Poked

by Naomi Niles

  I mumbled a few words under my breath that I was glad she couldn’t hear. “Carlotta, I’m not going to die,” I said aloud. “I’m a better driver than that.”

  But Carlotta had worked herself up into such a fit that by now she was practically in tears. “You promised me you were only going to spend that money on us. It says here you’ve eaten out nine times in the last week. McDonald’s, Church’s, KFC… why are you spending all our money on junk? You know how tight our budget is right now.”

  I was beginning to regret ever getting a joint bank account. Rubbing my temples in exasperation, I said, “Look, Carlotta, maybe we can talk about this later when I’ve woken up a bit.”

  “No, you always say that, and then we never talk about it. If this is your way of getting out of having this discussion, then I’m not having it. I want to know why you keep going out to eat when I specifically ask you not to.”

  “Carlotta, a man’s gotta eat. I don’t think you understand that. I get hungry during the day.”

  “Then make your own freaking lunch! Hell, I’ll come over and make it for you. We could save—between fifty and sixty dollars a week! And the crap you’re putting into your body… Darren, you can do better than this. You can eat sandwiches, salads. Real food. You don’t have to live on Big Macs.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were my health specialist,” I said acidly. “If we’re being honest, I think you’re just mad because I’m spending that money on me instead of you.”

  “I mean, I thought we were supposed to be saving that money,” said Carlotta, making no effort to deny it. “What if we had a kid?”

  I froze, and for a moment, a cold feeling of terror came over me. “Are we having a kid?” I asked in a faint voice.

  “No, but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re spending money without asking me, and you’re spending it on shit that you don’t need. Our relationship isn’t going to last if you keep making purchases behind my back. If I don’t feel like I can trust you, then one day I’m just gonna leave and take this body elsewhere.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I hung up the phone and threw it down on the bed, rubbing my sore eyes miserably. As great as she was in bed, sometimes I didn’t think it was worth this.

  Perhaps it was a feeling of spite that drove me to visit Car Quest right after breakfast. Carlotta could yell at me later all she wanted, but I needed to make this purchase, or I’d be out of the race on Saturday.

  I spent a couple minutes searching for it at the back of the store and was beginning to feel pretty frustrated that I couldn’t find it. It didn’t help that Dickie kept texting me to ask if I was on my way to work. After the fourth text, I turned my phone off and went up to the front counter.

  There was a girl behind the counter trying to snap a picture of a moth that had landed on the rim of the donations jar. She kept trying to get it from different angles and at one point even leaned in for a selfie. It took her a minute to realize she had a customer: when she saw me watching her with a smirk on my face, she straightened up and said in a very serious voice, “How can I help you, good sir?”

  “Are you Pete’s daughter? He’s mentioned you, but he never told me you were so interested in moths.”

  “It’s a good moth,” she said with a shrug. “I like how its wings are fuzzy and how it didn’t fly away. Some moths get scared or annoyed when you try to take selfies with them, and those aren’t my favorite. I had a turtle once that ran away whenever I tried to take pictures with it.”

  “It couldn’t have gone very fast.”

  “You’d be surprised. It’s hard to outrun a turtle who doesn’t want his picture taken.”

  It was an odd conversation to be having, and I began to wonder if she was alright in the head. She had this weirdly childish way about her and didn’t look much older than nineteen, though I remembered Pete saying she was in her mid-twenties. She had a button nose spotted with freckles, long, wavy blonde hair, and huge, bluish-green eyes that seemed just slightly too big for her face. And she was tiny—couldn’t have been any taller than five feet when she stood to her full height. She had a slender body with wide hips that gave her body a pear shape.

  “Anyway, how’s your dad doing?” I asked. “I ain’t seen him around much lately.”

  “He’s been alright.” Her eyes shifted evasively, and I got a funny feeling she was holding something back. “Last week we went out and played badminton. Do you want me to tell you a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  She whispered, “I let him win. Promise you won’t tell?”

  “By the time I see him again, I’ll have forgotten you even told me.”

  “Thank you,” she said in a tone of relief. “Did you need anything or did you just come up here to chat?”

  I had gotten so absorbed in our conversation that I had briefly forgotten all about the spark plug. “Yeah, I was looking for a certain part back there, but I couldn’t find it.” I told her the make and model of my car, and she did a search on her janky old computer. “I thought maybe I was just overlooking it—this place seems to have every car part under the sun.”

  “Yeah, no, it doesn’t look like we have it,” she said with a frown. “But I can order it for you. Would you like that? It’ll take about a week to get here, maybe even a bit longer.”

  She must have sensed my irritation, because she quickly added, “Or, you know what I could do? I could rush order it for you at no extra charge?”

  “Would you mind? I need the part by Friday.”

  “Ooo!” Her mouth formed an O. “Planning on racing a turtle?”

  It was such an odd question that I couldn’t help laughing. “Some other cars, actually. But those other guys are so slow, a turtle could probably outrun ‘em.”

  “You never know,” she said in a very matter-of-fact voice, her eyes still fixed on the screen in front of her. “Those turtles can be really fast.”

  I gave her my name and number and left the store with a feeling of relief, like a weight had been lifted off of me. Back at the car shop, I found Dickie standing behind the counter chewing on a beef stick and drinking a Diet Coke. The odor of gasoline and lighter fluid was pungent.

  “How’d it go?” he asked when I came in. “You stopped answering my texts.”

  “I stopped reading your texts,” I replied as I slung my leather satchel down across the counter. “We ordered the part, though. It only took forever because me and the girl at the register got to talking.”

  “Which one, Nicole? That girl will fuck anything that moves.”

  “Good to know. No, the other girl—Pete’s girl.” It occurred to me only now that I hadn’t asked her name. “She was weird as shit but hella cute.”

  “Oh, Penny,” Dickie said with a knowing look. “Yeah, someone like her doesn’t really belong in this town. She ought to be up in Austin feeding pigeons or running a kids’ daycare. Matter of fact, I think she went to school in Boston for a while, but she dropped out and moved home because the pressures of college life got to be too much for her.”

  “What’s her deal, man? Why’s she so weird?”

  Dickie laughed. “What’d she do? Was she coloring in a coloring book?”

  “No, she kept trying to take selfies with a moth, and we had a long conversation about turtles.”

  “It could have been worse.” Dickie drained the last of his Coke and threw it in the bin behind him. He was grinning like I hadn’t seen him grin in a while. “One time when I went in there, she had the radio on and was doing aerobics in shorts and a sports bra. Another time she would only speak to me in a very fake Italian accident. ‘I’m-a very sorry! We still have not-ta gotten the part you ordered!’ She did that for twenty minutes.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked, bewildered. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Yeah, she’s fine,” said Dickie with a laugh. “She just has a very quirky sense of humor and likes to have fun. She’s definitely the weird one in her family, but if you think about i
t, you can sort of see how Pete would have a daughter like that. He’s always been a goofball at heart.”

  “I guess, man.” I shook my head with a dazed feeling. “Like you said, she’s cute, and that could probably make up for a lot. But man, I think I would have a hard time explaining her to my parents. I’d be afraid to bring her home because God only knows what she might do—pull a live frog out of her pocket or start throwing turnips at people like a goddamned Mario game.”

  “She’s unique; I’ll grant you that. It’s tempting to ask her out, but I would never do it. She’s too much of a goody-goody.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Dickie shrugged. “I would just be very surprised if she had ever slept with a guy. She mostly keeps to herself and doesn’t go out to parties—so basically the opposite of her best friend. If I just wanted a quick lay, I could hit up Nikki, but she’s not worth it. Penny is more interesting to me because she would be harder to get.”

  “You seem to have thought a lot about this.”

  “Well, I’ve known their family for a long time. And Penny is so different, she sort of stands out from everyone around her even when she doesn’t mean to. She’s eccentric, but not in a way where she’s obviously trying to get attention. She just does her own thing. She likes doing her own thing, and I respect that about her, even if it means we’ll probably never sleep together.”

  “It’s too bad, really,” I said with a smirk. “She’s crazy enough that I bet she would be dynamite in bed.”

  “Yeah, assuming she had any idea what she was doing. I doubt she’s even seen a guy naked.”

  “Honestly, we’re not much to look at,” I replied.

  “Speak for yourself!” Dickie laughed.

  But at that moment, the door of the shop swung open, and Carlotta came walking in. She was wearing a brown crop top, high-waisted denim shorts, and a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses that covered half her face. She had the look of a Hollywood actress being harassed by the paparazzi.

  “Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” muttered Dickie, nudging me in the ribs. I let out a resigned sigh; I had already asked Carlotta to stop coming in when I was working, but she insisted on it, probably because she wanted to make sure I wasn’t flirting with anyone but her.

  “You need somethin’?” I asked her as she strode up to the counter.

  Carlotta glared at Dickie from behind her glasses as though wishing he wasn’t there. “Yeah, I need somethin’. I need to know why you hung up on me this morning and haven’t been returning my calls.”

  “Maybe because I didn’t want to.”

  I don’t think Carlotta had been expecting this level of honesty; she paled for a moment as though she had just gotten the breath knocked out of her. “Look, if you don’t want to be in this relationship, you can just say so—”

  “Ain’t sayin’ that,” I replied. “I just wasn’t in the mood to be shrieked at first thing when I got up this morning. Give me a few hours, and maybe I’ll feel better about it, but if you come chasing me down at work, you’re not doing yourself any favors.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just have conversations like a normal adult,” said Carlotta, looking visibly frustrated.

  “Maybe because you insist on treating me like a child. My mom used to call and lecture me about how I was spending my money. I never much liked it when she did it, and I damn sure don’t like it when you do it.”

  “Then maybe you ought to grow up. It never seems to have occurred to you that the reason we keep lecturing you is because you refuse to take responsibility. You behave like a teenager who has no concept of money. When someone tries to help you, you hang up on them, talk down to them, make fun of them. You’re almost twenty-two years old, Darren. Quit acting like a teenager.”

  She turned and slunk out of the shop without giving me a chance to respond.

  Dickie, who had been standing behind me smirking through the whole conversation, shook his head and grinned. “You know, she’s got a point.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got a fist,” I said with a laugh. “So you’d best watch it.”

  “If you ever get tired of her,” said Dickie, still polishing his hubcap, “feel free to let her know I’m still single.”

  “Honestly, Dickie, you could do a lot better than her.”

  He shrugged as if to say it was worth a shot.

  Chapter Four

  Penny

  Once Darren left, Nic came walking out of the back office.

  “Do you have to scare away all our hottest customers?” She was carrying a bottle of glass cleaner and a damp washrag, which she set down on the counter. “Now he’ll probably never come back.”

  “Did he look scared?”

  “He looked confused,” said Nicole, stealing a sip of my tea. “I think sometimes you confuse normal guys when they first meet you because they’re not used to meeting girls who like turtles and moths or whatever.”

  “I like other animals, too,” I said in a defensive tone. I thought the conversation had gone well, but now Nic was making me over-analyze every word that came out of my mouth. “Besides, he didn’t seem annoyed or angry. He was laughing!”

  “Penny, you have to learn the difference between when someone is laughing with you and when they’re laughing at you. You were doing so well at the party the other night because you let the boy do most of the talking. The more you talk, the more you confuse boys.”

  “I was quiet that night because I didn’t really want to be at the party,” I replied. “I wanted to be home in my jammies drinking a glass of milk.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Nic, beginning to wipe down the counter, “I hope that’s not the last we see of Darren. He doesn’t have much of a brain, but he more than makes up for it in other ways. I wish I could just hang him up on my wall and stare at him for a few minutes every night before I go to sleep.”

  “Maybe you should take a picture of him.”

  “That wouldn’t help,” Nic said sadly. “I’d want to bring him home with me. I might ask him out if he ever comes back… if he’s not too scared to come back.”

  “I feel like you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it really was. We had a really great conversation.”

  “Sure. I liked the part where you told him a turtle could outrun a racecar.”

  “Well, it’s a very serious issue!” I said with a laugh. “Racecar drivers need to know what they’re up against. Also, what is the difference between a street car and a race car? I feel like I should know this.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Nic in a tone of concern. She came over and kissed me on the forehead; because she was so much taller than me, she almost had to stoop to do it. Rubbing my temples with her thumbs, she added, “How did you ever get this job?”

  “Nepotism, I guess,” I answered, which Nic thought was so funny, I could still hear her laughing about it after she disappeared back into the back room.

  After work that night, we went out for dinner and drinks at The Woolworth. It was one of those old-fashioned bars with wood-paneled walls and hand-crafted mahogany tables. A small flat-screen near the back of the room was broadcasting the latest news out of North Korea; the bartender froze in the middle of pouring out our chips and watched for a moment with a worried look.

  “Do you think we’re all going to die?” asked Nic as she reached for the salt shaker.

  “Maybe eventually,” I said with a shrug. “We’re all going to die someday.”

  “Okay, but have you been following the news? They’re saying this could get really bad.”

  “They were talking about it earlier on the radio. It made me nervous, so I turned it off. My worrying about it probably doesn’t change the situation much.”

  “I wish we all had that attitude,” said Cindy, the bartender. “There was a woman in here panicking earlier, just in tears because she doesn’t think she’ll get to see her son grow up. And I met a guy who’s building a bomb shelter in his backyard.”

  “Peop
le need to calm down,” said Nic with a shake of her head. “Except for you,” she added, motioning to me. “You need to be more worried.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you don’t worry enough about things. You find ways of ignoring the things that scare you. It’s unhealthy.”

  “It helps keep me calm,” I replied. “If we’re all about to die anyway, I would rather go out having a dance party than cowering in a bunker.”

  “See!” said Cindy proudly. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude we should all have.”

  I beamed in appreciation, but Nic rolled her eyes.

  I ended up ordering a “black and blue salad” with gorgonzola, heirloom tomatoes, asparagus, dried cherries, and chili-crusted steak while Nic got a southern-fried chicken smothered in red-eye gravy and calamari fries with sweet-and-spicy chili sauce. I was so hungry by the time our orders were finally ready that I ate about half my salad before Nic had even taken a bite of her steak.

  “Did you not eat lunch?” she asked as I scarfed down my salad. “You poor thing, you must be so hungry.”

  “Starving,” I said through a mouthful of cherries.

  While we were eating, boys kept wandering up to the bar and offering to buy us drinks. Mostly they were interested in Nic; they hovered around her like a group of old friends around a piano, repeatedly playing the same old songs. One wanted to know where she worked; the other said he had seen her at a party the week before making out with a guy and proceeded to rate her performance. One bought her a ruby fizz; another bought her a Kentucky blue. By the end of the meal, she couldn’t even set her elbows down on the bar because there were so many drinks there.

  But if the boys had expected her to keep them around, they were disappointed.

  “So, do you work out?” asked a boy named Josh. He had just ordered her a mango cooler, which she sat sipping with a look of annoyance. “I’m pretty sure I saw you at the gym the other day. You were on the treadmill watching Netflix.”