by Owen Thomas
“Well, if it isn’t CC Lewis,” I say when I am in range. She is in thrashed out jeans and boots and an ocean-blue t-shirt. She tips the bill of her baseball hat.
“Sheriff.”
I sit next to her and fall backward onto the lawn, closing my eyes.
“You look like something that dropped out the backside of a farm animal, DJ.”
“Never call me that again. Ever.”
She rotates to look at me, shielding her eyes to the sun. “The farm animal…”
“No. DJ.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not DJ. That’s why.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Forget it. I’ve wanted to call the past few days.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“The whole hospice thing intimidates me. How is he? I mean, did he…”
“Dancing Danny?”
“Yeah.”
“Fox trotting with St. Peter.”
“How was it?”
“Graceful. But that was Danny. You could’ve called.”
I open my eyes and stare at the blue sky. There is a single plane leaving white contrails. I’m not on it. I could go to sleep right here.
“How about something to eat?”
“I don’t have anything to eat.”
“No, I mean out. We could catch a movie.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“My treat.”
“I don’t need your charity.”
“The hell you don’t. You need the Red Cross, my friend. You need United Nations relief. You need FEMA, and I don’t mean eventually. You’re a fuckin’ one-man New Orleans, Dave. Someone sticks out a hand, I advise you take it.”
“Why are you here, Cait?”
She falls back next to me and our elbows knock. The plane is gone now. Only the white scar remains. A perfect zipper cloud.
“Cause you need a friend. I can’t fix your problems, but I can do that much. I can be a friend. I’ve got the day, so I’m taking you to lunch and you’re gonna tell me all about it and then we’re going to go see something unforgivably bad on a great big screen that will put all of your problems in perspective. Or at least put them on the shelf for a couple of hours.”
I think about this for several seconds, weighing the prospect of sleep against the prospect of food, distraction, and someone to talk to who isn’t simple, insane or out to lock me in prison.
“Can I change my clothes first?”
“Dawg, you can go buck neckid if you care to.”
Somehow I am able to peel myself off of the grass and make it to my feet. I stand over her, casting her face in shadow. I tell her to wait where she is. She shoos me away with the back of her hand.
Inside, I make a beeline for the bedroom, trying to keep my head down, focusing on my shoes. The bedroom is the only patch of living space in my home that does not resemble something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. It smells like a circle of Hell.
I change into clean clothes and step into the bathroom. I brush my teeth and splash some water in my face and try to mask the smell of incarceration with deodorant. The man in the mirror has zombie eyes. He is undead. I try to shake it off. More water in the face, colder this time. I look again. Now he looks undead and wet. I realize that this is as good as I can do and I head for the door.
My hand is on the knob and the cautionary question comes to me, as it always does, at the last possible second. Did you remember to feed the fish? It is one of those preprogrammed reminders, hardwired into my brain and forever outside the real time updated data-loop; that ticker of changing circumstances. I am forced to manually disengage the concern by reminding myself that the horrible smell choking my senses is partly due to the implosion of the glass-encased freshwater kingdom that once graced my hallway, and that the whole fish-feeding ritual has been rendered a quaint little custom of my past. But that reminder leads headlong into the memory of the fish I had been able to salvage before taking Brittany Kline most of the way to the hospital.
I head for the kitchen, trying not to look at the surrounding carnage, which proves to be roughly like walking through the pit of monster truck rally and trying not to notice any tire treads or tobacco plugs. The hallway is still sopping and crunchy with gravel and glass and plastic undersea carnival equipment.
Strange, heavy footprints are everywhere. The couch and the table are wildly askew. The bloody paper towels are gone, each probably in its own separate evidence baggie. Also missing are the backpack, the violin, the lingerie, and the booze. The condoms. The movies too. And why not? I may as well be tried and convicted for my taste in movies. Hell, maybe I’ll be tried and convicted for the crimes committed by the characters in the movies. Maybe they’ll prove that I was the one who broke into the manager’s office and stole the Glengarry leads. David Johns: Manchurian History Teacher. Maybe I was the one in the book depository with the magic bullet. I have a new sympathy for Oswald the patsy.
The plastic salad bowl is on the counter where I left it: next to my cell phone and above a trail of now old vomit. Inside the bowl, all is still. All are buoyant, each with one eye to the heavens. There is just enough spirit left in those little single eyes – just enough life memory – to leave me a floating message in the event of my return. The message says that I have failed them. As simple and basic as my responsibility might have been, I have failed.
Outside, Caitlin Carson Lewis has not moved, still splayed on my front lawn. I suspect the neighbors think she’s just another victim; another tick on the body count.
I climb up into the vanbulance and close the door and wait. In another minute she is in the driver’s seat starting the engine and backing out of my notorious driveway. We head out in silence, into the lengthening shadows of afternoon. She is waiting for me to kick things off but I have no interest in speaking. I watch things pass me like I am on a train rocking and clicking and clacking through a town that I pass through every day to and from work and yet utterly indifferent to what I see because I don’t live here. I live someplace else. I must.
“Where you wanna eat?”
“I don’t care. I’m not making any more decisions, about anything, ever again.”
“Mmm. Okay. You like waffles?”
“I’m not making any more decisions, about anything, ever again.”
“Waffles it is.”
We hit the freeway and head towards Columbus, the city I now hate. Neither of us speaks. Me, because suddenly words seem like little frivolous trinkets in the face of my own personal mushroom cloud and I cannot find meaning anymore in anything I might say to someone who is not me. Her, I suspect, because she knows better than to force it. She knows it will come eventually. And I do too.
She exits the freeway sooner than I expect, aiming for a yellow rectangle perched at the top of an iron pole at the end of an access road and turning in the air like the beacon of a lighthouse. Across the yellow rectangle, the word “Waffles” stands out in a dark, heavy relief. Like the bat signal. Where the hell is Batman?
“Cait?”
“Yeah?”
“This is a truck stop.”
“No good? That’s what you get for abdicating. You had your chance.”
She punches me in the shoulder and opens her door.
“Come on. I know it’s a little fancy for lunch. Maybe we’ll see some celebrities.”
The place is reasonably clean and cheerful for a truck stop diner. There is only a handful of people scattered here and there, mostly singles, forks in one hand, quarter-folded newspapers in the other. There is the sound of hissing and of silverware on ceramic and of ice against glass. It smells like coffee and warm cooking grease and bacon and dough and maple. The air is humid and slow.
From somewhere beneath my undeadness I can feel a bubble of life force separating itself from the bottom. It is need. It is desire. It is normal and basic and wholly independent of any of the complicated and increasingly dire concerns that clog my
brain. The bubble rises and pops. It is quickly followed by others, each more urgent than the last, until, suddenly, I am at a rolling boil. I am fucking hungry.
“Hey, Hon,” says a woman in an aproned uniform when she notices Caitlin heading for a booth in the back.
“Hey Ruth,” says Caitlin.
“Been awhile since you graced us young lady.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t forgotten. You doing okay?”
The woman pours some coffee for a big bald man with a red beard. She follows us to the booth and juts her hip out and finds a way to smile as she works her gum.
“Oh, yeah. Me and Jesus are still seein’ it through.”
“Aah, so you two are still in cahoots then?”
“You know it.”
“Find any other good men yet? Aside from Jesus, I mean.”
“There’s Frank. He’s good.”
“No, no. Frank’s your boss, Ruth. He is a good man, but he’s the wrong kind of good man. I’m talking about a good man man.”
“Ain’t not a one of those left on this wretched planet.” Ruth laughs and gives me a wink. “Sorry son. It’s not your fault. It’s your daddy’s fault. If and when you ever have a son, then it’ll be your fault.”
“What if I already have a son?”
She squishes a snap out of her gum and nods at Caitlin. “‘Well, if you’re with Lew here then you can’t be all that bad. I’m guessin’ she got to you in time and there’s still some hope. Lord knows if there was hope for me, then there’s some hope for you. Sit, sit. Let me get y’all some menus so I don’t get myself fired.”
She disappears and is back in seconds with menus and water and is gone again.
“You come here a lot, I take it,” I say to Caitlin after we have ordered and have exhausted all the meaningless small talk subjects I can bear.
She shrugs. “No. Not a lot. Why?”
I nod in the direction of Ruth, who is clearing a table two booths away.
“Oh. Yeah. She’s a character.”
“She seems… grateful.”
“Hmm. Does she?”
“Yeah. She does. Did you meet her here, or … or did you place her here?”
Caitlin takes a drink and puts the glass back down. She looks sideways out the window, a ghost of a wry smile on her face. Her eyes slide back to mine.
“You want to tell me why you were walking around the neighborhood in a monkey suit today?”
“Not really. I’m not into the whole torture thing.”
“What if I want to hear?”
“Then I’d say you’re a masochist and you should get professional help. I’d want to know what’s missing in your own life that you want to tune into mine. I’d want to recommend that you look into quality cable programming.”
She shrugs and leans back and looks back out the window, telling me with her body that it’s not a big deal whether I tell her anything or not. It is a message that leaves me feeling cold and alone. I know all she needs is a thread to pull. I hand her one.
“My fish died,” I say.
“Oh? Which one?”
“Fishes.”
“All of them?”
I nod.
Ruth shows up with a round tray beneath a mountain of food. I begin eating before she is done unloading.
“My word,” she drawls. “Boy’s hungrier than a little lion. Look at him go. Lew, you need to feel him more regularly.”
“Thanks, Ruth. I’ll keep some treats in my pocket.”
“Don’t eat the fork, son.” She heads back toward the kitchen. “We reuse those.”
“So?” Caitlin asks.
“So what?”
“So how’d they die?”
I look up and finish chewing and swallow and put down my fork and wipe my mouth with my napkin.
“How? You want to know how all my fish – fishes – died? Because I’ll tell you if you want. I’ll tell you. It’s probably not the reason you’re thinking.”
“Spill it.”
And there it is. The pull of the thread.
I start at the beginning, letting her eat as I talk, unspooling the story for the third time today, only this time I leave nothing out. She gets it all. Every few minutes I pause to shovel in a forkful of waffle but my mouth is not big enough to put food in as the words are coming out. That, and my hunger is abating with every disgusting, acid-producing syllable. I try to moderate my tone; to detach my emotions and to simply relate what has happened rather than actually reliving it all in grotesque narrative form, but that is not possible. I try to give her opportunities to interject, to ask questions, to express surprise or disbelief, to make this a conversation rather than a runaway monologue. But that, too, is impossible. I have lost all ability to keep myself in a proper context. I have lost all ability to consider the world around me. It is almost irrelevant. There is only me. I have condemned Brittany Kline and her generation to the fate of Narcissus, but am I any different? Am I not the dark twin of Narcissus, gazing into a pool of flaming oil, falling under the spell of my own misery? Am I not just as captivated by my own reflection?
Across the table, Caitlin listens calmly, eating, nodding, like I am telling her about something interesting I saw on the news. When she has cleaned her plate she leans back in the booth and crosses her arms and watches my face doing its unconscious pantomime, the layers of muscle in my forehead and around my eyes and my mouth all working frantically with my hands to tell the story. I will probably never know if she can see the other part of me. Not the part that is consumed with my own miserable life – the part that is in danger of drowning. But the other part. The buoyant part. The admittedly much smaller part that has broken free from all the drama and that can float.
The part of me … that is watching her … watching me.
She removes her cap and runs her fingers through her hair, which she then tucks behind her ears in that way of hers. Her right ear cantilevers away from her head just slightly more than the left. The wall behind her is aflame from the sun whose transit has finally found a direct route through the window and in the warm yellow light her features unfold. The left eye, actually more brown than green. The ridgeline across the bridge of her nose, an old fracture, marking the upper slope of a slight hump of cartilage. The slightly over ripe, fullness of the upper lip, with its protective divot. A cheek that can faintly remember childhood acne. Her features are irregular shapes on an uneven surface, unapologetic in their heresy. Perfection is surely out of reach.
And yet, the small part of me that floats – the part of me that watches her – can see that she is perfect. Can see that she is beautiful.
“Mancub, you get more curious by the minute.” Ruth has appeared to take away the dishes. “First you act like you might just eat off my left arm and now…you haven’t finished one of those waffles. And the bacon. And the toast.” She collects Caitlin’s empty plate and shows it to me. “See how she does? Something wrong with our food that I should know about?”
“Oh, no. It was great. Mood kind of passed, I think.”
“The mood passed? The mood passed?” She looks over at Caitlin as if for confirmation and then back at me, leaning in. “For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.”
“…”
“That’s Matthew, Mr. Moody-britches. Now, you want this good, nourishing food in a doggy bag? Case your mood changes?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Mood passed… what kinda’ nonsense…”
As she leaves, Caitlin is laughing into her hand. Before I can think about how much I do not have to laugh about, I too am laughing. We are still at it, trying to get control when she comes back with a Styrofoam box loaded with everything I did not eat.
“Still laughin’ are ya? That’s okay. The good Lord is bound to have a sense of humor. Don’t know how he’d get through the day other
wise.”
“Oh, Ruth…”
“Don’t you oh Ruth me, Lew. I just want to make sure everybody’s well fed. That’s what I do. Beats the hell outta stealin’ for the devil, don’t it?”
“It does, Ruth,” says Caitlin in a tone meant to exclude my understanding. “It sure does. What do we owe you?”
“You never owe me a dime, Sugar. This is on me. You keep comin’ back. They’ll all be on me.”
“Ruth…”
“Don’t you fight me, now, Lew. I’ve got some powerful friends. You just go on and do your work in the world. Here’s your food, Tiger. See if you can put some meat on those bones of yours.”
We are back on the road, rolling south, and I am determined not to ask her for any kind of reaction. Not for sympathy. Not for suggestions. Not for shock or disbelief. Any of which would feel good, better than silence, but I do not want a repeat of my pathetic display outside the Columbus Police Department Vehicle Impound Lot. I will not beg this time. I have told her what happened and that is enough. It is not her problem and I expect nothing.
“You helped her, didn’t you?” I ask. “Ruth. Like whatshisname in Cincinnati. The car painting guy.”
“Eddy Mac?”
“Yeah. Eddy Mac. Ruth was on her way down, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And you saved her.”
“No. Ruth saved herself. I just got her a steady paycheck.”
“But she was going down.”
“Yes.”
“What was it? Drugs? Booze?”
“None of your business. Nosey.”
“I’m going down aren’t I? That’s why you’re here.”
“You tell me, Dave. Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are.”
“Is that why you’re here? To keep me from going down?”
“Just who do you think I am, anyway?”
“I don’t know who you are. You always just kind of …”
“What?”
“I don’t know… appear out of nowhere. Right when things head over the cliff.”