"Lin? You okay?"
"I'm fine," she lied. "Do you work tomorrow?"
"I'm supposed to, but that can be changed."
"No, no, don't call off on my account. It's just very... different. Being here all by myself, you know?"
"Having second thoughts already?"
"No. I love the apartment, it's just so damn quiet."
"I'd kill for quiet," Theresa laughed. "I swear, sometimes this place feels like a women's prison. People shouting and carrying on at all hours of the night. Thank God I don't live in the city."
On the surface, it seemed like nothing had changed, but there was something in Theresa's voice that was different. Linda couldn't put her finger on it, but it was there.
"Do you want to come over? I know it's asking a lot, but I could use the company."
Theresa was quiet for a second before addressing the elephant in the room. "I still haven't gotten in touch with Lenny. I don't want this to be weird. You're my best friend..."
"No," Linda said. "I don't want to talk about that, in fact, I want to forget it. It'll just be two friends having a few laughs."
"That I can do. Give me a few hours, I'll text on the way."
Linda went to hang up before shouting, "Wait! Theresa? You there?"
"Yeah?"
"Grab beer on the way, okay?"
So much for resolutions.
Chapter 7
A cold bottle of beer really hit the spot.
So did the second and third.
Linda was happy to see that her old friend wasn't harboring any resentment or misplaced feelings about what had happened with her brother. They didn't discuss it, which is exactly what Linda needed. Instead, she regaled Theresa with the story of the Dollar General and the smoking robot behind the checkout counter. They both laughed, but the more Linda thought about it, the less funny it became.
"You have to show me," Theresa said. "It'll make me feel better about slacking off at my job."
"You're joking," Linda said. "I never want to go near that place again."
"Oh, come on! What's the harm?"
"Losing what's left of my sanity, for starters."
"I'll be there to protect you. Besides, I don't want to go inside. Maybe just a cruise through the parking lot."
"You're serious?"
"Absolutely!"
"This might be the worst idea you've ever had," she said, but she'd already bent over to slip on a pair of sandals.
"It won't be my first bad idea and it certainly won't be the last."
Linda grabbed her keys and chided herself for being dumb enough to get behind the wheel of her car. She'd only had three beers, but there was one rule she'd followed ever since she'd gotten her license - don't drink and drive.
Many years earlier, a teenage boy had lived next to her parents' house. Jose Reyes. He seemed like a good kid, but once he hit high school, he made some questionable friends and even more questionable decisions. After a night of partying at the old silk mill, Sully got into his Camaro and attempted the short drive home, but he never made it. From what Linda had learned from her classmates, he had fallen asleep at the wheel and collided with a tractor-trailer. They said that what was left of him had to be scooped off the highway with a shovel and dumped into a body bag like chunks of raw hamburger.
"On second thought," Linda said, "maybe we should just walk."
"I'm up for that. You can show me around the neighborhood."
"I don't think there's much to see. It's just like the apartment... a lot of open space with no one to fill it."
"Cheer up. By the time we get back, we'll be sober enough to start fresh."
You'll be sober the second you see the place, she thought. Especially if Melissa is still there surrounded by the laughter of invisible shoppers.
This is a terrible idea.
"Lead the way," Theresa said as she tied her shoes. "You sure you don't want to wear sneakers? Just in case we have to run?"
"Why the hell would we have to run? You're making this worse."
"You never know. Wouldn't you rather be prepared?"
"I'd rather we stay home and wish I hadn't said anything."
"What did you think would happen? You're talking to the girl who ran naked across the football field during Homecoming. I've never been one to walk away from a good time."
"This isn't a good time... it's actually rather sad."
"So is a car accident, but you slow down and look, anyway. Come on, let's go. We'll take a peek and come back before it gets dark."
"You promise you're not going to do anything stupid?"
"I take offense to that. When have I ever done anything stupid?"
"Do you want a list?"
Linda took off her sandals and replaced them with a pair of running shoes.
Just in case.
***
"Are we in vampire country?" Theresa asked as they passed another row of empty buildings. "I have a feeling the second the sun sets, all these doors will open and handsome young men in cloaks will take us back to their lair."
"I've had enough encounters with handsome young men to last a lifetime, vampire or otherwise."
Theresa frowned and looked away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
"No, really, don't worry about it. I didn't mean anything. I guess it was bound to come up at some point."
Theresa stopped on the sidewalk in front of a rundown jewelry store and grabbed Linda's arm. "Lin. Stop. Listen to me. I don't know what happened, and if you think I'm upset with you, I'm not. I don't have a right to be upset. You didn't do anything wrong, but he's my brother. You have to understand where I'm coming from. There's no explanation, no excuse, but it's so hard to imagine Lenny behaving that way."
"We promised not to talk about that," Linda said. "I wish it never happened, but there's no changing it. It's something I'll have to deal with in my own way."
Theresa nodded and let the silence speak for itself. Things may not have changed between them, but they had certainly grown more complicated.
"Come on," Theresa urged, wrinkling her nose. "It smells like piss and sauerkraut."
Theresa quickly hugged her and Linda allowed it, blinking her eyes rapidly to keep from crying.
"It does smell, doesn't it?"
Laughing, they hurried past empty storefronts and stopped at the intersection where Sutton Street crossed Delaney. A yellow stoplight blinked intermittently over the center of the road, but there was no traffic to heed its warning. Further south was the sign for Abruzzi's Italian Restaurant. Linda made a mental note of its location and saw it was the only building with any signs of life. Her neighborhood was far more depressing than she'd thought.
"How much longer?" Theresa asked. "I'm getting the willies."
"It was your idea," Linda said. "I think it's only a few more blocks. Why? Did you change your mind?"
"No. It can't be any creepier than this."
Dogs bayed in the distance. From a third-floor apartment came the thin, tinny sound of a television at max volume. In an empty driveway sat a rusty child's bike, standing on two flat tires. They passed a Ford dealership on their left, packed with dusty, older models that looked like they hadn't been moved since Clinton's inauguration. Once-colorful red, white, and blue flags fluttered from the overhead wire, now faded and tattered. The showroom windows had grown opaque from years of neglect and road grime.
The sky darkened.
"I've seen more action in a cemetery," Theresa said.
"Why did you want to come out here in the first place?"
"I'm wondering the same thing."
When it became obvious that neither of them wanted to be there, they saw the Dollar General's empty parking lot a hundred yards ahead. At first glance, there was nothing scary or even remotely interesting about the store's appearance. As they approached, Linda staggered to a stop and looked at the building in surprise.
"I don't get it," she blurted.
The faded Dollar General sign
above the front entrance was dark and someone had covered the plate-glass windows with newspaper. Only three of the tall light poles had come on, filling the parking lot with shadows.
"Well, that's not what I expected," Theresa said.
"It wasn't like this earlier, I swear."
The store looked like it had been empty for years.
"You're sure this is the same place?" Theresa asked. "Everything looks the same around here. Maybe you got turned around."
"I know where I was," Linda huffed. She pointed at a forgotten shopping cart sitting in an empty parking space. "That was mine. I left it there."
"You're a rebel! You didn't even return it to the cart corral. What would your co-workers think?"
"It's not funny... I don't understand what happened."
"Relax. It's an abandoned store, not the end of the world."
"It wasn't abandoned a few hours ago!" She ran a hand through her hair, clearly perplexed and a bit shaken. She ran ahead with purpose, glancing at her shopping cart on the way to the front of the building. She searched for a space between the newspapers, put her face to the window, and peeked inside.
"There's... nothing!" she exclaimed. "Everything is gone. Theresa, you believe me, don't you? I have the fucking receipt to prove it."
"If you say so." Theresa joined her and looked inside, shrugging her shoulders and grunting dismissively. "Maybe they closed up shop. You should know better than anyone that the big box stores put a lot of these smaller chains out of business."
"Since this morning?"
"Time marches on..."
"Okay, stop that. I know what I saw. No one emptied the place out in a few hours."
"Apparently that's exactly what they did. Why are you getting so upset?"
"I don't know. It's just... it's like misplacing your keys. You have a specific place you always put them so you know where to find them, but one day they're not there. Your mind tells you they should be right where you put them, but later you find them somewhere else with no knowledge of how they got there. It's like you have two sets of memories... one that's true and one you only think is true."
Theresa peeked through the slit in the newspaper, trying to see anything that would make Linda's story believable. When her eyes hurt from the strain of squinting into the dark, she gasped and backed away.
"What?" Linda said. "What did you see?"
"The front counter," she replied. "It's covered in cigarette butts."
Linda mashed her face against the dirty glass and searched for Melissa's register. "That's it! That's where she was. Do you believe me now?"
"I never said I didn't believe you, but do you know how crazy it sounds?"
"Of course I do, but what more proof do you need?"
"Oh, I think I'm good. Are you ready to go? I'd like to get my buzz back and forget we ever came here."
Linda nodded and wiped the grime from her face; her nose and forehead were covered in dusty gray streaks. She turned and walked away as black figures flitted from shadow to shadow on the store's empty sales floor.
They crossed the parking lot without speaking, suddenly feeling like they were being watched from the empty windows of the buildings across the street. When they heard the soft squeal of rubber on blacktop, they stopped and turned.
A car idled near the front of the store, its headlights cutting a bright path through the encroaching gloom. The front doors opened and two tall figures stepped out, back-lit by the yellow glow of the vehicle's dome light. Linda held her breath.
They listened as the visitors talked quietly to one another, two deep baritone voices that surely belonged to adult men. Theresa twitched and prepared to run. She felt as if she was witnessing the beginning of a crime... something she wasn't meant to see.
The men ambled to the rear of the car, still muttering, their shoes crunching on loose stones. The trunk opened with a squeak.
"What the fuck are they doing?" Theresa whispered. She was reminded of a scene from some mob movie Lenny used to play all the time. In the film, three mobsters pulled over to the sound of loud banging, only to reveal a bloody body in the trunk.
Please tell me there's no body in the trunk, Theresa thought. Why the hell did I come here?
One of the men circled around to the side of the car, opened the rear door, and pulled something from the back seat. He approached the front of the store, unfolded a large piece of paper, and taped it to the front window.
OUT OF BUSINESS.
The other man dashed to the discarded shopping cart, lifted it over his head, and placed it in the trunk of the car. He secured the trunk with a bungee cable and exchanged words with his partner before they jumped inside the vehicle and closed the doors behind them. The dome light went out, hiding their faces from view.
Linda and Theresa watched the car roll towards them, coming within ten feet of where they stood. Linda could see the silhouette of the man in the passenger seat, but it was too dark to make out any of his features. The more she tried focusing, the harder it became. The shape of his head had grown fuzzy as if it was vibrating atop his neck at high speed. She pinched her eyes closed to regain her focus, but when she opened them, the car had passed and pulled into the street.
Whatever it was they saw, they didn't discuss it on the way back. The street was silent and the last hint of daylight bled away over the western horizon. In the dark, this section of town was even more sinister, almost post-apocalyptic. They quickened their pace, chatted nervously, and kept looking over their shoulders to see if they were being followed. Linda was glad she'd worn her sneakers after all.
Once inside her apartment, the mood brightened. Linda turned on a few extra lights to keep the shadows at bay and grabbed two cold beers from the fridge. She swore tonight would be the last time she drank for a while. The excessive drinking had made her soft in the middle, and nothing lowered her self-esteem more than seeing a bloated paunch in the mirror under pale, white lights.
Once they settled, they fell into their normal routine. There was no more talk about what had happened at the Dollar General, no mention of Lenny or Christian. Linda only wanted to feel normal, even if it was just for the rest of the night.
No nonsense. No surprises.
A little after ten, the doorbell rang.
Chapter 8
Linda should have realized by now that every time she expected one thing, it turned into something completely different. She wanted a quiet night with Theresa to patch things up and forget about the last few days. She wasn't expecting company.
"Who the hell could that be this late at night?" Linda asked.
"Sexy pizza delivery guy?"
"Is that all you think about?"
"No. I think about drinking, too. Sex and booze in equal amounts."
Linda stood and went to the front door, putting her eye to the peephole. "It's my neighbor," she whispered. "Audrey."
"So see what she wants. Maybe she brought food."
Linda laughed, slid the bolt, and opened the door on her smiling neighbor. In one outstretched hand she held a six-pack of Smirnoff Ice, and in the other, a bottle of Captain Morgan Black.
"Hi, there," Audrey said. She looked over Linda's shoulder and saw Theresa sit up on the couch and look in her direction. "Are you girls having a party?"
"We're working on it," Theresa called.
"Maybe I can help," Audrey said, slipping inside.
Sure, come right in, make yourself at home.
Linda closed the door and joined Theresa in the living room; Audrey had already deposited the Smirnoff in the refrigerator and was searching the cabinets for glasses.
"You like rum, right?" Audrey asked. "I mean, who doesn't?"
"Are you sure you don't want a roommate?" Theresa asked Linda. "I could get used to this."
"Mr. Sterling is very strict when it comes to roommates," Audrey said. "Things don't work out, things get broken, people skip out on the rent. Visiting is one thing... living here is another."
&nbs
p; Theresa raised an eyebrow and stuck out her tongue. Linda giggled.
"I don't think she's serious," Linda said. "She wouldn't be able to put up with me for very long."
"True! She snores," Theresa joked.
Andrey turned, dropped a few ice cubes in the glass, and put it on the counter. "So who wants some?"
"Straight?" Linda asked. "I'll be singing on the balcony by midnight."
"I don't sing," Theresa said, "so I'll take me some of that."
Audrey grabbed the glass from the counter and brought it to her, licking condensation from her fingertips.
"You sure you don't want some? All the cool kids are doing it."
Linda threw her hands in the air and laughed. "Well, if all the cool kids are doing it."
Her willpower was nonexistent. It wasn't even a brief battle, not a skirmish, not a tussle on the playground. When it came to alcohol, all common sense left the building.
Once they each held a glass of their own, Audrey sat on the couch next to Theresa and nudged her conspiratorially.
"So, why don't you girls tell me about yourselves."
"There's not much to tell, really. I'm an hour from home and getting drunk on a weeknight," Theresa said. "Pretty much sums it up."
"And what about you?" she asked, pointing to Linda. "You're awfully quiet."
"I work in retail..."
"And she likes Phil Collins," Theresa interrupted. "Take that for what it is."
They laughed, easing into comfortable banter.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you two are a couple."
Theresa coughed and dribbled rum down her chin. "No! No way! I'm not saying I have anything against women, but Lin's just not my type."
"Hey! What's that supposed that to mean? What type am I?"
"I don't have to answer anything without my lawyer present." She turned an invisible key in an invisible lock and pinched her lips together.
"We've been friends since grade school," Linda added.
"That explains it," Audrey said. "I don't keep in touch with anyone from my past. Too many bodies buried and bridges burned. I came here to get away from all that, meet new people, find more... challenging things to occupy my time."
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