by Ray Garton
"Well...okay. Look, if you can't sleep, tell Mrs. Tipton I said you could stay up and watch TV, okay? And I'll call and check on you during my break."
By the time Jenny got off the phone, Debbie had returned to the register.
"Hey," Jenny said quietly, "how come you seated those guys?"
"What guys?"
"Those guys." She pointed to their table and Debbie squinted as she peered across the restaurant.
"That family? They looked awful and I figured—"
"No, no, the table next to them."
"I didn't seat those guys."
"Yes you did. I just stood here and watched you. They came in with some girl, a teenager, and she said something to you and you seated them. And here we've got all these people waiting to—"
"What girl?" Debbie faced her and Jenny could see that she was genuinely puzzled, confused. "I didn't talk to no teenage girl."
Jenny opened her mouth to argue but thought better of it; it was the look on Debbie's face that stopped her, that pinched look she got when she didn't understand something or thought someone was pulling one over on her.
"What the hell're you talking about, Jen?"
"I, um...nothing. Nothing."
Troubled, Jenny left the register and went to take the men's order, not looking forward to getting close to them again...
It was cold in the cab, but Dad did not offer to turn on the heater. He'd turned out the light in the sleeper so they were left with only the glow of the streetlight outside and Dad's face was hooded in shadow as he sat behind the wheel.
"So you're mom's inside, huh?" he asked, looking toward the restaurant.
"Yeah. They're having dinner."
"The girls, too?"
Jon nodded and started to add, And Doug, but stopped himself. Dad didn't know about Doug. At least, Jon didn't think he did. Before Mom had packed up and taken them to live with Grandma for a while, Doug had always visited while Dad was on the road. Jon had wanted to tell him about Doug, felt it was only right that he know because, as time passed, Doug's visits became longer and more frequent and he and Mom spent more and more time alone together. But Jon had said nothing, knowing how his mother would have reacted, how she would have shouted at him and probably grounded him until he was thirty. Then, when Dad just sort of disappeared, Jon had wished he'd told him, just come right out with it no matter what Mom would have done. Maybe then the past year would have been very different.
"Who else?" Dad asked.
Jon was startled. "What?"
"Who else is she with? You were about to say someone else. Who?"
"Oh. Um. Well..."
"It's all right. You can tell me."
"His name is Doug."
Dad repeated the name softly: "Doug. Hm. Doug." Then he nodded as he stared at the restaurant's bright windows. After a moment, he turned to Jon and asked, "Does he live with you?"
Jon bowed his head, feeling ashamed, as if he had betrayed his dad somehow, as if he had asked Doug to move in with them himself. "Yeah."
"It's okay, Jon. Don't feel bad about it. Is he a good man? Does he treat you well?"
Jon shrugged.
"Oh, c'mon. He's gotta have some good qualities."
Another shrug. "I don't know. Things just aren't...the same."
"Things don't ever stay the same, Jon."
Looking into his dad's black face, Jon asked, "Can I come live with you? I could go on the road with you. I've only got another year of school left, and I could take a correspondence course. We could—"
But he was already shaking his head. "No, Jon. You've got to stay with your mom. She's really going to be needing you after Grandma dies. And just in case this Doug isn't such a good guy after all, she needs someone around to keep an eye on her. And you need to finish school with your friends."
Jon clenched his teeth as a surge of anger welled up in his chest, anger at the unfairness of his life. He had no control over anything around him; he wasn't able to make any choices for himself, they were made for him by others, whether he liked the outcome or not. Suddenly he didn't want to be with his dad anymore, even though he'd wanted for the past year to see him so badly. He felt like throwing a tantrum, the kind only children threw when things didn't go their way. He felt like hitting something, like shouting, like—
"Why the hell did you have to just disappear like that?" Jon shouted. His voice was deafening in the cab and his dad started. "Did you think just because she wanted to leave you that I did, too? You couldn't write? You couldn't call once in a while? Just pick up a phone somewhere and call? Other people are divorced, some of my friends' parents are divorced, but they at least keep in touch with their kids, you know? They call, they visit. But you, you just...you just disappear, like a fucking criminal, like you're wanted by the police, or something! And you look so bad, so sick, like there's something wrong with you, but you won't tell me anything, like where you've been or where you're going or if I'm ever going to see you again, and…and I..." His next words stuck in his throat for a moment, clogging with the hot tears that were burning there and welling up in his eyes. Lowering his voice, but still speaking with trembling intensity, he added, "I hate you for that. I've thought about you so much this past year, thinking you'd come back or get in touch. But I had to meet you here by accident, and if I hadn't I'd probably never see you again. And I really don't care if I do." He fumbled with the door's handle to get out but it was locked and he groped around to unlock it, saying, "Because I hate you. For leaving me with her and just taking off, I hate you, I hate you for—"
His dad closed a hand gently around Jon's wrist and Jon gasped, shocked by the icy chill of his dad's skin. He froze, looked down at the hand on him, so white, veins so pronounced, fingers so boney...then he looked at his dad.
He'd leaned forward and his face was in the light. He looked different than before and worse than Jon had originally thought. His skin, impossibly drained of all color, seemed to be stretched taut over his skull, showing every bone in his face but his eyes were now bright above half moons of sagging flesh, wide, more alive than Jon had ever seen them, but sunken so deep into their sockets that they seemed about to completely disappear.
AIDS, Jon thought with horror, unable to speak the word, he's got AIDS. He's dying.
"Please don't hate me, Jonny," he said in a whisper. "I didn't want to disappear. I've thought of you every single day since the last time I saw you. But I...couldn't see you. I didn't want you to see me. Not like this."
"What's... wruh-wrong, Dad?"
"Something's happened to me. I'm...different now."
"Do you have—"
"No-no, I don't have anything. Not...really. I guess you could say I'm not well, but it's not a sickness. Not exactly." He looked down at his hand on Jon's wrist and frowned, thinking, struggling with something.
"What, Dad? Tell me what's wrong with you."
"I can't, Jon. I just can't explain it, it's too...you wouldn't understand it. You'd think I'm crazy."
"No I wouldn't!" Jon hissed.
He was silent for a long time, so long that Jon began to think he'd just...slipped away, or something. Then he nodded. Looked Jon in the eyes. And speaking slowly and monotonously, he began to tell Jon what had happened to him in the last year.
As he listened, Jon was filled slowly with a fear much colder than the snowy night outside...
CHAPTER 7
As Kevin passed the order counter carrying a tray of dirty utensils, the cook, Arnie Hamilton, leaned out and called, "Hey, Kevin, we're almost out of cheese. Go down and get some, huh?"
Kevin put the tray down on the dish cart with a tray of plates and called over his shoulder, "What kind?"
"Both."
"No problem." He smiled slightly as he wiped his hands. He liked to go down in the basement; he was the only one who ever went down in the basement on this shift and it gave him a chance to be alone and take a few tokes.
Passing through the kitchen, Kevin grabbed a
ring of keys from a hook on the wall. At the end of a narrow corridor that went all the way to the back of the building, he unlocked a rickety door, reached in to flick on a light and went down the steep stairs to the basement.
The fluorescent tube lights made delicate tinkling sounds as they flickered on and bathed the stacks of boxes and crates and shelves of restaurant equipment in glaring white light. It was damp and smelled of cardboard and wet cement and it was almost as cold going down there as it would have been stepping outside.
Across the basement from the staircase was the freezer's broad steel door. Kevin thought it looked like the door to some awful prison cell, the kind of cell reserved for only the most heinous offenders; sometimes when he opened it up, he imagined finding not the restaurant's food but a dark and smelly room with mossy stone walls to which were chained the decayed rat-eaten remains of prisoners who had been locked up and forgotten. Of course, there was nothing beyond the big steel door but meats, cheeses, ice cream, frozen batters and God only knew what else, but giving his imagination an occasional walk in the park made Kevin's job a little more enjoyable.
His feet crunched over the damp concrete floor as he reached under his smock, unfastened his breast pocket and removed a joint. There were NO SMOKING signs posted all over the basement, but Kevin ignored them. He'd been performing this little ritual ever since he'd gotten the job and had found a way to keep the smell from lingering.
Near the ceiling was a rectangular window about two feet by three with a sturdy padlock on a hinge-latch. Months ago, Kevin had tried every small key on the ring that hung in the kitchen until the lock chittered free.
Now he climbed a couple crates and unlocked the window, pulling it open to let in a blast of icy air. He sat on the crate, cupped his hand around the lighter and lit the joint, drawing the sweet smoke in deeply and holding it in his lungs.
His job was the best thing that had happened to him in a long time. Aside from being around Jenny—something he enjoyed so much that he figured it was probably weird...unhealthy, or something—it got him out of the house and away from the constant screaming that was a way of life for his uncle Mike and aunt Sylvia. He'd been living with them since his parents were killed in a house fire almost four years ago and he'd hated every minute of it. Most of the time they seemed unaware of his presence and when they did notice him, it was only to shout at him for one thing or another. His parents hadn't been much better, but at least they weren't screaming all the time and they didn't live in Yreka. He'd tried saving money with the hope of moving south to Redding on his own when he could afford it, but jobs didn't pay much in Yreka and he wasn't going to get any help from Mike and Sylvia, so he held his money in an iron grip. His only luxury was the little baggy of marijuana he bought every couple months from Corky Potter who lived, appropriately, in nearby Weed. He hadn't been on a date in all the years he'd lived in Yreka and he didn't go to movies or eat out; he had no friends to speak of, but that was okay because, the way he saw it, having friends meant having to spend money now and then, so he couldn't afford them. He had his job, and he enjoyed it.
After the second hit, Kevin began to feel the effects of the grass—a little relaxed, a little horny—but decided he had time for one more hit before getting the cheese and going back upstairs. He inhaled a third time and lifted his face to the window so the smoke would waft outside and—
—a small white face smiled at him from outside and said, "Smells good."
Kevin fell from the crate and landed on the cement with an explosive grunt. He scrambled to his feet coughing and spun around as two legs slid through the open window.
"Sorry," the girl said, still smiling as she hopped off the crates. "Didn't mean to scare you." She brushed snow from her curly brown hair and the shoulders of her blue down jacket. "Are you okay?"
Kevin was shaken, but unhurt. "Y-yeah, I'm fine, but... um, you shouldn't be in here. I could get into trouble."
"I think you could get into trouble all by yourself." She looked down at the smoldering joint on the floor.
Kevin stamped out the ember with the toe of his shoe and put the joint back in his pocket. "Yeah, well... you should go." He fidgeted, looking the girl up and down quickly, then turning toward the freezer.
"Why? Is somebody else coming down here?"
"Maybe," he lied, opening the freezer.
"Ah. You're expecting company? Your girlfriend, maybe?"
He heard her footsteps on the concrete as she followed him. He said nothing as he searched for the boxes of shredded cheese.
"You have a girlfriend?"
He hefted the box out of the freezer, looking at the girl again.
She was kind of cute. No... cute wasn't exactly the right word. Exotic...yes, she was exotic. She had very pretty dark eyes, heavy lidded, as if she were sleepy, and smooth lips which she licked as she unzipped her puffy jacket.
"Look, I'm working right now, okay?" He tried to sound firm but he was preoccupied with the open front of her jacket, with the impressive curve of her breasts beneath the black sweatshirt she wore, and with the tingly feeling that had already been stirred in him by the marijuana. He put the box down and added, "I've been down here too long already."
"Oh. So you aren't waiting for your girlfriend."
"No. Um, you've gotta go now. Really." He was sounding less convincing each time he spoke.
"Out there? But it's so cold."
"Go inside. Get some coffee."
"It's packed in there. Besides, I don't have any money. I'm stuck here." She slipped her jacket off and tossed it onto the crate behind her. On her sweatshirt, red letters stretched taut over her surprisingly large breasts: EASY BUT NOT CHEAP.
He thought about it a long time. Yes, he could get into trouble. But no one ever came down to the basement besides Kevin and he did have a break coming. He could even take it early.
"So you want to stay down here a while?" he asked.
Her eyes brightened a little. "Could I? I promise not to touch anything and I won't make any noise. I'll just sit down here for a while, that's all. I could use the rest."
The marijuana was making him feel a little more sure of himself than he would have been otherwise and he nodded slowly as he looked the girl over. What skin he could see looked silky; she wore no bra and when she moved, her breasts shifted slightly beneath the black material. She was probably seventeen, maybe eighteen. Yes...exotic. In spite of his boldness—he usually found it difficult to stare so shamelessly at women—he was nervous inside, jittery, and his mouth felt dry. The condition worsened as he let his mind wander through the possibilities.
Kevin had never been with a girl before, never touched a girl. He was too busy saving his money to spend it on dinners and movies and whatever else people did on dates. But this would be different. This would be free.
"Okay," he said, going back into the freezer. He got the second box of cheese, brought it out and put it on top of the first and pushed the freezer door shut.
"I can stay, you mean?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, jeez, thanks, I really—"
She stopped when he stepped in front of her and, trying hard to bury his nervousness, said, "But what do I get for letting you?"
She stared at him expressionlessly a moment, then smirked again. Her tongue flicked out over her lower lip, there and gone in a flash, like a snake's. "Well..." She looked him over then held his eyes with hers. "What do you want?"
"I let you stay here and I get to... spend my break with you."
"Okay. Yeah." She lifted a hand and brushed her fingertips lightly over his throat just below his jaw. Kevin almost flinched, but resisted. "Yeah, you come back."
As he lifted the boxes and started upstairs, Kevin felt her watching him, felt those heavy lidded eyes on his back. Half way up, he turned and looked down at her.
She was watching him, sitting on her coat on the crate, legs spread; her elbows rested on her knees, arms dangling between her thighs, long fingers twitchi
ng. She was smiling.
"I'll leave the light on," he said.
"No, that's okay." It was nearly a whisper. "I like the dark."
As Kevin started back up the stairs, she added, "Take your break early."
His thoughts were so concentrated on the girl that he completely forgot to relock the window. In fact, he was so preoccupied that, later, as he hurried from table to table in the restaurant, he didn't even realize that he was ignoring Jenny completely, as if she weren't even there...
CHAPTER 8
Jon watched his dad grow smaller.
As he told Jon about the night he'd taken a sickly girl into his sleeper in Missouri, about the black truck she'd gotten into and the man who'd driven it away, Dad hunched farther and farther forward until he seemed to be curling into a ball behind the wheel. After a long pause, he continued:
"After that, when I realized this was not going to go away, when I realized what I was, I—"
"What do you mean, what you are? What're you—"
"Just let me finish, Jon. I made arrangements for the divorce right away and let your mother have everything. Well, almost everything. I had my lawyer wire me some money from my savings account, enough to live on for a while." He seemed to think about that a moment, then chuckled coldly, muttering, "Enough to live on. Hmph. Anyway, I left her everything else. I knew I wouldn't need it. I sure wasn't going to go home. I didn't want to expose any of you to this...to me. I still didn't understand it and didn't know how to handle it. But I knew I was different. I noticed changes in myself, weird changes, in the next couple of days. Like, breathing...I caught myself not breathing sometimes, just not taking in any breath. I realized I could go for hours without a single breath. Now, I have to make a conscious effort to breathe. It just doesn't come naturally. And sunlight. I couldn't stand the sunlight, Jonny, still can't. And when I tried to eat food or drink anything, even water? I got sick, deathly ill. But I still felt hungry, I craved...something. I got bad...weak, shaky, cold. I finally stopped one night at a hospital in Kansas and went into the emergency room. There was a boy there. He'd been hit by a car and they were just taking him in. He'd bled a lot. All over the waiting room. It was on the floor, one of the sofas. I could smell it the second I walked in and I just went...crazy. I dropped to my knees and put my face down on the floor and just started licking it up. Rubbed my face all around in it like some animal. The receptionist started screaming and a doctor ran out and just... stood there. Looking at me. Like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Hell, I couldn't believe what I was doing. But it was good, it was so good. And I felt better. Stronger. More alert. After a few seconds, the doctor came for me, shouting something. I'm not sure what. I hauled ass out of there, ran to my truck and took off. But I knew for sure what I was then. And what I needed. And I knew I needed more of it right away. Now...I couldn't believe it at first, even after I knew. It was happening to me and I couldn't believe it, because it was just too...too crazy. But it was true. And I was hungry." He wiped his face with a palm and turned away from Jon, silent for a while.