keep something like that to myself. Anyway, long story short, Anthony never trusted me from the start.”
“But he found out it was true.”
“Of course he found out it was true. But that was later. And that first impression of me as a liar always stuck in his head.”
Jack waits a second, not sure if he should ask his next question, but does anyway.
“It’s kind of weird you didn’t tell him though, right?”
“What? Just because I didn’t feel like telling him every fucking thing about me and my father, every pain and disappointment and argument and our entire lives summed up over that first beer? That’s what I was supposed to do, huh?” She scoffs. “Whatever. So, yeah, he never trusted me after that, right up until...”
She fades off. Jack soaks in the information in silence as they drink and the drummer bangs around a bit.
“So, why did you waste so much time with the guy?”
“Okay, if I could sum him up, the way he must have summed me up, it would have been back when I first started teaching, when he anticipated that the little kiss-ass student who was giving me books to read after class – this kid would pass me all these books with dreamy passages marked with beefy bank receipts – was putting the moves on me. Anthony was convinced this kid would eventually try something on our weekly walk to our cars.”
“Why did you let him walk you to your car?”
Jacki ignores this, but talks slower.
“So when Anthony’s crazy throwback bullshit was proven right for the first time ever, and the kiss-ass student did ask me to ‘go get coffee or something,’ I made the mistake of letting him say, ‘I told you so.’ And he said this no less than nine times. It was the happiest I ever saw him actually.”
“And?”
“And? That’s it. That’s the kind of person he was. He was never more miserable than when he was wrong, even if that meant I was not screwing around.”
“So you went out with this kid?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she laughs.
“Do you still teach?”
“What else you got?”
Jack changes the subject back to one she hates even more.
“Why do you think you kept your father’s death to yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because of a lot of stuff. For one, Anthony always suspected that he wasn’t my real father. He said-”
“Wait, did you just say ‘Anthony’ wasn’t your real-”
“No, no, no. I meant my dad wasn’t my dad. What did I say? No, my dad didn’t think he was my real father. He said this in front of my mom on several occasions, mostly holidays. I wanted to scream at him, ‘Is it so goddamn important?’”
“I don’t know,” Jack shakes his head. “Not to take Anthony’s side, but it is weird how first impressions can stick with you forever. Even if you prove someone wasn’t lying to you, you always remember that initial feeling of being lied to. And you associate that feeling with them forever. Even if they tell you the grass is green, you look twice.”
Jacki looks at him for a long time, deciding something. She leans forward.
“Okay. I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
“Anthony didn’t just take off. He was killed last night.”
Jack blinks once, twice, looks around and wishes he would have had a mouthful of beer to spray out in shock.
“What? Where? I thought you said – how?”
“I don’t know. They’re telling me drowned? Only there’s nowhere he could have drowned. Two cops came to tell me about it today. More like interrogate me about it, to be honest. I laugh at those kinds of tactics, but to be honest, something weird happens to you afterwards. I seem to have this urge to tell you all sorts of personal shit, and it’s not like me at all.”
“This was today? And you’re at a bar the same night? And you don’t even mention this at all while we-”
“Wow!” Jacki sighs. “See, that’s what I was talking about. And men wonder why women are reluctant to talk about personal shit. When they have to constantly worry about their responses being inappropriate to the situation.”
“Yeah, but, come on, this is a little different. I mean, I’m sorry I was surprised, but it’s not like all women have a day like yours.”
They both take a drink, suddenly noticing the band has been playing David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” for quite a while and they’ve just been shouting over it. The crowd is small, and the singer aims his microphone at their table.
“I’m sure you’re not protected, for it’s plain to see… the diamond dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees…”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Maybe I’m just ashamed I’m not that sorry.”
“Drowned? Seriously? Did they tell you that?”
“Can you do me a favor?” she asks him.
“Um, okay.”
“Can we pretend that I didn’t tell you my husband was just murdered or my dad choked on throat cancer so we can have a conversation about all the shitty things they did without feeling guilty?”
“Sure,” Jack says, not sure at all. “We don’t need to talk about your husband being killed. Yesterday. I did all sorts of crap today we can talk about.”
Jacki has to smile at the sarcasm.
“Like I said,” she explains. “Anthony always thought Toni wasn’t his. Even though he burdened a girl with a boy’s name, even though she tried to love him - and he loved her back, I guess - he held it against us both that he wasn’t her real father.”
“Who was?”
“Eric. The boy who died that night in the crash.”
“Derek?”
“No. ‘Eric.’”
“The one hanging in the tree? Are you sure?”
“Yes. Well, no. But Anthony was sure. And it bothered him off and on for a long time. Only lately did he finally grow the balls to insist on a blood test. I only agreed because I wanted things to calm down. But now I think it was a mistake. It’s a waste of time. In fact, I think the split-second of pain in my daughter’s arm from that needle was more attention than this subject deserved.”
The singer keeps demanding their attention, seemingly arching every line toward them.
“…the Halloween Jack is a real cool cat…”
“Well, some might disagree with you on that subject. Did you get the results back?”
“It’s no one’s business but my own. And I said ‘no.’ Didn’t I say no?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Me neither. You know, I just hate talking about this stuff. It’s probably not you. I just don’t want to come across as a victim. I don’t want it to seem like my dad and my boyfriend have been the only things that have affected my life. I’m defined by more than just the men who cross my path, you know?”
“I know what you mean.”
“People should know that I’ve made choices that have done infinitely more damage than they ever could.”
“That’s not what I thought you meant.”
They listen to the music for a bit. It starts terrible and never gets better. “Diamond Dogs” is a rough song to play anyway, and Relationshit’s rendition is even rougher. Jack is especially annoyed when the singer forgets his favorite lyric. The one that’s more like a question. Jack watches Jacki as she watches the band. Finally, she shoves away her beer and crosses her arms.
“You know, even when I tell myself that I’m unaffected by certain things, my body… it knows the difference.” She sighs. “Sometimes my stomach hurts as if I’ve eaten a sandwich full of thorns and bullshit.”
“Sweetly reminiscent, something mother used to bake… wrecked up and paralyzed…”
Jack turns back to her and sits up high to get between her and the band. He feels she’s ready for a speech.
“I’ve been thinking about some things lately,” she goes on. “And it amazes me how some men don’t understand what they are doing to someone that they supposedly love. I was th
inking today that, what if, instead of causing a headache or a stomach ache with their anger, what if their jealousy caused their girl to get a nosebleed every time he accused her of cheating?”
He considers this. She finishes her beer, then takes Jack’s while she talks.
“Every time some asshole accuses their girl of smiling at someone else, every time he checks her email all sneaky, every time he suspiciously unfolds a scrap of paper from the jeans she left on the floor where she dropped them… she gets a nosebleed. Without anyone laying a hand on her. Think about it. What if, every time you screamed at your girl about how many guys she’s fucked, a little drop of blood ran out the corner of her mouth? Would you think twice about what you were doing to her?”
“In the year of the scavenger, the season of the bitch… sashay on the boardwalk, scurry to the ditch…”
“Probably not,” Jack admits. “Now, maybe if I started bleeding…”
She looks at him with an expression of amusement, horror, then understanding. Then she looks around the room, lets the band take over awhile. But the voice in her head drowns it out.
“Three more minutes and it never happened...”
Distracted by some noise behind them, Jack turns his chair toward one of the four televisions in the corners of the bar where they’re showing a lumberjack contest. One of the barflies is turning up the volume on a TV to keep listening, and the frantic sawing of the wannabe lumberjacks sounds a lot like the band.
“Are you into that?” Jacki asks him. Then louder. “I said, ‘Are you into that?’”
“Sorry,” he says, turning back. “I was always one of those kids who was afraid he’d miss something on every channel.”
“Is that why you got here an hour early?” she asks.
“Huh? How did you know that?” He’s shocked by her words at first, then calms down. “No, it just always pissed off my dad because I’d fall asleep with the TV on every night, or I’d refuse to leave a movie theater until the last of the credits was finished rolling. But right now I’m just wondering how the fuck do you win a lumberjack contest?”
Jacki doesn’t care. “So, you’re a paramedic, huh? Tell me a story. Like how many you saved last night.”
“Hard to say,” he frowns.
“Uh-oh. Is this like that nonsense with veterans where you can’t ask them if they killed anybody? But it’s always for the opposite reason you’d think…”
“No, it’s just that eighty percent of our trips are bullshit. People using the ambulance for a free taxi service to the hospital because their insurance covers it. But the real stuff? There’s still plenty of that, too. Over the last couple years, I’ve given myself a couple limits. I will park it for the night and go home if I’ve hit six saves or three losses, depending on which comes first. That’s where I draw the line. Sometimes I forget though.”
“So you have a limit, huh?”
“…you’ll catch your death in the fog. Young girl, they call them diamond dogs… young girl, they call them diamond dogs…”
“Just with my job.”
“What’s the most people you’ve-”
“Twenty six-”
“What?!” Jacki laughs, cutting him off. “You didn’t hear the rest of the question! Are you telling me you saved twenty six people in one night?”
“Oh, no, sorry. I mean twenty six dead.”
“Yikes,” she says, looking away. “How can you even function after seeing that many stopped hearts in one shift?”
“I couldn’t, to tell you the truth.”
“Where was this? A car crash?”
“Worse. Lumberjack contests.”
He waits for a laugh. He would have heard the crickets if it wasn’t for the band.
“So, does everyone at your job keep track of the numbers like that?”
“Some of us do,” Jack shrugs. “Some keep track of their saves vs. losses. One asshole tries to up this average by fighting over calls he knows are easy. Stubbed toes and cat scratch fevers ‘n’ all that hypochondriac shit.”
“That’s not really saving a life though,” she says, but Jack ignores this.
“One time, just because there was some kind of betting pool between crews, three ambulances from three hospitals raced to a bee-sting only to find that, yeah, it had started with a sting, but after the man in the car called it in, he flew off the highway and crashed through a boatload of Boy Scouts happily bobbing down a river. Serves ‘em right. The crews, I mean, not the Scouts. And don’t get me started on the Wildlife Clean-up crews. That’s where the worst of the EMTs go to die. EMS, I mean...”
“I don’t believe any of that.”
“I’m telling you. Numbers are very important to these guys.”
“Is that what you’re doing with me?”
“What?”
“Working on your batting average. If you are, sorry. Not only am I not allergic to bee stings, the stingers barely hurt me at all. I used to swat them with my bare hand when I was six. Even my dad would duck for cover, and I’d just grab them like they were soap bubbles. Something to do with my blood-type or something.”
Jack looks at her like he’s in love.
“No shit.”
It’s not a question.
Jack watches the bare-chested lead singer for a second, shaking his head at the shark jaw he has tattooed across his torso. He pulls out a twenty to pay for the beers, then starts to doodle on it with the waitress’s pen.
“What are those?” Jacki asks.
“Bees. And spiders. I usually do ‘em on dollars. But if you draw bugs on a dollar bill, they don’t last a year.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because people get rid of them too fast. That means they get passed around way more. Makes them fall apart.”
“Bees and spiders on my dollar bills wouldn’t bother me. You should draw ladybugs instead and see if the money lasts forever.”
He shrugs and draws a big ladybug over Andrew Jackson’s face. Jacki snatches it up with a laugh to stuff it in her pocket.
“That seems kind of dangerous,” he says. “Pushing your luck. Like wishing for more wishes.”
The song ends, and they gear up for another.
“Thanks for coming out, guys!” Jacki yells, standing up and pretending they’re finished. The band ignores her heckling.
“Did you know that original copies of that Bowie album go for like ten grand?” Jack says, standing up, too. “Bowie is like this dog dude on the cover, complete with little doggie dick. Now that’s someone taking their doggelgänger to its logical conclusion!” He frowns. “They took the dick off later though. Or blacked it out…”
Blacked it out…
She shakes off the voice and moves around the table to get closer to him.
“Don’t move,” she whispers. Then she smacks him hard across the face. He closes his eyes but doesn’t flinch. He expected worse.
“How many times am I gonna get smacked today?” he asks her.
“Aw, you must deserve it,” she says, squeezing his mouth. “No, no joke, there was a ladybug on your face. And that’s how I make a wish.”
“That’s not how you’re supposed to do that,” he mumbles, mouth squished around her hand.
“Think of all the wishes your face granted today!” Then she pulls her hand away and backs off. “Wait, I want another one. I’ll wish for more ladybugs.”
He rubs his face.
“You’re like the goddamn Make-A-Wish-Foundation,” she laughs, heading for the door. Then she comes back and decides to try smacking him one more time, loving the way it felt.
“Hold still…”
Jack catches her hand. Holds it awhile.
Jack’s car, later that night. He’s driving Jacki home. Finally outside the noise of the bar, they’re both quiet and pensive. The ominous tune “Simonize” by an impossibly young Pete Yorn leaks from the speakers, in spite of the radio being off. Jack would be concerned but he’s relieved it’s not a drain on the batt
ery:
“Lose your life today... and follow me into the alleyway...”
Jack turns it off too fast, making Jacki suspicious, and she stares at the dashboard numbers trying to anticipate the rest of the lyrics. Then she drums her fingers on his knee.
“You know what I remember?” she asks him, almost inaudible.
“Remember from when?” Jack asks.
“From the crash.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember someone’s voice.”
“Whose voice?”
“I don’t know. Someone familiar. I hear it a lot lately.”
“Familiar then or familiar now?”
Jacki had never considered that question, and he sees this in her reaction. So he quickly asks her another.
“What’s the voice saying?”
“The voice says, ‘Three more minutes and it never happened.’”
Silence in the car. Jack squints out at the road, catching a glimpse of a dead animal on the yellow line right before he swerves around it. Then he reflexively checks his rear-view mirror for the Mikes to pick it up.
“Did you just try to run that over?”
“No, I was avoiding it.”
“Are you sure? It looked like you were trying to hit it.”
“No, I’d never do that.”
“Really. Wasn’t it in the middle of the road anyway?”
“No!”
“Christ, relax.”
“Listen, I got in a fight with an ex-girlfriend for doing that once. I swerved to miss this smashed road critter, whatever it was, and she got all mad saying it was still moving and I should have put it out of its misery. But I don’t believe in that shit.”
“Don’t believe in what? Roadkill?”
“I think people just use that saying, ‘out of its misery,’ as an excuse to kill something.”
“My dad said something like that once. We were watching a horror movie, and there was this scene where they found this monster baby that kept screaming and screaming, and I said, ‘Why don’t they put it out of its misery?’ and my dad got friggin’ furious.”
“Why?”
“He was all like, ‘That thing is fighting for every last breath it can get.’ And I was like, ‘But it’s a mutant lizard thing, and it’s suffering.’ And he’s like, ‘It’s fighting to live, not to die.’ And I just kept saying, ‘But it’s a monster.’ And dad finally goes, ‘It doesn’t know it’s a monster.’”
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