by Tanen Jones
“But won’t you inherit her half, if she owed you?” I said. “Now that she’s, you know…”
She turned her odd colorless eyes on me. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “That was a dumb thing to say. I didn’t mean it like that.”
She was still looking at me, that half-present blankness on her face. I wished she would stop looking at me like that.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” I blurted out.
“What?” she said, seeming to come out of her daze.
I sucked on my cigarette. “I think people think I’m dumb,” I told her. “I think maybe I just look like I am. I don’t know.”
Leslie let out a hoarse giggle again. “No,” she said, when she caught her breath. “Of course not.”
I frowned. “I might be. You don’t even know me.”
“Everybody has talents,” Leslie said, her body loosening a little.
“Does this count?” I took the cigarette out of my mouth and did cauliflower tongue. She laughed, and I put the cigarette back in my mouth. “No, but I can read palms, though. I’m really good at it. Here, I’ll show you.”
She curled her hand up against her chest. “No, no.”
“Come on.” I grabbed her hand and tugged it toward my knee. “It won’t hurt.”
She relented and leaned toward me, letting her palm rest on my leg. I stubbed out my cigarette and added it to the fairy ring around the bench. “Okay,” I said, “you’ve got this really fleshy Venus mound.” I squished it with my thumb. Leslie made a face. “No, it’s good,” I said. “It means resistance to disease. And your middle finger is the longest. That means you’re an overachiever.”
“Aren’t you supposed to read the lines?” she asked.
“Sure.” I bent her fingers in slightly, so that I could see where her palm creased. “That’s the life line. Yours is really faint.”
“What does that mean?” She leaned in.
“It means you don’t work with your hands…you work in an office.”
Leslie laughed. “What about my love line? That’s one of them, isn’t it?”
“Heart line.” Hers was short and straight, like a cut. “You’re married?”
“Yes,” she said. “Four years.”
“Beautiful. What’s his name?”
“David. Dave,” she said, revealing a slightly crooked canine.
I dropped her hand and took out a second cigarette. She gave me a sidelong glance, watching my hands. “What do your palms say?” she asked.
I let my fingers uncurl on the bench between us. “See that long one down the middle? That means I’m going to be famous,” I told her. My voice echoed a little in the empty lot. “The psychic I went to said it’s the longest one she’s ever seen.” I pulled my hand back and stuck it into my apron, gripping the bills I’d stuffed in there, drawing in a breath through my nose.
“I should leave soon,” Leslie said. “It’s getting late.”
“Thanks for keeping me company.” A car pulled into the lot, washing us in bright, flat light, and our heads turned briefly to look at it. When I looked back, she was already gathering her things. “I hope everything works out with her. Your sister and everything,” I said.
“Robin,” Leslie said. That blankness fell back over her face, like a veil. “Thank you.”
She started to gather her things, but paused. I followed her gaze and saw that the car had parked, and a man was coming toward us with an odd shambling gait.
I said, “You should go—you should go inside.”
“Do you know him?” Leslie asked, her hand half in her purse.
“A little.”
She didn’t move.
Sam was my height, bald, with a reddish goatee. His ears and cheeks were the same flushed, ruddy pink. “Who’s your friend?” he said, coming up onto the curb.
I dropped my phone and scraped my fingers trying to pick it up again. The cigarette fell onto the pavement. “No one,” I said, sticking my index finger in my mouth so it wouldn’t bleed everywhere. “She’s a customer.”
Leslie glanced between us. Her lips parted.
“A customer. I see.” He left off staring at Leslie and nodded at my phone. “What you looking at?”
“I’m just checking the time,” I said, wiping my hand on my apron. “I have to get back inside.” I stood up.
Sam wandered over to me. He was wearing a button-down shirt today, khaki, which strained over his thick middle. He smelled like strawberry candy, that factory-plastic sweetness, like he’d eaten an Airhead or something. “I heard you were over at Paul’s house again today.” He tugged on my earlobe. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Maybe we should head back in,” Leslie said. “Your break’s probably up.”
Sam ignored Leslie. “I told you not to see that man anymore,” he said, flicking my ear.
“Stop it,” I said, smacking his hand away, grinning reflexively. I could feel it on my face, a panicked, skeletal expression.
He put his arms around me. “You want me to stop?” he said. “Gimme an apology.” He stuck his hand in my apron and pulled out a handful of cash. “You did good today, baby,” he said, stepping back a little so that he could see the bills under the streetlight. “You got two hundred dollars in here.”
I felt Leslie’s eyes on me as I watched him tuck my money into his wallet. “I have to get back to work,” I said.
“You have time,” he said. “No one’s gonna fire you. Dance with me.” He held out his arms.
I didn’t move for a second. Then I walked stiffly over to him and put my arms around his warm, fleshy neck.
We swayed for a minute, my face pressed against the rough fabric of his shirt. He hummed and I felt it rumble through his chest. The song wormed its way into my ear, vaguely familiar. The words crept in after a minute: Going to the chapel and we’re…gonna get married…He was making fun of me. I started to draw away.
He coughed and squeezed my waist, coming to a halt. “Okay, say you’re sorry. I want to hear it.”
I glanced at Leslie, still sitting on the bench, clutching her purse. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, turning back to Sam.
“And you won’t go back there again.”
I shook my head.
“This is a good little gig you have here,” Sam said. “You look nice in that dress. I’m gonna come visit you. You work most Saturdays?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“All right. Have a good night, baby.” He smiled at me. I was still smiling back, like I’d been frozen that way. I knew what it looked like from the outside.
He squeezed me one last time and turned away, heading back toward his car. I sat down heavily on the bench, listening to his footsteps, and then to the throat-clearing noise of the start of his engine.
“Are you okay?” Leslie asked, leaning toward me. Headlights swept over us again as Sam pulled out of the parking lot. “Who was that?”
The door to the restaurant thumped open and Berna put her head through the doorway. “Have you been out there this whole time?” she called.
“What?” I said.
“Breaks are ten minutes,” she said. “I know you have a clock on your phone. Who’s this? Is this a customer?”
“I’m about to head to my car,” Leslie said.
Berna turned her gaze back on me. “You need to learn to budget your time,” she said, her short nose twitching. “I have to write you up, unfortunately. Last chance train.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Follow me in here. I’m going to get the form. You need to sign it to show you understand this is your third strike.” She retreated into the hallway and I got up to follow her.
“I shouldn’t have come out here,” Leslie said quietly as I slipp
ed back into the building.
Inside, Berna clacked toward her office. I paused at the bank of lockers. Under the fluorescent lights everything seemed hyperreal. I could almost believe that I’d imagined what had happened outside.
I dialed my locker combination and took out my duffel bag as quietly as I could, slipping my hand into it and feeling around for the lucky veladora where I kept my saved-up cash.
Sam hadn’t gotten everything.
I slung the duffel bag over my shoulder and hurried back down the hallway, pushing open the door as quietly as I could.
Leslie was still there, leaning against the wall by the jamb. We were barely a foot away from each other. She turned her head in surprise.
“Mary,” she said, straightening, her dirty-blond hair slipping behind her shoulders. “Is everything okay?”
“I quit,” I said, stepping on her last word.
“Don’t you have—”
“That guy who showed up—Sam—that’s my ex. He knows where I work now. I tried to make sure…Those were my tips that he stole just now. He—Leslie—”
Leslie took my hand and pulled me along the building wall, toward the corner.
“Thank you,” I breathed. I rattled along beside her in my heels as well as I could on the asphalt.
We reached the front parking lot. She clicked the button on her keys and I fell into her Honda. It smelled good inside, like Pine-Sol or something. I pulled off my shoes and held them awkwardly on my lap. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Behind me, in the rearview mirror, I could see Berna pushing open the front door, the neon heart swinging wildly.
“You can stay with me tonight,” Leslie said, reversing out of her space. “I have two beds. It’s no trouble.” She pulled onto Harmon. Taillights from the car in front of us turned her pale skin a deep red. “I’m sorry about your ex,” she said into the quiet car.
“Sorry about Robin,” I said. Then we didn’t say anything for a while.
6
Leslie
“Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is the self-proclaimed capital of this German sausage,” Alex Trebek said.
“Frankfurter,” Mary called. “Frankwurst.”
“Frankwurst is not a sausage,” I told her, just as one of the contestants said, “Uh, what is bratwurst?”
“See, I knew it.” Mary raised an eyebrow at me. “I knew the end part. I forgot about the front part.”
“The ending doesn’t count. Every German sausage is a -wurst. It literally translates to sausage.”
Mary slapped another miniature bottle of schnapps into my palm. “Drink this. Stop talking in German.”
“This fruit-and-nut-filled sweet bread sounds like it was…pilfered,” Alex Trebek went on. The contestants stared at him, slack-jawed. “It’s called stollen,” he explained, when the buzzer went off. “Stollen.”
I laughed. Mary glanced at me. She was back in her leggings, cross-legged on one of the double beds, holding a pillow in her lap. The room seemed more stable with her in it. Alone, I’d felt almost disembodied; the thick green felt curtains and the industrial air-conditioning unit absorbed all the ambient noise, even my own breathing. After George’s, I’d come back here and tried to sleep, lying motionless on the bed, trying to think of ways to explain my absence to Iker.
I’m so sorry. I was overcome by grief. I hope you understand.
I was shocked. I needed a few moments alone.
I couldn’t look at her anymore—I couldn’t be in that room—
“Did you know this is the first time I’ve ever gone anywhere by myself?” I said, as Jeopardy! went to commercial.
Mary thumped off the bed and went to get another bottle of vodka, weaving slightly. “I feel like my mouth is making, you know, more than the amount of spit it’s supposed to make,” she said, talking over me. “Do you ever get that? Wait, what were you saying?”
“Are you drooling?” I took the vodka bottle out of her hands as she struggled to open it and tossed it onto the opposite bed. “That’s not a good sign.”
“I didn’t mean drooling. That’s not what I meant. I’m going to wash my face. You keep telling me what you were telling me.”
I fell back against the pillows. “I’ve never been on a trip alone before.”
Mary stuck her head out from the bathroom. “How old are you? Like thirty?” she asked around a toothbrush.
“Thirty-one.”
She disappeared, and I heard her spit into the sink. “That’s crazy.”
“I’ve never been anywhere, really. Dave got his job right before our wedding, so we couldn’t take a honeymoon, and before I met him my dad was sick, so we never traveled. I don’t even remember traveling when I was a kid. We went to the Grand Canyon once, I guess.” I wiped my nose.
The water ran briefly, and then Mary exited the bathroom. She looked different barefaced; despite her bronzed, freckled sternum, the skin on her face under all the contour was like marble, and her unpainted eyebrows were girlishly curved, without the harsh arch she gave them with the pencil. “I got your towel all black,” she said. “I couldn’t find the Kleenexes.”
“They’re not my towels,” I said.
She shrugged.
Jeopardy! came back on as she flopped down next to me on the bed, humming along with the theme. “How come your husband didn’t come with you, then?” she asked. “If you’re scared to be here by yourself?”
I stared at the screen as DAILY DOUBLE appeared, accompanied by air horns. “I didn’t want him to meet her,” I said laconically.
Mary chewed peanuts. “Your sister?”
I nodded.
She waited for me to say something else. When I didn’t, she said, “How come?”
The Jeopardy! contestant paused; the air conditioner rushed in to fill the silence. “She did a lot of drugs,” I said over its heaving breaths. “Heroin, lately. That’s how she died.”
“Oh.” Mary stuffed more peanuts in her mouth.
I shifted on the pillow, pulling my blouse down over the roll of flesh above my waistband. “You look like her, kind of. Without your makeup on. She had hair like mine, though.”
“ ‘Return to Sender’!” Mary yelped, spraying peanut dust. “I knew it. Was she pretty?”
She hadn’t turned to me; it took me a few seconds to catch up. “Robin?”
“Yeah, your sister. Was she pretty?”
“Yes.” At least when I’d known her she had been.
“All pretty people kind of look alike,” Mary said, unblushing, still watching TV. “At least that’s what I think. I get told I look like people all the time. Daughters…nieces…Amy Adams…” She grinned at me. “A young Melanie Griffith.”
“The group of painters known as ‘the Eight’ established this ‘sooty’ school of art,” Alex Trebek intoned.
“I wish I had something. Like falafel. Or a gyro,” I said.
Mary silently offered me the packet of peanuts.
“Peanuts aren’t falafel.”
“They’re all we have.”
I screwed up my face as she pushed them at my cheek. After a few seconds she gave up and fell back next to me on the bed, sending peanuts scattering across the floor. “Leslie,” she started, and then seemed to forget she had been about to say anything.
“Have you been a lot of places by yourself?” I asked after it became clear she was lost in her own thoughts.
“Um…here. Texas. One time I got flown out to Florida to be in a short film about a dog. But then it never aired anywhere.” She yawned. Her teeth were white and perfectly aligned, like a toothpaste advertisement.
“Did you use my toothbrush before?” I mumbled.
She ignored me. “Paul told me he could introduce me to people. His brother used to be a PA for James Cameron. Paul’s the one
I was waiting for today, outside the restaurant. But he never introduced me to anybody, and today I found out he’s got some new girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “I just don’t know how else you do it. Like if I don’t know anybody important, how am I ever supposed to get started?”
“Build up savings?” I guessed, pulling the sateen coverlet over my feet. “Find an agent?”
Mary shook her head as much as she could, pressed against the pillow. “Something always happens. I think I was born under a dark star, Leslie. I really do.”
I put my hand up to cover my smile. “Because you haven’t gotten to act yet?”
Her eyes were big and solemn; behind her, on the television, a Corona commercial cast blue light across the pin-striped wallpaper. “Things don’t work out for me.”
“They will,” I said. “You just have to wait.”
“No.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “Some people are lucky. It’s just in them. Like they were good in a past life, and now God wants to reward them. I’m not like that. Paul cheats on me. I got this job I’m actually doing okay at, and Sam tracks me down, and I gotta…That’s how I lost the last one too. I know how he is. He’ll show up every day now that he knows where I am.”
I didn’t know what to say. She wrapped a loose thread around her finger, then unwrapped it slowly. “Hey,” she said suddenly, “how did you know your husband was the right one?”
The change of subject caught me off guard. “Um, I just knew.”
Mary smacked me on the arm, letting the thread fall to the bed. “Ugh. I hate that.”
The atmosphere had shifted so suddenly that I couldn’t help laughing. “I mean, I don’t know how else to say it.” The truth was one of those things it was impossible to say aloud: I knew because it terrified me. I had never been in love before, so I didn’t understand what it meant until it happened to me. Early in our relationship, I’d gone through a phase of dreaming that he was dead, then waking in a cold horror, my face soaked. I dreamed it a dozen times or more, all in the middle of a courtship so intense that it had made me feel crazy. I did things with Dave I never would have done with anyone else: skipping classes to stay in bed all day, moving in with him after only two weeks. I didn’t sleep in my own apartment once after meeting him—at the time that had seemed absolutely sensible.