by Jeff Gomez
As they walk, Kat frantically tries texting and then calling her friend, except neither works. When they get to the entrance, they step out of line and let people pass them and head into the club. A band’s on stage, tuning up, about to go on.
“Goddamn,” Kat says. “She probably got hung up. She said she might have some family thing. Well, I guess she had it.”
There’s desperation in her voice. They stand there for a few seconds, the crowd filing past. Randy hands her his ticket.
“Take mine.”
“What? No, I couldn’t. We just met and, what about you?”
He shrugs.
“I’ve seen them a bunch of times. I want you to have it. Really.”
She bites her lip. When she does, they get even more red.
“But will—are you sure?”
Randy grins.
“I’m sure.”
Kat’s about to say something, but doesn’t. She just smiles and takes the ticket.
“Thanks.”
She leans in for a hug. When Kat does this, he can smell her hair. It smells like apricots. Releasing him, she folds herself back into the line of people entering the club. The first band has started playing, and Randy recognizes the song. It’s the Deer Park. He interviewed them twenty years ago in a smelly and beat up van just a few miles from where he’s standing. Randy imagines the younger version of himself in the club, moshing in the pit, singing along, having fun. He tries to think of something he could say to that version of himself, something that would prepare for him everything that’s going to follow, but he comes up blank.
Randy turns and walks away from the club.
Charles needs more gin. As he wades deeper into the pantry—the room’s the size of, and resembles, a small store—the green cap catches the light from the bulb that’s still swinging from where he hit it with his head a few seconds ago as he entered the room. He grabs the gin, pulls the string to turn out the light, and reenters the kitchen.
He fills the cocktail shaker halfway with gin. Charles adds a dash of vermouth and walks to the refrigerator to get ice from the door. He puts the top on the cocktail shaker, gives it a good shake, and then grabs the strainer as he enters the den.
“Who’s ready for a refill?”
Roy and Ronnie turn and raise their empty glasses. Just as Charles bends over, about to fill Ronnie’s glass, there’s a knock at the door. It’s louder and more insistent than earlier in evening. Charles frowns, says, “Excuse me,” and places the pitcher on the table.
“Charles,” Roy says, “you need a hand?”
“Thanks, but no. This’ll just take a second.”
Charles gets up and marches out of the dining room. He throws open the front door.
“Jesus, Randy, will you just leave me—”
Only it’s not Randy. It’s Dylan. He has bloodshot eyes and his hands are shaking. Charles sniffs and can smell alcohol.
“Why? Why’d you do it, Charles?”
Charles steps out and quickly closes the door behind him.
“Do what?”
Dylan forces a laugh.
“Don’t play dumb with me. Brooks told me you sent him on some wild good chase on Monday, acting all nervous and weird. Later that day I noticed some of my files were missing. On Tuesday I have some strange meeting with O’Brien where he accuses me of all kinds of shit. Then, on Wednesday, I’m fired. Pretty suspicious, don’t you think?”
“Look, Dylan, I’m sorry they let you go. Really. But this has nothing to do with me.”
Dylan waves his hand, as if casting aside everything that Charles is saying. As he does this, his big silver watch makes a rattling sound.
“Charles, that’s bullshit. You know it and I know it.”
“Dylan, I’m—I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Seconds pass. Charles wishes someone would drive by, or that Grace would come out to check on him. But there’s just silence.
“I suppose they gave you the promotion. My promotion.”
“I’m not sure. Nothing’s really—nothing’s been decided yet.”
“You fucking liar.”
“Dylan, look. I’m telling you the truth.”
Dylan begins quickly pacing back and forth.
“Jack said you met with Tom on Friday.”
“Jack? How does Jack know anything?”
“He’s sleeping with Heather. She told him you’ve been meeting with Tom a lot lately.”
Goddamn Jack.
“Dylan, that wasn’t about you, I swear. Or Sharon. Tom wants me to go to the main office. In Seattle. To talk about next quarter’s quotas for the sales guys. That’s it.”
“You liar. You fucking, goddamn, liar!”
The door opens. Charles turns and sees Grace and Roy. Ronnie’s in the background, sipping her martini.
Grace says, “Dylan?” They’ve met before. Holiday parties. Company barbecues. She and Dylan’s wife once organized a company trip to Atlantic City.
Seeing Grace seems to calm Dylan down. He retreats slightly, anger draining from his face. But a second later, it’s back.
“Celebrating, are we, Charles? Celebrating my promotion?”
Charles doesn’t say anything.
“Honey, what’s he talking about?” Grace says this to Charles but she’s looking at Dylan.
“Nothing, sweetheart. Dylan’s just being—it’s sour grapes, that’s all.”
“Tell her, Charles! The whole fucking office knows. She might as well know, too.”
Roy leans in and says, quietly, “Should I call the cops?”
Charles pictures police cars. Flashing sirens. News crews. A story in tomorrow’s Kitty Courier. He whispers to Roy, “No, don’t worry about it. He’s just letting off a little steam. It’ll be okay.”
“Tell them, Charles!” Dylan’s fists are curled into tight balls. His voice is practically a scream. “Tell her how you lied to O’Brien to get my job! Tell them how you fucked me and got me fired!”
Dylan’s voice echoes in the night. Various lights over various doors turn on, up and down the street. Doors open, people step out to see what’s going on. Charles can tell you everyone’s name. He knows all his neighbors. And now they know this. Next door, John steps out, onto his porch.
When Dylan speaks again, he’s no longer shouting. His voice is actually not much more than a whisper. Beginning to cry, his eyes filled with tears, he says, “Tell them, Charles. Tell them how you ruined my life.”
Behind them, there’s someone new at the door. Maddie stands in jeans and a T-shirt. She looks at her father.
“Daddy? Is that true?”
Craig finally spots Ashley at the party. He’s been texting and calling her for the past two hours, but she hasn’t answered. Now he sees her tentatively hovering at the edge of the room, as if unsure she’s in the right place.
“You’re late.”
“Sorry, I got lost.”
“Lost? How did you get lost? You’ve lived here your entire life.” Craig takes her by the arm and walks her over to the windows, toward where he used to sit. “We’re right off the freeway. How do you miss that?”
Ashley looks out the window, blankly.
“I’m sorry, Craig,” she says. “I told you. I was lost.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nathan watching him. Craig fakes a smile and then whispers to Ashley.
“Look, I’m sorry. It’s been a rough night. Can we just leave?”
“But we—I just got here. Don’t you at least want to show me your office?”
“Sure.” He points around the room. “These are the desks. There’s the kitchen. We used to have a conference room, but now it’s Wimbledon for idiots. It’s over there. Now can we go?”
Ashley shrugs, so Craig grabs her hand and leads her through the office. They’re almost out the door when Nathan calls out.
“Craig, got a second?”
Leaning in to Ashley, he says, “Meet me in the hallway.”
Ashley nods and walks through the door she entered just a few minutes ago.
“Wanted to give you one of these.” Nathan hands Craig a pillow. “Thought you should have one of these so you could familiarize yourself with our product. This is next month’s selection. Feel how soft it is.”
Craig squeezes the pillow. It’s indeed soft, but it also feels thin and cheap, like a cotton ball.
“Air, right?” Nathan says. “Doesn’t it feel just like air?”
Two weeks ago I was presenting the marketing strategy for an innovative new startup that was going to revolutionize travel. Now I’m sending people air.
“Wow, yeah—Nathan. This is awesome.”
Nathan grins. Across the room, Craig sees James grab a beer from the fridge. He’s breathing heavily and there’s sweat on his forehead. When he catches Craig’s eye, he winks.
“I knew you’d like it,” Nathan’s saying. “So then, see you on Monday? First thing? We’re going to crush it.”
“Definitely. Crush it.”
Craig puts the pillow under his right arm and leaves the office. He finds Ashley in the hallway staring at the back of her phone. They ride the elevator in silence. Downstairs, people are still arriving for the party. Craig searches for a familiar face, but sees only strangers. They stop by the bike rack and he turns to Ashley.
“I’m sorry about up there. But I’m really glad to see you. Really glad. I’ve been thinking of you every second since the other day. And, well, I’m just glad to be with you again. To be back together.”
“Back together?”
“Well, yeah.”
He reaches out to take her hand but, when he does, she flinches and his fingers scrape against her wedding band. The diamonds scratch his skin.
“Craig, I can’t do this.”
Ashley’s eyes look dull and her face is washed out.
“Ash, please. This can be our chance to get it right.”
“Don’t call me Ash. And just—get away from me. Right now.”
“Why?”
“Craig, look at yourself. You look like you’re twelve years old and you’re heading off to summer camp.”
He looks down. He still has the pillow Nathan gave him tucked under his arm and the backpack’s slung over a shoulder.
“You dress like you’re in the sixth grade and you take a glorified bus to work. And, and,” she motions to his shoulder. This seems to break her. “You’re wearing a fucking backpack.”
Ashley crumples to the ground. Her purse falls and empties itself onto the concrete. Items scatter—tube of mascara, packet of gum, small tin of Altoids. An amber prescription bottle rolls into the parking lot, coming to a stop under the front tire of a Tesla.
He says, in a whisper, “It’s a shuttle.”
“Craig, you’re going backwards. And I can’t—I just don’t want to be in that place. Not anymore. Not with you. Not again.”
“What, you’d rather go back to Andrew? To fucking Andrew?”
“Andrew’s good to me. He’s better to me than I’ve been to him.” She looks up. “And he’s better to me than you ever were.”
“That’s not true. Stop that.”
He kicks at the curb. When he does, the backpack falls off his shoulder. It makes noise as it hits the ground, the metallic buckles and clasps clanging on the concrete. Craig grabs the backpack and throws it across the parking lot. It bounces off a black Chevy Volt.
“Ash, please. I’m begging you.”
“You ruined me once, Craig. I won’t let you do it again.”
“For god’s sake, stop blaming me for what happened. It wasn’t my fault.”
“What we did was wrong, Craig. In Charlottesville. It was wrong.”
“Don’t bring that up.”
“We could have been parents. We could have had a child. We could have had something to love.”
“I loved you.”
“Loved me? You didn’t even like me.” Ashley begins picking up the things that fell out of her purse. But rather than put them back in, she throws them into the parking lot. Slowly, one at a time. The gum. A packet of tissues. Her checkbook.
Craig moves toward her, grabbing the upper part of her right arm. When he tries to get her to stand up, she lets out a small scream so he lets go. A young couple heading into the building throws them glances.
“There’s no need to create a scene, Ashley. Jesus.”
“You made me do it, Craig. You made me.”
“I didn’t make you. Stop saying that. We made the decision together. You’re rewriting history.”
Craig looks up at the building, to the window in Seatr’s office that overlooks the parking lot. He sees figures, skinny silhouettes holding cups and beer bottles. He sees fingers pointing.
Ashley stands up, grabs her purse, and stumbles toward him. Craig backs up, not sure what she’s going to do.
“I would love to rewrite history, Craig. I would write it so that I never married Andrew. Or took my stupid job.” She’s speaking slowly and staring at the freeway. “And I’d go even further than that. To that day in the bookstore. When I first met you.”
She focuses for a second on Craig, but then turns toward the parking lot. She says, “If I could rewrite history, Craig, I’d write you right out.” And then she walks away.
He considers going after her, but doesn’t. Instead, he sits down on the curb inside of the semicircle of stuff that fell out of her purse. He grabs the pillow and pulls it in, close to his chest. He buries his head. The sounds all around him are muffled.
A few minutes later, he registers someone walk up beside him and stop.
“Ashley?”
He looks up and sees James. Behind him stand Josh, Nathan, Alex, and a few other people he recognizes from the party.
“Come back upstairs,” James says. “Let’s play a game.”
When he doesn’t move, James bends down and stretches out his arms, offering to help Craig up. That’s when he notices the tattoos. Two four letter words, one on each of James’s hands, a letter on each knuckle: GAME OVER.
Ashley turns into the driveway, pulling up alongside Andrew’s Audi. She glares at the garage door. The garage filled with all the useless crap they never use and don’t want. She revs the engine and releases the brakes, launching the car forward. It strikes the garage door with a dull crash. The impact throws up a cloud of dust, paint chips rain down. Airbags deploy and feel soft against her cheek. It makes her want to close her eyes and rest. But then she thinks of Craig and his pillow. The backpack. All the mistakes she’s made in the past week.
The garage door falls apart in three sheets of plywood. She’d wanted there to be a hole shaped like her car, like you see in cartoons, but instead the whole thing’s come down in pieces. Andrew appears at the back of the garage, standing at the door that leads from the garage into the house. He’s silhouetted by light from the kitchen. She gets out of the car.
“Ashley, what are you doing?” There’s panic in his voice. “Are you okay? Did you lose control?”
Her own voice, when she speaks, is even and calm.
“Yes, Andrew. I lost control.”
She looks at the front of her Prius. It doesn’t look dented, but the hood is scratched and something inside the car is chiming, asking for her attention. The door’s still open so maybe it’s that. She looks around at all the stuff in the garage. The stacks. The piles. The mountains of junk.
Neighbors told them to keep a pair of old mattresses. You never know when you’re going to need them. Her parents said they shouldn’t throw out their old microwave. It might come in handy someday. She begged Andrew to get rid of his books, but he swore he’d reread them. Every time they were going to toss something, they held on to it. Just in case.
All our lives we were taking the wrong advice, listening to the wrong voices.
Cars go by, slowing, gawking, jaws dropped. She doesn’t care anymore.
“Ashley!” Andrew grabs her by the shoulders. �
�Talk to me. What happened?”
“I just wanted—I just wanted—”
“What, Ashley, what?”
“I just wanted to park in the garage. For once.”
His look softens—less scared, more understanding—and he pulls her close. For a few minutes they don’t speak.
Finally, Ashley, “Why did we wait, Andrew?”
When he doesn’t answer, she asks again, “Why did we make that decision over another?”
“I don’t know, darling.” Now his own voice is calm. It’s not much louder than the chiming still coming out of the car. “I really don’t. But does it matter now? The decision was made.”
“We can do something about it.”
“We can’t Ash—Ashley, we can’t. Too much time’s gone by.”
He lets go of her and she sits down on a stack of old magazines. She’s flanked by an assortment of paint cans on one side and a belt sander on the other that Andrew bought two years ago but has never used.
“We can do something,” she says.
“We looked into that, sweetheart. That clinic out west. It costs a fortune. We don’t have a fortune.”
“Andrew, please. We need to do something.”
He’s about to speak, but doesn’t. So she does.
“Andrew, we need to change. I just feel like we haven’t changed, that’s all.”
He finally says, “Okay, Ashley. We’ll change.”
She looks up at him and smiles. He reaches down and helps her up, the stack of magazines falls over when she stands. He leads her toward the door off the kitchen.
Going back into the house, and just to see what happens, Andrew presses the button to open the garage. What remains of the door falls to the ground, dust and chips of old flaking paint make clouds that are lit up by the streetlight two doors down. The engine pulls and the chain makes all its usual noise. Something’s missing, but it still works.
Mark’s ears are ringing. It’s nearly midnight, the night having gone by in a blur. The club’s emptying out, more people are backstage than lingering on Dark Star’s huge floor or at the bar. Gary’s in the corner with Dave, smiles on both their faces. Gary’s covered in sweat and still breathing hard from the show. Steve’s with his wife and older brother, Phil. Mark remembers Phil from back in the day. He used to look scary with piercings and long hair. Now, with his hair thinned and silver, he looks like a banker or a lawyer. The other bands are back here too, along with their friends and relatives. People are drinking beer and chugging cocktails out of red plastic cups. Someone even sneaks hits off a joint from a cupped hand. The mood is festive and celebratory.