The doctor who treated me was young. She wore a ponytail and stylish glasses and smelled of soap. She was gentle, touching my hand with the care of a curator examining a rare artifact.
“Nasty little bugger you have here,” she said, dabbing at the wound with gauze. The wound still bled, blocking her view of the incision. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Scale of one to ten, one being ‘meh’ and ten being cataclysmic, mind-numbing torture.”
“I don’t know. Eight maybe?”
“You don’t seem sure.”
“It hurts. It hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“We’ll call that 7.5 then.”
“Sure.”
The doctor had a suture kit displayed on a rolling chrome table. There were scissors with their blades curved at the end, black thread, a needle sharp enough to puncture flesh. All of it sterilized, lying on a nondescript blue towel.
“You have anyone with you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Waiting in the lobby. Someone to make sure you get home after this?”
I shook my head no.
“The pain’s just going to get worse,” she said. “It might seem bad now, but once you leave here, the pain will intensify. You nicked the bone. Good, too. And later you’ll bump it. You’ll roll over it in your sleep. You’ll overwork it. Happens every time.”
“No. I don’t have anyone to take me home.”
“Someone you can call then? Your mom or dad or a friend.”
“Nobody.”
“Maybe a neighbor or somebody? You’ll need pain meds, but they’ll make you disoriented. Groggy. You won’t be able to drive.”
“I don’t drive.”
She nodded her head, her eyes still locked on her work. She had me lay my hand on the table, the wound facing up. She used a local anesthetic to numb it, then cleaned it with iodine and alcohol.
“I can’t give you anything for the pain if you don’t have anyone to get you. Are you sure you don’t have anyone to call? A brother, an aunt, some guy that tried to sell you pest control door to door?”
I racked my brain. There was Pinkett, of course, and Atchley. They were really the only friends I had since being set free, but I didn’t feel right calling them. I’d only known them for a couple weeks, our interactions consisting solely of motivational team meetings, backslapping and exuberant congratulations, a quick lunch chowing down some chicken nuggets, some mild workplace flirtation. We didn’t ask each other to help us move. We didn’t hang out on the weekends, hitting up clubs or catching a movie together or the nightcap doubleheader for the Oklahoma City Redhawks. I didn’t know what their reaction would be if I were to call them, if they’d be flattered or surprised or both. Mostly, I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me. Eighteen years old and the only person I could call was a relative stranger. What would they think of me then?
“You know,” the doctor said. “My husband and I were getting ready to go on a date the other night. Dinner, movie, nothing really special, but with our work schedules it was the first time we’d been free in a long time, so I wanted to look nice, you know?”
“Sure,” I said.
She readied the thread and needle and punctured my skin. I flinched a little, expecting at least a slight pinch, but there was nothing. My hand was completely numb.
“And so, I went to my closet. I tried on dress after dress after dress. I must’ve tried on like fourteen outfits or something, but I couldn’t find anything I liked. I felt like I looked fat in all of them, and so I started complaining to my husband. I tell him I want to go shopping, that nothing I have fits me right, and that I look fat and so on and so on, and he doesn’t even say a word. Finally, I’m like, you know, you could give me a compliment, make me feel a little better. And you know what he said?”
I shook my head.
“He said that at least my eyesight is good.”
She laughed and laughed and laughed. She snorted, she laughed so hard. It was infectious, really, like her laughter was a shared, intimate memory, and I couldn’t help but laugh myself. I laughed so hard I began to feel a little bit better.
When she was done, she gave me two painkillers. “Percocet,” she said. “Take one when you get home, the other one four hours later. That’ll get you through the night.” I took the packet from her and thanked her for her kindness.
“Of course,” she said. “You be careful now with those knives,” she said. “Though I like you, I don’t ever want to see you in here again, you hear?”
She stood to leave, and I did as well, my hand now bandaged but still numb. I stood there a moment, not knowing exactly what to do. I had no idea where I was at, really, or where I could find the closest bus station. My demo knives were still at the client’s house, and that was about a mile or two away, though I wasn’t really sure. I wasn’t even sure how to get there from the hospital. The ambulance ride over, I hadn’t been able to see the street, and I didn’t pay attention to the turns being made. I had no money for a taxi. No cell phone to call for directions. I really had no idea what to do.
I must’ve had a concerned expression on my face, because the doctor said, “Listen. I usually don’t do this, but”—she took out a pen and wrote out a phone number on a prescription pad—“you call me when you get home, okay? Just so I know you made it all right.”
I thanked her again and walked out into the lobby. It was chaotic in there, people with head wounds, the sick, the frightened. A family huddled in the corner, crying, leaning against each other for support. The place teemed with people. They coughed, and they slept, some watching television from a set that hung from the ceiling. It was on a news station, but it was muted without captioning, just a man’s face, a picture beside him of a town devastated. I didn’t know where the picture was taken, but it looked as though a bomb had dropped, destroying buildings, a city in rubble. Finally, I went to the front desk, and they were able to tell me the address where I’d been picked up, gave me directions on how to get back. And so I walked. I walked for an hour, getting lost a couple times, wandering streets in an unfamiliar neighborhood, but finally I found it. The man was home, surprised I’d returned, and handed me back my knives. He then told me where I could catch the bus.
When I got home, I took the painkiller with an entire glass of water, gulping it down, refilling the glass, and then gulping it down again, surprised at how thirsty I was, but I didn’t call the doctor. I thought about it, staring at her number, phone in hand. A couple of times I even dialed the first three numbers before hanging up, thinking of her still at the emergency room, caring for the sick, the injured, suturing wounds and diagnosing a persistent cough or vomiting, wondering if she was thinking about me at that moment, worried I hadn’t reached out to her yet, or if she was too busy with her patients to have given me a second thought once I’d walked out the doors. I hoped the former. I really did, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her. Instead, I just taped her number to my fridge. At the very least, I liked the idea I had somebody to call if I absolutely needed to.
CHAPTER 3
WHEN I ARRIVED AT WORK THE FOLLOWING DAY, arm in sling, hand bandaged and splinted, everyone showed concern: Pinkett, Atchley, even Kari. They offered their sympathies, asking if they could do anything for me, get me a Mountain Dew, a sausage biscuit from Johnnies, carry my demo bag full of knives. They fussed over me like a concerned parent might, their tone full of angst and sincerity. It was like waking up to smell your mother cooking pancakes.
“There is one thing,” I said.
“Of course,” they said. “Anything. Just name it.”
“You guys want to hang out sometime?”
They blinked at me, surprised by the question.
“Sure,” they said. “Yeah. Sure. Any time.”
That evening we all hung out after work. We went to Pinkett’s apartment, this small place a minute or two from the office, carpet stained and doors chipped. In the living r
oom there was a pleather couch, a lamp devoid of its shade, and an old glass coffee table marked by condensation rings. It was a one-bedroom with an open-style concept, the small kitchen overlooking the living room. The sink was full of mismatched dishes, plastic cups from various burger and pizza joints around town, bowls that still contained bits of popcorn. The only things worth any money in the place were his set of SlashCo knives and his video game consoles: Playstation, Xbox, N64, the Wii. Two bookshelves full of video games framed the big-screen TV. Mario Kart and Call of Duty and Halo and Resident Evil and Legend of Zelda and sports games, NBA basketball and NFL football and Major League Baseball, even hockey and soccer. There must’ve been five hundred of them, dating back from the mid-nineties to new releases out that very week.
Pinkett stashed his keys on the coffee table and slung his suit jacket on the couch’s armrest.
“Home sweet home,” he said, and the awkwardness was palpable. No one really knew what to say or do, avoiding eye contact, holding their hands in front of them, not moving more than a few feet into the apartment, eyes searching the ceiling, the kitchen, the blinds covered in dust. It seemed it was the first time any of them had hung out together outside of the office.
“I don’t have much in the way of refreshments,” Pinkett said. “Got water.” He opened his fridge. A smell emanated from it: soured milk and bologna. “Beer. Got a few beers, too.”
No one said anything right away. Kari, Atchley, and I stood at the entrance, and Pinkett kept looking at us. Well, at Atchley, really. Every chance he could, he stared at her.
“I’ll take a beer,” Atchley said, and Pinkett smiled. He grabbed a Natural Light and tossed her the can. Atchley grabbed it, popped the tab, and took a long, deep gulp, burping when she was finished, and everyone laughed.
Beers in hand, we relaxed. We drank, and we gossiped, laughing at our customers, at other sales reps on the team, poking fun at their insecurities and their eccentricities, finding common ground in pointing out their flaws and gaffes.
“You remember Daryl?” Pinkett asked. He was referring to a young kid, a senior in high school, who had been hired a few weeks back. He’d showed up to his interview with a short-sleeved oxford buttoned all the way up to his neck and tucked into chinos a size too small. “I shit you not, the first sales call he goes on is his friend’s mother, and he gets there, and he starts on the demo, cutting the penny and the rope and going over all the options, and the entire time he’s nervous as hell. He’s stuttering and shaking, and it takes him like five or six tries just to cut the penny, and his friend’s mom is laughing at him. He tells me all this. She starts to laugh at him, and he gets all embarrassed, and he goes into this panic attack and guess what happens?”
“What?” we asked, our eyes slits and bloodshot red.
“He pisses himself.”
We burst out laughing, Kari actually spitting out a mouthful of beer.
Pinkett nods. “Honest to God. Just straight up pisses his pants right there in the lady’s kitchen, and then you know what he does? He comes to the office. Doesn’t go home. Doesn’t change his pants. Just drives straight to the office, smelling like piss and his pants soaked. I can see the stain on his crotch, and he just hands me his demo bag back and says he can’t do it anymore.”
“I wondered what the hell happened to him,” I said, all of us laughing until we cried, doubled over in pain.
“Best thing was, it worked. Kid sold the lady a Homemaker. A $900 knife set because she felt sorry for the little fuck. Damnedest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The night continued on like that. Pinkett left to go get more beer, and we kept drinking. The entire time, Pinkett kept scooting closer to Atchley. He touched her. He touched her hand, and he touched her shoulder. He rested his knee against hers and brushed her hair from her face, and Atchley didn’t rebuke his advances. She welcomed them, actually, returning his flirtations with her own, parting her lips into a small, enticing circle. And with each lingering glance and grazing fingernail tease, the bile in my stomach churned. They were going to spend the night together, and I couldn’t stop it. I wasn’t the object of her affection, he was, and the cut I felt was even deeper than the one to my hand.
Around two-thirty that morning, we decided to call it a night. All of us were too drunk to drive, so Pinkett gave Kari and I a couple pillows, some sheets, and a blanket. Kari took the couch while I made a pallet on the floor. Atchley retired to Pinkett’s bedroom with him, their hushed voices and giggles audible through the cheap, thin door, all the while Kari asking me, “Are you still awake, Billie?” nudging my shoulder, tracing her fingers along my hairline. “Billie, you still awake?”
BACK AT WORK THE NEXT day, Pinkett and Atchley acted like nothing had happened. Pinkett conducted his interviews and counseled newly minted sales reps. Atchley answered Pinkett’s phone and got his dry cleaning and prepped materials for our weekly team meetings. They didn’t eat lunch together or have private conversations in Pinkett’s office. They didn’t hold hands or kiss each other goodbye, making plans to see each other that evening, to go see a movie or catch a concert at the Blue Door. Their conversations were professional, polite, and to the point, often clipped with one-word answers: “Print this out for me?”
“Sure.”
“Clean the butcher block?”
“Yeah.”
“Got the orders ready?”
“Yup.”
I looked for clues they were a couple now, reading into their inflections, how they pronounced the last syllable in a question, if it flipped off the tongue an octave higher or remained flat. I read their emails over their shoulders, looking for emojis, a sentence in all caps followed by a dozen exclamation points. Did they take bathroom breaks around the same time or carry on a private conversation by text? Every little move or action they took, I deconstructed, turned it over in my head, analyzed it from every angle, reading into everything that they were indeed an item, fucking in the facilities-management closet on the first floor, planning a vacation to Hawaii, their marriage, kids, moving far, far away, until I couldn’t take it anymore, until I was convinced they were maddeningly, deeply, irrevocably in love.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Kari said. We were sitting in the lobby to the office, prepping materials for the next interview that was about to start. “It was a one-night stand. That’s all.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play dumb. I know you like her.”
“Atchley?”
Kari shot me a look like a mother catching her child eating raw cookie dough.
“They’re not a thing. Seriously. You should talk to her.”
I glanced through the door. Atchley and Pinkett were in the large conference room. They weren’t working. They weren’t setting up for the interview like I’d thought they were. They just sat in two metal folding chairs, talking. I tried to make out their conversation, but their tones were hushed, their lip movements unintelligible. They could’ve been talking about innocuous things, the state bird for example, or their favorite cartoon growing up, but I couldn’t help but think they were planning on running away from here, starting a life someplace new, a future shared just between the two of them. They’d end up someplace tropical probably, drinking rum punches and digging their toes in the sand, making love in their studio apartment, the surf audible through an open window. They’d probably even laugh about me. “Remember that kid?” they’d ask each other. “Remember Billie? How he used to swoon over you?” Sad guy, they’d say. Hope everything turned out okay.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Afterward, everything took on shape. I had a routine. I had a purpose. I was doing well, and people looked up to me. I was the number one in the office, week after week. I became Pinkett’s assistant manager. I started conducting my own interviews. I made friends and won awards and became known throughout the region as an up-and-comer, a candidate to
be a district manager one day. Hell, maybe even a regional one. For a while I thought it would continue on like this forever. All I had to do was avoid any triggers. Stay away from guns, loud noises, law enforcement officers, the pulpit. All I had to do was sell knives and stay drunk and everything would be okay.
The four of us hung out more. Most nights, we just went to Pinkett’s apartment, drank beer, chain-smoked cigarettes, took bong rips, and snorted Adderall. Every day was the same routine: wake up at seven a.m., shower, shave, put on our suits, head to the office, conduct interviews, go on sales calls, coach new reps, book more appointments, then head back to Pinkett’s for a thirty rack of whatever beer was cheapest and a night of substance abuse until our eyes drooped and our bodies couldn’t take any more. It became a ritual in a way, one I looked forward to regardless of the toll it was taking. After several weeks, I started to feel exhausted, my limbs heavy, my organs labored. It became harder to breathe, to walk upstairs, to carry my demo bag full of knives. But it wasn’t just physical; it was mental, too. My mood changed. When drunk, I was happy, carousing alongside Pinkett as we played Guitar Hero, but during the day, my anxiety levels peaked. I constantly thought the newer sales reps were talking about me behind my back, laughing at me, at how I mimicked Pinkett and how I secretly pined for just a few more seconds of conversation with Atchley, for her to look in my direction, for her to choose me instead of Pinkett.
To their credit, they kept their relationship hidden. They never had public displays of affection, making out at the office or even holding hands, but that didn’t mean there weren’t some clues they were seeing each other. Atchley wore more makeup for one, a dark purple lipstick, a smoky charcoal eye shadow. She never wore sweatpants to the office anymore, opting for tight jeans, a low-cut top. Our conversations became less frequent, she always having some important task to complete for Pinkett. Some nights Pinkett would make an excuse as to why we couldn’t hang out at his apartment, saying he had to travel to Dallas that evening for business or that his mother was in town. Strangely, his business trips only lasted that evening; he’d be back in the office the very next morning, and his mother never visited the office. Those nights, Atchley, Kari, and I would never hang out, our friendship hinging on the glue of Pinkett bringing us together, sustainable as a foursome but disintegrating if he was missing. I never saw them together, but I always had a sinking feeling they were sneaking around so as not to arouse the rumor mill around the office.
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