Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

  “You don’t have to sit in back alone, like a weirdo,” she said as she turned to face the rear until she finished backing into the street.

  Wendell folded his arms across his chest and didn’t look at her.

  “Relax. I was just kidding,” she said.

  Since he clearly wasn’t going to offer her any conversation, Lily turned on the radio. All she got was AM. The only thing on was news and weird oldies. Her radio was caught in a time warp. Lily rolled through the stop sign at the end of the block and decided to turn left. Distance wise, it was shorter to go across the green bridge. But if she went across the black bridge, she could avoid the snarl on the other side of the river.

  Lily glanced up the hill at the cemetery as they passed. She couldn’t even drive by it without remembering the time that her ex-boyfriend had scared the shit out of her.

  When she felt the hand on her shoulder, Lily nearly screamed.

  “Damn it, Wendell, what’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  She glanced at his face in the rearview mirror. He was pointing through his window.

  “That’s the guy. Do you see him?”

  Lily looked left and saw an overweight guy slipping behind a giant tree.

  “The guy dressed up like a banker?”

  “Yeah. That was him. That was the guy who showed Charlie Holdt his penis.”

  “What?” Lily asked. She jerked the wheel to the left, having nearly veered into the stone wall next to the River Walk. In the mirror, Wendell was sitting backwards on the rear seat on his knees so he could look through the back glass.

  “Wen, what happened?” Lily asked. She barely slowed for the turn to the black bridge. Wendell slid across the seat and hit the door before he turned himself the right way around.

  “Charlie Holdt had a bet with Ben Trout.”

  “Like the fish?”

  “Yeah. Charlie said that grown up men all have penises that stick up and out.”

  Lily covered her mouth with her hand so Wendell wouldn’t think that she was laughing at him. She had a pretty good idea where Charlie had come up with that idea. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Charlie’s older brother might assume the same.

  “Ben Trout kept saying that they’re like little mushrooms.”

  “Don’t you people have health class?”

  “Health class doesn’t happen until middle school. Charlie and Ben were both still in fifth grade.”

  Technically, Wendell was now in fifth grade himself. But at his smarty pants school, they didn’t have grades like that. They moved through the curriculum at their own pace and graduated when they were ready. Lily thought that it was incredibly lucky that Wendell had the opportunity to be intellectually stimulated, and very unlucky that he wouldn’t be forced to socialize with kids his own age.

  “So?” Lily asked. “How does that…”

  “So, Charlie gave that guy a dollar and the guy showed Charlie and Ben his penis.”

  “Gross,” Lily said, shaking her head. She went straight through the intersection so she could head towards Wendell’s school. “Ben won the bet, I gather?”

  “No,” Wendell said. “They wrote down the bet beforehand. Charlie said it would be hard and go up. Ben said it would be a little mushroom surrounded by hair. It was neither.”

  “Neither?”

  “Yeah, they said that the guy didn’t have any hair down there, and his dork was long and floppy, like a hose.”

  “Super gross,” Lily said. “I’m not sure if I can express how disappointed I am in myself for letting this conversation go on so long.”

  “Maybe you secretly didn’t know what one looked like and you just wanted me to tell you?” Wendell asked.

  Sometimes, he could inadvertently be very funny. Lily covered her mouth again as she pulled to a stop.

  “Get out, pervert,” she said.

  He did, running three steps before he realized that he hadn’t shut the door properly. When he opened it so he could slam it shut, he said, “Thanks. Have fun at work.”

  Lily grunted a sad laugh and felt the joy drain from her face as she sighed.

  “Fun,” she said. “Work.”

  She pulled away.

  # # #

  Lily ran for the door, swinging her purse to catch it before it could close. She slammed her punchcard into the machine and pulled the lever right on the hour. It probably didn’t matter, the thing had run out of ink a week before. Still, Martha had said that Mr. Stollingford could brush the timecards across his face and read the imprints with his lips.

  His voice made her jump for the second time that morning.

  “Doesn’t matter when you punch in, Lily, it’s when you get to your station.”

  “Yes, Mr. Stollingford.”

  She rushed through the break room, still pulling on her smock as she stepped out into the grill. All the girls called the steamy room the grill, even though it was a wet heat. Her first station was loading. Lily went to the hooks and pulled down a bag.

  “How did it go?” Jackie asked.

  “With what?” Lily asked, making her eyes wide with innocence.

  “Now you’re going to hold out on me?” Jackie asked.

  “Mondays always drag out forever. If I dish out all my dirt first thing, what will we have to talk about after lunch?”

  “Silly me, I assumed that the act would take more than five minutes to describe.”

  “Touché,” Lily said. She dumped the bag onto the trough and sorted through them, looking for anything problematic. Her fingers worked fast to unbutton a shirt that was still buttoned up. Everything had to be loose or the machine would twist them into knots.

  “Frankly, it wasn’t all that different from what I imagined it would be,” Lily said. “The first thing I noticed about the place was the fragrance. It smelled almost like vanilla and sage, mixed with something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.”

  “Were they making stuffing? Vanilla and sage?” Jackie asked.

  “Stuffing? Who puts vanilla in…”

  “Miss Carroll?” a voice asked. It was the third time that Lily was startled that morning. She hated being startled.

  Getting control of herself, she turned and said, “Yes, Mr. Stollingford?”

  “May I see you in my office?”

  She dropped the pillowcase back in the trough and followed him as he walked quickly towards the metal stairs. Jackie gave her a raised-eyebrow look and Lily rolled her eyes as she passed. The boss climbed the stairs like his feet were angry at them. Every second step, his hand slid on the metal rail. Lily moved silently behind him. At the top, he opened the door to his office and gestured for her to pass.

  Walking through the door and taking a seat, she decided that if he tried to hit on her, she was going to quit right then and there. Since his divorce, he had been trying to date every girl on the floor. The ones who didn’t accept his offers usually got demoted for a week or two, although they always returned to their appropriate positions after a while. They didn’t have enough staff for him to permanently demote everyone who turned him down. She wasn’t going to put up with even the request. Lily straightened in her seat and raised her chin, waiting for him to ask.

  “I’m letting you go,” he said as he took his chair.

  “What?”

  “I’ll pay you for the week, even though I have no obligation.”

  “For the…”

  “Mrs. Francesca will escort you to your locker so you can clear it out. Then she will follow you to your car for your parking pass.”

  “But…”

  “We will mail you the final check. Is your mailing address still seventeen River Road?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Please leave your uniform in your locker and leave the door open.”

  She waited for him to finish and then took a breath to collect herself.

  “May I ask why you’re letting me go?”

  Instead of answering, he pressed his hands on his desk, stood,
and opened the rear door—the one that led to the office area. Mrs. Francesca was waiting there with her clipboard held against her chest. The woman darted a tongue across her lips as she waited.

  Lily wanted to demand an answer, but she couldn’t trust her voice not to crack. She could feel the tears wanting to rise up, like she was a thermometer and the heat had been turned on underneath her. The last thing she was going to do was let Mr. Stollingford see her cry. She walked right past him and right by Mrs. Francesca as well, heading for the rear of the building. She had never been down those stairs before, but she knew they must come out behind the locker room.

  She didn’t slow until she was descending. Lily realized that Mrs. Francesca had been calling to her.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Carroll, you need to leave your uniform in your locker and then leave the door open.”

  “I know,” Lily said. She pushed through the door to the hall, oriented herself, and then headed for the rear door of the locker room. Inside, she walked fast to her locker. Mrs. Francesca waited near the sinks.

  Lily took off her uniform, throwing into the bottom of the locker, and then dressed fast. She didn’t wait for Mrs. Francesca.

  “You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t un-punch a face,” her father liked to say.

  Lily thought about that as she pushed through the door to the lobby. It would have been easy to storm out and toss her parking pass through the window before she peeled out of the parking lot. But that face couldn’t be un-punched. Instead, she waited at the time card machine and plastered a fake smile on her face.

  “Do I need to punch out, Mrs. Francesca?”

  “No need,” the woman said. She consulted her clipboard and then must have realized that there was nothing pertinent there. “I just need your parking pass?”

  “Do you have any idea why I’m being let go?” Lily asked. Her smile was faltering.

  “I should think it’s obvious,” Mrs. Francesca said. The disdain in her voice made Lily’s thermometer begin to rise again. This time, she wasn’t sure that tears would come out if it rose too high. Lily blinked slowly and turned for the outer door. She hated the job, that was sure, but the thought that she was being fired was unbearable.

  Her mother was going to have a field day.

  Lily pushed out into the morning sunlight.

  # # #

  There were no cars in the driveway, but Lily kept going anyway. She rounded the corner and pulled up in front of Dottie’s. There were three parking places where the gas pumps used to be. Lily took the center one and paused when she got out.

  Crossing the bridge, her heartbeat had finally slowed to a reasonable rhythm. She was more confused and ashamed than angry. With a sigh, she headed into the market. The bell attached to the screen door rang when it banged shut behind her.

  A familiar face appeared from the back.

  “Hey, Nicky,” Lily said.

  “Hey.”

  “You’re not in school?”

  “Graduated.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not at work?”

  Lily sighed.

  Nicky seemed to pick up on her mood. She looked down and found something to arrange on the counter as Lily approached.

  “Let me get a pack of Marlboro?”

  Nicky looked up, biting her lower lip and cringing.

  “You know I’m old enough. I have ID.”

  “We don’t sell them,” Nicky said. “Dottie said that it was…”

  “Whatever,” Lily said, waving her hand, dismissing the answer. It had been a silly impulse anyway. She had almost gotten hooked on the things over the summer and had barely been able to slip out of their grip. It would have been stupid to invite that monster back into her life. Now that she wasn’t going to have any income, the expense alone would have been a decent reason to stay away.

  “Lily?” Nicky asked. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Whatever,” Lily said, crossing her arms over her chest. She looked around the store. It was all soda and chips. None of that appealed to her, especially first thing in the morning. Her life felt like an intertwined set of untying knots. It was all falling apart—everything that she had loosely tied together to keep herself upright. Working and living at home were a necessary evil so that she could save enough to move to Portland—or, god forbid, Augusta—and enroll in community college so she could get cheap credits and then transfer to…

  Cutting through all that fog, a new vision popped into her head. She could get in her car, load it up with her stuff while everyone was out, clean out her savings, and then hit the road. Everything would be behind her—all that failure would be in the rearview mirror.

  “Lily?”

  Walking backwards towards the door, Lily gave Nicky a crooked smile and tipped her a tight salute.

  “Sayonara, suckers,” she said.

  The confusion stamped into Nicky’s face made Lily laugh as she pushed backwards through the door and out into the sunshine. When it slammed, the little bell bid her a cheerful adieu.

  Lily practically skipped to the car. City names streamed through her head. Portland wasn’t far enough. Boston was within reach. On a field trip to the New England Aquarium, gray slush had filled her shoes when she stepped down onto the sidewalk. The rest of the day had been a wet-footed misery.

  “Fuck Boston—I’ll go to Hartford or New York,” she said to the dazzling morning sun.

  She paused with her hand on the car door. Lily’s eyes went wide with a new idea.

  “Houston,” she whispered. She glanced around to make sure that nobody had overheard her secret. In the depths of her heart, Houston was a bright, hot desire that she had never told another human being. She didn’t have the first idea of how to get there—doubted her car would be up to the trip or that she could possibly have enough money for gas—but that was where she was going to go.

  Opening the car door, she jumped up and down like an idiot, giggling before she got in.

  NICKY

  NICKY FROZE AS SHE watched Lily’s face pass through several changes. She looked sad, confused, and then angry. Nicky had read stories about men who came back from Viet Nam and went bonkers. In one, a guy had camouflaged himself by cutting the upholstery off of a chair so he could blend in with the matching couch. Then, he had waited patiently for his family to return. When they were all back in the house, he had snuck to the front door and locked them all in. His mother, father, and two sisters were dead by the end. The only witness to the murders had been his little brother, who had survived by leaping from a second-floor window.

  Nicky wondered if that was what was happening to Lily.

  Had she gone insane?

  Denied of cigarettes, was Lily going to leap across the counter and attack? Her brother always told her that it was dangerous for Nicky to work the store alone, but Nicky had always been concerned with the unshaven men who came in after dark and lurked over near the magazine rack. Maybe the real threat was this nineteen-year-old girl that Nicky had practically known her whole life.

  “Lily?” Nicky asked.

  “Sayonara, suckers!” Lily said with an evil grin. She left the store and the door banged shut behind her.

  Nicky put her hand on the phone, knowing she had to call someone. The police wouldn’t care—what was the crime? She could call Dottie, but she was dealing with her own problems. The erratic behavior of a local teenager wasn’t comparable to a dead husband of fifty years.

  Nicky snapped her fingers. She had the work number for Reynold Carroll—Lily’s Dad. Except to say hi, Nicky hadn’t talked to him since Eric had left town, but Mr. Carroll was always friendly. She went in back to find her bag and dig through it. Hunched over, pawing thought the backpack, she heard her mother’s voice in her head. It never failed.

  “All you need is lipstick, something feminine, a wallet, and a key, Nicole. I don’t understand why you insist on carrying around that dirty old satchel. Once, when she had been eight, she had tried on
lipstick. Ever since, she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing the stuff. Not after what Eddie Chisholm had said. As for the other things her mother had listed, they were useful, but her bag held so much more. One of the things, near the bottom, was her address book. She pulled it out and zipped her bag back up, not bothering to flip through the book to be sure it held the number for Mr. Carroll. Of course it did.

  The bell rang on the front door again. Nicky, still crouched next to her pack, hunkered even lower so she wouldn’t be visible. If it was Lily again, she might seriously consider sneaking out the back. There was something really wrong with that girl, and Nicky didn’t want to find out how that would manifest itself.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice called.

  Nicky’s brow furrowed. Now, she was really confused. She didn’t recognize the voice, but somehow she recognized the inflection of it.

  “Hello?” the voice said again.

  Nicky sprang up and ran through the door towards the counter. The man standing in the aisle between the dusty cans and bags of Cheese Doodles looked like a dirty hitchhiker. He had long hair and a scraggly patch of whiskers on his chin. His green army jacket had a peace sign sewn over the name on the pocket flap. His backpack was even dirtier than the one Nicky had in back.

  Still, Nicky jumped over the counter and practically knocked him into the Devil Dogs when she snatched him into a hug.

  “Nicky?” he asked.

  “Eric! You’re alive?”

  She realized that she had her arms around him. Shoving him away, Nicky recovered her personal space and crossed her arms.

  “What the fuck, man, you couldn’t write to me?” Nicky asked.

  Eric blushed and shook his head. “No. Sorry.”

  Her eyebrows knitted as it took her a second to figure out what was wrong with the way he had said those two words. “What are you, Canadian now?”

  Eric shook his head and his blush deepened.

  “What happened?”

  Looking down, he scuffed one foot on the floor.

  “Come on,” Nicky said. “Back porch. Tell me everything.”