Girl in Pieces

by Kathleen Glasgow

  “Do you have a problem with that?” I’m angry, Julie’s words still stinging my ears.

  Temple Dancer’s face loosens and she laughs, a deep sound, like owls fluttering from her throat. “Just testing. It’s awesome. I’m totally sick of dudes.”

  Julie appears, changed into drapey pants and a tank top to go to her yoga class. “Girls, play nice. Linus!”

  Linus emerges from behind the grill, Riley’s grill, her face sweaty. “Welcome to nights, Charlie. And I know, I know, I work too much, it’s true, even nights. I never leave!”

  “Let’s try to keep it together tonight, okay, girls? Kibosh on the drinking?” Julie pleads.

  “No problem, J.” Linus spins a dish towel with her forefinger.

  As soon as Julie’s gone, two waitgirls burst through the doors to the front, planting themselves right in front of me. Temple Dancer joins them. I’ve never been in the coffeehouse at night, so I’ve never met them.

  “You’re the one that fucked Riley in Julie’s office? Oh my God.”

  “Jesus! You totally fucked Riley in Julie’s office. How was it?”

  “I thought he was fucking that Darla girl from Swoon? Does she know? Because she will die. She’s such a pussy.”

  “I thought you were with Mike Gustafson. Did you guys break up? You were a totally cute couple. I saw you guys eating fries at Gentle Ben’s once.”

  The comment about Mikey cuts me a little. The comments about Riley horrify me. Darla from Swoon? Did that really happen?

  Linus waves the dish towel in the air. “Enough. Officially over, no more questions asked or answered. Temple, do your bit: train Charlie.”

  One of the other girls says, “I’m Frances. Nights are hell here.” She tucks her orange bob behind her ears. “But in a good way,” she finishes before taking off to the café floor with her green order pad.

  Temple says ominously, “The best and worst thing about nights is when we have live music. It can sucketh or it can giveth. Tonight, our pleasure is…” She fishes a sheet of paper from under the counter.

  “Modern Wolf. Tonight will sucketh.” She jams a finger into her mouth, gagging.

  The other girl says, “I’m Randy.” She does a little two-step shimmy. She’s dressed in a black miniskirt and white T-shirt with a spray-painted red target. Her saddle shoes scuffle against the hardwood floor.

  Randy rolls her eyes. Her blond, feathered hair swings against her cheeks. “Modern Wolf sucks ass. This means we’ll get mostly bangers and some art types thinking this is prog rock, which it is not. It’ll be loud and awful and hell getting rid of them at closing.”

  Temple is spearing receipts on a spindle. “Sucks for you, since you have to clean both shitters and the main floor at the end of the night.”

  Randy nods. “And we’ll all be waiting for you, and stuff, to finish because Julie says we all have to leave at the same time? But we can’t help you.”

  “Because nobody helps the dish.” Temple makes a sad-clown face.

  “So we’ll be getting angrier, while we wait for you,” Randy says.

  “And angrier,” Temple concurs. She frowns. “Jesus, you’re going to burn up in that shirt.”

  Randy cocks her head at me. “We know about you. Julie told us. I have a T-shirt with short sleeves in my bag, if you want it.”

  Desperately, because their machine-gun conversation has made my head spin, I say, “Do you guys ever shut up?” Behind the grill, Linus laughs.

  Temple grins. “Never.”

  “It’s cool with me, you know,” Randy tells me, leaning in closer, so that I can see the shine of the piercing in her nose. “Julie hardly ever comes in at night, anyway. My cousin, she was a cutter. She’s in law school now. Stuff happens, you just keep on truckin’, am I right?”

  Move forward. Keep on truckin’. I’m getting tired of everyone thinking it’s so easy to live. Because it’s not. At all.

  Randy gives me a friendly little nudge with her elbow and I try to smile, just to be nice, Don’t be a cold fish, but I’m starting to feel sick, and heavy inside. I look out the front window at the dark sky. Working at night is going to be a lot different.

  Around eight-thirty, Modern Wolf come in drunk and take a long, noisy time setting up; one of them falls off the riser and passes out. Temple empties a pitcher of water over his head. The band has a core of friends who fling themselves into the battered wooden chairs and smoke inside even though they shouldn’t and drink enormous amounts of beer they smuggled in stuffed in paper bags. They stomp booted feet on the floor so hard that Linus shakes her head at me and says, “You stupid, stupid children. Why do you think that’s music?”

  The band reminds me of the ragged kids Mikey and DannyBoy used to take me to see in St. Paul: skinny, loose-jeaned kids, girls and boys, with bad skin and crunchy hair who whaled on instruments in the moldy basements of houses, popping strings and bashing on drums. It was exciting to me, that you could throw yourself into something so much simply because you loved it and it consumed you. It didn’t seem to matter if you were good or not. It only mattered that you did it.

  Modern Wolf sings, My heart is a political nightmare / Guantánamo Bay every day / You’ve searched and seized and strung me up / I’m left with nothing to say / I ain’t got nothing to say!

  A girl in a mesh top and hot pants lurches through the doors to the kitchen area, takes a look at Linus and me, spews fries and beer from her mouth, the dregs caking instantly to her chin, and whispers, “My bad,” before Randy shoves her out. I sop up the chunks, holding my breath. They were right, nights are way worse than days. No one ever vomits during the day, except for that time with Riley. I’m exhausted and my head hurts from all the noisy music and there are still two hours until closing, and longer after that to clean. My heart sinks farther and farther.

  At closing, Temple brings out a large bottle of Maker’s Mark and pours cups for everyone except Linus, who grimaces. Temple raises her cup and shouts, “Salud!” I just leave mine by the dishwasher. Even though I’ve had some drinks at Riley’s, mostly when he’s sleeping, and that half bottle of wine, I haven’t had anything else.

  Someone has menstruated in an ugly way on the women’s toilet seat and that takes me some time. The men’s room is all graffitied walls, piss on the floor, paper towels stuck to the tiled backdrop above the sink. I drop stream after stream of cleanser in the toilet, but it remains a defiantly burnished yellow. My hands burn from the chemicals when I’m done.

  While the other girls bustle and laugh behind the counter and in back, I tackle the tables: wiping them down and heaving the chairs on top of them so I can mop. It’s a lot more work at night. My face is red from the effort and I’m breaking out in sweat. Modern Wolf is still straggling out, the last of them bleary and unsure of the direction of the doorway. It’s Friday; Fourth Avenue will be packed with people going to hear music along the street, to Plush, O’Malley’s, the Hut with its enormous, glowering tiki head, all the way down to Hotel Congress with its pretty, old-fashioned awnings. Mikey’s probably calling Bunny every night. Maybe buying things for her in truck stops, stupid stuff, like pencils with fuzzy tops.

  I wonder what Riley’s doing, because we’d be together now, on a good night, maybe listening to records in his living room, something quiet like that that I like. I wonder if he’s thinking about me at all.

  It’s while I’m mopping the sloping hardwood floor, listening to the other girls laughing and drinking and smoking, that I suddenly get really lonely. They’re a gaggle of girls, together and happy, normal girls doing normal things. They’re all going to go out after, find friends and boys, maybe go to the bars. And I’m mopping shit up and smelling like old food.

  The bell tinkles on the front door and happy girl-squawks erupt from the counter: Hi, Riley, hey, Riley, taking us out for drinks, Riley? My heart sinks and soars at the same time when he answers, So sorry, ladies, I’ve just come to collect my girl, and then there’s an awkward, small silence bef
ore Temple says, Oh, right, because she, and they, all of them, I know, were really thinking, But we thought you just fucked her.

  He said My girl.

  My heart leaps, but I don’t want him, or them, to see it. I can feel everyone watching me from behind the counter, so I ignore them, pushing through the double doors to the kitchen area. I dump the grimy, slick water in the sink, run my apron through the washer. There are two tiny white cups of untouched Maker’s Mark on the counter by the washer. They’re called demitasses and they’re for single espressos. Linus has been teaching me the names of cups for coffee drinks. I love them because they’re perfect and compact and unblemished.

  When I finally turn around, the girls are there, giving me little half-smirks, Riley standing among them, already several drinks down. He wobbles slightly on his feet.

  We aren’t going to listen to records. He might have said My girl, but will he remember that in the morning? I look down at the demitasses. What does it matter if I drink now, too? Would he even notice?

  A tiny, tiny part of me whispers: Is there even room for me in what we are? A cookie, a book, a record on a shelf.

  “I’m almost ready,” I say, and turn back to the sink. A wave of resignation washes over me. I down the Maker’s Mark and rinse the cups. My throat and stomach burn, but the warmth that spreads through my veins obliterates that. I wipe my mouth and turn around to face them.

  “Are you ready?” I ask Riley. “I’m ready to go.”

  Outside, I have to push through a gauntlet of bodies to get to my yellow bike. I’m fumbling with the lock when someone shouts, “Hey, Riley, man, is that your girlfrien’?” Slurry laughter creeps from the Modern Wolf crowd. In that moment, looking at the sea of drunken, black-shirted boys with greasy, dark hair and boots with dangerous soles, I know that Mikey has heard, or will hear soon, about what I’ve been doing. And I don’t think I care anymore. I feel heavy and numb.

  A rumble of ooohhhs seeps from the crowd and Riley takes the bicycle from me, puts my backpack over his shoulders, settles on the seat. “Don’t be mad,” he says quietly in my ear. “I came to take you home. I swear I would never hurt you, Charlie, never. You have to let me show you that.”

  He angles me on his lap so that I’m facing forward, my hands gripping his thighs, my feet up on the bike’s bar.

  He tells me to hold on or we’ll both die, and we ride to his house.

  I think that slopes are meant to be slippery. I don’t know why. I don’t even know who invented the stupid notion of them. I don’t even know why it matters. Who cares? Who cares about a scarred girl who can’t seem to be by herself ? Who cares about a scarred girl who mops floors and ferries drugs for her boyfriend? The scarred girl should care. But she doesn’t know how and once you let the Maker’s Mark in, once you let anything like that in, like kissing, or sex, alcohol, drugs, anything that fills up time and makes you feel better, even if it’s just for a little while, well, you’re going to be a goner. And sometimes, once, maybe twice, she starts to say that she’s thinking of taking a class with this lady artist, and she stops, because a little mouse taps her brain and heart and whispers, But then you won’t get to spend so much time with Riley, and the words, they turn to stone again, fat in her throat, and she can feel little bits of herself disappearing in the large thing of Riley and me and and and…

  The slippery slope, it will never, ever end.

  It’s so sly, the way it happens. Like a thread through a needle: silent and easy, and then just that little knot at the end to stop things up.

  Temple is scrolling through her phone, sitting on the stool behind the counter, as I stack coffee mugs and plastic water cups on trays. The band never showed up tonight, and she let Frances and Randy go early, because the place was dead. Linus is in the back, reading a book.

  Temple says, “Didn’t you date Mike Gustafson? Or something? I know I saw you guys at Gentle Ben’s a couple times.”

  “No,” I tell her. “He’s just my friend. Why?”

  She shakes her head and makes a disappointed, clucking sound. “All the good ones get snapped up, don’t they?” She angles her phone. “Check it out. That hot little weasel went and got married in Seattle!”

  It feels like moving through mud, making my way to her, bending to look at the image on the phone. Facebook, someone’s page I don’t know, maybe a band member, and there it is, there he is, there she is, and they’re both smiling insanely, their faces shining. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and a red tie with jeans and sneakers. Bunny is wearing a plain and pretty strapless flowered dress, with a crown of tiny, delicate roses in her hair. The roses match Mikey’s tie.

  All the blood in my body turns cold in an instant. I don’t know what sound I’m making until Temple starts shouting to Linus, “I think Charlie’s gonna hurl, Linus! Come help!”

  I’m heaving, but nothing is coming out. I hold my head over the trash can, make an excuse: “I think I ate something bad for lunch. I have to go, can I go,” and Linus says she’ll give me a ride, it’s almost closing anyway, but I stumble up and away from her, grab my backpack, leave the coffeehouse in a blur. I forget my bike.

  I walk so hard my shins start to burn and then I start to limp. I break into a run at the underpass and don’t stop until I’m at his door, pounding.

  I’m ashamed that I still feel like I have to ask to go into his house.

  He opens the door, pulls me in. I’m sick, I tell him, tears coursing down my cheeks. I’m just sick, so sick. And then, as though someone pulled a plug in me, everything drains out of me at once, and I fall on the floor.

  I can hear Riley swearing and little Oh, Jesuses, and Oh, honeys, as he unties my boots, strips off my socks. He picks me up carefully, sliding his hands under me. I’m dizzy. He’s a blur.

  Riley takes me to his bed. After a time, his sheets grow damp with my sweat and he peels off my overalls, touches the back of his hand to my forehead. He sets water by the bed, a small bin with a plastic bag inside. I throw up three times and he empties the bag each time. He asks me, Did you take something? I tell him no and roll toward the wall. I lost something, I lost some things, I tell him. I keep losing things. I’m tired.

  Riley says, I’m sorry to hear that, baby. But he doesn’t ask any more questions. He tells me he’ll cover my shifts at True Grit. He draws on his cigarette and his eyes are the slick dark of stones underwater. For three days, he works in the morning and he covers my dish shifts at night. He heats bowls of broth. He sets a cool cloth on my forehead. As he sleeps behind me, his breath is a billowy sail against my neck. On the fourth day, I stagger from the bed when there’s a knock at the front door. It’s Wendy from the drug house, her red-and-yellow hair mashed under the hoodie of her jacket, scratching at her cheek. She says, I need Riley, where’s he at? He around? Her skin is like the surface of the moon. When I don’t answer, she smiles. Haven’t seen him in a while, is all. We get worried.

  You don’t look so good, kid, she says. Tell him Wendy came by.

  All day Wendy appears in my dreams, long-legged and smudge-faced, smoky-voiced and grinning. When Riley comes home late, late, he’s not so far gone that I can’t press against him in the dark, work at him with my fingers, make him noisy, make him do things to me that he doesn’t know hurt me, all to erase Mikey and Bunny, Wendy at the door, erase the gray turning back to black inside my body. We are such a terrible mess now.

  I get up and out of Riley’s bed four days after seeing Mikey on Facebook. I walk like a zombie to my own apartment, change my clothes, and walk to the library.

  No message from Casper, nothing from Blue.

  There are eleven emails from Mikey. I delete all of them, unread.

  Door, shut. World, over.

  Every so often, when I take coffee mugs to the shelf behind the front counter, I sneak looks outside the window at Riley. He’s been off shift for a few hours, but he hasn’t left yet. He’s installed himself at a table by the front window, a thick paperback in his h
ands. Steam rises from the cup of coffee wedged on the windowsill next to him. He banters with the Go players at the next table. He compliments an old hippie woman on her knit hat as she passes by. We don’t speak to each other at the coffeehouse; we follow Julie’s rule. So here he is, sitting out front until the open mic starts, when he’s allowed to come in and set up the stage for the performers and emcee the show.

  This is my first open mic at the coffeehouse. When Riley comes in, he’s greeted warmly by everyone at the tables and he walks around like he owns the place, which I guess he sort of does. From behind the counter, I watch him check amps and adjust the mic, things he’s done a million times in his life. He looks at home on the ramshackle stage and there’s a moment, when he presses his mouth to the microphone and murmurs Check, check, check, that my heart starts to stutter at the way his husky voice travels the room. He soft-sings a few lines of Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” and everyone in the audience gets very, very quiet. But then he stops and stoops down to the amp to adjust the levels.

  Riley introduces the first act, a hip-hop poet who prowls the lopsided stage, waving his arms and slouching his hips. “He’s like a fuckin’ cheetah on acid,” Temple says dryly. He scratches his belly and chest incessantly and drops bitches so much that one woman trying to drink her latte and read her paper shouts, “Oh, please stop him already!”

  He’s followed by a waifish girl with a pixie cut who reads horrible poems about hunger and war in a childish, thin voice. An older woman with hair to her knees and thick ankles peeking from her tie-dyed skirt lugs her bongos onstage; she’s actually pretty good. She plays intensely, her grayish hair fanning behind her. The pounding of the drums is so hypnotic, even Linus comes out to the front counter to listen.

  Riley sits on a chair just off the stage. He jumps in front of the mic and asks the crowd to give a hearty welcome to a nervous high school trumpet player whose forehead gleams under the bright ceiling lights. Riley dims them, casting the coffeehouse in an amberish light. The trumpet player’s hands shake; he plays something sultry that makes me think he and the bongo player should join up. At the break, I collect empty cups and glasses. The tub is almost full when I notice Riley helping a young woman in Docs and a sleeveless black tee adjust the mic. Her black skirt looks like it was cut with scissors; the hem hangs unevenly. Her hair is black and spiky and her face is lit with contempt. She looks like she’s my age. Her dark eyes take stock of the room. I haul the tub to the dish area and then go stand by the counter again. Riley’s leaning down, whispering something in the girl’s ear. She laughs and kind of curls her head away from him. My heart stops. What was that?