the wrong sort of attention ... and here he was, doing precisely that.
“Hey baldy! You in the wheelchair!”
People turning to look at him. One was a fat black bitch in a red jumper who looked about half as bright as The Base Camp clerk with the harelip. She also looked vaguely familiar, but Norman dismissed that as plain paranoia—he didn’t know anyone in this city. She turned and walked on, clutching a purse the size of a briefcase, but plenty of other people were still looking. Norman’s crotch suddenly felt humid with sweat.
“Hey, man, come back here! You gave me too much!”
For a moment the sense of this didn’t come through to him—it was like something spoken in a foreign language. Then he understood, and an enormous sense of relief—mingled with feelings of disgust at his own stupidity—washed over him. Of course he had given the guy in the booth too much. He had forgotten he was not an Adult Male but a Handicapped Person.
He pivoted and wheeled back to the booth. The guy leaning out of it was fat, and he looked as disgusted with Norman as Norman felt with himself. He was holding out a five-dollar bill. “Seven bucks handicap, can’tcha read?” he asked Norman, first pointing at the sign on the booth with the bill and then shoving it in Norman’s face.
Norman entertained a brief vision of jamming the fivespot into the fat fuck’s left eye, then took it and stuffed it into one of his jacket’s many pockets. “Sorry, ” he said humbly.
“Yeah, yeah, ” the man in the booth said, and turned away
Norman began wheeling himself into the park again, his heart pounding. He had carefully constructed a character ... made simple but adequate plans to accomplish his aims ... and then, at the outset, had done something not just stupid but incredibly stupid. What was happening to him?
He didn’t know, but from this point on he was going to have to work around it.
“I can do that, ” he muttered to himself. “Goddam right I can.”
“Ahoy for terror, matey!” the robot sailor droned down at him as Norman rolled past. In one hand he waved a corncob pipe the size of a toilet bowl. “Ahoy for terror, matey! Ahoy for terror, matey!”
“Whatever you say, Cap’n, ” Norman muttered under his breath, and kept rolling. He came to a three-way intersection with arrows pointing to the Pier, the midway, and the picnic area. Beside the one pointing to the picnic area was a small sign which read GUESTS AND FRIENDS OF DAUGHTERS AND SISTERS EAT AT NOON, EAT AT SIX, CONCERT AT EIGHT ENJOY! REJOICE!
You bet, Norman thought, and began to roll his bestickered wheelchair down one of the concrete flower-bordered paths which led into the picnic area. It was actually a park, and a good one. There was playground equipment for children who had tired of the rides or found them too stressful. There were jolly topiary animals like the ones at Disney World, horseshoe pits, a softball diamond, and lots of picnic tables. An open-sided canvas tent had been set up and Norman could see men in cooks’ whites inside, preparing to barbecue. Beyond the tent was a row of booths which had clearly been put up just for today’s events—at one you could buy chances on a couple of handmade quilts, at another you could buy tee-shirts (many bearing the same sentiments which decorated “Hump’s” wheelchair), at another you could get any sort of pamphlet you wanted... as long as you wanted to find out how to leave your husband and find joy with your lesbian soul-sisters.
If I had a gun, he thought, something heavy and fast like a Mac-10, I could make the world a much better place in just twenty seconds. Much better.
Most of the people here were women, but there were enough men that Norman did not feel particularly conspicuous. He rolled past the booths, being pleasant, nodding when nodded to, smiling when smiled at. He bought a chance on the snowflake quilt, putting his name down as Richard Peterson. It might not be such a good idea to call himself Hump-not here. He picked up a pamphlet called Women Have Estate Rights, Too and told the lesbo queen minding the booth he was going to send it to his sister Jeannie in Topeka. The lesbo queen smiled and told him to have a nice day. Norman smiled and said right back atcha. He looked at everything in general