The Highway Kind

by Patrick Millikin

  I scrabbled across the seat to the door behind Cisco and climbed out. Then I went to the front door and opened it. I reached in for my driver.

  “You okay?”

  “I will be. Where is he?”

  “He’s down. We don’t have to worry about him. It’s over.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He came up to the window with a train ticket. Wanted to know how to find Union Station. I tried to tell him and then he pulled the gun.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Told me to unlock the back door.”

  “Well, it’s over.”

  “What about what he said about making the call?”

  “What call?”

  “That night he said he called for help. You think the sheriff’s captain pulled the 911 recording?”

  “That was before you worked with me. Saul was my investigator back then. He looked into it, couldn’t find anything. Letts said he made the call from a gas station where he borrowed somebody’s cell. We never found anybody to back it up. Believe me, we tried. That was the case right there.”

  “Too bad—if he was telling the truth.”

  Cisco struggled out of the car and leaned against the side, keeping his hand on his left shoulder.

  “Yeah, too bad.”

  Cisco rubbed his shoulder beneath the jacket. I could see the crimson stain spreading on the white T-shirt he wore under the leather.

  “Got me right in the rotator, I think. Probably going to get a new shoulder to go with my new knee.”

  I didn’t answer. I leaned against the car next to him and watched traffic build up behind the accident scene. Pretty soon it would be a parking lot stretching all the way back to downtown.

  RUNS GOOD

  by Kelly Braffet

  CARO MISSED THE bus. She usually did. The last one left the mall at ten and unless she managed to clock out a few minutes early, she inevitably saw it pull away from the curb as she was still running across the parking lot. Tonight, sweaty, heart pounding, feet killing her, she put her headphones on and started walking.

  Past the car dealership, on the side of the road near a place that sold outdoor furniture, she came upon a battered white Civic. One side mirror was held on with duct tape and there was a decent-size dent in the bumper. The sign in the window said FOR SALE, $1,000, RUNS GOOD. It was late; she was tired and bitter about missing the bus, which was bright and quick and safe. Too often her life seemed disproportionately inconvenient and annoying, and now, looking at the car, she found her feet slowing, and stopping, until she stood by the side of the road in the cool damp grass as cars roared by on the four-lane next to her.

  A thousand dollars. What a big, slippery number that was. If she managed to squirrel away a hundred a week she could have it in ten weeks (three months-ish, by which time the car probably wouldn’t even be there anymore so why was she even bothering to do the math). She put the numbers together in her head, food and electricity and the phone—Margot’s SSI almost covered rent—and looked away. She couldn’t manage to save fifty dollars a month, let alone a hundred a week. And that wasn’t even figuring in insurance and gas. Her last boyfriend had been all worked up about insurance and gas, how much they cost.

  But at the same time, she wanted the car. It pulled at her. Having her own car would make everything better. It would mean no more walking by the side of the highway in the middle of the night, no more hauling everything she needed for both of her jobs around in her backpack. The car would mean no wrestling Margot onto the bus for doctors’ appointments, no more hikes to the bank to deposit checks. No more having to take Does he have a car? into account when a guy asked her out, no more having to take But he has a car into account when she didn’t want to see him anymore.

  Caro was not quite eighteen, but she was smart, and, more than that, she was realistic. She knew that right now, as things stood, she could not have the car.

  Someday, she thought—as she always did—I will look back on this part of my life, and it will be in my past, and I will not have to live it anymore.

  Still, she burned with frustration.

  It was not fair.

  Caro had applied for a job as a bartender and she would have gotten it, but her fake ID was terrible, and Freddy, the manager, didn’t buy it for a second. He said he’d hire her as a waitress, and she needed money so she took the job. She acted more grateful than she was and got good at finding reasons not to be alone in a room with him.

  The place was at a new midrange hotel out on the strip outside Pitlorsville, the kind that was supposed to appeal to business travelers, a step above the hot-breakfast-buffet sort of deal in that it had an actual restaurant with an actual bar. Caro didn’t think the food was anything special. All the sandwiches came with sauces that were basically mayonnaise with stuff mixed in—Parmesan or garlic or pesto or whatever—and the French fries and bread all came frozen off the Sysco truck. Caro mostly worked the dinner shift, which was normally dead. She usually had one table going at any given time. Two was rare. Three tables left the kitchen in the weeds, even though everything was basically reheated. Her paychecks were minuscule. Her tips were nothing. But after a few weeks, Freddy started giving her bartending shifts, and that was experience she might be able to turn into a real job somewhere else.

  The humid air of September gave way to the brisk mulchy wind of October, and still the car sat. Waiting, she thought—for a thousand dollars to fall out of the sky at her feet, for whatever cosmic forces controlled the world to decide she’d been taunted enough, for someone luckier to drive it away. Halloween was coming. November and December were right around the corner. Winter would bring snowstorms and icicles and long hours in the dark predawn, numb hands stuffed into Margot’s old mittens, scraping ice off the front steps of the rickety little duplex where they lived, clearing the driveway. (Caro had negotiated that last winter, shoveling the snow in exchange for an embarrassingly small break on the rent.) Winter would bring school closings. Caro didn’t like school but it was better than home, better than hours spent curled up under a blanket in the barely heated duplex hiding a book from Margot and forcing herself through it one sentence at a time. Yanking herself, by sheer force of will, into any world other than this one, any room other than one of the three tiny ones she shared with Margot.

  The guidance counselor, who thought he knew things, passed her in the hallway one day and said, “Hey, Carolyn! How’s your mother?”

  She forced a smile and said, “Good.” As soon as he was around the corner, one of the other girls said, “God, she even fucks the guidance counselors.” Caro stared at her until she looked uncomfortable and walked away. The girls at school thought they knew things too.

  She took the school bus home with all the other kids who didn’t have cars, staring fixedly out the window and ignoring the cacophony around her. At home she found Margot nestled inside a fort she’d made out of the kitchen table by turning it on its side and surrounding it with the chairs, similarly upended. An old afghan was draped across the top, letting light in through its crocheted holes.

  Caro wondered if any of the other girls at school had mothers who made blanket forts. She crouched down so she could see Margot sitting inside, cross-legged like a child, her wide eyes staring out of the dappled darkness. She was wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt—no zippers—and her arms were pulled in close, as if they were cold. “That kind of day?” Caro said.

  “Yes,” Margot said in her weird, affectless way.

  Caro looked around for a plate or a paper towel or some crumbs. “Eat anything?”

  “Nothing was out,” Margot said.

  Caro sighed. “Want me to make you a peanut butter sandwich?”

  Margot nodded.

  “Okay,” Caro said, and stood up. “Cover your ears. I have to open things.”

  She heard a soft whimper from inside the fort, and then her mother said, “Okay,” in a tense, muffled way that Car
o knew meant that Margot had clapped both hands over her ears and was curled in a tight defensive ball. “Hands, Carrie?”

  Automatically, Caro pulled her sleeves down over her hands. There was an empty pitcher on the counter; with her hands still inside her sleeves, so she didn’t touch the metal faucet, she put it in the sink and let the cold water trickle into it. As quickly and quietly as she could, she opened the drawer and took out a knife, opened the cupboard and took out the peanut butter. She had to open another drawer to get the bread and that was the worst one because sometimes it squeaked. Margot squeaked too when she heard it. There was a half a loaf of bread left: seven slices. The peanut butter in the jar was enough for two reasonable sandwiches and one scanty one. Caro made the sandwiches, put all three of them on a plate—she heard Margot yelp with fear as the cabinet door slammed shut—and slid them into Margot’s den. Then she took the full pitcher of water from the sink, got a glass down from the cupboard, and crouched down next to the tent again.

  Margot still had her ears covered. Her eyes were squeezed shut too. Caro reached in and tapped her knee. “Margot,” she said, and her mother opened her eyes. Caro showed her the pitcher and the glass. “Water’s right here, okay?”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “My shift starts at four.”

  With one hand, pale and slightly swollen from her meds, Margot pulled the plate in close to her. No other part of her moved. “You have homework?” she said.

  “Taking it with me.”

  “Have you ever read Simone de Beauvoir, Carrie?” Caro shook her head no, and Margot shook her head too. “Shame. I think you’d like her.” Her watery eyes, so like and unlike Caro’s own, blinked, and she made a sad, wistful noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a breath. “I wish they hadn’t gotten to the books. So many good books out there. None of them are safe.”

  “Do you want to go to the bathroom before I leave?” Caro said instead of responding to that, and Margot did, so Caro opened the bathroom door and turned on all the lights and the taps. She waited outside in the hallway until Margot was done, then went in and flushed the toilet and turned everything off. She washed her own hands too, because they smelled like peanut butter, and then redid her ponytail. By the time she got back into the kitchen, Margot had returned to her fort and there was the steady sound of eating.

  “I’m going now,” Caro said.

  “Have a nice day, sweetie,” Margot said. Just like a real mother would.

  As always, Caro thought, It’s nighttime, and as always, she didn’t say it.

  On the nights she didn’t work at the hotel, she worked her old job at the Eat’n Park, in her green polyester jumper and the ribbon-bow earrings she’d bought from the cheerleading squad’s latest fund-raiser. School colors: blue and gold. Go, Golden Bears. She didn’t know if there was even such a thing as a Golden Bear and she’d never seen a bear of any color in worn-down, suburban Pitlorsville, but there were an awful lot of Golden Bear alums. If she stood there on her aching feet and listened to some fat old dude wax nostalgic about his glory days on the whatever team and smiled as if she cared, it was sometimes worth an extra dollar or two. All of the other waitresses went to school with her and most of them hated her. She had to keep an eye on her order slips or they’d magically migrate to the end of the line, and she had to keep an eye on her bag or it ended up full of ketchup. So, really, the nights at the hotel weren’t so bad. At least she got to wear nice clothes and wasn’t surrounded by people whose boyfriends she might or might not have slept with.

  That night she ended up working the counter in the smoking section, which none of the other girls wanted. A guy in a blue work shirt with sewn-on patches ordered bacon and eggs; he said thanks when she brought them and not much else, but he left her a big tip and a note with his number. To the prettiest thing I’ve seen all night. Call me.

  She put the note in her pocket and tried to remember the words on the patches. Was he a cop? A paramedic? A paramedic might be able to help her with Margot sometimes. A cop wouldn’t be worth it. A cop would probably call people.

  Or maybe the patches had said Security Guard. With her luck, they probably had. Out on the highway, the car still waited.

  She worked at the hotel bar a few nights later. Only one customer came in her whole shift; she offered him a table, but he chose to sit at the bar and ordered without looking at the menu. He wore gray slacks and a white button-down shirt. Hair cut recently and conservatively; the watch on his wrist was nice, and the phone he left sitting next to his plate on the bar was glossy and new. He had a friendly face. “You have a turkey club, right?” he said.

  “We do,” she said.

  “All hotel restaurants have to have a turkey club,” he said and gave her a tired smile. “I think it’s a rule.”

  She smiled back, because she had to, and put the order in. The cook was on the phone with his girlfriend, arguing. She wondered if the turkey-club guy was a chatter. She didn’t always mind chatters—sometimes they tipped well—but she had a lab report to write up for chem.

  Her books were spread out behind the bar, which technically they weren’t supposed to be, but nobody was going to rat her out tonight. For a while she worked and Turkey Club watched the crawl on CNN and the restaurant was filled with canned music and a companionable non-quiet. The music covered the sound of what’s his name fighting with his girlfriend and meant that Caro had to listen closely for the bell that meant Turkey Club’s turkey club was ready. When the bell finally rang, she brought the man his food, nodded at the TV, and said, “I can turn that up for you if you want. Or change the station.”

  He looked around. “Yeah, it doesn’t look like anybody will complain. What are you working on?”

  “Lab report for chemistry,” she said.

  “Where do you go to school?” he said.

  Somehow she understood that he thought she was in college. When she worked at the hotel she wore all black, with dark lipstick and some fake diamond earrings she’d bought at the drugstore. “Community college,” she said. “Nothing fancy.”

  He nodded. “That’s smart. Do a few years at community, transfer to a school with a name, save yourself some money.” A dab of mayonnaise stuck to his lip; he wiped it away. “Or just stay at community. There’s nothing wrong with community college.”

  There seemed to be something wrong with the Pitlorsville community college. Caro had never known a single person who’d managed to graduate from it. But she probably just knew the wrong people. “That’s my plan. Transferring.” And wouldn’t that be a lovely plan.

  “I was a chemistry major myself,” he said.

  “Really? What do you do now?”

  “I’m in sales.”

  “That doesn’t seem to have much to do with chemistry.”

  He shrugged. “I never really had the patience for lab work. I just liked mixing things together so they went boom. And the degree got me my first job in pharma.” He looked down at his half-eaten sandwich, the fries cooling in a puddle of ketchup. “Which led to the glamorous life you see before you.”

  “There’s nothing you can tell me about glamour,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “I work here.”

  Grinning, he said, “Well, it’s quiet.”

  Quiet it certainly was. Turkey Club was her first and last customer of the night. Freddy, her boss, came in as she was closing up, looked at the posted schedule, and shook his head. “There’s no good way to say this,” he said, and then he told her that after this week, they were closing the restaurant for dinner. They’d be doing room service instead, splitting those shifts between the two bartenders and whatever hotel staff was available. “If you wanted to, you could work breakfasts,” he said. “We’re always busy at breakfast.”

  So was Caro. In English class. For the nine millionth time she wondered if it would be easier to quit school, but as always, something in her balked at the thought. Margot had quit school. Margot thought there were evil elves in the wall monitori
ng her and Caro’s movements through every metal thing or printed word in the house. “I need this job, Freddy,” she said.

  “And you’ve got it. For one more shift.”

  “How generous of you,” she said.

  He had the decency to look sad. “Just so you know, I hate firing people. And it’s not that I don’t like you. You’re a great kid. You’re good with the customers. If there were more of them, this wouldn’t even be a question.”

  She trudged home in the cold. When she passed the car, she didn’t even let herself look at it. There was no way. Absolutely no way.

  The next night she worked at Eat’n Park. She left at the same time as a girl named Cathy who was in her math class and who had her own car. Cathy didn’t offer her a ride home. Caro hadn’t expected her to. Even the girls who didn’t have a specific reason to hate her stayed away, and she understood why. In high school, being a pariah was like having a communicable disease. And maybe Cathy had a boyfriend too. Caro didn’t set out to steal. She just took opportunities as they arose. She couldn’t afford not to, and it was nice not to feel alone, and all of those girls had loving mommies and doting daddies and there would be other boys for them, other futures.

  She thought about blowing off her last shift at the hotel but she couldn’t justify it—and besides, what was she going to do instead? Sit at home with Margot and watch her meds not work? So, two days later, she was back in her black shirt and pants, standing behind the bar doing homework. Algebra this time. She’d failed it the year before.