All My Friends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman [11]
When Hypno woke that morning, she was gone. He knew she wasn’t coming back. He was devastated. He couldn’t go to work. He couldn’t eat. His cat disappeared. The only way he survived the experience was by hypnotizing himself. He dangled a watch, stared at the mirror and repeated after himself. The Perfectionist became invisible to him, a spell he broke only to attend her wedding.
Tom held the receiver close to his ear. He listened to the phone ring three times.
‘Hello?’ Hypno answered.
‘It’s Tom.’
‘So?’ Hypno said.
‘Don’t,’ Tom said. ‘I think I’ve killed her.’
‘While she was sleeping?’ Hypno asked.
‘Yes?’
‘You touched her while she was asleep?’
‘I held her.’
‘You shouldn’t do that.’
‘It’s our wedding night,’ Tom said.
‘You can’t do that.’
‘What should I do?’
‘She’s still sleeping?’
‘You’d better hope so.’
‘She’s fine,’ Hypno assured. ‘Go back and check on her, and you’ll see. She’s fine.’
Tom dropped the phone. He ran to the bedroom. The Perfectionist was sleeping (perfectly). Tom watched her to make sure. He sat at the foot of the bed. Ten minutes passed and her breathing was easy and regular.
Tom got off the bed still watching the Perfectionist. He stepped on her wedding dress, then picked it up, searched around and found a wooden hanger. The dress rustled as he hung it up. It took up almost half the space in the closet. He walked back to the kitchen and saw the phone on the floor. Tom picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’ Tom asked into it.
‘She’s fine, right?’ asked Hypno.
‘How do I make it stop?’
‘It’s pretty simple.’
‘Tell me!’
‘Are you that afraid of her, Tom?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If you can’t figure this one out, you don’t deserve her. You really don’t,’ Hypno said. He hung up.
Tom listened to the dial tone. He held the receiver away from his head and looked at it. He threw the phone. The receiver was skidding across the floor as the Perfectionist walked into the kitchen. She stepped over it without looking down, went to the sink and filled a glass with water. She sat at the kitchen table, staring straight ahead.
‘See me!’ Tom screamed. He waved his hands in front of her face. He pushed the kitchen table away. The Perfectionist reached down. She took hold of a glass that wasn’t there, raised her arm and drank from her empty hand.
Tom opened a cupboard. He took out a dinner plate. Raising it over his head, Tom let it fall. The plate shattered.
The Perfectionist didn’t look up.
Tom dropped another plate. The Perfectionist stared at the wall in front of her. Tom threw a plate into the wall she stared at. The Perfectionist didn’t look up. Tom reached to the back of the cupboard. He stacked all the remaining plates.
‘Look at me!’ he screamed. He lifted the stack over his head and his housecoat bunched up under his arms.
The Perfectionist didn’t look at him.
Tom dropped the plates. They hit the floor and shattered into countless bits. The Perfectionist got up from the kitchen table and set her imaginary glass in the sink. She stepped on the bits of broken plate and cut her feet to ribbons. She didn’t say a word. She tracked blood all the way to the bedroom.
Tom discovered that touching her feet made her seasick. The Perfectionist threw up into a bowl as he pulled slivers of china out of her feet. He washed her feet. He bandaged them and slept on the floor.
In seat F27 the Perfectionist continues snoring. Tom puts his head in his hands. He leans forward, reaches into the pocket of the seat in front of him and pulls the plastic off a pair of headphones. He plugs them in. The last passenger left the volume at nine and opera plays so loud he can hear it with the headphones still on his lap.
Tom looks at the headphones. He can hear the music, but he can’t see it. ‘If music is invisible, can being invisible