A Frosty Girl's Cure - Chapter 15

I had a massive hangover the next day when I finally woke up. The commissioner had paid the bounty for all of the Sugar Gliders, along with a bonus for Dale’s “sculpture.” You may think I’m joking, but the museum sealed the body in preserving enzymes, and it became a part of the regular display the same day.

Yeah, that’s how weird City is.

The museum even asked Dale to make another statue...using City’s illustrious mayor. Of course, that may have to do with his cutting their funding that year.

Needless to say, we turned down their generous offer.

Anyway, we went to this one little cantina that’s a known dive for the city’s villains, and let me tell you, that place was empty the second we walked in. We had to hunt down the bartender and band to drag them back in, but the night went pretty smoothly after that.

We drank a lot. The guys took turns dancing with me, though Simon was the only one whispering compliments about how beautiful I was. He even kissed me once, and I might have pushed him away if I hadn’t been so drunk by that point.

It certainly wasn’t a kiss from a little boy. His tongue flitted over mine, but his lips crushed my mouth, conveying an urgency and need that stole my breath.

But thankfully nothing else happened, as we all took separate cabs home. Wally and Dale were too drunk to fly, so we had to have the bartender send for a cab company.

An hour later, we had them call the cab company again to assure them that they wouldn’t get robbed when they came to pick us up from the bad side of town.

My cab ride was free. The cabby’s daughter was the little girl that Dale had rescued in the pizza parlor, and I was promised free fare for life, along with the rest of “The Normals.”

Yep, that’s the name the reporters gave us. We were being portrayed as the common folk who were working to make a better future for the city. I found that especially ironic after considering that we had all been bad people, with the exception of Dale.

Even he had a few dark spots on his record already.

Wally was much better at being a hero than he was at being a henchman, and Simon was getting famous by being one of the good guys when no one even knew he existed as a villain. Finally, there was me, who no one seemed to recognize as Icee.

At least the papers never brought that fact up. Maybe they just knew better than to provoke me.

I’m getting away from my story.

I woke up with the worst hangover I’d had in months, and I was almost crying on the kitchen counter while I waited for my coffee pot to brew enough for one cup.

I heard a very soft knocking on my front door and opened it to find Dale in dark glasses. I might have been upset with him for showing up before three thirty, but I couldn’t shout without killing myself.

I asked, “What do you want?”

Dale was thankfully soft voiced that morning. “I know you don’t like me coming over this early, but I was going to visit a friend of mine, and I wanted you to meet her.”

Nodding, I waved him inside and shut the door, walking back into the kitchen. “I thought you said you didn’t have any friends beside me.”

“Su told me that she’d only be my friend if I promised not to tell anyone about her,” Dale explained. “I’ve never told anybody, but I figured you were hurting as much as I was this morning, and she can fix that.”

We had some coffee before I got dressed and let Dale fly me to a little pastel blue house on the south side of the city. A small white sign on the lawn had the words So Su Mi - Massage Therapy written in blue marker. The letters has an Asian design to them, but there was also something simplistic and child-like about the sign.

Dale walked up the three steps to the front door, knocking lightly before he went back to rubbing his temples to appease the beast thrashing around in his head.

Su opened the door, a short Korean woman that I was standing almost level with. She was kind of cute, but her eyes were spaced a bit too far apart, and the outer corners of her slanted eyes seemed wrong, like they were canted at the wrong angle.

Her white T-shirt said So Su Mi, Licensed Massage Artist. That gave me a momentary pause, but I filed it way for later as Dale and I walked into Su’s house.

Dale smiled at her questioning expression and gestured to me. “Su, this is my friend Terry, and she needs your help in getting rid of a hangover.”

Su looked at me for a moment with what looked like jealousy, but she smiled a moment later at Dale, her eyes sparkling. “Sweetie, you made a friend? That’s wonderful! I told you that you could do it, didn’t I?”

There was something wrong with her voice, though I couldn’t put my finger on it at first.

“Yeah,” Dale said and put his hands in his pockets, his cheeks flushing as Su put her arms around him and hugged him tightly.

Dale had her take care of me first, and I was led to a little room with a padded table. It had a hole on one end that Su had me rest my face in. Under the hole was a small silver tray, and I smelled lilacs a moment after she put a crystal bowl on the tray.

“Scented oils?” I asked.

“Aromatherapy,” Su replied, beginning to rub my neck with her tiny fingers. “The scent relaxes the brain and aids in improving circulation.”

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“What is it?” Su asked.

“How did you meet Dale?”

Su laughed softly, continuing to knead my neck and shoulders. “He came in after he’d been pushed off a bridge by a local gang. His back was twisted up bad, worse than his healing factor could deal with, and I helped him get back on his feet. He’s been coming over ever since then.”

“So why are you his friend?”

“Actually I’m his girlfriend, but he won’t call me that. He once told me that he was afraid that he’d screw up and lose me if he did,” Su said, and I laughed. “What’s funny about that?”

“Dale is dumb as a post.” I said and chuckled. “I like being his friend, but I can’t imagine having sex with him.”

“Dale isn’t always dumb, Terry. He’s got schizophrenia, and that dumb little boy is one of three personalities running around in his head. The dumb Dale is his dominant personality, a defense mechanism he developed to protect the real Dale from harm. You haven’t noticed that sometimes he seems smarter and more menacing than usual?”

“Well yeah, I guess I have,” I said. “But I figured that he was just paying attention then.”

I wanted to look at Su, but I was face planted and stuck watching a bowl of water with swirly bits of oil and steam.

The whole conversation had a dreamlike quality.

“No, that’s Jody, Dale’s other personality,” Su said. “I would have been scared of him, but it was Jody who sought me out for the pain in his back. The other personalities weren’t able to cope with the pain. Because I helped him, Jody has always been kind to me.”

“What’s the real Dale like?” I asked.

“He’s very sweet, but he doesn’t come out very often without medication,” Su said.

I could tell that she was sad by the tone of her voice.

“It isn’t fair, because the drugs make it impossible for him to function. He can’t sleep or deal with people, and he isn’t able to make love to me. I would rather take Dale as a crazy person than the shell he becomes after the drugs begin to work.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you decided to have sex with him.”

“I decided it would be okay after I realized that he’s as close to the perfect man as I’m ever going to get,” Su said.

I giggle-snorted. “Just how do you figure that?”

“He’s dumb and he knows it, so he never tries to act superior to me. He’s handsome without the ego to ruin it, and he keeps his mouth shut about us. In my opinion, that alone makes him worth his weight in gold. As I said, he’s as close to perfect as I’ll ever find.”

“At least you can get him to be quiet,” I joked. “I wish I knew how to do that.”

“Bribe him.” Su giggled. “When he used to come over to talk, I could give him comics to make him sit and listen to me. Now I don’t have to. He listens to me without any bribes, but I suppose I still am bribing him. I’m the only girl willing to have sex with him.”

And then all the little slurs and lisps finally added up. Su had some mild form of mental retardation. I realized that Dale was probably also a great find for her because he would never look down on her.

Su couldn’t have that many problems, as she owned her own place and ran her own business. But I saw how this also allowed her to be reclusive. Her work came to her. Dale did too, and she never had to leave her home.

I thought that I could just be guessing, so I tested my observations by asking, “You don’t get out very often, do you?”

“No, normal people make me nervous. It’s like they don’t know how to act around us.”

“Us?” I asked.

“People like Dale and me, I mean,” Su clarified. Her hand moved down my back, feeling almost painful before the knots in my muscles relaxed. “People finally make the connections and realize I have problems, and then they talk to me like I’m stupid. I get mad, and then people act like I’m too stupid to understand the rules of society. Then the police get called, and someone starts looking for my handler. Because obviously, I must be too simple to live by myself.”

Her voice slowly filled with more bitterness, but I never felt it in her touch. She remained focused on her job even as she explained how normal people could be jerks while thinking they were being nice at the same time.

I sighed. “And so if people knew Dale was your boyfriend, they’d snoop in your relationship because they don’t think you’re smart enough for sex.”

“Yes, exactly.” Su heaved an exasperated sigh, and she squeezed a muscle in my side harder than before. I felt no pain, but she released me and said, “Sorry.”

“I’m a bit tougher than that,” I said.

“If you need me to be more firm, say so.” Su went back to work for a minutes, and then she broke the silence. “Dale doesn’t visit me very often. He hasn’t been by in a couple of months, and I’d like to spend some time alone with him, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “I can take a cab home here in a few minutes.”

Su let go of my neck, smiling at me as I got up from the table. “How do you feel now?”

“Great. My headache is gone and my vision isn’t blurry anymore. How much do I owe you?”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? I’m wouldn’t take your money now,” Su said.

“Why not?” I asked.

Su smiled at me. “Any friend of Dale’s is a friend of mine, and I don’t charge friends for massages.”

I got up and called a cab, explaining to Dale that I would be at the lab with Morgan and Wally that night. I suggested that he might try finding Simon if he felt like going out on patrol, then I went outside to wait for my cab. I was surprised when Su jogged out to follow me to the cab

I noticed her expression was worried as I opened the door and turned around. “What’s wrong?”

Well, it’s just—I know Dale has a healing factor, but I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

“We gave him something that makes him invulnerable now, so you won’t have to worry about patching him up anymore,” I said.

Su didn’t look assured. I put my hand on her shoulder and smiled. “I’ll tell you what. If we get into something that I think will hurt Dale, I’ll send him here. Would that work?” She gave a small nod. “You really love him, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“You shouldn’t worry so much,” I said. “Dale is a good hero.”

Su nodded. “I know. I’ve been reading the paper and laughing over him getting all of this attention, but I found it hard to believe that you would think of Dale as a friend.”

I laughed with her. “That makes us even. You can’t believe we’re Dale’s friends, and I guarantee you the guys wouldn’t believe this.”

I grinned, holding up my hand when Su pouted. “If they knew about this. They won’t unless Dale tells them himself.” I turned to step into the cab. “Remind Dale to check in with—”

“I will. I know my man,” Su cut me off. Her smile widened as she waved and went back to her house. She stopped at the door and turned around. I’m trusting you to stay true to your word, she said, though her lips didn’t move.

I kept laughing to myself, confusing the driver by not explaining my giggling fits.

While the thought of Dale having a telepathic girlfriend was amusing, it was also a source of great relief. Dale really did just want to be my friend, so I didn’t have to worry about any awkward moments with him where I’d end up having to turn him down.

This of course sent my thoughts right back over to David, and I felt even happier knowing that I might be able to call him that night to tell him that I found a cure for my nanites being self-programmed. We could have a normal life together, and I would never have to leave him again.