The Summer Job

by Cesare, Adam

  Claire thought back to high school and the bums her friend convinced to buy them bottles of Rumple Mintz, her friend’s parents who would allow semi-supervised keggers to be thrown in their garages.

  “No, sounds a bit creepy to me,” Claire said. She was tired of hearing about Mission’s milquetoast “dark” secrets. She just wanted to finish the day’s work and go illegally watch bad TV on her phone. “I didn’t know any of this. I was only asking because, well, like you said, he is the handsome one.”

  Daisy smiled, patted her on the back, and led her back out into the hallway. “He is, but don’t let that little devil fool you. You don’t want anything that David and them are cooking up in those woods. Their activities are an affront to the lord.”

  Claire nodded emphatically and said that no, indeed, she did not want any part of those illicit activities.

  Inside she did, though, and filed the wino’s name away.

  David.

  Silverfish very much wanted a taste of Mission’s local nightlife.

  Chapter Ten

  After the two strange conversations she’d had with Daisy, one about a BBQ’d holy man and the other about a messianic hobo that the town’s children idolized, Claire waited for Tobin every night.

  The window to her room faced the parking lot, so she kept it open a crack and stayed up listening for any sign that he’d returned to clean out the dumpster. This was how she fell asleep for three nights straight, not reading or watching TV, but sitting in the silence of her hotel room and listening.

  It would have struck her as eerily silent had she not known that most of the guests were kept on the floor below her, with most of them housed in the opposite wing.

  Claire’s room was on the third floor and the only guests that were there with her were the Chopins, a young married couple.

  And Father Hayden, who wasn’t really a guest. She tried not to think about him.

  The Chopins seemed nice enough, but Claire had a hard time trusting anyone her own age whose idea of a good time was vacationing at The Brant. When they weren’t taking in the local flavor, they were using Mission as a hub to venture out and explore the rest of Western Massachusetts. She tried to imagine Mickey sweeping her off her feet and depositing her in a suite at The Brant. Would they pour over brochures for wine tastings, local theater and nature walks? In all their years together, they’d never gone on vacation, but something told Claire that it wouldn’t look like what the Chopins were enjoying right now.

  It was Thursday night, which in her glory days would have been Thirsty Thursday, before she heard him again. He woke her out of a sound half-sleep, and for a moment she’d incorporated the sounds of clinking bottles into a dream.

  Instead of her nightgown, she slipped on her T-shirt and jeans. These were the only clothes of her own that she had at the hotel because of the odd circumstances under which she was hired. She made a mental note to go shopping this weekend. Maybe she could catch a ride to the nearest mall so all her clothes didn’t have to come from the Mission gift shop.

  This was the first time all week she’d worn her jeans. It felt strange to be without her piercings, like she was wearing only part of a Claire costume.

  The Brant may have been an old building, but the doors and floorboards were creak-free. Getting downstairs unnoticed was easy. The back door was a fire exit, but it didn’t sound. Roy was a smoker, and she’d seen him use it every day while she helped him whisk pancake batter or tenderize meat for chicken-fried steaks.

  By the time she got downstairs, Tobin was already into it with the dumpster. His faded jeans fit snug, giving his ass that kind of picturesque, late-’80s music video vibe. The view would have been excellent if her mind hadn’t been pumping in the smell of the overripe garbage.

  “Hey,” she said, not trying to scare him but not altogether unhappy that her greeting made him bang his head on the top of the dumpster. The plastic and metal reverberated through the night, and Claire became acutely aware that she’d probably just woken up Brant, Daisy, and even the poor innocent Chopins. Those two were likely sore from touring the butter churn factory or whateverthefuck.

  “Hey. It’s Claire Foster from Boston, formerly of Long Island. What are you doing out here?” He spoke with a lack of surprise that turned Claire off. It suggested that he knew that he was the only game in town and that she had no choice but to seek him out. He might have been right, but that didn’t mean that she had to like it.

  “It’s Tobin I-don’t-know-his-last-name from Mission, Massachusetts, formerly of Mission, Massachusetts.” She waited to hear if that sounded as mean as she wanted it to, but it still came out flirtatious. “I’m thinking of picking up smoking. You got a light?”

  “Left my Bic in my other pants.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t have any cigarettes anyway.”

  “Good, they’re bad for you.” Tobin tossed one last Bud Light bottle into his bag and closed the dumpster with a clatter. “Did you know that every time someone lights someone else’s cigarette in a movie, it actually means something different?”

  He left the bag on the pavement, leaning against the dumpster, and started walking over to her.

  “I did know that actually, but I’ve had some film studies classes. Where’d you learn it?”

  “Read it in a book. Also from watching movies,” he said, dusting himself off as he approached. “It’s super obvious, you know, not really something that you need to be alerted to if you’re watching somewhat closely.”

  He was right, that was totally amateur hour. How else did you tell the audience two characters were balling under the Hays Code? Fay Wray had to light up because there was no Sasha Grey back then. But Fay could have been Sasha, would have been if that’s what the world called for.

  “You miss your friend?” Tobin asked, rattling her out of her semi-pornographic thought processes.

  “Not really, she ditched me without saying goodbye.”

  “Is that right?” Tobin suddenly got a troubled look. Troubled or amused, Claire couldn’t tell which.

  “It’s no big deal. She’s fine. She’s done shit like this before,” Claire said. “Why are you so sad? Do you miss her too? The taller, prettier one?” She messed up her face into what she imagined was a picture of childish jealousy. At least that’s what she was trying to look like, but she was hopeless at the art of flirtation, so it might have looked like a seizure.

  “Allison the prettier one?” Tobin said and waved his hand to show that he thought she had to be kidding. “Taller is objective, but you’re way off-base calling her prettier.”

  “Bigger boobs.”

  “True, but that’s not always a one-to-one ratio,” he said, letting his eyes take a momentary dip to check hers out.

  “So where are these mythical parties I hear so much about? Daisy says that they are an ‘affront to her Lord’. That’s an exact quote. I didn’t make it up.”

  “I believe it. There’s a lot of people in this town that talk like that. Dwyer, that old guy at the general store? He won’t even serve me. Says that it’s because of the company that I keep. That means I have to drive up to the highway rest stops to get my Slim Jims and Pepsis.”

  “In this economy?” Claire said, trying for sarcasm. She could tell that the statement perplexed Tobin. “That was something I constantly heard douche bags that didn’t tip say. When I was waitressing.” She wanted Tobin to know that she was joking.

  He laughed more than the joke called for to make up for the awkwardness.

  “So where are they?” She held her hands out.

  “I don’t usually go to the Thursday night ones.”

  “Ha! I was kidding. There actually are ones on Thursdays? Why don’t you go to them? Different crowd?”

  “No, there’s never a different crowd. I mean, we have special guests sometimes. But Thursday’s usually my night to rest,” he said and then pointed a finger back at the bag of bottles. “And earn a little beer money.”

  �
�I’ve heard a bit about your special guests. Poaching from the hotel’s clientele, eh? Boy does that piss them off, I bet. Ever ruin any young marriages?”

  “Only a couple,” Tobin said, his tone different now. They’d been straddling the fine line between endearing verbal foreplay and flat out embarrassment and Claire had been the first to cross it.

  “Want to go tonight?” Claire said, checking her phone for the time. 12:30, the night was young.

  She had him conflicted. He looked down first at his feet, then at her feet. Finally, he spoke, “Do you have anything better for walking in?”

  She ran back into the hotel, switched out of her flats and into her work shoes. Her maid shoes were all-white Reebok running shoes. It unnerved her that she was the same shoe size as Daisy.

  Chapter Eleven

  From even the most freewheeling perspective, getting into a pickup truck with a strange boy after midnight in a new town was not a great idea.

  Tobin had parked on the street in front of The Brant instead of pulling into the driveway.

  His truck fit him so well that Claire could have described it before seeing it. It was a red late-model Ford that was kept in decent shape but had seen some action.

  As she pulled open the passenger side door and stepped up, she got hit with her one and only thrum of panic. What if he drives off with you and you’re never seen again?

  She pushed the thought away. If he was set on doing that, it was probably too late now. Besides, she was the one twisting his arm to take her. If she was going to get Buffalo Bill’d, his reverse psychology was flawless.

  They drove for a much shorter time than she anticipated.

  “We’ve got to walk from here,” he said, pulling off to the side of the road. “Could you get the flashlight out of the glove box?”

  She had no idea why, but she expected there to be a gun in there with it.

  There wasn’t. There was just a large Maglite and some maps and receipts. Was she so starved for entertainment that her imaginings were desperately trying to slither into reality? Was Mission so boring that it had broken her?

  “I hope you don’t mind walking through the woods at night.”

  “Who would?”

  He smiled at that, turning that mood back around.

  “You’re a very adventurous girl,” Tobin said. “You’re going to fit right in. We’re going to steal you away from Brant like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Is that the way it is, the real reason that Daisy hates you so much? Because it’s you versus them?”

  “Oh yeah, big time.” Tobin opened his door and hopped out.

  After he shut off the engine, the only light was a dim streetlamp on the opposite side of the road. Tobin’s shadow crossed in front of the hood and he opened her door for her. He took the flashlight from her then offered her a hand down from the truck.

  His hands were rough. She’d never felt that before. The tips of Mickey’s fingers were calloused, but the palms were smooth and soft, not like Tobin’s. It was a nice change.

  “We’ll have some light,” he said, his voice all Ranger Rick, “but you’re going to have to watch where you step. You don’t want to spend the night in the emergency room because you busted an ankle stepping into a snake hole.”

  The idea of a “snake hole” worried her more than a broken ankle, but she didn’t tell him that.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” she asked as they walked off the side of the road and into the woods. There was no trail, no indicator of where they were going that she could see.

  He pointed to a tree with what looked like a loop of cellophane wrapped around its trunk.

  “Even if I ignored that, I could probably make it out to Davey’s blindfolded. I’ve done it blind drunk before.”

  “Davey? Who is that?” Claire said, not concentrating as much on their conversation as she was on the flashlight beam, trying to keep herself from imagining all the nasty things creeping under the layer of pine needles they crunched under their heels.

  “You’re saying that Daisy told you about the parties but she didn’t tell you about who throws them?” he said, her interest piqued by the sound of a cross-examination.

  “Oh, you mean David, the hermit!”

  “The hermit?” He said, muttering what sounded to Claire like “bitch” but may also have just been a tsk. He took a swipe at a low-hanging branch with the Maglite. The flashlight was heavy and a muscular boy like Tobin could do some damage with it. “The hermit! That’s so disrespectful. It’s no wonder that everyone in this town hates each other.”

  His voice had lost that young Marlboro Man cool. Tobin was legitimately upset by how Claire had described Davey or David or whoever. “Don’t waste time listening to assholes, especially Daisy,” Claire said. She wanted to soothe him, to bring the other Tobin back, so she reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  Underneath the thin fabric of his shirt, she could feel that he was muscular, but there was a different kind of hardness there too.

  “Thanks,” he said, gently removing her hand from his back, but keeping hold of it as they walked.

  Claire felt the strands of a spider web touch her cheek and she brushed it away as quickly as she could without giving away how badly the sensation creeped her out.

  “Am I going to get bit by mosquitoes?” she asked, her words filling some of the emptiness of the woods.

  “Maybe one or two on our way, but not once we’re there.”

  She didn’t ask why. Citronella, probably. No reason to keep the conversation on the topic of insects.

  Taking a quick look down at her feet, she saw that her white shoes were now mottled with dark marks from the walk. They were going to be hell to clean.

  “So tell me about David,” she asked.

  “First of all, he’s going to insist that you call him Davey.” Tobin’s grip tightened as he spoke, their hands warming. “David is,” his voice trailed off, either taking a minute to get his thought or spacing out.

  “I’ve never liked my dad,” Tobin said, starting up again. “He drives a truck for a living, probably sleeps in town, in his own bed, once or twice a week. He’s not here. But for me, for all the other kids who’ve grown up or are growing up in Mission. David is here.”

  “How old are you?” She said, getting a sudden pang of fear that Tobin might still be in high school.

  “Twenty-two. Why?”

  “Just checking. Go on.” She felt a great relief wash over her, the feeling accompanied by the distant sound of music. It was not crickets or cicadas or the rest of the music of the forest. It was young people’s music.

  “Every adult out here,” Tobin said, “is so concerned with what’s good for the town, that they never pay much attention to what’s good for its children.”

  “Children are the future,” Claire said with a smile, feeling old after listening to Tobin speak.

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling back even wider and picking up his pace, dragging her along. The music was louder now, aggressive and electronic. “And this is where the future is born.”

  His timing was impeccable. At that moment they crested a hill and there below them was a bright ball of light and sound. The party.

  *

  “Don’t call me David. Davey, please, I insist.”

  Tobin had been right about that.

  Davey was a tall man, a man tall enough to intimidate, but he was trying to make up for that. He spoke in soothing tones, his hands aflutter. He repeated Claire’s name every third statement to remind her that he remembered and cared what her name was.

  Just looking at him, it was easy to see why Daisy and Brant hated this man. His dark beard was unwieldy, tufts of hair shooting in every direction. He smelled, too. Not of piss and body odor (which was honestly what Claire had expected. If it dressed like a hobo and quacked like a hobo.), but of smoke and herbs.

  When Claire was a little girl, her mother had dabbled in New Age mysticism as a hobby. Sh
e’d brought Claire along several times to a bookstore in Manhattan that sold supplies for yuppie witches—candles, crystals, herbs.

  Davey smelled like a more authentic version of that store. Burning sage and pot smoke seemed to waft off him in waves.

  For Daisy and Brant he was the Other, an unsettling reminder that not everyone in the world adorned their homes with golden rabbits and quilts. To Claire he was the most intriguing person, place or thing in Mission, Massachusetts.

  Tobin had introduced them and then shifted away from Claire, sidling up next to Davey and whispering in his ear like a Secret Service agent. Tobin was tall, but Davey still had to cock his head downwards to enable Tobin to reach his ear.

  “Boston, eh?” Davey said, responding to information that Tobin had shared with him, not Claire. He stretched his arms wide, displaying his wingspan. “My hometown! Well, Cambridge actually, but close enough. I used to teach in Boston.”

  “Really? Where? I’ve got friends who teach in the area,” she said. It was almost true. She had went to school with people who taught, kept them on their Facebook feed even though they were always sharing the “funny” things their students said and did.

  It was insufferable.

  “My time as a formal teacher was brief. And long before you and your friends were out of diapers, I’m sure. I was fired for antagonizing the students with art.”

  Claire smiled and nodded politely, unsure what most of that meant.

  “I stood up on my desk and started throwing books at them,” Davey said, seeming to answer a question that she’d only thought of asking.

  When she talked to Davey, the rest of the party seemed to dissolve into background noise, but now that they’d reached a lull, everything seemed to snap back into focus.