“Listen, there’s something called an amulet.” Tosca glances down at her pocket. “Anything you can fit in the palm of your hand, like a rock or a necklace. Just a little piece of something to watch over you and keep you safe. It’s better than Vicodin, I swear you go right to sleep. You should try it.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
A hoard of middle-schoolers and teachers are trickling into our part of the exhibit, causing general mayhem. We have to sort of shout over them.
Tosca’s eyes narrow. “Listen fuckwad, I’m trying to help you.”
“Help me what?” I snap, even though my stomach’s in knots. “Chase the evil spirit out from under my bed? What do you want me to do? Chant spells and slaughter a chicken?”
Tosca groans and leans her head back. “God, you’re not even listening. You people think you know everything, but guess what? You don’t.”
“I know I don’t need a pothead and a stolen body part to heal my REM cycle.”
“You need something,” She hisses back, “You’re a fucking basketcase.”
“Oh, clearly I should be institutionalized. Why don’t you and your dead plastic kidney go fix somebody else,” I say a little too loudly, but no one seems to notice since the middle-schoolers are busy laughing at the cadavers’ tiny skinned penises.
“God, shut up. You ruin everything.”
“Don’t worry. As enthralling as this is, I think we’re done,” I say in a lower voice. “It’s all yours. Enjoy.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Listen.” I lean in next to her ear and whisper, “Your little souvenir is part of a human being. Did you think about that?”
She looks up at me and suddenly I’m too close. There are freckles on her cheeks, so light they’re almost invisible, and the tips of hairs growing back where she plucks her eyebrows. I can smell her underneath the weed and Tic-Tacs. That certain smell everyone has that’s only their own, no matter what else is covering it up. Hers has something to do with mud and trees. Her green eyes are looking right at me, and there’s nowhere to look away to, so I look back. She’s grabbing my hand and pulling it towards her, and for a split second I think she’s going to stick my hand under her skirt. Then I feel it slide into the folds of her jacket and my hand closes around something round and clammy.
It’s the kidney.
I try to pull away, but Tosca grits her teeth and her little spider fingers clamp down around my wrist like handcuffs. The kidney’s cool and slightly damp. It’s fat and curved and God it’s so real. I want to break her fingers and run, but Tosca holds me there. The kids and teachers give us a look, but of course penises on dead guys are far more entertaining than two weirdos groping each other, so they lose interest. I don’t know how much time passes.
I breathe.
The security guard is back. One of the teachers frowns and says something to him, and they both look at me. Not at Tosca, but right at me standing there with my hand in her pocket and a weird expression on my face.
“Everything okay here?”
I say, “Yes, Sir.” I should try to get my hand back from Tosca right about now, but I don’t move, and neither does she.
“Just lose the PDA or move it outside, alright?”
“Oh you bet, Mister. We’ll fuck in the lobby from now on,” Tosca throws over her shoulder as he’s leaving. He pretends not to hear. “Who the fuck does he think he is, huh? Must be nice to have a job where you get to tell everybody what to do. I bet he was beaten as a child, or forced to join the army or something.”
I don’t say anything. My heart’s still pounding. Tosca trails off and it’s quiet under the babble of the middle-schoolers. When I shift my weight, she lets my hand out of her pocket, but she doesn’t let go. We’re both staring straight ahead, holding hands, but not with her fingers in between mine the way couples do. More the way a kid holds on to his mommy or daddy for dear life.
The security guard follows us while trying to pretend he’s not. Tosca glares at him over her shoulder and sticks her tongue out. I close my eyes and pray for sweet mercy, because Mom will probably kill me if I get busted for stealing an organ from an exhibit I wasn’t supposed to go to in the first place. Tosca’s chest goes up and down, and I can hear her breathing quick little breaths through her nose. I can’t fathom what the hell she’s thinking right now. The feel of the kidney is still crawling on my fingertips, but her hand’s warm after the plastic. We come to the end of the exhibit, and she drags me around the gift shop, picking things up and putting them down somewhere else.
“Look at all this shit. I totally want one of these.”
Toys, clothes, and refrigerator magnets, courtesy of plundered corpses from China. I twitch my shoulders under my T-shirt, but they still feel stiff.
Tosca waves a piece of anatomically-correct plastic in my face. “Want a keychain? I’ll buy you one.”
I shake my head, and she dives for another handful of stuff.
“What about a shirt? Here, look at this one.” She shoots me a nervous grin, tucking one sleeve under her chin to keep it open.
“You’re stalling.”
Her grin falters. “Yeah, I don’t have any money.”
She’s tapping her fingers along the edge of my hand in a little rhythm. Like she’s playing a song over and over in her head. I stay quiet and she starts humming. It reminds me of my mom, but she only taps when something’s wrong. After Jenna died, you’d have thought Mom was writing “War and Peace” in Morse code.
I blow my breath out in a big fat sigh. “So what happens now?”
Tosca stares at her dirty pink tennis shoes. “You better not rat me out.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious. I’ll tell that guy you’re a wife beater. He knows you’re with me now. There’s a bruise on my leg I can show him, and he’ll think you’re hitting me. You better not say anything.”
“Tosca,” I lower my voice, “I just said I wouldn’t.”
Her eyebrow twitches and she looks at the exit, chewing a translucent piece of lipstick and skin off her lip. “You’re coming with me, right?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
I nod. She squeezes my hand and we start walking.
My palms are sweaty as we go through the lobby. Our hands are getting hot and sticky where they’re touching. A bunch of people are milling around outside the gift shop, laughing and chatting like it’s a cocktail party instead of twenty-one naked, skinless cadavers on display.
Just keep going.
The woman at the front desk says have a nice day. Tosca says we will. Or maybe I say it. For some reason I expect an alarm to go off when we walk through the doors, then I remember it’s a body part, not an ipod or a pair of jeans. The glass doors swish closed behind us. No alarms go off. No one tackles us on the sidewalk. Just a wash of cold air and exhaust hits my face, and we’re out.
It’s freezing. I wish I’d brought a jacket, but you don’t think of those things when you’re sneaking out the window with the keys to your mom’s Honda. At least I didn’t. Tosca shivers and keeps walking. We don’t even break stride from the lobby doors to dodging around clumps of people and junk and street vendors. We’re going the wrong way to my car, and I’m thinking I should probably get my ass home before Mom has a conniption and reports me missing. I just can’t force myself to say anything. The sidewalk slides away under my feet. Pennies and bits of gum blur into streaks of color.
I shift my hand against Tosca’s, unsticking the sweat between us. “Well, you got your kidney.”
“It’s not my kidney, dumbass.”
“Whose is it?”
She shakes her head.
Pigeons take off under our feet, their wings smacking the air.