by Zach Wyner
You straightened up, put some volume behind your voice. “What changed tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why come out of your room tonight? Why stop whatever it was you were doing?”
His piss turned from deluge to light sprinkle; it was followed by a zip and a flush. He emerged from the bathroom and made his way over to the beer. “All work and no play, I guess.”
You stood and parted the threadbare curtains. The street, draped by a pale sheet of moonlight, looked empty and indifferent, as if the cool night wind had erased all memory of the daily car crashes and traffic jams waged on its stained and mottled surface.
“I think too much,” you said.
“Of course you do, man. That’s your thing.”
“It’s everyone’s thing. Who doesn’t think too much? I mean, besides the doorman at Barfly.”
“I mean your weakness. You overthink and then you don’t act. Unless, of course, your dick is involved.”
You bit your lip.
“What is it?” he said.
“We should get a bottle. You want to go get a bottle?”
He laughed. “Who are you asking?”
“I’ll be back in five.”
“Relax, partner,” he said. “We’re in this together.”
*
You awoke on the floor in a jaundiced puddle of morning sunshine to Harrison’s wheezing and a petulant knocking on the door.
“Housecleaning!” called a female voice.
Another volley of knocks. You tried to get up. The room spun; your heart hammered in your chest as though you’d passed your dreams in flight from something terrifying and your limbs felt unnaturally heavy, like the blood pumping through your veins had been transfused with viscous, bourbon ooze. A half-empty fifth of Jim Beam, parked like a road sign on the nightstand, came into focus and you dashed to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before releasing a stream of hot, syrupy vomit.
Another knock. “No gracias!” you yelled, mustering whatever poorly constructed high school Spanish you could. “Muchas gracias. No quiero limpiar!”
“Hey!” called the voice. “I don’t speak Spanish!” Ordinarily you might have been horrified by the faux pas, but at the moment you didn’t care. All that mattered was that the knocking stop and the person leave you in peace. Your heart rate slowed from a sprint to a jog. You lifted your head from the toilet bowl and bent over the sink. The water from the tap turned gradually from beige to yellow and you drank lustily, cooling your vomit-scalded esophagus. You crawled back to your spot on the floor and curled into a quivering ball of acute self-loathing. Your cell phone rattled on the table. You crawled on your hands and knees, bumping the bedside table and knocking a lamp to the floor in the process. Harrison mumbled something and turned over on his side but didn’t wake. Without checking the number, you flipped open the phone.
“Hello?”
“Josh?” said an incomprehensibly youthful voice.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Adrienne.”
“Who?” you croaked.
“Dude. What’s up with your voice? Do you have the flu or something?”
“Adrienne?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Adrienne!” you said. “Holy… Wow! What’s up? How did you…”
“I got your number from Tim. He was totally grumpy today too. What happens to you guys on Fridays? I figured you’d both be cheerful because you don’t have to see any teenagers today.”
“We have teenovers,” you said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Was that a joke?”
“No. Yes.”
“Jesus.”
You rubbed your eyes vigorously, as though clarity of sight and thought had a direct correlation to one another. “Where’ve you been?”
“Play rehearsals,” she said. “Every day until seven. Frank has been helping me with my geometry, which totally sucks because he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about and he just gets angry when I tell him that he’s wrong.”
“Play rehearsals?”
“It’s nothing. These little student-written one-acts that the drama department does to kick off the school year.”
“No kidding? That’s rad.”
“I didn’t say anything because I was embarrassed. And I didn’t think I’d get the part, so, better to fail quietly than be forced to endure a bunch of ‘you’ll get em next time, kiddo’ speeches.”
“That’s a very Adrienne thing to say.”
She laughed. You hoisted yourself into a chair and sat up straight, trying to remove the hangover from your voice. “So?”
“So I called because I’m having trouble with some aspects of this character and the director is like this totally gross guy whose sweaters reek of old man and mothballs and he always has dried spittle in the corners of his mouth, and I thought that maybe you, because I remember you said that you used to be an actor or a playwright or something, maybe you could meet with me on Friday afternoons for a few weeks at The Homework Club because I don’t have rehearsal that day. Tim said it would be okay.”
“He did?”
“Yep.”
Warmth spread through your chest like last night’s Baker’s. For a moment you feared you might cry. “I’d really like that.”
“Cool.”
You were quiet for a few seconds until it dawned on you that she was waiting for an answer to a question. “You mean like today Friday?”
“Geez, that’s one powerful teenover you’ve got there. Yes. Today.”
You surveyed the wrecked motel room, trying to get your bearings. Daylight spilled through the curtains onto Harrison’s sparsely bearded cheeks; cigarette butts floated in half-filled beer bottles; the gnarled and nubby blue blanket, beneath which you’d passed out, lay twisted across the middle of the floor like roadkill.
“I don’t know,” you said. You were visited by an image of June, leaving your apartment last night without saying a word, toting that behemoth of a duffel bag. “There’s a situation I’ve got to take care of.”
“Sounds mysterious.”
You cleared your throat. “What time do I meet you there?”
“I’ll be done with school at three thirty. Frank can drop me off by four.”
“What time is it now?”
“Did I wake you up or something?”
“Of course not.” You scanned the room for an alarm clock and realized, to your relief, that it was only ten forty-five. “Whoa. ten forty-five already. Where did my morning go?”
“Yeah, right. See you at three thirty?”
“Count on it.”
You left without waking Harrison and ventured onto the street in search of your car. Your limbs felt like they were weighted down with cement blocks, and with each step, a pair of screws twisted deeper into your temples. A passing bus squealed and belched to a stop six inches from your elbow and your heart pounded so violently you feared it might crack your ribcage. The light reflecting off your car’s windshield made it impossible to see the parking ticket until you were inside looking out. In addition to the hangover, you were starting the day forty-five dollars in the red.
A block from home you swerved into the 7-Eleven parking lot. Years ago this had been a grocery store, a quaint species long since extinct that had sold fresh produce and had a deli counter with a real butcher. Your dad had a tab there, an impossibly old world concept. You recalled how he used wait in the car while you ran in and grabbed a Gatorade on the way back from basketball practice. Hal the butcher would smile and wave and boast about his Los Angeles Lakers and then you’d be out the door. You got such a kick out of not paying, even if the item was being discreetly entered into a ledger. It made the store feel like an extension of your own kitchen, b
ut with candy, sugar cereal, and soda.
The lot was empty except for a battered silver Civic hatchback taking up half of a handicapped spot and half of the neighboring space. Welded to the driver’s side door was the kind of slide latch lock usually seen in bathroom stalls. An honest person owns this vehicle, you thought. A person who identifies something broken and fixes it. You wished you could approach problem solving in so straightforward a manner.
Shielding your eyes from the malevolent sunshine, you crossed the threshold into the convenience store. The electric door chime announced to the cashier—absent from his post behind the cash register—the arrival of another customer in need of a sixty-four-ounce soda, a People magazine, or one of yesterday’s egg salad sandwiches. You cracked open a lemon-lime Gatorade and drank lustily. The chilled liquid lubricated your desiccated tongue, your acid-charred throat and induced a state of severe brain freeze. As you massaged your temples, the unmistakable sensation of being watched broke through the grimy film of your hangover.
Beneath the monitor displaying the latest Lotto numbers, stood a massive man, about 6’5” with a belly the size of a cannonball hanging so precipitously over the front of his grey sweatpants that it appeared wholly possible it might break off from his torso and crack open the laminate floor. He smiled and you averted your gaze, fearful of being caught staring. You waited a beat and looked again. His eyes, now fixed on the monitor, were hidden behind black rubber sunglasses. His salt and pepper hair was matted and thick with grease, and snow-white stubble dusted his wan cheeks. He shoveled a fistful of nachos into his face and wiped the residual cheese from his fingers onto his black sweatshirt. Owing to the abuse his body had endured, it was difficult to estimate his age, but regardless of how long that body been on the planet, it could no longer be considered young. This man had been ravaged by something more aggressive than time.
You poured yourself a cup of French Roast and scrutinized the monitor. A new set of numbers tumbled across the bottom of the screen. The massive man fished into his sweatshirt pocket, took out a stub of paper, read it, and returned it to his pocket without making a sound. He stuck his finger into the mess of chili, cheese, and jalapeños, pushing the ingredients around until he uncovered a soggy chip. Bile ascended your esophagus and you quickly averted your eyes. You emptied four sugar packets into your coffee. Apropos of nothing, the massive man spoke.
“‘I can resist anything but temptation.’” He lowered his sunglasses to the bridge of his nose and squinted at you. His irises were the pale blue of a scorched, late-afternoon sky. They were the lone feature, other than his voice, that possessed the slightest trace of delicacy, and yet, when fixed on you, they became the dominant feature, overhauling your initial impression. “Oscar Wilde.” He winked. “Forgive my being so bold as to presume that you, like I, might have firsthand knowledge of the sentiment’s truth.”
You broke from his gaze and busied your hands with the task of peeling back the little foil lids on the single-servings of Half and Half. “Your powers of perception are prodigious.”
“It does not take great acuity to recognize one’s own.”
You nodded but kept your focus on your task; you stirred your coffee, blew on it, and took a tentative sip.
He sighed. “Perhaps a different career path would have bolstered my self-discipline.”
“I’m a teacher,” you said suddenly, surprising yourself.
He smiled. “Aha. And I a student.”
“I work with teenagers. They’re a pain in the ass but when you get through to them, you know, the ones that can still be gotten through to…”
“Yours is a noble profession. You are an asset to both your students and your community.”
You fitted a lid to your steaming coffee. Having no idea where you were going with this, you could do nothing but blush and change the subject. “Where’s the cashier?”
The man returned his gaze to the monitor. “Habib!” he yelled. No one responded. “A teacher wishes to make a purchase!”
You immediately recognized the handsome, doe-eyed Indian man with a neatly trimmed mustache who emerged from a door labeled Employees Only. He’d rung you up on many occasions but you’d never spoken to one another.
“So sorry,” he said. “I am understaffed today and I was… I had to…”
“Habib is as fine a man as you will find in this country today—a recently naturalized citizen with the kind of work ethic rarely observed in our homegrown residents.”
Habib shook his head and scanned your coffee cup and half-empty Gatorade. “Thank you, sir. So sorry to keep you waiting.”
“It’s fine,” you said. “Habib?”
“Yes. Thank you,” he said, turning his back on you and tearing open a giant stack of shrink-wrapped Playboys.
You stopped on your way out the door. “My name’s Josh, by the way.”
Habib’s head swiveled.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m Josh. I live around the corner.”
Both men stared at you but neither spoke. Your cheeks burned red.
“A local of our fair province,” said the massive man.
You smiled. “Actually, I grew up nearby but I hadn’t lived in the Valley for years until I moved back a few months ago.”
“The prodigal son,” he said with a satisfied grin. “My name is Ozzie. Some call me Wizard.”
“No shit!” you said. He furrowed his brow. “My buddies, Bill and Amare…they’re great admirers of yours.”
The Wizard nodded knowingly, as if he had intuited this precise connection the moment you walked in and was now savoring his clairvoyance like a mouthful of chile cheese sauce. He piloted another chip towards his cavernous mouth and sighed as he chewed. “Tell me, Josh. Have you read Yeats?”
“Not since high school.”
“Care to test that memory?”
You pinched the bridge of your nose. “I had a pretty rough night.” The Wizard kept right on chewing, as thought you hadn’t said a word.
“Okay,” you said. “Try me.”
He smiled and straightened to his full height. “‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,’” he shoveled another chile-cheese-soaked chip into his mouth and spoke as he chewed. “And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.” He tilted his head, swallowed his food, lifted his eyebrows.
“No, I recognize it.” Your heart sank. It was suddenly very important that you impress this man.
“The best lack all conviction,” he said.
“Shit,” you said. “Shit, shit.”
“While the worst…”
“Something,” you said, snapping your fingers. “Something, about intensity.”
The Wizard raised his chin, teetering on the precipice of praise.
“They’re full of it!” you said. “Are full of passionate intensity.”
“Very good, young man!” he bellowed. With his free hand, he patted his belly. “The question that remains to be seen, Joshua, is ‘what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’”
“Seems to me we’ve got no shortage of rough beasts these days.”
He laughed and scratched his white whiskers. “Tell those radiant young lads that The Wizard sends his greetings.”
*
The apartment was sunny and surprisingly well ventilated; the boys, seated respectively at the computer and the dining table, appeared fresh and well groomed. They turned blank, inscrutable faces in your direction.
“What?”
“Where’ve you been?” said Amare.
“Aw,” you said. “You guys worried about me?” You tossed your keys on the table and sat beside Bill, his nearly completed Whole Foods application between his elbows. “Well look at you. Way to go, man.”
“Where’s your girl?” said Amare.
“Please
don’t call her that.”
“She never came home either,” said Bill. “She left a message, saying she was out and that she’d try your cell. That was the last we heard from her.”
You checked your phone. No missed calls. “I was so hammered last night,” you said, sipping your coffee and staring out the window at the neighboring apartment building, its cracked stucco walls and opaque windows caked with grime. You hadn’t thought of it as dumpy until now. At night, its flickering blue lights and electrical buzz created the impression of animation, but daylight revealed the totality of its decrepitude.
“I guess I remember talking to her,” you said, knowing full well that such a conversation never took place.
“Where is she?” said Bill.
“Her girlfriend’s, I think,” you said, embellishing the lie. “I’ll track her down after work.”
“I thought you didn’t have to go in on Fridays,” said Bill. “Was hoping you could drive me over to Whole Foods to drop this thing off.”
“New gig, but no worries. I can drop it off on my way.”
“Don’t you think I should do it in person?”
“I don’t think it matters. I’ll tell what’s her name…”
“Sadie.”
“Right. I’ll tell her how excited you are and whatnot.”
You sat on the couch and stared at the muted TV, last night’s sports highlights flickering frivolously before your eyes, a montage of fragments to be consumed and immediately forgotten.
“Oh!” you said brightly. “I finally met the famous Wizard over at 7-Eleven. What a character.”
Amare popped up from his seat at the computer. “He still there?”
“Didn’t look like he was going anywhere.”
Amare crammed his bare feet into his shoes and made for the door.
“What’s so urgent?” you said.
“Gotta see if my numbers came up.”
“Say it ain’t so,” said Bill.
“Beats working at a grocery store.”