Free Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! by Mykle Hansen Page B

guaranteed! ”
    “Marv, please!” suggests ever-helpful Edna. “Use your anger tools! You could hurt yourself even worse if you get all worked up!”
    “Hurt myself? You just shot me!”
    “I said I was sorry! Honestly, Marv … you’ve got to hold on a little longer, Pumpkin. Please … for me?”
    “First you shoot me … and now you want to see my anger tools?”
    And then Frank chuckles. Frank Baumer chuckles. At me. He thinks I’m funny. I consider cutting off one of his fingers. I have a knife. I can still hurt people. He says to me: “Marv, you’re talking crazy. Don’t try crazy stuff. You’re in no shape to drive.”
    And then … then he reaches across my chest into my right breast pocket … and pulls out the gleaming fob that holds my Range Rover’s ignition keys and door/alarm remote. Just like that. Like he knows which pocket I keep them in. Like he’s been watching me. I grab for the keys, for his arm, his coat, anything, but my hands are just like big bunches of bananas hanging off my sleeves. And he says: “Just hunker down and hang in there, Marv. Help is on the way. You’re gonna live. You’re gonna be fine.” And he gets up to walk away, the keys still dangling from his limp, worthless wrist.
    “Gimme that! Get back here with that! Those are mine ! Don’t you leave!” He walks over to Edna, and they stand there looking at me from a distance. “Edna! Do not leave! Bitch, you had better not leave! Get over here right now and jack up this car!”
    “Get a grip , Marv! Honestly we’re doing the best we can. Why do you have to get all grumpy at a time like this?” Edna sobs pointedly, but she doesn’t comply. Why doesn’t she comply?
    “Baumer! You are so fired if you don’t get back over here right now and get busy with that jack!”
    Edna stands up with a meaty, phlegmatic sigh. Now I don’t see them, I just hear their heavy footsteps crunching back into the forest, Edna’s sobs and labored breathing fade out like a steam train rolling away from the station without me.
    “Frank! Edna! I need water! I need medicine! Rescue me god-dammit! I’m sorry! I’m bleeding! I didn’t mean what I said! I’ve been under a lot of stress! Come back here and let’s just start over. Please! Edna! Did you hear that? Marv Pushkin is saying please, you know I never say please but I’m saying it. I’m asking nicely for fuck’s sake, so will you get the fuck back here, I love you already! Baby! Sugar bumps! I love you, Edna! I’m going to die! If you leave, I’ll die! I’ll do it, I swear! Edna!”
    Silence. Severe silence. It’s never this quiet. I’m totally alone. And I’m crying. Like a woman, like a fag, I’m crying.
    Note to self: Kill, kill, kill my darling Edna.



9
    But wasn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that why I brought her along? To get her off my balance sheets, wash her out of my collar, pluck her like the nostril-hair she is?
    Certainly not! Oh no, officer, such an unspeakable act never crossed my mind. Kill my own wife? My loveypants, my cream and sugar, my honeydew melon, my ice cream headache? Oh no.
    Rather, I thought I’d delegate. Alaska is wild and dangerous — as we’ve seen — and there’s no shortage of mortal threats to which to delegate the wife-disposal chores with which modern advertising executives are so overburdened. People die out here constantly, especially weak, foolish, incompetent, ugly people like Edna. They drown in poorly-marked bodies of water with no lifeguards presiding. They fall off cliffs, into ravines. They are devoured by bears, or trampled by moose, or skeletonized by ticks. And when all else fails, there are always the tragic hunting accidents. In fact, just before we left I bought Edna a brown fur coat with a matching fur hat from Saks. From a distance she made a fine grizzly … but the stupid bitch refuses to wear it.
    “It makes me look fat,” she said.
    “Baby,” I enthused, “that coat makes you look fabulous.