“Sure thing! Tell you what, I’ll head over now, you come when you can, and if all you can do is drop by and say hi, that’d be grand.” And an assurance our budding friendship wouldn’t go the way of Bowling Guy.
“Right on! See you”—static—“in a bit.”
Get your phone checked out! I almost razz him, but then I figure, between the parking garage and my flip phone, the problem is probably on my end.
He hangs up. I key the ignition and drive to Harbor Horizon Bar and Grill.
* * *
I admit, I waited a bit before I sat down and ordered. Something about breaking bread with people, you know? But I was halfway through my bowl of chowder before they finally came in.
I don’t know why I bothered keepin’ an eye out for him. Once The Girlfriend steps through that door, the light of the electric candles grabs onto her all-white windbreaker, carwash pants, and blonde perm, and reflects it back out into the dim-dark of the restaurant. I mean, she practically glows. Darryl’s barely a lumpy shadow next to her.
When they sit down across from me at my booth, you can almost feel the restaurant’s worn blue shiplap give up—she’s too clean, too modern for it to stand a chance of impressing anybody.
The Girlfriend’s eyes meet mine, then light up in delight—she cuts Darryl off in the middle of introductions.
“I know you! You are the preet-zle man!”
Darryl looks back and forth between us, but his smile don’t break. “‘Pretzel’ man, babe?”
I try shaking my head at her, but The Girlfriend plows on. “Yes, yes! He sold me the first prit-zle I had at the mall!” She wraps her hands around his bicep and squeezes, delighted, like I’m a celebrity, but I can’t help but wish I’d disappear.
Now Darryl’s confused—and lookin’ at me. The smile’s still there, but the brow is bent.
“I thought you worked at Ten-Sys, Ray.”
Suddenly, my chowder don’t sound so good. The gig’s up. No thanks to her.
“Used to,” I say. “Then, uh, I got sick—nothin’ catchy! But I couldn’t keep up with the pace after.” Saying the words out loud make my tongue taste bitter.
“Oh. I’m sorry, man. That’s rough.”
The Girlfriend jumps in. “But the others”—the sounds like shjee coming out of her mouth—“you are the ménage-er there, at our lovely prit-zle shop?”
“Manager, babe.”
“Menna-ger,” she corrects, but her slightly skewed eyes are still huge on me. Their blue is far deeper than the restaurant carpet she floated in on. It takes me a second to shake her navy gaze and respond.
“Well, actually, I’m a supervisor there.”
She pats Darryl playfully on the arm. “That’s why they”—shjey—“are all polite there. Because of your friend…friend…What’s your name, again?” The Girlfriend asks me.
“Ray,” I tell her. “So, Ms. Smith, how do you spend your time?” A tip I picked up during the Recession: never ask what a person does for a living, ’cuz if they’re unemployed…well, the sale may not be lost, but havin’ that little lead brick dropped in the middle of a conversation sure never did a salesman any good, if you know what I mean.
“Oh! I just retired. I used to be…be…” She holds up one finger, bounces it, “…What is word, word, word—pilot?” She looks at Darryl, who smiles…then kinda shrugs, weirdly enough—I mean, he speaks English, don’t he? He oughta know the word for her job by now!
“Pilot!” She beams at me. “I used to be pilot.”
When she says it this time, my back straightens right up and I take a real hard look at her, I can’t help it. Nothin’ in that doe-eyed supermodel face says she’d do well in a cockpit shuttling people around for years on end, at least, not to ol’ Ray. Unless…
“Commercial, or military?”
“Ahm…” Her eyes squinch up: with the dark blue in them they turn her expression into something more intriguing than just your average “thinking” face.
“Government. Sort of. Not military. But, ah, it is…um…” She turns to Darryl. “Mi ken ala toki.”
“Uh…” Darryl thinks for a long while. A really long while. “Classified…?” he finally says. “Yeah…” He nods to himself. “She’s unable to talk about her flights.”
“Huh!” There’s a conversation killer, I figure, but her face turns rapturous, though she’s lookin’ up at the Horizon’s dustiest hanging lamp. “But it was wonderful! Such beauty I saw!” She clasps her hands together. She turns to Darryl. “Maybe I show you. After movie!”
Didn’t she just say her work was classified? How can she offer to show him?
But he just smiles at her. Totally twitterpated. “Sure, babe. Whatever you want.”
The waitress comes over. Darryl orders a Dr. Pepper, mozzarella sticks, and a margarita. When the waitress is gone, The Girlfriend’s eyes come back to mine.
“It was an adventure so often. Do you like adventures, Ray?”
Yep, she’s kooky, all right. I lift my palms at her like I’m innocent. “My adventurin’ days are long over, Ms. Smith.”
“Oooh, you mustn’t give up, Ray! Nice prit-zle man like you should never give up! Listen to me.” Lee-ssin. “Listen. When you have traveled for as long and as far as I have, you know things. And I know one thing. Do you want to know, too?”
I shrug as casually as I dare, what with Darryl right next to her and all. Not to mention he’s leanin’ towards her like she’s about to spill the Big Secret of Life and he wants to lick every drop off the table. “Sure,” I say.
She lowers herself between us like a panther about to pounce, the fake candle beneath her chin shining strange-shaped glints in her eyes. “You never know what’s around the corner.” She slaps her palm down, whap! “You never know! Every day, a new corner to turn, a new direction to travel! You think you see a familiar thing ten times, hundred times, a thousand! But trust me.” A white plastic bangle bounces around her wrist as she chops her hand to emphasize her words. “You’ve never seen it.”
Now, Darryl ain’t exactly nodding along, but he’s definitely interested in what she’s sellin’. Me, I’m thinkin’ she’s a can o’ Planters—nuts. But hey, I don’t have to go home with her.
The waitress drops off their order and I think I’ve escaped the wacko philosophizing for the night. But after the waitress leaves, The Girlfriend plucks the lime slice off the salted (of course) rim of her drink, plunks it into Darryl’s drink, turns to me and says, “Knowing that, how do you think your life will change?” She’s smilin’ now. Too bad I got no idea what she’s talking about.
“Uh…knowing what, again?”
Her shoulders lift—or maybe her head lowers—and her windbreaker crinkles around her neck, a sound that reminds me, somehow, of feathers. Ruffled feathers.
“Knowing,” she says in an undertone, “that you are always looking at things without seeing them. That…life is only as mundane as a…as…agh! I don’t have the words. Life is a costume. —Every day is a winding road!” She sings.
Okay. This chick is officially Looney Tunes. I glance at Darryl to save me, to reel her in, but his mouth is full of cheese stick. In fact, he’s got this sleepy cow look on his face aimed at me, like he’s expecting ME to say something.
The Girlfriend is waiting.
I reach into my sales bag and pull out my old friend, The Polite Smile, and his pal, The Respectful Tone Of Voice. “I’m sure my life will change dramatically, Ms. Smith, thanks to your wisdom.” I just manage to usher Mr. Sarcastic Barb out of the sentence before it ends.
“Yes, I know,” she says, “but how will it change?”
Oh, brother.
“I’ll…I’ll be sure to dance like no one’s watchin’. Promise.” I flash her the best charming grin I can muster.
She scowls. “No, no! That is all wrong! You’re
not getting it!” She smacks Darryl lightly on the shoulder. “Darryl, tell Prit-zle man he is wrong!”
His mouth was full of mozzarella stick when she hit him. He gulps it immediately down, wincing as his esophagus gets an express shot of molten cheese sent straight down the tracks.
“You can’t expect him to agree with you, babe. What you’re talking about…well, some things you gotta experience firsthand.”
Does did he just go to bat for me, or insult me? Before I can decide whether or not to react, he pets her hair with his hand. Ugh. And yet, if it distracts her enough to get me outta this conversation…
She swipes his hand out of the way. “No. This is important. How will your life change, Ray? I need you to tell me.”
First she blows my secret. Then she lectures me. Now she insists I answer her?
I’ll give her an answer, all right.
“Listen—Ms. Smith. No disrespect meant to you and your philosophy. I’m glad you can find excitement in the everyday, I really am. And I can tell Darryl loves it and loves you. But some of us got crap hands dealt to us—tough cards to play. And I ain’t got the energy to smile and thank the dealer. In short, right now, I ain’t doin’ nothin’ for nobody. Sorry. Now can we please talk about the weather or what movie you’re gonna see, or ANYTHING else but this stupid topic?”
I guess I expect her to lose it, but she crosses her arms, looks away with a hmpff! and turns up her nose with a hauteur that shames Miss Piggy.
Darryl smiles at me calmly, like I didn’t just chew out his lady friend. But…there’s something funny about his look…a little…patronizing, maybe?
“We’re going to see Rosa’s Last Resort.”
Forget his stupid look. I latch onto the topic like a drowning man grabbing a pool noodle. “Oh, yeah? Got good reviews?”
While we blather, The Girlfriends wipes her finger ’round the margarita rim, sucks it clean, then grabs the salt shaker. I avert my gaze, but I can still tell she’s dumped two inches of the stuff into her drink before she downs it.
They leave for their rom-com just after Darryl finishes his last cheese stick, leaving me with the remains of his Dr. Pepper and my cold chowder. Watching ’em leave, I see their silhouettes in the door way lean in for a quick peck on the lips. I shake my head. I’m glad he’s happy. But if folks from Delaware are all as weird as she is, they can just stay in their own damn state.
* * *
My noise machine goes silent around eleven. I foolishly think that’s gonna be it. I lie there in my orange smoke room, wondering if Rich’s hearing aids—probably on a nightstand next to him—were K.O. too. Like two people sharing a blackout.
Only, since he was deaf, he was probably still snoozing away. And traveling would be gone, six miles up in the sky above all this.
I hold my breath, waiting. Without the white noise, I can hear the murmuring of voices. But they’re too muffled—almost the hints of voices, really, not even wah-wahs, no hints to their intonations—I can’t tell if I’m hearing real people or a TV. It’s only enough noise to imply the presence of voices, if that makes any sense.
Then, very, very softly, I hear the barest tone. I stick my finger in my ear and twist it, ’cuz it sounds like one of those little sound checks your ears do once in a while, you know, first a soft whine, then your ear plugs up for no reason.
But sticking my finger in my ear changes the volume of the sound. I wipe my finger on my sheets and push myself up on my elbows. Even the soft rustle of sheets makes the tone—not quite like the tone they use for the Emergency Broadcast System, but definitely in the same family—disappear. It’s that soft that it covers up easy.
But if I’m still and I hold my breath, I can still hear it. I turn my head slowly, trying to get a bead on it.
My sound box?
I push myself all the way up and lean my ear up to it. I think of Rich’s granddaughter. I must look like she did when she had her ear to the wall.
The sound is coming from my box.
The little hairs on the back of my neck raise. It’s never done that before.
And it wasn’t like it had radio capability. Hell, it didn’t even have a clock with it—my light-up clock alarm was a separate piece of equipment, facing away from my bed.
So if it can’t tune in to something…what is it I’m hearing? It don’t sound like any interference I’ve ever heard.
I reach for the volume dial with one finger. It’s got little teeth on it, teeth I stroke gently to turn the dial to raise the volume.
The tone gets louder, and not so steady. It flutters, for lack of a better word, and it takes me a minute to figure out what it reminds me of. Then it hits me: Morse code! But I never learned Morse code, so I can’t tell I the little flutters in the tone are that, or just random fluctuations in the sound.
Besides, ain’t Morse code all about starts and stops? This isn’t letting up. It’s just wibblin’ kinda.
I scootch the volume up a little more and listen for a while, but it’s still just noise.
What am I doing? I got work tomorrow. The barbell presses into me. It’s hard not to think of a toothy bulldog breathin’ down the back of my neck. Better quit goofin’ off and get to sleep, idiot.
So I ratch the volume dial down, but it does bupkiss. I creak onto my side and jerk the sound box’s plug out of the wall.
The sound is still going.
Now my heebies are REALLY jeebied. I grab the closest pillow and drop sis’s sound box in it and twist the pillowcase around like I’m closing off a plastic bag of bread. I can still hear it through the fabric.
I run out into the kitchen with it. But with each step away from the room, the tone grows louder and louder. By the time I stuff it in the oven, it’s wailing in my arms. I fold the twisted end of the pillowcase under the sound box so it’s sittin’ on it, keeping it closed. I slam the over door and climb back into my canyon, where I grab the other pillow and cram it over my head.
But the thing in the oven’s howling now—I say howl, ’cuz it’s not high-shrieky like a fire alarm, no; it’s an electric wolf’s ooooooo and it’s getting louder and louder and angrier and angrier and I think it might even be in my head now, ’cuz when I clap the pillow harder ’round my head, it does nothing, doesn’t even muffle it.
All I can think of is I got no close neighbors…I’m too far away…Rich is deaf…no one will hear this.
Or if somebody is hearing this, they’re probably just turning their Hulu up louder.
My pillow is a vise around my head, held there by my two fists. I’m squeezing it so hard against my head that I can feel my arms shaking with the effort. Still the howling goes on in my head. It builds and builds…and then, just when I think I can’t stand it anymore, when I think my brain’ll start melting out my ears, it switches to a different tone, lower even than the howl.
I get approximately half a second to appreciate the change before my sight goes. Where before I at least saw the hint of orange-touched room around me, I now see nothing. Just emptiness everywhere I look. I breathe in deep to scream, but when I let loose, I can’t get any power behind it. I leak air like someone imitating the roar of a crowd… haaaaah, haaaah. I try to breathe in again, but this time the air won’t come, not like I want it to.
I’m paralyzed.
That’s when the visions start.
Against the black of blindness appear two red lines. They fall on their sides, multiply, moving and turning to different shapes, like somebody glued a kaleidoscope to my eyes. They spin faster and faster, new colors flash in, zoom past me like I’m that guy in that space movie of Kubrick’s, but I want off this ride, but I can’t move, can’t scream, can only watch the sickening patterns and listen to the unending drone.
Now there are vibrating yellow and teal patterns. They make my brain sore somehow, like there’s an invisible needle in them that reaches through my eye to tattoo somethin
g in the back of my skull.
The patterns strobe on. They make no sense to me, yet some part of my brain insists I’m just seeing the edges of something out of my reach.
I don’t know how long it is before the patterns start to fold up, deciding to spin slower and slower until we are back at the start, with two red lines raising upright, then freezing, then fading to black.
The tone changes back to the howl, and seconds later, my vision returns.
My arms are cramping and finally I howl. They must not have relaxed during the entire light
fright
show.
The cramps eventually die down. I lie there whimpering. Since the light show left, the pain’s left my head, but what’s worse is that it feels like something’s been left behind, a film of bad feeling, scum in my psyche, or a tattoo on the inside of my head, warm and poisonous but not painful.
“What was—” I swallow, this is a sound check and I don’t like hearing my voice so thin out in the air, “what was that?”
Silence. Wonderful silence.
Then, as if to answer, the hell machine upstairs starts up again.
* * *
“Whoa. Mr. Ray.”
Some kid of mine. They’re all lookin’ at me bug-eyed like I’m a dead man walkin’. I know what I look like—I saw my face in the mirror in the food court restroom, and I can’t imagine the overhead fluorescents here in the shop are adding any flattering details.
“Are you all right?”
I look at this kid. Not Winnie, not Audell, just some kid I taught customer service to, customer service for selling soft pretzels in a third-rate mall in a city in a state in a country in a world in a universe where, somehow, what happened to me last night…happened.
It just don’t seem too important anymore.
When I don’t answer after a full minute, another kid pipes up.
“You don’t look so good,” she says. It’s the understatement of the year.
“Didn’t sleep well last night?” another kid ventures, his smile bright but eyes nervous.
I could’ve slept. I mean, the opportunity was there. Technically.
The Girlfriend Who Wasn't from Delaware Page 5