Authors: Willy Vlautin
B005HF54UE EBOK (11 page)
Chapter 31
Waiting Outside on a Bench
The next morning on her way home from work she walked down Virginia Street to the mall. It was still early out. The shops were just opening and she went into a department store and bought a pair of long underwear. As she walked out into the parking lot she could see a Babies R Us store in a strip mall across the street. She tried not to go there. She knew it was a bad idea, but couldn’t help it. She made her way over and went inside. She looked up and down the aisles, staring at the different products, passing couples and mothers with kids along the way. She saw the strollers and the cribs and the toys and heard the sounds of kids talking and babies crying.
Finally she left and sat on a bench outside the building. She couldn’t leave. She sat there for nearly two hours hoping that somehow her baby would pass her. She pictured the man and the woman that took him that day in the hospital. Maybe they shopped at this store. Maybe they would walk past her with her son. She just wanted to see her baby, at least for a moment, to make sure he was okay. To see what he looked like, to make sure the couple were an all right couple, that they were good parents, that they cared for him and protected him.
Penny was doing her nails. The TV was on, but with the sound off. She had a forty-two-ounce cup full of ice and vodka and orange cream soda. It was nearing eight p.m. and she had twenty-five confirmed appointments.
Allison sat at her desk, staring out the window. Below, on the street, a man was trying to push a car, an early 1980s Honda Civic, down First Street. Cars were lined up behind him unable to pass. They started honking. The man wouldn’t move the car to the side of the road. He just kept going the best he could down the center of the lane.
‘Look out there.’
‘I bet he’s a speed freak,’ Penny said when she saw him. ‘He’s too skinny to be that strong.’
‘Boy, I hate cars.’
‘How many confirms do you have?’ Penny asked. She pulled herself away from the window and sat on the edge of Allison’s desk.
‘I’m at sixteen.’
‘You’re seriously the best girl I’ve had in a long time. How about we call it a night and go to Baskin Robbins? We’ll clock out that we left at nine.’
Allison kept her eyes out the window. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I wonder how far that guy will push the car?’
‘It reminds me of the time my ex-husband and I were in the parking lot of Home Depot. This guy had a little car like the one down there. He was trying to push it, but he had three little kids in the back seat, and his wife in the front seat, in the driver’s seat. It was in the summer, so it was hot out, and he was trying to push start the car. We walked over to him and asked if he needed help. It was over a hundred degrees out. Those poor kids stuck in the back, you had to feel for them. You could see them sweating. Kids don’t usually sweat, but these kids were wet with it. I don’t know why he didn’t let them get out of the car and stand in the store, or at least in the shade. So anyway my ex-husband talks to the guy and then we start pushing, me, my ex-husband, and this guy. He was a horrible looking guy. It breaks my heart just thinking about him and his poor kids. We help push the car and we get it up to a decent speed, but the woman, his wife who was behind the wheel, didn’t know how to compression start it, ’cause she kept letting the clutch out in first, and the car would just sputter and stop. We weren’t going fast enough for that. We tried it once more, then my ex-husband told the guy that they should let the clutch out in second. The guy just turned to my ex-husband and told him that you had to compression start in first. You had to be there for the way this fella said it. So my ex-husband just looked at me and then back at him and told the guy good luck and we walked away. The guy stood there and screamed at his wife, and then his kids started crying.’
‘Poor little kids,’ Allison said, still looking out the window.
‘It’s Baskin Robbins time, hon. Give me your confirms and let’s get the hell out of here.’
Penny drove a new silver two-door Cadillac Seville. But even with the seat all the way back her stomach touched the steering wheel and as she drove you could hear the shortness of her breath. The girl sat next to her looking at the dashboard.
‘This is the nicest car I’ve ever been in.’
‘My dad runs a Cadillac dealership in Manteca, California.’
‘So you’ve always driven nice cars?’
‘Yep,’ she said.
‘Boy, that’s something.’
‘So what’s your viewpoint on marijuana?’
‘I don’t smoke before work or anything like that, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘I don’t care if you do. Maybe you should.’
‘I know I’m a jumpy person,’ the girl said.
‘You’re fine. That’s not why I’m asking.’
‘Still, I’m sorry if I am,’ she said.
‘All I’m really asking is that if I smoke a joint before we eat ice cream, are you going to freak out?’
‘Oh no, I don’t care about that.’
‘Good,’ Penny said and laughed.
They parked in a strip mall that held the Baskin Robbins and took a space in the dark, away from any street lights. Penny took a joint from her purse, lit it, and put in a CD of Neil Diamond.
‘Neil Diamond’s a good singer,’ the girl said, looking out the window.
‘He’s my favorite man.’
‘He’d be a good husband, probably,’ the girl said.
‘Believe me, he would be better than that,’ she said and a trail of smoke left her mouth.
‘My mom listened to him all the time.’
‘Every good woman should,’ Penny said and coughed. ‘Are you sure you don’t want some?’
The girl shook her head.
‘Then let’s go in. I’m starving.’
The two walked into Baskin Robbins and stood under the fluorescent lights of the empty store. A teenage girl stood behind the counter, took their order, and made the sundaes. They paid and walked back to the car and ate in darkness.
‘I love Baskin Robbins. I go to this one ’cause there’s never a soul in there unless it’s summer. In the summer I buy my ice cream at the store. Let me tell you, it’s hard when you’re fat and you’re buying a four scoop sundae. People look at you like you just ran over their grandma.’
‘I used to work there when I was in high school, but it wasn’t like that one. It was busy all the time. You would have hated that one.’
‘I don’t think I could control myself if I worked there.’
‘I used to take pints home. We had a freezer full of ice cream for a while. The lady that owned it let us each take one pint home a day. She owned it with her husband who was this really rich guy. They had investments all over, a tanning salon and a card store and two Baskin Robbins. I’m not sure what he did, but he drove a black Mercedes. Anyway, even though she had the other places she was always at the Baskin Robbins I was at. It was my first job and then she fired me.’
‘I hate those rich bitches. She was probably skinny too, a blonde.’
‘She was,’ Allison said and laughed. ‘She really was. She was dyed blonde, but I guess that qualifies as a blonde.’
‘It does,’ Penny said. ‘This is a good sundae. That high school girl did all right.’
‘She did.’
‘Why’d you get fired?’
‘Well, like I said it was always busy and the woman, the owner, she would get really uptight because of it. She’s probably the most uptight person I’ve ever met. So I was always nervous and on this particular day three bad things happened. First, it was really hot out. In the summer it’s always hot in Vegas, but this day was horrible. Second, it was on a Saturday so it was really crowded in the store. And the third bad thing was it was just me and her in there. Usually she just sat in the back and me and another person would work out front, but the other kid called in sick. Anyway, that day it got backed up and everybody was in a terrible mood. I thought I was doing all right, but as she would pass me, like say on her way to the register, or if she was heading to the big freezer or whatever, she’d tell me I was too slow or I was making the scoops too big or not big enough. I guess she was just sorta picking on me. I don’t know why exactly. I think she hadn’t worked that hard in a long time. So it goes on this way for maybe an hour or so, and then suddenly I began to hyperventilate. I was making a strawberry milkshake one moment and then suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was having a heart attack. I’d never felt that way before. Everyone in the store just stared at me. Then I blacked out. The next thing I know, my mom was there with my sister Evelyn, and they took me home. I went back to work maybe a week later. The store wasn’t busy at all, but the woman was there and she said a few things to me while I was making a banana split and it happened again. They had to call my mom and she had to come down a second time.’
‘That must have been hard.’
‘It wasn’t so bad ’cause it was the year I discovered Paul Newman.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, the lady fired me after the second time so I didn’t get another job or anything for the rest of the summer. I just laid around with the A/C on in the dark and rented movies. I saw Paul Newman first in
Slap Shot
, and I thought he was the funniest guy I’d ever seen. Plus he was so handsome. Then I started renting all his movies. When he’s young, like in
Cool Hand Luke
, he’s amazing. He’s really really handsome in that. Or in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. But if you’ve ever seen
Fort Apache, the Bronx
, then you’d understand him. You ever seen that one?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘He’s older in it and he falls in love with a nurse. She’s really beautiful, but she’s a junkie and lives in a horrible part of New York City. But she’s a good person, she’s just had a hard life. Paul Newman is a cop and he’s tough and strong, but he’s also really nice. He’s just tired and worn out ’cause being a policeman in New York City is an awful job. Anyway, there’s this scene where the nurse and him are together, and she’s really exhausted so he makes her a bath. He puts bubbles in it and shakes the water so the bubbles get extra bubbly and he sits with her while she lays in the water. It’s hard to explain, but it just kills me. As sad as it is to admit, he’s probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me.’
‘Paul Newman?’
‘Any time I get worried or my anxieties start in, I just think about Paul Newman. Sometimes it’s hard to get him here, but most of the time he shows up. Ever since that summer, it’s been like that.’
‘You ever go see a doctor?’
‘After that first one my mom thought I might have heart problems, so I went to a doctor. He took blood tests and I had a sonogram, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. He told me to take yoga, go running, maybe see a counselor, and if that all failed, to come back. But that fall when school started it got worse again and I started missing classes and then my mom got this new boyfriend and sorta moved in with him, so I just quit going altogether. I had told myself I was gonna do something great, but then I just got a job as a waitress.’
‘That’s rough,’ Penny said and finished the sundae. ‘You still have them now?’
‘You mean the panic attacks?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No. Not for a while, anyway.’
‘Well, that’s good. At least now they’re over and you get to keep Paul Newman,’ Penny said and put her hand on the girl’s arm. ‘So you’ll be all right.’
‘Oh, I’m fine now,’ she said and tried to smile.
Allison took a plastic garbage bag and put her dirty clothes in it and carried it along with a box of detergent down Fourth Street, past the rundown Morris Hotel and the boxing club, Harrison’s Machine Shop, and the Rumpus Room. She came to the Last Dollar Saloon and went behind it, where there was a laundromat not much bigger than the size of a bedroom. In it were three dryers along one wall, three washers on the other, and in the middle a red picnic bench. There hung a single light bulb from the ceiling, and the place, at that time, was empty.
She looked inside two washers, made sure they were empty and clean, and put in her clothes. She took quarters from her purse and started the wash cycles, then walked into the Last Dollar Saloon with the box of detergent and sat at the bar.
It was a dilapidated old place. There was wood paneling on the walls and black and white framed pictures of Reno hung on it. There was a jukebox and tables and chairs that sat in front of two large windows that looked out onto Fourth Street. Five old men and one woman sat at the bar.
‘You’re back?’ the bartender said when he saw her. He was an old man with a limp and a gray moustache. He had a beer in his hand and a deep, cigarette-scarred voice. ‘I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks. You doing laundry again?’
‘Just put two loads in,’ the girl said and sat at the end of the bar away from the others.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘Vodka and 7UP, please.’
He went to work and brought it back to her.
‘You all right?’ he asked. She looked rough to him. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. He could tell she’d been crying.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, so he nodded and left her alone.
He came back five times, replacing her empties, and none of the times did they speak more than what was courtesy. It was an hour later when the girl passed out, fell off the stool, and landed on the ground.
The regulars looked at her, and the old bartender came from behind the bar and tried to wake her.
‘You okay?’ he said and gently shook her.
‘What the hell happened?’ a man said.
‘I don’t know, but she hit the ground hard,’ the old man said.
‘Come on, girl, wake up,’ he said again. He waited but she didn’t move. He picked her up and carried her to the back room where the pool table sat and put her down on the couch. He set a bucket near her head, covered her in a blanket he took from the office, and went back to the bar.
‘What are you going to do with her?’ asked the woman there.
The old bartender lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t feel like calling the police to carry her away. That would get her in a load of shit. I’m hoping she’ll just sleep it off for a while. I should have known. I shouldn’t have kept serving her. I forget in a place like this.’
He checked on her every half hour as the night went along. It was almost ten o’clock when his wife came in. She had just gotten off work and as she walked to the bar the old bartender poured her a drink and put it down and the woman took a seat in front of it.
‘How are things?’
‘It wasn’t so bad tonight,’ she said and smiled. She went into her purse and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and set them on the bar. ‘How about you?’
‘Well, it was all right, nothing more than usual, then this young girl who comes in every once in a while showed up. She does her laundry at the place next door. Now I don’t know why she does it there. She must live around here. She comes in and orders drink after drink. I gotta to tell you I wasn’t paying attention. I should have been but I wasn’t. She ended up passing out. I didn’t want to call the police. I should have, but she reminds me of Carol a little and so I just set her down on the couch and put a blanket over her. I’ve been looking in on her every twenty minutes or so.’
‘Let me take a look,’ his wife said, lighting a cigarette. She got up off the stool and walked to the back room. The girl lay there asleep. The old woman put her cigarette out on the floor and bent over and gently began to shake her. The girl finally opened her eyes and the woman helped her sit up.
‘Are you all right?’ the woman said gently.
‘I might be,’ the girl said and the woman helped her to her feet and she walked uneasily towards the bathroom. She ran the water in the faucet hoping it would deaden the sound and then she was sick. Afterwards she put water on her face and rinsed out her mouth and walked out to the room and took her purse off the couch.
‘I have to get my laundry,’ she said hardly and stumbled into the pool table.
The bartender walked back to the room and stood at the entry.
‘I’m glad you’re up. I should have stopped serving you.’
‘It’s my fault,’ the girl said.
‘I guess you ain’t much of a drinker,’ the bartender said.
‘No,’ the girl said. ‘I’m not. I’ve about had it with it, I think.’
‘It ain’t much of a habit.’
‘No,’ the girl said. ‘I puked in your bathroom, but I think I made it all in. If I didn’t I can come back and clean it up when I’m all right.’
‘Look, don’t worry about that. Just the next time you come in with your eyes red from crying maybe I’ll just give you a candy bar and a soda.’
‘I’ll get fat as a train if I come in here every time I cry,’ the girl said and gave a half of a smile.
‘Maybe that’s why everyone’s so fat,’ the bartender said and laughed. ‘Now look, I don’t know how long you’ve lived here, but this neighborhood’s not safe at night. I’ll call you a cab and have it take you home.’
‘I gotta get my laundry. I forgot to put it in the dryer.’
‘You shouldn’t worry about that tonight. In your own bed is where you should be.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll be okay,” the girl said and then suddenly, like that, she left the bar.
She made her way down the street and to the laundromat. She moved her wet clothes into the dryers and put the quarters in and started them. She sat down on the bench and leaned against the back wall and passed out again. When she woke it was an hour later and the woman was there folding her laundry and the bartender stood next to her smoking a cigarette.
‘She’s awake,’ the bartender said and smiled.
‘What are you doing?’ the girl asked worriedly and tried to stand. She was dizzy and her stomach was upset and she was tired.
‘I’m folding your laundry,’ the woman said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Okay, I guess.’
‘You shouldn’t be doing your laundry here. There are a few places up near the university that are better, that are safer.’
‘And if you have to do it here, do it during the day. In the morning. Then you won’t get bothered. But like my wife said, if I were you I’d just do it somewhere else.’
The woman finished folding the last pair of pants. ‘Do you want us to call you a cab?’
‘I’m all right, I think,’ the girl said and sat back down on the bench.
‘Do you want us to walk you home? Where do you live?’
‘At the Emerald Arms,’ the girl muttered. ‘My grandfather and I live next to each other. He’s a truck driver and he’s probably worried sick. T.J.Watson is his name. He used to be a professional boxer. He’s as big as a building.’ Then she stopped talking and suddenly laid down on the bench and passed out.
‘That was fast,’ the woman said.
‘The Emerald Arms is just up the street,’ the bartender said.
‘Well, what do you want to do?’
‘We could try to walk her up there.’
‘I guess we could try,’ his wife said.
The bartender went to the girl and tried to wake her. She said a few words and then was silent. He bent down and picked her up and carried her in his arms. The girl hardly moved at all. She didn’t wake. He walked out of the laundromat and his wife followed with the bag of clothes and box of detergent.
‘She’s like carrying a couple sacks of concrete.’
‘Be careful of your back.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘She sure reminds me of Carol.’
‘That’s what’s got me carrying her.’
‘Do you think Carol is ever like this?’
‘No,’ the bartender said. ‘She’s got Harry to look after her. Plus she doesn’t like to drink.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘I hope the cops won’t stop us. That would be something to explain.’
‘Poor girl.’
‘Jesus, you wouldn’t think she’d be this heavy. She looks skinny but I swear she’s made of fucking rocks,’ he said and he struggled with her, nearly dropping her, but he made it across the street eventually.
In the parking lot of the Emerald Arms he set her down on the pavement and they woke her again.
‘Which one do you live in?’ he said to her.
The girl finally sat up and apologized. She could hardly keep her eyes open, but she told them the apartment number. They helped her up to her room. She unlocked the door and the woman set the laundry and detergent inside.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said and tears came down her face.
‘Don’t be,’ the woman said. ‘Just be more careful. Now lock your door and drink some water.’
‘And remember the next time you come into the bar, the soda’s on the house. And the chips, too. But let’s lay off the booze, all right? If you go on another bender I think I’ll have to be put in traction.’
