Before You Go

by James Preller

  “Aye-aye, me bucko,” Roberto grinned.

  * * *

  Three messy hours later, with great concentrated effort, Jude slid the key into his front door. It was late, past midnight. The house was dark. He felt tired, beat. Grabbed the banister by the stairs and groaned. Something caught his eye. Jude paused, stopped. “Mom, I didn’t see you there.”

  She was in her bathrobe, sitting in the dark, waiting for her boy to come home.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Have you been drinking?”

  Jude considered the question, brain misfiring. “It’s okay, Mom,” Jude said. “I’m home now. I’m going to bed. You should too.”

  He looked at her from across the room. Her hair was beginning to turn white, her eyes were pink and small. She seemed frail, fragile. She had never been the same. Ever since Lily passed, his mother was present and absent at once. Here and not here.

  Jude took a few steps up the stairs, almost losing his balance. He sat down on the fifth step, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

  His mother rose and took a tentative step toward him. “Are you going to be all right? Jude? Can I help you?”

  He shook his head, “No, no. It’s just … tonight sucked.” He looked up, steadied his gaze, watched his mother stare at him. Her arms dangled uselessly at her sides, like a marionette with severed strings.

  She didn’t move, frozen in place; didn’t speak, unable to find the words.

  “Good night, Mom,” Jude finally said, slowly rising. “Love you.”

  She nodded imperceptibly in the dark, a movement he did not catch, and otherwise made no reply.

  Heart clouded in confusion, Jude climbed the stairs and fell—dreamlessly, noiselessly, thoughtlessly—into bed.

  FIFTEEN

  Jude hit the snooze button three times before rising. He felt sour, his mouth stale and parched, his teeth wearing sweaters after a night of too much rum and coke and heartache. The house was silent. Jude shambled into the bathroom for a long, reviving shower. It helped. Failing to find a fresh work shirt, Jude fished the cleanest dirty shirt from the hamper. Sniffed it, frowned: pretty ripe. The shirt matched his mood. Mad at the world.

  In the kitchen, Jude gulped a tall glass of orange juice. A note on the counter informed him that his father had gone out for a long, slow run. His father ran to get away from it all, yet despite all the hours logged and miles slogged, he always returned to the same place; the road never rose to lift him to some new, shimmering elsewhere.

  Jude considered himself a different kind of runner entirely. First of all, his father jogged; Jude ran. Big diff. His father was one of those old guys who stopped after his run, winded and panting, two fingers on his neck, counting the beats of his pulse while he stared at the watch on his wrist. Goofy shit, if you asked Jude. A lot of times, Jude headed out in just a pair of shorts. No shirt, no shoes, a barefoot runner in the burbs. Nobody could say nothing, because Jude was faster than them all.

  His mother was a notorious late riser; Jude rarely saw her before he left for work. He knew he should eat, so cracked three eggs into a bowl, scrambled them with a fork, and added a splash of milk while a slab of butter sizzled in the skillet. Jude tossed torn pieces of ham into a second, smaller pan. He had grown into a capable cook, and ham and cheese omelets were his specialty. His mother wasn’t big on sit-down meals these days—or had the days becomes years?—so Jude was used to fending for himself. She used to have a job, selling medical supplies, but after Lily passed, things changed. She eventually got laid off for missing too many days and …

  After Lily passed.

  That phrase again.

  Those three words like a sword that severed his life in two.

  It was how everyone talked. Empty words in hushed, polite tones. After Lily passed.

  Passed? Past? And what of the present? It was defined by absence, what was no longer there. The empty mirror after someone walks away.

  Lily was dead and that was that, no other way to skin the cat, yet she came to his mind every day. A visitor, a neighbor ringing the bell. Here to borrow a cup of sugar? Or with some other intent? Why ask why. Sometimes he called for her, conjured up images like a sorcerer. Lily at play, her lithe body wriggling inside a hula-hoop, the family cheering, “Go, girl, go!” The two of them drawing shoulder to shoulder on the hardwood floor. At Lily’s urging, Jude copied comics from the newspaper and she colored them in. He laughed at her crazy color schemes. The grass blue, the sun green, the sky a cockamamy blaze of orange and pink. Lily never saw anything wrong with it, and neither did Jude.

  Most days he didn’t try to remember. But Lily would come to him unbidden, a spectral figure, a holographic image projected from the dreamworld ether. He would pass a playground and see her, like a vision, sitting idly on a swing as if waiting for a push. Or out on his own street, he’d see one of Lily’s old playmates riding a bicycle—little Zoe Buchman, older now, still growing, still alive—and the memories would come flooding back, drowning his thoughts with images and phrases. He remembered those silly songs she used to sing—“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any pizza?”—her smiles, and her laughter. He remembered how his father had packed her things in boxes and stored them in the attic. But for the most part, Lily’s room remained unchanged, untouched by time: His mother had insisted on that. Jude dared not enter—after ever after—but could still picture it: that enormous stuffed bear in the corner, the posters of ballerinas on pink walls.

  Gone, and yet she was everywhere.

  He missed her so much.

  They had turned her room into a kind of shrine, a mausoleum filled with her playthings. It was weird and upsetting, Jude thought. His mother called it the guest room, but who was she kidding? Nobody came. It was the Lily Museum, an internment room for her spirit. Jude looked at it once and never returned, nor did his father, but sometimes he’d catch his mother in there, sitting quietly in a chair, the door open, hands folded in her lap, as if waiting for a bus or something else to take her away.

  His cell vibrated. Becka—again. She had tried him twice last night, and twice Jude ignored the messages before finally powering off altogether. He didn’t have the heart for it. Not yet. Had she seen him at the bowling alley? Snatched a glimpse as he stood there, watching her? Or as he turned, walking away? Did she merely want to give him a ride to work?

  Jude had briefly considered running—it would be good to sweat out the toxins, clear his head—but he knew there was no life in his legs this morning.

  He took the bus.

  * * *

  Becka was already at work, seated behind a register. Jude managed to stay busy, avoid eye contact. Jessup looked haggard, slumped in a chair at his desk, puffy around the eyes. Allergies or something worse. “You look like hell,” Jude said, not unsympathetically.

  Jessup nodded, said he felt worse than that, told Jude in a hoarse voice to go clean up the picnic area. Jude grabbed a soapy washrag, bucket, and broom to wander among the yellow tables, searching the ground for fallen fries, used napkins, fluttering hot dog wrappers, assorted windswept litter. Most people didn’t bother clearing their tables after eating, figuring that somebody else would clean up after them. They figured right about that—somebody would, some sucker with a fierce hangover named Jude Fox.

  He felt confused and angry, a bitter taste on the back of his tongue. Out of old habit, Jude tried to push his thoughts aside, focus on the bright morning sunshine, but it was useless. The same unhappy feelings yammered at his brain. Corey had tried to console Jude last night, hauling out that stale line about how there were plenty more fish in the sea. “Don’t obsess, Jude,” Corey advised. “She’s one girl. There are lots more babes out there. Look around. It’s a beautiful planet.”

  Jude knew Corey didn’t believe a word of it. Neither of them looked at girls that way. Becka wasn’t another fish in the sea, some flat-bellied flounder in the deep blue water. Becka was different, special. They had a connection, Jude knew it. And this on
e hurt.

  He checked the garbage cans, using cardboard trays to push down the contents, hoping he wouldn’t find one that had to be emptied. But it was part of the job, the grunt work, and when necessary, he pulled up the bulging, soggy plastic liners, tied them off, and inserted a new liner into each grimy, foul-smelling can. He half dragged, half carried the torn, dripping, disgusting bags over to the Dumpster around back. Good times.

  Roberto found Jude by the Dumpster. “He’s coming!” Roberto exclaimed. “Jessup is going home sick. They’re shifting him over to West End Two.”

  Jude’s brain was fogged. He didn’t understand.

  “Kenny Mays,” Roberto said. “He’s filling in for Denzel.”

  “Have you got a man crush on this guy?” Jude asked. “I’m starting to wonder about you, Roberto—not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  “Shut up, Lumbus,” Roberto replied. “You’ll see.” Then he returned to his post behind the counter, practically skipping with excitement. Jude sighed. He felt like crawling into the Dumpster for a nap.

  The new manager, Kenny Mays, arrived when Jude was working the grill. Kenny was smallish with a large beak, a college boy with wavy hair that grew below his ears. Jude watched through sidelong glances as Kenny moved through the crew, introducing himself, learning names. There didn’t seem anything particularly wonderful about him, but at the same time, he seemed real. Unpretentious. Kenny slipped a hot pretzel from the warmer and took a bite. He turned to Jude. “Did you make this?”

  Jude shook his head, pointed to Emilio.

  “Emilio, right?” Kenny asked. “When did you make the pretzels?”

  Emilio shrugged. “I don’t know, when I first came in, a couple of hours ago.”

  “Here, take a bite.” Kenny ripped off a length of pretzel and handed it to Emilio, who chewed it thoughtfully.

  “Are you proud of that pretzel?” Kenny asked.

  Emilio glanced at Jude, shifted his eyes back to the new manager, wondering if he was getting punked or some other kind of joke. “It’s a pretzel.” He shrugged.

  “No offense,” Kenny said, “but it tastes like an old shoe that’s been peed on by a dog.”

  Emilio stopped chewing, swallowed.

  “Pull all those out, throw ’em away,” Kenny said. “You can’t leave pretzels hanging in that warmer for too long; they turn to cardboard.” He instructed Emilio to make another batch, not so much salt this time. Less brown, more golden.

  As the day dragged on, Kenny remained a ball of energy. Bouncing from one place to the other, joking with the crew, grabbing two strong guys and getting them to rearrange the kegs in the walk-in refrigerator, and on and on. He worked hard and made everyone else work hard too. That’s when Jude realized that it was like a guitar, all about tone. Not what you said, but how you said it. The words were just words, standard grammatical units, floating on sound. The weird thing was, Jude now understood, the sound meant more than the words themselves. You could say “close the door” eight hundred different ways. But Kenny could tell you to clean out the toilets in such a way that you’d race into the bathrooms, eager to swab away. He had a gift for making every task sound good.

  In the late afternoon, with things slowing down, Kenny pulled Jude aside. “Hey, Jude, hey, Jude, hey, Judy, Judy, Jud-EEE!” he sang, as countless others had done before him. “You know this crew better than I do. Who do I send home, and who do I keep for the big rodeo?”

  Jude arched his eyebrows. “A rodeo? Like a yee-ha kind of thing?”

  “Closing this place, breaking it down, cleaning it up. I need real workers—no slackers,” Kenny said.

  “How many?” Jude asked.

  “Four guys and two cashiers.”

  Jude pointed out a few likely crew members, Ivan, Roberto, and DaJon, the mustached twenty-one-year-old with a silky manner who was old enough to pour beer. DaJon was a good guy. Jude looked across the floor to the three cashiers who remained: Daphne, Becka, and the unlovely lump Margorie Watson, aka Sourpuss. “Maybe Daphne and Margorie?” he suggested.

  Kenny laughed, took it like a joke. “Right, large Marge in charge. She looks like fun.” He picked Becka instead.

  Jude had steered clear of Becka all day, even worked through his break to avoid her. He resisted a dozen urges to confront her about last night. If Becka noticed, she didn’t push things, just did her job and kept a distance.

  Kenny went around, thanking guys, sending them home, until his handpicked skeleton crew remained. Once the last customers were served, Kenny locked the door and yelled, “All right, let’s knock this out and get out of Dodge.”

  Kenny energized the entire crew. They worked like whirling dervishes for the next twenty minutes—scraping the grill, emptying the grease trays, cleaning up behind the counter, washing the windows, sweeping and mopping the floors. Kenny brought up a little portable Bose system, plugged in his iPod, and the walls shook with a crazy mix of hard-core rap and metal. By the end, the place was spotless. Unlike Denzel, who left every night with clean fingernails, Kenny labored right along with everyone else, really putting his back into it. Jude noticed Roberto cleaning out a large, plastic, gallon-size mustard jar. “What are you doing, Berto?” Jude asked.

  Roberto grinned. “Kenny’s idea. Our reward for a job well done.”

  While the crew punched out, Roberto filled two mustard jars with beer from the tap. DaJon stood watch by the back door.

  “Don’t let anybody see you guys,” Kenny said. “Throw a towel or something over it.”

  “You going to hang with us, Kenny?” Roberto asked.

  Kenny shook his head. “People to do, things to meet. Just be sure to get away from the building. Go to the far end of the parking lot—over by the dunes. If you get caught, I don’t know anything about it.”

  Off they went, the jolly crew, smuggling mustard jars of pale ale into the sand dunes. It gave them a feeling of giddiness, a happy euphoria: beer, because they earned it. A bunch of working stiffs on their way to the neighborhood dive. Not enough beer to get hammered or anything, or even fail a Breathalyzer test, just enough to take the edge off a long day.

  The only ones left were Jude, Roberto, DaJon, Ivan, Daphne, and Becka. Roberto opined that no way in hell he was walking across that hot parking lot—“I’d rather play hopscotch on the surface of the sun”—so he rolled over in his mother’s wheels with DaJon and Ivan.

  Becka got her car too and offered Jude and Daphne a ride. “No, I’m good,” Jude said. “I’ll walk. You guys go.” Becka gave him a quizzical look, like, Are you for real? So he relented and climbed into the backseat. In the hot car, Jude felt tense and uncomfortable. Fortunately, Daphne seemed oblivious to the tension and chattered about her volunteer work at some pet-rescue center. “I’m not kidding,” she said. “After the old lady died, we discovered there were more than seventy-five cats living in her house.”

  “Oh, my God,” Becka gasped.

  “You should have seen it, Beck. They were sick and undernourished; my heart was breaking the whole time. It was horrible and disgusting.”

  “Didn’t anyone notice?” Jude asked.

  “That’s what I said,” Daphne replied, shifting in her seat to look back at Jude. “It was just this old, lonely woman who lived by herself—”

  “With, like, a million cats,” Jude said.

  “It makes me sad,” Becka commented. “That poor lady.”

  “Those poor cats,” Daphne corrected.

  They parked and gathered in a loose circle in a depression amid the dunes, pulling off shoes and socks, feeling the scrunch of warm sand between their toes. Roberto complained about seagulls, “rats with wings,” he called them.

  Jude glanced at Daphne to see if she’d react. She probably liked rats. But the thin girl with large eyes had her head tilted toward Becka, deep in some kind of whispered conference.

  DaJon took a swig from the mustard jar, wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “They say that about pigeo
ns. Rats with wings.”

  “Sure, if you live in the city, it’s pigeons,” Berto conceded. “Out here, it’s seagulls. People think they are so beautiful soaring in the wind, but those people should come over with me to the Dumpster sometime. I’ll show ’em what seagulls are all about.” He took a shallow sip of beer, shivered, and said, “Nasty beasts.”

  Roberto had a way of claiming the spotlight without overdoing it. He told hilarious stories about his Cuban grandmother Mam-Maw, and kept the conversation rolling. Roberto was in full glory, mid-story, saying, “At first I was like, ‘What?’ then I was like, ‘WHAT?!’” when Jude’s cell vibrated.

  Why r u so weird today?

  Jude read the text and glanced at its sender, sitting across from him. Becka looked back at him, worry in her eyes.

  She rose and stretched. “I’m walking down to the water for a minute. Come with me, Jude.”

  Phrased that way, Jude didn’t have much choice. Roberto cast a hairy eyeball at Jude and offered a slight, almost imperceptible shrug. “Good luck with that,” he seemed to say.

  SIXTEEN

  Jude and Becka walked in silence to the water’s edge. Becka put a stick of gum in her mouth. Jude thought of all the gum he scraped from the table and, screw it, asked for a piece anyway.

  “Open a pack of gum and suddenly everybody’s your friend,” Becka joked.

  Jude smiled—he couldn’t help himself—and took the gum from her hand. The late-afternoon surf was nearly perfect, the waves rolling in rhythmic succession before breaking and thundering to the sand, like white horses galloping to the shore. “Broken waves,” Jude murmured. He listened to the drone of the sea’s white noise, imagined it as a musical soundscape, a song, and felt the dry sting of salt air on his skin.