Before You Go

by James Preller

  “Seriously,” Jude persisted. “What’s she like?”

  Roberto shrugged, made more slurping sounds with his straw. He looked away and said, “She might be taken.”

  “Taken? A boyfriend?”

  “No, taken by aliens. She was abducted by little green men last week, they’re taking over the planet—or don’t you read the National Star?” Roberto shook his head, gave Jude a how-dumb-can-you-get? look. Then smiled, just busting. He meant nothing by it. “Yes, Jude, boyfriend. An older guy, I think.” Roberto may have noticed the look of disappointment on Jude’s face, so quickly added, “I don’t know for sure. Ask her yourself—she’s right out there, see her, sitting on the bench near the flowers.”

  Jude glanced out the window, saw Becka sitting with one foot tucked under a thigh, nibbling on the pretzel, reading a paperback old-school style.

  “So what’s up with the supercool manager we were supposed to get?” Jude asked.

  “Kenny ‘Half-Baked’ Mays?” Roberto frowned. “I don’t know what happened. He’s not listed on the schedule. I asked Denzel—he says Kenny’s filling in over at Zack’s Bay.”

  “How long?”

  “Nobody knows,” Roberto said.

  “That’s not good,” Jude said.

  “Not good? Not good is when an airplane crashes through your roof and lands on your bed like in Donnie Darko. And you are sleeping on your bed at the time—that is ‘not good.’ This is worse.” Roberto acted it out with his hands, the plane crashing through the roof, the flaming carnage, the whole not goodness of it all.

  Jude laughed. He enjoyed talking with Roberto, thinking that maybe they should hang out someday. Besides, it was cool he referenced Donnie Darko, a first-rate cult classic. Roberto’s mind was alive, full of sudden twists and surprises.

  Roberto’s eyes grew large. “I got it, the perfect example: The difference between Jessup and Kenny is like the difference between Bert and Ernie.”

  “From Sesame Street?”

  “You know another Bert and Ernie?” Roberto asked.

  Jude shook his head.

  “You have to use your imagination, Lumbus,” Roberto said, addressing Jude by his new nickname, short for Columbus, made up on the spot. “Do I have to spell it all out for you? Kenny is Ernie—you want to work for Ernie. He’s crazy, he’s wild, and his head is orange. Ernie’s tight.”

  “Right,” Jude nodded.

  “But Bert,” Roberto said mournfully, “that’s Jessup. We could be in for a long summer.”

  Jude remembered when he was little, loving Bert’s song, “Doin’ the Pigeon.” He used to dance to it in front of the television. Whatever happened to that kid? Jude wondered. Where’d he go?

  Jude glanced out the window, intrigued by the girl on the bench. Becka McCrystal. She was alone still. But now the book was closed. Her chin lifted to the sun; she looked to the sky, eyes shut, and bathed in its warmth. She appeared perfectly composed and content, like a figure in a painting.

  “I’ll cover for you,” Roberto said. “Go friend her, Lumbus.”

  Jude ignored the nickname in the hope that, like a stray dog, it might go away if he didn’t feed it. “You sure it’s okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Go, man, go,” Roberto urged. “Denzel’s doing inventory in the back. I’ll keep an eye on things. Go click on the like button.”

  EIGHT

  Jude grabbed a broom and dustpan and wandered outside, trying to look his most excellent self while indirectly making his way to where Becka sat, jibing like a sailboat from port to starboard tack. Just a regular guy sweeping up the debris, hum-dee-dum, dee dum-dum—no need to get a restraining order. Becka didn’t seem to notice his upwind presence, her face still tilted toward the sun.

  “You getting your bronze on?” Jude observed. He tried to deliver the line in the least-stalkerlike way possible. He smiled to signal that he was a harmless guy just making conversation.

  Becka turned to him, smiled back. “The sun feels so good, especially after being stuck inside all day.”

  Jude glanced upward, shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand. He gestured to the bench. “Do you mind if I—?”

  She slid over to make room.

  Jude sat down next to her, picked up the faintest fragrance off her hair. She smelled fresh, like peaches. All around them, people in bathing suits walked to and from the bathrooms and outdoor showers. They were gorgeous, drunk, fat, sexy, horrifying, freckled, heavily inked, scarred, milky white, sunburned as lobsters, tanned as leather—humanity of every shape and size and shade, but with a lot less clothes than usual. Life’s rich pageant.

  “So how do you like working the cash register?” Jude said. “It’s gotta beat flipping burgers.”

  “Or working security,” Becka said, eyes smiling. “It’s okay—boring, I guess. I like watching the people. I give them names, try to imagine their lives.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Becka pointed to a couple holding hands as they walked past. “That guy there, he’s, let’s see, Dwight. They’ve been together for two years. He’s in construction.”

  “Nah,” Jude said. “See that tattoo on his biceps? ‘Semper fi.’ That’s the Marine motto, always faithful. He just got back from the Middle East.”

  Becka’s eyes widened. “And she’s been cheating on him!”

  Jude laughed. “My name’s Jude.”

  “Oh, like the song?”

  The boy nodded; he’d heard that one a lot. It usually irritated him, but not coming from her lips. “My mother used to be a Beatles freak,” he explained, “so I guess I’m supposed to be the guy in the song.”

  “What does he do in the song?” Becka asked. There was a flicker in her eyes, a dance of light, as if she already knew the answer.

  Jude looked away, uncomfortable. He makes it better, he thought. He goes out and gets her. But Jude did not say the words.

  “I’m Becka Bliss McCrystal.” She reached out her hand for an official handshake. She had a firm grip and looked him square in the eyes.

  He saw that her clear eyes were green, as if an artist had painted them while dreaming of the Mediterranean Sea. And then the word came to him: turquoise. “Bliss, I like that,” Jude said.

  A chiseled bodybuilder, overcooked by the sun, paraded past in a minuscule bathing suit.

  “Holy God, look at the size of that guy,” Becka said.

  “I’m guessing he works out,” Jude noted.

  “In front of a mirror, all day long,” Becka said. “Exhibitionist. Not my type.”

  “Oh?” Jude asked. “You have a type?”

  Becka turned to look at him, a crooked smile on her face. “I don’t know yet. I’m not really all that into looks.” She paused. “I’ll know it when I meet him. What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Me?” Jude felt suddenly tongue-tied, alarmed by Becka’s directness, not sure how the conversation had so quickly turned intimate. “No, I’m basically solo.”

  Becka laughed at that. “Yeah, who needs the old ball and chain, is that how it is?”

  “No, I guess, I don’t know, maybe I’m like you. I’ll know when I meet her,” and he resisted adding, and I’m looking right at her.

  “I crushed on a guy for a long time but finally realized it was hopeless,” Becka confided. She glanced toward the ocean for an answer, then gestured with her bottle of water toward the building. “Looks like somebody wants you,” she said. There behind the wall-length glass window stood his boss. Denzel Jessup had a clipboard tucked under his left arm and with his right fist knocked on the window to get Jude’s attention. He did not look happy.

  Busted.

  “Ooooh, you’re in trouble,” Becka half sang, drawing out the vowels in trouble.

  Jude cast a worried look at Becka. “You think I’m fired?”

  “Meh,” she replied with a shrug. “I doubt it. How many people are dumb enough to work here in the first place?”

  Jude headed back to the
building, walking quickly. He paused to pick up a phantom paper with his broom and dustpan, trying to make the ruse look good.

  “Hey, Jude,” she called after him.

  He stopped, turned. “Yeah?”

  “At least you’re still wearing your hat—that’s gotta be worth something,” she said, cheerfully patting her own head.

  Jude reached for his head, felt the hat perched there like an awkward duck. He’d forgotten all about it. A warm rush of blood came to his cheeks. He must’ve looked very smooth, chatting up Becka with a paper hat on his head.

  Of course, Jessup didn’t buy Jude’s story about cleaning up outside—as if Jude was suddenly possessed with this tremendous desire to pick up litter. Yeah, right.

  “You can’t just decide to take a break whenever you want,” Jessup told Jude. “That’s not how the job works.”

  “It was slow, I thought that—”

  “You ‘thought’?” Jessup echoed. “Mr. Fox, let me tell you this right now. Thinking is not your job.”

  Jude nodded, absorbing the insult.

  “There’s always something to do around here,” Jessup continued. “If it’s slow, you can wipe down the counter, replenish the stock, organize the inventory, sweep out the supply closet. The important thing is, look busy. If you can’t think of something to do, I’ll think of it for you. And believe me, you won’t like the kind of jobs that I’ll think up.” He smiled. “And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I just thought of a good one,” Jessup said, teeth gleaming. “Follow me.”

  Jessup went into the back, dug around in a deep-bottomed desk drawer, and pulled out a metal scraper. “Grab a bucket from the supply closet and come with me.”

  The counter crew watched, grinning behind Jessup’s back. Roberto had his hands out, palm up, wearing a wha’-happened? expression, as if it wasn’t his idea in the first place.

  Jessup stopped at the outdoor picnic area. He asked, “Have you ever been to Disneyland?”

  “Once, a long time ago,” Jude answered. He remembered that trip to Disney; it was burned inside his memory. He pictured himself waiting impatiently while his little sister Lil stood on line to meet the pretty princesses. He could see her in his mind’s eye, golden-haired, bouncing on her toes with excitement, clutching an autograph book to her chest. It was their last summer together.

  Jude looked at Jessup, blinked, said, “I was too young; I don’t remember much.”

  “They hate gum at Disney, did you know that?”

  “No, I wasn’t aware how they felt about gum,” Jude replied. He didn’t like where this was going.

  “Do you know you can’t buy a stick of gum in the entire park? They refuse to sell it,” Jessup said. “They treat gum like it’s crack cocaine.”

  Jude eyed the scraper in Jessup’s hand. The bucket. All those yellow plastic tables in the eating area. Must have been fifteen tables, easy.

  “You know why, don’t you?” Jessup asked.

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Jude said.

  “Tell me.”

  Jude sighed. It was almost funny, discussing Disneyland’s policy on chewing gum. “The kids stick the gum on stuff,” he ventured.

  Jessup clapped his hands once, pleased. “Exactly right, Mr. Fox! The gum goes everywhere—on the sidewalks, under chairs and tables, on the rides, you name it. That’s what people do with gum—they don’t care, they stick it anywhere. So the accountants at Disney sat down and did a cost analysis. Do you know what that is?”

  “They, uh…” Jude was getting tired of this game. He was ready to serve his punishment. “No, what’s it mean?”

  “They figured out how much money they’d earn by selling gum. Then they figured out how much it would cost to clean up after it,” Jessup explained. “They realized it would cost more than they’d earn. It wasn’t worth the hassle. The solution: Ban gum from the park!”

  “Pretty smart rat, that Mickey Mouse,” Jude said.

  Jessup handed the scraper to Jude, gestured to the tables. “Unfortunately, this isn’t Disney. You work at West End Two—for today, at least. I suggest you start scraping.”

  The honest truth? It wasn’t that bad. Jude was outside in the fresh air, even if he spent most of it on his back, or crunched up in a contorted knot under the table like some kind of yoga master. His arms ached after a while, his fingers stiffened; he switched hands every few minutes. Even so, Jude didn’t mind being alone with his thoughts. From under the table, he was like a mechanic under a car—invisible to most of the people around him. Unseen. Besides, it offered a provocative vantage point on the girls as they walked past.

  Jude didn’t love that he got himself into Jessup’s doghouse on his second day on the job. Not a great start. He couldn’t wait; nope, he had to listen to Roberto, go outside to meet that girl. Becka Bliss McCrystal. And all he could think was this: She was totally worth it. Jude pictured her thick black hair, her dark eyebrows and easy smile. The way she sat with her spine perfectly straight, relaxed but elegant. He wondered if she was a dancer. And wondered also how he could describe her to Corey, who’d be eager to hear all about it. He might as well try to describe the way a breeze comes off the ocean or the way the air smells after a morning rain.

  * * *

  West End Two attracted people with cars. There was no way to get there without your own wheels, no bus service to that part of the park, and the central boardwalk didn’t extend that far west. Because it was the closest beach to the city, West End Two drew a multicultural, slightly older, urban-flavored crowd. And because the parking lot was so far from the waterline, not many families came, either. The crowd was almost exclusively ages sixteen to twenty-five, with some of the most beautiful girls Jude had ever seen in one place. He could already tell this job was going to be an exquisite form of torture.

  All he could think of was one girl in particular, a face he barely knew.

  Near the end of day, after he scraped tables for an hour at least, the muscles in Jude’s forearms burned. He felt a crick in his neck, so he stood to stretch. Jude noticed a little girl walk past, comically trying to balance a soda and a container of fries. A smattering of fries spilled onto the sand after her, like Gretel’s trail of crumbs in the woods. Ahead of her walked an older boy, surely her brother; he had the same body type and tussled blond hair, not much different from his own. Jude guessed the boy was about twelve years old. He stood watching as they walked in the sand toward the water, searching for a familiar blanket or beach umbrella.

  Just a boy and a boy’s sister.

  Take her hand, Jude silently urged the boy. Don’t let her out of your sight. But the older boy kept walking, confident that his sister would always be there. Jude felt an old hollowness return to his stomach. He watched until they disappeared into the horizon, smaller and smaller, and then, fully gone, swallowed up by sand and sky.

  Bickering seagulls landed to scavenge the dropped fries, Gretel’s trail vanishing to nothingness as they ate until there was no trace of the girl’s passage except for her small footsteps in the sand.

  NINE

  It was finals week at school, so Jude spent late nights cramming for tests. Still, he rose early most mornings to run, hard and long, just to clear his head. Jude sometimes imagined himself as an ancient Navajo among the mesas, running till he found the next tribe somewhere over the rise. It was never about numbers for Jude. Not the distance traveled, nor the time it took. He ran for the love of running, like a colt in the grass. All the while, Becka on his mind.

  Come the weekend, he looked forward to work. Jessup said he wouldn’t put Jude on a full-time schedule until school ended in another week. But on Saturday the overcast sky darkened as the hours passed, and it became obvious that it would be a disappointing day for sun worshippers. The concession was overstaffed, the crowds meager, nothing to do. Jessup went around tapping people on the shoulder, sending them home.

  Becka wasn’t too happy about it. She’d only wo
rked three hours. “Well, I guess I’m outta here,” she told Jude. Her eyes spoke for a moment, lingered on his for an extra beat, and he sensed she was waiting for something.

  “Hey, um,” he said, holding her there, “maybe I could get a ride from you. I mean, would that be okay?”

  Gladness flickered on Becka’s face, like wind in the trees. She smiled and said yes.

  “Problem is, I’m not off yet,” Jude said, trying not to sound too eager.

  “You could ask him,” Becka suggested. “See if he’ll let you go.”

  “I could use the money,” Jude countered.

  Becka shrugged, noncommittal. “Up to you. Either way, I’m leaving in five minutes.”

  Jessup hemmed and hawed at Jude’s request, said he was letting most of the cashiers go but still needed a few good workers for closing. Jude was persuasive; Denzel finally told him to go before he changed his mind.

  Being alone with Becka outside of work made Jude feel light-headed, like he was walking on soft, fluffy clouds. Becka shifted around a bunch of junk in her car—it was a mess with blankets, bags, books, CDs, magazines, assorted crap everywhere—to make room for Jude in the front.

  “What can I say? I’m a slob,” Becka said without apology.

  The car was an old Toyota, a little worse for wear. “Sweet ride,” Jude whistled.

  “You can walk if you’d like,” Becka replied. She grabbed a canvas bag from the backseat and said she’d be right back. “I’ve got to get out of these clothes.”

  She returned with her hair tied loosely back, wearing shorts and some kind of spaghetti-strap top. She looked great, with tanned, toned legs. “I feel better already,” Becka announced, turning the key. “Now I’m myself.” She found a song on the radio and turned it up loud, moving her head to the beat. Becka was transformed, and it wasn’t just the clothes. She seemed more playful out in the real world, quicker to smile, more fun, way sexier. As they drove east toward the roundabout, Becka asked, “Are you in a hurry to get home?”

  Jude told her that he definitely was not.

  Becka pulled the car into the huge Field Four parking lot. “Let’s do the boardwalk,” she said.