“Hello,” I greet him, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “My name is Tommy. I’m supposed to be starting today.”
The boy continues to stare at the woman and her daughter as they saddle up to one of the high-top tables by the window. The one right beside our table.
I’m starting to feel like I’m interrupting, so I clear my throat.
“For Christ’s sake, Rod.” A blonde girl slinks in beside him, elbowing his ribs. “It’s way too early in the season for you to be that horny. Can I at least get a few weeks of peace before you start chasing every piece of ass that walks through the door?”
The guy—Rod—rubs his rib cage absentmindedly. “But Mel… yoga pants.”
The blonde rolls her eyes, then notices me.
“What’s up, hon? You need to order something?”
“N-no.” I shift again, looking down at my apron. “I’m Tommy. Claudine said I was supposed to start today.”
“Oooh.” The girl leans forward on her elbows, eyeing me. “You’re the new Tina. Funny, I thought Claudine said she hired some bimbo.”
“She was talking about you,” quips Rod, seeming to have broken from his yoga pants trance, at least temporarily.
“Shut the hell up, Bermuda Joe. Trot your Hawaiian shirt loving ass out back and take out the trash, would you?”
Rod mumbles something under his breath that makes my cheeks flush, but does as he’s asked, disappearing around the corner and down the back hallway.
Yeah, you’d definitely like him.
“Sorry about that,” Mel huffs, pushing off the counter to straighten her posture. “Good help is so hard to find these days.”
I have no idea what to say to that, so I let a nervous laugh escape. These pauses are when I miss you the most. You always filled my awkward silences.
“Just remember to smile, Tommy. You’ve got crazy resting bitch face.”
Mel’s hands find her hips. “Well, what are you looking at? Not gonna do much good standing there with your thumb up your ass. If I’m going to be stuck with you for the next three months, you’d better at least be competent.”
I panic, looking left and right for the way to get behind the counter. “Right, sorry.”
Mel just laughs. “Easy, new Tina. Just walk over here.” She motions to the side of the counter with a latch that allows you to lift the wood.
After I make an idiot of myself struggling with the contraption, I finally duck under the opening and pop up on the other side of the counter.
Mel gives me a thumbs up. “Smooth. Very smooth.”
It’s a whole different world on this side of the wooden bar. From here, I can see it all. The spilled milk puddles. Three filthy paper cups just chilling on the floor. A worn and crumpled strip of paper attached to the ancient looking cash register that says, “Don’t forget to smile!” but someone has marked through the last bit and penciled in, “Don’t forget, Bush did 9/11!”
All that’s missing is your flannel shirt and laugh.
“Welcome to hell,” Mel says, leaning up against the sink on the back wall. She folds her arms over her chest and gives me a once over. “Did Claudine say you had to wear all that?”
I look down at my dress slacks and shined leather shoes.
“Um…” My face burns even worse than being in the car. “I wanted to look nice for my first day.”
“That’s adorable.” Mel laughs and waves a manicured hand. “I give it a week till you’re back in here with shorts and a tank top.” She kicks off the sink and pokes me in the chest. “Hey, give me your phone.”
“W-what? Why?”
“Questions, questions. Jesus. I’m not going to break it. I need to download a messaging app for you. It’s how we get shifts covered and send out the schedule. Claudine may be old and crazy, but she’s a hag of the twenty-first century.”
“Oh.” I dig into my pocket and hand her my phone. The case is falling apart but it’s still got that unicorn sticker you gave me back at the start of ninth grade.
“Wow, what are you living under a rock? This thing’s like, ancient. Hope this doesn’t make it crash… what’s your name again?”
“Tommy,” I repeat myself. Did she forget that quickly?
“Right. Tommy.” She snaps her fingers then hands me back my phone. “Why was I thinking it was Fernando? Don’t get offended if I call you Tina at least a few times a day, for sentimental reasons. I mean, God, the woman worked here for like, a billion years. It’ll be hard not having her around.”
“Did she retire, or something?”
“You could say that. She actually dropped dead right there.” Mel points to the padded mat sitting in front of the register. “Aneurism they said. She flung coffee everywhere on the way down. It was epic.”
“She died?”
“Now that’s an omen!” Your voice rings clear as a bell.
“Uh, duh?” Mel says through a yawn. “Why do you think you’re wearing her apron, Not Tina?”
My hands shake as I fumble with the knot across my back. There’s no way in hell I’m going to go the rest of the day wearing some dead lady’s apron. That’s some bad juju if ever there was such a thing. I’ll suffer the spills.
“Ah-ah.” Mel places a hand on my shoulder. “Gotta keep it on, I’m afraid. Claudine may not really care what you wear under the apron, but it stays on no matter what. Got it?”
I nod, abandoning my attempt at shedding the death-apron. It feels heavier somehow. Like Tina’s spirit is weighing me down, resenting every step I take in her uniform.
A shiver crawls up my spine. I’m creeping myself out. I’ve only got room for one ghost in my life and that’s you.
“Dead employees aside,” Mel continues, stepping up to the register. “I’ll be the one showing you the ropes. Name’s Mel. No, it’s not my full name, but let’s not talk about that. Yes, I am happily taken, and no it’s not that skeeze, Rod. Favorite color is purple. Not royal, more like a fuchsia. I prefer my coffee iced, with almond milk because the real thing gives me the shits. You keeping up with me, Not Tina?”
“Should you be writing this stuff down?”
“Um, yes?”
“Good. Now buckle in, because next we’re gonna talk about my favorite candy and what type of music I will tolerate.”
I glance at the clock on the wall. Only six hours and fifty minutes left.
“Nicholas, help me grab the groceries from the car, please.”
“Thank god.”
I let out a groan then heave myself off the couch. We’ve been here half a day and I’m already bored out of my skull. If a rabid grizzly bear tore this cabin right now, I’d be thankful for the entertainment, at least until I’m ripped limb-from-limb. Now that I think of it, being stuck here for two months with Mom might be an even grimmer fate.
“Good grief, Ma, did you buy the place out?” I ask, eyeing the paper sacks that spill into the back seat of Mom’s white Escalade.
“I don’t plan on leaving for a while.” Mom climbs out of the driver’s seat, her perfectly-fake blond curls subdued by a pink Atlanta Braves cap. I don’t think my mother has ever attended a baseball game in her life, but I guess it helps her image. Keeps her approachable for the masses. For me, it signifies everything I hate about our family. We’re fake and have no idea how to relate.
It takes me four trips to unload the entire haul. Mom flits around the shiny kitchen, opening empty cabinets and filling them with her health food garbage.
I pick up a jar of a brownish liquid. “What is Kombucha, and please, God, tell me it’s not what it sounds like.”
“Fermented tea, Nick, dear. Please dig your mind from the gutter. I’ve paid far too much for your education.”
“Gross. I think I might prefer what I first envisioned.”
Mom cocks a thin eyebrow but I just shrug and hand her the bottle of viscous sludge. She continues to file away her spoils and I heft myself onto one of the barstools across from her.
�
�Heard from dad?” I ask when the silence grows uncomfortable.
“It shouldn’t be too long. Once those idiots across the aisle come to their senses, then he’ll be able to join our little slice of paradise.”
She doesn’t exactly sound convinced. This place may be quiet, but a Paradise it is not.
“Oh, is that what this place is called? I thought for sure the town named it Hicksville. I mean, seriously. This place is the worst. There’s nothing to do!”
She waves a fistful of baby carrots at me. “There’s everything to do! Grab a brochure from the table and take your pick. Hiking, kayaking, wood carving. I think there’s even one for basket weaving in the stack. How exciting is that?”
“You and I have fundamentally different understandings of the word ‘exciting.’”
Mom huffs a sigh, turning her best impression of a concerned parent on me. “We’re here, whether we like it or not, Nicholas. I suggest that you find a way to entertain yourself, or we’ll both be in for a miserably long summer.”
“You’ve never been righter.”
“Here,” she hands me a sack of birdseed and points me out the door. “Make yourself useful and fill the feeders. You know your father enjoys watching the vermin flutter about.”
I grab the sack and toss it on my shoulder. “I’m on it.”
Mom gives me a nod then returns to her greens and beets.
The air outside is thick with heat, but a pleasant breeze blows by, stirring the leaves and bending the trees. I guess it is kind of pretty up here in No Man’s Land. Back home, I’d be sitting in traffic right now with Reese, heading out to catch an early movie or lay by the pool. There are no pools in Hester, apparently. If there were, they’d have a brochure, I’m certain of it.
I toss the bag of birdseed by the door, watching it slump against the wooden exterior. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around why Dad would sequester us in a freaking log cabin all summer. At least at the beach I’d be getting bronzed and watching the cute guys run along the waves…
A car horn interrupts my daydreaming.
“Who’s that?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
A black Miata pulls around the bend of the drive way and I glimpse a tuft a frizzy red hair sticking out of the sunroof.
“My savior.”
Working at Claudine’s is weird. It’s hard to be there. Not just that I fuck up everything I touch—we’re talking serious Tommy Travesties—but because I can’t help but see you. Well. Clearly see you. Sitting in the corner chair, nose stuck in a book with your red sneakers propped on the table.
It isn’t fair that I keep changing, but you’ll stay the same forever. 11:12pm
Message Failed. Number not in service. 11:12pm
“Double tall, café mocha macchiato, upside down and extra dirty.”
I glance up at the menu, searching for even one of those words, then back to the sour woman.
“Not even I can translate that.”
“You want… dirt?”
“Let me.” Rod steps over to the register, punching in a few keys. “Hey, Susie. Could you take it easy on the kid? It’s his first week.”
The woman just huffs in my general direction and hands over her card. It’s a black amex, which tells me she must have ordered her condescending demeanor from a designer boutique.
“I’ll have your unnecessarily complicated beverage out to you momentarily,” Rod tells her, handing back the plastic rectangle that could purchase all of my possessions a dozen times over.
“Don’t sweat it,” he says under his breath, sliding back over to the espresso machine. “You’ll be speaking the lingo of sexually frustrated soccer moms in no time.”
His words bring me little comfort. I’ve been here for a week and a half and I can barely navigate the stupid register. I know I’m not an idiot. Why is this so hard? Could it be that I can’t seem to focus long enough to follow the orders? Or maybe it’s that my hands never stop vibrating because my anxiety is through the freaking roof as if I’m absorbing the coffee through some form of osmosis.
Or maybe it’s just the ghost of Tina, haunting my every move because I’m standing in her spot and wearing the apron she croaked in.
“It’s definitely the ghost.”
Either way, I’m screwed. Claudine is going to kick me to the curb as soon as she gets wind of my horrendous people skills.
Why did she hire me in the first place? You’d do so much better here.
“Hiring a dead guy is a bit of a tough sell.”
“Here we are Susie,” Rod announces, sliding over the paper cup. “Stay warm out there.”
The woman sniffs again, but takes her coffee, her gold-studded Prada bag, and her air of entitlement and heads out the front door.
“How the fuck do you drink scalding hot coffee when it’s like, eight-thousand degrees outside?” I don’t answer, assuming the question’s rhetorical. He scratches his patchy beard and adds, “Then again, I guess it doesn’t matter when your heart is a frozen chunk of hate as I suspect may be the case.”
“Thanks for saving me. She was just spewing random words. I thought she was going to bite my head off.”
Rod wipes down the steam wand with a towel. “Don’t mention it, Not Tina. The lesson to learn from this is that if I let one of those rich bitches walk all over one of us, they’ll think they can do it to all of us.”
“Are they really that bad?” I ask, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “I was hoping that was just an overreaction on my part.”
Rod laughs, shaking his head. “Don’t worry. You’ll see…”
With that ominous warning, he returns to his cleaning task. I stare out the windows longingly, counting down the hours till I’m free.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy working. Honestly. This is a way better gig than last summer when your dad hired us to mow the field on your nana’s property. It would just be so much better if I could do it without all the people. People make me anxious. People order weird drinks I’ve never even heard of. People dump sugar all over the condiment stand like Neanderthals. You’re so much better at handling people.
Plus, it’s summer. The last summer of my high school career. I should be out on a trail or cruising the Hooch. Not here, literally stuck to the floor. Ew. What is that?
“Tommy?”
“Huh?” I shake off the doldrums, turning toward the voice.
“I said it’s time for your break,” Mel says, apparently repeating herself. “So, get out of the way.”
“Right.” I step back from the register, my shoes making an audible noise as they uproot themselves from the floor. Mel takes my place, rapping her decorated nails along the counter as she strikes up a conversation with Rod about her amazing boyfriend. It’s a topic I’m coming to realize gets brought up often.
I reach under the counter for my sack lunch and grab my ancient phone while I’m down there. Once I’ve got everything, I head down the hallway, past the bathrooms and out the back door. Sunlight smacks me in the face, blinding but welcome. The smell of garbage is still new to me, so I hold my breath as I cross paths with the dumpster and keep moving toward my lunch spot. A perfect place to regroup and convince myself that quitting a week into my first job would be a shitty thing to do.
“You can do it, Tommy. Just keep that smile shining.”
I lower myself onto the patch of soft grass underneath an oak tree that towers over half the town. From here, I can turn away from civilization and gaze into the dense forest that surrounds Hester. It’s crazy, that you can stand in a parking lot one moment and be surrounded by such natural beauty three seconds later. Well, except the empty Doritos bag and a soda bottle I really hope isn’t full of urine chilling over there, but that’s a small thing. Maybe I’ll grab those on my way inside. Litter makes me think of you. Then again, so does just about everything.
“Littering is such a dick move. How would you like it if I came into your house and tossed shit all over your floor?”
Yo
ur voice echoing in my ears makes me smile.
I was in a hurry this morning, so my peanut butter and banana sandwich is flattened when I unwrap it. But it does a fine job at silencing my rumbling stomach and sticking to the roof of my mouth as I enjoy twenty-six glorious minutes of not-people.
However, like all good things, my break eventually comes to an end, and it’s time to get back to work. I scoop up the Dorito bag, shoving my hand into it like a glove so I can grab the hopefully-not-pee bottle. Once I’ve tossed the trash in the dumpster, I pull on the door but it’s locked. That’s weird. It usually doesn’t close all the way.
With a sigh, I trudge my way around the strip of stores and back to the front entrance.
“Welcome,” Rod calls as I step through the door, but that’s only because he’s got his back turned. Mel just kind of glowers at me as I replace my folded lunch sack and phone under the counter.
I retie Tina’s apron around my waist, ready to take my place at the counter, but Rod tosses me a towel. I manage to catch it despite my sub-par hand-eye coordination.
“It’s time to swab the poop deck.”
“And by that you mean—?”
“Bathrooms,” Rod clarifies. “I’d grab a few extra gloves if I were you. You’re going to need them.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
God, I really hate this place.
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” I say to Reese before she shuts off the engine of her Miata. It’s super early—like, nine o’clock—and we’ve survived a short drive down a winding road leading to a trailhead.
“Did you really think I was going to go the entire summer without seeing that beautiful face of yours? Plus, I’ve been needing some new content for my Insta, so what better way to kill two birds with one stone?”
Ghosting You Page 2