What We Never Had

by Zach Wyner

  “You should be my number one most best customer,” he said. “This man,” he said, pointing at Bill. “This man is my most best hero. He looks small but eats like giant.”

  Bill blushed. “I’m a stress eater.”

  “Stress!” yelled Abdal. “It is beautiful sunny day outside. What you have to be stress about?”

  “I need a job, Abdal.”

  Abdal stroked his thin mustache. “Ah. This is worries me. All the time when I have no job, I am thinking, ‘I am not a man,’” he said, tapping his chest with his fist.

  Bill shrugged. “Yeah, well that’s a sensation I’m pretty familiar with, Abdal. All the time when I have no job I am thinking, ‘my teachers were right.’”

  “My friend, you eat double chili cheeseburger. You feel better. More like man.”

  “He keeps eating double chili cheeseburgers, he will be more man,” said Amare. “That’s for sure.”

  Your burger was as good as advertised, a thick, greasy patty smothered in pickles and thousand island dressing that soaked through the cellophane and left your fingers glistening. You thanked Abdal, promised to come back, promised yourself just the opposite, and drifted over to the neighborhood park to lounge on splintered fitness equipment and pass gas in the shade of the eucalyptus trees. Acorn-fattened squirrels and sweat-suited senior citizens jogged circles around you while you digested, smoked, and discussed the state of your increasingly small world.

  Ever since the disastrous triple-date, Bill had been fantasizing about life on the other side of those swinging double doors that led to the refrigerated storage rooms of grocery stores, where rubber mats carpeted wet concrete floors, cheeks were stung red by the cold, and breath was a perpetual mist in front of your face. He imagined himself wearing black rubber gloves, hefting crates, sorting vegetables, packing steaks, and spending breaks squatting on loading docks with a mix of immigrants, students, and young fathers in need of jobs with family health plans, all garbed in the soiled aprons and integrity of men and women who leave work with sore muscles.

  “There’s a Whole Foods in Valley Village,” you said. “A girl I knew in high school works there. I guess she might be able to help you out.”

  “Dude, why didn’t you say something before?” said Bill. “That would be fucking righteous.”

  Amare chuckled.

  “The fuck you laughing at?” said Bill.

  “I’m sorry,” said Amare. “It’s just your enthusiasm. I’m not accustomed to it. It amuses me.”

  “Pardon me for getting excited by the idea of not mooching off Josh anymore.”

  “Josh doesn’t care,” said Amare.

  “Are you insane? Of course Josh cares!”

  You were lost in thought, imagining a reunion with the Whole Foods girl and already regretting your offer to make the introduction.

  “I was somewhere else,” you said. “Who’s nuts?”

  “I was just fucking with you,” said Amare. “I know we’ve worn out our welcome.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We should have been out of your hair days ago.”

  “Weeks,” said Bill.

  “Screw that!” you said. “I need you guys. You think I want to be left alone with June?”

  “I’d want to be alone with her,” said Bill.

  Amare shook his head. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “All I’m saying,” said Bill, “is, no offense Josh, I possess nothing, including my dignity, that I would not readily sacrifice to sleep with someone as smoking hot as your ex-ish girlfriend.”

  “Dignity is just the entry fee,” you said, slinging an acorn at an audacious squirrel that had wandered too close.

  While Amare and Bill continued to argue about the lengths to which they’d go to sleep with beautiful women, you drifted back to the Whole Foods girl, someone you now remembered you’d actually slept with one drunken night during college when she’d traveled up the coast to visit some mutual friends. You’d woken up the next morning on your friend’s couch and, caught up in a moment of incredible gratitude, you were about to lie and tell her you’d always had a thing for her, when she kissed you, thanked you for the orgasm, put on her clothes, and walked out the door. You’d had so much respect for her in that moment. And it’s not that it didn’t sting a little bit, being discarded so easily, but now that you thought about it, it was a perfect memory of both a person and an experience. The sort of memory that gives life a narrative. You’d been so disarmed when, years later, she resurfaced as the amiable cashier who rang up your Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, free-trade bananas, and gastrointestinal supplements that you’d stopped shopping at that Whole Foods altogether. Your embarrassment had nothing to do with her attitude; she hadn’t communicated anything remotely resembling shame. Your embarrassment stemmed from the feeling that you had no right to intrude on her life that way, to imagine that you knew something about what kind of person she was just because you knew where she worked.

  Los Angeles natives all experienced their own personal diaspora, as the people they grew up with spread out across the hills, valleys, and coastal regions or migrated to the East Coast. Other than the occasional case of a former classmate popping up in a Miller Lite commercial or an episode of CSI, most of them disappeared entirely, existing only in memory and between the dusty covers of those yearbooks that were occasionally exhumed from bookshelves during indulgent bouts of nostalgia brought on by excessive drinking. Running into this girl at her place of work had been like having dinner with a friend whose girlfriend suddenly gets too drunk and starts revealing privileged information—like the guy’s need for nipple tweaking during sex in order to cum, or his having a soft spot for the music of *NSYNC. It upset the portrait of a character that, in her proximity to you, helped shape your self image. If identity was nothing more than a story you told yourself, how were you supposed to maintain your grip on that story when the players from your past, the static ones carved into the stone of anecdotes, evolved?

  “You want to head over to Whole Foods tomorrow morning?” Bill said hopefully.

  “Sure,” you said. “Tomorrow sounds good. I wish I had her email.”

  “Hey guys,” said Amare. “Look.”

  You and Bill turned your heads towards the street. June stood near the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic. Her hair was pulled back in some kind of elaborate braid and the sun smoldered in her skin, summoning a bronze hue rendered fallow by perennially closed blinds and snoozed alarm clocks. June’s face—how mesmerized by it you’d once been. You used to cup it in your hands, kiss it from its smooth forehead to its delicate chin, watch in amazement while she slept, smiled, ate, listened, laughed; you couldn’t believe that such a face existed, that you had somehow earned the privilege to lose yourself in its architecture, to stare without fear of repercussion. When she had worn a look of longing or love, you had been reduced to a terrifyingly primal emotional state; you teetered on a precipice of laughter and tears with absolutely no control over which way you might fall. As she jogged across the street that day, you felt a familiar sense of pride: that girl is looking for me. You stood up to wave, so that you might be the envy of anyone watching, but then caught yourself. You sat back down, stared instead at the blades of yellow-brown grass between your legs.

  “June!” yelled Bill. “Hey!”

  You looked up in time to catch her flash an enchantmenting smile at Bill. She rarely smiled that way for you anymore. That smile was reserved for new men. No matter that it would have taken far less to charm Bill. June was egalitarian where it came to her charms—equal flirtation for all potential admirers.

  “Hey boys,” she said, leaning over to hug the shoulders of first Bill and then Amare. “Thanks for the note.”

  Amare furrowed his brow.

  “No problem,” said Bill. “Thought you might nee
d a little motivation to leave behind the air conditioning.”

  “I know, right?” She stood next to where you sat, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.

  “Y’all don’t know hot until you’ve spent a summer in the South,” said Amare. “This shit is nothing. Sit in the shade here and you’re fine. But you can’t escape humidity.”

  “You gonna sit down, sweetheart?” you said, knowing that June’s fear of insects made it difficult for her to sit in the grass. She ignored you.

  “Hey, June,” said Bill. “You want to apply for jobs at Whole Foods with me? Josh knows some chick who works there. He’s gonna introduce me.”

  “He does?” She glanced at you for the first time since she’d arrived.

  “He does indeed,” you said.

  “You should do it,” said Bill. “I mean…I enjoy sleeping-in and watching television all day as much as the next guy, but a job, as long as it’s a job that you don’t take home with you, I think it could be a good thing.”

  June chewed her lip, inclined her head slightly to the side. “You got a cigarette?”

  “I’m all for solidarity as an instrument of change,” said Amare, “but I’m not working for Whole fucking Pay Check.”

  You handed June a cigarette.

  “Who said anything about you?” said Bill.

  “How about a lighter?” she said.

  Amare leaned back on his palms, letting the sun shine directly on his face, and closed his eyes. “You think that just because they offer organic produce and environmentally-friendly detergent that they’re not an evil fucking corporate empire that exploits both their workers and the good intentions of hordes of guilt-ridden liberal douche bags? Not that I really give a fuck about those self-righteous idiots who think that they’re doing anything other than aggravating their hemorrhoids by buying recycled toilet paper, but still.”

  Bill rolled his eyes. “Would you give it a rest? It’s a grocery store.”

  Amare sat upright. “It’s not a grocery store, dude. It’s a monolithic corporate machine that sells organic foodstuffs. It bears no resemblance to the grocery stores of the past, where local owners bought and sold locally grown food.”

  “You’re right,” said Bill. “Those stores are in the past. But I don’t live there. I live here, and here, at this time, in this universe in which I reside, I am unemployed. And anyway, better a monolithic corporation that sells recycled toilet paper than one that sells nothing but that ultra soft stuff they make from thousand year-old trees.”

  “I’ll apply with you, Bill,” said June.

  Three heads pivoted as one.

  She blushed. “What?”

  You chuckled. Her eyes flashed like a pair of black volcanic rocks. “You think I couldn’t do it?”

  “I think you can do anything you want,” you said.

  Her features softened; she posed with straight-backed integrity. “Well I can.”

  “I’ve just never heard you express a desire to work at a grocery store before.”

  She dropped her half-smoked cigarette in the brown grass and crushed it with her sandal. “Who said this is about my desires? This is about getting a job so I can afford to get my own damn place.”

  You could only smile. While you felt you knew a few things about June’s whims and resolve, it certainly wasn’t in your best interest to say anything disparaging.

  The two of you had moved in together too young and too soon. You’d been a twenty-three-year-old file clerk, hoping to break into the acting business; she’d been a twenty-year-old student at UCLA extension, taking a steadily diminishing number of classes per semester and working nights as a waitress at her mom’s bikini bar—a shady establishment where young girls in skimpy bikinis danced on a stage while other girls in bikini tops and short shorts served drinks. Of course you wanted her to quit. Not because you couldn’t stand the idea of lecherous drunks ogling her, or because the place was so unbearably seedy and dilapidated—in fact it was clean and bright, with some nice pool tables, streamers hanging from the ceiling, and a couple of bulky bouncers to make sure the clientele kept their hands to themselves—but primarily because of the mindfuck you imagined it did on her: doing that kind of work for her own mother. So, when you’d gotten a job as a bartender at an old Hollywood watering hole, you encouraged her to quit. Between your tips and the money that your dad was willing to kick down each month, you could swing her share of the rent. And quit she did. And for the first couple of weeks, your hopes were realized: June’s mood improved, she applied herself to her schoolwork, she got encouraging feedback from her professors. But the extensions she asked for on her term papers quickly piled up, and, under the weight of concrete expectations, she crumbled. She ate less, drank more, watched TV until the sun came up and slept until it went down. She hardly acknowledged you when you came back from your shifts at the bar. For nearly a month you didn’t have a civil conversation; any kind of inquiry about schoolwork was met with fury. Communication swung like a pendulum between screaming and silence.

  At first her sister April’s request to come live with you felt like a life raft—while April didn’t have much money, every little bit helped, and surely June’s behavior would change with a younger sibling around. And maybe things did get better for a couple of weeks; you couldn’t remember. What you could remember was the shitstorm June unleashed the first time you stayed up late with April, smoking weed and talking photography. By the time you’d made it back to your room, June was curled up in bed in the fetal position, trembling. You’d immediately gone to her, felt her forehead, asked her if she was feeling okay. She exploded—accused you of trying to screw a teenager and threw a plate covered with two-day-old pizza crusts in the vicinity of your head. While the blast was contained to your room, the shockwaves reverberated throughout the apartment. April left early the next morning and didn’t come home for three days and nights. Too furious to face June, you set up camp in the living room and slept on the couch. When April did return, both her and June acted like nothing had happened.

  Then one day you arrived at work and your boss informed you that the rent on the bar had tripled and they were going to be laying off all recent hires. Just like that, you and June were both unemployed. It might not be fair to say that this development made her happy, but, on a dime, things shifted once again. Suddenly June was rubbing your shoulders, bringing you cold beer, and telling you it would all be okay, that you had each other and that together you would survive.

  You tried to get another bartending gig, but, without knowing someone on the inside, bartending jobs resembled any other Hollywood cattle call audition—dozens of airbrushed hopefuls lined up outside some Sunset Boulevard meat market, trying desperately to project cool, competence, and sex appeal. At more than one of these interviews, you were forced to pose for a Polaroid picture that they then stapled to your résumé. Rejection, fear, insecurity, and unemployment tucked you and June under a downy comforter of depression and together you fell away from the world. You survived on bagels, coffee, and cigarettes; you hemorrhaged cash on rent, bills, and a sufficient amount of bourbon to keep big feelings at bay; you sleepwalked through your home with the shades drawn, waiting for the executioner’s axe to drop. When the blade came down the form of the eviction notice, you realized it wasn’t at all the death blow you’d been fearing; what they’d actually handed you was a get-out-of-jail-free card. You wasted no time cashing it in.

  *

  Given the number of bodies, the study room at the Homework Club was eerily quiet. Other than the hum of the air-conditioner, the scribbling of pencils, and the turning of textbook pages, the only voices you were treated to were the ones in your head. From the students came no chatter, gossip, snickering, or groaning. Four high school boys, obedient and respectful, all relatively new to the club, plodded through their biology, statistics, and calculus homework, not a single one of them yet graspin
g the upside of squandering an opportunity to lighten their workload. You weren’t too confident in any of these subjects, so you read quietly, hoping that none of them would ask a question you couldn’t answer—there was nothing you disdained more than having to suck humility and go to Tim and Eric for help.

  These kids were part of the new breed. As much as Sophie frustrated you, she was at least a type that you were familiar with. High school was changing. In the years since you’d graduated, getting into a good college had become exponentially tougher. The kinds of scores required just to be considered by top universities forced these students to completely surrender to the ambitions of their parents, teachers, and counselors. A devout existentialist, this development troubled you. How was the individual supposed to emerge when all these kids shared the same goals? You had gone to a competitive prep school with plenty of straight-A students, but straight As hadn’t been the norm. You had never felt defective for maintaining a B average. You pursued subjects and activities that interested you. And yet look at you now. Maybe you’d had it all wrong. Maybe the greatest peril facing the young was the notion of individualism. You had assumed that constraints and pressures placed on high school students limited imaginations and hence, options. Maybe that assumption was wrong. You had to concede that it was possible that once set in motion, these kids might act without doubt and thrive while you and your ilk mulled, pondered, procrastinated, and dwelled.

  At 5:30, the bell on the front door jingled. You swiveled in your seat to see Sophie, half in the door, half out, facing the street, her hip thrust toward the sidewalk like a baited hook.

  “I cannn’t!” she whined. “I need to do my geometry!”

  You looked back at the studious assembly—faces emerging from textbooks and huddled shoulders to look at one another quizzically. An unintelligible voice responded to Sophie.