What Would Satan Do_ - Anthony Miller [25]
Liam glanced up at Raju, a look of disgust on his face. “Bite me.” He grabbed his bag and headed for the door. “Make sure you lock up. And no toking the Buddha while I’m gone.”
People – other than Festus, of course – were always trying to set him up with women. And every couple of months or so, Liam relented. But it never amounted to anything. There was nothing wrong with the women. They were always nice, smart, attractive – whatever. He just never felt anything. Not even a blip. In fact, he wasn’t even sure it was possible for him – not any more, at least. It was as if he were immune.
Liam’s women problems had started back in college, with Anna.
Anna was tall and willowy, with long, white-blonde hair that always made her look like she’d just come off the set of a shampoo commercial. She had a way of making Liam’s serious thoughts seem pointless and boring, and was always coming up with brilliant suggestions like, “You should become an Inuit studies major!” or, “We should kidnap Daniel Day Lewis and demand jobs as caretakers for his shoes!” And when she said these things, they seemed so logical; so right. He often found himself wondering, Why didn’t I think of that?
Liam’s inability to recognize Anna’s insanity was, of course, the result of a chemical imbalance in his cerebral cortex. Whenever he saw Anna, the deep, lizardy bits of his brain released wave after wave of peptide neurotransmitters and endorphins that supplanted and screwed with the acetylcholine that usually kept the synapses in his parietal lobe on the straight and narrow. In other words, Liam was in love.
“You should skip your biochem final so you can help us,” said Anna one day. “The circus is in town and we’re going to go protest!”
“Hmm,” he said. “Skipping a final seems like kind of a bad idea. And anyway, I’m not sure I want to go protest the inhumane treatment of animals with someone who’s going to be wearing a fur coat.” He gestured toward the bed, where she’d set down her politically incorrect, but very hip jacket.
“Animals?” said Anna. “Who cares about a bunch of stinky animals?” She put her hand on her hip. “I mean, an elephant in the circus probably gets better food and is less likely to get shot by a hunter, right? So … screw the animals.”
Yeah, screw the animals, he thought, wondering how Anna was always so convincing. Maybe it was her intoxicating smile, or her long, well-toned legs. Or it might have been her sundress, which seemed just a little too short. He wasn’t sure.
He noticed that Anna was still talking, and blinked his eyes as he tried to focus on whatever it was she was saying.
“We’re going to protest the humiliating and demeaning exploitation of those poor, overworked and under-respected souls.”
“Who?” he asked. “What are we talking about?”
“The clowns, Liam. They’re exploited, and we’re going to protest.”
“The clowns?” He scrunched up his face, mystified, as he attempted to grapple with the absurdity of what Anna had just told him. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish as he tried and failed repeatedly to find a toe hold from which to build a logical response. But there was nothing. You just can’t argue logic with someone who is completely unhinged. Batshit is immune to logic.
“Come on!” Anna shut his book and lifted his chin so that their eyes met. “This is important,” she said.
She stood up tall and smiled a mischievous, radiant smile that washed over him like the first, warm buzz of what was going to be a long night of drinking. Then the girl who’d spent years in ballet class gracefully lifted her toe into the air, swung it over, and placed it on the other side of his legs so that she was standing over him. She clasped her hands behind his neck and sat down. Slowly. The tiny blue flowers on her sun dress inched up her thighs as she settled onto his lap. She leaned forward, letting the front of her dress gape as she nibbled his ear.
“Please,” she said.
Liam experienced a complete cognitive breakdown. The outer, thinking portions of his brain ceased to function, and those same lizardy bits at the base