I didn’t want to be one of those guys who was always hanging out at the office, or stopping by every time I saw one of our rigs on the roads. I thought maybe I would hang out with Carrie more. I was getting worker’s comp but no overtime, so I was really short on dough. I figured I could make it up to her by offering to do projects about her house, things I could do with one arm. I painted her room, and I did a nice job at it, though it took me a while. I still only got to stay one night a week if I was lucky.
“You need to go home by six,” she said when she got home from work. “It’s not fair to my roommate, you being here all the time.”
“But she’s at work tonight, and I’m hardly ever here, aside from all the time I’ve spent painting.”
“That isn’t the point. You don’t pay rent here. She does.”
Rent? I thought, what about the two hundred dollars a month I was giving her? “Ask her, I’ll paint her room too, the bathroom, the hallways, everything. I just want to spend the night in your arms.”
“I’m sure she’ll like that, but she specifically told me I could only have overnight guests one night a week, and we’ve abused that a bit in the past. I just want to be fair to her. And I don’t want her kicking me out, which she can because I don’t have a lease.”
So I painted by day, and went home to my room at night. Even the nights I stayed seemed to lack their usual vigor. I took her to more and more expensive restaurants, but it seemed not to make an impression later on. Instead of making her giddy, the wine made her sleepy. When I brought marijuana over, instead of making her happy, it made her remote.
“You look like you’ve got a tapeworm,” Carrie said. “I don’t understand how you’re losing weight with all you eat when you’re with me.”
I was losing weight because I’d stopped weightlifting and wasn’t getting enough protein to support what muscle I did have. I was starving myself. The only other good meal I got was at my mom’s, and she said the same thing. “You look terrible.”
They had a big explosion one day at the civic center. They had ambulances in from all over, and I had to watch it on TV, wishing I was there. Over a hundred people were hurt; sixteen died. I saw all the old faces on the news—there was Fred doing CPR on a man—and I saw plenty of new people I didn’t know. Everyone in the company who worked that day got a commendation from the mayor.
Thanksgiving dinner, I was able to make it to my mom’s after all. My mom, my sister and myself. It was depressing.
“How come you didn’t bring anyone?” my sister asked.
“Because I didn’t invite anyone.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“She’s having dinner with her family.”
“She didn’t invite you?”
“Don’t you have anything nice to say?”
“She didn’t want to come. You could have brought your partner.”
“Are you talking about Fred?”
“No, not that doofus. I’m talking about that Tom guy you work with, the good-looking one.”
“What do you know about him?”
“I saw him at the Wendy’s. He was in there getting a burger. I told him I was your sister. He said he’d take me down to the casino some night.”
“Stay the fuck away from him.”
“I can see whoever I want.” And she stuck her tongue out at me.
“Suit yourself then. You’re twenty. You can wreck your life, see if I care. Enjoy your venereal disease.”
“Mom!”
“Stop it, the both of you. This is a family meal.”
At least I got a decent meal out of it. Afterwards we all watched Groundhog Day together. I spent the night on the couch. My mom came down in the middle of the night and wrapped a blanket around me. I pretended to be asleep. She must have sat there an hour watching me.
***
I started getting strange vibes from Carrie some nights when I’d call her just to say hi, maybe hoping to finagle an invitation over on an off night. She acted like she didn’t have time to talk to me. “What is going on with you? Do you have someone there?”
“Yes, some friends from work. We’re doing a project, having pizza and trying to get our deadline met. Things have been hectic.”
“I guess they have. Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, why don’t I just meet you at the Olive Garden?”
“All right.”
After we ate that night, she said she was all of a sudden not feeling well, and went home alone. I laid out sixty bucks for dinner and wine for her and got nothing but a disinterested peck on the cheek in return.
One night I decided to stake her house out. She usually arrived home from work at four-thirty to five depending on whether she stopped at the store. I let Fred use my car in exchange for his tinted-window Camaro. I backed into a space on the far side of the parking lot, but with a good view of her front door. I had a pair of my dad’s old binoculars, a Double Big Gulp from the 7-11, a notebook to write down any thoughts and two cans of Vienna sausage in case I got hungry.
At ten after five, I saw her grey Yugo pull into her assigned spot. She got out, and went around to the passenger door, and took out three bags of groceries. I saw a loaf of French bread sticking out. She was cooking pasta, no doubt. She always bought French bread when she cooked for me, which she’d done a fair amount when we were first seeing each other, but hadn’t for a while. I also saw her take out a box of wine. She liked to drink red burgundy.
I waited. Who was coming over? She usually told me seven when she was cooking. It gave her time to smoke a little reefer if she had it, make the sauce, clean up the house, and take a long bubble bath, which was where she would start in on the wine. She always liked to have a good high going when I got there. I could taste the wine on her breath when she’d put her tongue in my mouth as soon as I came through the door. Just thinking about the way she used to greet me, the passion coming off of her—passion for me, I believed—got me excited sitting there. And it made me feel like a pervert, hiding behind tinted glass, spying.
The living room blinds were partly open, but I couldn’t see in from where I was. I wondered what would happen if I waited a little longer until she was in the tub, then cracked the door and went in. Would she be surprised to see me? Would she scream and call the cops, or would she smile and take me inside?
At seven on the button, a big black Chevy truck pulled up, and Jimmie Winslow got out. He was carrying a six pack of beer and headed straight for her door.
He rang the bell. He waited, looked at his watch, and then I saw the door open and the dread sight—Carrie in her bathrobe, letting him in.
After vomiting in a plastic bag, I sat there crying like a baby. I didn’t know whether to keep crying or whether I ought to knock down the door and kill them both. I certainly could understand why some people committed sudden acts of violence. I looked in my back seat and saw my crowbar. I thought about getting out and doing a number on his car, smashing the windshield, the front lights, calling him out to fight mano a mano or, because he had a good eighty pounds on me, mano a crowbar. Instead, I just took what was left of my Big Gulp. I walked over to his car, spun off the gas tank, and poured it in like it was STP. For good measure, I let the air out of his back passenger-side tire.
Chapter 28
Carrie called the next day and broke up with me on the phone. “There’s no sense in prolonging this,” she said. “It clearly isn’t working. I just wanted to let you know. We can still be friends, but our sexual relationship is over.”
“Our sexual relationship?”
“Yes, that’s what it was. Convenience, nothing more, or at least that’s how you made me feel. I’ve moved on.”
“It’s my fault?”
“Yes, but as I said, I’ve moved on. You had your chance.”
“That’s it, just like that,” I said. I was supposed to be the one giving her heck.
“I tried to make it work, and put up with your silliness, but I’m
getting on and I need someone more mature, someone who has learned to take me seriously.”
“Jimmie Winslow?” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
I could tell by the pause I had her. She was wondering how I knew.
“Don’t think I don’t know? Word gets around. Didn’t he cheat on you the last time?”
“He’s learned his lesson. Something I doubt you ever will.”
“I never…”
“Did you enjoy your blow job at Uncle Frank’s?”
I stuttered.
“That’s right. Word gets around. Jimmie saw you. If that’s how you’re going to spend your money.”
“Did you ask Jimmie what he was doing there?”
“He was working undercover. He’s told me plenty of stories of all the sad sacks who go into the place to spend their money. I just didn’t think you’d be one of them.”
“Sad sacks?”
“That’s right. You don’t have enough money to take me out to dinner, but you could blow your money on lap dances and cheap whores. Because of you I have to get tested.”
“If anyone should make you get tested, it should be Jimmie. You wouldn’t believe the stuff cops do on the job.”
“All I know is he’s a man and you’re just a boy, and everything you say just convinces me of it more.”
“So he’s going to take you to New York to see The Lion King, I suppose?”
“No, as a matter of fact, he’s taking me to the Caribbean. We’re leaving on a plane on Friday for Turks and Caicos.”
I was out of words. I was mad and shaking, and I slammed the phone down.
Chapter 29
I descended into a dark, lonely place. And it was a lonely place that was only made worse by being with other people. I avoided going to bars, avoided going to my mother’s, avoided even going to stores during busy hours. I became a night owl, staying up watching old movies, and sometimes reading books. I liked reading short stories, and thought the authors probably got a lot of chicks because they were so good at telling tales. I particularly like a book called Steppenwolf about a guy who walked around like me, a friendless ghost. I tried writing a few stories myself. I needed desperately to create a world I could understand. Some nights I just listened to classical music. Miss Broadbent had given me a list of the ten greatest works and I had bought them all. Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky. Dvorak’s New World Symphony remained my favorite. It haunted me. I felt like he too must have, at some time in his life, looked around at the world and wondered how he ended up where he did, like maybe we were both just bit players in a universe and world too daunting to comprehend.
I was glad when my shoulder was healed enough to go back to work without hurting too much. I’m back and it’s like people would say to me, “Haven’t seen you for a while. Been out?” “Yeah, I was out,” I’d say. “How about that,” they’d answer. No one is ever really missed. Meat in the seat.
I used to love the job, but now it didn’t take long for me to see something had changed. It just wasn’t the same anymore. The things I found fascinating before, no longer fascinated me.
I was in the EMT room, and one of the new EMTs was going, “You wouldn’t believe this call we had yesterday. We go screaming all across town, priority one for severe bleeding. We’re fighting through traffic, jamming the air horn, we finally get there and an old man answers the door.
“‘Ambulance,’ we say.
“‘Anderson?’ he says. ‘There ain’t no one named Anderson here.’
“‘No, no, AMBULANCE. Someone called for an AMBULANCE?’
“He goes, ‘Oh, oh, oh, wait a minute,’ then he gets his cane and goes wobbling into the back, and you hear a door open and some rap music, then this gangbanger comes strutting out, holding up his finger that’s got a little cut on and he asks us for a Band-Aid. I thought, you gotta be fucking kidding. ‘We don’t carry Band-Aids,’ my partner says. The guy just goes, ‘Oh, okay,’ turns around and walks back to where the music is coming from. We cleared it unfounded. Can you believe that, calling 911 because you want a Band-aid?”
I could believe it. You work two months in the city and that shouldn’t shock you. I was going on three years, and I was as tired of the stories as I was of what they were about. I mean, how many fucked-up, psycho, complete idiot or dead gross people stories are there in the world? “You wouldn’t fucking believe this call,” they’d say, “you wouldn’t fucking believe it.” Yes, I would, I’d say to myself and tune them out. Been there, done that, and didn’t like being there, doing that anymore. The only way being at work beat not being at work was that, at least being at work, I was getting paid for wasting the days of my life.
Everything was one mind-numbing, depressing routine. It wasn’t that I joined the ranks of the bitchers and complainers—I was beyond that. It was petty. I didn’t care if dispatch was boning my car, or if one of the supervisors was being a jerk, or if the new union contract didn’t have a big enough raise in it. All that seemed to matter was that I had a place to be—not a particular place I liked being, but it beat having to decide what to do with myself. They gave me a call, I went to it, did it, and took someone to the hospital, only to do it all over again, ten times a shift, seven days a week. Grinding out the calls, grinding out the days and nights.
Chapter 30
I awoke with a fever, my sheets soaked through. It was 4:30 a.m. I was due in at work at seven. I couldn’t get up; I was nauseous, dizzy. I felt a retch, and then the next thing I knew my mouth was full of vomit. I tried to keep my mouth closed to keep from spewing on the floor until I could get to the hallway bathroom, but I couldn’t hold it back. It went all over my blanket and the floor. I managed to fall out of bed and half crawl to the waste basket where I retched again. I could barely hold my head up. The room started spinning. I thought I was dying.
I crawled across the hot desert sands. The sun blistered my back. My tongue was swollen. My heart was racing even though I knew I had to be dreaming. A conveyor belt with people on it went past me. There were old ladies and old men, people I had known, patients I’d had. The belt had small clouds under it, and gradually the belt went up into the sky, into the far distance, and I looked up and I saw a hotel up there and I knew it was heaven where they were all going.
Not me. There I was crawling on the hot sand, crawling past horned young men wearing bandoleer gun belts sitting in beach chairs smoking weed. They gave me the thumbs down as I crawled past. AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” blared from the speakers.
I woke up again at 6:25. I was still on the floor. I had a horrendous headache and felt parched. I tried to get up, but my head spun even worse than before. I knew I had to call work, but I didn’t think I could reach the phone on my desk. I tried to stand and I threw up again.
The phone rang. I managed to get it. I tried to hold myself against the desk, but I was too weak. I curled back down to the floor.
“Where the hell are you? You’re on the schedule. Get your slacker butt in here. We’re getting killed this morning.”
“I’m sick,” I said.
“Sick? No, you’re not, not unless you call in four hours ahead of time, you’re not sick, you’re tardy. Now get in here.”
“No, I’m really sick.”
“Out drinking, you ought to know better. You’re a young man; you can work with a hangover. I did all the time in my day.”
“No, no, I’m really, really sick.”
There was silence on the other end.
“What do you want me to do about it? Are you telling me you’re not coming in? It’s an unexcused absence.”
“I’m sick.”
I guess my voice sounded puny enough that he took some notice.
“Are you all right? You’re never sick. You got a broad there?”
“No, I’m sick. I’ve got a fever.”
“All right, since you never book off, I’ll let this one go. Be here tomorrow or call in. Four hours notice. I’m cutting you slack this time
.”
I hung the phone up.
I had some aspirin and some ginger ale. I took four aspirin. I had the worst headache of my life. The ginger ale was flat.
I guessed I had some kind of twenty-four-hour bug, and the best thing would be to just lie there and let it pass. I didn’t have a thermometer, but I knew I was burning up. My head was spinning so much I just prayed I could sleep and wake up and be better.
I thrashed. I felt like I was on some kind of mind-altering drug. I was back in my dream crawling across the sands when all of a sudden I came across a set of feet. They were old with long nasty toenails that hadn’t been cut for years, thick, curved, brown and green fungusy nails. The legs were thick and edematous, elephant-like legs. I looked up and saw an old woman sitting in a wheelchair. She shook her head. “Shame,” she said.
“Help me,” I said.
“What have you done to deserve help?”
“I’ve got to drink. I’m dying.”
“Grab hold of my leg.”
I hesitated.
“Go on, grab a hold!”
I grabbed and held on and suddenly I was being whisked through the air. I don’t know if I was more scared of falling or getting stuck to her legs, my arms sunk into her edematous skin as I held on. I was so parched I lapped the beads of moisture on her legs. She swatted the top of my head. “I didn’t say you could drink!” We flew through a spinning psychedelic tunnel. I saw the pages of a calendar fly off like in the old time travel movie, the pages going backwards, November, October, September, August, July, June, 2004, 2003, 2000, 1999, 1994, 1989, 1977, 1971, 1963, 1952, and then we popped out in the spring of 1949. There were flowering dogwood trees. We were on the streets of Hartford, in the North End except the houses were all beautiful, freshly painted with flower gardens, and children playing in the yards, birds singing.
Diamond in the Rough Page 11