Sorry, You've Reached KeithElmy.com

Ken from Footwear finally snaps, shoots up a display of Nikes, puts a cluster of hollow-point rounds through a cardboard standee of Lebron. I’m kinda glad when that stupid headband is lopped off by gunfire. Always hated that thing.

Ken targets some Adidas cross trainers next. Once the magazine empties and the slide of his pistol locks back, he extracts a K-Bar from a sheath on his belt, hacks away at a rack of low-cut, poly/cotton, moisture-wicking socks with it. 

We should’ve seen this coming. There were signs if I stop to think about it. 

Like how he’s eaten fried chicken, like six pieces of it, every day for as long as he’s worked here. Years. He’ll put a drumstick in his mouth, work it around and around, and then when he finally pulls it out, that sucker is stripped clean. 

Or like how he’ll talk about lawn mowers non-stop with anybody who’ll listen. An Exmark is better than a Scag is better than a John Deere, but not better than a Snapper, and so on.

If those aren’t signs of madness, I don’t know what is.

On the security monitors in the manager’s office, just off the break room, Ken arranges Filas in a pile, sets fire to it with a Bic. Then he starts dancing around it, whooping, clapping his hand over his mouth repeatedly. Insanity and racism make strange bedfellows.

We – the employees of The Sports Emporium – huddle together in the cramped office, amid the tattered catalogs of sporting equipment stacked on the desk and softball team Polaroids thumb-tacked haphazardly to the corkboard, while involuntarily huffing the stink of recently smoked Kools roiling off Stump from Fitness and the miasmic cloud of cotton candy body spray that seems to encase Brock from Apparel at all times. Uncomfortable as the office is, none of us can tear ourselves away from the bedlam we’re witnessing on the monitors. Not even when One-Arm Ray, the manager, starts biting his fingernails and pa-tooey-ing jagged little crescent moons on to the desk.

“I think we should call the cops,” Brock says. She adjusts a bra strap, puts her hands into the back pockets of her skin-tight jeans.

Butch from Loss and Prevention says, “In a minute.” He sips coffee from a thermal Wawa mug that has BUTCH Sharpied on the side in ginormous black letters. “I wanna see where this goes.” None of us say anything because we wanna see where this goes, too. 

Jen from Team Sports pops her gum, pulls handfuls of thick, lustrous black hair into a ponytail. Hair that smells like Pantene and tickles like silk. “Guys,” she says, “we open in fifteen minutes.” Everybody ignores her. 

“Y’know,” says Bob from Hunting, Fishing, and Camping, whose fifty-six-year-old nipples are always hard, “I could take him out if we still sold shotguns.” Everybody ignores Bob, too. There was an incident a couple years back, when we still sold shotguns, before Bob worked here, when a customer loaded a shell into a pump-action Mossberg 12-gauge and went to fire it, but it jammed. After that, corporate threw up its hands, declared that The Sports Emporium would never again sell firearms. They could’ve put safety measures in place, but why take the chance, was their reasoning. 

A beep-beep-beep! beep-beep-beep! issues from somewhere. Jen turns and looks at me, smiles. She points at my wrist, says, “Watch, sweetness.” She looks me up and down, winks at me. I blush, silence my Timex, leave the office to look for my purse, which has my insulin in it. I scour the break room, can’t find my purse anywhere.

Oh, no. 

I was late coming in, so I threw my purse under my register, booked it to the time clock. 

I pop my head back into the office, scan the monitors. On one of them, I spot the grainy image of my purse – the worn, royal blue Kate Spade that Mom got for me – nestled snugly under the register, holding my insulin, my life blood, in its soft, satiny interior. 

Well, shit. I gotta go out there.

I don’t tell anybody, don’t ask anybody to “cover me.” What would they cover me with, anyway? I slip out of the break room, step on to the sales floor.

In my head, Mom tells me to stay put, asks how can I be so careless.

Like she should talk.

#          

Mom, an angular stick figure of a woman, had diabetes, too. Same deal as me, a type 1 diabetic. She was horrible about taking her insulin, though.

Mom was as vain as she was acidic. She’d never be caught dead in sweatpants and/or without makeup. And if she saw somebody else like that, she’d always make a snide comment about them. 

Mom was a bit of a bitch. 

One time she dropped me off at school, and my friend Carla rushed to the car to greet me. Carla was cute enough, but Mom talked constantly about how Carla could be cuter. “If she just, y’know, gussied herself up a little more,” Mom would say, “she’d be so cute.” 

Carla who was a bit overweight, whose blonde hair was always wild and frizzy. Carla who loved a good pair of sweatpants or oversized mom jeans. Carla, always smiling – beaming – because she was just fine with how she looked. It’s why I’m friends with her: she’s the polar opposite of Mom.

Mom was a bit of a snob.

A side effect of taking insulin is that it makes you gain weight. This can happen especially if you don’t maintain a proper diet, which Mom did not. 

Mom’s thing was chocolate. She loved chocolate. She was a connoisseur. Halloween night, she’d root around in my pillowcase of goodies after trick-or-treating. “Zoe, my love,” she’d say, holding up a tiny Mr. Goodbar or a mini-Kit Kat, “Hershey is trash. You want good chocolate, you get Godiva or Ghirardelli. Or a nice piece of Dove.” She kept bags and bags of Dove Promises dark chocolates in the house, and she’d plow through them. But I’d still find oodles of discarded Hershey candy wrappers in the garbage can. Candy that I hadn’t eaten. Candy that Dad hadn’t eaten because Dad’s never had a sweet tooth. 

Then when I’d indulge in a piece of candy or two, Mom would dog me about taking my insulin and then dog Dad for dogging her for not taking hers. When she did take it, she’d eat like a bird, just enough to avoid full-on hypoglycemia, then be moody as fuck because her blood sugar was all out of whack.

Mom was a bit of a hypocrite.

Eventually, Mom developed neuropathy in her feet. She started walking very slowly because her feet often went numb. She went everywhere early so she could take her time, concentrate on her steps. 

Dad and I had no idea it was neuropathy because Mom insisted the metformin made her tired, sluggish. I bought that even though metformin never really made me sluggish. I thought maybe it just affected people differently. 

Mom was a bit of a bullshit artist.

One night the power went out at our house. When it came back on, the clocks were all screwed up, so Mom was in a tizzy about making it to work on time. She fumbled around the house, bumping into things because of her feet. Dad tried to slow her down, tried to get her to call work to let them know she was gonna be late. Mom, a shuffling tornado in a bespoke pantsuit, said something about an important meeting, can’t be late. “So fuck off, Sam,” she said to Dad.

Mom was a bit of a drama queen.

Mom hurried to the Malvern train station, purse swinging from her shoulder, laptop bag clutched in a manicured hand. When she got there, she dashed across the parking lot, hustled up the steps to the platform. 

Thing is, Mom wasn’t good at hustling because of her numb feet. She stumbled, fell backward, tumbled down the unforgiving concrete steps, and hit her head. Limbs twisted at the foot of the staircase, perfectly coifed hair spilled out Carla-wild around her head, Mom suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and died. A few other commuters, coffee-stained mouths agape, stared helplessly.

Mom was a bit of a tragedy.

But I’m not gonna be.

#

From just outside the break room, I scope out the area.

There’s about fifty yards of store between me and the checkout lanes. About twenty yards from there is Ken, in all his off-his-meds, sneaker-torching glory.   

I creep up to the fitting rooms, hide next to the counter where Brock once hit on a married guy who looked like Nick Nolte. After she had sex with him in one of the fitting rooms, “Nick Nolte” wound up as a hash mark on a piece of paper that Brock taped to the countertop. I glance at the tally: fourteen. So far. Stump is one of those hash marks, too, but he’ll never admit it.

A quick peek at Ken – he’s strapped on a pair of rollerblades and is doing circles around the smoldering Filas – and I dart across to the apparel racks, where Butch once caught a kid smoking a joint in the middle of a rack of Columbia parkas. Butch kicked the kid out, but not before confiscating the joint, which he shared with me and Jen later that day, after our shift. It was the first time I ever got high. And the first time I ever made out with a girl.

From there I scamper on hands and knees to the collectibles area, with the baseball cards and Philly sports team pennants and limited-edition bobbleheads and other miscellaneous tchotchkes of sports fandom. It’s where I was given the shortest, most informal interview ever, where I spoke about my customer service qualifications while One-Arm Ray looked me up and down three times and glanced at my boobs five times and said, “Uh-huh. You’re hired. When can you start?”

 In the home stretch, near the checkout lanes, I flatten out on my belly, army-crawl past the end cap of Big League Chew, Bubble Tape, Hubba Bubba, Dubble Bubble, Bubble Yum, and watermelon-flavored Bubblicious. Even now, as I reach my station, I can hear the phantom primeval screams of kids who are denied those sugary chewing gums. Even now, as I quietly lift my purse out of the cubbyhole underneath the terminal and check to make sure my insulin is in there, I can hear the ghosts of prickly parents shout back, “Haven’t you gotten enough already today? We’re going home, you don’t need any more sugar!”

Relieved to the point where I’m not thinking about anything other than the fact that I’m relieved, I stand up, purse in hand, and walk back to the break room. 

From behind me: “Zoe!”

It’s Ken. Crap.

I freeze, clutch my purse, hope if I stay perfectly still, he won’t see me like that T-Rex in Jurassic Park. 

“Hey, Zoe!” he says. “Where is everybody?” His voice is steady. Calm, even. 

I turn, slap on a smile. “Hey, Ken! Whatcha doin’ out here?” I point a thumb in the direction of the break room. “We’re about to have our team meeting.”

Ken stops rollerblading, looks at his watch. “Oh right. We open soon.”

I nod. “Yep.”

Ken, knife in hand, standing in a cloud of smoke, considers the destroyed Nikes, the bullet-ridden Adidas, the melted Filas. “I should prob’ly clean this up, huh?”

I shrug. “Might not be a bad idea.” Gesture to the standee. “Leave Lebron how he is, though. I hate that stupid headband.”

Ken goggles. “Thank you! So do I!”

The fire alarm blares, and tepid water rains down from the sprinklers. 

In my head, Mom tuts, says, “Well now your hair and makeup are ruined.”

Mom was a bit of a nutbag. 

She would’ve loved Ken.

END

There was this chick I ran cross country with in high school. Amber. She had buck teeth and the nicest legs I ever seen. 

Ballsiest chick I ever knew. Wildest, too.

One time we’re at this end-of-summer party, right? One of our teammate’s parents had it at their house. There was this huge pond in the backyard. Thing had a diving platform. Musta been a hunnert feet high. 

Amber gets there and immediately strips down to a green string bikini. Which was like, holy shit. Most skin I ever saw on a high school chick. And remember, this was back in, what, ‘96? None of the other chicks I went to school with did that shit. 

But Amber stripped down like it was nothin’.

And then she goes up the diving platform and executes a perfect dive right into the wooder. Shit was Olympic, man. Didn’t even ask how deep the goddamn pond was. 

But that’s how she was with everything. She just dove, man. 

#

I was smitten with this chick. So much so that I made a move on her at cross country practice one day.

We were out on a run, and I stuck kinda close to her. Ran just a little ahead of her. I stop and start dickin’ with my eye, pretending like there was something in it, and Amber stopped to see what was wrong. I asked her to look in my eye, and when she did, I kissed her. Just went for it. She kissed me back, and I tasted vodka on her. Like she had a couple swigs before practice. Then she said she had a boyfriend and ran off.  

She didn’t say shit to me for the rest of practice. She didn’t say shit to me until right before practice the next day.

There was a bathroom right by the track where we warmed up, right. I sometimes got changed in there because I just wanted a few minutes to myself. Well, I’d just gotten changed when the door opens, and, boom, Amber’s standin’ there. Lookin’ all hot in a pair of running shorts and a tank top. Before I could say anything, she started kissing me.

One thing led to another and, well, I lost my virginity that day. Right there in one of the stalls, man. It was crazy. Fuckin’ Amber just pushed me into one and that was it. 

Now, Amber was as mysterious as she was wild. I mean, she’d been at my school a year maybe, something like that. And nobody knew fuckin’ shit about her.

But I’d heard stories about her. Rumors. Like, I heard she was with two dudes at the same time, and they Eiffel Towered her. Shit like that. I didn’t know what to believe. 

But that day, in that stall, it seemed like anything was possible. I mean, it did not seem like her first rodeo. Or her second, know what I mean? That girl knew exactly what she was doin’. 

It didn’t last long, of course. And, full disclosure, Amber was disappointed. She straight up asked me if I was a virgin. And the second I said I was, she was fuckin’ out. Just pulled on her shorts and walked out the door. Didn’t say shit to me the rest of practice. Didn’t say shit to me the rest of the week. And P.S., I tasted vodka on her again.

Anyway, I kept my distance, too. I was freaked out by the whole thing. I mean, we didn’t use protection or anything, y’know? It definitely messed with my head.

Then a week later, after practice, she comes up to me as I’m about to get in my car. And she’s just like, “Oh, hey. Is this your car? Can I drive it?” 

And I was like, “No, you can’t, I gotta get home.” So she asks me to give her a ride home, which I did.

So we’re driving, and we’re god knows where in Charlestown, right, and she starts messing with my junk.

Well, my heart starts jackhammering, and I didn’t know what to do. And then her head was, y’know, in my crotch. 

I pulled over real quick, and, uh, full disclosure, what Amber was doing, that didn’t last long, either, if you know what I mean. And then get this. She’s like, “Now can I drive your car?” 

At that point I was all dopey, so I was like, Fuck it, sure, why not.

#

Back then I drove a Subaru Justy. Ever heard of it? Well, I’m not surprised. Most people haven’t. They don’t even make ‘em anymore. It was a weird little car. Four-door hatchback. All-wheel drive. Mine was a five-speed manual. Still one of the best cars I ever owned. 

I didn’t even ask if she could drive a stick. Back then, not a lotta kids could. Not the kids I knew, anyway. This chick, though? She gets behind the wheel, and the car was like another limb for her. Smoothest driving I ever seen. And the scariest.

She was red-lining the thing, taking turns at speed, it was nuts. 

I look over and see her doing something weird with the clutch. Turns out she was double-clutching. I didn’t even know what that was. 

So we’re racing through Charlestown, right? Just tearing ass down every backroad. 

I’ll never forget it – I was holding on for dear life, and that Smashing Pumpkins song “Zero” came on the radio. And just as I’m fuckin’ praying we don’t get killed, Amber starts singing along, and screams, “WANNA GO FOR A RIDE?!” at the top of her fucking lungs.

At that point, we were careening down some road, kinda near the old Devault meat packing plant, but farther out, on some side road. And we come to this long-ass driveway, and Amber jerks the e-brake and cranks the wheel, and we start drifting. Like, actually drifting. Like Fast and Furious shit.

We get halfway down the driveway, and Amber stops the car. She takes off her seat belt and her shorts and gets on top of me. And, well, that time lasted a bit longer but not by much.

She tells me she lied; she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Then she puts her shorts back on and gets out and walks up the driveway toward this big-ass house. I mean, this thing was fucking huge. Ever seen one of those mansions on the Main Line? Like in Bryn Mawr or Ardmore? This thing was twice the size of one of those. 

I watched Amber walk toward it, and then I got my shit together and drove home. The whole thing was like a crazy-ass dream.

#

So I get home, right, and then I have to deal with my mom, who’s a massive drunk. She’s sprawled on the living room couch, clothes all wrinkled and shit. Bottle of Red Dog in her hand. Remember that shit? Red Dog? My mom loved that shit. Kept at least a case in reserve at all times. I see her, and she has, like, eight or nine dead soldiers on the floor in front of her.

I was home later than usual, and somehow she noticed. Even though she was drunk. She starts in with me – where were you, I was starting to worry, why didn’t ya call, all that mom shit. 

I told her practice went late, and I gave somebody a ride home. She asks who, and I tell her Amber, a girl I run with. 

Well, I might as well told her I gave the fucking pope a ride home. She starts in with more questions, and I downplay the whole thing. You know, “Just some girl, she’s nobody.” Shit like that.

I change the subject, ask her where’s Dad, and she says he’s at work. 

Dad was always at work back then. Always on some job. He’s still a bit of a workaholic but nothing like he used to be. 

Anyway, I sat with Mom for a little bit. Just long enough for her to get drowsy and nod off, which didn’t take long. It never did.

I went to the kitchen to find somethin’ to eat, and the phone rings. I pick it up, expecting it to be Dad, saying he was gonna be late. But it was Amber.

She sounded out of it, slurring her words. Of course I knew what that meant: she was drunk. She said everything I heard was true. Then she trailed off, said she left her underwear in my car. I asked her if she was okay, and she said she was. She says she doesn’t have a boyfriend, and I’m like, “Yeah, you told me.”

Then she asks about the English homework. Then my mom starts calling to me from the other room, asking who’s on the phone. It was like being in a mental institution. You know, just two crazy people crying out for attention. I told Amber I had to go, and right before I hang up she tells me she loves my car. I’m like, “Great, see you tomorrow,” and I hang up.

#

The next day at school, Amber comes up to me and starts talking to me. Really talking to me. I’ve barely talked to this chick, and suddenly I’m her best friend. 

She’s asking me about school and my family and all this. I didn’t tell her much about my mom because I couldn’t. I mean, that’s a whole thing, y’know? Just didn’t wanna get into it.

And before you know it, boom, we’re dating. Just like that. She’s cold, then she’s hot. It was heady shit.

One day she takes me to her house, right, and we do it in the pool house. Like Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Afterward, she takes me to her room and pulls out this scrapbook. It’s full of articles about rally car races. And then she shows me an article about how this dude named Bobby Halsey died in a rally car crash.

And then she starts crying like crazy. Like, her whole body was shaking. And I’m trying to calm her down, and then she’s like, “I miss him so much.” And that’s when I put it together. 

Bobby Halsey was her dad. 

Anyway, once she calmed down, she told me he was seconds from the finish line, and he was hit by another driver who’d lost control of his car. Her dad’s car flipped and rolled, like, thirteen times. And get this: Amber and her mom were right. There. Saw the whole fuckin’ thing.

This happened, I don’t know, a few months before they moved to the area. They were all set to move to Charlestown right after the race, and then he died, and they moved anyway. Hence the humongous fuckin’ house they lived in. Apparently rally car drivers make bank.

She said things got bad after he died, but she didn’t elaborate. And I didn’t ask. 

And by the way, that’s how she knew how to drive like a fuckin’ bat outta hell. Her dad started teaching her when she was, like, ten or something.

She swears me to secrecy on all this. Nobody knows but her, her mom, and me.

For a while, we were great. In love, I’d say. I mean, if you can call a high school relationship love. I loved her. I will say that. And I did say that. Thing is, I didn’t tell her until right before we broke up. Timing, right? Life always gets in the way of timing.

#

The whole time Amber and I dated, she tasted like alcohol at some point or another. During school, after school, on the weekends. I kissed her and tasted vodka. Not always, mind you, but a lotta the time. I found out she was filling a wooder bottle with vodka and drinking during school.

Now, I tried to ignore this. I mean, my mom was an alcoholic, right? I was used to ignoring it. I was annoyed, but I could ignore it. Until I couldn’t. Not with Amber. That’s when I told her about my mom. And when I say “told,” I mean I took her to meet my mom.

But I didn’t tell my mom I was bringing Amber over. Which was on purpose. I wanted Amber to see my mom in her natural habitat. Like Jane Goodall with the apes and shit.

Which, looking back, was really unfair to my mom. I mean, she was a person, not a scared straight program. I should’ve been more, y’know, cognizant of that. Anyway, I take Amber to my house, and my mom is neck-deep in Red Dog empties.

I kept it as innocent as I could. Just a kid bringing home his girlfriend to meet Mom, right? All Leave It to Beaver and shit.

Mom was startled by it, though. But she was sweet as could be. Funny, even.

And Amber loved my mom. She loved that my mom let it all hang out, y’know? And of course my mom told some embarrassing stories about me, which I expected. I figured that was the price of admission. 

Afterward I drive Amber home, and she’s talking about how great my mom is, how sweet, how funny. And I’m like, “Yeah, but she’s a drunk.” And I follow that up with how she’s like that every night and how embarrassing it is. 

Amber got real quiet after that. And then she said something I’ll never forget. She goes, “Maybe she’s in pain.” And without thinking about it, I go, “Is that why you drink?” That’s when Amber started crying. And then she told me about Drew Drabich.

#

Drew was a typical cliché high school bad guy. He was one of those popular kids who was dicky to the unpopular kids. I was in his gunsights for a while. I mean, shit, a lotta kids were. But this douchebag had a real hard-on for Amber. He loved to pester the shit outta her. 

Amber had buck teeth and her last name was Halsey, right? Well, fuckin’ Drew called her “Horsey.” And of course this got major laughs from the other shitstains I went to school with, which only encouraged him to do it more. 

Well, that night in my car, the night she met my mom, she told me after her dad died, she lost her shit. Partied like crazy. 

There was this spot near my high school, this rock quarry the kids called “Dead Man’s.” It was where kids went to drink. Amber goes there one Friday night and gets totally shitfaced. And she hooks up with Drew. But somewhere in there, she passes out. Somewhere in the woods. When she comes to, Drew and his asshole brother, Nick, are, uh, double-teaming her. 

She tried to push them away, but she was still really drunk and out of it so she wasn’t able to. Then they finished and just left her there.

She felt shitty and gross, but she didn’t tell anyone. Shortly thereafter, the rumor about Amber being double-teamed surfaced. And then Drew started in with the “Horsey” bullshit, which is when Amber started bringing booze to school. Just to get through the day. Amber said the really shitty thing was that if they’d just asked her to do what they did, she would’ve done it. She was like, “I’m no prude.” 

She tells me all this, and I don’t know what to say. I mean, after a story like that, what can you say? I just told Amber I was sorry and that I had no idea. 

Then, like a fuckin’ asshole, I blurted out that the drinking had to stop. If she wanted to be with me, it had to stop. I said I understood why she did it, but I couldn’t deal with one alcoholic let alone two. Then I told her I loved her. I loved her and I needed it to stop. In other words, I made it all about me. 

And Amber gave me an earful for it. She was like, “Weren’t you listening? I was raped.” 

Now, that should’ve stopped me in my tracks. I should’ve shut the fuck up and just been there for her. But instead, I bulldozed right on, like the fuckin’ prick I was. 

I told her we should go to the cops and file a report and maybe then she wouldn’t feel like drinking. And then to top that off, I told her she should’ve gone to the cops in the first place and why didn’t she think of that. And that is when she told me to go fuck myself and got outta the car. 

I should’ve gone after her. Apologized. Groveled. Told her again that I loved her. But I didn’t. I drove home, and when I got there, my mom was waiting up for me. 

She was at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her. She wasn’t sober, but she was soberer than she usually was. And as soon as she saw me, man, she laced into me. Why didn’t I tell her I was bringing Amber over, she would’ve “made herself up,” how could I not tell her, blah blah blah blah blah. And without thinking again, I was like, “I wanted her to see what an embarrassment you are.” 

She didn’t have a fuckin’ thing to say to that. And then I told her to grow the fuck up and stop drinking. And then I stomped off to my room. 

Next morning, Dad wakes me up, tells me to meet him downstairs. He gives me a lecture about how I upset Mom and I shouldn’t talk to adults like that and all this. And I told him that if she wants me to talk to her like an adult, she should fucking act like one. And I left him sitting there.

Then I got ready as fast as I could and went to school. 

At that point, I already have a headache. I hadn’t slept well the night before and then I had to deal with my dad, which only made things worse because I love my dad, okay? I adore the guy. He doesn’t bother anybody, doesn’t make a fuss. He just keeps his head down, goes to work, and that’s that. And I know dealing with my mom’s bullshit wasn’t easy for him. It couldn’t’ve been. It was probably ten times worse for him than it was for me. But he never showed it. Fuckin’ guy is a rock. Still is. So busting his balls about Mom’s bullshit felt terrible. I didn’t feel bad about Mom, but I did feel bad about Dad. 

So all that’s in the back of my head, right? I get to my locker, and it’s just before first period and who shows up but Amber. And she is wasted off her fuckin’ ass, man. Just sloppy drunk. 

And she’s got her hands all over me and trying to make out with me and telling me she loves me and all this. And people are staring, man. Like the world stopped and all eyes were on us. And I’m trying to calm her down, trying to handle the situation when guess who pipes up. Fuckin’ Drew Drabich. That motherfucker.

He was like, “Gabe’s having problems with his horsey.” Well, just as I’m about to say something, Amber goes off on him, calling him a piece of shit, an asshole, all this.

So I grab her arm and literally drag her into a bathroom. I try to calm her down, but she starts crying. I hold her and hold her, but she keeps crying. Then the first period bell rings. But we just ignored it and stayed in the bathroom, and I wanted the world to fuck right off, man.

#

After all that shit, I gave Amber an ultimatum. I told her she had one week to get her shit together or that was it. Not exactly the picture of compassion, I know. But what could I do. It was a lot to take. I’ll admit, I should’ve played it differently. But hindsight and all that, right? 

Anyway, Amber, to her credit, stayed off the sauce for a few days. But that was it. Then she was right back on. So we broke up.

Ironically, my mom stopped drinking around the same time. She went to AA and everything. Got rid of all the Red Dog. So things started looking up. At home, anyway.

And get this, Mom even joined a gym, which surprised the shit outta me. You ever see those stickers on gym equipment? You know, like, “Consult your doctor before starting an exercise program”? Well, she never consulted a doctor. Instead, she hit the gym hard and then had a massive heart attack. Literally dropped dead on a treadmill. 

And then I lost my shit. I started drinking. I went to school drunk. I quit cross country, my grades dropped. Typical downward spiral. 

One day I’m in class, and Drew Drabich is like, “You lost your horsey, and then you lost your mommy.” And then the motherfucker starts laughing.

Well, I fuckin’ lost it. I clocked the motherfucker and then kicked him when he was down. Teacher broke it up, and then I got suspended. 

Amber tried to reach out, but I wasn’t havin’ that. I just drank my fuckin’ ass off. I just kept sliding down, farther and farther. I barely graduated. 

But Drew Drabich, boy. He never said fuckin’ shit to me or Amber after that. I’d call that a silver lining. Maybe the only one.

#

My dad’s the one who finally pulled me out of the tailspin. He came at it subtle, though. He didn’t take me to an AA meeting or give me some dramatic talking-to. No intervention-type shit. 

He just asked me to help him make an armoire. Custom job for some Main Liner in Wayne. Cherry construction, intricate inlays, the whole bit. This thing took us a few weeks to complete.

And when it was done, he asked me to help him with some cabinets. Then a kitchen remodel. Pretty soon I was matching his rhythm. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. 

I didn’t have time or energy to drink or think about Mom or Amber or what a fuckin’ train wreck I was. I just worked.

Come to think of it, that’s probably why Dad worked so much. I mean, all that work, he didn’t have time to think about Mom and her drinking. Which ain’t the healthiest way to deal with an alcoholic, but. I don’t blame him. People cope how they cope, man. 

And that’s how I dealt with my bullshit. I worked it off. It’s also how I became a carpenter.

I heard Amber went on to bigger and better. She went to UPenn, got a full ride on a cross country scholarship. Which is ironic, considering she of all people could’ve afforded the tuition. But whatever. She earned that shit.

I’m glad she pulled her shit together, y’know? I am. I’m not regretful of what happened or how it happened. 

I’ve thought about reaching out over the years, but what’s the point. I mean, my life went one way and hers went another, and that’s it. Nothing else to say. Besides, I can’t imagine we’d have much to talk about. I think she became a lawyer or something. 

Which leads me to the conundrum I’m currently in. If I don’t want to talk to her, then why did I show up to my twenty-year high school reunion in the hopes that I’ll see her? 

I’m a walking contradiction, I guess. Then again, who isn’t. 

**********************************

A sagging royal blue banner stretches from wall to wall in one corner of the Fox & Hound. “WELCOME CLASS OF ’97,” it proclaims in white block letters. 

The dude I’m sitting next to at the bar holds up a hand. He’s a corporate America drone, gingham-shirted and khaki-clad. “Hold up.” He leans forward, and his loosened tie hangs limply, grazes the edge of the glazed wood bar top. A wooderlogged slice of orange bobs in his half-drunk beer. “You haven’t seen this broad in twenty years?”

I shake my head no.

“And she’s here tonight?”

I shrug.

“Well is she?”

I scan the section of the bar where my twenty-year high school reunion is being held. “Nah, doesn’t look it,” I say. “What I get for being sentimental. Anyway.” I slug the rest of my beer, slap some cash on the bar. “I got your drinks. See y‘round.”

#

I weave my way through the reunion. Only way out is through. 

Nobody recognizes me. Not even Drew Drabich, who ain’t exactly lookin’ his best. Then again, neither am I. 

Hair long gone to seed, the remnants shaved clean off. Half-moons under my eyes. Crow’s feet. Varnish stains on the sleeves of my beige Carhartt, on the toes of my boots. Didn’t even bother to dress up. 

I push through the front door. A crisp, late-November wind kicks up in the parking lot, blows dead leaves in front of me. They crunch under my boots. 

Sepia light from the lot lamps reflects off the hood of my truck. I open the door, step on the running board.

“A truck?” a voice says. “Doesn’t suit you, Zoshak.”

I turn toward the voice. It’s Amber.  

She’s filled out a bit. Gained five pounds maybe. Has a few wrinkles, nothing crazy. Looks a few years older than when I last saw her. 

She looks fucking great, is how she looks.

My mouth is dry as the leaves that whisk across the lot. “Hey.” I smile. Or try to. Doesn’t feel like a proper smile.

She walks toward me, drags a finger along the side of my truck. “Not very sporty.”

“Purely utilitarian,” I say. 

She stops right in front of me. Smiles. She still has the buck teeth. Which look even better on her now. “So it’s a useful piece of shit.”

I grin. “Yeah.” Motion to the bar. “Here for the reunion?”

“Nah,” she says. “Reunions are obsolete. I have Facebook. Which, by the way, you aren’t on.”

I shrug. “No reason to be.”

She shakes her head, grins. “Still hiding.”

I shrug again. “So, um, what are you driving these days?”

She jerks her head at a blue Subaru parked diagonally from my truck. I walked right past it on the way to my truck.

“A WRX.” I smile. “Nice.” It’s got a hood scoop, alloy wheels, the works. And a child seat in the back. “It’s no Justy, though.”

She smiles. “That it isn’t.” She puts her hands in the pockets of her puffy black parka. “My husband said I was nuts for getting it. He’s not a car guy, though. He drives an Accord.”  

I nod. Stare at the Subaru. She puts a hand on my arm. Opens her mouth to speak.

“I’m sorry,” I say. 

Her mouth closes.

“When you told me all that stuff way back when. About Drew and his brother. I, uh. I didn’t. I mean, I wasn’t.” I lick my lips, exhale. “I was a dick, and you deserved better. That’s all.”

She kisses me. Just like that. Pulls me close and kisses me. Full on the mouth. Tongue and all. She tastes like…I don’t know what. But not alcohol. Not vodka. Just…Amber, I guess.

She pulls away, but still holds me close. “You were a dick,” she says. “And I’m not gonna lie, that shit hurt. But I don’t hold it against you. I mean, you kinda helped me stop drinking.” 

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, you were kinda like a mirror,” she says. “I saw what a mess you were, and it freaked me out. And I quit drinking. Like, for good.”

“Yeah.” I look at the ground. “I was in a bad place.”

“We both were,” she says. “But we were kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. So, you know, what happened,” she shrugs, “I can’t be too mad about it.” She pauses. “This why you came out of hiding? To apologize?

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess it is.” 

She hugs me. Presses every inch of herself against me. I hold her tight. 

She lets go, steps back. “What are you doing right now?”

“You’re lookin’ at it.”

She smiles, jerks a thumb at the Subaru. “Wanna go for a ride?”

END

An intro to you

You burn bridges. Piss in the wind. Tug on Superman’s cape. 

Caution is not your friend.

You’ve broken three teeth. Seen the dentist five times this year. He pretends like he’s worried about you but is secretly thrilled because you’ve helped finance a much-needed kitchen renovation, thus causing his wife to finally shut up about it. 

You’ve fractured your collarbone once, your hand twice. The doctors and nurses at the ER know you by name, wrinkle their noses at your odor, at the booze burped up by your pores. They’ve long since written you off as a lost cause. There’s one nurse who’s hasn’t, who instead gently mops your face with a cold, wet wad of paper towels. She calls you “sweetie,” slips pamphlets for AA into your pockets. You don’t find them until you’ve sobered up. 

Then you chuck ‘em.

#

Your new favorite pastime

A fist mashes your nose. The crunch reverberates in your head. Galaxies of bright pinpricks flash in your vision. You taste blood.

The fist pulls back, slams into your gut. You crumple. Now you taste bile. 

A boot plows into your sternum. There’s a pain you haven’t felt before. Maybe a cracked rib. Maybe a broken one.

A bouncer breaks up the fight, throws you out of the bar. You’re in a heap on the sidewalk. You grip a signpost, pull yourself up.

You stagger home. Pain shuts out everything but itself.

You grin, thankful for that much.

#

Why you are the way you are          

Sleep isn’t easy. Ironic because you come from a family of heavy sleepers.

They’re such heavy sleepers that they didn’t hear the smoke alarms go off and burned to death in a house fire. A house fire you caused.

It was a freak accident, but still. You’ll never smoke a cigarette again.

One father. One mother. One sister. One brother. That’s the cost of your carelessness.

You see their faces in your dreams. They’re reduced to melted wax, runny and dripping. It’s like this more often than not.

You wake up. Dark bags hang from your eyes like sad change purses. You age ten years in two. 

#

Angie! Annnnnn-gie. And Ted.

A piercing shrill cleaves the world in half. You bolt out of bed. Your head’s a junk drawer full of jagged glass and rusty nails. Your stomach’s a gas station toilet brimming with the ghosts of bad decisions.

You trace the source of the noise to the kitchen downstairs. A chubby young woman waves at a smoke alarm with a spatula. She’s completely naked. An intricate tattoo of a trout decorates her entire left ass cheek.

She doesn’t notice you as you lift a decorative wooden oar off the wall. The paddle has a lighthouse painted on it. One of the many beach-themed tchotchkes, courtesy of your mother, that festoon the walls of your parents’ – now your – beach house.

You walk up behind the woman, lift the oar, smash the alarm with it. Quiet is restored as bits of white plastic rain down. 

The woman jumps, turns, looks at you, a crinkly joint between her lips. Her face is carved from alabaster, every line and curve copied from an angelic blueprint. She pinches the joint from her mouth, says she wanted to surprise you with breakfast. She holds out the spliff, asks if you want a hit.

You whisper, “Who are you?”

Squinting, she replaces the joint between her lips, takes a long drag, holds it. She says, “Seriously?”

You nod, prop the oar against a wall.

The woman exhales, grins through the smoke. “I’m the girl whose ass you fucked last night.”

Your stomach burbles an urgent message in Morse: O-U-T-B-O-U-N-D. Then it explodes into your throat. You double over, blow chunks on her feet.

Calm as can be, the woman goes over to the sink. She jabs the joint in the corner of her mouth, puts one puke-covered foot in the sink. She hoses it down with the sprayer, then does the other. Her flexibility is remarkable.

She takes a smoking pan off the stove. Presumably what set off the alarm. She drops it into the sink. Clang!

She marches up the stairs, stops halfway. She slaps her trout, says, “That’s the last time you take a trip down thisHershey highway.”

She continues her ascension as you hork directly onto the kitchen floor.

The doorbell rings.

You go to the front door, open it.

A police officer stands there. His nametag says, BENDIS. His badge says, DEWEY BEACH POLICE DEPARTMENT. He starts to say your name but stops halfway. His eyes are trained on your midsection. You look down. Your shriveled schwanz dangles in the open air.

He tells you you’re under arrest for assault and public drunkenness. 

You barf on his shiny black shoes, spatter the cuffs of his pants. He says he’ll let that go if you put on some clothes.

You turn to find something to wear and run into the young woman from before. She’s fully clothed now. Her tank top and short skirt fit her like a bologna skin.

Officer Bendis says, “Angie?”

“Hey, Ted.” She continues past him then stops. She turns, says, “If you’re gonna arrest this asshole, put him in a cell with somebody mean. I shouldn’t be the only one who gets fucked in the ass today.” She goes to leave but stops again. She glares at you, says to Bendis, “By the way, if you’re in the market for some weed, you’ll find a bag of it on the kitchen counter. Bye.”

“Sorry, kid,” Bendis says, “that one I can’t ignore.”

You spew vomit down the front of Bendis’s uniform.

He sighs.

#

Chitty-Chitty-Chitwood, Esq.

You’re summoned to court.    

Your lawyer is some pasty, overworked, underpaid, wispy-pated business card dispenser of a public defender named Byron Chitwood. He drinks lukewarm coffee out of a paper cup with playing cards on the side, calls you “pal,” smells of peanuts and knockoff Drakkar Noir. 

You like him instantly.

He explains your irrational behavior to the judge. Cites your dead parents, your dead brother, your dead sister. Explains the house fire that you inadvertently caused, that you suffer from survivor’s guilt and quite possibly post-traumatic stress disorder. The guy you assaulted, the one who has a bit of a black eye, nothing more, drops the charges.

The judge, no fan of you or your behavior, still fines you a thousand bucks, sentences you to a hundred hours of community service. Just because she can.

#

Things to do in Lower Slower when you can’t sleep         

Unable to sleep that night, you drive northwest, into the farmland that blankets much of Lower Slower. 

You find an abandoned trailer park. It’s all cracked windows, faded siding, overgrown everything. 

You get out of your car, wander around in the dark. Don’t even try to be quiet. An animal – cat? gopher? raccoon? – darts from underneath a powder blue doublewide, crashes through the brush, scurries inside a cinderblock…something or other. A well?

You enter the doublewide the animal abandoned. Tufts of pink insulation like cotton candy vomited out of broken ceiling tiles nearly touch the threadbare carpet. The hot mustiness of the place makes your skin as comfortable as a scratchy wool overcoat. Booze sweat soaks your clothes within minutes.

You crash around the place. Punch out the remaining window. There’s a pain in your arm. Probably a cut. You put a finger to it. It comes away wet. 

Soon after, in the jaundiced glow of your car’s dome light, you inspect your wound. It’s a cut, alright. About three inches long. Deep. Pouring blood. Barely missed the vein it runs alongside of.

Pity.

#

A nurse. A Hope. A blowjob.           

At the emergency room, there’s a girl. Young woman. Old enough to drink, young enough not to handle it well. Far be it for you to judge, though.

She’s dressed in jean cutoffs, a white tank top. Scuffed low-top Chucks. Everything but the sneakers looks painted on. She’s not wearing a bra, not that those bee stings need one. A sleeve of colorful tats covers her right arm from shoulder to mid-forearm. Her bleached-blonde hair shows brown at the roots. You wonder if maybe she’s from that busted trailer park. You wonder if maybe she was the one who destroyed it. Is she trash or does she trash? 

She argues with one of the nurses. The one who’s nice to you.

The nurse sees you staring. She takes the girl’s tatted arm, leads her into a treatment room across from the curtained bed you occupy. Closes the door behind them.

Moments later, they emerge. The girl stomps off toward the exit. The nurse watches, sighs.

She walks over to you, manages the type of forced smile one gives a stranger in passing. She gently takes your lacerated arm, lays it on a bedside table. “My daughter,” she says. “Quite the handful.”

You receive eighteen stitches. 

**********************

In the ER parking lot, the tattooed girl sits on the hood of a car. Smokes a cigarette. A pack of P-Funks lay on the hood beside her.

You focus on the cherry. Glowing. Eating the tobacco and paper behind it as she inhales.

It still gets you. Still makes you see the house. The house in flames. Your family trapped inside. Somebody with an official-sounding title – medical examiner? fire investigator? – said they most likely asphyxiated before the flames got them. Were they dreaming they were drowning before they died? That somebody was choking them? Did they dream it was you? Because, in a way, it was.

She offers you the pack. You shake your head no, open your car door.

She takes a drag, says, “You’re the asshole who starts bar fights, right?”

You stare.

“I’ve seen you around,” she says. “My mom said you killed your family.”

You stare.

“It’s the pain, right? That’s why you do it. Fight, I mean,” she says. “One pain dulls the other.”

You stare. 

“I totally get that.” She drops her cigarette on the macadam. It makes you flinch. She grinds it out with the toe of her Chuck. “I’ll hit you if you want.” 

You shrug, close the car door. Step toward her.

She hits you. Right in the jaw. Closed fist. Knuckles sharp. Not a ton of power behind it. But enough to hurt.

Your hands clench. She stares. Dares you with a look.

Your right hand loosens, grabs her crotch. Squeezes. She makes a sound like “Eeet!”

She punches you again. Harder this time. In the stomach this time. You double over. Reach for a nearby car for balance. You straighten up. Suck wind. 

She kisses you. You taste cigarettes. Smell stale beer, plumeria. 

She pushes you in between her car and another. Drops to her knees. Gives you the world’s sloppiest blowjob. Grabs your freshly stitched arm, digs her nails in. You remember a time long ago when you would’ve worried about popping stitches. That time has passed.

In less than a minute, so has the blowjob. She kisses you again, spits your come into your mouth. It’s salty, has the consistency of a vigorous loogie. You swallow.

You zip up. Say, “Seeya.” 

“I’m Hope,” she says.

You get in the car. Drive away. Glance at your arm. A tiny archipelago of red soaks through the bandage. You can see it even in the low light from the dashboard.

Bitch drew blood.

“Hope.”

Hardly.

#

A green vest under an orange sun

The neon green safety vest is way too big, keeps slipping off your left shoulder. You correct it, and it slips off your right.

One of the Rehoboth Beach Public Works guys gave it to you when you showed up at City Hall, said you were there for community service. The guy, name of Vince, then took you and six other young-ish looking people out to Route 1 to clean up the median. 

You trudge through the grass, pick up stray food wrappers and beer cans with a chintzy mechanical claw. The refuse goes into a big black trash bag that’s clutched in your other hand. The bag flutters in the humid, late August breeze, as difficult to control as your life is.

A few of your fellow miscreants whisper to themselves, look in your direction while trying not to look like they’re looking in your direction. You’re well-used to this kind of thing by now. Let them have their fun.

You shotgunned three cans of Natty Ice before you left home. Chased those with two shots of El Toro. The buzz keeping your insanity at bay is wearing off, and you’re starting to feel itchy. A little sunburned, too. The skin on your bare arms is red and tight. Figure your neck is probably the same. 

A flattened McDonald’s French fry box waves to you from a tuft of overgrown grass. You reach for it with your claw. Snag it. You go to put it in your bag when a half-full can of Bud Light hits you in the head. Some of the beer spills out on to your shirt. Such a waste.

A bunch of cackling frat bros cruise by on the southbound side in a Jeep Wrangler with the top down and the doors off. They point and laugh at you. Before you can consider the consequences of your actions – your default mode – you launch your claw like a javelin at the driver. It pings him squarely in the side of the head, bounces back onto the median.

Douche Bag slams his brakes, skids to a stop. The cars behind him do the same. A stroke of luck: there aren’t any fender benders. Douche Bag gets out of the car, stomps toward you. He wears a white ball cap backwards, aviators, board shorts, flip-flops. No shirt. A tattoo of a flaming soccer ball adorns his left delt. 

You can’t help but grin, clench your fists.

“The fuck you think you’re doin’, asswipe?” It’s Vince, the DPW guy. He was trailing you and the others in a DPW truck, keeping a watchful eye. Now he’s out of the truck, stomping over the median toward you. You open your mouth to respond. Vince breezes right by you, gets in Douche Bag’s face. “Fuckin’ throwin’ beer cans at my guys, fuckface? We’re on the job, cocksucker!” 

Douche Bag fires back about calling his dad, his lawyer, suing, blah blah blah pampered white kid shit. 

Vince, several inches shorter than Douche Bag, doesn’t back down. “Get the fuck outta here, fuckstick! I don’t care who your cocksuckin’ daddy is!” He pushes Douche Bag. “C’mon, shitstain, take a poke at me! Know how many cops I know? Have you and your dickwipe friends locked up for assault!” Douche Bag’s friends pull him back to the Jeep, and they leave. Vince gives them the stink eye as they leave, wags his head, turns around. Retrieves your claw from the grass as he walks over to you. 

You pick up the can of Bud, give it a shake. Still a few swallows left. You hold the can at your side, wait for the other shoe to drop. 

“You okay, pardner?” Vince says.

You’re not used to this question. Don’t know how to respond.

“Y’alright?”

After a moment, you nod.

“Fuckin’ little pricks,” he says, handing you the claw. “You’re out here rightin’ wrongs, and they’re addin’ to it. Little fucks.”

Without thinking about it, you tip the can to your lips, guzzle the remains. Still a tad on the cold side, even.

Vince laughs. “Man, that’s some hot shit! I wudn’t here, betchu woulda fucked those guys up, huh? I seen you ballin’ your fists.”

You shrug. “Least this way I got some beer out of it.”

He laughs harder this time, claps you on the shoulder. “C’mon and getchu some water, man. You lookin’ pretty red.”

You both walk over to the truck, your fellow miscreants watching you for a few moments before they get back to work. There’s a big orange Igloo lashed to the truck bed with heavy-duty bungee cords. Vince takes a paper cone from a plastic sleeve, fills it with water from the spigot on the side of the cooler, hands it to you. 

You slug it, fill it again, slug it. Do it several more times. The water’s cold, clean. You had no clue you were so thirsty.

“Say, man, whatchu doin’ tonight?”

Getting fucked up. Getting in fights. Getting arrested.

“No plans,” you say.

“You feel like comin’ out with me and m’buddies?”

This is how you make a friend.

#

Hard to Starboard

A Wednesday night in late August means the bars in Dewey ain’t gonna be packed. Some action, sure, but there’s plenty of room to breathe, move around.

Optimal if you want to get into a fight. Which you do. Kinda.

Kinda, because in all the time you’ve lived here, nobody’s ever wanted to hang out with you. Certainly nobody’s ever invited you out with them. As much as you don’t give a shit about anything, you aren’t exactly looking to ruin the good time of somebody who’s trying to be nice to you. 

Thus, instead of getting obliterated before going out, you have only a few beers. Four, to be exact. No chasers. Then you head to the Starboard.

It’s only a little after eight, so there’s a decent crowd, but nothing crazy. Shouldn’t get much worse, either. Some cover band is playing “Livin’ on a Prayer” on a black riser in a corner of the bar when you walk in. Was that riser always there? Have you ever seen a band play there before? It occurs to you that you’ve never been here without being ossified drunk. There are probably tons of little things you don’t remember about the place. 

But that bouncer, the one with the ‘roid muscles and the goatee, the one keeping a sharp eye on you, him you remember.

You ignore him, go to the bar to order a drink, and there’s another thing you don’t remember: Hope bartends here. She has her back to you as she dumps some ice in a plastic cup. Pours in vodka, Red Bull. Finished, she turns around, spots you.

She stares, blushes, but it’s instantaneous at best. She quickly recovers, hands off the drink to a customer, takes cash off the bar, puts it in the register.

She turns back to you. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” you say. 

“Um, getcha somethin’?”

“Bud Light.”

She turns to fish a can out of a fridge. You dig in the pocket of your shorts, come out with some cash. She puts the can on the bar top, and you give her the cash. Far more than you owe, even after tip.

“Need change?”

You shake your head no, take a pull off your beer.

“You sure?”

You manage a grin. “Yeah.”

She grins back. “Thanks.” She puts the money in the register. “So, uh, is there gonna be trouble tonight?”

“Meeting some people here,” you shrug, “so.”

She smiles. The skin under her eyes crinkles. Her face looks young. Her eyes don’t. “Tryin’ to behave?”

You shrug again.

For a moment, neither of you say anything. Just look at each other. As if you’re having a staring contest. There’s a hand on your shoulder. You tense up. 

“Wassup, bud?”

You relax. It’s Vince. And a bunch of his friends. Lots of tats. A few missing teeth. A few wedding rings. A few shaved heads. But shaved because they’ve lost their hair. Because they’re all older than you. Maybe early to mid-thirties. You get the impression Vince invited you out because he thinks you’re around their age. Because you look as old as them, if not older.

Drinks are ordered, introductions made. 

Vince tells his buddies about the thing on the highway. 

Hope hovers nearby, keeps glancing at you as she makes drinks.

Vince says, “And this little pussy had a tat of a fuckin’ soccer ball on his arm.” 

Hope looks up, says, “A soccer ball?”

“Yeah!” Vince says. “And the shit was on fire! What kinda ink is that?”

One of his friends pipes up: “Kind dudn’t know soccer ain’t a real sport.”

Everybody laughs. Even you. Even though you played soccer in high school.

Another one of the guys: “Wait, Hope, didn’t ya date that dude?”

She nods. “Drew. Total fuckin’ asshole. Slapped me around one time. Broke up after that.”

As if on cue, Mr. Soccer Ball Tat and His Merry Band of Douche Bags walk into the Starboard right then. 

Others might call this fate. You call it dumb fucking luck.

Drew sees you and Vince, and you and Vince see him. But, wisely, Drew and his friends go to the other side of the bar and order drinks. He still has that white hat on, but he’s wearing a shirt now. A shirt that’s conveniently missing its sleeves. That future regret of a tattoo begs pathetically for attention, screaming, “I’m white, but I’m cool!” to anybody who’ll listen.

Another bartender tries to serve him. He waves her off, motions for Hope, who’s still facing you.

“Looks like fuckface needs ya,” Vince says.

Hope turns, glares at Drew. Shakes her head no. Turns back to you. “This is gonna sound shitty, but whaddaya think about me using you to get under his skin?”

Drama’s the last thing you need. But that doesn’t mean it’s the last thing you want. Drama is a distraction, after all.

You shrug. 

“Make out with me real quick?”

“Sure,” you say.

She leans across the bar, takes your head in her hands. Kisses you. Hard. Tongue and all. Doesn’t hold back. You put a hand on her shoulder, pull her toward you. This goes on for several moments. Finished, she turns around, reaches into the fridge, pulls out a cold one, pops it, hands it to you. “Thanks for that. This one’s on me.”

You finish your beer, take a long swig from the new one. Keep your eye on Drew the whole time. Much to your chagrin, he doesn’t take the bait. Doesn’t even nibble.

But he looks plenty pissed. Which makes you smile. Right at him.

#

Painful wish fulfillment

You get your wish on the Forgotten Mile. 

After leaving the Starboard, your first thought is to head home, to revel in the remarkable fact that you had a good night for once. You had fun hanging out with Vince and his buddies. You left the bar out of your own volition instead of being thrown out. The bouncer even gave you a small nod on your way out, as if to say, “Thanks for not being a dick. Maybe come back again?” To top it all off, Hope gave you her number. For once, things fell into place instead of falling apart. It was an unexpected – if not welcome – change of pace.  

But then you figure you’ll try to squeeze a little more joy out of the day. A drop. That a nice walk might be a good way to end the day. So you stroll toward the Forgotten Mile. That stretch of Route 1 between Dewey and Rehoboth that nobody really gives a shit about.

Suits you perfectly.

You make it almost to the Bay Road Package liquor store when something hits you in the back of the head. Something heavy and very hard. You go to your hands and knees, and beer sprays from a busted can. Wets your face, your hair.       

Running footsteps sound to your right. Then somebody kicks you in the face. Force of it flips you onto your back.

The shitheads who ambushed you come into focus. It’s Drew and his Merry Band of Douche Bags. There’s Fatty, Dopey, Shorty, and No Neck.

Those scenes in the movies where a gang of dudes surrounds one guy, but they come at him one at a time instead of all at once? This ain’t like that. Drew and his Douche Bags come at you as a group, hit you from every direction. These coddled motherfuckers really know how to cause pain when they want to. 

You do your best to fend them off. Even get off a few shots. You’re pretty sure you break Fatty’s nose, and you deliver a devastating blow to No Neck’s balls, and you yank the little hoop earring out of Drew’s left lobe, but that’s about all the damage you’re able to do.

You, on the other hand, are worse for wear. You feel your nose break, your eye socket cave in. There’s a sharp pain in the back of your head that makes your vision go bright and then dark. A kick in the ribs causes another sharp pain, and it very quickly becomes harder and harder to breathe.

One of the assholes pulls you to the curb, puts your arm over it. Fatty jumps, brings his whole marbled self down on your arm, which of course snaps. You scream until you wheeze. Your tear-blurred eyes deliver disheartening news: the bone didn’t puncture the skin, but boy oh boy, it came fucking close. 

Your screaming makes the jagoffs pause. Panting and groaning from their own injuries, they look down at you. You try to look up at them, but your eyesight is not working like it’s supposed to.

One of the shitheads – Dopey? – says, “Dude, is his eyeball out?”

“Fuck,” Drew says. “I think it is.”

Shorty: “Uh, could this guy die?”

You hear the gears in these imbeciles’ heads grinding together as they come to the realization that, if you do die, they could all be looking down the barrel of a homicide charge and, as a result, life in prison, where their asses will be made to gape wide on the daily when the inmates run train after train on their soft, privileged asses. 

“Fuck, man,” Drew says. “Let’s get outta here.”

They beat feet. Leave you there bleeding and broken.

Then it’s quiet. After a few moments, you try to get up.

Fail.

Try again.

Fail.

Once more.

Make it to your knees. You see double of everything. Try closing the one eye that wasn’t punched in. 

And there’s the pain in your chest. Worse now. Breathing is quite the chore.

You shuffle forward a few feet, cradle your broken arm. Remarkably, your legs still function rather well. 

You wheeze, shuffle, wheeze, shuffle. Then you fall over, barely catch yourself with your good arm. You lay on the sidewalk, stare up at a streetlight. 

You knew it’d end badly one day, but you never thought you’d be laid out alone on a sidewalk. You figure this is penance. Penance for being so irresponsible, for not cherishing what you had when you had it. And, really, this is what you wanted all along. What you wished for. Whether it’s on a sidewalk or in a bar or in your own living room, what’s it matter? The end’s still the end.

Fuck, maybe you’ll see your dead family soon enough. But you doubt it. You ain’t that lucky. 

There are lights. They strobe from somewhere above you. Red lights. Your vision has really taken a turn for the weird. 

There are voices, too. One that’s especially familiar. A woman. “Oh, fuck, I know this guy,” she says. “C’mon, let’s get him inside.”

There’s a trundling of metal, something rolling toward you. You look over. It’s a stretcher being wheeled out of an ambulance. Look back at the streetlight.

The woman’s face hovers over yours. Angelic, perfect. Have you died? “Hey, remember me?” she says. “I’m here to help.”

Angie. Angelface Angie.

“How?” you wheeze.

She and her partner lift you gently, place you on the stretcher. “Anonymous 911 call,” she says.

You’d bet everything you own that Drew or one of his flunkies made that call. A little something to keep in their back pocket so that, in the event you do die, they could say they did something to keep you from doing so.

They get you situated in the ambo, and Angie starts working on you, trying her best to get you stable. There’s not a lot she can do, though. You are in a bad way. She tapes some gauze over your bad eye, splints your arm.

Angie calls to her partner as he drives the rig. “Hey,” she says, “radio ahead and tell ‘em we need a medevac ASAP. This guy needs to go to Christiana. Probably gonna need a chest tube, too. Pretty sure his lung is punctured. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some internal bleeding.”

“Copy that,” her partner says.

You start to close your good eye, succumb to oblivion. 

Angie lays a hand on your forehead. “Hey, don’t go to sleep. Stay with me.”

“Sorry…” You muster a breath. “For being….” And another.

“Save your breath. Make it up to me later.”

#

A moment of clarity at 2,000 feet

Soon you make it to the hospital, where the docs pop in a chest tube, reinflate your lung, prep you for flight. A bit later you’re in the air heading north. 

Laying there in the helicopter cabin with nothing else to do but lay there, your mind does the one thing you don’t want it to do: it revisits the past. Really zeroes in on it. It’s why you started in with the drinking and fighting in the first place – you were trying to shut all that crap out. But now, being well and truly sober, all that crap creeps back in. Specifically, the night of the, ahem, incident.

It was the day after Christmas, and you were in PA, visiting. You’d been out of college all of, what, a year or two? You were living in Northern Virginia at the time and came home for the holidays. Your brother, Kevin, and sister, Lexi, were home from college. 

After dinner that night, Mom, Dad, Kevin, and Lexi had the bright idea to play a board game. Monopoly. 

You said you were gonna pass and meet up with your friends. But your dad, he guilted you into staying. He was always so goddamn good at laying a guilt trip on you. 

So you sat at the table with the stupid game, played with your stupid family. Thing about Monopoly is, it can go on for hours. Literal fucking hours. Which it did. Game went for a little more than three hours that night. You know because you kept glancing at your watch over and over, all the while lamenting that your precious time was being eaten up with that dumb game.

Thinking back, it isn’t a particularly good memory. It’s not like you enjoyed yourself. Meanwhile, Kevin and Lexi were smiling and laughing. They did enjoy themselves. They liked and valued spending time together as a family. But that wasn’t your thing. You liked to be out in the world. Anywhere but stuck at home with them. So, really, you don’t remember much about what you talked about or what any of them were up to because you never cared enough to pay attention.

When the game finally ended – your mom won – you glanced again at your watch. It was a little before 11:00. You still had time to go out. Not a lot of time, not as much as you’d like. But better than nothing.

You helped pack up the game, and everybody headed to bed. You couldn’t believe that Kevin and Lexi didn’t have anywhere else to be. Or wanted to be anywhere else. They were fulfilled. They were perfectly at ease going to bed after spending significant time with their family. But ain’t no way you were gonna let the night end on that note.

Everybody went upstairs, and you went to put on your coat. Just then, your dad said, “Got somewhere important to be, huh? You were lookin’ at your watch every two seconds.” 

You didn’t know what to say, so you just shrugged.

“Why are you always running away from us?” he said. “Are we that bad?” 

You didn’t ever feel violent toward your family, but in that moment, you very much wanted to punch your dad in the face. Why’d he call you out like that? Why couldn’t he just let things be? 

The worst thing was that his last question was rhetorical – yes, they were that bad. Yes, they were a burden. But admitting that would make you the asshole, and you didn’t want to be the asshole. And being reminded that you were an asshole only added to your indignance. “No, of course not,” you spat. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

He chuckled, shrugged. “Yeah, guess it was kinda stupid, huh?” He paused. “Anyway, I’m going up.” He started to ascend the staircase. “Have fun and be careful.”

Good and irritated at that point, you went outside. Got high. Smoked a few cigarettes. For some reason you can’t possibly explain, you threw the final butt into a shrub, the bottom of which was ringed with a skirt of dead, dry leaves. Even though you ground out the others on the driveway. Then you got in your car, went out to meet your friends. Came home later to a world on fire. Your world.

Laid up in that helicopter now, you wonder if maybe you meant to burn the house down. Maybe your resentment ran that deep. It’s a notion that makes you want to throw yourself out of the helicopter, because otherwise that thought is gonna torture you ad infinitum. And only death will stop it.

You thought you were gonna die on the sidewalk, maybe even in the ambo. But you didn’t. And now that they reinflated your lung and are making every effort to ensure that you get medical attention as quickly as possible, you’re pretty sure you’re gonna live. 

Shame.

#

An outro to you

You recover. Takes a while. Everything hurts. 

During physical therapy, your mind drifts. That heavy, sad feeling you carried around all that time turns into anger. It’s that anger that causes you to see the future. A possible future, anyway.

You get out of the hospital, decide to up your game. 

You learn fighting styles from different disciplines. Kickboxing. Kung Fu. Muay Thai. Pick up a little something from each. 

You go on the same as you always did, carry on with dumb shit like drinking and fighting. Only this time you’re able to inflict more pain. Take on groups of dumb assholes who aim to ambush you.

You put the moves on Hope, start dating her. 

When Drew and his Douche Bags come for you again, you let Drew take a swing at you, lean into it, take it right behind your left temple, where the bone is the hardest. It hurts, yeah, but Drew breaks his hand on your head, then you break several of the fingers on his other hand and his arm. 

And then you cripple his jagoff buddies, send them to the hospital, too. And you do it in front of a crowd of people who can testify that, yes, you were acting in self-defense. Certainly makes things easy for ol’ Chitwood.

This is your anger-fueled daydream. This is what keeps you going: the thought of hurting others rather than hurting yourself. Hurting them badly.

In other words, you learn nothing. You can’t learn to forgive Drew and his Douche Bags because you can’t learn to forgive yourself. Shit, maybe you never will.

During this stupid little reverie, your physical therapist makes a comment about your name, how it’s not one you hear every day. “What made your parents pick that?” she says.

You’re named Trenton, after New Jersey’s capitol, where your parents met. A city that used to be worth something. 

Apropos for a person who used to be worth something. 

END

The mom with the abs uses a Zodiac to stalk the dolphins. 

After her kids are in bed, after her husband gives her an insufficient cornholing, she drags the inflatable boat to the beach. Puts the oars in the locks, paddles out beyond the breakers, into the open water of the Atlantic. Water splashes and beads on her obsidian wetsuit, shimmers in the moonlight.  

She gets aways from shore, readies her speargun. She sets it aside, strips off her wetsuit. A breeze sweeps over the Zodiac. Her nipples stand up and salute. She prefers to do her killing in the nude. Makes it that much easier to masturbate after.

Then she waits. Waits for that telltale ripple in the water. She needs one to crest. Just one. There’s a flutter near the port bow. She slowly hefts the speargun, aims. Waits until that beautiful dark arc – dorsal fin and all – breaks the water. Then her finger mashes the trigger. 

THWIP!

The harpoon hits home. Cue the high-pitched keening from the porpoise.

She’s never actually done anything with her kills. Never wanted to. She simply ‘poons the porpoises, listens to their death cries as her fingers deliver a sharp orgasm.

#

The stripper with the braces finishes her shift at Sapphire, drives into the Nevada desert. She keeps an eye on the clock, edges the speedometer to seventy-five. Eighty. Eight-five. Ninety. One-oh-five. Can’t keep the babysitter waiting too long.

A cockeyed, sun-bleached mile marker appears on her right. She mashes the brake pedal. Squeals to a stop. She opens her car door, takes off her shoes.

Her bare feet carry her over the cool desert floor. She steps quickly, gingerly, to avoid the even cooler sand underneath. 

Meyer’s waiting where he’s always waiting. At the base of a cactus. 

Where she buried him.

She kneels, digs with her hands. Goes about a foot down. Her fingers graze a plastic bag, something long and hard inside. 

A humerus. An arm bone. The part between the elbow and the shoulder.

The humerus was once under the ground with the rest of Meyer. But then one day she found it a few feet from where Meyer was buried. A bit of meat still clinging to it, all rotted and stringy. She figured an animal must’ve gotten to it somehow. 

In tears, she took it home, gently carved away the meat chunk with a paring knife. Then she soaked the bone in a plastic bucket of soapy water. She found that Dawn worked best for this sort of thing. After that, she put the humerus in a hydrogen peroxide bath for a few hours. When she pulled it out, that bad boy was white as paper.

She took it back to Meyer’s grave, fully intending to put it back underground. Then she noticed the shape of it. 

Now: the stripper with the braces removes her jeans, lies on the ground. Balls the jeans up, puts them under her head. She unwraps the humerus, lays it on her torso so that the smooth knob of the ball joint grazes her belly button ring. From the plastic bag, she removes a small packet – an alcohol wipe. She wipes the top half of the bone, particularly the ball joint, waves it around to dry.

She moves her underwear to the side, puts the ball joint inside her. Like dozens of times before, it pops right in. 

Moving it in and out, she thinks about Meyer. Her parents. The colony. Then Meyer again. It’s a Möbius strip of things lost.

Grief, she’s learned, is a puppet master best not underestimated. It can get you to do some weird shit.

She rubs a hand over her stomach, her augmented breasts. Beneath her shirt, right between her breasts, is where a tattoo of a heart used to reside. It was delicate. Had a certain Victorian flair to it. The middle of the heart said MEYER DAVID in calligraphic script. That is, before she had it lasered the fuck off. She quickly learned that guys don’t tend to be generous tippers when they see that kind of ink on a stripper.

She comes until she cries.

#

The mom with the abs executes the Plow. The Tripod Headstand with Lotus Legs. The Scorpion Handstand. The Destroyer of the Universe.

The Destroyer, that’s her favorite. Took her months to master it. Longer than the Scorpion, even.

The other women in the mom’s yoga class worship her. They invite her to join their book clubs, join them at Twist for a juice. The mom with the abs declines. Always declines. She took up yoga to focus her mind, her body. Not to make friends. 

The instructor, Autumn, approaches the mom with the abs when class concludes. The mom rolls up her mat, secures it with webbed straps. “Hey,” Autumn says. “Great work today. You sure you don’t wanna teach a class? The other ladies are looking at you half the time anyway.”

The mom with the abs smiles politely, shakes her head no. “Nah, I’m okay,” she says. “Thanks, though.”

This has happened almost every class for the past few weeks. Autumn is horrible at taking a hint. Or maybe she’s just really hopeful. The mom with the abs can’t tell which. 

In truth, the mom with the abs doesn’t like exercise classes. Can’t stand the pre- and post-class chatting. The class does get her out of her head, though. Which is the point. Which is why her therapist suggested yoga in the first place. 

And mastering the Destroyer of the Universe, well, the mom with the abs loves laying claim to that. Makes her feel like she’s in control. If only for a little while.

#

The stripper with the braces loves going to the orthodontist. When she had the braces put on, she had no idea she’d enjoy it so much. 

Dr. Andy isn’t much to look at. His blond hair is thinning, inching away from his forehead. He has a pinchable amount of paunch around the middle. He wears ridiculous ties, many of which clash with his shirts. Today he’s wearing a yellow and brown-checked tie with a pink shirt. The stripper with the braces wonders whether he’s color blind.

His touch, though. He hovers over her, inches from her face, his hands lightly undoing the elastic around the bracket on each tooth. He slips the wire out, replaces it with another. He softly hums “Bang a Gong” by T. Rex as it emanates from the speakers embedded in the ceiling. He’s so gentle. So precise.

And his smell. The stripper can’t exactly pinpoint it, and she’s dying to ask him what it is. There’s a bit of Old Spice in there. But it’s not the cologne. It’s not that heavy. A deodorant maybe? There’s something else, too. A body wash, something. But she can only smell it when he’s this close to her. He smells like Meyer. 

Her nipples harden. She hopes Dr. Andy doesn’t notice. But she also kinda hopes he does.

Dr. Andy slips on the replacement elastics, works the little plier doodads with the precision of a fine-scale modeler. She imagines him in a cramped little room in a basement, bent over a beat-up card table, gently sliding decals onto the body of a model airplane, still humming “Bang a Gong.”

She looks at his eyes, hopes to catch his gaze. In her line of work, her eyes are just as important as her breasts. She’s learned to say full sentences with a ten-second stare. Dr. Andy’s eyes are a greyish blue, a teensy fleck of black in the left one. But those eyes stay trained on the stripper’s braces, the work at hand. 

Which only makes her want him more. She figures there’s a good chance she isn’t the only stripper whose teeth he’s fixed. There’s a good chance he isn’t one for strip clubs, period. She’s never seen him at Sapphire. And she’s looked. Many, many times.

#

The mom with the abs works three days a week at the Candy Kitchen in Rehoboth Beach. Dishes out bags of nonpareils. Boxes of saltwater taffy. Blocks of fudge. 

Her kids love smelling her clothes when she comes home from work. They press their little button noses to her taut stomach, breathe deeply of her official Candy Kitchen polo shirt. “Momma Yum-Yum,” they call her.

She hates sugar. Well, that’s not exactly true. She doesn’t hate it. She loves it, truth be told. But it makes her too jittery. And then there’s the crash, which she loathes. 

She’s done cocaine more than a few times in her life. Each time felt AMAZING. For about twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Then she bottomed out. Felt like shit. Sugar has a similar effect. Though less intense. So no sugar for the mom with the abs. Made it easy to get those abs.  

The Candy Kitchen gig was her therapist’s idea, too. Another distraction. “It’ll keep your mind on the present,” the therapist said. “The here and now.”

Yet with every sack of gummies she scoops, every parcel of chocolate-covered potato chips she rings up, the past lingers in her mind like dust in an attic – it coats everything, weighs it down, suffocates.

It makes her want to slam her hand in a car door. 

#

The stripper with the braces wants to cry when she sees her son, Braeden. Especially when Braeden lays his head in her lap. It’s exactly what Meyer used to do.

One day, the stripper with the braces made a list of the things Meyer and Braeden have in common. It went like this:

• Eyes (brown like really watery mud)
• Curly, dirty blond hair
• Loves playing with my hair
• Fusses when I play with his
• Sore loser (i’m trying to break that habit)
• Doesn’t like mac and cheese (don’t get this. never will.)
• Freakishly strong even though he’s scrawny
• Oddly obsessed with Johnny Cash music
• Horrible liar (but knows it – he hardly ever lies)
• Loves playing pretend

The stripper with the braces felt weird about the last one. Braeden’s version of pretend is not Meyer’s version. It’s Meyer’s version that causes the stripper’s eyes to well up. She hopes Braeden never likes Meyer’s version.

#

The mom with the abs kills dolphins so she won’t have an affair. 

Once, she asked her husband, Glenn, to slap her across the face while having sex. Glenn pretended he didn’t hear her. She said it again, louder, annunciated every syllable. He still kept pumping away, didn’t raise a hand. She said, “Fucking hit me, asshole!” He slapped her, but gently. Playfully, even. Didn’t even hurt. Not wanting to push the issue, though, she acted as if she liked it. Glenn smiled, relieved.

The very next day she went out and fucked some random guy who she knew would hit her. The guy had a reputation around town. Liked to fight. Stank like booze. Trent something. 

He took her home, fucked her brains out. When she asked for it, he hit her. Hard. Didn’t hesitate. Belted her right across the face. She saw stars. Then he choked her. She nearly passed out. 

The mom with the abs never came as hard as she did that night. But she felt so guilty afterward, swore off extramarital sex.

But she still wanted pain. And what better way to get that than to kill something beautiful. 

#

After she gets out of the shower, the stripper with the braces drops her towel, stares at herself in a full-length mirror. Her eyes wander over the blonde-framed face and bombshell body that have earned her stupid good money. 

She knows full well that looks don’t last forever. Even now, in only her late twenties, she can see the natal beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. Barely noticeable, but still noticeable.

She gets regular offers to do porn – which she’s never pursued, though she has thought about it – and while she still gets offers to do schoolgirl and babysitter porn, the offers to do MILF porn have begun to filter in more and more. Even though MILF porn is a thing, MILF strippers kinda aren’t. That is, unless the MILF strippers in question are in their very early twenties.

So. The clock is ticking. And she knows it. 

Later in the morning, she’s laid back in the dental chair in Dr. Andy’s office. He’s wearing a cobalt-blue shirt with a Kelly-green tie. Hums along to “Jailbreak” by Thin Lizzy as he does his usual maintenance routine on her braces.

He finishes, brings the chair back up to sitting position. Her nipples are hard once again, and for a moment, she’s dumbstruck. 

In her head, leading up to this moment, she rehearsed different ways to ask Dr. Andy about a career in dentistry while also kinda-sorta flirting with him. In her head, she tried the whole demure damsel in distress routine. But it didn’t feel quite right.

Dr. Andy strips off his nitrile gloves, and she says, “Um, do you think, um, you could. I mean, would you mind.”

He looks down at her, waiting for her to finish.

A voice in her head: Oh come on, bitch. He’s just another dude with a dick. Work that shit!

She stands up – back straight, tits thrust out – and looks him dead in the eye, says, “So look, I like you, and I wanna take you to lunch. My treat. Any place you want. You wanna have lunch with me?”

He fumfers around, says something about having to check his schedule.

“Stop it. Get over yourself and come to lunch with me.” She smiles, puts a hand on his upper arm. “I need some career advice.”

He flashes a nervous little grin. “Okay.”

The voice in her head: Yes, bitch! That is how you do it!

#

The mom with the abs almost runs into one of her kills on the beach. Literally.

She’s out for her morning run and nearly collides with a group of people standing around near the surf. This is because she always keeps her eyes on the ground while she runs on the beach. Has to. What with the uneven ground and washed-up bits of oceanic flotsam that could easily turn an ankle.

It’s the weeping that gets her attention. She looks up, spots the mullers, darts right, narrowly misses the throng. But then trips over a horseshoe crab shell. She goes down, rolls on the sand. Comes to a stop. Stands, brushes herself off. Finds that, thankfully, nothing’s broken or sprained.

That’s when she sees the dolphin. 

Chunks of its flesh are torn away. One flipper is missing. A tiny crab climbs out of its blowhole. The dorsal fin is jagged like something’s been chewing on it. The harpoon still sticks out of the animal’s flank, has slimy strings of seaweed tangled around it. 

The bystanders form a crescent around the dolphin. Shake their heads. Tut. Wonder aloud to themselves how anybody could do such a thing. One of them is on the phone with somebody – the police? animal control? – while another weeps.

The mom with the abs knows she should be disgusted. Upset. Creeped out. Something. Staring at the deal animal, at the aftermath of her handiwork, she feels something quite the opposite, though. A tingling. An intense, pleasurable tingling in her abdomen, which courses down, settles between her legs. 

She turns, sprints toward home where she proceeds to lock herself in the bathroom and rub one out.

#

The stripper with the braces has a hard time studying. Because Dr. Andy is helping her study, and that makes it hard to focus. 

The stripper with the braces never finished high school. Long story short: when she had Braeden, she had to drop out. And now that she’s decided to become a dental hygienist, she needs to go back to school. But in order to do that, she has to get her GED. And she managed to convince Dr. Andy to help her study for the exam. 

They sit at Dr. Andy’s kitchen table, the test materials arranged neatly in front of them. He insisted on doing it at his house because he wanted a “distraction-free environment.” Even though Johnny Cash is playing softly in the background. But it’s only because music always helped him study. It’s how he made it through college. And dental school.

Much to the stripper’s chagrin, though, he wants to help her study. Gun to her head, she’d admit that, yeah, she wanted his help studying, but those weren’t her true intentions. Her true intentions were to put the moves on him. But he’s wholly focused on test prep, dodging her hints like a deadbeat dodges the IRS – with complete and absurd dedication.

They review some simple algebra equations, and the stripper puts her hand on Dr. Andy’s leg. Upper thigh, to be precise.

He doesn’t react. Doesn’t even flinch. 

The stripper begins rubbing his leg. Gets really close to his dick.

He looks up from the study materials, stares her dead in the eye. “Do you want your GED?”

The stripper’s lips part, but no words come out.

“Do you want,” he says. “Your GED.”

She slowly removes her hand from his leg. “Yes.”

“And you really want to become a hygienist?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you need to focus, and stop with this seduction crap.”

Again her lips part, but only her breath passes between them.

“I’m not one of your marks at the club, okay? I’m a no-nonsense guy who’s in a position to help you attain your goal. Which I’m more than happy to do. And until you are well on the road to becoming a hygienist, I have no interest in dating you.”

She flinches.

“It’s not personal. And I’m not judging you. Or what you do. It’s just that I’ve dated exotic dancers” – exotic dancers, she notes, not strippers – “before, and it always ends in disaster. There’s too much drama, too much nonsense. But you seem different than the others. Like you truly want something more. So I’m helping because I want to help. Not because I want to get in your pants. So if you’re looking for a fling or…whatever, tell me now. Because I don’t have time to waste on more nonsense.” He stares. “What’s it gonna be.”

It’s the kind of brutal honesty Meyer used to hit her with. While it hurts to hear, it’s a good hurt. The kind that gets her wet. “I want your help,” she says. “And no more bullshit, I swear.”

He nods, turns his attention back to the study materials.

“Um,” she says, “okay if I take a quick pee break, though?”

He grins. “Sure.”

She goes to the bathroom, hikes up her skirt – worn for easy access in the hopes that Dr. Andy would take the bait – and masturbates furiously. Comes in record time. 

She doesn’t think of Meyer once.

#

The mom with the abs doesn’t regret it when she calls Autumn a cunt.

It’s after yoga one day, and Autumn once again badgers the mom to teach a class. “Just a one-and-done fill-in kinda thing,” Autumn says. She adds that she has to drive up to Philly to take her mom for a chemo treatment because her dad has some prior engagement blah blah blah blah. 

The mom with the abs tunes out. She’s been doing that a lot recently. She’s itchy, ill at ease. She hasn’t been able to go on the hunt lately, what with the Dewey and Rehoboth cops patrolling the beach at night. They started doing that immediately after her dead prey washed up on shore. With her being temporarily out of business, so to speak, she hasn’t been sleeping well and has been a bit off, to put it mildly. 

The mom’s eyes track around the room, completely avoiding Autumn’s. She says she’d love to but can’t. Makes excuses about having to work, her kids, stuff at home.

Nothing works, and Autumn continues to bore in, saying it’d be a huge help, and she’d give the mom a month’s worth of free classes in return, and “please please please, just this once, everybody looks up to you,” and “the other girls would love it, it’s totally easy. Please? Please?”

“Bitch, I said I can’t do it, and I can’t do it!” the mom says. “This is your problem, so fuck off, and take care of it yourself! Fucking whiny cunt.” She grabs her stuff and storms toward the door, past the small cadre of women who’ve abruptly stopped chatting and watch as the mom with the abs marches out of the yoga studio.

While the mom would admit that she overreacted, she can’t help but grin as she makes her way home. Felt good to be shitty to an innocent.

#

The stripper with the braces calls her sister, Shelley.

On the other side of the country, just as she’s finishing up the dinner dishes, the mom with the abs hears her cell phone ring. She wipes her hands on a dishtowel, picks up the phone, flips it open. “TINA,” the screen declares. The mom with the abs sighs, takes the call.

“Hey, Shell,” says the stripper with the braces. “It’s me.”

“Yeah, I know,” says the mom with the abs. “What’s up?” 

“So Thanksgiving is next week,” Tina says.

“I’m aware,” Shelley says. “You still coming here?”

“That’s what I called about, actually. Would it be okay if I, um, brought somebody? Besides Braeden, I mean.”

“What, like a date?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Uh,” Shelley looks out the window, at the dark ocean beyond the pane, imagines her would-be prey gliding just beneath its surface, their slick grey hides displacing water like oil, “yeah, sure.”

There’s a pause. Shelley knows Tina’s waiting for her to ask a follow-up question. She doesn’t want to, though. Doesn’t want to go where that road leads. But she capitulates. “So how long have you known this guy?” she says.

Shelley can hear Tina beaming through the phone before she says, “I’ve known him for a while, but we just started seeing each other. He’s my, um, orthodontist.”

“Oh! Cool.” Shelley hopes she sounds excited. Because she isn’t.

“Yeah, he, um.”

Please don’t say it, Shelley thinks. Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.

“He reminds me a lot of Meyer.”

Shelley closes her eyes, purses her lips. She desperately wants to shut the memory out.

But she never can.

#

The roughhewn walls of the house baffle sound the way a megaphone does. Shelley can hear every sound that comes from Tina’s room. Which, yes, includes Tina’s moans when she and Meyer have sex. 

Tonight, though, the bed squeaks, but it isn’t accompanied by moans. “No,” Tina says. “Stop. Meyer, please. Stop. Not without a cond—” Tina’s voice is garbled.

Meyer grunts. “Ow!” A slap. “Stay still!”

Shelley gets out of bed, runs to Tina’s door, rattles the knob. It’s locked. So she kicks it in. The flimsy doorframe makes it easy. The door flies open, bangs against the wall. 

Meyer’s on top of Tina, his hand clamped over her mouth. His shirttail barely covers his ass. He moans, shudders, his buttocks flexing. Tina’s bare legs are spread, her socks still on her feet. Tina looks at Shelley, her eyes wide. Meyer looks at Shelley, too. But he’s just plain frozen.

Shelley leaps at Meyer, barrels into him at full speed, knocks him off Tina. 

Meyer stumbles, stumbles, falls toward the window, crashes through the thin pane of glass. There’s a soft thud outside, and then nothing. Crickets. An owl hoots.

Tina, her bottom half bare as the day she was born, minus the socks, hurries to the window. Shelley joins her, peers down.

Meyer lies on the ground below, his limbs twisted. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound. 

“Baby?” Tina says. “Baby?!” She runs out of the room, fast as her naked legs can carry her. Shelley glimpses a glossy, milky line running down the inside of Tina’s thigh. 

Shelley follows, scrambles downstairs, out the front door after Tina.

Tina kneels next to Meyer, shakes him. His head rests at a disquieting angle. “Baby!” she says. “Baby, wake up!” She puts her head to his chest. “Oh shit.” Shakes him some more. “Baby!”

Shelley kneels, too. Takes Meyer’s limp wrist in her hand. She drops it, puts two fingers against Meyer’s throat, just under his jaw. Nothing. She pulls her hand away.

Tina looks at her sister. 

Shelley licks her dry lips. “He’s dead.”

Tina begins to cry, pushes Shelley. “Why’d you do that?!”

“He was raping you!”

“No, he wasn’t! We were,” Tina sniffs, “whaddaya call it. Roleplaying.”

“That was not roleplaying,” Shelley says. “You. I mean. I heard you slap him.”

“Not hard!” Tina cries harder, throws her arms around Meyer’s body. Cries into his torn, dirty shirt. 

“We need to get rid of the body,” Shelley says. “I mean, if the elders find out. We. Mom and Dad. We’ll be shunned.” She doesn’t fear God, but she does fear the elders. Luckily, their parents, the elders, and the other adults in the colony are out of town at a Bible retreat.

Still sobbing, Tina nods. She knows that Shelley’s right. Hates that Shelley’s right. Hates Shelley, period.

They find a tarp, roll up Meyer’s body in it, muscle it into the bed of their father’s pickup. They both sweat and grunt. Tina cries. But perseveres.

Shelley finds two shovels, places them in the bed next to Meyer’s body.

Then they drive into the desert to bury their sin.

#

Even now, as Tina prattles on about the many shining attributes of Dr. Andy, Shelley can see the desert. Hear the sand grind under her sneakers. 

Whiff her own sweaty funk as she pierces the ground with the metal spade of a shovel. Wince at the burning in her muscles as she scoops out mound after mound of gritty earth. 

Hear her and Tina’s grunts as they pull Meyer’s wrapped body out of the truck bed, drag it to the hole, heave it in.

Smell the evacuated piss and shit from Meyer’s body waft up when it hits the bottom of the grave.

Feel Tina’s tears soak into the shoulder of her shirt as Shelley holds her close, not even bothering to tell her it’ll be okay because it won’t.

Taste the tepid but clean water they drink from a bottle of Poland Spring passed between them on the ride back to the colony.

“Shell?” Tina says. “You still there?”

Shelley opens her eyes. “Yeah, I’m here.” But she isn’t. Because she’s a million miles away, thinking about a past she desperately wants to kill. A past that Tina desperately wants to resurrect. It’s exactly what turned their lives upside-down.

#

Months after Meyer dies, Shelley one day uses the bathroom while Tina’s taking a shower.

“What are you doing?!” Tina says from behind the clear plastic shower curtain. “Get outta here!”

“Calm down, I just gotta pee.”

“So hold it! Or go outside!”

“What’s your problem?” Shelley says. “We do this all the ti—” She stops, notices Tina’s posture. Tina’s got her back to Shelley and is crossing her arms over her midsection. Shelley pulls back the curtain, turns the water off. “Tina, turn around.”

“What are you doing, freak? Turn the water back on!”

Gently, Shelley puts a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “C’mon, just.” 

Tina hangs her head, slowly turns. Lets her arms drop to her sides. Rivulets of water run down her body, cresting at the slight convex bump of her stomach before continuing downward. Her boobs, which were a medium A-cup at best, have swelled to a small B.

“Oh my god,” Shelley says. “Is it Meyer’s?”

Tina, gaze still pointed downward, nods. 

“You gotta get rid of it,” Shelley says. 

Tina begins to cry softly. “I can’t, Shell.” She sniffs, looks down at her belly, rubs it in a slow, circular motion. “It’s all I have left of him.”

“Once people find out, though.”

Tina nods, sniffles. “I know.”

After that, they keep Tina’s secret as best they can. But there’s only so much overalls and oversized sweaters can hide. Soon, their parents find out.

They give Tina an earful, of course. Deride her as a jezebel, a whore. Tell her that she and her child will be granted a special place in hell. Then they demand to know who the father is. 

Tina lies her ass off, says Meyer found out she was pregnant and took off. It breaks Tina’s heart to disgrace his memory like that since he would’ve never abandoned her, but she figures it’s better than the truth. But the lie only makes things worse. After all, when Meyer initially “disappeared,” Tina claimed not to know what happened to him or where he went. So not only is she a jezebel, she’s a liar besides.

As pissed as her parents are, they don’t tell anybody. Not their friends and certainly not the elders. Instead, they tell Tina to leave and never come back.

Shelley sees this coming a mile away. She gives them a prepared speech about sticking together as a family, the power of forgiveness, how Jesus would never turn Tina away. When none of this makes a dent in their parents’ resolve, Shelley antes up with an ultimatum: shun Tina, and Shelley walks, too. Either lose both children or neither. 

Much to Shelley’s surprise and chagrin, their parents, without hesitation, tell her, Fine, go. “And take your whore sister with you,” their mom says.

Shelley and Tina leave. Take a bus to the only major city nearby: Vegas. Check into some shitty motel a few blocks from the Strip. The next day, Shelley begins brainstorming job ideas. Her first thought? A titty bar near their motel. “We can’t do that,” Tina says. “God wouldn’t—”

“God hasn’t done a fucking thing to help us,” Shelley says. “So God doesn’t get to have an opinion. Besides, youdon’t have to do anything. I’m gonna work there. You just rest and get ready to deliver that baby.” Shelley doesn’t add that there ain’t no way a titty bar is gonna hire a nine-months-pregnant girl, anyway. 

Though she isn’t thrilled with her plan, Shelley sucks it up and goes to work at the titty bar. It can be gross and demeaning, sure, but there’s one enormous silver lining: the money’s ridiculously good. It’s so good that by the time Braeden is born, they have enough money to move into a decent apartment. 

Tina is nursing Braeden late one night when Shelley comes home from work. She drops her purse on the floor, plops down on the couch next to Tina, exhales heavily. She takes Braeden’s tiny foot in her hand, rubs his little toes with her thumb as Tina nurses him.   

“How was work?” Tina says.

Shelley gives her standard response: “It is what it is.”

She smells like the other strippers she works with, that strawberry-smelling crap they spray themselves with. Her face and sinewy arms are bedaubed with specks of body glitter from using the same poles and stage as the other dancers. Her heavy makeup is still caked on. 

She used to beeline right to the bathroom to clean up after work. To scrub herself of all remnants of the club, which she couldn’t wait to get off her body. Lately, though, she collapses on the couch first. Then eats dinner. Then showers. Maybe.

Shelley’s exhausted, and Tina knows it. Looking at her sister covered in things she loathes but still not complaining while all Tina has to do is sit home and take care of her son, Tina curses herself for ever resenting Shelley.  

“I made that chicken and broccoli casserole that Mom makes,” Tina says. “There’s a plate for you in the fridge.”

“Really?” Shelley says. “You hate that stuff.”

Tina shrugs. “It’s not so bad. Besides, it’s your favorite,” she says. “And from now on, you tell me what you want for dinner, and I’ll make it.” A pause. “At least until I can find a job.”

Shelley grins. “Can’t argue with that.” She sits back, shuts her eyes. “Any idea where you wanna work?”

“Um, is the club hiring?”

#

Tina continues to ramble while Shelley pads into the living room, opens the sliding glass door. She steps out on to the deck, which overlooks the beach. 

A stiff breeze whips her hair across her face. She pulls her sweater tight around her. Her eyes roam over the beach to the water beyond. A Dewey Beach Police truck slowly rolls across the sand. Its side-mounted searchlight sweeps the beach, the ocean. Still searching for the maritime assassin. 

Even with her, ahem, “hobby” on hold, she’s kept it together for the most part. Especially after the Autumn incident, which, surprisingly, helped quite a bit. But now, with Tina yapping about this Meyer analogue, that all-too-familiar itchiness digs its claws in, squeezes hard.

Shelley turns away, steps back inside. Eyes a small box on the kitchen table. Her eyes trace the sunshiny Candy Kitchen logo on the box top. Inside is a little less than a pound of chocolate fudge. She brought it home for her kids. Not something she does often. She just thought they’d enjoy a little treat. And she never allows them to have much at a time anyway. Only a small cube for each of them after dinner.

She finishes her call with Tina, hangs up. Sits down at the kitchen table. Lays her cell phone next to the fudge box. She puts her elbows on the tabletop, massages her forehead. She stops, pulls the box toward her, opens it slowly.

The smell wafts up. Thick. Sweet. Luscious. So much more noticeable when it isn’t competing with the hundreds of other scents at the store.

A white, flimsy plastic knife lies next to the dark confection. Shelley licks her lips. Cuts off a tiny sliver. Tweezes it between her thumb and forefinger. She pinches it flat, pops it in her mouth before she can think twice.

She holds it in her mouth. Lets it melt. Savors it as the chocolate coats her tongue and teeth. “Fuck that’s good,” she exhales. She cuts another piece, eats it. Then another. And another. A fifth, a sixth. 

The sugar zips along the entire tangled roadmap of her nervous system. Makes her body feels like one big sparkler. Or, better yet, a fuse. The sugar makes every single moment a hold-your-breath-cuz-hear-come-the-fireworks! sizzle of excitement. And like a fuse, there’s gonna be the inevitable snuff-out. Only this’ll be less of an explosion and more of an implosion. She should go do something to try to offset it. Go for a run. Practice yoga. Fuck Glenn, maybe.

Instead, she gets up, leaves the house. Goes to find Trent what’s-his-name, who’ll be more than happy to murder her vagina while whacking the dark thoughts out of her head. 

She walks up Houston Street toward Route 1. Stops when a wild rabbit crosses her path. It stops, too, and sits on its hindlegs in the gravel driveway of a ranch-style cottage.

Dewey and Rehoboth are full of rabbits. They’re all over the fuckin’ place. 

She lunges at it, and it hops away, but its efforts to escape prove futile. Not even a rabbit is faster than the mom with the abs. Especially when she’s all hopped up on sugar.

She snatches it up, cradles it. The rabbit thrashes a bit, then calms down. The mom with the abs strokes its ears, its back. 

And then she begins strangling it. The rabbit emits an ear-stabbing cry as it struggles to stay alive, much like the dolphins did. 

Her nipples go rock-hard, and her crotch gets very warm very quickly. When her sinewy hands crush the rabbit’s tiny windpipe and the keening stops suddenly, she comes.

She returns home all drowsy and sex-drunk. Dead rabbit still in hand. Not knowing what else to do with it, she puts it in a plastic bag, pops it in the freezer.

With the present on ice, she’s able to freeze out the past. She sleeps better than she has in months.

END

EXT: TOSCHE STATION CONVENIENCE STORE (Sign in window reads “POWER CONVERTERS 50% OFF”)

INT: Bored LUKE SKYWALKER hunches over checkout counter, absentmindedly flips through an issue of Luscious Landspeeders & Tantalizing Twi’leks.

A bell above the door tinkles, and LUKE looks up. Standing in the doorway, black cape flowing, is DARTH VADER.

VADER: Luke.

LUKE (focused, eyes narrowed): I knew this day would come. (LUKE reaches under the counter, comes up with a lightsaber hilt. He vaults over the counter, activates the lightsaber, assumes a swordfighting stance)

VADER (puts up a hand): No, no, you misunderstand.

LUKE raises an eyebrow.

VADER: We need to talk about…your future.

LUKE: I’ll never join you, I’ll never turn to the dark side!

VADER: That old chestnut. (VADER shakes his head) No, Luke, we need to talk about your “career.” (VADER makes air quotes with fingers)

LUKE (deactivates lightsaber, crosses his arms): Not this again.

VADER: You’re such a talented young man, Luke. Why are you wasting your time in this (VADER gestures to the racks of mass-produced fruit pies, the cooler full of bottles of blue milk and Bantha Brew, the Jawa Java coffee maker)…place?

LUKE: Dad, we’ve talked about this. I’m only working here until my band starts getting some regular gigs. (LUKE rips a flyer off the wall, holds it out) Look, me and the guys are opening for the Max Rebo Band this weekend! At Jabba’s Palace!

VADER: First of all, son, it’s ”the guys and I.” Any self-respecting Sith Lord or Jedi Master knows the difference.

LUKE scoffs, rolls his eyes.

VADER: Secondly, entertaining a two-bit gangster is hardly something to brag about. Not to mention that Jabba will feed you to his Rancor if you bomb.

LUKE (surprised): Really?

VADER: Of course! Maybe if you studied the Force some more, you would be able to sense forthcoming dangers.

LUKE: For the millionth time, Dad, I’m not going to the dark side.

VADER: Pfft! At this point I’d settle for the good side. Anything is better than (VADER gestures to his surroundings) this. 

LUKE: You know what? I’m outta here. I’m gonna go to Tosche Station to—

VADER: You already are at Tosche Station.

LUKE: Fine, then I’m gonna go visit Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

VADER: They’re dead.

LUKE: Oh my god, whatever! I’m just gonna go cruise the Jundland Wastes then. Alone!

VADER: Sure you want to do that? The Jundland Wastes are not to be traveled lightly. They’re full of Sand People. You know that.

LUKE (exasperated, fuming, arms held out at his sides): See? That’s what I’m talking about. You’re so out of touch, man! They prefer to be called Tusken Raiders. Know what you are? (LUKE narrows his eyes, points at VADER) You’re Tuskenist!

VADER: What? No, I’m not. Some of my best friends are Sand Peop, uh, I mean, Tusken Raiders. 

LUKE: Didn’t you slaughter a whole bunch of Tusken Raiders when you were my age?

VADER (silent for a few moments): That’s, um, not really. I mean, it was a different time and uh. (VADER waves his hands) That’s not important. (VADER wags a finger) Now, Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was a Tuskenist. 

LUKE (emphatically): Ben was a great man.

VADER: You think Obi-Wan would approve of this lifestyle?

LUKE: He’d tell me to reach out with my feelings. And my feelings tell me to rock!

VADER (shaking his head, mumbling to himself): So willful. Just like Padme.

LUKE: What?

VADER: Nothing.

LUKE: Look, it’s my life, and I’ll live it how I want. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to restock the blue milk.

VADER (shoulders hunched, resigned): Fine. (VADER waves a hand) You will be home for dinner, though.

LUKE: (sarcastically, also waving a hand) I will be home for dinner if we don’t have tuna casserole. Again.

VADER (sighing): I’m making chicken parm, actually. 

LUKE: Fine.

VADER nods, exits the store.

EXT. TOSCHE STATION CONVENIENCE STORE

VADER shakes his head, stares out at the dunes, a small group of a womp rats sniping at each other. OBI-WAN KENOBI’S ghost materializes, leans an elbow on VADER’S shoulder.

OBI-WAN: Kids, am I right?

VADER: Was I the same way when you trained me?

OBI-WAN: He hasn’t killed you, so, no, you weren’t the same way. Dummy.

VADER: I can’t win.

OBI-WAN: The dark side never does. (He claps VADER on the shoulder) C’mon, let’s go to Mos Eisley, cut off some ruffian’s arm.

VADER and OBI-WAN walk off into the desert, the twin suns of Tattooine hovering just above the horizon.

END