Talia lived in my dorm during our freshman year at college. She was small of body with a light brown pixie cut and owl glasses. Talia was an art student. That October, she was all fired up about her midterm assignment. She had decided to make a plaster cast of a torso to serve as the base of her project. She talked our friend, Jerry, into providing the torso.
On a hot, southern California afternoon, Jerry lay down on the cement patio outside the dorm. Talia smeared Vaseline across his chest and shoulders. She mixed up a bag of plaster of Paris in a bucket. Then she spread the white goop evenly from his collarbone to his navel, making sure the plaster was an inch thick.
The scene gathered a few spectators. We watched as Talia tested the solidity of the plaster every few minutes. It was taking a lot longer than she’d anticipated for the plaster to harden. The sun moved along its inevitable path. Jerry’s feet were in shadow. Then his legs. Then the sunlight ceased to shine on the patio. Beneath Jerry, the cement cooled rapidly.
Someone threw a towel over Jerry’s legs for warmth. It didn’t help much. He was starting to shiver under the layer of damp plaster. We all cheered when Talia tapped on the plaster mold, and it emitted a solid thunk! thunk! At last, the plaster was hard.
Talia gripped the edges of the form on each side of Jerry’s ribs. She lifted it a fraction of a centimeter.
Jerry screamed.
His chest hair and some of the hair under his arms were trapped in the hardened plaster. Talia and the bystanders discussed what to do while Jerry lay, pale and grim, on the cold cement. It was decided to cut Jerry’s hair away from the plaster.
Three coeds produced nail scissors. Talia, her roommate, and Jerry’s boyfriend attempted to slide the scissors between Jerry’s skin and the plaster. This technique proved to be painful as well as tedious and slow. Tears leaked from Jerry’s eyes.
When Jerry’s shivers expanded into quakes, it became obvious to Talia, the helpers, and the audience that saving Jerry was more important than saving the plaster cast. Two runners were dispatched to the cafeteria to bring back large bowls, knives, and forks.
It took another hour or more to break up the plaster using the utensils and the warm water in the bowls. Jerry bore the procedure with eyes pinched shut.
Released at last from the plaster cocoon, Jerry stood up, stiff and splotched with white crumbs. He and his partner hurried away toward their dorm and hot showers.
Talia slumped onto a plastic patio chair, tears of frustration and fatigue on her cheeks.
“What am I going to do for a project now?” she moaned. After a pause, she brightened. “I guess I could use a female torso.” Talia looked around with raised, questioning eyebrows at the dorm-mates who remained on the patio.
“Oh, no! No way!” each one of us said, wide-eyed. We held out our hands as if stopping the idea in the air. In a moment, Talia was left alone on the shadowed patio.
This morning, as is my habit, I check the two mousetraps on the floor of the back seat. Alas, another mouse had succumbed to the temptation of peanut butter and lay stiff with its head caught in the trap.
I do not enjoy being the murderer of living creatures, especially cute, furry ones. However, mice living in my car create a danger of chewed wires, jammed vents, and expensive mechanic bills. I’ve been at war with the rodents since last fall.
By the time I figured out why I couldn’t turn the dial on the air vent control, mice had built nests behind the instrument panel. They’d chewed holes in the canvas attached to the underside of the hood and built homes in there as well.
At the garage, mechanic Steve shook his head at the damage. When he and his assistant pulled off the canvas, three mice bailed out onto the cement floor and skittered away.
The canvas was too damaged and tempting, so the men removed it entirely. Then they cleaned the debris out from behind the instrument panel.
When I asked Steve how to prevent another infestation, he shook his head and shrugged. “Some folks say that peppermint spray helps.”
I duly bought a peppermint rodent spray that claims to be harmless to people. I sprayed everything: the motor, the floor, the edges of the carpet, under the seats. A few days later, I found mouse droppings again.
I went to the hardware store and perused their anti-rodent offerings. I shied away from the blue blocks of poison because I didn’t want dead mice rotting somewhere in my car. Finally, I went traditional and bought four of the old-fashioned wooden killer traps. These worked. I caught four mice. But setting the traps was so fiddly and painful—I kept snapping my fingers—that I returned to the store to look for alternatives.
I found some balsam fir pellets that supposedly deter rodents. I put those under the seats. I bought an electric trap, and two plastic snap traps. I baited those with peanut butter. So far I’ve caught another six mice with the plastic traps—that’s ten total and counting.
To add to my mouse misery, I have mice in the house. This morning I found droppings in the bathroom cabinet. Never mind that I have a beautiful, silver Bengal cat who is not doing his job! In fact, he actually brings mice in through his cat door and then plays with them until they scurry under the baseboard heater and down the pipes to the basement.
The basement is where all the mice congregate and have their meetings. They give each other tips on how to avoid the cat, and where the best pickings are in the kitchen and pantry.
People continue to offer remedies to me. One person said to close the air vents in the car. That made sense but it didn’t work. The latest idea was cinnamon bark. My guess is that it will work as well as peppermint spray, or that the mice will develop a taste for cinnamon.
Alex is sitting on a bench in the small bus station. A fluorescent light flickers in the fixture above his head. It is 3 a.m. and he’s waiting for daylight. In four hours he’ll be able to get some coffee somewhere. For now, he’s waits.
He’s got his iPhone plugged into an outlet. Even if it was charged, he couldn’t call anyone. Certainly not Gram or his father. They’d only yell at him for getting kicked out of the Hostel. He did think about calling, and he weighed the options for several minutes. His dad would just add this fuck-up to the long list he keeps of all Alex’s fuck-ups, going way back to high school. Alex hears the Interlocutor’s voice calling him to confess. He decides not to acknowledge him. Instead he lights the remains of a cigarette he found in the bus station’s ashtray.
The smokes keep his dreams in their place. That’s why he was smoking in the Hostel’s kitchen. The dream of the black corks coming at him to stop his breath was doing that throbbing thing. Alex had to smoke or be suffocated. He knew he’d be locked out if he stepped outside to smoke, so he opened a window and sat by it, blowing the smoke out carefully.
He got caught. Someone saw him and called the manager, an Algerian guy with a really scary face. Alex had to pack up all his stuff. He dragged the bags down the street to the bus station. It was only after he got there that he realized he’d left his food in the fridge. Maybe he can pick it up in the morning.
He’s hungry now, but he’s used to being hungry. In the City, at his mom’s, there was hardly ever anything to eat. Sometimes she’d make some nasty bean concoction. After he lost his SSDI, Alex had to guilt trip his mom to get a little cash for a sandwich. And he’d have to listen to her go on about how she couldn’t afford to support him and he had to get back to handing out fliers so he’d make some money.
Alex looks out the window to the edge of the parking lot. He sees a small moving shape. It’s the fox again. She’s never very far away, but she usually stays in the shadows, like this. She is after his liver and Alex has to be constantly vigilant when he’s outdoors in the nighttime. Once he fell asleep in the park after smoking some really strong weed. It was in the summer. He fell asleep on the grass. The fox came so close he could hear her panting. She tried to bite his rib cage but he rolled away and she just got his shirt with her teeth. He sat up and yelled and slapped at her snout. She ran back into the trees. Alex’s friends woke up and they were scared. Scared of Alex, not the fox.
Tangled Magic 