“Oh, I get it,” Trent said with a smarmy grin. “But I think you underestimate me.” Bobby rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
“It’s like trying to reason with monkey testicles.”
While the boys had their relationship counseling session, Sherri turned in a slow circle, dragging her stare across the walls with a sneering squint. All she could see were four rectangles of pink light hanging in a field of darkness. The first was the door she had just come in through, followed by three visible windows. She held out her hand until she touched a shelf, then followed it, grasping its contents and looking them over with her blistered fingertips. Half a dozen unidentifiable cleaning products passed through her hands before thumping to the floor, rejected. She tore open a bag of Fritos only to find upon her first greedy mouthful that it was actually dry macaroni. After a second mouthful proved to be no better than the first, she dropped the bag to the ground with a clatter and continued down the shelf.
“Man, this place smells like a heavy girl on a hot day,” Trent coughed. “Let’s make with a little freshness in here.”
He picked up two cans of aerosol deodorant, popped the caps off with his thumbs in a maneuver reminiscent of a cowboy drawing his guns, and proceeded to spray down the fetid air with the flowery scent of shower-fresh underarms.
“Mr. Clean and the Scrubbing Bubbles working in ten-hour shifts couldn’t take the stink out of this place,” Bobby said, taking a can from Trent’s hand. “There is, however, still hope for my cabbagey ass.”
He shoved the can under his stained T-shirt and sprayed down his gnarly armpits. When he was finished, he pulled the can from under his clothes and, with a shrug, sprayed down his arms and legs. Trent gingerly sniffed under his own arm, winced, and followed Bobby’s example.
“Whoo!” he hooted, spraying himself. “That B.O. has got to G.O.” He wandered into the next aisle and found Sherri, her completely full mouth leaking a trickle of thick brown saliva down her chin. With a wiggle of her pierced nostril, her face twisted into a disgusted knot.
“You smell like vending machine tampons,” she slurred.
Trent looked at her chomping mouth and grinned.
“So tell me, Elvira,” he asked smarmily. “What does a goth girl eat for breakfast?” Without a word, Sherri flashed a box of Count Chocula from under her arm.
“Typical,” Trent laughed, picking up his own box of cereal and hungrily tearing off its top.
Sherri swallowed her crunchy cocoa mouthful and wiped her mouth on what was left of her sleeve.
“So tell me, Preppie,” she said sweetly, “what does an overcompensating closet queer eat for breakfast?”
Trent stopped in mid-chew and looked guiltily at his box of Fruity Pebbles.
“This means nothing,” he said.
“Here, take a hit of this, Stinky,” Bobby interrupted, pressing a deodorant can into Sherri’s free hand. “It’s strong enough for a man, but it’s made for an angry little woman.”
Sherri dropped the can on the floor and went back to her cereal.
“Nah,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Fine?” Bobby said. “Not hardly, cabbage pits. You smell like the baby that Xavier Roberts threw away.”
“I don’t wear deodorant,” Sherri said firmly. “That’s how the Man marks you with his scent and makes you his property. It’s just like how dogs piss on trees. Every time that you wear deodorant, you’re just letting the Man piss on you.”
“Fine. Have it your way, Little Miss Tinfoil Hat,” Bobby said, picking up the can and stuffing it into the backpack. “I’ll just save it so Viv and Erik can have a spray.”
“And then you’ll be stanky all by your lonesome in your own little stanky club of one,” Trent said condescendingly. “Girl, don’t you even want to try to be like everybody else?”
Sherri’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“You know, sometimes I can’t tell if you’re kidding, or if you’re actually this clueless.”
Outside of the convenience store, Vivian and Erik had separated, each following their own clues to find receptacles in which to carry the gasoline back to the Rabbit. Erik squatted on the ground to the side of the front porch, his arm shoulder-deep in its nether recesses. The porch’s knotty floor was held up by a series of thick, wooden supports three inches wide and six inches apart, caging a tangle of uncut weeds and various abandoned tools. Under the porch, his fingers fumbled against the rusted handle of a watering can.
“Come on …”
His sneakers dug at the hard, dusty dirt as he tried to force his arm just another centimeter closer to his prize. The can could carry at least a gallon of fuel, if he could just get his hands on it. With his cheek pressed harshly into the boards, a throbbing pressure spread across his jawbone and right eyeball.
“Come on!” he hissed breathlessly. “Come on, you little bastard!” With a final chest-deflating exhale and a thrust of his legs, he caught the handle between the very tips of his index and middle fingers. Without even taking a breath to fill his voided lungs, he pinched his fingertips together and carefully, carefully, pulled back. The can dragged against the tall grass, gaining a tiny bit of resistance with each stiff blade that bent against it. A bead of sweat rolled down Erik’s forehead and into his clenched left eye. Finally, with one desperate and suffocating effort, he was able to wrap his fingers around the rusted handle, and the ancient watering can broke through the weeds and clanged to a stop against the support beams. The impact reverberated into Erik’s weary arm, making his elbow feel like it had been hit with a tuning fork. He tried to yank the can out again and again, but it just slammed against the bars of its prison with a series of frantic clangs. It was too wide.
“But … but! Oh, come on!”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he had gained the clarity to turn his wrist ninety degrees, aligning the oblong can with the vertical gap and easily pulling it through.
“No sweat,” he sighed, wiping the sweat off of his brow.
He brushed his hands together to knock the rust crumbles from the star-spangled maroon of his freshly bandaged palms. Climbing to his feet, he pushed aside a Confederate flag that had conspicuously shrunk by several ragged inches.
“Hey Viv!” he said proudly, holding aloft his prize. “I found a container to pump the gas into!”
“Great!” Vivian said. “I found a couple too.”
Erik stepped around the corner of the porch and froze in disbelief. In front of the pumps was Vivian, flanked by six Army-green five-gallon gas cans.
“Where did those come from?” he asked incredulously.
“From the Jeep junkyard,” Vivian replied. “They were strapped into holsters on the backs of some of them. I found one more, but it had a hole in it. What did you find?”
Erik looked at his hard-won watering can, noticing for the first time that it had no bottom.
“Nothing,” he said bitterly. “Forget it.”
He dropped the can onto the pavement, splintering off its brittle spout. With a flush of anger and a rough, throaty growl, he kicked the can as hard as he could, smashing it against the side of the derelict pump.
“Whoa, Erik!” Vivian cringed. “What was that all about?” Erik squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head as if waking from a dream.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m just frustrated and really tired. I don’t feel like myself today.”
A chill ran icily down Vivian’s spine.
“If you don’t feel like yourself, then … what do you feel like?” she asked quietly. Erik glared.
“Who are you-Sigmund Freud?” he snapped. “Look, I’m just beat-up and tired. Quit treating me like I’m about to claw your skull open and eat your brains! It’s me, Erik. I’m cool.”
Vivian tipped her eyes to the ground in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” she blushed. “I’m just scared. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”
Erik shrugged.
“Forget it. Let’s just get these tanks filled, okay?”
Vivian nodded shamefully. She stuck the nozzle of the pump into the open mouth of the first gas can and pulled the handle.
Nothing happened.
“What’s wrong?” Erik said.
“It’s not working,” Vivian replied, pumping the trigger.
“But … but it has to work!”
Vivian shook her head with realization.
“No … it doesn’t have to work. It doesn’t have to work at all, ” she said, shoving the nozzle back onto its hook. “God, I am so stupid. ”
“What? Why are you stupid?” Erik said desperately. “Why doesn’t it work?”
“The pumps. They’re machines. They need electricity, just like everything else.”
“But … but this isn’t how it’s supposed to work!” Erik stammered. “We beat the level boss! We found the gas station! We won!”
He picked up the nozzle and clicked the trigger several times into the nearest gas can. Not a drop of fuel fell from its scraped-up tip. He dropped the nozzle into the dust and buried his head in his arms against the side of the pump, kicking it fitfully.
“This isn’t right! This isn’t how it’s supposed to work!”
Vivian watched Erik’s tantrum in silence. She felt the same frustration, but lack of oxygen had her feeling too light-headed to express it as passionately. Turning discreetly away from Erik’s glazed eyes, she put her thumb between her squashed breasts and into the top of her corset of bandages, pulling it as far off of her constricted chest as she could. Stretching the wrap in one direction only tightened it in another, but the breath that she gasped into her crushed lungs still seemed somehow fresher than it would have been without the tug. She exhaled deeply through her mouth, and her lips smacked involuntarily against the feeling of pasty filth within. Finally she turned back to Erik, finding him with the pump nozzle in his mouth and his cheeks collapsed in suction.
“Erik!” she squeaked. “What the hell are you doing?” Erik pulled the hose from his mouth and desperately swallowed a lungful of air.
“Got … to … get … gas,” he gasped. “Only … way …” He put the hose back into his mouth and continued to violently suck. Vivian rushed over to him and yanked the nozzle from his lips, knocking his asphyxiated body backward onto the ground.
“Stop it, Erik,” she said sternly. “That’s not going to work. You don’t have the lung capacity to pull a column of gasoline up a hose this wide!”
“Then we’ll get Trent to do it,” he countered breathlessly.
“No, you don’t understand,” Vivian said. “It’s impossible. The laws of physics are against you.”
“No no. Physics are with me,” Erik prattled. “My grandpa used to suck gas out of Grandma’s car to run his lawnmower. I just need to create a siphon, and physics will do all the work. It’ll work!”
He grabbed the hose, but Vivian put her palm over the tip before he could shove it back into his mouth.
“It won’t work,” she said firmly. “For a siphon to work, the fluid has to be moving from a higher to a lower elevation. You can’t pull gas from an underground tank that way. Not with your lungs.”
“My eighty-six-year-old grandpa used to be able to do it, and you’re saying I can’t?”
“No. Yes. Listen,” Vivian said. “Your grandpa’s siphon worked because it was going from the tank up here to a tank down here, ” she gestured with her hands.
“We could easily get gas out of something like … like one of those Jeeps, for example, because the gas tank is so high off the ground, you see?” Vivian’s eyes widened and blinked involuntarily, as if someone had just pounded a very heavy idea into her brain.
Inside the store, Sherri’s boots pounded between the darkened shelves with a sense of purpose that contrasted her usual state of resigned nihilism. She walked with blind determination through the aisles until her outstretched palms connected with something solid. With a sweep of her arms and a flutter of her bony fingers she explored the objects on its surface. Her left hand hit a small cardboard box, and her fingers scurried inside, feeling out two plastic and metal tubes.
“Oh, fuck me. I can’t find a cigarette to save my life, but I can always find lipstick.”
She picked up the box with the intention of throwing it at the nearest wall, but instead paused and licked her uncharacteristically pink lips. Without turning, she pulled one of the heavy tubes from the box and held it in the air.
“Hey, what color is this lipstick?” she demanded of nobody in particular. On the other side of the store, Bobby was thumbing through a wire rack of road maps. Most of them were for Florida and Georgia, but toward the rear of the bunch he found a highway map of the entire eastern United States. He stuffed it into his pocket and squinted at Sherri in the dim light.
“Looks black,” he replied.
“I’ll be damned,” Sherri shrugged. “It’s my lucky day.” Trent closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.
“Just like a woman,” he sighed. “You send them to get food, and they come back with makeup.”
“Why don’t you come here and I’ll put some on you?” Sherri said. “I want you to leave a receipt when you kiss my ass! ”
“Knock it off, you two,” Bobby said. “Your charming banter isn’t getting us out of this stinkbox any faster.”
With an unintelligible grumble, Sherri stuffed both tubes into her intact coat pocket and continued her groping exploration. Her left hand hit paper. She picked it up. It was a book. Not too thick. Paperback. Damp. Irrelevant. She threw it over her shoulder and heard it flutter to rest on the ground.
The fingers of her probing right hand brushed against a square plastic dish. She dove into its shallow bowl to find six pennies, a toothpick, and a cigarette butt. Although she couldn’t see it, she knew the dish was red and it said “Take a penny. Leave a penny.” She had wasted innumerable hours of her life staring into one exactly like it on her checkstand at Boltzmann’s Market. From this seed of familiarity, the rest of her immediate surroundings spilled out in the darkness of her mind’s eye.
Her left hand shot below the counter. Wire. Paper. Glossy. Serrated edge.
“Tabloids …”
Her right hand broke right. Square. Textured plastic. Keypad.
“Cash register …”
Both hands shot up, connecting with an expanse of smooth plastic holding a sheet of bent cardstock across its front.
“Cigarette rack!”
She turned her back toward the counter, planted her palms on its edge, and hopped her skinny behind up onto it, leaning back as far as the counterweight of her heavy boots would allow. Both of her bony hands launched skyward and landed in a fully stocked rack of cigarettes, eliciting a gleeful smile from her peeling face. The stale air blossomed with a bouquet of tobacco as she ravenously tore open a pack of American Spirits.
“Well, Merry Christmas to me! It looks like somebody has been a good girl this year!”
Within seconds, Sherri was lying blissfully across the counter, sucking down lungful after ragged lungful of yellow smoke with a languid satisfaction that the average onlooker would have mistaken for post-coital. Her immodest posture only added to the illusion: legs thrown apart, one boot resting on top of the register, the other swinging limply over the side of the counter. Once her body had been brought up to its optimal nicotine saturation, she suddenly became aware that the smell of decay in the air was stronger here than it was anywhere else in the store.
“Alright, I’m done here,” she exhaled. “Let’s get out of here. It’s like something died, but in a bad way.”
“For real. I can’t understand how this place can smell so freak nasty of food gone bad when everything in here has a longer shelf life than the Temptations,” Trent said, unhappily scanning the ingredients on a bag of Cheetos. “I realize this is just a place for weary travelers to sugar themselves up enough to get another piece down the ro
ad, but damn, homes. Vivi wants nutritional value, and this whole store has a lower vitamin content than my shampoo.”
“Uber-non-perishable snacks are a good thing,” Bobby said, taking the bag of Cheetos from Trent and stuffing it into the Army backpack. “We don’t have refrigeration, and we don’t know how long it’s gonna be before we get wherever we’re going. Besides, the body doesn’t need nutrients. You just need to put something inside to balance out the atmospheric pressure.”
Trent patted Bobby’s bulbous stomach with a condescending smile.
“And that, my friend, is why you are two seventy-five and are barely alive, and I’m a cut one-eighty and get all the ladies.”
“Hah! Whatever,” Bobby snorted. “I’m pushin’ three bills with the mad love skills, and you’re one-eighty-eight and prone to masturbate,” he parodied.
“Holy shit,” Sherri gasped, pulling her worn T-shirt over her nose. “Nobody told me that whatever Trent has is contagious!”
Trent swaggered over and leaned on the counter with a grin and a salacious glance.
“I believe it’s called infectious charm,” he oozed. “And everyone catches it sooner or later.”
“I believe it’s called my skirt,” Sherri growled menacingly. “And everyone who stares up it gets their eyes gouged out.”
The lascivious expression fell from Trent’s face as he broke eye contact with the jet-black skull and crossbones that glared back at him from the crotch of Sherri’s exposed red satin panties.
“B … but I thought you were blind!” he blurted.
“I am,” Sherri said, swinging her legs off the counter and hopping down. “But you’re just so fucking predictable. ”
Trent opened his mouth to reply, but, as he got his first view behind the counter, he promptly lost his grasp on the English language.
“Oh m-m-my …”
“Oh relax,” Sherri grumbled, taking a long drag off of her cigarette. “It’s just women’s underwear. You’ll get used to it after you’ve seen it more than one time.” Bobby reached the end of the aisle and slung his backpack full of empty calories over his shoulder. He noticed a small booklet on the floor and picked it up, flipping through its red-flecked pages as he approached the counter.
The Oblivion Society Page 26
