Failure As a Way of Life

by Andersen Prunty

  “Oh, hey man.” He throws his hand up and finishes filling the bottle he’s working on before turning in his chair to face me. “You got my truck and my phone and shit?”

  “Yeah. I drove it to work today.”

  I take his phone out of my pocket and hand it to him. I don’t really know why I brought it in with me. I don’t like to be responsible for things. My intention was to probably leave it on his desk.

  He turns his phone on and quickly scrolls through it.

  I move closer to him, inspecting him while his attention is elsewhere.

  He radiates something he’s never radiated before. He practically glows. There is a scent coming from him that isn’t as displeasing as the patchouli he typically uses to cover up intense BO and what I’d always assumed was improper or just lazy ass wiping. It was never the patchouli I found displeasing.

  I inspect his head. There doesn’t seem to be a mark on it.

  “I thought . . .” I trail off, not really knowing what I thought. That he was dead, I guess. Or at least very badly injured or perhaps even drowned. I’m so overwhelmed with relief I have to sit down.

  He glances up. “Yeah. Want to go to lunch?”

  I don’t have any money. “I guess I can get coffee or something,” I say.

  “Don’t worry, man. I’ll get it.” Then he mouths, “I got a raise.”

  And, like that, all of my relief and goodwill is replaced with a seething rage. Not at Gus. At this point, it’s hard to see Gus as anything but some kind of risen messiah. The rage is at Dr. Jolly.

  So I guess that’s how it goes. He has to practically kill you before he’ll give you a raise. The raise is probably just hush money to make sure Gus doesn’t blab to anyone about how Dr. Jolly threw him in the well so he wouldn’t be responsible for someone getting killed on his property. I think about throwing myself behind Dr. Jolly’s car except that, now that I think about it, I’ve never seen him drive and don’t even know if he owns a car. I think about accidentally breaking one of the bottles as I’m filling it, brutally slashing my wrists, but that seems too much like the suicide I meditate on every three months or so.

  “Okay. Cool,” I say. “Around noon?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I plug my earbuds into my phone, cue up some music, and get to work. I find that if you don’t have something to drown out the sound of water constantly running, all you have to do is piss all day.

  * * *

  At lunch, we drive into Twin Springs and I get a sandwich and coffee from Pete’s Market, the grocery store. Gus buys a pack of cigarettes on our way out. We find a park bench in front of an herb garden and sit down. It’s warm, the sunlight making my rash itch. I fight the urge to scratch.

  “So . . .?” I unwrap my sandwich.

  “I know. Friday was weird, huh?”

  “To say the least. I thought you were dead or something.”

  “I probably would have been if it hadn’t been for the bag of shit.”

  “The bag of shit?” I’d already forgotten about it.

  “Yeah. It must have softened the blow or something. The impact was still enough to knock me out.”

  “But there was blood.”

  “There was shit,” he said. “Maybe you thought it was blood, but it was definitely shit. Like diarrhea shit. I gotta start eating better.”

  “Kinda surprised you didn’t drown.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. I think the water revived me. And, I don’t know, Jolly must be down there a lot because there’s like a permanent ladder on the side. I panicked for a couple of minutes until I put things together and found it and climbed up. It’s probably why he seems so fit and wiry. That’s hard fucking work. I climbed up and didn’t have my phone so I walked out to the road and saw that my truck was gone so I just went to the hut and waited for Jolly. He let me in and I just started working. Didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You didn’t think about calling me to pick you up or anything?”

  “Nah. Honestly, I felt a little dazed. Kinda weird. Sorta stoned almost.”

  “And you’ve been in there working since Friday night?”

  He laughs. “It does sound kind of crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “And you got a raise?”

  “Yeah. That happened Sunday morning. I think Jolly felt kind of guilty or something.”

  “How much?”

  “I’m not allowed to discuss it.”

  “Come on.”

  “I promised. Let’s just say my money problems are over. I don’t spend much money anyway but now I might even be able to start saving something.”

  What he describes sounds like an enviable position. I’d blown off college and opted for slacker jobs right out of high school, blaming my then marriage and spending most of my free time on writing, telling myself if it was ever going to pay off, it might be big. Over the years I’d seen the publishing industry slowly decay, became a lot less naive about who actually gets published by large publishers, and a lot more aware of the fact I was writing shit no one really wanted to read. Still, I never opted to find a better job, telling myself if I just stayed at Jolly’s and kept quiet and worked hard, I might be able to eke out some kind of living. Which I guess I was doing but it was so tied up in deprivation I didn’t know if I could really describe it as living.

  “That . . . sounds great,” I say.

  “I feel rejuvenated,” he says. “I think maybe there is something to Dr. Jolly’s Godwater. I think I’m going to start bathing in it . . . Now that I can afford to. But maybe only like once a week.”

  I take a bite of my sandwich and furiously scratch my forearm.

  We finish our sandwiches and sit on the bench and smoke cigarettes. A girl walks by on the sidewalk in front of us and I notice Gus’s leering gaze fall upon her. She’s wearing black stretch pants and a tie-dyed t-shirt. She has a bandana tied do-rag style over her head. She smiles and then stops.

  “Hey there,” she says to Gus.

  “Hey,” he says and I wonder if they know each other.

  “Could I possibly bum a smoke?” she says, acting somewhat embarrassed.

  Gus pulls the pack from his shirt pocket and says, “Hey, wait, are you even eighteen?”

  She smiles again and says, “About a decade ago.”

  “Okay,” Gus says. He pulls a cigarette out and hands it to her, lights it for her.

  I expect her to walk on but she says, “Scooch over,” and sits next to Gus.

  They begin talking and I faze out for a couple of minutes. When my cigarette’s finished, I crush it out and stand to toss it in the trashcan by the street.

  “We should probably get back,” I say, interrupting them.

  Gus pulls his phone out and checks the time. “Yeah, I guess we should,” he says. Then, to the girl, he says, “Are you on MyFace?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’m on there under Leslie Feldmeyer, but everyone calls me Tarot.”

  Gus is looking at his phone. “Found you. Sent you a friend request.”

  “Oh, cool,” she says. “I don’t have my phone on me. I’ll accept it when I get home. Thanks for the smoke.”

  “Want one for the road?”

  “Sure,” she says and Gus hands her another one.

  We get in the truck and I say, “You’ve got it.”

  “What?” he says.

  “I don’t know. It. Whatever it is.”

  We drive the short drive to work, out in the countryside, and I wonder if I can handle my best friend being successful.

  10

  Fucking Republicans

  I pull into the driveway, the dread I feel as soon as I get off the highway and enter Dayton now fully settled in my core. There’s a fancy Cadillac parked on the curb in front of the house and my first thought is that it’s the landlord and we’ve done something wrong. Maybe it’s illegal to do sex work in the house. I don’t know.

  I give myself a tho
rough scratchdown before getting out of the car. I’ve tried to keep the scratching to a minimum around Alice. She hasn’t mentioned the quite visible rash as of yet. It’s probably because she keeps her eyes closed on the rare occasions we actually have sex and she never touches any part of me except my cock. Otherwise I think she tries not to look at me so she can pretend she’s living with someone else. I can’t really blame her.

  A fat, sweaty man, probably in his fifties, exits the house and begins walking toward his Cadillac. He’s smiling broadly and gives me a wave.

  “Hoo boy!” he says.

  The front door’s unlocked and I go into the house to find Alice naked and smoking a cigarette in bed.

  “Did you . . .?” I begin.

  “I was waiting for you,” she says.

  I waste no time in stripping off my clothes and getting into bed with her even though I feel really bad about myself. She goes down on me for the first time in I don’t know how long but the only thing I can really think about is the guy leaving the house. I wouldn’t doubt it if Alice were fucking guys on the side and I wonder if it bothers me more that the guy seemed like a rich, old, fat Republican. Like it implies Alice has no standards. Which goes a long way toward explaining why she’s with me but also makes me feel even worse about myself. Has she transitioned from a cam girl into a prostitute? If so, I again feel as though this is my fault. Because of my low income and lack of drive, the arguably most attractive and inarguably youngest girlfriend I’ve ever had is now forced to fuck Republicans for money.

  I’m not getting hard.

  “What’s wrong?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure I do know what’s wrong and it’s the thought of another man having his cock inside of her a very short while ago.

  She tries bringing me to life with her hand.

  “Who was that guy I saw leaving?”

  “The cable guy.”

  “We don’t have cable.”

  “I was thinking about getting it.”

  “Cable guys drive Cadillacs?”

  She rolls her eyes and takes her hand off me.

  “The sales people do. You really want to talk about this now?”

  “Is there a better time?”

  “Okay, you got me. He’s a client, okay?”

  “Jesus. Did you fuck him?”

  She frowns. “Is that what you think I do all day? Whore around? Fuck you. He just wanted to spank me for a little while. It’s all pretty harmless. See?”

  She gets up on her knees and turns around so I can see the big red handprints on her ass.

  I’m suddenly hard.

  I get up on my knees and move behind her.

  “Don’t care so much now, huh?” she says.

  When finished, we lie on the sweat-dampened sheet under the ceiling fan.

  “I think I hate Gus,” I say.

  “Who’s Gus?” she says and I wonder if she’s ever listened to a word I’ve said.

  11

  No Returns

  PAY UP!

  The words are scrawled in dripping red spraypaint across the windshield of my car. The driver’s side window is smashed out, the rock that presumably did the deed sitting in the driver’s seat. Anger surges through me but ultimately I just feel like crying. I stand looking at my vandalized car and absently scratching my left arm.

  The Monarch shuffles up next to me, virtually soundless. He’s drinking beer from a can in a koozie. It’s like nine o’clock in the morning.

  “Guess you better pay up, huh?” he says.

  “Did you see who did this?”

  “Big guy in a big black truck. Didn’t have time to stop him.”

  Bart. Jen’s brother. It had to be. He’s a complete and total psychopath and the fact that I’m now on his bad side is a whole other level of dread I have to deal with.

  The Monarch goes over to the driver’s side of the car and mimics the scene as he describes it.

  “He just turned around in your driveway, pulled up right next to your car, painted that message, and threw the rock threw the window.” At this he extends the hand holding the beer toward the window before taking a big drink.

  “I was thinking it probably went down like that.”

  “Want to come back to my place and grab a beer? You look like you could use it.”

  “Nah. I was on my way to work. I guess I’ll have to see if my friend can take me.”

  “I’d let you take my car but it’s got four flats right now.”

  “That’s all right. Thanks anyway.”

  I go back into the house and call Gus. He tells me he wasn’t planning on going to work today and asks if I want to go to Easy J’s and get breakfast. I say sure.

  While waiting for him I duct tape a trash bag to the driver’s side door to replace the window and do my best to get the shards of glass off the seat. I wonder if I should save the rock for evidence but decide it’s not really necessary. I’m not reporting this to the police so I just toss it into the woods at the end of the street. I’ll have to try googling the best way to remove spraypaint from a windshield.

  * * *

  “Dermatitis herpetiformis,” Gus says from across the booth at Easy J’s.

  “Whatitty whattus?” I say.

  “Your rash. I think that’s what it is. Probably too much gluten.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s probably in everything.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s just stress.”

  “Either way it’s probably not going away anytime soon.”

  “Thanks for being so hopeful. Did you trim your beard?”

  He shrugs. I don’t know what this means. His beard is cropped close to his face. It almost looks like he has a jawline. His usually muddy brown and graying hair is pulled back into an artfully sloppy man bun and has an almost golden shine to it.

  The waitress creeps up to the table. It’s Maybelline, our favorite. She’s rail thin, has a lazy eye, and looks like she’s had a rough life. We order our food. It’s probably all loaded with gluten.

  “Maybe you should go to the doctor and get it checked out,” Gus says.

  “I can’t afford to go to the doctor. We’ve been over this. Plus I probably don’t want to know what’s wrong with me. It sounds like herpes or something, if it’s what you said it was.”

  “I don’t think gluten causes herpes. Maybe you should take a bath in the Godwater.”

  “I think that would be more expensive than going to the doctor.”

  “Do you want me to drop you off at work when we leave here?”

  “Nah. I’ve already committed to not going. I should go but I’m just not feeling it.”

  “Yeah. That’s the way I felt last night when I went to bed. I thought, ‘I’m not going to work tomorrow.’ I’m salary now anyway, so fuck it.”

  “You’re salary?”

  “Yep. I can work two hours a week or fifty. It’s all the same.”

  “I’m not really sure—”

  He waves me away as if he doesn’t want to hear any rational argument.

  Maybelline brings two plates of heaping food and sets them on the table. Now it’s hard to see it as anything other than fuel for the rash, but I’m starving so I tear into it anyway.

  About halfway through, Gus catches my eye and nods my attention over to the register.

  There’s a morbidly obese woman in a muumuu arguing with a different waitress behind the register.

  “Your sign says ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed.’ I ain’t satisfied,” the obese woman says.

  “Then why did you eat everything?”

  “Cause I was hungry!”

  “If you’d let us know you weren’t satisfied we could have fixed it for you. But it’s a little late now. Best I can do is ten percent off.”

  “That ain’t good enough. I ain’t got time to sit around and wait for you bums to try and get it right. Should get it right the first time
.”

  “I’m terribly sorry. There’s nothing we can do now.”

  “I want my money back.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You know what then? You can take back your shitty food.”

  The woman slaps her meaty hands down on the counter, bracing herself, leans over and begins vomiting her breakfast all over the counter.

  The waitress steps back quickly, a look of horror on her face.

  “Ted!” she calls to the back. “Get up here!”

  A man with close-cropped gray hair emerges from the back and says, “Dear Lord. Lady, you need to get out of here.”

  “Not until I get my refund.”

  The man opens the register, pulls out some cash, and drops it into the puke.

  “Real nice!” the woman shouts. “Real classy!”

  She delicately plucks the bills up and shakes them off before putting them in her massive purse.

  She turns to leave, a look of sublime satisfaction on her face.

  “Well that was exciting,” I say.

  “This place is great.”

  “Not sure I’m hungry anymore, though.”

  “You ready to take off?”

  12

  Cost of Living

  I strip out of my clothes before getting in the shower. Showers have always been a somewhat rare thing for me but especially so in the last six months, for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is the lack of sex with Alice. Another is my lack of raise at work. At the very least, I feel entitled to a cost of living raise, especially since I’ve been there for ten years and never received a single raise. Since I haven’t received even this token bump in pay, I decided to remove most things associated with the cost of living. I have to eat, but since I can’t afford to eat good food, I don’t. Lately Gus has been paying for most of my meals out with his raise and I buy the cheapest shit possible when I go to the grocery store. I haven’t bought new clothes in I don’t know how long and only wash them when they became offensive to me. I have pretty poor hygiene standards to begin with, so this isn’t very often. I haven’t shaved or cut my hair in over a year. And I really only shower if intimate relations with Alice are a guaranteed thing or I do something outside that makes me sweaty or itchy. I keep waiting for Dr. Jolly to ask me about my nearly homeless appearance and smell so I can shrug and say, “Eh, cost of living, you know?” but he’s never asked and probably never will. It occurs to me all of this may be contributing to the rash, but the internet has offered no help. Some sites say bathing merely throws off your skin’s biome and removes the good bacteria. Other sites say bacteria is filthy and you need to wash at least periodically to avoid the plague.