The First One You Expect

by Adam Cesare

  Deloris watches me clock in and then comes over.

  “Everything okay, hon? You’re late.” She’s my boss and my mother, all in one short statement.

  “Sorry. I had to walk.” I say, and then deliberately move my hand over to Burt’s punch card. “Did Burt call in today?” I ask, flicking the corner of the card with only mild concern in my voice. I even try to throw a hint of disappointment, like I’m annoyed that I had to walk, unexpectedly.

  “No,” she says. Deloris loves me, but isn’t too crazy about Burt. This is not the first time he’s been late. If he were to come in it wouldn’t be the first time he’s come in still drunk.

  But he’s not coming.

  “He didn’t answer my texts,” I say and shrug. “Weird.” I plan to leave it here, this is enough for now. Tomorrow’s Saturday and neither of us are on the schedule, so I won’t have to put on another show until Monday morning.

  I’m behind my register and ringing in an elderly lady, an early shopper, before I remember that I should have checked the schedule to see when Anna works, if she’s on today.

  “Six seventy-five,” I say to the lady, she’s familiar, one of the shriveled biddies that populates the store on weekday mornings. “Would you like me to double bag this?”

  She looks up at me, confused, like her world has been upended. Her eyes are close to teary, the way old people eyes seem to be perpetually. “Did you run a card for me?” she asks.

  “I’m sorry about that, ma’am,” I say and throw my laminated UPC across the beam. The card knocks a whole fifteen cents off the lady’s cream of wheat.

  “Yes, double bag it, please,” she says, her boring life has been reset on its rails, a turtle picked up off its shell and placed right-way so that her feet touch the ground.

  Anna doesn’t show up until after lunch and by then I’ve forgotten to run a Super Saver card for at least a dozen customers.

  “And?” she asks. She’s leaning over my register, all smiles. One customer sees her, then decides it would be best to move to a different lane.

  “And what?” I don’t know how she can be so cool.

  “Is it up yet? Are we making a movie or what?” She reaches over and touches my arm. For bystanders the touch probably looks like flirting, but I get the message she’s sending: relax, don’t ruin this when we’re so close.

  Looking down, I notice that the cut on her arm has been neatly bandaged, the only evidence that she’s been injured a pale square band-aid, so similar in tone to her flesh that I have to struggle to remember if she had it on last night or not. She probably did, wouldn’t allow the possibility of leaving a drop of her own blood in Burt’s car.

  “I submitted it for approval. We should know soon.”

  “I thought you said you did that already?” Her voice is sugary sweet and she’s got her polo unbuttoned much lower than regulation, but I’m in no mood.

  “The first time, for the proposal. It still takes a little while.” It will take even less time for me than it does other first-timers, because I’ve already got in Amazon Payments account in semi-good standing. I could elaborate about this, but I don’t. Fuck her.

  “Deloris mentioned that you may need a ride after work today. Is that true?”

  I force myself to smile, because it’s the only thing that stops me from revving up the conveyor belt and feeding her American Girl ponytail into the gears.

  “I’ll drive you home on my break,” she says. “See you later.”

  In the car she’s different, less chipper, but there’s still a smile.

  I check the cup holder and the Kools are gone, somehow this seems important, but it’s not really, doesn’t change much of anything. The cinnamon bagel is still there, though, hard as a rock.

  “You can’t be a wreck. What happened to the badass that cuts up girls in his spare time?” She’d make a good high school football coach.

  I stare out the window.

  “You haven’t tweeted since yesterday afternoon. Don’t change your routine.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. She’s right. I wonder what @Cat_Killer’s been saying since last night, wonder how many followers she has now.

  Her hand finds my thigh, the five inch stretch above my knee, and rubs until a patch of my jeans are warm.

  “I was looking online, have you ever been to the Chiller Theatre convention?”

  I have. It’s wonderful. It’s next weekend. I have two tickets already, bought them months ago.

  “It’s next weekend, the eighteenth? I figured we could go and hand out fliers. I could be in costume.”

  “They have it twice a year, Burt and I go.” It’s a horror convention, like a comic book con with less (but still some) storm troopers.

  “I can drive us. It’s not a long drive, not far into New Jersey.”

  I don’t say yes or no, but I know that if we’re not in police custody, that’s where we’ll be. Changing the subject, I bring up something I’ve been thinking about.

  “Burt’s father has a key to the house.”

  She tightens her grip on the wheel, my thinking annoys her.

  “So?”

  “He might stop in if he doesn’t hear from his son. Did we clean well enough?” Or too well, I get a strong sense memory of the smell of the late-90s bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles.

  Her hand on my thigh creeps up, to the point where I think it may be going all the way, but then she diverts and grabs my hand.

  We’re at the end of my block now and she pulls the car to the corner and stops.

  She shakes my hand until I make eye contact with her, demanding that I listen.

  “He’s not going to check. Even if he did, a million to one chance, he’s not going to find anything. You need to relax. They’ll tow his car. His father won’t check. You said that they don’t speak.”

  I said that I don’t think that they speak much, but there’s that think word again.

  She takes two of my fingers and presses them down the top of her panties. She’s warm, but not as warm as one would hope. I don’t want this and don’t understand why I’m getting it.

  It’s daylight, but no one is on the streets.

  “Things are going to,” she says, pausing and exhaling as she pushes my fingers down, moving them for me, “be fine.”

  We sit there for another moment, me a passive party in this sex act. She’s choked up on my fingers, just moving the tips. Her breathing is heavy, but not exaggerated. I buy it.

  When it sounds like she’s done, or getting there, I curl my fingers in and catch her softness with one of my fingernails, hopefully leaving a cut.

  “Shit,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I say and push out of the car.

  My hand drying and my thigh cooling, I walk my street. I don’t know the names of anyone on my block with the exception of the neighbor we share a fence with. Small town façade, big city anonymity. Burt’s block is the same. A bunch of old people, ready to crump. Nobody’s going to miss him.

  Except maybe the cable company, but they won’t send the cops. Will they? Not this soon, surely?

  FIFTEEN

  I’ve got my clothes folded and laid over a towel. I put my hand on the bathroom doorknob, but it opens before I can touch it.

  “Nicky,” my mother says, surprised to see me on my way to shower in the daytime, I guess.

  “Hi ma, do you need the bathroom?”

  “Are you okay? You look sick.” Her hand is on my face before I can smack it away, but her interest in my well-being is momentary. “How is that girl, uh, Anna?” She tries to make it sound like she’d had trouble remembering Anna’s name, but that’s unlikely, the two of them spent yesterday gabbing. Anna must have left a good impression, I wonder if I should bring up the pictures I have on my phone, maybe give her a whiff of my fingers.

  “You like her, Nicky?” My mother’s five-six, two hundred pound frame is two seconds from doing a standing-somersault. That’s how excited she is. I don’t think I’ve seen
her this happy since Nicholas was in the business of making macaroni pictures.

  “She’s good, ma,” I say ignoring the second question. “Can I shower?” She’s body-blocking the bathroom. This is why I usually wait until after midnight to shower, when I shower.

  “Sure, sure,” she moves out of the way, her hand on my shoulder before I pass. “You be good to her, Nicholas, she’s good for you.”

  “Yeah mom.” I shut myself in the bathroom and steam up the hot water, to see if I can burn some of the dirt off.

  The shower makes my sore muscles feel better when the water is falling, but as I towel myself off and cool, my joints harden, like concrete setting.

  As my hair dries, I sit at my desk and I send out a few tweets. Most of them are links to my movies on Amazon. When I’m not in the mood, I self-promote, it may be lazy but the posts write themselves.

  “How much sick shit can you take? THE DEBASER wants to find out! #indie #horror #gore http://amzn.to/1b8cGZZ”

  I fall asleep while the sun is still peeking through the gaps in the tin foil I use to cover the basement windows. Reynolds wrap makes cheap blackout shades.

  I’m awoken by the buzz of a text, then another in rapid succession.

  “It’s up”

  “The Kickstarter”

  It’s three in the morning. Has Anna slept at all? I imagine her manically refreshing the page, hitting the search button. It’s something I would have done, too. If I weren’t so sore from digging graves, so sick to my stomach.

  I don’t respond to the text, and instead hold the button on top of my phone and power it off completely. My alarm isn’t set because tomorrow’s a day off, so I have nothing to risk beyond snubbing Anna. It may not be the best decision, I’ve seen what she’s capable of, but I need my beauty rest.

  I let sleep pull me back under.

  SIXTEEN

  I can’t remember the last time there’s been a knock on my door. That’s not true, I can remember, but it was months ago, my mother had intercepted a package of Japanese gore porn and insisted on questioning me about it. That had been a Saturday too.

  “Nicky!” I can hear my mother’s voice through the door. She’s at the top of the stairs, but her voice carries down the hallway, is amplified like an echo chamber as it bounces around the cinderblock walls of the basement.

  She calls my name again as I stretch, rub the gunk out of my eyes. When I hear her the second time, I realize that she’s calling me Nicky instead of Nicholas. If she were pissed, had been opening my mail again, she would be calling for Nicholas.

  “Your friend is here,” she says.

  I’m pulling on pants and for a loopy dream-second I think she means Burt.

  I pick a t-shirt up off the floor and pull it on. The shirt’s a limited edition Fright Rags. I probably shouldn’t be wearing it so many times in a row without washing it, but running it through the machine degrades the print, even when you set the water temperature to cold and let it drip dry.

  I take the steps two at a time and am winded as I confirm what I’ve feared. Anna’s standing in my living room. She’s smiling, of course, but my mother’s there, so I expect that. She’s done up in her Anna Friedman costume, hair pulled back in a conservative ponytail. It takes all the attention away from her highlights and makes her wholesome, like she’s captain of the high school field hockey team, all-state.

  “Have a nice sleep?” she asks.

  “You sleep the day away, Nicky. It’s no good.” My mother chimes in, pumping up the Greek mother routine, an accent appearing like magic.

  Great, I’ve got them in stereo now.

  Last night, when I got the text, I imagined Anna sitting by her laptop, maybe Indian-style on the floor, her face sallow and vertebra poking up from her curved back. A cross between Gollum and the girl in Audition, but now her eyes are fresh, no bags, and he hair looks recently washed and primped. She looks great. There’s the Anna I imagine and the Anna that the world sees, I wonder which one’s closer to the truth.

  “See my texts?” she asks. “I tried calling but it went straight to voicemail.”

  My mother’s still standing there, a third party in the conversation. I wave her away, but she stays put.

  “Yeah, sorry, I had my phone off.” I look around, then duck my head under the partition between the living room and kitchen to check the clock on the microwave. The clock reads a few minutes to two. I’ve been asleep for nearly twenty hours. That’s almost a new record.

  “The page is up!” She’s bubbly, she’s making an announcement and my mother’s catching the bug and puts a hand on Anna’s shoulder. Who knows how long they were up here talking before my mother knocked on the basement door. Anna’s here for the long haul, has inserted herself into my family.

  I do a little math, remembering when the text was last night. That means that we’re at least eleven hours into our thirty day campaign. I can’t help it, I’m curious to see if anyone’s pledged yet.

  “Has anyone, you know?” I say.

  “You really haven’t looked at it?” she asks, then looks at my mother who rolls her eyes. My mother can’t check her email without my help, so I doubt that she grasps what it is we’re talking about.

  I open up the basement door and motion for Anna to follow me.

  “Excuse us, Mrs. Anastos.”

  “So polite,” my mother says, practically swooning. “She’s so polite, Nicky.” It’s like she’s listing the features of an appliance, she slices and dices.

  Anna follows me downstairs and I begin to boot up my computer.

  This is the first time Anna’s been down here without me cleaning up first. A quick shadow of disgust passes across her face, but she stifles it. If this grosses her out, she should see it when I’ve had a chance to stink it up, really pile up the pizza boxes and spent tissues.

  “You don’t work today?” I ask, not much concerned that I won’t be making the cover of Good Housekeeping this month.

  “I’m on break,” she says. “You can’t turn your phone off like that. We need to be able to reach each other.”

  Ignoring the fact that I’m being dressed down, I bring up Firefox and begin to search for our project.

  “You don’t need to type it in,” she says. “Scroll down to the film category.” She leans over me, her finger rolling the wheel while I’ve still got my hand gripping the small, portable laser mouse.

  Then I see it, our thumbnail: Rambo, slick with blood, the words The Debaser Vs. Cat Killer superimposed over the image. It’s a screencap that I took from the video itself, the words added with a bootleg copy of Photoshop.

  We’re featured under the Staff Picks section, right at the top of the page. More than that, our progress bar, the green line that I’ve anticipated would be charting our slow failure, is more than halfway there.

  “No fucking way.” I say. There’s surprise in me, of course, but there’s joy too.

  She clicks, her fingers pressing mine on the mouse. I’m reminded of our hook up in the car, pressing her button. I wasn’t turned on then, but I am now.

  Sixty-two backers, $2,631.

  She turns to me. It’s the first time I’ve gotten a real, private smile, one that wasn’t also for the onlookers at Stop & Shop or my mother, since we made the tape.

  “How?” I ask. It sure as shit wasn’t our stellar sound design.

  “I sent some emails last night and this morning. Here, check out Dread and Bloody.”

  She opens two tabs, scrolling down through the day’s news to find our thumbnail somewhere on both front pages.

  “Our twitter accounts are blowing up too. I even dropped it on those forums you showed me, hope you don’t mind.”

  I kiss her. It’s the first first kiss I’ve ever initiated. It’s just a peck, then I’m back to reading the coverage.

  Brad Miska gives me the best backhanded compliment I’ve ever received: “Be warned the attached pledge video is NSFW: schlockmeister Anastos has clearly learned a thi
ng or two between his last bottom feeder of a film, because this video features some of the roughest violence we’ve seen in a long while.”

  Anna wraps her arms around my neck and I can feel her breasts pressing against my back. I have to push images of Burt’s death from my mind, but it’s easier now than it was when I was going to sleep.

  “I guess we have to start working on the film now,” she whispers in my ear. Her breath is warm now, much warmer than any part of her was in the car.

  I turn in my seat and she plants a kiss on me. Not a peck. She begins to show me how it’s done.

  “Shouldn’t you get back to work?” I ask, “Maintaining our normal routines and all that?”

  “I’m thinking of quitting and taking up acting full time.” She pulls me to her.

  I don’t even think that she closed the basement door behind her. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Let them listen.

  When we’re finished I check the page again and we’ve raised another three hundred dollars.

  SEVENTEEN

  “We’ve got an interview request.” Anna says, scrolling through her phone, standing in my checkout aisle. She’s been told by Deloris to put the phone in her locker, but she doesn’t.

  I like Deloris, wish that Anna would listen to her, but it’s no use arguing.

  By the fourth day of the campaign, pledges have slowed considerably, but we’re already funded and are closing in on six grand. I’ve added High Definition as a stretch goal and I’m already looking into renting the Red Scarlet camera. I’ll have to upgrade my computer as well, but I think we’ll have the money.

  “Who wants to talk to us?” I ask.

  “Some guy with a blog,” she says, scrolling with her thumb. “Looks like shit.”

  “How many followers on twitter?”

  “Seven hundred.”

  “Tell him we’ll get back to him.” We probably won’t, this guy’s clearly small potatoes. Besides, things are about to get very busy for me. Last night I ordered some plaster and latex, along with some how-to books that I’ve had my eyes on for a while. I’ve worked with this stuff a little bit in the past, but now I get to really try, I’ve got Rockefeller cash.