HER LONGEST NIGHT
a novel
Erik J. Avalon
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Erik J. Avalon (pen name of M. Erik Strouss)
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters and events herein are productions of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This work I hereby dedicate to the following:
Dean Koontz, fount of constant
inspiration; Mrs. Nichols, who tried
to teach this stubbornly bad student;
Mrs. Montgomery, whose class brought
home the basics; and for the man
who gives me daily
reason to live,
Kurt.
Disclaimer: The author has taken some geographic liberties.
1. Encounters Through Drive-Thru
While it happens, she dreams.
She sees an earth spread out before her
in a way she cannot quite comprehend. Her senses are split
between the direct physical and an indirect,
more intimate psychological plane,
a spectrum of sensations that is akin to the looking glass
of the gods. She sees a world that looks physically
like her own, but it does not feel like her own,
does not seem to move like her own, and is populated
by creatures that cannot possibly be
human in the way she is.
She would wonder why she does not choke
in the cold of space, which she can feel,
but she assumes
quite correctly
that she is in a dream state.
– from a dream
ONE
Audience in my head, I present to you, once again, the story of my life.
I get up, much too late in the day according to some sources who haven’t lived my life and have no right to judge the way I do. I clean the litter boxes and feed this month’s reclaims, kittens and older cats I’ve found, taken in, cleaned up, and worked to habilitate for domestic life with people I’ve probably yet to meet. I find my name tag, pin it to a clean, striped blue work shirt, politely shoo one of the toms off the black jeans I wore last night (I’m only going back in to work so who cares if I recycle one article of uniform?), begin to slip them on, think to change into new panties, slip into the jeans, snap into a bra two cups smaller than I wish it was, pull the day’s work shirt down over my head, tuck it in, and step into the bathroom to inspect my workly appearance before heading for the door. I’m sure I showered and took care of all those pesky little necessities before sleep this morning, so all I need now’s a good brush, rinse, a little combing, a little tweezing, a little cat-scratching between this and that, and oh, Marsha, don’t forget the hat!
Supposed to pull my hair back into a ridiculous tail before I can don the hat, but I always wait until I’m in the parking lot – two minutes or twenty late, I never care – to take off the baseball-ish cap, fish a scrunch out of the glove box, angrily yank my hair back through it, and then tug the cap back on top of my head. I figure if anyone’s annoyed that I’m late, they’ll look out at my car and maybe notice my pissy little ritual with the hat and one day stop requiring me to tie my hair back. I don’t work with the food, after all, just the screen, the money, and the dishes. But alas, rules are rules and at Our Mindy’s, the rules must be followed.
The rules any particular day’s manager likes, anyway.
I walk around the rooms of my mobile home, glancing here and there to see if there’s anything quickly needing done before I head out, but no, everything’s in its right place for now, stored and tucked and shelved and boxed and folded and if the cats knock anything down while I’m gone, yay, something to do first thing in the door later!
Walking through the living room, I pick up a strange little scrap of cloth lying where I woke. I sometimes sleep on the couch, but for the life of me, I can’t remember falling asleep last night, or what I was doing just before sleep that landed me on the couch.
And it’s not cloth. It crumbles to dust in my fingers, so I dismiss it as weird lint and walk on to the front door, petting and scratching and faux-purring at the many regulars who like to see me out the door. Luckily, only a few in this batch like to play sneak-out-the-door, and all of those must be preoccupied eating or shitting because I see none of them around now.
Just as I’m opening the inner scratched-wood door and reaching for the latch to open the glass outer door, I spy Cheshire sauntering into the living room from the hall. I could swear I didn’t see him anywhere back the hall or in the half-walled office space between the living room and the back part of the house, yet from there he comes. Maybe he was in the bedroom, the one room I realize I didn’t check, but no, the door there was shut – maybe shut, mostly shut, dark in there and uninteresting and I don’t know why but I don’t want to think about that room right now – so yeah, he must have been hiding behind the toilet or between shower curtain and liner.
Cheshire I’ve had the longest, going on a year or more now. He feels like my own among all these mostly friendly little furry strangers, and even though he hardly makes time for me, I feel a connection with him. My little guardian angel, I like to say to people, even though he looks more like a witch’s familiar, but then I don’t like to judge on appearances. I find myself doing it anyway, from time to time, but then, who can avoid it anymore?
Appearances rule our lives in this country.
I grapple with a desire to shut the door and chase after Cheshire and if I’m lucky enough to catch him in under ten minutes, snuggle with him on the couch watching local TV – who can afford cable or satellite on a fast food income with two or more dozen cats to feed? Not I, I proclaim – but, responsibility wins out in the end and I leave the house.
I’ll just have to watch out for him tonight. If he deigned to make an appearance before I left for work, he must be wanting some attention, and tonight he’ll get it.
Or not.
Before I know it, I’m behind the wheel, the park is miles behind me, I’m listening to the sounds of the world through my open windows, and a slow grin spreads over my face. I glance in the rearview mirror and it looks like the demented grin of a gypsy in a movie, waiting for a curse to come to pass that she has cast, waiting for the demon to arise and strike down the person foolish enough to cross her in some small way that she’s too petty to forgive.
I don’t believe in demons, by the way. I believe that if anything strange exists out there in the world beyond our world, it is in fact unknowable, and by trying to name it, we make of ourselves fools no less ignorant and stubbornly hateful than a Nazi or a Klansman.
Even if our otherworldly neighbors exist and look just half as frightful as our studios and more feverishly imaginative writers are wont to make them, they are probably no less terrified of us than we are of them, and expecting attack will only give reason for it to happen.
I laugh off the images evoked by my own reflection and turn off state route 132 onto 125, called Ohio Pike down here and Beechmont Avenue down where I work. I’m making good time today, minimal sluggish-old-fart traffic, no red lights so far – though the bulk of my daily voyage’s traffic signals still lie ahead at this point – and I may even be a minute or two early if I can keep up this momentum. No one will know what to think, but probably everyone I pass on my way in will have something small and snide to say.
Oh, the joys of menial labor jobs.
I wouldn’t choose anything else in the world for myself right now, though. With the economy so unpredictable and all sorts of jobs becoming obsolete or simply unprofitable to various levels of higher-ups, work in fast food is one of the few things I still see as reliably stable, something I can depend upon to support myself and my rescues.
Sure, the turn-over rate even at my store is pretty high, for while work is hard to find it’s still easy to find someone who isn’t willing to do any real work, but as long as I show up every day, keep myself presentable, and do the damned job – I mean, come on, how hard is it to do some mess of dishes and take an order for burgers, fries, and drinks – they’ll have no reason to do anything but keep giving me the hours they’ve been giving me.
I simplified there. Way oversimplified the job there. Don’t misunderstand me, it can be difficult, just not in ways you’d expect if you’ve never worked fast food.
Listen to me, being all condescending all of the sudden to the voices in my head that don’t speak. Can you believe it?
And now I seem to have experienced another little time jump, whereby I was distracted by a few small thoughts and suddenly miles on the road have passed, and I’m most of the lights further along than I think I should be. I know I just half-spaced, my mind wandering while my body kept driving along the familiar route, just enough of my consciousness still in the car to avoid causing an accident, but I must have been lucky and caught not a single red light, for I think I’d have been more aware of them if I’d had to stop at them.
Ahead, I see that cheerful doting-daughter icon that is the face of Our Mindy’s, once just Mindy’s, but years after the founder died, the corporation decided to add the attributive adjective as the legal first word in the restaurant’s branding and a compulsory part of our greetings.
Some people say that there’s more than a passing resemblance between myself and the red-haired, freckled cartoon girl on the sign, but I more liken myself to the foxy visage of Kathy Griffin. Her, I can respect and call a role model, or at least would if I were the type to model myself on anyone other than who I myself wish to be.
Pulling into the lot and my usual space – close to the small building housing the bun freezer and the enclosed dumpsters beside that – I shut off the engine and flip my cap over onto the passenger seat. My hand goes for the glove box, but I spy a scrunch on the floor and decide to use that instead of riffling through old insurance card sheets and receipts and napkins for an only slightly fresher one. I work quickly, not wanting to remain in the car any longer in the summer heat than I absolutely have to. True, it is finally cooling down just below the nineties for the first time in nearly two weeks, and the rain of the previous day and the night before that has helped a little as well, but I much prefer even cooler temps and regret that my life seems to have been destined to stay rooted in a place where I can rely on no favorable weather condition remaining for very long.
I suppose I should mention that I live in Ohio, residing in the town of New Richmond and working in Beechmont, both about a half-hour drive from downtown Cincinnati. I always forget you don’t know. You’re only the silence in my own skull, but every day you seem new and fresh somehow.
Especially today. How odd.
Hair bound and hat replaced, I climb out, lock and slam the door shut, cross behind a waiting pulled-up customer’s vehicle, and enter to see Big Bertie taking an order at the front counter. Bertie is larger than life both physically and in personality, and I hope but know it won’t be the case that she’s just taken over early instead of standing at the end of her shift. Things are always more entertaining with Big Bertie around, not to mention the fact she can make me laugh while still getting all her own work done and not expecting someone else to finish up what she didn’t feel like doing, like almost every other front counterman or -woman.
Spotting me coming in a couple minutes early, against my usual habit, she stops the grumpy impatient orderer for a moment to feign shock at my arrival, then waves me on back toward the employees only door, which I pass through quickly. The door swings back more rapidly than it should, and I step to the left to avoid it hitting me.
“Watch it with that thing,” Vespa, the usual day shift back-window woman, barks at me from the stool in front of the money-drop safe as I continue past her with only a half-apologetic glance to mark my acknowledgment of her.
Vespa means well most times, but she lets things get out of hand rather well and then never seems to have the time to clean up her own mess, no matter how long she tries to stick around into my shift and on the clock to get in my way as she tries to clean it up, too late, so late they make her leave before she can get it done and so by letting her stay to start, slow me down cleaning up her messes and getting my own work begun.
Between the grill and fryer stations on the right, situated between the spot where I’ve paused and where Bertie stands at the front reg station, daytime manager Evangeline is training a poor teen fool to take over the job Mick should be doing today. I was off when it happened, but I read about it in enough co-workers’ chirps and Lookbook updates that I feel I was here when Mick walked out without a word, leaving his crew double-short-handed following a legitimate medical call-off.
Evangeline is a latina with night-time soap star good looks and the voice of a hip-hop diva, but she’s no interest in the drudging work required to maintain likability amongst the wider masses of the viewing and listening public. So she’s chosen to remain in fast food, where, if her job’s done right, she only has to be cheerful in small doses with strangers who stand before her for only a few moments and then have to walk away and leave her alone.
I can definitely understand and appreciate her strategy there.
“And this coming in now – on time for once, bless her – is Our Marsha Bradley, beloved voice of the menu board,” Evangeline introduces me in a cringe-worthy, syrupy-drivel tone to the new guy, who stands pimply behind large-rimmed specs. “Marsha, meet Gregory.”
“Oh, Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” Gregory adopts a bad imitation of that voice I’ve grown to dread over the years, picking up rather quickly on the playground interpretation of my name and at the same time making the mistake of making his first words to me be the pet peeve I simply cannot abide in any ongoing fashion. “What’s happened to your nose?”
Evangeline almost grins, but the upturned corners of her lips are contrasted by stark worry around her eyes, almost terror, for she’s seen me come close to violence before over this issue with people. She cuts her glare from him to me, silently begging for me to move on.
I almost leave it alone, but the kid’s nearly tittering with glee at his little funny.
Without my brain realizing it had authorized the use of force, my fist clenches and slams up into Gregory’s soft nose, sending him flying back onto his ass on the floor between the fry-and-nugget warming station and the front sandwich station. Evangeline and Bertie both look down at the dazed boy, a hand to his face, eyes crossing in an attempt to look down at his offended feature. Big Bertie cackles, can’t help belting out a big hearty laugh, and I love her for it because it makes me laugh and even makes Evangeline merely grin and shake her head, rather than scream at me and order me back to the office for a write-up or worse.
Evangeline bends over to help poor foolish – but perhaps now a little wiser – Gregory get to his feet, and I turn to pass pointedly silent sandwich-maker Rico on my way back to the weird back hallway where I do my work in relative peace, away from the inevitable shiftly drama.
TWO
There’s no such thing as me, my, or I.
At least, that’s how we’re trained to think when we’re on the clock at Our Mindy’s.
Remove any singular personal identifiers and, according to Corporate, you remove the tendency to want to blame co-workers for any mistake, and take on a collective accountability for anything and everything that goes right or wrong concerning a customer’s order.
Even after the seven years I’ve worked here, I still find myself slipping from time to time on that spoken branding technique. Thankfully, usually, the average drive-thru customer is too distracted by conversation with passengers or via cell phone, or texting, or smoking, or doing whatever else, so distracted that they hardly notice anything we say besides a price they invariably find too high. I want to commiserate with the less rude among them, but I have nothing to do with the pricing – no one on-site does – and another pet peeve of mine is how so many customers blame us here directly, with their eyes if not their mouths.
And don’t get me started on the layout of this building.
The back hallway positions the rear drive-thru window precisely on the corner where customer vehicles turn to get from the menu board at the back to the order hand-out window on the side of the restaurant. No one expects a stop right there at the corner, and so rounding the building, most are a few feet out if they don’t simply fly on by. Luckily, the gods gave me a good ear-catching voice, so I can typically get their attention before they get all the way up there to second window and make me run halfway across the store just to collect their money, then go back and forth again to return change or credit card.
Can you imagine the comments this set-up gets me? Like I designed the building and erected it myself, just this morning. Most of the local regular customers are accustomed to this window arrangement, for the building’s been here over twenty years, but we’re right next to a major highway, and so you might be able to guess that most of the day-to-day customers are not locals, are not regulars, and so every day, every hour, nearly every minute I’ve got orders, I’m acknowledging again and again the insane design of this place.
Sorry, got myself started there.
Oh good, another order to take!
“Hi, welcome to Our Mindy’s!” I croon into the headset, pressing the microphone on and off again to grab up some paper towels to dry my hands off quick as I run-walk back to the touchscreen register menu and on again to ask, “How are you today?”, in as sincere a tone as I can muster.
I expect the typical response; a proof of the latest customer’s inattention when she or he either just goes on with their order or demands a “second,” offering no answer to my often at least partially sincere inquiry as to their current disposition.
Instead, I get, “Fantastic, and how are you?”
“Good enough,” I sigh, realizing for no reason at all that I haven’t yet posted today’s free cat bulletin sheet in my window for customers to see when they stop here to pay for their order. Thankfully, I had it folded into my pocket last night, so I take it out, unfold it, use the tape I keep back at my reg to affix it to the windowpane that doesn’t slide open, and ask, “What would you like to try today?”
My cats are special to me, but I can’t afford to feed them all forever and still continue to take in new kitteny strays or old toms or worn-out mother cats, so I long ago had to devise a system whereby I could give them away. Working in fast food already, the solution was easy to come up with. Each day, I post a new copy of the free cat bulletin sheet, featuring as many of the current batch in one photo as I can manage, and pull-off tabs with my phone number for any locals who want to contact me later about free adoption. For those just passing through or too impatient to wait for me to get off work, I give them my across-the-cul-de-sac neighbor’s number, and Miss Bettsy will show them into my home to pick out a cat or two, or however many they want and are able to take in as pets.
I’m usually a pretty good judge of character, so if the person asking after a cat strikes me as untrustworthy with animals, I simply fudge and claim I forgot to take the sheet down, none of those cats are available anymore, I can’t give out the ones I’ve got because they’d tear you to ribbons or never come out of hiding for you to meet; something nice to get them to forget all about free cats and go get their food and drive away.
Most people that do bother to ask, though, turn out to be exceptional pet owners, and provide good homes for my babies. I don’t get to know any of them too personally, but I do have a group on Lookbook that I and Miss Bettsy encourage adopters to join, where we all share pet pics, pet tips, and pet stories.
I rattle my head to get my brains back in the present, fully expecting to have to ask the customer at the speaker to have to repeat the order I’ve barely heard him making while I’ve been distracted by my own thoughts, but I look at the screen and find I’ve entered every item he’s asked for, even making a few things into a combo for him that could go together, but which he didn’t think to ask for as a meal. Apparently I can now do with the order screen what I’ve been able to do behind the wheel for years; divide my consciousness into distracted-Marsha and what-must-be-done-Marsha. The thought is a little disturbing, and a choked chuckle escapes me before I realize the headset is still on.
“What’s funny?” the customer asks, something like genuine concern coming through in his voice though he doesn’t know me and hasn’t even seen me yet.
He sounds like none of our regulars, not even the faintest bit familiar to my ears.
I lie, “Oh, one of Our Crew said something that made me laugh,” because I know that most likely, everyone else on my crew is now too busy putting his order together to listen to a thing I say at this point that isn’t directly related to the order. “We’re sorry, did you have anything else you would like to add to your order?”
“No, that will be all, thank you.”
I give him his total and ask him to pull around, and when he does, my breath deserts me for a moment. He’s gorgeous in a way I almost can’t describe, other than to say that Brad Pitt had an impossible love child with Vin Diesel, Denzel Washington had one with Will Smith, and this guy is their grandkid. I don’t even know why those names; they probably just came to mind because they’re some hot actors I wouldn’t mind getting to know a little better. This guy has light cocoa skin, with enough white in him that someone who didn’t want to see the African heritage could easily ignore it, but I’m not that type. I revel in diversity.
Usually.
“Miss, I’ll be paying with a card. Your establishment does take plastic, does it not?”
It takes me half a moment to process what he’s said. To see this level of male beauty and hear something other than half-moronic drivel spill out of his mouth, I almost think I must still be asleep and this has just been the longest vivid dream I’ve ever had, except I’m deaf in my dreams, so I can’t be dreaming. He’s real, and I must answer him.
“Yes, we take credit. Let me scan that for you real quick.”
I take his card and swipe it, watching the little bar at the top right of the screen do it’s flashing thing while the system places the charge and waits for account verification. I expect nothing less than the bar resting on green with the word “Accepted” showing clear, but I still wait, unwilling to let my attraction to this stranger cloud my judgment.
After all, anyone can give you an expired card by mistake, and should he grab his order and drive off before I get a chance to see a “Denied” on my screen, I’d be responsible for covering the amount.
Accepted.
Damn. I realize I was hoping for a “Denied,” just so I could ask him for another form of payment and get him to remain at my window a few moments longer.
Almost as if reading my mind, he laughs, “Oh, it’s good, miss, and I don’t blame you for waiting for verification. Can’t be too trusting these days, can we?”
He holds his hand out for the card, a gesture I typically see as demanding and impatient, but from him it seems like a welcoming sign, as if he’s inviting me into his vehicle, as if I could just step out through the window and into his lap to accompany him anywhere.
As he takes his card, I notice he’s looking over the bulletin sheet. I can tell he’s just a passer-through off the highway, and my gut clenches as I think of Miss Bettsy getting to spend more time with him – helping him pick one or more cats to take home, wherever his home may be – than I’ll get to spend with him here.
“Miss, I don’t have time today to stop and look at your kittenish wares,” he speaks, and my heart skip-dances at his use of the word kittenish, “but if you wouldn’t mind establishing a more permanent form of communication, just so I can contact you in the future when I’m back this way, about the cats, I can give you my chirpter handle.”
I can’t tell from his face or movements, but the very slightly awkward way he phrases his sentence makes me think he’s feeling as giggity as I am right now. I tear off one of the phone number tabs from the bulletin sheet, turn it over to the blank side, and hand it over to him with one of the pens I keep next to the reg. He jots down his chirpter user name, hands that and pen back with a smile, and moves on to the next window before I realize I never gave him my name or asked for his. I look down at the online handle hoping it’s a simple screen name derived from his real name, but no such luck; it’s just a few letters and numbers. Specific enough to achieve online contact, but too vague to decipher anything about the man from it.
“Damn,” I utter.
“He was hot, wasn’t he?” Big Bertie says behind me, shocking me into a quick spin that almost makes me dizzy.
She must have walked back here while I was getting his chirpter handle, but for the life of me I never noticed, and I’d think I’d notice Big Bertie approaching
“What are you still doing here? I thought you’d be halfway home by now.”
“Oh, no, the man and the kids wanted a few things they didn’t bother to tell me about until I got a text two seconds before I clocked out. Wasn’t that nice of them?”
“Extremely.”
“Anyway, I wanted to let you know Badger had her kittens last night. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, and I never saw you on Lookbook to point you to the new photo album.”
“Oh, Bertie, that’s great! How many did she pop out?”
“Five or six. You know how shy she can be? Well, she decided to have her babies back behind the big screen, and none of us can get back there or get her to come out, but from what we can see, they all look decent enough so far.”
“Healthy?”
“Again, can’t get too close to ’em yet, but yeah, all seems well in the world with Badger.”
“That’s great. Send my love to everyone.”
“I will,” she says as she turns and begins walking away. “Don’t work too hard, babe.”
“Wait, photo album? From behind the TV?”
“Oh, one of the kids tried to take some pictures. It’s all very vague, but in one or two of them you can see an itty bitty kitty face peeking up. Even out of focus, they’re adorable little shits.”
“All right,” I laugh, watching her turn the corner from the reg hallway to the dish-washing area.
I turn back to my register screen, expecting another car to pull up and ding in my ear any second, but none comes, and then I hear Big Bertie exercising her big mouth up front.
“I am not smitten!” I call up after her, then switch my headset to inside-only mode so my crew can hear me on their sets. “The guy only gave me his chirpter name so we can get in touch if he wants to adopt a cat the next time he’s in the area.”
“Sure, Marsha,” the new guy chimes in, “whatever you say, Marsha, I believe you, Marsha.”
It sounds like maybe he wants to keep going with it, trying his luck and proving he didn’t learn much earlier, but then I hear a discernable smacking sound from up front and can just picture Bertie slapping the guy upside the head. She knows I can’t stand teasing about my name, and even though she’ll push my buttons on a lot of things, that she won’t touch.
But she seems determined to get in at least one more rub today.
Speaking on what I imagine is the new guy’s headset, swiped when she smacked him, Bertie cries, “You are so smitten and you know it, kitten! Smitten is my kitten, smitten half to death.”
“Oh, go home and feed the fam some ham,” I tease right back, a barb referencing the one food she refuses to bring home because her husband and children will scarf it all down before she’s barely gotten a slice. “And bring me the leftovers!”
“Whatever, kid. Don’t work too hard.”
“You said that.”
After that, another car pulls up and business resumes. I glance back through my window and across the parking lot to see Bertie walking out to her car, wave back when she turns to wave at me, return the gesture when she flips me a random bird, and then complete the order in my ear and ask them to come around and take their money and give them their change and do it all again for the next customer, and the next, and someone reminds me it’s a concert night so I give up all hope of getting my dishes done at a decent time tonight.
Such is the flow of life.
THREE
Have I mentioned how much I typically despise concert nights?
We’re situated right off the exit from 275, not terribly far north from Riverbend Music Center down on route 52. Whenever there’s a big-draw concert there – or a festival or other large public gathering anywhere in the general area three or four exits north or south of us along the highway – we feel the brunt both before and after the event, and sometimes during as well. It at least trebles our business from the norm, and yet on these nights we still operate with a crew scheduled only large enough to handle the ordinary average of customers-per-hour.
Somehow, with a new guy on shift, we are still managing to take names and kick some serious behind with a seemingly endless barrage of both drive-thru and walk-in customers. My initial opinion of Gregory, with his goofy youthful looks and playground huckster attitude, will have to be amended, because although I cannot see him at work to know for sure whether or not he’s helping as much as he can, the speed with which orders are coming together and going out the window up there tells me he can’t be slouching or getting in the way too much.
And though my clock-out time’s starting to look like it’ll be closer to two than one tonight, thanks to too few breaks between orders paid and orders coming in, I’m still not finding myself in anything but high spirits. I try to tell myself it has nothing to do with anything but my own part being played in this ongoing, unfilmed, unscripted drama of hunger and demand answered with congeniality and damn-fine-smelling (and tasting) fulfillment in sacks and bags and cups. I try not to let thoughts of that unnamed man cloud my focus, but I find myself glancing again and again at the little scrap with his chirpter handle on it, find myself hoping for a few free moments between orders and a sink-load or two of finished dishes to get on chirpter mobile and see what I can find out about him from his chirpter feed, and find myself wondering if any of them up front are making remarks to each other about Marsha’s sad little crush on an out-of-towner.
Oh, who am I trying to kid? It’s just y’all and me in here.
Of course I’m crushing on the guy. I don’t know if you can exactly see through my eyes, but I’m pretty sure my “spoken” thoughts are coming through to you loud and clear (so to speak), and so I can’t deny what I’m feeling.
I’m not saying it isn’t foolish. Far from it. How can I let myself feel anything for a guy I’ll likely never see again? Sure, I’ll be able to follow him on chirpter tonight when I get home – because this unending stream of cars in my line is most likely not gonna allow for me getting on mobile internet tonight – but what will that mean to him? He probably won’t remember our short exchange at all, and neither should I. I should put it behind me.
Forget the whole thing.
No cats for him.
Then something unthinkable happens. The world seems to have conspired to make it impossible for me not to remember the handsome stranger, for it is now giving me dire reason to actively seek him out.
The last vehicle in my line right now has just pulled up a few feet past my window, waiting for the customers ahead of them to receive their order. The driver was silent, stern to the point of looking angry or nearly hateful, but he never turned his face or eyes to me for a moment. His passenger – identical to him in every feature and article of clothing except for his expression and demeanor – had placed their order at the speaker, and then reached over his unspeaking, almost unmoving brother to hand me their payment and take their change.
The passenger had seemed nice enough, almost instantly likeable. He was engaging at speaker and window, friendly in the face of his twin’s reticence, and though he was a bit twitchy – he seemed from one moment to the next to be uncomfortable, no matter how he minutely contorted his position – he looked like a guy I could get to like hanging out with. He more than made up for his brother’s stubborn silence, and I began to see the driver as some sort of very detailed futuristic robot, and nothing more than that.
Then they moved forward, and now I see something in their back seat that is giving me just about the worst chills of my life. Nothing other than maybe their skin color – that smoky shade of brown that makes it hard to tell if maybe they just have a good deep tan, or a biracial couple for parents – would immediately suggest a connection to the handsome stranger from just over an hour ago, and yet there his face is, blown up on a poorly printed target practice sheet. It might not have grasped or held my attention even a twelfth as deeply, but a significant number of holes have been punched through it, some directly orbiting or piercing the center target zone, but most around the eyes, forehead, and throat.
Neither of them struck me as the sharpshooter type, not even the unnervingly silent driver. Yes, I was a bit unnerved by him, but I never would have noticed it if not for spotting the used target portrait, thanks largely to the too-engaging behavior of the twitchy passenger.
They move up a few more inches, showing impatience with how long the order in front of them is taking to be completed.
I can no longer see the target sheet, but I cannot for a second begin to tell myself that I imagined whose face was on it.
With no more orders to take at the moment, I feel my heart thumping in my chest. I imagine I can see it beating roughly against my ribcage, urging me to action though my brain has of yet no clue what that action should be.
And then, two things occur simultaneously.
My left hand grabs up my cell phone, while my right flips open the copy of the Oculatum I keep handy at the back reg. If you’re unfamiliar with the Oculatum, that’s kinda too bad because I’m not explaining it right now.
My hands switch tasks, the left now holding the Oculatum open to the random page my fingers have found, and the right scrolling down my contact list on my phone.
“Trust not your eye’s impression alone,” I read softly from the Oculatum as I find the entry for Jakie in my phone.
Really, Oculatum? That’s all you have for me in this crucial turning point that I somehow feel might just shape the entire course of my future?
Melodramatic, I know. But really kind of not.
I press the tiny photo of Jakie on my screen, and a connection is made. I press the phone against my ear and wait for him to pick up.
“Hellosies!” Jakie sings from his end, always way too excited to hear from me, as if I were his fag hag and no one else’s in the world.
I almost think he’s sad and deluded enough to believe that.
“Hey, Jakie, quick favor and you can’t tell me you can’t do it because I do not even have half the time it would take to come whip your ass for inconveniencing me today. Comprehend?”
“Okay, honey, I’ve got it! What’s the fave?”
From the corner of my eye, I spy their car moving up to the pick-up window. My window of opportunity is closing fast, and though I know this can’t come together anywhere near as quickly as I need it to, I still have to try. My gut won’t let me not.
“Come in right now and close for me. Throw on your uniform, and don’t you dare even bother with eye liner, you know you’ll just get bitched out for that sooner or later, just GET here, you hear me? Thanks and I love you bunches, my big sweet faggoty friend. Now move!”
Without giving him a chance to catch his breath to respond in either affirmative or negative fashion, I end the call, put down the cell, and close the Oculatum. The book I always turn to in random moments wherein I find myself needing external guidance seems to be letting me down, but I won’t let this thought dishearten me just yet. After all, tonight won’t be the first time it’s happened if this phrase ends up having some meaning hours from now.
Now for the really fun part. Hope Jenny’s not one of the managers that can’t stand to work with giant, flamboyant Jakie.
Not that I much care if she is. Give me trouble tonight, Jenny. I just dare ya.
FOUR
Drawer counted down and register operator changed in the system from myself to the ineluctably, contagiously gleeful Jakie von Schmittensteiner, I thank the gods for this little spell of customer-free minutes and finally allow myself to look out the window and up toward the front end of this side of the parking lot. I see what I hoped for and exhale sharply in bitter relief.
I’d expected them to be gone and all hope for this stupid daring notion of mine to be dashed. Follow them? Follow them, freakishly hoping that they are somehow tracking the handsome stranger up or down the highway, and that they might lead me to him? Oh, I believe they have nothing but nefarious schemes cooked up in their parallel heads, but I also believe that I can stop them. I don’t know how, but I can be resourceful.
After receiving their order at the next window, the twins with their disturbing back-seat portrait – I wonder shortly how no one up front noticed or was alarmed by it, and then remember where I am and who I work with, and stop wondering – parked just a few spaces from the corner overshadowed by the giant Our Mindy’s sign and promo board.
They are still eating now.
I activate the inside-only function on my headset, address this evening’s manager, “Jen Jen, be prepared to love me beyond words,” and walk out of the back hall, past the dishwashing station – sinks full of soapy or sanitizer water and dishes in various states of dirty-to-clean – and up to face Jenny at the drive-thru drink station. “I have to duck out.”
“You’d best be telling me there’s an emergency. You got a cover coming in?”
“Yes and yes.”
“And why am I loving you for this?”
“Jakie.”
Jenny rolls her eyes but smiles as well, and I can tell she won’t terribly mind working with the sole gay man currently featured on our weekly schedule.
“He’s a charming git, your Jakie, but Marsha, you do a far better job than he. Is there any way I can talk you out of this?”
“Sorry, Jen Jen,” I use her nickname again, displaying a friendly familiarity with her that I typically avoid, “but I can’t get out of this myself.”
Jenny transferred into our store just a month or two back, part of an exchange program with the Our Mindy’s stores in Great Britain. I have nothing against foreigners, even those who are almost indistinguishable from good ole Americans, but something about Jenny gave me the creeps when first we met. I haven’t much thought about it since, and can’t afford to now.
“All right. I did see your register end report printing. I gather all you need is the key to the twenties box so you can retrieve the rest of your drop money?”
“No need. Haven’t had enough twenties to drop in the box, just one or two per hour that I’ve already dropped in the safe.” Wagging a fist clenched around the rest of my reg’s cash taken since my shift began, I go on, “And this I can have dropped in two flat.”
“Right. Go on with it, then.”
She moves on to do something managery and I rush to the drop-safe, punch in my employee number, feed the bills in as rapidly yet carefully as I can to avoid two bills slipping in as one and fucking up my end total, and print my safe end report. I look at the meager sum on the little printed sheet and shake my head. It’s got to be the lowest amount I’ve ever seen at the end of a shift, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.
Standing and turning to run back and find Jenny and hand her these scraps, I’m startled to find her standing right there in front of me. She’s got my paperwork all stapled together and is holding it out for me, a pen in the other hand. I take it all, scribble down my initials in the appropriate spots, and hand everything back to her with the safe end report.
Everything I need to bring with me is on me. I walk on unstiff legs to the second window register, which mostly serves just as a clock-in, clock-out station unless enough call-offs or no-shows warrant moving the order-taker up to this window. I swipe my time card, mentally note the daily and weekly hours shown on the screen, and turn back to leave.
Thinking of the Oculatum I’ve left at the back reg, I almost run to retrieve it. I usually go nowhere without a copy, but my personal one is at home.
Following my gut, I leave it here and exit to the dining room, saying no goodbyes to Jenny or Gregory or anyone else working.
My hand raises up to push the glass-paneled door open to exit the building.
I glance over to the left, at the twins’ car. The twitchy one downs the last sip of his drink and tosses the cup over the passenger seat to the back-seat floorboard. The driver turns on the engine and the break lights come on. My pulse quickens, but I refuse to rush now.
If they see me running to my car, they’ll be onto me instantly.
Pacing myself to seem relaxed and unconcerned with anything but myself, I exit the restaurant and walk to my car. From the corner of my eye, I see they’re still there. I slip behind the steering wheel, buckle up, slip my key into the ignition, and start my own engine.
As they back up, I back up.
As they begin to move forward, toward the exit from the lot, I begin to move forward.
Motion in the second window draws my eye, and I spot Gregory throwing me a weirdly friendly wave. He doesn’t know me and I’m leaving way early and he should be pissed and flipping me off for abandoning them – I don’t know why I’m not more pissed at myself – but instead, he’s just waving at me. And I wave back.
I follow the twins out of the lot and sit patiently behind them at a red light. Thankfully no other vehicles cut in behind them before I can get to that position. Out on the highway, should that be their first destination from here, I’ll hang back a little more, but I can’t afford to do that here on Beechmont Avenue.
The light changes and, sure enough, they flip on their turn signal to indicate they mean to take the northbound onramp just ahead. I do the same.
My pulse steadies. I hadn’t realized it was still jumping until it stopped.
So, handsome stranger, you’ve gone north.
Your stalkers seem to think so, anyway.
I’m coming right after them. Don’t know if I can do any good if they’ve got a decent plan cocked together to see you dead, but I have to try. I don’t know why I have to try, but nonetheless, I have to try.
Hope to see you sooner than later.
2. THE SHAPE OF THE BEAST
She glances away from the sphere before her
with her dream-physical eyes
and takes in the sight of stars that have never been
so clear, so close, so majestic in their burning,
spinning, everlasting might. And yet, she
senses something wrong in the star-speckled black canvas
before her. At first it is hard to pick out, but yes, there
a few stars are dimming out, and over there
a few more, and now it seems as if the stars
are floating things on various surfaces of oil and water
and other unmixable fluids and on each layer, one
after the next, the stars are being dispersed into the black
sucking void. The stars are crushing out, blinking out,
dying out, and if she looks hard enough
she can actually see it happen to one of them.
The darkness of space seems to have become
a somehow solid thing in that vast ember’s region, closing
down around it, crushing its very massive weight, defying
its gravity and unbinding the forces that make it spin
and burn. It shrinks and sputters and does not explode
as dying stars should do. Instead,
it simply ceases to be,
and the hungry dark moves on.
– from a dream
ONE
Not two minutes up the highway, I’m beginning to regret my impetuousness. I can’t afford to be doing this! No matter what mortal danger I may believe this handsome stranger might be in at the hands of the (possibly) gun-toting twins, my first responsibility is to my cats, then myself, then my work-place. I can’t just run off anytime I think someone’s in trouble, can’t let myself shirk what I’ve taken on to do, can’t run off like Batwoman trying to save the day.
And yet, here I am. Miles from work, traveling up 275 to I don’t have a damn clue where, and following two strangers in the hopes that I’ll be there to foil their plot, should they even be involved in a plot at all against him.
Oh, how I wish I’d gotten his name!
Are you a Chester, buddy?
A Roger?
Phil?
Jimmy?
Walter?
Well, whoever you are, I’m coming.
I’m following – just two sedans and a minivan behind the twins – in what I believe is a very successful subtle tailing operation. If they know I’m following them, then I’m in over my head and I should just turn back and forget the whole thing.
Of course the only window out I give myself would be something I can’t possibly know, yet anyway. It’s not like I can read their minds, though wouldn’t that be nice.
Traffic’s moving along at a brisk pace, both sides of the highway just about equally packed but not crammed; no bumper to bumper action, even though I’d expect the southbound lanes to be tighter considering the concert down at Riverbend tonight. Maybe it’s not as popular as I’m sure it’s proprietors, performers, backers, and publicists would like it to be, or maybe the crowds are already most of them there for the event.
I try to remember who’s even playing, and I can’t get the faintest clue to rise in my head. Do you know? No, of course you don’t. You probably don’t even understand the basic concept of a concert. Let me tell you, it’s just about pointless in my book, but then that’s probably just bitterness speaking on my part, since I’ve never been to but two shows in my life, and they stank, the both of them.
We’re all coming up on the Eastgate exits, and I see the twinsmobile signaling they intend to take route 32 out toward Batavia. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Typically there aren’t a lot of reasons for out-of-towners to go that way, unless maybe he’s got a room in one of the hotels around Eastgate. I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
So what are the twins doing heading that way?
Just about now I think I wouldn’t terribly mind riding around on that cycle Batwoman has, not to mention donning that awesome red and black get-up so I could have no compunction about rolling up next to the twins, kicking my way through glass into the back seat, tossing that shot-up portrait of the handsome stranger out on the wind, and knocking the boys’ heads together before I pull an amazing parking job from the back seat at high speed.
In moments we’re off 275 and traveling along 32, heading east through Eastgate and, as I suspected, they aren’t making any further turns just yet. We pass the mall, the surviving little shopping centers and fast food joints on the right, the slightly nicer restaurants and vehicle repair places and Meller’s supermarket on the left, and move on toward Batavia.
Through a short series of other vehicles making sudden turns left and right out of my way, I quickly end up right on the twins’ ass. If I hastily switch lanes now, that’ll make me seem more suspicious than if they accidentally notice me in one of their mirrors and by dumb luck see enough of my face to recognize me from Mindy’s. Then it hits me; it doesn’t matter right now if they identify me, but it does matter later whether or not I can identify them.
For the first time, I really pay attention to what they’re driving.
After years working drive-thru, I’ve trained myself not to bog my memory down with the endless parade of makes and models that swing by my window on an hourly basis, plus I was never much of a car girl anyway, but now I have to fight that self-taught behavior.
Before I try to look any more closely at their tail end to make out the lettering, another idea strikes, and I grin. I don’t need to remember any details; my camera phone can do that for me. Just as we all decelerate to stop behind a couple of semis at a red light, I pull out my cell, pull up the camera function screen, and take a couple of shots. That work done, I set the phone down on the passenger seat and look back up to check if either of them has noticed me.
So far, so good. Neither of them seems to have seen me, or my stalkery pic-taking.
I look at our surroundings and realize we’re already crossing into Batavia now. Just ahead on the right is a Swiftway station, which means Batavia proper is just a few more minutes and a severe downgrade ahead on 32.
I try to think of anyone I know in or around Batavia. Then the light turns green and we have to move and I curse, as I’m not real great at multi-tasking, usually, but especially while driving.
Anyway, I don’t think I still speak to most if any of my old acquaintances around here.
Around a bend and down we go, down a steep curving hill, with Batavia’s west half of Main Street – pretty barren by city standards – on the right of the highway, and a few old factories down on the left. I hope stupidly that this isn’t their destination, as I’m still on their ass and following them into Batavia’s gonna make it just about impossible to keep them from spotting their tail, but of course, they signal their intent to take this exit. Damn it!
Luckily, I know the next exit isn’t far, and should lead me to them again rather quickly. Surely they’ll be taking West Main down to the bridge, crossing over to East Main, and following them from there should be easy.
Unless they turn right off the exit onto University Lane, double back up that road where it parallels the highway, and disappear up into the area around UC’s Clermont campus or the ghetto apartments or the slightly less ghetto apartments or the MRDD place up there.
I don’t have time to worry about that now. They’ve just quit the highway for the exit, I haven’t had a signal on, this truck on my ass isn’t about to slow down now, and I’m committed to onward motion along 32. Bye-bye, easy tailing job; hello, proof of a wasted trip.
“What the hell am I doing?” I say to no one, as if I’m not already doing a hell of a lot of that in my head.
Traffic carries me back up the other side of this little valley, and Batavia’s nigh-downtown disappears behind me on the right as trees close back in around us. Coming up ahead is the 222/132 exit into Batavia, and I quickly turn my signal on; it may be a slim chance, but I’m not passing up my last one of catching up to them again. It was close back at work, me being able to follow them out at all… almost like they were giving me a chance to do so.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-27 show above.)