Chapter 2
What would he do if he saw Helga on the street? Arnold did not feel the need to ponder on such an unlikely situation. He now wished he had. What was the root of this problem? What troubled sweet Arnold most? He could hide in the crowd, mask his face with his hands, he could switch directions of his path or duck into the nearest store. He did not have to speak with her, yet somehow, he couldn't live with himself if he didn't.
She'd changed. She was an adult, a woman, no longer an ignorant girl but a woman. He had seen her last when she was seventeen. The light penetrated through the window and illuminated her face. It made her eyes glow, as the crystals of incoming tears decorated the interior of the two stars. He loved her eyes, they had a strange sort of significance to him, a power to make him yield, to forget all rationality and give up everything for her. Even his hate could not overshadow the passion he felt for her eyes. And there they were, still sparkling, still enchanting, surveying him from a distance of a meter.
"Arnold," she said calmly as she made her way through the current of pedestrians. Her voice was deep and rich, like caramel, and it rubbed against his earlobe in a strange collaboration of inflicting both, pain and pleasure.
"Helga," he weakly smiled, surveying her frame. She did get taller, but, in truth, little of her appearance had changed. Her face was still youthful, still annoyed, still uninhibited. Her lower lip curved when she was surprised and her bushy eyebrows elevated when she spoke. Watching every movement, every detail of her harsh yet tender visage made him tremble. He wanted to free himself of the past, but before him stood an obstacle, an expertly crafted, overly realistic effigy of what he had left behind.
"It's been a long time," she smiled, "Who would have thought that our paths would cross yet again."
"Not I," he replied heavily, "The last words you've said to me were, as I remember, 'I never want to see you or this dirty, forsaken town again.'"
"Will you be reminding me of the things I've said in high school on a regular basis now?" Helga snickered comically.
"Will there be a regular basis?" he inquired in the same tone.
"Fat chance, Football Head," she joked in her childhood innuendo.
"Now you're beginning to sound like the old Helga."
"Old Helga?" she studied him, "What was Old Helga like?"
"An angry, sad girl, who called me names and claimed she hated me."
She laughed in her malicious laughter, the same ringing sound he had heard occasionally, though not often, as a child, "I'm still the same Helga."
Arnold gazed deeply into her clear blue eyes, "Why are you sad?"
She did not reply.
"So, where are you going now?" he asked, trying to find a casual disruption from the previous question.
"I'm going to do lunch with some associates," she replied diplomatically, "I would invite you, but you understand."
"No," he paused, "I don't."
She looked down and then back up again. Her face had transitioned, her facial features became cold, and her eyes were filled with cleverly hidden, but undeniable, rage.
"Arnold," she said harshly, "This isn't a high school reunion, you know that. Someone is trying to destroy everything I have ever worked for, and I am not intending to let them. I will crush that someone with all my force and connections, I will ruin their career and their life, I will bankrupt them, bury them alive. I am capable and willing, and nothing will stop me until my mission is complete. When they beg for my forgiveness, I will laugh in their face. I'll destroy that someone, for trying to destroy me. Arnold, that someone is you. Prepare your troops for war, and practice your defeat speech."
She turned and began walking away, as he curiously watched over the way she moved, the way she portrayed herself. It was a frightening sight, that familiarity that she beheld. It gnawed on him from the inside. Eleven years ago, Arnold had left behind a skill to understand people. Naively, boldly, arrogantly, he never thought he would need to use the faculty on himself.
He watched her walk, it was the walk of a powerful woman, the walk of someone who had seen plenty in their life, who had achieved plenty. For a moment, he felt a streak of admiration and good will for Helga G Pataki, but immediately, his good graces were overshadowed by what had been stamped on paper.
After all, a lawsuit had been pending, people have bee hurt. Her weapons had been lethal, her attitudes were not at all graceful. How could she, this ugly duckling with a heart of steel, ever compare a to beautiful Lila, Lila, with her glory and grace and femininity and. Suddenly it struck him. When Lila walked, she walked like a woman. When Helga walked, she walked like a man. Perhaps that was why she used the tactics that she used, those disgraceful, horrible tactics. It was more socially acceptable for a man to commit crimes than for a woman. It was about testosterone, a normal female being could never possess such innovation. This made Helga abnormal, this made Helga equivalent to a man. That was what she was, a man with a vagina. Interesting, perhaps somewhat explanatory of the antipathy he felt. Arnold always did dislike other members of his sex. But surely, this was not the full, encyclopedic version of a psychoanalysis. Something else was pending within him, a feeling of unfinished business. After all, Helga had a vagina.
To clarify this reasoning, Arnold had to admit that in his life, for the past eleven years, at least, he never learned to care for people, to truly see people, truly appreciate them. In the male sex he saw enemies, in the female sex, he saw sex. For men, he felt hate. For women, he felt lust. Helga seemed to embody both sides. When hate mingled with lust, an extraordinary explosion occurred, a chemical reaction, an atomic bomb. Worse than that, it was a destructive force, the most powerful, the most convincing, in the world. Even his passion for Lila could not compare to the feeling that he felt against and for Helga. Manhood pride was at stake, Arnold did not toy with these realizations.
Finally, in the nick of time, just as her pink silhouette disappeared beneath the gray tints of other people, Arnold decided on his plan of action, on his revenge. This would come against Big Bob and his little daughter, a plot thought out to the core.
Even when she was a child, Helga was always seeking her father's approval. Arnold saw the misery within her, and, at times, even attempted to rectify her tortures. He saw in Big Bob's eyes, that deep within, he loved his daughter. He was inadequate in showing it, but he had always prided in her character, wit, and independence, very much similar to his own persona. He had two loves in his life, his business and his family. After Miriam divorced him and moved to Texas in order to pursue a riding career, after Olga had declared she was an alcoholic lesbian who hated him since birth for making her live up to highest expectations and disappeared in Europe with her lover, he had left only Helga. Helga, who made his dreams flourish, who turned his company into a landmark. Helga, who made him the happiest man and father alive.
After winning his case against BBB, Arnold would shatter Bob's business. After using Helga and leaving her brokenhearted, Arnold would shatter Bob's daughter. This was peachy, and made to succeed. He saw it in her walk, in her eyes, on her lips. He saw it everywhere. It's been a while since Helga was courted, and even longer since Helga was fucked. This was going to be easy. Within a week (with other girls it was a day, but he had to give a worthy adversary a tad of respect) he would find himself trashing Helga's phone number just like Rhonda's, Nadine's, Ruth's, Forgot Her Name's, etc.
"Yes," Helga looked across the table at her lawyer, "I understand what you are saying to me, but there is absolutely no way that I would let him have the damn settlement."
"Look, Helga," Phoebe frowned, "You don't understand, he's not offering you a settlement. We're far beyond that. He demands that you are stripped and fined and sued, and.."
"What's your point?"
"Look," Phoebe sighed, "The Company will not survive, this is something you will need to accept before we even go into that battle next week. We're trying to save you. Your ass is on the line, and unless you're willing to face twenty to life, I suggest that you quit while you're not too far behind. FBH Inc. is the type of firm that doesn't give up until the milk the cow for all it's worth."
Helga studied her childhood friends and present attorney's face, "Oh my God!"
"What?"
"You've been sleeping with Gerald again, haven't you?" She said in a disdainful, but caring voice.
Phoebe blushed. She was very pretty, with sparkling eyes and thick, long, brown hair. She was petite, with the perfect hourglass figure that every woman in her right mind desired, complimented well by slimming power suits. Phoebe was one of a kind, the second most feared woman in business, next to her associate Helga. However, with men there was a different story. Countless times her heart was broken, but she always came back, she always forgave. Helga did not understand this concept. In her world, if someone hurt her, that someone would have to die.
"Phoebes, why do you do this to yourself?"
"Do what?" she asked innocently.
"The man cheats on you, calls you a whore, tells you he doesn't want to be in a relationship, but you continue chasing after him like he's damn James Bond. You know I care about you."
"Let me live my life the way I want to live my life."
"Honey, go ahead and live, just don't live old mistakes over and over again."
"That shouldn't matter to you, my personal life does not affect yours."
"I don't want to have to listen to you weep over the phone about something that you knew would come from the very beginning," Helga debated.
"I don't think that's why. I think it's because he's Arnold's best friend."
"What does Arnold have to do with you being a retard when it comes to relationships?"
Phoebe stared at her with rage, "I think it's because you're still not over him, and that's why you can't bear hearing that he wants to destroy you."
"Oh what the fuck? How did we shift to this conversation all of a sudden?" Helga exclaimed angrily.
"I make mistakes?" Phoebe screamed in return with her little voice, making a few people turn their heads, "At least the mistakes I make affect only myself. I don't hurt people when I make mistakes, Helga. You do! And I am not saying this as either a lawyer or a friend, just as a normal person: you deserve what it happening to you! I hope you wound up rotting in jail!"
"Oh great!" Helga returned sarcastically, "I guess that really elevates you above me. So go, take your cell phone click the little clickers, fuck your little boyfriend, and catch him doing it with a blonde on the office table! I hope you enjoy not hurting others. Have a nice lunch, you little masochist!"
Helga walked out on Phoebe, on years of friendship, it all ended just like that. Her only friend in this world, her only available connection besides her father was gone. Helga walked the streets with a stoical _expression on her face, but by the time she reached her penthouse hotel room, she could not help but fall to her knees and cry.
High school was over, but Helga was still the same. Dressed in her little pink frock, with the ponytails and the one eyebrow. In her car was packed a suitcase, she had bid farewell to her family hours ago, and spent the day driving through the city, looking at old streets, remembering, and knowing that she needed to speak with Arnold.
It was not her fault that her father had decided to build his store on the property of Arnold's boarding house. However, she, and Arnold, blamed herself. This was wrong of him. This was unholy. But, nonetheless, Arnold was an angel in her perspective. Not only that, he was also her object of affection since kindergarten. No, she could not leave the town without saying goodbye, without admitting her feelings. This may have been her last chance in a long time, possibly forever.
She had found out that he was staying at a hotel downtown, and was nervously driving her car through the drizzle of the immortal day. Perhaps he would forgive her, perhaps they could keep in close correspondence, perhaps. Only the highest of achievers dreamed to dream, after all. Helga liked to think of herself as one.
She came up to the front desk and asked the secretary to ring his room and ask him to come down. Helga was too afraid to encounter Arnold's grandparents. Her father had, after all, wrecked their way of life. She was afraid of being shunned.
It took a while before he came down, but he came. She knew he was battling with two opposing forces. She knew that he had no reason to hate her, but hated her just the same. She knew.
"What do you have to say?" he said coldly, with a disdainful impression on his face, "Go on, make it quick."
Helga looked around uncomfortably, "Can we please go outside? I cannot talk in here."
Without saying a word, Arnold began to walk out of the hotel and Helga scurried to catch up with him. Presently, they stood in the middle of the dark street, illuminated by the stores and streetlights, the colors of the night. Helga looked beautiful in this light, this Arnold could not deny. But her beauty irritated him, while he was pale and troubled, she was youthful and becoming. This was not the proper way it was supposed to be, the proper way was vice versa.
"Go ahead," he said, trying to avoid her watery, wide, extraordinary eyes that softened his actions.
"This is very difficult for me to say," Helga stumbled.
"Well try harder, I am giving you a minute."
Helga looked at the ground and back at him once more, "I know about the boarding house, Arnold. I care."
"You care?" he said sarcastically, "This was not very difficult, or earnest, for that matter. What do you mean by that?"
"My father did a terrible thing, Arnold," Helga continued, "I had no control over him, I cold not stop him. You have to understand."
"Why are you here? My life has nothing to do with yours."
Helga sighed, afraid she would break into tears at the absurdity of his statement, if only he knew, "But Arnold, your life."
"Is just that, MY life! Please, stop it and leave. I don't want to have this conversation with you."
"But Arnold, you don't understand!"
"Understand what? What, Helga? Tell me, please, make it clear so I could understand. Why have you come here?"
"I came to apologize for my father, Arnold!" She screamed back, catching him a little by surprise, "because I know that he will never apologize on his own, and you deserve an apology."
"Helga, we don't need your apology, we don't need your words. What do the words have to do with us? How can they affect us? Who the hell are you at all to think that we need your apology?" he was speaking harshly, cutting Helga to the bone, "Bob is a brute, an uneducated, barbaric, cruel, despicable man."
Helga could not believe it, the man she loved was insulting her own father in a beastly manner. She was torn, with whom would she side? Bob had his faults, but he was, after all, her father. And Arnold, oh Arnold! Her mind began to race, she did not know how to respond. Her silence triggered Arnold to continue, to spill all the rage he had within onto her, even though, inwardly, he knew and was afraid to admit that she did not deserve it. He wanted to say to her all the things he never dared to say to Bob.
"And you, Helga, you are even less than that. You have no business coming here, you're nobody. Just the daughter of a bastard, of the brute, uneducated."
And suddenly, she kissed him, and he pondered her action for a moment, as his lips began to move along hers, melting into a sensation of queerness, unfathomed feeling, miscomprehension, all before he violently pushed her away as her skinny body swayed a meter across the concrete boulevard.
This rejection did not stop Helga, she fell to her knees, hugging his legs in a strange manner, pleading temporarily insanity, and mumbling pathetic words he could not understand under her breath. His first instinct was to sweep her up, put her in his grasp, hold on to her, kiss those tears away and cry apologies for hurting her the way that he did. But hate overfilled his lungs, and he followed the gruesome feeling in the pit of his stomach, as it drew him to begin moving away, as the tender skin on her knee scraped against the ground and he saw specks of blood descend upon it. Oh how he wanted to nurse that wound, all the while conflicting to hurt her, to move faster, deepen the cut. Cruelty got the best of him as he ripped her weak hands off his ankles, pushed her down onto the ground and looked at her in disgust.
Helga quickly got to her feet, a strange sort feeling arose within her, an unrecognized, unfathomed emotion she had never felt before for anyone. As she stood in his sight, bruised, heartbroken, insulted, abused, she felt her spinal cord collapse, as she felt faint. Weakly, she stumbled against a wall that kept her up, not once leaving her beloved's gaze. This was it, the last time she would ever see him again. All was said and done, and that was his true nature. He was not an angel but a devil. Oh how it pained her to understand that all her life she spent loving, obsessing over, a man who did not exist. Life lost all meaning to her, and suddenly, she was avid to leave this town, leave this planet, and start another life elsewhere, start a life anew, and never make the same mistake again.
Arnold studied her face. That weakness, that feebleness. He suddenly became as disgusted with himself as he was with her. He had assaulted a crying soul; that was wrong, that was cruel. Men did not hit women, he was not a man. Oh but there was something more about that disgust, he felt as if he was throwing away something. It wasn't about his manly pride, it was that in hitting her he shattered some sort of possibility, some mysterious force that she used to feed him with. He could not understand the feelings that he felt for Helga, and that made him hate her even more. But something. damn it, there was something. Rain began to pour, as it drained her clothes, her hair, her skin. He wanted to shelter her, while simultaneously conspiring to strip her of all protection.
"Go home," he said at last, trying to forget what had just happened, "get some sleep. I'm sure that by tomorrow you'll be good as new, bumping into me and insulting me the way you always have."
She stared at him, awe stricken, not responding for a moment, only pondering his face. How could she have been so mistaken? For so many years, too.
She snapped out of her meditation suddenly and considered his remark, "No," she said, "It's never going to be that way again. I'm leaving for college tonight, and I'm not coming back."
Arnold could not believe the sudden burst he felt within, the pain in his chest, the longing to hold her and keep her and never let her get away, but he confined all that, hid it, and smuggled it into the air with a simple, "Oh."
Helga stared into his face, her eyes no longer watery, but strong, determined, enthralling. She looked at him and penetrated him, as her lips quivered and her body shook under the rain. She knew that in the past five minutes she had grown more than in the last seventeen years. And that gave her a mixed sort of feeling.
"Let me humor you, Arnold," she said softly, "I'm getting out of here, and I'm becoming something more than just the 'daughter of a bastard.' And I don't care what you think about me, not anymore. I know that many years down the road, you are going to offer me your apology, and I will treat you on that lovely afternoon the same way that you treat me now. But I'm not looking forward to that day. Quite frankly, and this wish is very improbable, but I can dream nonetheless," she sighed, "I never want to see you, or this dirty, forsaken town ever again."
She quickly turned and began walking away. As her shadow became smaller and smaller, more invisible to determine, more obscure and irrational, as this occurred, Arnold could not help but wonder. Was it really the rain that accounted for the dismal moisture that he felt running along his lower eyelid.
Did Arnold hate Helga because she was the female male? The man with the vagina? Or, perhaps, did the true root of his feelings emerge on that night, when she left him for an eternity, confused and abandoned, shivering under the pouring rain, eleven years ago?
Helga drank her eleventh dry martini of the evening and slowly passed out on the bed. Life had dwindled down to representing only a series of conflicts and collisions, and she felt as if her weak, thin shoulders would not be able to carry the burden for much longer. She secretly hoped she'd die of alcohol poisoning. Instead, she was afflicted by a terrible hangover the next morning.
What would he do if he saw Helga on the street? Arnold did not feel the need to ponder on such an unlikely situation. He now wished he had. What was the root of this problem? What troubled sweet Arnold most? He could hide in the crowd, mask his face with his hands, he could switch directions of his path or duck into the nearest store. He did not have to speak with her, yet somehow, he couldn't live with himself if he didn't.
She'd changed. She was an adult, a woman, no longer an ignorant girl but a woman. He had seen her last when she was seventeen. The light penetrated through the window and illuminated her face. It made her eyes glow, as the crystals of incoming tears decorated the interior of the two stars. He loved her eyes, they had a strange sort of significance to him, a power to make him yield, to forget all rationality and give up everything for her. Even his hate could not overshadow the passion he felt for her eyes. And there they were, still sparkling, still enchanting, surveying him from a distance of a meter.
"Arnold," she said calmly as she made her way through the current of pedestrians. Her voice was deep and rich, like caramel, and it rubbed against his earlobe in a strange collaboration of inflicting both, pain and pleasure.
"Helga," he weakly smiled, surveying her frame. She did get taller, but, in truth, little of her appearance had changed. Her face was still youthful, still annoyed, still uninhibited. Her lower lip curved when she was surprised and her bushy eyebrows elevated when she spoke. Watching every movement, every detail of her harsh yet tender visage made him tremble. He wanted to free himself of the past, but before him stood an obstacle, an expertly crafted, overly realistic effigy of what he had left behind.
"It's been a long time," she smiled, "Who would have thought that our paths would cross yet again."
"Not I," he replied heavily, "The last words you've said to me were, as I remember, 'I never want to see you or this dirty, forsaken town again.'"
"Will you be reminding me of the things I've said in high school on a regular basis now?" Helga snickered comically.
"Will there be a regular basis?" he inquired in the same tone.
"Fat chance, Football Head," she joked in her childhood innuendo.
"Now you're beginning to sound like the old Helga."
"Old Helga?" she studied him, "What was Old Helga like?"
"An angry, sad girl, who called me names and claimed she hated me."
She laughed in her malicious laughter, the same ringing sound he had heard occasionally, though not often, as a child, "I'm still the same Helga."
Arnold gazed deeply into her clear blue eyes, "Why are you sad?"
She did not reply.
"So, where are you going now?" he asked, trying to find a casual disruption from the previous question.
"I'm going to do lunch with some associates," she replied diplomatically, "I would invite you, but you understand."
"No," he paused, "I don't."
She looked down and then back up again. Her face had transitioned, her facial features became cold, and her eyes were filled with cleverly hidden, but undeniable, rage.
"Arnold," she said harshly, "This isn't a high school reunion, you know that. Someone is trying to destroy everything I have ever worked for, and I am not intending to let them. I will crush that someone with all my force and connections, I will ruin their career and their life, I will bankrupt them, bury them alive. I am capable and willing, and nothing will stop me until my mission is complete. When they beg for my forgiveness, I will laugh in their face. I'll destroy that someone, for trying to destroy me. Arnold, that someone is you. Prepare your troops for war, and practice your defeat speech."
She turned and began walking away, as he curiously watched over the way she moved, the way she portrayed herself. It was a frightening sight, that familiarity that she beheld. It gnawed on him from the inside. Eleven years ago, Arnold had left behind a skill to understand people. Naively, boldly, arrogantly, he never thought he would need to use the faculty on himself.
He watched her walk, it was the walk of a powerful woman, the walk of someone who had seen plenty in their life, who had achieved plenty. For a moment, he felt a streak of admiration and good will for Helga G Pataki, but immediately, his good graces were overshadowed by what had been stamped on paper.
After all, a lawsuit had been pending, people have bee hurt. Her weapons had been lethal, her attitudes were not at all graceful. How could she, this ugly duckling with a heart of steel, ever compare a to beautiful Lila, Lila, with her glory and grace and femininity and. Suddenly it struck him. When Lila walked, she walked like a woman. When Helga walked, she walked like a man. Perhaps that was why she used the tactics that she used, those disgraceful, horrible tactics. It was more socially acceptable for a man to commit crimes than for a woman. It was about testosterone, a normal female being could never possess such innovation. This made Helga abnormal, this made Helga equivalent to a man. That was what she was, a man with a vagina. Interesting, perhaps somewhat explanatory of the antipathy he felt. Arnold always did dislike other members of his sex. But surely, this was not the full, encyclopedic version of a psychoanalysis. Something else was pending within him, a feeling of unfinished business. After all, Helga had a vagina.
To clarify this reasoning, Arnold had to admit that in his life, for the past eleven years, at least, he never learned to care for people, to truly see people, truly appreciate them. In the male sex he saw enemies, in the female sex, he saw sex. For men, he felt hate. For women, he felt lust. Helga seemed to embody both sides. When hate mingled with lust, an extraordinary explosion occurred, a chemical reaction, an atomic bomb. Worse than that, it was a destructive force, the most powerful, the most convincing, in the world. Even his passion for Lila could not compare to the feeling that he felt against and for Helga. Manhood pride was at stake, Arnold did not toy with these realizations.
Finally, in the nick of time, just as her pink silhouette disappeared beneath the gray tints of other people, Arnold decided on his plan of action, on his revenge. This would come against Big Bob and his little daughter, a plot thought out to the core.
Even when she was a child, Helga was always seeking her father's approval. Arnold saw the misery within her, and, at times, even attempted to rectify her tortures. He saw in Big Bob's eyes, that deep within, he loved his daughter. He was inadequate in showing it, but he had always prided in her character, wit, and independence, very much similar to his own persona. He had two loves in his life, his business and his family. After Miriam divorced him and moved to Texas in order to pursue a riding career, after Olga had declared she was an alcoholic lesbian who hated him since birth for making her live up to highest expectations and disappeared in Europe with her lover, he had left only Helga. Helga, who made his dreams flourish, who turned his company into a landmark. Helga, who made him the happiest man and father alive.
After winning his case against BBB, Arnold would shatter Bob's business. After using Helga and leaving her brokenhearted, Arnold would shatter Bob's daughter. This was peachy, and made to succeed. He saw it in her walk, in her eyes, on her lips. He saw it everywhere. It's been a while since Helga was courted, and even longer since Helga was fucked. This was going to be easy. Within a week (with other girls it was a day, but he had to give a worthy adversary a tad of respect) he would find himself trashing Helga's phone number just like Rhonda's, Nadine's, Ruth's, Forgot Her Name's, etc.
"Yes," Helga looked across the table at her lawyer, "I understand what you are saying to me, but there is absolutely no way that I would let him have the damn settlement."
"Look, Helga," Phoebe frowned, "You don't understand, he's not offering you a settlement. We're far beyond that. He demands that you are stripped and fined and sued, and.."
"What's your point?"
"Look," Phoebe sighed, "The Company will not survive, this is something you will need to accept before we even go into that battle next week. We're trying to save you. Your ass is on the line, and unless you're willing to face twenty to life, I suggest that you quit while you're not too far behind. FBH Inc. is the type of firm that doesn't give up until the milk the cow for all it's worth."
Helga studied her childhood friends and present attorney's face, "Oh my God!"
"What?"
"You've been sleeping with Gerald again, haven't you?" She said in a disdainful, but caring voice.
Phoebe blushed. She was very pretty, with sparkling eyes and thick, long, brown hair. She was petite, with the perfect hourglass figure that every woman in her right mind desired, complimented well by slimming power suits. Phoebe was one of a kind, the second most feared woman in business, next to her associate Helga. However, with men there was a different story. Countless times her heart was broken, but she always came back, she always forgave. Helga did not understand this concept. In her world, if someone hurt her, that someone would have to die.
"Phoebes, why do you do this to yourself?"
"Do what?" she asked innocently.
"The man cheats on you, calls you a whore, tells you he doesn't want to be in a relationship, but you continue chasing after him like he's damn James Bond. You know I care about you."
"Let me live my life the way I want to live my life."
"Honey, go ahead and live, just don't live old mistakes over and over again."
"That shouldn't matter to you, my personal life does not affect yours."
"I don't want to have to listen to you weep over the phone about something that you knew would come from the very beginning," Helga debated.
"I don't think that's why. I think it's because he's Arnold's best friend."
"What does Arnold have to do with you being a retard when it comes to relationships?"
Phoebe stared at her with rage, "I think it's because you're still not over him, and that's why you can't bear hearing that he wants to destroy you."
"Oh what the fuck? How did we shift to this conversation all of a sudden?" Helga exclaimed angrily.
"I make mistakes?" Phoebe screamed in return with her little voice, making a few people turn their heads, "At least the mistakes I make affect only myself. I don't hurt people when I make mistakes, Helga. You do! And I am not saying this as either a lawyer or a friend, just as a normal person: you deserve what it happening to you! I hope you wound up rotting in jail!"
"Oh great!" Helga returned sarcastically, "I guess that really elevates you above me. So go, take your cell phone click the little clickers, fuck your little boyfriend, and catch him doing it with a blonde on the office table! I hope you enjoy not hurting others. Have a nice lunch, you little masochist!"
Helga walked out on Phoebe, on years of friendship, it all ended just like that. Her only friend in this world, her only available connection besides her father was gone. Helga walked the streets with a stoical _expression on her face, but by the time she reached her penthouse hotel room, she could not help but fall to her knees and cry.
High school was over, but Helga was still the same. Dressed in her little pink frock, with the ponytails and the one eyebrow. In her car was packed a suitcase, she had bid farewell to her family hours ago, and spent the day driving through the city, looking at old streets, remembering, and knowing that she needed to speak with Arnold.
It was not her fault that her father had decided to build his store on the property of Arnold's boarding house. However, she, and Arnold, blamed herself. This was wrong of him. This was unholy. But, nonetheless, Arnold was an angel in her perspective. Not only that, he was also her object of affection since kindergarten. No, she could not leave the town without saying goodbye, without admitting her feelings. This may have been her last chance in a long time, possibly forever.
She had found out that he was staying at a hotel downtown, and was nervously driving her car through the drizzle of the immortal day. Perhaps he would forgive her, perhaps they could keep in close correspondence, perhaps. Only the highest of achievers dreamed to dream, after all. Helga liked to think of herself as one.
She came up to the front desk and asked the secretary to ring his room and ask him to come down. Helga was too afraid to encounter Arnold's grandparents. Her father had, after all, wrecked their way of life. She was afraid of being shunned.
It took a while before he came down, but he came. She knew he was battling with two opposing forces. She knew that he had no reason to hate her, but hated her just the same. She knew.
"What do you have to say?" he said coldly, with a disdainful impression on his face, "Go on, make it quick."
Helga looked around uncomfortably, "Can we please go outside? I cannot talk in here."
Without saying a word, Arnold began to walk out of the hotel and Helga scurried to catch up with him. Presently, they stood in the middle of the dark street, illuminated by the stores and streetlights, the colors of the night. Helga looked beautiful in this light, this Arnold could not deny. But her beauty irritated him, while he was pale and troubled, she was youthful and becoming. This was not the proper way it was supposed to be, the proper way was vice versa.
"Go ahead," he said, trying to avoid her watery, wide, extraordinary eyes that softened his actions.
"This is very difficult for me to say," Helga stumbled.
"Well try harder, I am giving you a minute."
Helga looked at the ground and back at him once more, "I know about the boarding house, Arnold. I care."
"You care?" he said sarcastically, "This was not very difficult, or earnest, for that matter. What do you mean by that?"
"My father did a terrible thing, Arnold," Helga continued, "I had no control over him, I cold not stop him. You have to understand."
"Why are you here? My life has nothing to do with yours."
Helga sighed, afraid she would break into tears at the absurdity of his statement, if only he knew, "But Arnold, your life."
"Is just that, MY life! Please, stop it and leave. I don't want to have this conversation with you."
"But Arnold, you don't understand!"
"Understand what? What, Helga? Tell me, please, make it clear so I could understand. Why have you come here?"
"I came to apologize for my father, Arnold!" She screamed back, catching him a little by surprise, "because I know that he will never apologize on his own, and you deserve an apology."
"Helga, we don't need your apology, we don't need your words. What do the words have to do with us? How can they affect us? Who the hell are you at all to think that we need your apology?" he was speaking harshly, cutting Helga to the bone, "Bob is a brute, an uneducated, barbaric, cruel, despicable man."
Helga could not believe it, the man she loved was insulting her own father in a beastly manner. She was torn, with whom would she side? Bob had his faults, but he was, after all, her father. And Arnold, oh Arnold! Her mind began to race, she did not know how to respond. Her silence triggered Arnold to continue, to spill all the rage he had within onto her, even though, inwardly, he knew and was afraid to admit that she did not deserve it. He wanted to say to her all the things he never dared to say to Bob.
"And you, Helga, you are even less than that. You have no business coming here, you're nobody. Just the daughter of a bastard, of the brute, uneducated."
And suddenly, she kissed him, and he pondered her action for a moment, as his lips began to move along hers, melting into a sensation of queerness, unfathomed feeling, miscomprehension, all before he violently pushed her away as her skinny body swayed a meter across the concrete boulevard.
This rejection did not stop Helga, she fell to her knees, hugging his legs in a strange manner, pleading temporarily insanity, and mumbling pathetic words he could not understand under her breath. His first instinct was to sweep her up, put her in his grasp, hold on to her, kiss those tears away and cry apologies for hurting her the way that he did. But hate overfilled his lungs, and he followed the gruesome feeling in the pit of his stomach, as it drew him to begin moving away, as the tender skin on her knee scraped against the ground and he saw specks of blood descend upon it. Oh how he wanted to nurse that wound, all the while conflicting to hurt her, to move faster, deepen the cut. Cruelty got the best of him as he ripped her weak hands off his ankles, pushed her down onto the ground and looked at her in disgust.
Helga quickly got to her feet, a strange sort feeling arose within her, an unrecognized, unfathomed emotion she had never felt before for anyone. As she stood in his sight, bruised, heartbroken, insulted, abused, she felt her spinal cord collapse, as she felt faint. Weakly, she stumbled against a wall that kept her up, not once leaving her beloved's gaze. This was it, the last time she would ever see him again. All was said and done, and that was his true nature. He was not an angel but a devil. Oh how it pained her to understand that all her life she spent loving, obsessing over, a man who did not exist. Life lost all meaning to her, and suddenly, she was avid to leave this town, leave this planet, and start another life elsewhere, start a life anew, and never make the same mistake again.
Arnold studied her face. That weakness, that feebleness. He suddenly became as disgusted with himself as he was with her. He had assaulted a crying soul; that was wrong, that was cruel. Men did not hit women, he was not a man. Oh but there was something more about that disgust, he felt as if he was throwing away something. It wasn't about his manly pride, it was that in hitting her he shattered some sort of possibility, some mysterious force that she used to feed him with. He could not understand the feelings that he felt for Helga, and that made him hate her even more. But something. damn it, there was something. Rain began to pour, as it drained her clothes, her hair, her skin. He wanted to shelter her, while simultaneously conspiring to strip her of all protection.
"Go home," he said at last, trying to forget what had just happened, "get some sleep. I'm sure that by tomorrow you'll be good as new, bumping into me and insulting me the way you always have."
She stared at him, awe stricken, not responding for a moment, only pondering his face. How could she have been so mistaken? For so many years, too.
She snapped out of her meditation suddenly and considered his remark, "No," she said, "It's never going to be that way again. I'm leaving for college tonight, and I'm not coming back."
Arnold could not believe the sudden burst he felt within, the pain in his chest, the longing to hold her and keep her and never let her get away, but he confined all that, hid it, and smuggled it into the air with a simple, "Oh."
Helga stared into his face, her eyes no longer watery, but strong, determined, enthralling. She looked at him and penetrated him, as her lips quivered and her body shook under the rain. She knew that in the past five minutes she had grown more than in the last seventeen years. And that gave her a mixed sort of feeling.
"Let me humor you, Arnold," she said softly, "I'm getting out of here, and I'm becoming something more than just the 'daughter of a bastard.' And I don't care what you think about me, not anymore. I know that many years down the road, you are going to offer me your apology, and I will treat you on that lovely afternoon the same way that you treat me now. But I'm not looking forward to that day. Quite frankly, and this wish is very improbable, but I can dream nonetheless," she sighed, "I never want to see you, or this dirty, forsaken town ever again."
She quickly turned and began walking away. As her shadow became smaller and smaller, more invisible to determine, more obscure and irrational, as this occurred, Arnold could not help but wonder. Was it really the rain that accounted for the dismal moisture that he felt running along his lower eyelid.
Did Arnold hate Helga because she was the female male? The man with the vagina? Or, perhaps, did the true root of his feelings emerge on that night, when she left him for an eternity, confused and abandoned, shivering under the pouring rain, eleven years ago?
Helga drank her eleventh dry martini of the evening and slowly passed out on the bed. Life had dwindled down to representing only a series of conflicts and collisions, and she felt as if her weak, thin shoulders would not be able to carry the burden for much longer. She secretly hoped she'd die of alcohol poisoning. Instead, she was afflicted by a terrible hangover the next morning.