Running Into Trouble

by Mina McShady

  Nasty was too absorbed in the mechanics of smoking and breathing at the same time to notice Jennifer’s slack, empty expression. She motioned for Jennifer to come inside, and Jennifer followed slowly and stiffly, placing one undead foot after another. Immediately, Jennifer started coughing. It wasn’t that she actually needed to clear her airways. Instead, it was the abominable smell, an overpowering mixture of sweetly fermenting garbage and stale cigarettes with an undertone of sour, sick human and a sprightly hint of air freshener, no doubt intended to disguise everything else. She needed a socially acceptable reason to cover her nose and mouth, at least until she could get used to the assault by odors.

  As she made her way up the stairs and into Nasty’s living room, carefully stepping over clusters of newspapers and piles of unopened mail, Jennifer realized that she’d forgotten to hire a cleaning service for Nasty. I am a bad, bad friend, she thought, marveling at how she hadn’t thought about much except herself, Eli, and his probably ex-girlfriend Helen for days. She’d even missed a few training runs, something she almost never did, especially not with an important race like the Death March coming up in just thirteen more weeks.

  “Oh shit!”

  Cigarettes and a surprisingly large quantity of fine ash fell to the floor. Jennifer had knocked a precariously placed ashtray off Nasty’s glass coffee table, which was now barnacled with melted candle wax, sticky plates and coffee cups, stacks of romance novels, and a strange congealed goo the approximate color of maple syrup. The whole thing, she thought, was an abstract impressionist object d’art. I’d title it despair, thought Jennifer. Nasty, meanwhile, was turning a slightly darker, more purple shade of blue as she inhaled the dregs of her cigarette, sucking it down to the filter.

  “I am so, so sorry. Let me clean that up—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” rasped Nasty, who stubbed out her cigarette in yet another ashtray. Breathing hoarsely, she quickly grabbed the cannula hanging from the oxygen tree and installed it in her nose. Jennifer’s eyes flickered between Nasty’s hectic face and the cigarette butts now scattered on the floor. She started backing away towards the kitchen. She just wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting down for chat, all the while knowing that cigarette ash was slowly seeping into the carpet’s synthetic fibers. And, anyway, she had to do something to stop her slide from bad friend to awful, selfish monster.

  “I said don’t worry about it,” said Nasty, who was looking slightly less cadaverous. The oxygen was definitely having an effect.

  “It will only take a minute, and besides—”

  “You can clean it later. I want to know what you’ve been doing.” Nasty stopped to catch her breath, gesturing that Jennifer should sit down, and sit down now.

  Jennifer reluctantly gave up on the carpet for the time being and tried to excavate some space on Nasty’s couch. She grabbed an armful of clothes and piled them into a small mound at the end of the couch. She also removed a blackened banana and a dried up old apple core, and placed them on the coffee table. She was appalled. She imagined that Nasty would be hospitalized inside of a week. She was going to miss her friend.

  “Hey, you, stop that,” said Nasty, who thought she’d sensed pity emanating from Jennifer and didn’t like it one bit. “Come on,” she gasped. “Tell me a story.”

  -Eli Hawthorne-

  It was strange waking up in Jennifer’s boxy two-and-a-half-room apartment. Actually, he thought, it was three-and-a-half rooms, if you count the bathroom. She had no real furniture, just a collection of lumpy objects, ranging in color from off-white to institutional olive, sprawled across a dusty hardwood floor. He especially hated her futon, which smelled just slightly of dead leaves and seemed to be stuffed with a miniature mountain range of knobs and bumps hostile to the human back.

  Merrow. Merrow.

  Even worse, the futon’s position on the floor meant that he awoke each morning at eye level with Wretch, a scrawny, stinky half-Siamese that used to live on scraps from the dumpster in the Organic Food Store’s parking lot. Jennifer had brought the cat home a couple months ago, and it seemed to have an unlimited appetite for human affection. It followed Jennifer everywhere she went and, when she wasn’t around, it would climb all over Eli, scratching his sensitive skin with its sharp little claws. Sometimes, like this morning, it would sit and stare at Eli at close range, mewing loudly and exhaling toxic fumes of tuna breath.

  Eli groaned and got out of bed. Wretch followed him to the kitchen where he fumbled with Jennifer’s battered coffee maker. Of course, it wouldn’t be quite up to his standards—Jennifer didn’t own a bean grinder, and she hadn’t bought one, despite Eli’s hints. He poured himself a hot cup of joe and headed back into Jennifer’s “living room,” placing his feet carefully to avoid tripping over Wretch. He flopped down on a bruise-colored beanbag chair and looked around the room.

  Jennifer’s television was broken, so he couldn’t watch the news. She had a Macintosh with the rounded, contoured design so popular in the late 1990s, but it only had a poky dial up Web connection and, besides, it crashed every half hour or so. A squat clock radio-slash-CD-player lurked with some dust bunnies in a dimly lit corner, but the radio reception was of random quality, depending a great deal on the weather, and Jennifer’s small pile of CDs, an eclectic collection mostly left behind by ex-boyfriends, were already somewhat over familiar.

  Eli sighed, sipping his coffee and fending off the advances of Wretch. Except for the fact that he (or she, he didn’t know) was a cat, Wretch sort of reminded him of Hell. He figured it was the enormous hunger for affection. If only Wretch could calm down, he’d be a good cat. Likewise, if Hell could have just relaxed a little, she would have been the perfect girlfriend. Of course, there was no way he and Hell could get back together now.

  He remembered the look in her eyes when she discovered him and Jennifer. Shock, hurt, and anger distorted her features until her face was a swollen, goggle-eyed mask. Unbelievably, she’d fallen on Jennifer, using her long, carefully manicured nails to rip and tear. When scratching wasn’t enough, she began pummeling Jennifer, who just lay there as passively as a giant cotton doll. Although Hell was enraged, she was also weirdly focused. Her tongue stuck out slightly from the corner of her mouth, just like it did when she ran at a challenging pace, and the punches she threw were regular and evenly distributed along Jennifer’s torso. The sight of the two women was so strange and so unexpected that Eli waited almost two minutes before he realized that he would have to come to Jennifer’s aid.

  Inexperienced with physical violence of any kind—Eli had never even been in a playground fight—he grabbed Hell’s arms and attempted to pull her back. The soft flesh on her forearms was hot, as if her anger was burning just beneath her skin. But instead of simply yielding to him, she twisted away and clawed at his face, digging a red groove from his eyebrow to the corner of his mouth. Energized by the sudden pain, Eli held Hell tightly and pulled her away from the bed. Even though he had her in a tight grip, she kept struggling. She scratched, kicked, and bit; she cried out like wounded animal.

  “Is everything okay in there?” called Bob Robertson in rounded, self-satisfied tones. Of course, thought Eli, he must have called Hell. But he wondered if Bob had known what Hell was certain to find.

  At the sound of Bob’s voice, Hell went pale and limp. Reluctantly he let her go. She swayed gently on her feet and her shoulders slumped forward. She looked much older than twenty-eight.

  “Oh my, what have we here?” Bob’s mouth wore an exaggerated frown. It had crossed Eli’s mind that he, Bob, was trying very hard not to smirk or smile.

  Eli thought quickly. He had a big scratch on his face, but it was probably okay. In fact, the injury made him feel better about being discovered by Hell; it was as though he’d already done some penance. And it boosted his morale in another way: if Hell was the type of person who could become frenzied like that, then who could really blame him for cheating on her?

  “Helen will take us both home,�
�� he said. “Isn’t that right?”

  Hell nodded wanly. “I’ll go, uh, out to the car,” she said, her voice breaking.

  Eli watched Hell shuffle out the door and down the hallway, and then he looked over at Jennifer. While he was struggling with Hell, she must have hidden herself in the sheet because all he could see was an off-white shrouded lump.

  “Is she?” asked Bob with wide, gleeful eyes, first gesturing toward where Hell had gone and then at the bed with its incriminating bulge.

  Eli, not completely sure what Bob was getting at, just shook his head. “We just need a minute, okay?” he said, hoping Bob would take the hint and leave the room so Jennifer could get dressed.

  “Ohhhhhhhh,” replied Bob with a knowing wink. “Stop by the kitchen if you’d like some coffee.”

  Eli quickly shut the door behind Bob and went to Jennifer, who was slowly pushing herself out of her cloth cocoon. At first, all he could see was her brown, sinewy back. She was moving easily; she seemed okay. But then she turned around and faced him. He gasped when he saw her bruised, damaged face. She’ll almost certainly need stitches, he thought with a pang of guilt.

  Without speaking, she dressed quickly and, keeping her eyes trained on the floor, she approached Eli and took his hand. Her fingers were tapered and delicate with long, breakable bones.

  “It’s okay,” he said in a husky voice. “Let’s go.”

  The two of them glided down the hallway and down the stairs. Without saying goodbye to Bob—they each had their reasons for not wanting Bob to see Jennifer’s ruined face—they hurried to Hell’s car.

  Eli gave Hell careful driving directions to the Crawford Memorial hospital. Otherwise, they didn’t speak. To Eli, this silent, shell-shocked Hell was a stranger, a ghost. At the hospital, she followed him and Jennifer to the waiting area in the E.R. When Eli accompanied Jennifer into triage, he wondered if Hell would still be there when he got back. After Jennifer had received twelve stitches distributed amongst four cuts, an ice pack, and two Tylenol, they returned to the waiting room where they found Hell, apparently thinking hard behind a glassy-eyed stare.

  Eli touched her shoulder and she flinched, as though she’d been burned.

  “C’mon,” he said, taking Hell’s arm and gently pulling her in the direction of the parking lot.

  The three of them got into the car, and it suddenly occurred to Eli that he had no idea where Jennifer lived.

  “Jennifer,” he said. “Can you tell Helen how to drive to your house?”

  Within half an hour, they were in front of Jennifer's ramshackle apartment complex. Jennifer got out of the car and, without a glance behind her, walked towards her front door. Eli frowned. He didn’t think he could go home with Hell. He knew he’d been wrong, that he shouldn’t have cheated on her, that he’d broken their agreement. But he also felt a deep revulsion from watching her lose control and attack Jennifer. He needed time to let the memory of Hell’s undignified, inchoate rage fade. So he made an instant decision. He got out of the car and followed Jennifer. He waved at Hell, to indicate that she should go.

  For what seemed like a long time, Hell’s car sat in Jennifer’s parking lot. Hell was slumped over the wheel, apparently crying. The windows were lightly fogged with her rapid, shallow exhalations. But, eventually, she left.

  And now Eli, squatting in Jennifer’s apartment, feeling a strange mixture of relief and regret and a certain materialistic nostalgia, had no idea what he was going to do.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  “So, wait a minute,” wheezed Nasty. “You mean you didn’t press charges?”

  “Press charges?” asked Jennifer, staring blanking at Nasty’s oxygen tree. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, call the cops, make a statement, send that bitch to jail,” explained Nasty, as if she were speaking to a simple child. “That witch attacked you. It doesn’t matter if she was upset. Physical violence is always wrong. It’s uncivilized.”

  Jennifer frowned. It was true that she was bruised and her face was torn. The welts on her face had faded from a turgid purple to a yellow-ish green. It would be another week until her stitches could come out. But the injuries actually made her feel good—or, if not good, then better. She had been stricken dumb by the mournful look on Helen’s face. It was like Helen had found out she had terminal cancer on the way to her mother’s funeral and then somehow found herself staring at a whole roomful of dead puppies. The fact that Helen had lashed out, had resorted to the most primitive possible response, was the only thing keeping Jennifer from dissolving into a helpless, quivering pile of guilt.

  When she looked in the mirror, the bruises reminded Jennifer that, although she had done wrong, Helen had enjoyed some measure of revenge. The karma, she felt, was relatively balanced. So, instead of trying to cover up her bruises, which were turning a sickly greenish yellow with age, with large sunglasses or makeup, Jennifer presented them unashamedly to the world. She’d even stopped fixing her hair and wearing earrings because she felt it was appropriate for her to look somewhat down and out.

  “Well?” asked Nasty an edge of impatience, which Jennifer understood to be a manifestation of her condition. Nasty really didn’t have a lot of time for dithering; she preferred to get straight to the point.

  “I don’t know,” said Jennifer. “I guess I just figured we were kind of even. I mean, I slept with her boyfriend, she beat me up a little. The scales are balanced.”

  “So have you been to any R&M club events?”

  “No,” replied Jennifer in a small voice. “I’m laying low for a while. Waiting for all the gossip to die down.”

  “Jesus Christ! That’s the worst thing you could do. I bet Helen’s running around, sucking up all the sympathy, poisoning people’s minds. You’ve got to be out there, showing off your bruises and your cuts, or people will think—”

  Jennifer looked on as Nasty had an epic coughing fit. Wet and convulsive, it went on and on for almost two minutes, until Nasty brought up a streaky gelatinous mass that she hid in a wad of tissues.

  “So,” said Jennifer with a rueful grin, “aren’t you glad I decided to be reckless?”

  -Helen Kale-

  Helen chugged slowly up Screw You Hill, a treacherous single track in the Abyss, a remote spot of woods known for its sheer inaccessibility. If you couldn’t run or walk out of the Abyss, you weren’t getting out. But Helen didn’t care. The gentle, rhythmic drumming of her feet on rocky ground provided a metronome for her symphony of wild, obsessive thoughts.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Eli and that awful, scrawny Jennifer she’d found him with. When she walked through the bedroom door, the two of them froze. Their faces wore almost identical expressions of surprise and embarrassment and pity. Instead of begging her forgiveness or scrambling to get dressed or even gloating, they just stared at her helplessly, looking for their cue.

  The hill was steeper now, and Helen was breathing hard. Her footsteps were closer together. It was getting more difficult to think, but not impossible. She remembered the hot wave of rage that had passed through her, how she’d hated their passivity. She'd also felt hundreds of odd little occurrences and larger mysteries suddenly click into place. All of Helen’s problems with Eli for the past two years led straight to her.

  At the crest of the hill, Helen looked over the town. She saw the tiny little colored boxes that made up Crawford’s Notch. The trail ended, but she kept going, bushwhacking her way through low brush and a pointy-leaved plant that was probably poison oak. She knew that Eli and Jennifer had been counting on her to be civilized, to be a great gal, a superior human being, a law abiding citizen. Boy, were they surprised, she thought, releasing a harsh laugh into the forest.

  Plowing her way through a bush bearing small round berries, Helen relived that singular moment of violence when she set upon Jennifer like an avenging harpy and dug her nails in, surrendering to her anger without even a glimmer of doubt. And although she knew she should feel guilty—s
he put the bitch in the hospital, for God’s sake—she didn’t. Instead she missed the perfect clarity of unalloyed rage.

  Without this certainty, she was lost. She couldn’t sleep or even sit in one place for very long. By staying in motion, Helen hoped to outrun her despair and exhaust her mind. She wanted to come home and collapse into bed before she could start fondling Eli’s things, pacing from room to room, and asking why, why, why.

  -Jennifer Champion-

  “So, are you in love with him?”

  “Oh God, no. Or, at least, I don’t think so,” said Jennifer, puzzled. She honestly hadn’t considered the matter. Although Eli had shared her futon for the past couple of weeks, she’d thought of him sort of like an old school movie rental. She could watch it over and over again, but eventually she’d have to return it or face ridiculous fines that could quickly add up to a value greater than the movie itself.