Love and Other Wounds

by Jordan Harper

  But all that comes later. When Benny sits across from me I’m sitting in a corner of the food court with my fried rice and egg rolls, thinking about the store. I want to be a salesgirl. Mr. Nesbitt laughed when I told him, and said he didn’t know what he’d do without me working the computers. The salesgirls, like Amanda who sits in the middle of the food court, don’t know half what I do about carats and cut and clarity, but they look like the kind of woman you want to drape in diamonds. And now I’m replaying the conversation in my head, the way Mr. Nesbitt won’t look at me while he laughs at the idea. And then there’s Benny staring straight into my eyes and asking if this seat is taken.

  He sits across from me talking and smiling. I’m trying not to stare at him. The napkin I put over my General Tso’s chicken is turning orange from the grease it’s drinking. As soon as this gorgeous hunk gets up and leaves, I’m going to dip my crab rangoon in the General Tso’s sauce and suck out the cream cheese. But he doesn’t leave, and after he tells one lame joke he winks at me. I wonder if the girls at Nesbitt’s maybe hired this guy or something.

  I’ve met chubby chasers, and this guy isn’t one. Guys like that like to say something about my size right away, to try and make me feel comfortable. Oh God, like how they like a woman with some meat on her bones. Like maybe they’re planning on cooking me up later.

  He’s not looking around the room while we talk, either. Most men, when they end up in a conversation with me in a bar or something, they’re always looking around. Maybe they’re looking for better options, but mostly, I think, it’s because they’re afraid someone might see them. A friend told me this joke once. I guess it’s a joke men tell to each other:

  Why’s a fat girl like a moped?

  They’re a lot of fun to ride, but you wouldn’t want your friends to see you on one.

  Benny looks right in my eyes when he talks to me. His eyes are clear blue, and I don’t see myself reflected in them at all.

  He asks if I want to go see a movie after work. I never told him that I worked at the mall. I could have been shopping. This is something I don’t think about until later. At the time I can hardly think at all. But later on, it will come back to me and make perfect sense.

  Back at the store, Amanda corners me. Her skin is the color of Arizona dirt, and it’s stretched so tight you can see three sides of her collarbones. She asks me who I was talking to. Just some guy. Pretty cute, she says back, the way you’d say it to a niece who had not yet admitted to liking boys. Whatever, I say, just like your niece would.

  After work, I stop at Lion’s Choice and pick up a few roast beef sandwiches and eat them while I drive, barely chewing at all. He’s taking me to dinner, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to the restaurant hungry. He’s not really going to show up, I tell myself as I drive and swallow. There’s no way. Maybe he’s just into fat chicks, I tell myself. But that doesn’t feel right.

  Maybe he’s hogging, I think. I read one time about guys who will set out to pick up the fattest thing they can find, and they all show up someplace and the guy with the biggest girl wins. Wins what, I don’t know. Respect? I can see in my head a table full of women like me, all of us knowing what is going on and not a one of us doing a thing about it while the men get drunk and laugh at us. For the hundredth time I cancel the date in my head and then remind myself that I don’t even have this guy’s number. My fate, at least for the night, is sealed.

  It takes me about three hours to get dressed, an hour of that in the shower, getting everything, shaving my legs, even that patch down by my ankle. I have to hold my breath to reach it. I’m lucky I don’t break my neck. Choosing a dress takes longer. Black, of course. Black’s slimming, you know. I put my makeup on using a mirror and trying not to look at myself. Then I eat a pint of Cherry Garcia standing over the sink, thinking he’s not going to come and if he does then that might be even worse and that there’s something wrong with him; there must be something wrong, but even if there is I don’t care because at least that kind of wrong will be something new. When the doorbell rings, I just about bite through the spoon.

  We eat Italian on the Hill, and I get fettuccini with white sauce and laugh at his jokes, which aren’t very funny. He tells me he works in contracting, and I ask him what that means, and he fumbles a bit. So we drink more, and I let myself get drunker than I should on a date, because if I don’t I’m going to jump out of my skin. Which wouldn’t be so bad, really.

  After the dinner, after I refuse to have dessert, just say no, when he asks me if I want to go to his place, I say yes. I breathe in deep, trying to see if my nervous sweat has kicked up any of the smell, but I don’t smell anything. The way Benny smokes, I’d be surprised if he can smell anything at all. We go to his place in the Central West End and it’s done up in that way that looks tasteful but just means that you bought everything at the same store. And I’m looking around and he puts a hand on my shoulders and it’s like someone set my insides on puree.

  When we make love, he wants to leave the lights on, but I stand my ground. He shuts off the light. He almost glows in the dark.

  When we lie in bed the light through his window throws my silhouette against the wall, hiding Benny’s completely. He doesn’t try to put his arm around me, thank God. He sits up against his headboard and smokes and talks. He lets the name Frank Priest slip, and anybody who reads the paper knows he’s like the biggest mob boss in town, and another part of Benny becomes clear. Then he asks me what I do. I tell him I run a computer system at a store in the mall. He asks what kind of store and I tell him, jewelry, and he says, oh, really?

  Two nights later he takes me to a bar, and the other women look at me with hateful eyes like maybe I’m holding Benny hostage. Benny gets up at one point to get us refills and some guy with gelled hair and an upturned collar comes by my table, the muscles in his face slack and his eyes shot. He’s trying to talk to me but he’s laughing too hard to do it. At another table behind him his friends are tamping down their giggles like children in church.

  The guy never gets his line out. Maybe it was about a moped, I’ll never know. Benny comes out of the dark and doubles the guy with a punch in the stomach. Then he gets both hands in the crisp bristles of the guy’s hair and slams his head against our table, making my amaretto sour jump. The guy just drops after that. Benny holds his hand out to me, palm up, and says, m’lady. His hand has little specks of blood on it. I take it in my own and I walk out of that place feeling like I left two hundred pounds sitting on the bar.

  That night, after we make love, I tell him I know what it is that he wants. And that it’s okay.

  Yeah? He asks me.

  Yes, I tell him. Just tell me what your plan is, and let’s work together to make it better.

  It turns out that his plan needs a lot of work. Benny doesn’t know much about jewelry stores, or even jewelry. So I tell him about the security room and its own special server, which I can access. I tell him about the loose stone set, and how they keep another box just like it full of cubic zirconium fakes.

  He talks about us robbing it together, like Bonnie and Clyde. You could wear a mask, he tells me. And I just look at him. A mask? What kind of mask could I wear?

  He wants to blow the safe. He’s already got a bomb, he says. He shows it to me, how you just twist these wires onto those connectors and then push down the little plunger and boom! Never thought I’d learn how to set up a bomb. When I tell him that we won’t need to blow anything up, that the best stuff sits out in the inventory room so people can look through it, he gets a look on his face like I just took away his lollipop. He spent a lot of money on the bomb, he says. Well, it doesn’t go bad, does it? I ask. Just put it in the closet, and maybe we’ll need it next time.

  Over the next two weeks I lose ten pounds. In that number there’s a future where diamond money can buy the gastric bypass, buy new clothes, the kind of clothes they put in the windows of the stores at the mall. There’s a future where people could see me and Benn
y at a bar somewhere and not laugh or gape or guess I’m his sister. And we finally come to make a plan that I’m pretty sure will work. When we finally get it all set out and planned, Benny gets out a bottle of champagne and after a toast he pours some of the champagne on me and licks it off, and I don’t push him away or wonder how I smell. I just look up at the ceiling and see that other life hanging there, so close I can almost taste it.

  The morning of the robbery, we leave from Benny’s place, each in our own car. Just before we pull out, I get back out and head back inside. Benny gives me a look like, what? I just point to my stomach and roll my eyes. Let him think I have last-minute jitters. It takes only a minute to do what I have to do. Then we’re on course.

  None of the salesgirls hanging around the display cases say hello. My card opens the door into the back of the store. I boot up the store server, then buzz the door to the inventory room. Jack, a sweet old guy with a gun on his ankle, lets me in. I boot up the security server, then wreck it with a few clicks of the mouse. I act confused and ask Jack to check a connection across the room. While he does that, I put a little red sticker on the top of the loose stone case, the one without the fakes in it. Jack comes back and tells me the wires are plugged tight, and I say, well, that probably makes it the motherboard. Let me make a call. I step outside of the inventory room and dial Benny’s number. He doesn’t answer, but he’s not supposed to. He’s coming from the food court where we first met. He should be here in the time it takes me to take five deep breaths.

  He wears a wig and dark glasses, and he steps into the store with his silver pistol pointing right at Amanda’s face. With his left hand he grabs her by the hair and yanks her across the counter. That’s how skinny she is. And then he’s pushing her to the back of the store and one of the other salesgirls starts screaming. Benny pushes past me without even looking and gets Amanda to open the back door and then just pulls open the inventory door, because I zapped the electric lock when I fried the server. A few seconds later the gunfire starts.

  Maybe Jack went for his gun. I don’t know. But there are two loud pops and Amanda screams and then Benny is back out, kicking Amanda in front of him, the loose stone case in one hand and the pistol in the other. Right in front of me Amanda falls down and Benny points the gun down and there’s a bang and all sorts of stuff slops out of Amanda onto the floor. I would never have guessed she’d have so much inside her.

  Then Benny looks up at me, and even though he’s wearing glasses and a wig I can see him perfectly, and he sees me, like we’re both naked in the daylight.

  I turn so I don’t have to watch the gun barrel rise, or Benny’s face when he pulls the trigger. That’s why the bullets hit me in the back.

  If it had gone according to the plan that both of us knew was a lie, then Benny would have headed out the door next to the Foot Locker across the way; ditched his wig, glasses, and coat in the hall; and put the loose stone case inside the big plastic Gap bag he had tucked inside his pants. He would have gotten in his car and driven to the motel just past Six Flags on I-44. After the police questioning finished, I was supposed to drive there myself.

  But first, I would have stopped at his apartment and unhooked Benny’s bomb from the front door, where I’d hooked it up just before we left. I would have put the bomb back into the closet and gotten ready for my new life. But I guess Benny will just have to find it himself. See, Benny never really had me fooled. But he did make me hope.

  Damn him for that.

  AD HOMINEM ATTACK, OR I REFUTE IT THUS

  Frank’s thumb, the one with the lump, popped when he picked up his fork. The lump had scared him when it first rose up, enough to send him to the health clinic. The man at the doc-in-a-box called it a Bible cyst and asked if he did a lot of typing. When Frank said he did data entry, the doc had nodded and told him to pay it no mind. Said something about repetitive stress. Said something about workers’ comp. That was when Frank had stopped listening. A man who got his typing certificate from JeffCo Prison doesn’t take workers’ comp for a cyst. He just thanks whoever that it wasn’t carpal tunnel, not yet anyway.

  “I can’t believe you,” the voice said behind him. He tried not to listen. But they talked too loud to ignore.

  “Well, you’re the one making indefensible arguments.”

  The booth behind Frank. College boys. They came across the park to the Dogtown Diner late at night for the cheap coffee. Same as Frank did. They came to read and smoke, same as him too. Frank drank coffee and read anything paperback, because in five dry years he still hadn’t figured out how to sleep without booze. A different doc, one at JeffCo, had told him that he’d gone and rewired his brain over twenty years of juicing. That’s just the way it was.

  Repetitive stress.

  “Get off it, Owen. How can you say it’s not raining outside? You can see the rain hitting the window.”

  Owen was the one sitting right behind Frank. That made him the one smoking the sickly sweet clove cigarette.

  “I don’t know that’s rain, and neither do you.”

  Frank hadn’t noticed Owen when he sat down, but he’d gotten a pretty clear idea of what his face must look like. That slicked back hair and the scraggly beard, the old clothes that cost more than new clothes did, and a face smug as a freshly wiped asshole. Frank would put a ten-spot on it right now.

  “Are you high?” the other guy asked. “I can see the rain hitting the window, just like you can.”

  “There are so many wrong things in that little sentence,” Owen said. “First off, you can’t know that what you see and what I see are the same. Alienation. It’s only been, like, the most important theme of art for the last thirty years. You can’t know if I see what you see.”

  “Can we just study?”

  “Look, you just think it’s raining because you’ve been taught the idea of rain—that when you see liquid fall from the sky that it is rain.”

  “Fuck the trig homework, huh?” the other one said, slamming shut a book. “All right, fine. I think it’s rain because it’s always fucking rain.”

  “But just because something has always happened in the past doesn’t mean that it will happen again. Hume proved that in the eighteenth century.”

  Frank nodded at Debbie walking by with a coffeepot. She filled up his cup. He watched her walk away, saw the Band-Aids on the backs of her heels where her shoes rubbed her raw.

  Repetitive stress.

  “And another thing,” Owen said. “Your whole concept of ‘rain’ . . . The word is a symbol. Once you’ve applied it to the drops of liquid that you insist are falling outside, you’ve replaced the real with the symbolic. It’s your idea of the word that you’re talking about, not the real thing that may or may not be happening.”

  “Then what’s the point of you talking right now?”

  “Ha-ha. Words still have a symbolic meaning that can never stand in for reality, which must be experienced through the senses . . . and of course the senses can’t be trusted either. That’s the realm of the imaginary, and that’s not real either.”

  “So everything we know is just, what, a seven-layer bean dip of bullshit?”

  “Exactly. Unreality piled on top of unreality!” Owen lit another clove. “Look, nothing is certain. Every experiment they’ve ever done on eyewitnesses and the like prove that our senses can’t be trusted. The Heisenberg principle shows that even by observing something, we change it in a way that we’ll never fully understand.”

  “Christ, Owen . . . it’s raining outside.”

  “You don’t know that.” Owen’s gesture shook the back of Frank’s seat. “What are you doing in school, man? I mean, in high school they teach you Newton’s laws, and then you get to college and you learn that Einstein and quantum mechanics have shown that Newton was wrong. Antiparticles move backward through time. We don’t know anything about things people have been studying for thousands of years. And you look through a piece of glass and proclaim you know exactly what is happenin
g out there. Don’t be so stupid.”

  “Fine, Owen, fine. You win. It isn’t raining outside.”

  “Fine, Jack, fine,” Owen said. “Run away into sarcasm. But it’s just because you can’t prove me wrong.”

  For a second, just the sound of silverware scraping on plates. Frank rubbed the lump on his thumb, then the lump in his pocket, where the knife was.

  “Look, dude, let’s get back to trig.”

  “Pure mathematics, Jack. No problem.”

  Frank got up and paid at the counter, enjoying Debbie’s twisted front tooth as she bit her bottom lip counting out change.

  “Keep it,” he said. “Slow night, huh?”

  “It’s the rain,” Debbie said.

  “I know.”

  Frank waited in the back of the gravel parking lot of the diner for the time it took him to smoke three cigarettes, looking into the diner at the two college students. Flicking his knife blade open and closed. He’d been right on the money about Owen. Only thing he’d missed were the thick-rimmed glasses.

  Right about when Frank tossed the third butt onto the wet gravel the two young men closed their books and paid up. The one named Jack left the diner and headed south into Dogtown. Owen headed north, toward the bridge over the freeway into Forest Park. Frank followed.

  Away from I-40, Forest Park was silent, and the trees above blocked out the moonlight. Here in the heart of the park at three in the morning, you could fool yourself into thinking you were in the middle of a real forest. Frank sped up, staying quiet, until he was close enough to touch Owen.

  “Hey there,” Frank said. Owen froze.

  Frank kicked the back of Owen’s knee. Owen skidded down ass-first onto the wet grass.

  “Is it raining?” Frank asked. He straddled Owen, sitting on his stomach. “Tell me, Owen. Is it raining?”

  “What are you doing?” Owen twisted back and forth under Frank. He slapped up at Frank with soft hands. Frank had the mount. Frank had him cold.