The Odds of You and Me

by Cecilia Galante

  “Holy shit.” I put my coffee cup down, shake my head. “Without bail?”

  “Holy shit!” Angus yells, grinning widely.

  “Angus!” It’s hard to say his name sharply when I am stifling a giggle. “Don’t. That’s not a good word.”

  He looks at me defiantly. “Then how come you said it?”

  I make a point not to look at Ma, who is standing both arms akimbo in front of the stove, glaring at me. “Well, sometimes grown-ups say things they shouldn’t.”

  “Like when we were coloring in my Nemo book and you said, ‘Fuck’?”

  Ma gasps. Her back goes rigid. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Bernadette!” Then she turns on Angus. “You listen to me, young man! If I ever hear you say that word again in my house, you will stay in your room for a week! Is that understood?”

  Angus’s hand goes up to his neck; his fingers start pinching the smooth skin, and his eyes well with tears.

  James is momentarily forgotten as I come around quickly to his side of the table, and pick him up. “Don’t lay into him like that, Ma. That was my fault.”

  Ma’s face is set tight. “Well, somebody has to.”

  “Ma.”

  She looks at the clock. “You’re going to be late dropping him off.”

  I shift Angus against my hip. He has buried his face into my neck, arms clasped around my shoulders, away from Ma. “Come on, Boo. We have to go.” On the TV screen, the police cruiser, which looks like some kind of enormous white fish in the darkness, drives away. It’s impossible to see anything inside the dark windows, but knowing James is in there leaves a bitter, coppery taste in the back of my mouth. For some reason, I wonder if he is hungry.

  “Wait!” Ma says as we head for the door.

  “What?”

  “I just want to get him a clean shirt. There’s a huge stain on the hem of the one he’s wearing now.”

  She’s halfway up the steps by the time we make it out the front door. I catch a glimpse of her again only when I adjust the rearview mirror of my old Toyota Camry; she is standing in the doorway, waving something furiously above her head.

  From the distance, it looks like a white flag, almost like a tiny peace offering.

  Except that I know better.

  Chapter 5

  I was nineteen and working the morning shift at the Burger Barn the first time I met James Rittenhouse. Technically, the morning shift began at eight A.M., but every two weeks, someone was assigned to come in at six A.M. to do prep work, mindless, necessary chores that involved wiping down and refilling all the condiment bottles (ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, malt vinegar, mayonnaise, and horsey-sauce tubs), making sure the tables and booths were spotless, stocking the napkin and silverware holders, slicing fifty lemons into eight precise wedges for the iced tea orders, and preparing the coffee urns, which gurgled endlessly throughout the day. Prep work was so detested by the waitress pool that we actually drew straws to see who would be assigned to it. I was one of the few, however, who didn’t mind when my turn came around. I’d never had trouble getting up early, and it was easy, if monotonous, work, something that had never bothered me.

  I sped through the litany of chores that week, pausing after I’d dusted the silk orange lily bouquets on each table to pour myself a cup of coffee (my first of six or seven before noon), before starting on the lemons. I always saved the condiment task for last, since I had to empty out the condiment holder—a rectangular, boat-like structure that sectioned off the various packets and bottles—and then hose it down in the alley behind the restaurant. Not only was hauling the thing out there a pain in the ass, but the awkwardness of the container, combined with a spitting, leaky hose, never failed to soak my shoes, a detail that set me on edge for the rest of the day.

  It was still early when I went out back that morning, the pale summer light hovering over a distance that encompassed a pair of old railroad tracks, waist-high field grass, and beyond that just the yellow tips of a McDonald’s arches. The handle on the container—which Charlie, the manager, had promised to fix three days ago—slipped as I turned it over, and gobs of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise spotted the tips of my sneakers. “Goddamn it.” I threw it to the ground and leaned over to pick up the hose, pausing when a movement caught my eye.

  Sitting on a small cement stoop just around the corner with a cigarette between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and a small book perched open in his right was James. Up until that point, I’d never really seen him up close, since he was always rushing around inside the kitchen alongside Lionel, the other cook, a white apron tied around his waist, his head wrapped in a blue kerchief, bent over something behind the small window that separated us. Now he was casually dressed in jeans, heavy work boots that came up around his ankles, and a gray T-shirt; I could see the outline of his biceps beneath the thin material. His hair, loose and untethered, was the color of deer hide and curled lightly along the tops of his shoulders. High cheekbones curved in dramatically when he inhaled on his cigarette, and his lips were dry and cracked. He was staring at something inside the little book with such concentration that I wondered if he even knew I was there.

  “Oh, hi,” I said anyway, shoving the container to one side with the tip of my shoe and grabbing the hose. “Sorry, I didn’t even see you there.”

  It was impossible, given the enclosed vicinity of our surroundings, that he had not heard me push open the door and throw the plastic tub to the ground, but he had not moved an inch. Now, I wondered if he was deaf, as he did not indicate that he had heard anything I’d just said either. I stared at him a moment, once again admiring the smooth line of biceps under his shirt, and then turned back to the hose. Whatever. It was just as well. I was a little behind this morning anyway. There wasn’t any time for small talk. I winced as I turned on the hose, water spitting out left and right.

  A voice sounded behind me, and I turned, startled.

  James was still staring at his book.

  “Did you say something?” I asked.

  “Turn the nozzle all the way to the right.” His eyes were still fixed on his book, but he spoke loud enough this time that I could hear him. “It won’t leak that way.”

  I did as he said, twisting the rusty metal ring to one side. Almost immediately, the water began to flow in a smooth, fluid arc. “Shit,” I said. “Finally. Thanks.”

  James shut his book and put it down next to him. He studied the tip of his cigarette for a moment, as if waiting for it to say something. “You’re Bird, right?” he asked finally.

  “Uh-huh.” I angled the stream of water along the inside of the plastic tub. Blobs of red and yellow began to bleed against the plastic, dissolving into an orange swirl.

  “That your real name?” He lowered his cigarette and looked at me. A thick, crescent-shaped scar traveled down between his eyebrows, sloping over the bridge of his nose and ending just at the center of his right cheek. The mark was pale enough that it might have passed as just an odd section of skin, but the thickness of it, combined with a strange, ridged pattern along the edges, gave it a menacing quality, something that made my breath catch tight in the back of my throat.

  “My real name’s Bernadette,” I said, hoping the expression on my face didn’t convey the vague revulsion I felt inside. “Bird’s my nickname. My dad made it up when I was younger. He said I used to look like a—” I stopped talking and stared down at the stream of water still gushing from the hose. What the hell was I telling him all this for? I didn’t even know the guy.

  James nodded slowly, as if the unfinished explanation—or maybe my reason for leaving it that way—made perfect sense. “You date Charlie, right?”

  I blushed, although there was no reason to. It wasn’t any secret that Charlie and I had been together for a few months now. It wasn’t serious, but still, I didn’t have anything to hide. Except possibly the fact that I already knew he wasn’t what I wanted. “Yeah.”

  “I thought so.” He nodded once, reaching up to
pull on his earlobe. “I’m James,” he said. “If you didn’t already know.”

  I ignored the comment, glancing instead at his book, small and compact on the stoop next to him. It was red, with gold lettering on the front. Various pieces of paper stuck out from the top, like jagged leaves. “What’re you reading?” I asked.

  James glanced down at the book, and then flicked his cigarette into the distance. It bounced along the hardened dirt like a small caterpillar and then rolled to a halt. “Curious Facts and Data,” he said finally.

  I stared at him. Curious facts and data? At six A.M. behind the Burger Barn? Was he for real?

  “You want to hear one?” He was looking directly at me again, shading his eyes with the back of his hand, which softened the appearance of his scar. He had small teeth, and too many of them, the ones in front crowded and overlapped like kids pushing in line.

  “One what?” I asked.

  “Curious fact.”

  “Um . . . okay.” I watched as he opened the book and slid his hand down the width of the page.

  “Here’s one of my favorites,” he said. “One-sixth of our entire lives will be spent on a Wednesday.” There was a pause as he waited for me to absorb this information and then, when I didn’t say anything, he shrugged. “You don’t think that’s kind of interesting?”

  I guessed it was kind of interesting; mostly, I just thought it was weird. Was this how this guy really spent his time, besides frying up burgers all day long? What did he do after work, go look for unusual bugs along the riverbank? “That’s what it says, huh?” I asked finally. “Wednesdays?”

  James nodded, flattening the pages with one hand so that the book would stay open. “That’s what it says. This guy who wrote it is some kind of a fact person. You know, like into numbers and stuff. From MIT. He’s got hundreds of these kinds of things in here. I don’t know how he figured them all out, especially the Wednesday one, but he did.”

  “How do you know he’s right?” I turned off the hose and kicked the rubber tubing to one side. Despite the adjustment of nozzle, my shoes were once again saturated. Perfect.

  “It’s in the book.” James held it up, as if I needed proof. “You can’t publish something for people to read unless it’s true.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Well, not statistics,” James argued. “Not facts.”

  “How do you know?” I picked up the container, adjusting it awkwardly against one hip. The handle slipped, and I grabbed for it.

  James shielded his face again with his hand, although there was no sun in sight. “That’s common knowledge. You can’t publish known facts unless they’re already proven. It would be irresponsible.” He paused, watching me. “You want me to fix that handle for you?”

  I gave the canister a final swing against my hip. “Charlie said he would do it.”

  “Well, until he does . . .” James stood up. He pulled something out of his pocket, kneaded it between his hands for a moment, and then flattened it beneath the loose handle. His hands were large, the knuckles rough and worn, but his fingernails were surprisingly neat, smooth, and clean around the edges. “Silly Putty,” he said. “Just for the time being.”

  I smiled. “You find out how to do that in that book?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I do carpentry work, too. Just a little on the side. I know some things.”

  “Oh.” My cheeks flushed hot for some reason, as if I’d insulted him. “Well, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I went back inside.

  I was on prep for the next two weeks, and during that time, I saw James every morning. It was always the same scenario with him sitting on the cement step, smoking a cigarette and reading his little red factoid book, while I came out to rinse the condiment holder. Every day, he gave me some piece of odd, random information, like how a year on Venus is shorter than its day, or how the Greeks used to dip their children in olive oil after they were born so that they would not get too hairy throughout the rest of their lives. I learned that human feet had 250,000 sweat glands, that if you threw a snowball hard enough against a wall it would completely vaporize, and that our solar system’s biggest mountain was on Mars. It was bizarre, obscure, completely random information. And for some reason, I began to look forward to hearing it, found myself getting up even earlier to share this odd space of time that had morphed somehow from an awkward, slightly suspicious rapport into strangely comforting company. More often than not, I just smiled and nodded at the bits of information; sometimes I balked at their validity, but a few times, they led to brief discussions. He’d mentioned something about sleep, for example, that gave me pause one morning, something about ninety percent of our dreams being forgotten within ten minutes of waking up.

  “Ninety percent?” I repeated. “Out of how many dreams—a thousand?”

  “Actually, it says here that we only have five or six dreams a night,” James answered. “So that means we only remember one of them. And only a little section of it, at that.” He had already tied his blue bandanna around the top of his head. Thick pieces of hair snaked out beneath the back of it, some slightly curled at the tips, as if shyer than the rest.

  This couldn’t be true, I told myself, even as I was trying desperately to access the image of Dad I’d had that morning. I didn’t dream about him very often, but when I did, it was always vague and peripheral, as if he wasn’t too sure whether or not he wanted to enter my consciousness. The one I’d had that morning, though, was markedly different. Dad had been standing in a field of waist-high grass, both arms over his head, waving to me. His mouth was open and his lips were forming words, but there was no sound coming from them. The only thing I could hear was the force of my own breathing as I raced toward him, the distance between us shortening with every step as I got closer and closer until I could see the soft lines in his face, the sporadic patches of gray in his hair. And then suddenly, with five or six feet to go, he began to retreat, fading into the horizon like a mirage, a watercolor, until there was nothing there at all. That was disconcerting enough, but now I was struck with another thought: What if the other four or five dreams I’d had that night had been about Dad, too? And what if they had been different from the one I remembered—he hadn’t faded from sight, I’d gotten close enough so that he could wrap his arms around me, whisper into my ear what he’d been trying to shout across the grass. If I couldn’t remember them, did that mean they were lost forever? Or worse, that they hadn’t happened at all?

  “You remember any of your dreams from last night?” James asked suddenly.

  “Nah.” I pressed my thumb over part of the nozzle so that a stream of water shot out with dangerous force against the plastic condiment holder. “I’m not a very good sleeper. I don’t think I even have dreams.”

  “You do lose consciousness at some point, don’t you?” James’s voice was dry. “Or are you an insomniac?”

  “I sleep some, I guess. It’s just not very restful.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, running the edge of his thumb down the spine of his book. “I know what that’s like.”

  I glanced over at him, wondering briefly what his life was like outside of this tiny part of the world we inhabited. Did he live alone? With a girlfriend? I imagined him heading straight for the refrigerator when he got home from work, twisting a can of Bud Light out from the plastic rings. Maybe he’d kick off his sneakers as he gulped from it, sit down for a while on a couch to watch TV. Or maybe he was one of those guys who kept a change of clothes in a Nike bag stashed in the back of the car, and then went straight to the gym after his shift. It was hard to guess.

  “You don’t sleep?” I asked.

  “Some.” He shrugged. “Like you. In and out. Not very restful.”

  What did he wear to bed? I wondered. Boxers? Briefs? Nothing? “Why not?”

  He shrugged again and reached into his shirt pocket for another cigarette. “Lot on my mind, I guess.”

  I nodde
d, looking away as he perched the cigarette between his lips and reached for his lighter. With his face in profile, his scar hidden on the other side, he could definitely pass for a decent-looking guy. Maybe even handsome.

  “What’s your excuse?” he asked, exhaling the smoke between his lips.

  “Oh, I’ve never been a good sleeper,” I lied. “Even when I was younger. I’d stay up until three or four in the morning.”

  “So you are an insomniac.” His cheekbones appeared as he inhaled on his cigarette.

  “Yeah,” I concurred. “Maybe I am.”

  “You don’t have bags under your eyes.” He was looking right at me. “Or dark circles or anything.”

  “I guess I’ve got youth on my side.” I turned off the hose, slightly unsettled that he had noticed such a thing. Or was that pleasure? “At least for now.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Wow.” He nodded, looking at something in the distance.

  “Wow?” I repeated.

  “You’ve got your whole life before you,” he said. “The world is your oyster.”

  I considered this for a moment. I might have had my whole life before me, but if the world was my oyster, I was definitely looking at things just now from inside the shell. “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Twenty-four.” There was a heaviness to his voice that hadn’t been there before, a sort of weighted resignation.

  “You make it sound like you’re ninety.”

  He stood up, crushing the half-smoked cigarette under his shoe. “Ninety and counting,” he said, giving me a small smile. “Come on. We’ve gotta get going.”

  Another morning, I spoke up first, before he had a chance to give me a factoid. “Why are you always here so early?” I asked. “Lionel doesn’t even roll out of bed ’til nine-thirty, and he does just as much work back there as you do.”

  “Lionel does half the work I do.” He was wearing a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Pale veins stood out along the tops of his arms like green tubing, and a large blister, soft and nearly collapsed in the center, had appeared on the knuckle of his thumb. “Besides, what do you care if I’m here?”