It all started with Link's number. The numbers were hurriedly scrawled in bleeding pen on a torn square of loose leaf I could spare. The folded sheet fell out of my pants pocket while I was doing laundry, and I nearly had a heart attack there on the spot. It would admittedly be a very peculiar place to have a heart attack. It's a small alcove upstairs beside Tingle's room that's a peeling maroon red, and it's usually droning with the sounds of the old-style washing and drying machines. Tingle's snores could be heard through the walls and from beneath the crack at the bottom of the door.
I know what you're probably thinking. Why haven't I called her yet? It's been three days. I don't have the greatest excuse to give you quite yet, so I'll distract you with a different monologue.
The whole heart attack thing might seem hyperbolic. It is not. I literally clutched my chest and let out an exclamation loud enough to wake Tingle. His lumbering form approached the opposite side of the door, banged it open, and glared at me through bloodshot eyes. I gave him a wave. He responded with something incomprehensible, but I think I got what he meant, and he slammed the door shut. My heart was still pounding for several moments afterwards, all the while I remained frozen on the spot.
The thought of the heart attack itself came to me the moment I whipped out the crumpled sheet of paper. With it came that peculiar, bubbly, slightly sadistic feeling you get when you contemplate your own mortality and how funny it would be if you suddenly just fell over and died one day. Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this. It's not like it's a conscious decision or anything. Maybe at one time I was, but right now I am not suicidal. It's a kind of thing that tends to happen on its own. Sometimes when I'm wandering at night in a flash I'll see myself falling down the stairs and hitting my head and spilling my brains all over the wooden steps, or when I'm out walking the street I'll see myself getting hit by an inattentive driver and breaking all the bones in my body. I wouldn't really call myself paranoid, but it definitely makes me more cautious and conscious of my surroundings.
In this particular instance, finding Link's number in my pockets right before tossing my pantaloons into the washer was almost metaphorical to keeling over and dying. Had mom not terrorized me into always checking my pockets before doing the wash, Link's number would have been gone, swept away into the foaming, gyrating abyss. In retrospect, this seems to lean towards the melodramatic, so I'm going to blame sucky female hormones on this: I was absolutely certain my happiness would have been over then and there. I may or may not have visualized the piece of paper between my fingers being rendered to mush with amazement at my own stupidity.
I immediately dropped everything, leaving the laundry to languish on the floor, and raced out of the room to grab a pen downstairs. I pulled any piece of paper I could find and wrote her number down. A coffee receipt, an electric bill, some random ranty drabbles I wrote about a month ago...no free floating sheet of paper was spared my pen and frantic scribbling. I was on a roll. Within fifteen minutes my hand was cramping, but her number was both seared into my retinas and had become my new wall art. I could proudly say her number backwards and forwards with my eyes closed. I was so completely elated and giddy that I had to sit down and take some breaths. It was practically like having coffee in my system.
Please note that this was all done with heavy bruising, so I think some congratulations are in order. I look a bit like a bruised banana, and I feel like I've been dragged a hundred miles on gravel. I know it sounds like an exaggeration, but I swear it's just about the only way I can describe it. When I try to move certain muscles or do certain movements, like twisting to look behind me or lifting my left arm higher than head level, it feels like barbed wire is being woven through my skin and around my bones. I can normally bear it doing menial tasks at Telma's and maneuvering the house, but every once in awhile I'll do a sudden movement, the pain will catch me by surprise and I'll let out a long stream of colorful linguistics. What's most annoying is that I'm still limping from place to place, and it's been several days since the incident. Telma's noticed. She's having me only bus tables and not serve so I don't scare the patrons. I'm okay with it I guess (I make more money serving, since bussers and servers are tipped separately). Telma 's making it so that I don't have to interact with people during my moontime…(ugh!)...which is thankfully almost over.
Telma has been worried about me. She's been threatening to throw me in the back of her pickup with a gag and forcibly take me to the hospital if I'm not better by next week. I think she's mostly joking. I'd wager fifty-six percent joking. Secretly, I would love to know what she would say to the cops if we got pulled over on the way to the hospital. Probably something badass. Like I said before, she cares about her employees, and I think it shook her up to see me walk through her doors looking like a human punching bag. She re-did the schedule so I would have today off. It's screwing me over in terms of rent, but she threatened to fire me if I showed up today. I'd wager she was three percent joking.
I'm not entirely sure if I can really explain exactly what having Link's number is like. Why I suddenly have this huge rush of adrenaline. Why I'm grinning like a dolt just like I was in the coffee shop. It's a complicated feeling. I've suddenly found myself happier than I could have imagined just days ago. Most absurdly, the source of this happiness is something very simple. Numbers on a folded sheet of paper. Just as I was beginning to accept my life as one without much happiness, now, numbers on a page copied from a cup of coffee, written over and over again, suddenly have the power to make me happy. Isn't that just insane?
Then again, maybe it isn't. Maybe the reason I'm so elated is obvious. Link. She's my reason. I look up to her, find her incredible and amazing. The fact that she forged her own path and went all the way through with her transition takes more courage than I can imagine. Having her number and writing it down is like a mantra: I am not alone. Link went through this too. Going from having your ass kicked in the back alley of a nightclub because the world hates you, to suddenly seeing someone who has found her way in the same world as a transgender individual is not only amazing, but utterly inspirational. It's one of those Gee, I'd Love to Be Where You Are Now scenarios. I know she's probably got her own shit to face, but at the very least she seems happy with her body now, and that's always just been my goal from the beginning. Just knowing her, having some piece of her, is like knowing that I'm not lost. I can do this too. I, too, can achieve my goals just like any other human in this world is entitled to. That's empowering. She is walking, talking, living proof that we are not freaks. We are not abominations of this earth as some people would have you think. We are people. Entitled to happiness, capable of loving and being loved. We feel things. And we can overcome. It is through her, and any part of her, that I can finally find hope for my own future. That hope which I've been reaching for during these years of uncertainty and confusion.
On a more basic level, I think the most obvious reason is that I might be falling for her. Okay, I'll admit that I don't really know her that well, but I would at least like to. It's only been, like, five years? I mean, damn, she is hot. And she was totally flirting with me too. I think she and I already have enough common ground to understand where we're both coming from. And really, what were the odds of meeting each other here of all places? I've already mentioned how big Kakariko is, the chances of us crossing paths again are slim. I'm not generally a very superstitious person, but you have to admit, these circumstances are just a little strange.
I should really just call her already, shouldn't I?