More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse

by Joel Arnold

  May – Susan Hayward

  The next morning, the calendar was turned to May, and Ben came in, squinted at the calendar and visibly relaxed. He even slapped me on the shoulder and apologized. “I didn’t mean to seem so…” He fished for the right word.

  “Assholish?” I suggested.

  Kinsley shrugged and chuckled. “Not quite what I was going to say, but close enough.” Then he said, “I just don’t like to rush things, you know? I want to enjoy April and not worry about May until I have to.”

  “It’s just a calendar,” I said. “Whether I turned the page or not, the actual days stay the same.”

  “That ain’t the point. I wasn’t ready to see May yet. I wasn’t ready to see what it might bring.”

  Whatever the hell that meant. I looked over at the calendar, at Susan Hayward posed seductively in a one-piece bathing suit. Beneath it, all the days of May, all thirty-one of them, were there in black and white, the days of the week marked – Sunday through Saturday – Memorial Day noted, and that was all.

  I smelled bourbon on Kinsley’s breath. “A little early to be drinking, ain’t it, Ben?”

  He chuckled. “Don’t be getting all judgmental on me. Just needed a bracer for the day.”

  “To face the first of the month?” I joked.

  “Well…” He shrugged.

  I left him there in the break room. A Honda Civic and Ford Bronco waited for me in the garage, unwilling to fix themselves.

  June – Gina Lollabrigida

  July – Veronica Lake

  July was a scorcher. Record temps with correlating bad tempers – at least here at Morton’s Service Garage. The cashier that took Jenny’s place was a nineteen-year old named Cory. Not exactly the type to go the extra mile, let alone the extra inch. I found myself changing the coffee filters more often than not, and we practically had to glue a broom to his hands and hold a gun to his head if we wanted him to do any cleanup.

  I talked to Mort about this, and he just said, “You got any other suggestions? Besides, he’s only temporary until Jenny comes back. But if you know someone better, I’m all ears.”

  I’m not necessarily the best at making friends. I keep to myself mostly, and the only folks I really spend time talking to are Ms. Poppin at the library, Ben, and Mort. And of course my daughter, Angie.

  God, it felt like a long time since I’d seen her, and I had a handful of vacation days burning a hole in my pocket, so there I was in the break room, trying to figure out a good time to visit.

  I started flipping through the calendar, turning the pages ahead to see what weekend Labor Day landed on, or maybe even Thanksgiving, but I didn’t get that far.

  Morton came in and threw a fit.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.

  I spun around, my heart double-timing it in my throat.

  “Checking out the calendar,” I said.

  “Didn’t we talk about this before?” He stepped a bit too far into my personal space.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You remember your tiff with Ben? You turning the calendar a day early?”

  What the hell? “For one thing, I was looking ahead to see when I might pay a visit to my daughter. And for another thing, Ben’s not even in here! So what do you care?”

  Mort’s face was beat red at this point. I could tell that his gears were cranking and that he was having a hell of a struggle trying to calm himself down.

  “Is there something I’m missing here?” I asked. “Is there something about this particular calendar that makes everyone nuts?”

  His eyes darted from me to the calendar. I had the feeling he wanted to tell me something, but all he said was, “Don’t let me catch you messing with it again.” He turned around and stormed out of the break room.

  I was angry. Confused. I guess I don’t know what I was feeling, exactly. If someone’s going to get angry at me, I like them to have a good reason. I tried to let it go. Slept on it a few days, trying to figure out what it was all about. What was I missing?

  Forget it, I told myself. Just forget it. Let it go. But the more I thought about it, the more angry I became. I couldn’t just let it go. So finally, a few days later –

  August – Betty Grable

  – I decided to take the fucker down. If it was causing this much bullshit, then to hell with it.

  On a slow day when Mort was gone and I was the only mechanic in the shop, I walked up to the break room’s bulletin board, reached up, grabbed the pin holding the calendar in place and yanked. The pin flew out, and the calendar fell in my hand. I glared at it, as if daring it to complain. Then I flipped forward through a couple months. September, October, November. Your typical months. Just a calendar. I tossed it in the wastebasket.

  I sifted through the magazines on the card table. There – the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit edition. If they wanted some T&A on the wall, then why not something current? I ripped the cover off the magazine and pinned it up in the space the calendar had occupied.

  Problem solved.

  I passed the wastebasket. The old calendar stared up at me. I walked over to the coffee maker, pulled out the basket with the filter full of spent, wet coffee grounds and dumped it on top of the calendar. Even better. And to top it off, to make things absolutely final, I yanked the garbage bag out of the waste basket, tied the top ends together tightly and carried it out to the large blue trash bin behind the station and lofted it over the edge.

  There. Problem really solved.

  I spent the rest of that day feeling at turns satisfied and prickish. It was such a silly thing, wasn’t it? Silly on their part; that’s what drove me to get rid of the thing. But silly on my part, too. Why couldn’t I ignore the whole deal? It wasn’t hurting anything. Not really. I mean, people get superstitious about a lot of things, and if they wanted to be superstitious about a lousy calendar, who was I to get in the way?

  Well, what was done was done, and I knew I’d catch hell the next day. I decided if that was the case, I’d apologize, make amends, and eventually the whole thing would blow over. This kind of petty shit always did. In a week, a month, we’d be laughing at it over a few beers.

  The next morning I entered Morton’s Service Garage, bracing myself, ready to receive a lot of shit from Ben and Mort. I was surprised to see Jenny at the register. She’d finally come back. She waved and gave me a tenuous smile.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I said. “How are you getting along?”

  “I’m okay.” She looked down at her lap and her smile disappeared. “I’m managing.” She wiped at the corner of her eye.

  “If you need anything…” I offered.

  She nodded. “I appreciate that. But I’ll be fine.” Her smile reappeared.

  I nodded back. I believed her.

  I walked into the break room. The Sport’s Illustrated cover was still in place on the bulletin board. I poured myself a cuppa Joe, punched in and headed out to the garage.

  Ben was bent over the guts of a Lexus. I sidled up next to him. “What do we have going on today?”

  He backed out from the hood and straightened up, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

  Here it comes.

  He stared at me. Nodded at an old VW van. “Needs an oil change. Someone’s bringing in a Taurus any time now. Tire rotation. When that’s done, you can give me a hand on this ‘un.”

  I waited, and when he turned back to the Lexus without going into rage mode, I was surprised. That hadn’t been so bad.

  Mort poked his head out. “Jordan,” he called. “Step into my office, will ya?”

  “Sure.” Okay, maybe now was the time to brace myself.

  I sauntered toward him. He put his arm around my shoulder and guided me into his office.

  “What the hell?” he asked quietly.

  “Sir?”

  “The calendar,” he said, his voice calm. “Just what the hell?”

  I hung my head. “I don’t know
– it just bothered me. And the way Ben treated it like something holy…and then you – ” I stopped.

  Behind Mort, hung on the wall of his office directly behind his desk was the calendar. The coffee-stained, bent up fucking calendar. Nailed into the drywall.

  “Jesus,” I said, walking over to it. “Don’t tell me you actually fetched this thing out of the trash?”

  “Have a seat,” Mort said.

  I settled into the green plastic chair in front of his desk. He sat in his big cloth swivel chair and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk.

  “Here’s the thing.” He looked up at me and tapped the top of his desk gently with his knuckles. “I know this seems silly. I get that. But what it all comes down to is if you touch that calendar again, you’re fired. Understand?”

  I’d been expecting a tongue-lashing, yelling, swearing, but this?

  “Fired?”

  Mort shrugged. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. It was a calendar. A stupid old calendar. But all I could do was shrug. “Okay,” I said.

  “You understand, then?”

  I chuckled. “Not really. But I know when to let things go. I won’t touch the calendar.”

  Mort gave the desktop one final rap of his knuckles. “Good.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “Yep, that’s all.”

  I stood. “And Ben?”

  “I had a talk with Ben. Told him if anyone was going to give you crap about the calendar, it would be me. He’s okay with that.”

  I walked back to the garage bewildered. Ben nodded at me. “So everything’s cool?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Everything is cool.”

  We shook hands.

  September – Diana Dors

  October – Bettie Page

  The flow of cars in and out of Morton’s Service Garage remained steady as the weather cooled. October 1st brought the usual smell of early morning bourbon on Ben’s breath, and after coming out of Mort’s office, he was in his usual good mood. Jenny’s father had left her a nice chunk of change in his will, but she decided to continue working through her senior year. At least now she had a better selection of colleges to choose from as long as she kept her grades up.

  Speaking of confident young women, I called Angie.

  “What are your plans for Christmas?” I asked.

  “Carl’s folks and his sister are coming over.”

  “Don’t suppose you could put your dad up for a few nights over the holidays?”

  She sighed. “Well…”

  “What?”

  “Mom already made plans to visit.”

  “Ah. I see. I thought you were going to see her over Thanksgiving.”

  She was silent a moment, and then her voice brightened. “How about New Years’?”

  I nodded into the phone. “Yeah, New Years’ will do.”

  “Great. I’ll let Carl know.”

  “Speaking of Carl, how’s he been doing?”

  “Oh, he’s – you know, he’s okay.”

  “Has he found a job, yet?”

  “It’s a tough economy out there.”

  “It’s been how many years, now?”

  The brightness in Angie’s voice disappeared. “Dad, he’s trying.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then, “Why don’t you come out here to visit? Just you. I can send you money for a plane ticket.”

  Angie didn’t answer.

  “Honey?”

  “Look, Dad, I gotta go, okay? Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She hung up. I stared at my phone for a moment before sliding it back in my pocket. God, I could be an idiot sometimes.

  November – Kim Novak

  I found Jenny in the shop sitting behind the cash register, chuckling. It was the first time I’d seen any real mirth on her face since her father died. “Looks like Thanksgiving’s been called off,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “According to Mort’s calendar, November only has seventeen days.”

  I squinted at her. She was kidding, right? “Must’ve run out of ink,” I said. “Does that mean we all get the rest of the month off, then?”

  “I wish,” Jenny said.

  On the way out of the garage, I glanced in at Mort’s office. He had the day off, but both Ben and I had keys; one of us opened it up first thing in the morning depending on who arrived first.

  November’s pinup girl was Kim Novak. She lay voluptuously on a tiger skin rug. I looked at the days of the month, the first through the thirtieth. All there.

  I remembered Jenny’s dad, how he claimed February was missing the twenty-ninth. And then he had his aneurysm.

  Were aneurysms inheritable?

  Or maybe –

  Maybe…

  Aw, hell. She was pulling my leg. That had to be it. I didn’t really see the humor in it, but we were a generation apart, and maybe it was something funny to kids her age.

  I was going to ask her about it, but Ben pulled me into the garage. “Jord – give me a hand in here?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  It was a busy day, and by closing time I convinced myself to forget about the damn calendar. The last time I thought too much about it, I’d nearly gotten fired.

  But on November sixteenth, I asked Jenny, “You feeling okay?”

  She set down the book she was reading. “Yeah. Why?”

  “No headaches or anything?”

  She frowned. “No. Why?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just…”

  “’Cause of my dad? Don’t worry. After he died, I went to Iowa City and had an MRI.” She tapped the top of her head. “Everything’s fine up here. Doesn’t even need a tune-up.”

  I smiled. “Good. That’s good to hear.”

  “I appreciate it,” Jenny said. “You and Mort and Ben have always been so sweet to me. Especially after Dad passed. It means a lot to me.” She hopped off her stool and gave me a hug. “Thank you.”

  I was touched. “No problem.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I pointed my thumb at the garage. “Well, I better see if Ben needs some help.”

  I guess it’s easy enough to see what’s coming. But if you were in my place, walking around in my shoes, even if you had some kind of inkling, I’d be willing to lay odds that you would’ve ignored that inkling same as I did. Because to act on something like that seems more like a sure-fire shortcut to the loony bin than a bona-fide sensible thing to do. And you know what they say about hindsight being twenty-twenty.

  Jenny’s funeral was held in St. Paul’s Catholic Church on November twentieth. It was well attended. She was well missed. Morton paid for her coffin. I paid for the flowers. The teachers and kids at her high school pitched in for a nice headstone.

  Yep, sure as shit, she died on the seventeenth of November. But not from a brain aneurysm. It was a car accident. She lost control of her dad’s pickup on I-35. The vehicle rolled into a ditch and flipped over, killing her instantly. Her neck snapped, her cell phone still clutched in her hand when they found her. They say she’d been texting just before the pickup went off the road.

  Look, I know it’s a coincidence. But damn, ain’t that the kind of coincidence that turns a rational human being into a superstitious fool?

  Maybe I should’ve paid her a visit that day, offered to drive her. But what it all comes down to is if it’s your day to go, it’s your day to go. Only one who’s got any say over that is the ol’ grim reaper, and he ain’t much of a negotiator.

  The funeral was beautiful and sad, and her tombstone was made of black granite. She died too goddamn young. The station stayed closed that day, and after the funeral, I called Angie. She was doing fine, and after I hung up the phone, I don’t mind telling you that I cried for a bit.

  December – Marilyn Monroe

  Saturday, December 1st.

  Since I had the weekend off, I slept in that morning. The g
as pumps and store are open on weekends, of course, and Glen Heywood, a twenty-something hotshot, was the on-call mechanic in case anyone needed emergency repairs. So when my phone started playing the rocking part of Bohemian Rhapsody, I almost didn’t answer.

  Almost.

  “Jordan?” It was the weekend cashier, Erik, eighteen and skinny as a dipstick.

  “Yep?”

  “Sorry to bug you, but we got someone needing a new tire.”

  “What about Glen?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the thing. I called him, and he came in, but then he just left.”

  “He just left? What do you mean?”

  “I mean he just…left. Like he had some kind of emergency.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Nope. Just ran out and peeled off.”

  I sighed.

  “Jordan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you come in? Or should I call Ben?”

  “Naw, I’ll come in,” I said. “Just a blown tire, right?”

  “Yes sir.”

  I got dressed, brushed my teeth and ran a comb through what little hair I have left and walked the half-block to the garage. Eric was entranced in his Game Boy, while some out-of-towner sat on the hood of his Rav-4, the front passenger side’s tire a spare.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said. “I’ll have the thing fixed in no time.”

  “Good. I thought I had a bad case of B.O. or something, the way that other guy left.”

  “Sorry about that. I guess he had some emergency to get to.”

  I jacked up his vehicle and replaced the spare with a new tire, and then checked the pressure on the rest of them. He was good to go. As he paid Erik, I grabbed a coffee from the break room. When I came out, I noticed Mort’s office door was open. Nothing unusual about that, since Erik has a key in order to get change for the register drawer. But I asked him, “Was Glen in there?”