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Eat a dick.”
“Elkin . . .”
And then there’s quiet and an awful lot of it, though in the distance, he can hear Molly starting up again with her ceaseless chatter. That’s life for you, right? He can get a girl to zip her lips, but he can’t get the one person he really wants to talk to to say a peep. Just doesn’t seem fair. Hell. Well, he’s all the way over here, now. Might as well make the most of it. He goes to the edge of the pool and dips one of his crab legs in. Oh, it’s frigid, but a numb body might be just what he needs right now.
When the godsend wears off, he’s going to regret this, but he hops in anyway and does a couple laps. Water passes across his carapace, as cool and slick as silk sheets. Muzi imagines himself in the ocean, admiring coral reefs, scavenging for a snack, making underwater music with the click of his claws. Really, he’s hoping to piss Elkin off enough that he’ll come outside, and then maybe after he’s done cussing, they could talk about things.
“Elkin, come out here, dof. I know you’re watching.” Muzi kicks down into the depths of the pool, then settles on his imaginary ocean floor and pretends to dig holes into the sand, looking for worms. He’s actually got a craving for them. His little crab heart quivers at the thought of living flesh passing his lips, but his crab stomach quickly overrides his vegetarian tendencies. And it feels so . . . right. Maybe he’s always been a crab, caught between land and sea, between cultures, between this world and the next. It seems like he’s been underwater forever, but his crab lungs don’t seem to mind. Still, it might be the drugs screwing with him, and he could be drowning for all he knows. So he swims back up to the surface, delighted to see Elkin standing there at the edge of the pool in faded jeans and a Duffy Live concert T-shirt. The real Elkin, not the porpoise.
“Hey,” Muzi mumbles in the kind of way that says I’m sorry for being such a giant asswad in not so many words. Elkin stands there, eyes distant. Mind distant. But at least he hasn’t walked away. Muzi props his claws up on the pool’s ledge. His body and legs float buoyantly along the water’s surface. Yesterday was such an intense mix of emotions and experiences, he doesn’t even know where to start. Might as well just say what’s in his heart, and if Elkin decides he wants to kick his teeth in, so be it. “You’re my best friend, Elkin, going on ten years. You know me better than anyone else on this planet, and I’m sorry if I sound like a cake, but that means a whole hell of a lot to me. If you want to go and forget that yesterday ever happened, I’m fine with that. But if you want to push through, and deal with it and shit, I’m open to that, too.”
Elkin stands there, motionless. Emotionless.
Muzi slaps his claw against the water, soaking Elkin’s jeans from the knees down.
“Damn it, Elkin. Say something!”