When I get up the next morning, I take a stroll to the pay phone at the gas station down the street, my pockets heavy with quarters. I tell the answering machine of Andy Chambers of Billings, Montana that he is an asshole, and repeat his social security number a few times. Then I tell Cal Orion of Chicago that he shouldn’t be mean to people on the telephone. I call Carol Boone of Eugene, Oregon. three times to make pig noises into her answering machine. On the fourth call, I just repeat her contact information and social security number over and over again until the machine cuts me off. Jacob Wyatt of Atlanta answers his phone, so I berate him for a few minutes, and then hang up without really telling him why I called. I have all the pertinent information for Ed Weed’s Discover card, so I call in and cancel it for him, so he won’t be running up any high bills. I’m kind, I know it. In exchange for helping out Ed Weed, I call and report Warwick Kincade’s Visa to be stolen.
When I get home, I fill out the small stack of subscription cards for almost two dozen assorted porn magazines, checking the ‘bill me later,’ option on each one. I want the happy recipients to be able to preview the wonderful magazines I have chosen for them. I take them to a mail box, drop them in, and then go to a book store to pick up cards from more menial magazines, such as YM, 17, Modern Bride, and a host of others.
Upon returning home, I do an Internet search, find local newspapers for customers and sign them up. It’s a token of my appreciation, and I’m sure they will be most gracious. I almost want to call to tell them the good I’ve done for their lives. I suppose just getting the bill will be good enough. I spend the following hour calling SpectraCom to downgrade commonly used services such as long distance. For others, I just shut the phone off all together. On a few that just irritated me, I put vulgar passwords on the account.
By evening, with all the hard work I’ve done, I’m ready for a big dinner and some booze. Chloe gets home when I’m about half done. She complains about the animalistic way I eat my steak and rice. I threaten to eat without utensils and even without my hands, just dive in like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. She tells me I’m gross and goes to hide in her room until I’m done. I consider eating with my face anyway.
I consider washing my dishes when I finish eating, but there is that old adage of ‘why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?’ I tell Chloe that I want to go to the bar. She is a little surprised, suggesting it may be a little early to start drinking. However, she already has a bottle of Jack Daniels in her room. I tell her it’s 7pm, and if anything, we are late to the bar. She agrees, and we head off.
I try to remember if I were supposed to hang out with Alicia, but decide that I really don’t care. What’s the point of trying to do or start anything if she is moving away? I’m not about to get into a long-distance relationship, and I’m not about to move away with someone I hardly know, no matter how much I do like her. I’ve fallen temporarily into a rather black mood, and Chloe notices almost right away.
“What’s wrong?” she demands.
“Nothing,” I snap, jamming the car into an undefined parking space in the rough dirt lot.
“Rubin, the only time you ever snap at me is when there is something wrong. Now tell me before I kick your ass.” There is nothing like gently coaxing the information out of me.
“It’s just... Ugh... I like one girl, but she’s moving far away. Combine that with the girl I was going to marry getting married to someone else this weekend,” I moan, turning off the car. We get out and don’t bother locking it. If someone wants to steal my car, I would be better off. I would save money. “It just wears down on me, makes me want to give up on love altogether. Why bother doing anything when it will just turn to shit in the end?”
“You’re so lame, Rubin.” I’m glad I can always rely on her to sugarcoat the truth when I need it. “That’s the same lame statement that all fucking drama queens make when their love-lives are taking a turn for the worse.”
“It’s what you always say,” I defensively retort. The lights are all on in the bar. There is hardly anyone here, just the usual drunks, among which I suppose Chloe and I can be considered. There is Scott the junkie, Knuckles the old man, the SS T-shirt guy. Only Dr. Filth is missing.
“Exactly,” she says, leading me to our customary table in the back. “Exactly, that’s what I always say, and I’m the biggest drama queen of them all. That should be all you need to know.”
I return to the bar and get a pitcher of Moosehead. “It just sucks, is all,” I moan, feeling excessively sorry for myself. “I just feel like I can’t win, you know. Every time I gain one, I lose one.”
“Rubin,” she sighs, pouring first a pint for me and then one for herself. “You’re making me sick. Shut your fucking mouth.” She waits for me to take a sip and says, “We will talk about anything else. Have you gotten any kind of reply from your magazines?”
“Endless rejections,” I say brightly.
“You’ll get published,” she says confidently. “You’re a genius.”
“I should have you as my agent,” I grumble.
When Filth arrives at 10:30, Chloe and I are quite drunk. He has been drinking at work all day, so he is in a sorry shape as well.
“Some woman I spoke with today had a religious epiphany with me,” he tells us after he gets a double Jack & Coke.
“What happened?” I ask, enthralled.
“She had called in earlier, and told us a rock hit her windshield and cracked it, and she wanted to make a claim for it,” he informs. “Then she went home, and prayed, because she felt guilty. The Lord told her that she had to, she must call us back and tell us the truth. She could not go on living the lie. We had to be told what she really hit.”
“And what did she really hit?” Chloe asks.
“A person,” Doc answers. “She hit a homeless man on her way home, and was so scared that she ran. She thought she could get away with it, because he was homeless, but the Lord led her to the path of truth.”
“What did you tell her?” Chloe asks.
“I told her that I had to submit the report to the local authorities to verify it, so she should consider contacting them as well if she had not already.”
Tommy Guilt comes in around 11:30, coked to the gills, bright eyed and bushy tailed. He wants to know if anyone has any pot. Doc Filth does, of course, so they go out to Tommy’s car to smoke. Both are nearly comatose when they return.
“Are you going to Zoe’s wedding on Saturday?” Doc Filth asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “What, did she invite you too?”
“No, but for an open bar, I would wear a dress and be your date if the offer still stands.”
“You guys are going to date?” Tommy asks, eyes wide. He stares for a moment, and then nearly falls out of his seat laughing. “That’s fucking awesome.”
“Naw,” I say. “If I take anyone, it will be my dear Chloe.” I put my arm around her and we fall against each other. “We will get wasted and ruin my ex-girlfriend’s wedding. It will be great.”
“Not taking Alicia?” Filth asks.
“Take the girl I’m seeing right now to my ex’s wedding. Don’t you think that would be a bad idea?”
“He was considering it,” Chloe says.
“I was considering it,” I admit in a low voice, looking into the depths of my pint glass.
We drink until the bar closes and Chloe and I head for home. I still have the better part of a 12 pack of Ice Beasts in the fridge, so I break out a can. Even though I have to work tomorrow, I really don’t feel like sleeping right away. Kurt Vance is gone somewhere, so Chloe and I decide to keep drinking. After all, when we run out of beer, she still has a bottle of vodka.
We lounge in the living room for awhile, barely talking, just drinking. Then, without speaking, Chloe grabs a sketch pad and two charcoal pencils from her bedroom. She tears out a small sheaf of papers, hands the book and a pencil to me, and tells me it’s time to draw.
We play a game similar to the poetry game Doc Filth and I used to play, where one of us comes up with a word and then we draw a picture of that word. This amuses us for about an hour and a half. Then we decide to hang them up in a private art gallery–a present for Kurt when he gets home.
I’ve started to feel tired at this point, but Chloe persists that if we’ve gone this far, there is no turning back, and we have to watch the sun rise. I realize I have no choice but to watch the sun rise, so we collect a few more beers and sit on the front step.
It’s a cool, misty morning, one when rain is unnecessary. We sit on our front stoop for a few minutes, but then decide it would be better to watch from the train tracks over the river. We run down the street, past all the ‘No Trespassing,’ signs onto the tracks. A few railway men ignore us, and we plop down over the water on a rusty iron trellis.
The sky is turning a magnificent shade of grey. In a few hours, it will have infected every building, every worker, every employer, and every child. Tempers will flare, apathy will coalesce, people will start to fall. Lives will begin to fade. This year, the murder rate and the unemployment rate are both skyrocketing. In a city of 40,000 people, there have already been four murders, three nonfatal shootings, countless stabbings and beatings—one day there were three unrelated incidents in a single afternoon—fight after fight after fight after fight. It’s happening all over the country, but for the first time ever, I’m feeling it at home. I used to walk these streets brazenly at all hours of the night. Now, even I keep a constant watchful eye over my shoulder. No one has money. No one has jobs. This is all going to blow up. I feel the groundwork of a massive riot rumbling beneath my feet. I know it’s going to happen soon. It’s going to be a hot summer. The President has promised that economic prosperity is right around the corner. He says nothing to back this up. He has already proven though, that if he did attempt to back it up, it would be a bold-faced lie. He and his rich friends sit behind concrete walls, sipping mint juleps and snorting an endless supply of cocaine. They are protected from the poor they treat so contemptuously, the very same poor they are supposed to represent. The very same poor who chose them in the most farcical popularity contest since Hitler’s rise to power. They are protected from the poor, so the concerns of the poor mean nothing to them. Maybe another war would do well to thin the ranks of the desperate and starving. Soon that war will reach our own shores, and no one will know what to do. Still, some people love him. It’s going to be a hot summer.
“So what’s going on with Alicia?” Chloe asks as a 15-foot branch floats below us and smashes into the concrete pylons. “How are things going there? You said she’s leaving, but what are you going to do?”
I think for a few seconds, staring down into the water, which is opaque and bears the color of heavily creamed coffee. “It almost seems pointless to pursue,” I say. “She is an amazing girl, but she’s leaving. It sucks–I’m so into her, and I already know how it’s going to end.”
“You’re just giving up?” Chloe asks, a little surprised.
“I don’t know. It sounds like the logical thing to do.” I look over at her and smile bitterly. “In a round about way, I guess I’m taking your advice.” I chuckle. “She extended the offer to go with her.”
Chloe’s eyes widen. “You considered it,” Chloe says, matter-of-factly.
I snort. “You know me so well,” I let fall from my lips. “We should just get it over with and get married. Most people already think we’re a couple.”
“Would you believe that I’ve had girls ask permission to talk to you or hang out with you?”
“And what did you tell them?” I manage to raise up one eyebrow this time.
“Some of them, I gave permission, if I thought they were safe. Others, I said, ‘Bitch, that’s my man!”
“What would you say if I did go with her?” I ask, gazing out over the river again. “Just picked up, moved away from here and never came back. What would you say to me?”
“You know what I would say,” she tells me. “I would tell you that you’re an idiot. We all need to get out of this shithole, but chasing after a girl is not the way to do it. Even if you just picked up and did something crazy, just moved away with no plan, I’d respect that, but not if you’re running off with some girl you hardly know.”
“I don’t know,” I say absently. “I’ve kinda always wanted to go out to California, maybe get in the film business or something. You know, write movies.”
“Rubin,” she moans. “Everyone wants to run off to California and write movies.”
“Yeah,” I sigh.
“So do it. Get out of here,” she says flatly. “You’ll be missed here, but so what? You’ll be better off and we’ll get over it. Go someplace. Make something of yourself, and come back only to visit. Don’t go chasing after a girl.”
I groan and say,” Why does life have to be so stupid?”
No comments:
Post a Comment