The Bad Decisions Playlist

by Michael Rubens

  “What? I thought​—”

  “It’s eleven twenty-six now,” he said, showing me his watch. “You’re supposed to be here at eleven.”

  “Sorry, got a little lost, and​—”

  “No explanations necessary. Tomorrow you’re here at eight thirty for the team meeting, right?”

  “Team meeting.”

  “You bet. Every morning. Go over the goals for the day, get the team spirit up. But, Austin? If you’re late again tomorrow, don’t come back.” Pat-pat on my cheek. “All right, vamos—​the others have already started.”

  He gestured out toward the vast hinterlands. I spotted a few distant figures mowing, the grounds of the retirement community so extensive that I was pretty certain you could see the curvature of the earth.

  He introduced me to the walk-behind mower that will soon be killing me, showed me how to fuel it, start it, and operate it.

  “Austin, you know how to walk in a straight line, go back and forth?”

  “Yes I do, Kent.”

  “Outstanding, Austin. Go do that over there,” he said. “But what are we not going to do?”

  “We’re not going to use a big mower on the slopes.”

  “Exactly. What are we going to use?”

  “We’re going to use the small push mower.”

  “Outstanding. Get going.”

  I started off on the field he had indicated and went back and forth, back and forth, each trip taking several centuries. It was intensely boring. I don’t know why the residents need acreage like this​—​I guess to gaze at and recall their youth during the Civil War while they ponder the peaceful hectares of lawn and trees and landscaping, all of which needs mowing and tending and will presently become the scene of a grisly accident.

  While I worked, I argued with Josephine.

  Out loud, my own words inaudible to me. Crazy guy, walking back and forth, quarreling with thin air.

  It started with me replaying the things she had said to me, and I’d think of new ways to respond. Oh, yeah?

  Pretty soon, though, fantasy Josephine had taken control, saying entirely new things that real Josephine hadn’t. Criticizing me, my life, my Big Secret Plan, my everything, telling me I’m lost and rudderless. And even if you did have a rudder, it wouldn’t help, because, let’s be honest, you don’t have a map, or even an engine.

  Okay, Josey​—​

  Josephine.

  Fine. I didn’t ask you.

  Why did she get to me so much? Who was she, anyway?

  You, Josey, are just some girl who is never late and has never blown off a class and would give someone that disapproving grownup frown if they crossed against a red light. I don’t give a crap what you think of me, Josey.

  I really don’t. I don’t care what she thinks.

  Is what I kept saying. But the squabble kept going, me doing my best to parry and counterattack, and even though I was conducting both sides of the argument, she was winning, slicing me to ribbons.

  It was that way she looked at me. Like I couldn’t fool her at all.

  Your usual nonsense will not work on me, Austin Methune.

  Around the time the argument was really heating up, I was mowing along the wooded edge of the slope on which I was supposed to use the small push mower.

  Somehow that rule turned into all the other obstacles in my life​—​the mandolin, Rick, the contract, Kent, everything, and I was thinking, Screw it, I’ll show you all, and just then Josephine’s lecturey voice popped into my head: Don’t be stupid!

  “Would you just SHUT UP!” I bellowed, and did a hard left-hand turn down the slope.

  The mower immediately started sliding.

  Panic.

  Turn nose uphill. Sliding continues. Sudden terrible clarity regarding Kent’s instructions.

  I told you so.

  “Shut up, Josey!”

  Josephine.

  “Argh!”

  Now my body is one straight line, my arms extended over my head, hands in a death grip on the mower. I’m leaning so far forward that my nose is only about two feet from the twenty-degree slope, my quivering body at an acute angle to the ground. Or is it an obtuse angle? Which is pointier and narrower?

  This is why you’re in summer school!

  “Yes, got it, thank you!”

  Stuck on a ledge, wheels spinning helplessly.

  Which, you realize, is a pretty accurate metaphor for your life.

  “Zip it!”

  My feet are slick with grass juice. I’m sliding backwards, six inches from the edge of the retaining wall. Five. Four.

  Then I spot him. Right at the top of the ridge that I shouldn’t have descended. Another member of the lawn crew, silhouetted against the blue summer sky, armed with a gas-powered weed whip, concentrating on trimming the fringe around a nearby tree. Salvation!

  “Help!” I shout. “HELP!”

  I don’t know if it’s because he heard me or sheer chance, but he turns his head and looks down the slope and spots me. I don’t get a good look at him because the sky behind him is so bright. He takes a few steps down the slope toward me, which brings him into the dappled shade of the trees. He pulls off his yellow eye-protection goggles and stares at me and my predicament, and in that moment Todd Malloy and I recognize each other.

  “Help,” I say. “Help!”

  A big smile spreads across Todd’s face.

  Then my foot slips and I go over the edge.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Things you think about as you’re tumbling violently downhill with a twin-blade lawn mower hurtling just inches behind you: GAHOHMYGODI’MGONNADIE!!!

  Which I am thinking, plus GAHOHMYGODTODDMALLOYISONMYLAWNCREW!!!

  So, no, I’m not dead, but it’s still early.

  A few milliseconds ago: My foot slipped.

  I bailed, jumping backwards off the retaining wall, which turned out to be somewhat less than a hundred feet tall and maybe more like five.

  The ground where my feet hit was mossy and even more steeply sloped than that above the retaining wall, meaning it threw me directly into a brutal backward somersault and kept me rolling downhill​—​which is what saved my life for the time being, because the mower came crashing down an instant later right on the spot I had just vacated.

  Now it’s all straight-up action movie, an action movie featuring a murderous lawn mower and a stoner idiot.

  Tumbling, head-over-assing, mower right behind and now somehow upright on its wheels. Get my feet under me, stumble desperately forward and down, death machine on my heels, the two of us doing a fifty-yard dash down a leaf-covered, wooded, double-black-diamond slope. Root! Hole! Low branch! Rock! TODD MALLOY IS ON MY LAWN CREW!

  Shallow creek just ahead at the bottom. Hurl myself into it​—​Aaaaah!​—​splash, turn just in time to see the mower barreling toward me and then FWOOOM hit a hidden bump that alters its course and then CRASH it front-ends into a tree trunk and clunk the engine cuts out.

  Everything is suddenly very quiet. I can hear birds chirping and the breeze in the branches above me and the soothing gurgle of the stream. And from far above me, the sound of Todd Malloy’s hysterical laughter.

  Better, perhaps, that I had died.

  Then things get worse.

  I’m not waving / and I’m not drowning /

  and I’m not feeling no fear / ’cause I’m not even here . . .

  “Austin, we’re glad you’re home. We’d like to speak with you.”

  !!!

  Oh, God. They know. They know about Josephine and the lawn mower and Kent, and they know that I’ve already violated the contract and that Further Steps will have to be taken, Further Steps that might mean me wearing a uniform.

  It’s even worse because they’re not angry. They’re smiling​—​no, beaming—​at me, arms around each other. They were both standing there, my mother and Rick, just inside the front door when I opened it​—​I went, “Eep!”​—​and it’s almost like the situation
is reversed, like I’m the one who had opened the door from the inside and found two eerily jovial people on the front porch, there to share some life-changing literature with me. Or to announce, Hello, we’ll now be cheerfully escorting you to the van that will take you to rehab and please don’t resist we have stun guns.

  “Glabble blabble gotta take a shower florble!” I say, or something like that, and they both chuckle and say, “Of course!” And then part like swinging doors to let me pass, Rick giving me a thump on the shoulder as I go by.

  I stumble up the stairs as fast as I can, even the air resistance a source of pain to my battered carcass. I get to the bathroom, close the door, and lean against it, panting. Think. Think! When you get in trouble and they’re smiling, you know you’re really in trouble. Because whatever they have planned as punishment is so insidious and awful that it’s actually giving them pleasure.

  Damage control. What do I do? Tutor! Fix the tutor thing!

  I turn on the shower to help block out the sound and call Josephine.

  “Nope” is the first thing she says.

  “Josey​—”

  “Josephine.”

  “Josephine, please, I’m really sorry about what happened today. I was a total jerk. I was hoping you’d​—”

  “Austin, I can’t be your tutor. I made a mistake. It’s not you, it’s me.”

  “You know, I hear that from girls a lot.”

  “Fine. It’s not me, it’s you. I don’t want to be your tutor. You specifically.”

  “Josephine, I just​—”

  “Sorry, I have to go.”

  She cuts off the call.

  I cry in the shower. I cry partly because most of my body is either a bruise or an abrasion and it hurts so much. But mostly I cry because of everything. It’s actually just a follow-up to lots of earlier weeping, the first occurrence being a few hours ago when I was at the bottom of a ravine, soaking wet, bruised, bleeding, and draped over a commercial-grade lawn mower that was refusing to start. This after an hour of yanking fruitlessly on the starter cord, until my hands were blistered and my arms so weak I had to stop. If that’s not a low point in one’s life, I’m not sure what is.

  Which is an even better metaphor.

  Yes, Josephine. Thank you.

  I kicked the thing. I hugged and stroked the engine and murmured pathetically like it was a wounded animal. I sang it several songs.

  And, yes, if anyone asks, I can say I’ve kissed a lawn mower, because following the tears and stroking and singing it finally roared to life after a single feeble pull, and then it was one long mow of shame up a side path to continue my work.

  Then, when I was done, Kent fired me.

  He was waiting for me by his pickup truck, checking his watch. Nearby, Todd Malloy and Brad Zohlner were leaning against a car, grinning in anticipation. Brad being the third member of the close-knit and harmonious crew of Rick’s Lawn Care. My strongest memory of Brad is that he likes heavy-metal T-shirts and that he was good at using a spot welder to fuse two triangular pieces of sheet metal into throwing stars in eighth grade shop class, which was about the limit of his achievements.

  “Austin!” said Kent. “I told you. We have to finish by six. It’s nearly six twenty. That means you’re fired.”

  I instantly burst into tears again, babbling through sobs and snot about contracts and losing my tutor and begging him not to fire me, while Todd and Brad fell all over each other, the hilarity too much for them to handle.

  “Please,” I said to him. “Please, please, please.”

  Kent stood there, arms crossed, not saying anything.

  “Please,” I repeated. Bloop, said a snot bubble as it burst after ballooning from my right nostril.

  Silence. Then Kent nodded.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You passed.”

  “I w-w-what?” I blubbered.

  “Austin,” said Kent, “I will take this passion that you’re showing right now as evidence of your commitment to this team.” WHERE DO PEOPLE LEARN TO TALK LIKE THIS? “Are you truly committed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re committed to this team?”

  “Yes, I am truly committed to this team.”

  “Can you apologize to your team members for letting them down and making them late?”

  Arrraaarrrraarrrr. . . .

  “I’m really sorry, team members, for letting you down and making you late.”

  “Excellent. All right, Austin, if you are truly committed to this team, I will give you one more chance. One more.”

  Okay, I exaggerated. Kent didn’t fire me. He fake-fired me as a humiliating loyalty test.

  I was still sniffling while I loaded the push mower onto the flatbed trailer hitched to Kent’s pickup, and was just stepping off when a convertible Mercedes eased past and stopped, its top down.

  “Austin! Hey!”

  Holy crap. It was Alison. Of course​—​Todd famously lost his license after only three months, DUI. She must have come by to pick him up.

  “How are you?” she said.

  “Uh, I’m OOOF!”

  Shoulder check from Todd as he passed by. He turned and walked backwards a moment. “You’re not gonna last,” he said, and winked. Then he pivoted and sauntered the rest of the way to Alison’s car, jumped over the door into the passenger seat, and looked straight at me as he turned Alison’s head with his paw so they could kiss, going at it for juuust a bit too long. Yeah, I get it. You’re back together.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When I finish my shower, I stay up in my room as long as I dare, taking a few drags from a pinch hitter and blowing the smoke out my window as I review this shipwreck of a day and the larger shipwreck of my life.

  Here’s the real secret of my Big Secret Plan: The secret is that even I know it’s a joke. I’m a joke. I won’t be going to New York. I won’t be writing songs that will make people think and feel and performing those songs onstage. I won’t be going anywhere. I’m stuck at the bottom of a ravine, totally alone, useless, unable to get the lawn mower of my life started. And it’s never going to change.

  My mom and Rick are already seated at the dinner table when I get downstairs, and they turn in unison to smile creepily at me.

  “C’mon, the food’s getting cold,” says my mom.

  I sit, easing myself cautiously into my chair. There’s a fresh salad, bread, and a big bowl of linguine with clam sauce that Rick made, my mom’s favorite food. I do a quick scan to make sure there’s no sharp knife within easy reach.

  “Linguine?” she says.

  “Sure,” I say, and she serves me.

  Salad?

  Sure.

  Bread?

  Sure.

  She and Rick serve themselves, trading little glances. I catch a whiff of exotic herbs from the infusion my mom is drinking out of her big Renaissance festival earthenware mug, a calming potion prescribed to her by her wicca/Reiki/ovary-magic psychic, Terry. It must be effective, because she’s so uncannily relaxed right now.

  “So,” Rick says, “how was work?”

  I stare at him.

  “Really good,” I say. “Really”​—​I make a little rah-rah punching gesture​—​“good.”

  Rick smiles and nods, apparently pleased that I’m gathering precious life lessons by virtue of manual labor.

  “And the tutor?” asks my mom.

  They’re toying with me.

  “So great,” I say. “So, so great.”

  “Fantastic,” says my mom. “Austin, we​—”

  “Mom, I know. I know. It’s just that I​—”

  The doorbell rings.

  We all look at each other.

  “I’ll get it!” I say, and practically leap out of my chair.

  Save me save me save me.

  It’s a UPS guy. I dart past him and sprint across the lawn and dive into his truck and roar away to a new life in Yuma, Arizona.

  It’s a cult recruiter. I say, Yes, yes to all of it
, where do I sign, let’s go now, now, now!

  It’s a Girl Scout selling cookies. Quick! Let’s swap clothes! You go inside!

  But when I open the door, it’s none of those.

  It’s the least likely option of all, an option that drives every thought out of my head other than I must stop smoking weed, which is clearly damaging my brain and causing hallucinations.

  Because facing me is Shane Tyler.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  As in Shane Tyler the singer-songwriter Shane Tyler. Blue Limbo Blues Shane Tyler, Good Fun from a Safe Distance Shane Tyler. CD in the garbage disposal Shane Tyler. That Shane Tyler. Standing at my door.

  I goggle at him, no words coming out.

  He’s got his hands in the pockets of his faded and torn-up jeans, shoulders a bit hunched, his face squinted into the kind of half grimace you make when you’re prepping yourself to get stung by bad news.

  He clears his throat diffidently. “Uh . . . hi,” he says.

  “Guuh,” I say, goggling at him some more.

  “Um . . .” he says, like he’s weighing whether to ask the question he came to ask. He fidgets, looks away for a second, then back at me. I’m aware of how loud the evening crickets are.

  “Uh . . .” he says again, then scratches his head and takes a deep breath, evidently having decided to be a man and tear off whatever the internal Band-Aid is. “Sorry to bother you,” he says. “Um . . . does Katie Methune live here?”

  “Katie? No,” I say automatically, thrown by how close his question slices to real life while just missing the mark.

  “Oh,” he says. Relieved, I think.

  Sudden inspiration as I realize the obvious. “Wait,” I say. “Did you say Kay-Dee? Like, Kelly Dean Methune?”

  “What? Yeah. Yeah, Kelly,” he says, perking up. “I’m a . . . friend of hers. I’m just in town a bit for this thing, and I thought​—”

  “Austin, who’s at the door?”

  My mother’s voice, coming from inside. When Shane hears her, his expression changes, like he just got a big mainline shot of adrenaline.