19
Space Oddity
==========MARY==========
Most of what I feared came true when Jim and Danny met.
Danny didn't know about that part of my life. And Jim wouldn't like any guy I brought home. No boy had ever seen the walls of my room. But, unfortunately, Idiot had to show up at my house. Which ended up being a pointless shit-fit with me and Jim anyway.
Jim was out (probably drinkin' at Cat's or Gypsies) when Danny dropped me off after the gas station, and so I took advantage of that miraculous timing and locked myself in my room for the rest of the night. Telling myself: "To hell with the mess," as I kicked Mt. Pile of Neglect onto the floor and caught up with Tumblr until I fell asleep.
After waking up from a disturbing dream well past midnight, (I was trapped in an iron box with an open roof deep in the ground, and the rain kept falling; filling the box up until I drowned), I finally crept out of my room to grab cold chicken strips, or whatever nutritional dinner Jim would've brought home from the bar, and noticed that the house stunk like an ashtray. Curiosity got the better of me.
Why does the house smell like smoke?
I peered around the corner to the living room and saw that Jim had passed out in front of some late night cop show, with (get this) his work jacket slung over the couch. An empty carton of Newport cigarettes sat on the coffee table.
The next morning when I went to pour myself a bowl of Cheerios, Jim came in from seshing on the porch, or waking and baking as some may say, and sang: "Good morning! Good morning! All night you were snoring!"
This guy—Jim, a lot like Danny—loved a good fucking rhyme. "How's my beauty queen?" he asked.
"Good," I answered.
Jim yawned and grumbled as he dug through his pockets, pulling out a fifty-dollar bill.
"Queen Mary! As your father, King Jim the Third, I command you to go down to the mall and buy yourself something pretty. Like a nice blue dress, maybe? Or new shoes? Girls love new shoes. Right?" Then, like a fucking court jester sang: "New shoes cure the blues!"
And with a loud smack, palmed the fifty-dollar bill on the kitchen table and hobbled towards the stairs to his basement lair.
Just as I grabbed a carton of day-old expired milk out of the fridge, telling myself I'd give my gastric durability a run for its money, Jim turned around at the top of the steps.
"Didj'ya figure things out with your boyfriend?"
"I don't have a boyfriend, Dad," I said, answering truthfully.
"No? Not that nice fellow with the hair? Daniel?"
"Danny," I accidentally corrected him.
"You met Danny at work?"
My tongue slid down my esophagus and slapped my heart with its moist pink flesh on its way to my stomach.
"H-how do you know?"
"I don't!" Jim bopped and I felt stupid. "He works at the Wright Bros?"
"Oh. Uh, no. Next door—"
"Oh! I see I see." Jim then mumbled some indiscernible gibberish to himself. "You know my buddy, Greg? He's barbecuin'. Maybe I'll bring home some steak, maybe some corn on the cob, too, if ya like that?"
"Sounds good," I said.
"Yes, Miss Mary!" he bellowed, before descending down the basement stairs, singing something about "Corn on the cob from a farmer named Bob" on his way down.
Later, as I was getting ready for work, I stripped off my shirt and felt a tight pain on my left arm. When I looked, I had five pink bruises, shaped like fingers, on my forearm.
==========DANNY==========
"What can I do for ya, Danny?" Rob asked me as I stepped into his office at the carwash. He gestured to the stool next to his faux leather chair. I took the seat. The window in his office faced the assembly line, where the carwashing machinery was hard away at work, mopping a car. The concrete block walls made his office remarkably cooler than the oppressive humidity outside. A big fat gray cloud had decided to hover over the northeast, and it didn't look like it was going anywhere anytime soon.
Rob was sorting through some papers on his desk when he looked up at me through his reading glasses.
"Have you been getting enough protein?"
"What?"
"You're looking pretty flushed," he remarked. "Have you been getting enough protein?" Then went back to his paper work. The office fan hummed.
"Uh, yeah." I cleared my throat. "Um, I talked to Max, and he told me that—we're closing down?"
Saying the words "closing down" instantly acknowledged the reality of what was happening. Rob glanced up long enough from the spreadsheets and tallies he was filing to pierce me with a gaze that reminded me of being in the principal's office with Max for throwing snowballs. Rob looked back down at his paperwork.
"Yeah." He sounded pissed. "You missed the big meeting, Danny. I called. I left you a couple voicemails. I never heard back."
I damn well knew that ignoring my phone wasn't the right thing to do, and that's probably why I started feeling a hole in my stomach.
"I'm sorry."
"I wouldn't be sorry." He pressed his bottom lip out and shook his head. "You don't owe me nothin', Danny. We're just not bringing in the business we used to, so we're shutting down. Simple as that. You don't owe me nothin'."
Rob kept his eyes fixed on the papers he was shuffling in his hand. The oscillating fan gushed an unexpected cold blast onto my face.
"But what did I expect? You're movin' out to Calfornia, Rockstar. You're probably so busy thinking 'bout all the babes you're gonna be screwin' out there. You've got no time for us bricks here in Jersey."
"Well, wait. Why? What happened?"
"Danny, I already told you. When people are making money, they're spending it. When they're not, they ain't. It's pretty fucking simple," he said with a deep coarse chuckle.
Something I said had triggered Rob. This was the first time I'd ever felt like he was my boss and not a buddy. Well, former boss, I guess. I knew there were economic downturns, but I never imagined the carwash closing down because of it.
"I'm sorry, Danny," Rob said. "You're a good kid. Believe me, I wish this was different."
I was speechless.
"I've got some tips for you here," he said, reaching into the drawer of his steel desk, which was showing its age by the burnt-orange rust disintegrating the ledges, and pulled out an envelope. I didn't really care, mostly because the writing on the envelope spelled out in purple pen, ten dollars.
"Wait, Rob, what are you gonna do now? Where are you going to work?"
"My brother runs a little bistro over the river. He says he could use some help managing. So, I put the Porsche up for sale—that's actually why I had you detail it for me, and I'm heading out there." He started writing something, and then jolted his head up. "You interested in buying it? I know you like it. I know you took it out that night."
"I didn't take your—"
"I checked the mileage. I knew what I had, buddy. Plus Miller told me he saw you stopped at a light with some smokin' broad in the car. Believe me, Danny, I was fucking pissed, until he told me she was hot." I was about to speak up, but he kept going. "It's okay, Danny. As long as you got laid—I don't mind."
I forced myself to laugh at his remark, but couldn't help but feel that my night with Mary had been exposed. I'd thought those memories were private. But I guess nothing is private. Maybe this guilty rotten feeling was my Karma. Karma had sought, and run me down, after all.
I looked out at the now lifeless mechanical arms, buzzing patiently, anticipating the next car. Motionlessly waiting for something that wouldn't happen.
"Danny!" Rob exclaimed. "Stop looking like someone just drowned your cat. I'm not mad at ya, buddy."
I tried apologizing, but he kept telling me that it was okay. So I guess it was okay, but it wasn't. I felt like an irresponsible bag of shit, and like my first night with Mary—stargazing and dancing and beach bonfire-making—was now somehow sacrilegious.
"Best of luck to you, Danny," he said as we stood up. Nodded. Then gave each other a firm, final-farewell handshake. I walked out of his office for the last time. The heavy metal door slammed behind me. The impact echoed throughout the detail garage.
Slogging out of the garage, back into the thick afternoon air on my way to my car, I saw what I thought was a familiar dark green pickup truck idling outside on the driveway. I didn't want this person thinking I was at work, and I really didn't want to go through the process of kindly explaining to this waiting customer that I was an employee, but not working at that precise moment. And that would lead to having to explain that we were closing with a reason I didn't quite fully understand myself. But, while keeping my head down, trying to avoid all contact possible, I heard someone shout my name.
"Dan-ny!" The eerily friendly voice repeated, singing my name. I really couldn't believe what I saw when I looked up.
"Uh, hi," was all I managed to utter when I saw Jim.
"Can I have a..." his voice trailed off as he scratched his chin. "Ooh, a number three car wash, please?" He had a tendency to add a growly high-pitched inflection to the end of his sentences.
"I uh, I'm not at work."
"Wanna lift home, then?"
Jim couldn't have been any friendlier. This guy was nothing close to the sinister villain I'd come toe-to-toe with days before inside Mary's house. If it wasn't for being called a "leftist faggot" and witnessing Mary almost have a handful of hair aggressively ripped out of her scalp—and aside from having driven myself—I probably would've said Yes.
"No, I'm really quite okay. Thanks." I nodded and waved, and then picked up the pace on my power-walk to my car.
Jim pulled his truck up beside me, following as I walked. "I just wanta have a little conversation. Won't be long, Danny. Just need t' ask ya a question."
My heart started pounding. The teeter-totter started wobbling in my head. What on Earth could he possibly want to ask me?
I looked back at him. With his short messy hair and weak eyebrow bone, he almost looked like an overgrown child.
"I don't mean ya no harm. No need t'be 'fraid, right? Just a quick little conversation." His voice singsonged the words, as if the other day had just been the act of Jim's evil twin, and this was the nice twin, bopping out every vowel as he conned me into his truck. This was what I imagined a Hells Angel biker trying to sweet-talk their grandmother would sound like. I got in the truck. I guess I was the grandmother.
We drove without saying a word for probably only a minute, but it was a minute that felt like forever. The wobbling in my head didn't calm down. It only got worse. Particularly because Jim had the windows rolled up, and didn't have the air on to filter out the permanent stench of pot. Though he kept relatively steady at the wheel, I felt as though at any moment I was going to disastrously throw up.
"So," he said at last, taking an awfully long pause before continuing. "How was work?"
Did I not just tell this man that I was not at work?
"It was good," I said. I figured it didn't really matter what I told him.
He tapped the top of the steering wheel, which was worn out and partly wrapped with duct tape.
"Good. Good. That's good. Work is good." Each word bopped out with a song and the slow rocking back and forth of his torso.
"Yeah," I added. "It's a good place to work."
Good seemed to be the word of the hour.
"So," his voice smoky, light, and peppy popped. "How's Mary?"
"Uh," I mumbled. I couldn't figure out what the heck this guy was getting at, but that feeling of needing to throw up didn't leave. Especially since there was a weird combination of ashes and funk in the cup holders, and my feet were planted amongst a variety of fast-food wrappers; the smell of rotten cheeseburger rose from the floor.
"So, you like my daughter?"
"Yeah I—"
"Have ya screwed my daughter?"
"Ayee—no."
He jolted. "Danny, there's one thing I don't like." And held his index finger up. I waited for him to finish his sentence, but he just continued to hold his finger up. Like, he just left it up there.
"What's that?" I finally asked. Thought I would least find out what he didn't like.
Then brusquely, "A liar." And threw his fist to his mouth to cough. My stomach turned on its backside.
Jim then aggressively gripped the bottom of the wheel, said, "I can always tell a liar," and cranked the truck into the other lane straight towards an oncoming car.
"What are you doing?" I yelled. Jim's eyes bulged as he started to drive faster. The approaching car started wailing on the horn. Jim gripped the wheel tighter. The car was getting closer. A crazed smile crossed his face as the lines on the road and the car warped towards us.
"Jesus Christ, what are you doing?"
The weighing down of the horn got louder. The speedometer started firing back and forth; the engine hollered like it was about to explode.
"TURN BACK IN!" I screamed. My arms flew out beside me, holding on to the door and cup-holder, bracing myself for the high-speed crash. "YOU'RE GOING TO GET US KILLED!"
It was when we were half a second away from an engine-bursting, bloodied motor-vehicle death, that the car swerved to the right around us, nearly clipping the mirror on my side, and then raced back into their correct lane and lost it on the horn. From the rearview, I saw them stick their middle finger high out of the window.
"What the fuck?!" I cried.
Jim was hysterical. With ease, he steered the wheel, and glided back into our proper lane. "That was fun, right?" His face was all lit up.
This man is insane. This man is bat-shit, far outfield insane.
More than being on the brink of tears or of passing out, I found myself just plain incredulous. And then, I was suddenly furious at myself for giving this whole situation the chance to even happen. Why the fuck did I get in the car with this psychopath? I didn't know anything about him, except the fact that he had a tendency to be bipolar and violent. More than that, I didn't owe him anything. If all this was based on the suspicion that his nearly eighteen-year-old daughter might have had sex with her boyfriend, then this was as bullshit as anything could be.
To hell with him and the fact he was Mary's father. I was a good kid from a normal world where the adults I knew weren't mentally ill lunatics. The only responsibility I had at that moment was to my parents, the people who raised me not to get caught up in the dysfunction of somebody else's life, and to do them right by getting the fuck out of that truck.
My mind raced with how I would gently ease out of the situation. What I had to do to please this man and get the fuck as far away as possible. From the deepest recesses of my mind, I called upon Dad's voice, trying to figure out how, as a man, I should handle this dilemma, the way Dad would have.
Except, when remembering the sound of Dad's voice took longer than I'd hoped, a smirk of pity and remorse slipped onto my face.
And Jim caught that smirk from the corner of his eye. He didn't like that smirk.
"Ya think that's funny?" he deadpanned. "Ya think I'mma jokester? Ya know, sometimes there's big, scary guys. Right? Been in prison or somethin' for a while. Without a woman. Gets lonely, right? So they get carryin' 'round," Jim reached into the floor of the backseat and pulled out a tub of Vaseline. "Some a this, right? Incase they run into a cute boy like you, with pretty hair." Jim lunged his arm out and ran his hand through my hair. Then rubbing his fingers against my head, continued, "Same way you're comin' onta Mary? Right? Bein' a young guy it's all your thinkin' 'bout. Fuckin' chicks. But ya see, big guys like that protect their families, right? Don't want'ya doin' to their daughters what they're gonna do t' you."
After a light tug of my hair, Jim pulled his hand away and slapped it against the steering wheel. "Right?"
I stared out the windshield.
"Where are you driving me?" I asked.
"To the store."
"What's the store?"
"Where your girlfriend works."
"We were just beside the grocery store."
I was beyond horrified. And the horror only deepened when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dildo—yes, a dildo—wedged in the sun visor. What the actual fuck was that thing doing there?
With my arms braced tightly against the door and the center console, I could feel each groove and bump in the road and the truck's internal jagged response. The brakes squealed when he slowed for a red light, and as the truck idled, the engine made a clattering sound as if the oil hadn't been changed in years.
If I ever have to say I regretted anything in my life, it was getting in that truck.
Bad judgment call there, Grandma.
"I used ta drive t'where her mum worked," Jim began saying "at the old Betty's Diner. I'm sure your folks musta known it. At the time I was driving this beautiful seventy-nine Trans Am. Oh, you shoulda seen that thing! It could rip!" Jim rambled on, absorbed in his own world.
"And her manager, where she worked, right? Would lock the door every time she'd see me pullin' up in the parkin' lot, and they'd be losing customers and she'd be screamin' out the window, 'We're gonna call the cops! We're gonna call the cops!' And I mean, I wasn't causin' no real harm or nothin', just having fun, right? Comin' in with my buddies, ordering a couple cheeseburgs, drinking beers outta the brown bags, you know how kids used to do that, right? Waiting for Wend to get off work.
"Yeah..." Jim said with a soft sigh. Then tucking in his lips, he rocked his head slightly. "Those were the days, alright."
He looked out the windshield past where his large, swollen hand gripped the wheel. And then as another flashback of the glory days jogged his memory, he smiled to himself as if overcome by nostalgia.
I was so entranced by this psychotic dilemma I had wandered into that, when the truck jerked up over a curb, I nearly smacked my head against the roof. And when the car slammed back down to the ground, the dildo nose-dived into the cup holder and the glove box slammed open over my knees. Loose papers flopped out.
Stopped outside of Wright Bros, Jim cranked the column shifter into park, and then picked up the dildo and pointed it headfirst at me. "So, you bagged my daughter?"
The noisy whirling lash of the radiator fan loudened.
"No."
"Good!" Jim snapped his wrist, wobbling the dildo at me. "We wouldn't want any necks broken." Then grabbing the rubber phallus with both hands, Jim bent it until it tore in half. "Right?"
I unbuckled the seatbelt and jumped out of that passenger seat. The second my feet hit the pavement, the door slammed shut behind me, and the truck roared off with black smoke pouring out of the exhaust pipe.
I stared down at the pavement, digging my fingers deep into my forehead. Then hearing the squeal of the brakes, and another car blast the horn, I watched the back-end of the truck, with the half scratched out, red lettering of CHEVROLET, whip around the corner.
The guerilla soldiers, in the incarnation of Mary's father, caught up to me and blasted thick bullet-holes through my spirit. Didn't I tell you that Gilmore Park, and all its fucking inhabitants, were waiting to break you 'til you were helpless on your knees?
Happiness in that dumpy town was like sprinting with your back towards the hot Atlantic sun. No matter how hard or fast you tried, its shadow always managed to overextend beyond your feet, forever impossible to outrun. I looked up at the Wright Bros sign above the grocery store's yellow canopy, twisted open the blotched golden handle, and walked inside.