by John Searles
The last comment is enough to make him stop listening. Since the bartender is taking his sweet time making the drinks, Philip turns and heads into the kitchen to check on the appetizers. They’re not up yet, but when he opens the door, Deb Shishimanian is just clocking in. Her spiky highlighted hair is still damp and falling down in front of her eyes. Shish is the moodiest person on the waitstaff, so Philip tries to guess, from the expression on her broad face, which one of her personalities walked through the door tonight. “Hey, baby,” she says, pulling her apron around her wide hips. “How you doing?”
Nice Shish, Philip thinks. “I’ve been better,” he says.
“Yeah, well, whatever’s wrong with you, it can’t be worse than my week.”
Sometimes Philip wonders if anyone in this place even remembers the fact that his brother died five months ago. At the time, they sent flowers and a few people from the staff—Gumaro and Shish included—showed up at the wake. But no one has mentioned it since. “What’s the matter?” he asks as she sticks her time card back in the rack.
“I caught Beth in ‘Women4Women’ the other day.”
“Where?”
“A chat room on AOL. Remember? It’s the one where I met her in the first place.”
“Oh, yeah,” Philip says. “That’s right. Sorry, I forgot.”
Beth has been Shish’s girlfriend for the past year, ever since they met online and Shish invited her to the Olive Garden one night during her shift. Since Shish has a habit of broadcasting her business to the entire staff—never bothering to hold back on the details of her period or her personal life—they all knew she was expecting a mystery guest that night. And when Beth arrived in leather pants and a tank top with tattooed arms and a pierced nose, every single one of the waiters and waitresses made a point of swinging by the table to check her out. Even Gumaro and the other kitchen guys spent a good part of the night staring through the kitchen window, trying to catch a glimpse. Walter was the only one who refused to take part in the fun.
“I had a feeling she was messing around on the Internet again,” Shish is saying now as she shines up her thin lips with a wand of goo she pulled from her apron. “So I logged on under a fake name from the computer in Walter’s office.”
“He let you?”
“No. The turkey was at the bank doing payroll. Anyway, I started IMing her, real flirtatiouslike, you know, and she suggested that we meet up. I asked her if she was single, and she wrote back ‘yup.’ Just like that: ‘y-fucking-u-fucking-p.’ Can you believe it?”
“I never trusted her,” Philip says
The second the words leave his mouth, he realizes it was the wrong thing to say because Shish’s broad face takes on an angry sneer. Her stumpy nose crinkles, and her shiny lips turn inward. “What do you mean, you never trusted her? You told me you liked her.”
“I—”
“For your information, Philip, we made up. Beth explained the whole thing. She knew it was me, since I was using a screen name I used when we first started talking. Online, I mean. Anyway, I forgot about it until then.”
Not only has Philip lost track of her story, but somehow, right before his eyes, nice Shish has morphed into evil Shish. And since he doesn’t know what else to say, Philip tells her, “I’m sorry.” Then he asks, “But if you made up, why was your week so bad?”
“Chicklet got hit by a car yesterday. She’s dead.”
Chicklet is—was—Shish’s cat. “I’m sorry,” Philip says again.
But Shish continues looking at him with that angry sneer, her stumpy nose still crinkled, her thin lips turned thinner. “You know, Philip,” she says as the kitchen crew clangs pots and a pan hisses with the sound of something frying, “maybe if you came out of the closet and had a relationship of your own, you’d stop being so judgmental.”
Philip sucks in a breath. He is willing to tolerate Walter’s crap, as well as the verbal thrashing from his mother today, but he refuses to put up with abuse from Deb Shishimanian, psycho lesbian waitress. “Just because I don’t broadcast every detail of my sex life to the staff of the Olive Garden does not mean I’m in the closet.”
Shish adjusts her apron around her waist, lining up the tops of her pens like it’s a holster, clearly unfazed by what he just said. “Oh, please, Philip,” she tells him as she fishes through yet another pocket and produces a claw-shaped clip, which she uses to hold her damp hair away from her eyes. “What sex life do you have? I bet the fucking pope sees more action than you.”
Philip opens his mouth to go back at her when the door flies open and the bartender points to the dining room, where Walter is doing The Robot once again. “Philip, your drinks are up. And someone better save our leader before he self-destructs.”
“Shit,” Shish says and walks out the door into the dining room.
“Que es lo que pasa contigo? Se loco,” Gumaro calls from over by the dishwasher.
“Where are my two Sampler Italianos?” Philip yells to the guys from Guam manning the grill and the Fryolater.
“They’re coming, maricón,” one of them yells back.
He turns and goes to the bar, where he grabs a tray. Philip loads it up with all twelve drinks and turns to head for the table. At the same time, Walter storms by, arms waving madly, and smacks right into him. For a brief, slow motion moment, it looks as though Philip will be able save the glasses from toppling. But then a gin and tonic knocks into a Long Island iced tea, which knocks into two chardonnays, and down they all go, crashing to the floor so loudly that the pack of corporate imbeciles all stop talking and stare at Philip, bug-eyed. Only Dean Martin can be heard on the stereo. He’s moved on to “Volare.”
What are you people looking at? Philip wants to scream. Haven’t you ever seen someone spill a tray of drinks before?
And then that black-haired, Cleopatra-banged runt of a woman, the one who had all but wished her coworker dead just so she could get a promotion, thinks she is being funny and starts to clap. The rest of the crowd quickly joins in the applause, and one of the bald guys even shouts, “Bravo!”
Philip tells himself to smile and take the joke, to bend down and pick up the broken glass. But he can’t do any of those things. He feels frozen in place as he stares out at the people clapping, at Deb standing by the coffee machine with a smirk on her face, at the bartender who is already making a duplicate round of drinks, and at Walter, who is not yet saying anything but will definitely start screaming the second they’re in the kitchen. That’s when he hears Gumaro’s weeks of questions rattle off in his mind:
Que es lo que pasa contigo? What’s the matter with you?
Por qué tiene que trabajar aquí si no tiene qué trabajar? Why do you work here if you don’t have to?
It is during this frozen moment that Philip’s mind goes back to this time last year when his brother came home and announced that he had bought a used Mercedes on the credit card their father had given him. The card was intended for emergency use only, so their parents were furious. But after a lot of yelling and screaming, they let Ronnie keep the car. Philip has an identical Visa card in his wallet right now, though he has never once used it. All because he has this notion about making his own way in the world, a notion that seems ridiculous, downright idiotic for the first time this instant.
“Well, are you going to just stand there?” Walter asks when the applause dies down. “Or are you going to at least tell Gumbo back there to get the mop?”
Philip doesn’t answer.
He turns and walks through the door into the kitchen, where he punches his time card and looks down at the tiny purple stamp: five-thirty-seven, the world’s shortest shift. He heads back through the maze of shelves, loaded with olive oil and minced garlic, and the oversize pots and pans hanging on the wall, until he sees Gumaro. He doesn’t mention the mop. Instead, he pats his bulky shoulder and says, “Adios, amigo.”
“Adios,” Gumaro says as he slides a dish rack into the machine and slams down the lever. His voice is so
casual that it’s obvious he doesn’t get that this is good-bye for good.
Philip keeps going out the door anyway.
The moments that follow feel automatic:
He gets in his car.
He starts the engine.
He takes off out of the parking lot.
For the first five minutes, he drives along Lancaster Avenue with no particular destination in mind. What is surprising even to Philip is that he is not thinking about the restaurant or what he’s just done. As odd as it may seem, his mind is focused again on that week at the Cape when he felt trapped by the same sort of endlessly gloomy aching he feels now. He remembers that every shop his grandparents took Philip and Ronnie into, they would ask the person behind the counter for the weather report. It became a kind of game to them, racing to the register to see who could blurt the question first. Everyone gave the same answer: rain for the rest of the week. Finally, their grandmother took them both by the arm and snapped, “Would you two stop this nonsense already? No one is going to tell you anything different. Face facts: the bad weather is here to stay. We’ll just have to make the best of it.” But neither Philip nor Ronnie wanted to make the best of it—if it wasn’t going to get sunny, then they simply wanted to leave.
At the next red light, Philip turns on the radio and flips through the stations in an effort to distract himself from all the things he really should be thinking about. Nothing is on but talk radio and rap music, so he switches it off. When the light turns green, he begins moving again and soon finds himself on a commercial strip, which looks like the same congested stretch of road that can be found in most states these days. He passes a Home Depot with a crowded parking lot, a Wal*Mart, a TGI Fridays, a 7-Eleven, a Subway, a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Target, a Burger King, a Wendy’s, a Mailboxes Etc., and etc. and etc. and etc.
He keeps on driving, his thoughts returning to that day Jilda Horowitz read her truck poem to the class, as he resumes the mission to gauge the validity of Conorton’s comments. After he complimented Jilda, Philip remembers that the hairdresser, who wrote mostly about rainbows and dolphins, said she liked the poem too. But then she added that it might be stronger if Jilda didn’t use the word bastard so much.
“I feel like it’s hitting me on the head. It’s like I tell my clients when I’m giving them highlights,” she said while doodling what looked to Philip like a unicorn at the top of the page. “Sometimes less is more.”
Class rules forbid the writer to speak during the critique session following a reading, but Philip knew exactly what Jilda was thinking, that she’d like to run the hairdresser over with a monster truck and leave her carcass behind for Animal Control to shovel up.
And that’s when Philip remembers that Conorton chimed in with this noncommittal assessment: “Jilda, I think it must be wonderfully cathartic for you to get your rage out on the page.” He stopped and chuckled, coughed a hacking cough. “Listen to me. Rage out on the page. I guess I really am a poet. Rhyme schemes flow from my mouth like a fountain. Okay, next poem.”
As Philip drives on, he wonders if Conorton really did mean what he said about “Sharp Crossing” after all. Finally, he decides to stop thinking about it, since at the moment he has more important things to worry about, like where he is going and what he is going to do now that he just walked out of his job. Since he doesn’t want to go home yet and face his mother, he decides to wait until later when she’s asleep and he can tiptoe up the stairs to his room. But then what? Tomorrow morning, he’ll wake up and have to face her again.
When he focuses on the road ahead, Philip sees the entrance ramp to Route 476. Without signaling, he turns at the last possible second. After paying the toll, he tries to merge with the other cars on the highway. They are all moving faster than the speed limit, zipping by his old Subaru in a steady whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. Philip steps on the gas in an effort to keep up. Soon he is going sixty, then sixty-five, then seventy. Each time he glances down at the speedometer, the police report from his brother’s accident flashes in his mind: Based on the damage to the vehicle, it is estimated that the limousine was traveling at a speed of seventy miles per hour in a thirty-five-miles-per-hour zone at the moment of impact. Normally, that memory makes him slow down. But he presses his foot harder on the gas, going faster still: seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five… When the car reaches eighty, the steering wheel begins to shake in Philip’s hands. He sees a sign for 276, which leads to the Jersey Turnpike, then on to New York City. This time, he signals before turning. Once he is on 276, Philip glances in the rearview mirror, where there is a car with piercing bluetinted headlights, following too closely. He lets his mind wander, thinking of all the things he is leaving behind him:
There is Walter, barking, “You’re late… Get your ass on the floor.”
Gumaro, asking, “Que es lo que pasa contigo?”
Deb Shishimanian and her shiny lips, saying, “Maybe if you came out of the closet and had a relationship of your own, you’d stop being so judgmental.”
And then there is gray-haired Dr. Conorton, seated at his wooden desk in his office crammed with too many books, telling Philip, “I think you stand a chance of publishing this piece, young man. I really do.”
The faster he drives, the faster Philip’s mind ricochets among all these memories and more, some as far back as high school. There is Jedd Kusam knocking Philip’s books to the floor, slamming him up against a locker, and saying, “Repeat after me: My name is Dickless Fairy.” There is his father, only a few months ago, standing before Philip in the family room, explaining, “I’ve already told your mother, so now I need to tell you. I’ve met someone else. Her name is Holly. She was working as a stand-up comedian, of all things, at the medical convention I attended in Vegas. I’m moving out right away. I’ll give you my phone number, and you still have that emergency credit card if you need anything.” There is that shoe salesman at the Payless store in the King of Prussia Mall whose eyes linger on Philip’s longer than most men’s do, a look that leads to them sitting in the man’s Miata in a dark corner of the parking lot, both their pants down at their knees. There is Philip crinkling up his number afterward and tossing it out the window the way he has done so many times before.
Among this swirl of memories, there is one that keeps bubbling to the surface, no matter how much Philip struggles to force it down. He sees his mother standing at the top of the stairs in her nightgown earlier today. She is screaming at Philip, after having chased him from Ronnie’s room, where he was looking for a clean T-shirt, since all of his were dirty. “No one does laundry in this house anymore, so what the hell do you expect?” Philip yells back at her. And then she silences him with a single statement. “Too bad the wrong son died!” she yells in a bloodcurdling voice as Philip steps out the front door of the house with his apron in hand. “Do you hear me? It’s too bad the wrong son died!”
Philip feels as though he could drive on forever.
And still the memory of those words would not be far enough behind.
chapter 6
HOLLY IS IN THE MIDDLE OF HER MORNING WORKOUT WHEN THE phone rings. Normally, she wouldn’t stop to answer it, but instead of her usual combination Pilates-yoga routine, today she is trying a DVD she borrowed from her friend Marley called Facercises: Stretch Your Way to a Natural Face-lift. On the screen, a baby-faced brunette who can’t be a day older than eighteen is poking her tongue against the inside of her cheek, creating a bulge that looks positively obscene. For thirty minutes now, Holly has been struggling to follow along with the various moves, but she feels as though she is in training to become a pornographic mime rather than working off her wrinkles and sagging skin. Either way, she welcomes the interruption of the phone, at least until she presses the On button and hears the voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello.”
“Salutations, Holly. Is your darling husband at home?”
Charlene. She has not called in weeks, but whenever she does,
it never fails to put Richard in a bad mood. Holly once saw a Lifetime movie starring Meredith Baxter Birney as a jilted wife who left angry, ranting messages on her ex-husband’s machine until she finally showed up during the night and shot him and his new wife while they were asleep. That’s what Holly is thinking of when she musters her perkiest voice and says, “Uh, hi. Salutations to you too, Charlene. How are you?”
“Never better. Listen, it’s been great catching up with you. Now put Richard on the phone.”
On the television, the girl with the baby face is saying, “This next exercise works wonders to keep away my frown lines. Just open your mouth big and wide. Make it big. Make it wide. Bigger. Wider. Bigger. Wider. Bigger. Wider. Okay, now thrust out your tongue like you’re trying to lick a melting ice-cream cone. Go on, ladies. Don’t be shy. Lick it up!” Holly doesn’t want to give Charlene any more ammo, so she grabs the remote and presses Pause, freezing that girl with her mouth open so wide it looks as though she is about to vomit. “He’s asleep,” she says.
“Still?”
“Yes, still. We were out late last night at a benefit for a hospital up near Vero Beach. Richard has been doing some consulting for them.” Holly doesn’t know why she feels the need to offer an explanation, but talking to Charlene always makes her nervous. She finds herself blurting things she wouldn’t with anyone else.
“Oh, that’s right,” Charlene says. “How could I have possibly forgotten that I’ve just called the home of Mr. and Mrs. Palm Beach? Well, I’m sure going to all those glamorous black-tie events on Richard’s arm must beat your days working on the Strip before you launched Operation: Steal Someone’s Rich Husband.”