by Dan Chaon
But instead Troy had brushed right past him. I’m in a big hurry, Troy said, as if to a stranger he’d just met, hardly looking at him, and in some ways that was worse than a blow. Jonah stood there in the yard for a moment as Troy disappeared into the house, and he could feel himself dissipating, the other lives he’d been imagining lifting away, foolish as balloons.
He was nothing. He remembered that woman, Marie, her face pinched as she said I don’t have a son; he remembered Ernesto’s gentle, uncomprehending eyes as Jonah struggled with basic words: Perro . . . dientes . . . He saw his mother staring at him dully, expelling smoke from her mouth when she came upon him babbling away to himself, and all of the various costumes of his imagination fell away. He could feel himself shrinking.
He saw himself as Troy had: an oddball stranger, a minor character, uninvited, unwelcome, standing for no good reason in his coworker’s yard.
What are you doing here? Troy’s expression had said, and he felt the weight of that question settle over him. He didn’t know the answer.
——
In practical terms, his life in St. Bonaventure was not so different from his life in Chicago. The small trailer house he’d found in a place called Camelot Court was as dull and anonymous as the efficiency he’d rented from Mrs. Orlova. The other residents, consumed with the problems of work and family, with the mundane sufferings of unspectacular poverty, paid him little mind. He would hear them sometimes, screaming at their children or deeply involved in some love argument, but he rarely saw them. He kept to himself: watching TV, reading, trying to work things out in his mind.
When he finally left the trailer that day his head was so full of thoughts that it was almost surprising to see people. It was about two in the afternoon, and he was on his way to work, still sifting through his imaginary notecards, and he stopped short when he saw them. They were a group of teenage boys, sitting on the hood of an old Mustang in the gravel roadway that ran between the trailers. Right behind his car; they were blocking him in.
The four boys were passing a joint back and forth. Jonah paused on the wooden steps that led up to the screen door of his trailer while they eyed him, talking softly to one another. This wouldn’t have bothered him so much, except they had a dog—a thickly muscled mongrel of some sort. Unleashed. It stood a few yards away from Jonah, the hair on its back pricked up in spikes, barking. Jonah stood steady, watching the animal. He couldn’t bring himself to move or speak, and it was an effort not to simply retreat into his trailer.
Finally, one of the boys, the oldest of the four, seemed to take notice of Jonah. “Hey, man,” the kid said, as if Jonah had just appeared. “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Jonah said, flatly. The dog didn’t move toward him, but in order to get to his car he would need to walk nearer to it. In Chicago he would cross the street when he saw a pet owner walking a tethered dog along the sidewalk, and he knew which parks to avoid.
“You new here?” the boy said, and his followers grinned, staring at Jonah expectantly. At twenty-five, his face was still too young to have any authority over them—even with the scar, people often mistook him for a teenager himself.
“Yes,” Jonah said. “I just moved in.” He glanced at the dog again, and the leader boy followed his gaze.
“Rosebud!” the kid said, firmly, and gave Jonah a sly half smile. “Don’t worry,” the kid said to Jonah. “She won’t bite unless I tell her to.” He clapped his hands, hard, and Jonah watched as the dog obediently sat down, running its tongue across its chops, its ears pricked up expectantly.
The boy turned back to Jonah and nodded, pleased with himself, proud owner of Rosebud. He didn’t seem threatening, exactly. He was short, round-faced, wearing a muscle shirt. There was brownish black facial hair sprouting over his lip and on his chin, though this did not yet amount to a mustache or a goatee. His eyes seemed basically gentle, albeit very drugged, and he might have even seemed friendly if it wasn’t for his dog.
“So what’s your name?” the kid said, after he and Jonah had faced each other for a moment, and Jonah cleared his throat.
“Jonah,” he said. The younger ones seemed to think this was funny for some reason, ribbing each other and chuckling, but their leader only observed Jonah, apparently earnest.
“Jinx,” he said, and rubbed his hand over the thigh of his jeans before holding it out to shake. “I live over there, with my mom.” He pointed in the direction of a series of long trailers, each with a small patch of grass and brightly colored lawn ornaments.
“Pleased to meet you,” Jonah said, cordially, and the kid showed his small, gilt-edged teeth. Rosebud let out a thoughtful whine.
“So,” Jinx said, and shifted from foot to foot, still grinning. He was very stoned, Jonah thought. They all were. Jonah kept his hands stiffly at his sides as the boy leaned forward, confidentially. “I have to ask you, man,” the boy said. “What’s with the, uh,” and he made a quick swipe along his cheek to indicate Jonah’s scar. “What’s with the jack-o’-lantern effect? Are you a fighter?”
Jonah was silent for a moment, and the teens, lined up on the hood of the Mustang, stared at him curiously. He wasn’t afraid of them. They were clumsy with drugs, and he felt fairly sure they posed little threat. He had discovered fairly early on in his junior high school years that he was stronger than most of the bullies, and more impervious to pain. The knowledge that he had the ability to hurt people had always been a steadying force when he faced encounters such as this, and he curled his hand around his car key, the sharp tip of the key protruding a little from between his ring and middle finger. The only thing he felt nervous about was the dog.
“I’m not a fighter,” Jonah said, but he hardened his eyes, and Jinx took a small step back. Jonah knew very well how to make his expression scary—it was making it look normal that was the problem. He put out his thumb, deliberately, and traced along the ridge of the scar. “I’m not anything,” he said, and he kept his eyes on Jinx as he stepped cautiously toward his car. Rosebud didn’t move, though she growled low in her throat. He hoped they didn’t see what an act of bravery it took, with the unleashed dog sitting there, to walk down the stairs, to open his car door. If he hadn’t been almost late for work, he didn’t think he could have managed it. He unrolled his window a few inches.
“Would you mind moving your car,” he said, coolly, though his heart was beating very fast. “I can’t quite get past you.”
And Jinx made a kind of formal bow. “No problem, Jonah,” he said, his eyes glinting.
——
When he arrived at the Stumble Inn that day, the shift change was already under way. Vivian was cooking, and Troy was tending bar, and Crystal was bustling about, doing various side work in preparation for the evening. Jonah had been surprised to learn that the four of them made up the entirety of the regular staff. There were two other employees, both part-time—a man named Chuck, who also worked as a city fireman and as a handyman, bartended the single Sunday shift, when the kitchen was closed; and an elderly, apparently alcoholic woman named Esther worked in the kitchen on Mondays. Jonah had met neither of these peripheral figures. He was scheduled to work five days a week—from three thirty P.M. to nine P.M. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and from ten A.M. to two A.M. on Fridays and Saturdays—and he was already hopefully settling himself into a routine, with Troy and Vivian and Crystal as a kind of family around whom his daily life would begin to revolve. He liked, very much, the sense of a schedule solidifying, and it upset him that his encounter with the teenagers had disrupted it. He was flushed as he came in through the back door of the bar, even before Vivian said anything.
“You’re getting close to late,” Vivian said as he walked in, her voice grave and edged with pessimistic disappointment. She gazed at him as if she’d expected, all along, that he would screw up, and he waved his hands in exasperation.
“I apologize,” he said. He saw Crystal and Troy turn to look at him, and he blushed. He had hoped,
at the very least, to seem admirably dependable. A hard, earnest worker. He had always thought that if you were reliably good at your job, you could win anyone over, no matter what your appearance. He stood there awkwardly.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I had teenager problems. A bunch of kids in my way.” He smiled humorously, hoping that they would commiserate, but they didn’t seem to understand.
“They were just sitting there in my driveway, blocking me in!” Jonah explained. “Some kid with a big ugly dog named Rosebud,” Jonah said. “Ha! Do you think he’s a fan of Citizen Kane?”
Jonah thought this was quite clever, but Vivian, and Crystal, and Troy all looked at him blankly.
“It’s a movie,” Jonah said. “Citizen Kane.”
Vivian blinked, sternly. “Why don’t you go downstairs and bring up a bucket of ice,” she said, returning to her work, and Jonah felt a familiar weight of self-loathing settle over his shoulders. He shouldn’t tell jokes. He shouldn’t try to be gregarious. He was bad at both of these things, and he should know it by now.
——
It was quite busy for a while. After Vivian had left, after Troy had clocked out and hurried wordlessly out the door, the bar began to inexplicably fill up with patrons. Through the small order window he could see customers entering, leaning on the bar with their elbows, occupying the booths and tables. He could hear Crystal’s musical, bell-like voice, greeting people and chatting with them and calling “order” to him. In his mind, the world irradiated outward—lifting above the roomful of townsfolk in their buzz of chatter, their beers and hamburgers; above the parking lot and the boarded-up facade of Zike’s Roller Rink, above St. Bonaventure and the expanse of prairie that surrounded it, the dots of headlights on the roads that led away, the clusters of lights that represented the small cities in the distance—Denver, Cheyenne, Rapid City—the blurry scrim of clouds that held the atmosphere to the earth, the planet itself shrinking into an ellipsis, his own existence dwindling into something subatomic.
It helped to think of things this way. Enclosed in the box of the kitchen, in his dirty white apron and hair net and checked pants, sweat trickling out of the elastic of his paper cap and into his eyes, winding along the ridges of his scarred face, he felt vile. He brooded over the hot griddle and the stacks of prefab hamburgers, each separated by a tab of wax paper; the monotonous rituals of frying, lowering a handful of breaded, cheese-stuffed jalapeños into a vat of snapping oil. He was aware of his body as he crept into the bar area, glum as a prison worker, to refill the garnish bins with lime wedges and sliced circles of lemons; he was aware of his deeply bitten fingernails, his grimy hands lining slick dishes in racks, a fist around a scouring pad, scrubbing pots in his spare moments. This did not feel like starting his life over.
——
And then, without warning, the bar was empty. He looked at his watch—it was eleven o’clock and he heard Crystal calling after someone. “Thanks for stopping in!” she said, and her voice fell woodenly into the empty room. There was a moment of silence.
Then, after a moment, she turned to look at Jonah.
“Whew,” she said, in a breezy, cheerfully friendly voice. “That was something else!” She grinned at him. With the bar empty, there was no one else to turn her warmth upon, and so suddenly he was the recipient: her able coworker, her comrade in arms. He was scouring the grill with a charcoal pad, and he peered out at her, blinking.
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“You were great,” she said. “I really think the food here is starting to get a reputation, because of you.”
He put his head down, as if against a strong wind. “Uh-huh,” he said.
“I’m serious,” she said, and when he glanced back up, she was still looking at him. Her long blond hair hung straight, almost to her shoulder blades, and it was clear that she brushed and brushed it every morning. It caught the light and glowed, and he shifted uncomfortably at its brilliance. She was the type of girl who secretly imagined a man cherishing a lock of her hair, the type of girl who thought it was possible that the eyes could be windows upon the soul. There was a general tenderness, extending out to flowers and children and small animals and the elderly, and from there passing on to the rest of the world, to people like Jonah himself.
“How about a beer?” she said. “I’m going to pour myself one. And then we can finish up with the side work and get out of here.”
He hesitated. “Sure,” he said. He watched as she tilted a glass against the tap, and then he bent again to the griddle, scrubbing it hard. He looked up warily as she came into the kitchen with his glass of perfectly poured beer—golden liquid, topped with a soft head of white foam.
“Relax for a minute,” she said, and caught his eye as he took the beer from her. “You’re like a workhorse, Jonah! I haven’t seen you take a break all night!”
“Thanks,” Jonah said, and lifted the glass to his lips and drank. Crystal did the same, smiling as she tasted her beer in a way that made Jonah think of a missionary, sharing some exotic drink with a savage.
“So how is St. Bonaventure treating you, Jonah?” she said, after she’d taken a surprisingly long pull of her beer. “Are you settling in okay?”
Jonah shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m doing all right.”
“Despite the crazy teenagers and their mean dogs.”
“Right,” he said.
She downed the rest of the beer in a single long gulp. “Ahh,” she said, and he watched as she went back out to fill her glass again. His own was still nearly full, and he took another sip.
“It must be an adjustment,” she said brightly, as she came back in. “Moving here from Chicago! There’s got to be a lot of culture shock involved!”
“A little,” he said, and she smiled warmly again, as if this were a big admission on his part. He scratched at the last bit of blackness on the griddle, then took another sip of beer.
“But you like it here?” Crystal said.
“Yeah,” said Jonah. He hesitated, took another sip of beer as Crystal drank deeply from hers. “It’s all right,” he said. “I think I like it.”
“Do you?”
“I think so,” he said, and reached over to turn off the fryalator. He glanced around the work area, to see if there was anything left unfinished. “Do you like it here?”
She shrugged, sipped again—she was half finished with her second beer. “I guess,” she said. “I don’t know. I mean, if I’d been driving down the interstate looking for someplace to settle, I don’t know whether this would have been my first choice, but I’m here now. You get to know a place, and you’re used to it. I like my house.”
“That’s good,” Jonah said. He took a last drink of his beer, and Crystal held out her hand for his glass.
“Another?” she said, and when he hesitated, she smiled at him. “Why not?” she said, as if she was pretending to read his mind.
“I’m not a big drinker,” he said, but she was already on her way out to the bar, filling his glass again. She turned to look over her shoulder.
“Vivian told me about your accident,” she said. “About your wife.”
It was like a soft but dizzying blow to the head.
He felt himself flush, heat filling his cheeks and forehead. He thought he could recall what he’d said to Vivian: I was in a car accident. It’s not something I generally talk about. My wife— She was pregnant, and she died. But had he said more than that? Had he, for example, given his wife a name, a background? He wasn’t sure. He had known it was a mistake even as it came out of his mouth. I don’t like to talk about it, he’d said, trying to backpeddle. I shouldn’t have said anything—if it could just stay . . . between us, I’d appreciate it.
And he’d trusted Vivian, at that moment. Had believed her when she looked at him earnestly. Oh, of course, she’d said. Just between us. But now, as Crystal gazed at him, he could sense the ground beneath him softening, his feet sinking slowly. He
knew his face was very red, and he was aware of that particular story, told on the spur of the moment, solidifying around him.
“Oh,” he said hoarsely. He watched as Crystal walked again from around the bar and into the kitchen area. “That wasn’t something . . . I . . . didn’t want everyone to know about that,” he said.
“I know,” Crystal said. She smiled, melancholy, as she handed him another glass of beer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Vivian isn’t very good at keeping secrets.”
He swallowed, and brought the beer to his lips. “Oh,” he said again, and he looked at Crystal. Maybe it was possible to change things, to undo the casual lie he’d told Vivian, to drag everything, at last, into the open. He wondered what would happen if he told her the truth—if he explained about Troy, and the adoption, and the PeopleSearch Agency. Maybe she would help him. But he wasn’t certain. It might be that even now he was too deeply mired into the false person she thought he was.
“Does everyone know?” he said softly.
She looked at him.
“Jonah,” she said. “You’re living in a small town. It’s not a place where you can keep to yourself.”
He blinked.
“I’m sorry if I brought up something upsetting,” Crystal said gently. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. People will understand.”
——
As he trudged out into the parking lot, Jonah could feel the weight of the story roost on his shoulder—the velocity of the car rushing forward, the grille of the truck bearing down on him, the sound of his wife screaming. Poor Jonah, people would say. Starting his ruined life over in St. Bonaventure. Had Troy already heard as well? He stood there, staring at the old Festiva, trying to recalculate the history of his life. The air was chill, and a delicate, fern-shaped frost had branched across his windshield, though it turned to dew when he pressed his fingers to the glass.
