Well

by Matthew McIntosh

  Julie was lying on the couch when he got home. The TV was on. She’d ordered a pizza.

  Jim thought, We can’t afford pizza. Why doesn’t she make herself a sandwich! She always wants expensive food!

  Have a slice, Julie said. She sat up, then heaved her enormous body over to the next cushion so Jim could sit down. She was due anytime now.

  Jim sat and took a piece. Cold and waxy. He put his feet up on the table, one on each side of the pizza box.

  That’s not very sanitary, Julie said. And you know you should wash your hands.

  I washed them at work.

  You’ll have to wash your hands before you touch the baby. She hit MUTE on the remote. I heard about the game, she said.

  Yep.

  Too bad.

  Too bad.

  They almost came back?

  They never come back, do they. Not all the way. Did you feed the fish? he said.

  I forgot.

  Did you clean the tank at least?

  I forgot that too. Do you wanna feel? she said. He’s kicking.

  Do I have to wash my hands first?

  Very funny, Mr Comedian.

  He wiped his hand on his work pants and placed it on Julie’s stomach, and she put her hand over his and pressed down. First he didn’t feel anything at all. He thought, I can’t feel it. It isn’t there. There’s nothing there but air. But then he felt it knock. Three times. He thought, There it is. It’s real all right.

  Julie said, You feel?

  Yep.

  Isn’t it awesome?

  Yes.

  Aren’t you excited?

  Jim took his hand back.

  He said, I had to cover Randy’s section tonight. That’s why I’m so late if you were wondering.

  He didn’t show up?

  Bob said he fell off the wagon. Said it was because he was so nervous about the game. They’ll probably fire him.

  There’s a real fan for you.

  He’s a jackass.

  You think they’ll really fire him?

  I hope so.

  We should have him over for dinner.

  He eats too much already. He’s a fatass.

  He eats terribly. He doesn’t have anyone to cook for him. All he eats is fast food.

  Let him starve.

  That’s a wonderful thing to say.

  The fat fucker can starve.

  Very nice, she said.

  Jim looked around. He thought, This goddamn shithole… It had once been a sleazy motel run by a couple Arabs. You couldn’t drink the water. The heat never worked. The walls were thin and if the neighbors weren’t screaming at each other, they were fucking each other with bullhorns. The toilet was always overflowing…

  You wanna go to bed? Julie said. I’m so tired.

  Some asshole wiped shit all over one of his stalls, Jim said.

  What? Whose stalls?

  His. Randy’s. At work.

  And you had to clean it up?

  Who else? Not Randy.

  Disgusting. I hope you washed your hands.

  All over: the walls, the floor, the door, the toilet paper, the seat…

  Disgusting.

  Why the hell would you do that? I don’t get what makes a person do that.

  A sick mind, Julie said.

  Don’t they know somebody’s gotta clean it up?

  Julie rested her head on his shoulder. Jim remembered well. It smelled like shit, he said.

  Don’t talk about it anymore.

  I should have just left it there.

  You should have.

  I should have just walked out.

  You should have just left it.

  I couldn’t just leave it, Jim said. It smelled so bad…

  Quit talking about it. You make yourself feel worse. Why don’t you go take a shower? You might feel better.

  I won’t feel better.

  You might.

  I won’t. I won’t feel better. It smelled so bad.

  He hadn’t known where to start but he’d started on the floor using an industrial strength cleanser and a mop and a bucket and gloves and another bucket and the mop had just smeared it around and the water had turned brown and when he’d finally gotten the floor cleaned there was still so much more to go.

  Jim, please. Let’s talk about something else.

  That fat fucker can starve as far as I’m concerned.

  You’re right. We won’t invite him.

  He’s not such a fan. He doesn’t even know who Jack Sikma is. I’m a fan.

  I know you are, Julie said.

  Why do you think I took that fucking job in the first place? Because I like cleaning up shit?

  I know, I know.

  I’m a fucking fan.

  I know you are. Shhhh. She rubbed his arm.

  Ninety six ninety seven Pacific division champs ninety five ninety six Pacific division champs ninety five ninety six Western Conference champs

  Shhhh

  ninety three ninety four Pacific division champs seventy eight seventy nine Pacific division champs seventy eight seventy nine

  shhhh

  Western Conference champs seventy eight seventy nine NBA champions.

  shhhh.

  Julie reached to put her hand on Jim’s head, but he stood quickly and walked to the front door.

  Jimmy, sit back down, she said. Baby, come sit with me.

  He needed some air.

  Put your head on my lap.

  I’ll be back, he said.

  Come sit with me. Come here. Lay down.

  But he was already through the door. He closed it behind him and pulled out a smoke, lit it. He leaned over the railing and looked down into the parking lot.

  The rain had stopped. It was quiet. No cars out. But it was very late and not many people were even awake. The strip club across the street was closed and all the lights were out.

  [If only they’d won…]

  One night, he’d lain in bed awake long after Julie had fallen asleep, and he’d gotten up and had dressed quietly and slipped outside, down the stairs, and across the street. He’d walked through the parking lot and gone inside, paid the five-dollar cover, bought a drink, and took a table towards the back. He shook off a girl who petted him and stroked his arm—You wanna dance?—and then she had floated away through the smoke and it was dark inside but warm and the music was thick and slow and a pedal steel guitar cried out and he felt tired and worn-through. She left him alone with the girl onstage.

  She stood at the rear of the stage with her back to him in a simple white G-string, facing a mirror, swaying slowly to the music. She unfastened her bra in the back and slid the straps down off her shoulders and, still holding on to the front with one hand, she turned her head and looked at him. Slowly danced to the pole, reached for it with her free hand and swung around to the front of the stage—all in perfect rhythm—pulled her hand away and let the bra drop to the floor. She ran her fingers over her breasts, smiling, let go, and took the pole in her hands. She slid down, opening her legs, and rolled onto her back. Touched her breasts and smiled. Looking at him, she stretched for a spray bottle that one of the other girls had brought out to her—sprayed it over her breasts and belly, rolled over onto her stomach and reached behind her, smiling, sprayed it on her ass, between her legs. She rolled again and sprayed it in the air and the cloud descended upon her, she set the bottle down and rolled and he saw that there was glitter and confetti on the stage. It stuck to her as she rolled. She stopped rolling and smiled. On her back, she reached down between her legs and smiled. Glimmering and shining beneath the overhead lights. Then someone hit a switch and the black lights came on and Jim saw that her skin was scales and it glowed a cold moonlit underwater blue and then, smiling at him, she slowly ran both hands down her breasts, over her ribcage, down her belly, the seam of her, then across to her thighs (many of the scales falling off as she touched them with her hands), around to her hips and hooking her thumbs around both sides of her G-string, she li
fted her pelvis from the floor, and pulled. Lying there on the stage beneath the black lights, covered in scales, pulling her panties down (Jim stopped looking), she said, RELIEF—

  and he remembered all of this later when he was back home in bed, trying not to shake the mattress too much and wake his girlfriend, his eyes closed tight in concentration—he remembered and—when he finally came to the finale where she sprayed herself and rolled and smiled and began to pull—

  it came, he opened his eyes, he sighed.

  She said, Thank you for coming, and swam away.

  The market was still open.

  So he threw his cigarette over the railing and walked down the stairs, through the parking lot and towards the store [inside of which the old man was sweeping the floor behind the counter in a rush to get home, then stopped because through the window he saw a man standing on the median in the middle of the highway, waiting for a car to pass, which passed, and the man continued crossing, stepped up onto the curb, and the old man, who had counted out the register already, realized that he’d forgotten to turn the sign off and lock the door, so quickly he set the broom aside and lifted the countertop, hurried to the door and threw the bolt—the man kept coming, not noticing. Mr So hurried back behind the counter.

  Fingering the chain below the red neon OPEN sign, he...........pulled it] not noticing that it was closed.

  IT’S TAKING SO DAMN LONG TO GET HERE (II)

  We had this thing where I’d be Russia and she’d be the States and she’d put on her blue bathing suit top and her red bottoms—and I’d put on this red cape and this pair of yellow boxers—we’d both be really loaded by this point—we’d be mixing our chemicals let’s just say—and usually if we could afford it I’d have to be drinking vodka—and we’d sit there watching Wheel of Fortune unless it was Sunday but we never did it on Sunday—and now that I think about it I don’t think we ever did it before seven o’clock—because it always started with Wheel of Fortune—but we’d dress up and sit on the couch—or I’d sit on the couch and she’d sit on the floor with her head by my crotch and we’d continue to get plastered—and this girl would always solve the puzzles before me or before anyone on the show except she had trouble with this one guy who was always getting them after one or two letters and consequently not winning much dough—but we’d watch Wheel and after Wheel we’d watch Jeopardy which again she was much better at than me—and I have a huge tolerance but I’m talking about crack cocaine and straight shot after shot—she’d make herself orange and lime cocktails with paper umbrellas—so we’d be over the moon—and after Jeopardy we’d watch the prime-time lineup—usually NBC because she likes their sitcoms better—so maybe like four of those sitcoms and it’d be like ten o’clock—and if I’m still sober enough to do it and if I haven’t puked all over myself or passed out or overdosed—if all of these things are a Go—after ER or whatever drama came on at ten she’d turn around and blink her eyes and she’d put on this old pair of Captain America sunglasses and she’d go, “Nuke me, baby.” This would be around eleven.

  MODERN COLOR / MODERN LOVE

  I.

  He had a car and a job and a nice apartment and he met a girl one night when he was feeling particularly in the vibe and she was in the vibe herself and she had a car and an apartment and no job but she was looking and they hooked up and started spending all their time together and he promised to find her a job in the office where he worked but she didn’t really want to work no what she wanted was to move in with him and he was an asshole and he knew that and he didn’t like what he’d done with his life and he was going to rectify the crimes against women he had committed and there were a ton of them in thirty-two years and believe him this girl really understood his deeper parts like no one had like no one ever wanted to so when she ran out of money he gave her some and then he moved her in and when her car broke down he took care of it and all she wanted to do was sit around eating Nilla Wafers and all his buddies hated her and when they wanted to go out with him and get loaded she always said no and he was a little embarrassed but not really because look at the tail on that bitch and I can always…

  II.

  On Friday and Saturday nights Shelly and her girlfriends would cruise around in her car, through the Sea-Tac mall parking lot, across 320th, and up through the parking lot of the Old Navy. Shelly had lots of friends and they would smoke cigarettes and play their music with the windows rolled down and park and talk to guys. They would drive to Taco Bell and see who was there and talk to the people they knew or had seen around. They would do whatever drugs they could get their hands on. Getting high was important. Often, because there was never anything real ever going on in Federal Way, they would drive to Seattle and talk their way into the dance clubs, sometimes going home with older guys.

  Shelly lived with her mother in an apartment off of west 320th. Her mother ran a take-out teriyaki place eighteen hours a day and never came home until very late. Shelly’s friends would always meet at her apartment and drink and smoke weed and do whatever else anyone had. Sometimes things would get out of hand. Once a couple guys she knew had taken a girlfriend of Shelly’s into her mother’s bedroom after the girl had passed out. Shelly was sprawled out on the couch, barely awake herself, when it happened. She could hear it happening and she was angry, but she was tired. She gave the guys hell the next day and her girlfriend stopped talking to her. Shelly really didn’t mind and soon the guys were back at her house and her girlfriend was back with the rest of them and everything was like it always was.

  Shelly didn’t like her friends much but she needed them. She didn’t like the idea of being alone and without these friends of hers she was afraid she wouldn’t be anyone. Sometimes a guy would come over and they’d fuck. She liked that. She also liked getting high. Her favorite was crystal methamphetamine. When she was on crystal she thought she was stronger and smarter and better than when she was straight, and she was never tired. She liked that her apartment was the apartment where everyone always met, and she didn’t like being by herself.

  Shelly wasn’t any good at school. She only showed up when none of her friends came to her apartment. Once the principal called Shelly and her mother in to see him, but her mother was tired and didn’t speak much English, she couldn’t figure out what was going on, and on the way home Shelly explained to her mother in Korean that everyone’s parents were being invited down to meet the principal that month, that this is what they do in America, and after awhile her mother gave in and believed her. The next day, the principal told Shelly she was being transferred to the alternative school by the freeway. He grabbed her by the shoulder and said he hoped she would get her act together and quit fucking around.

  The alternative school had been called Continuation. A few months before Shelly’s name was on the roll, it was renamed Harry S Truman High. She went to Truman a few times and didn’t like it. Most of the kids there were lowlifes; niggers and white trash. It could have been useful in scoring drugs, but Shelly knew where to get whatever she wanted. She stopped going and since she was almost seventeen the State couldn’t do anything about it. She dropped out and figured she would get her GED later, when she felt like it, go to the University and get a degree in communications.

  She stayed out late most nights. When no one was around, she’d go down to the Trolley, an old beer dive across from the new Blockbuster and drink and talk to guys there and go out back and smoke crystal or opium or whatever anyone had and sometimes she’d feel like fucking, so she’d go out to their cars with them or back to their apartments. Most of these guys were lowlifes but she didn’t mind so much. Once she woke up in a dark place with a man on top of her and didn’t know where she was. She kicked the man off and pulled up her underwear and stumbled in the dark for the door. She opened the door and stepped outside. She was in a parking lot somewhere and there were trees and a field and goal posts and she didn’t know where she was, but she knew she was far away. She could see the red sky over Federal Way and s
he figured she was somewhere to the north. She got back in and told the man to take her to her car. She told him to wait around in case it wouldn’t start.

  She liked the bars better than driving around and most of her friends couldn’t get into bars and most of her friends had become boring as hell anyway. She knew they talked about her behind her back and once she had pulled a knife on a girlfriend of hers and her friends had all left and when they were driving away, one of them threw a rock through the window of her car. No one was coming by her house anymore but she liked it better that way and didn’t miss them. Coming home from the Trolley one night, she fell asleep and crossed 320th and drove through a fence and into someone’s backyard. She went to jail for the night and in the morning her mother came to pick her up. Her mother wept and said that Shelly had finally become a Real American Whore, that Shelly wasn’t her daughter anymore and that she hadn’t been for a long time. Shelly really didn’t give a shit. She was tired and she wanted a shower and her head and her stomach and her face and her fingers were killing her and it depressed her that she would have to wait until the bars opened at eleven to get a fix.

  A man at the Trolley bought her drinks one night and Shelly danced with him in front of the jukebox to some old hippie song she’d always hated and she went to his house with him and stayed there. He was a lot older than her and his house was a piece of shit, but he always had money. Sometimes they would ride around in his red Corvette. A few times, early on, they had gone down to Auburn where he knew some people with horses and they’d gone horseback riding. He didn’t like Shelly going out unless she was with him so during the week she waited for him to leave for work and then she walked down to the Trolley and stayed there all day. She would score there and walk home in the evening and clean up and have dinner waiting for him when he got back. She was a lousy cook and he always told her so. After a time, he stopped wanting to go out, so on Friday and Saturday nights they stayed in. When Shelly asked for money to have an abortion, he said she should use the money he’d been giving her to save for his birthday present, and when she told him she had spent most of that money, he said it was time she left. He put her in the car and drove her back to her mother’s apartment and she said, Please turn around, I want to go home, and she cried and told him she’d kill herself if he didn’t turn around. But when they were at her mother’s complex, he told her to get out, so she got out and waited on the steps for her mother to get off work. Shelly was tired and she could hear the cars rushing up 320th and it occurred to her that it had been nearly a year since she had seen her mother and that maybe she had moved to a different apartment across town or maybe she had quit the teriyaki stand and got a better job or changed cities or moved back home to Korea where she had always said life was better. Maybe she’s not here anymore, Shelly thought, and for a second she almost panicked. But that was stupid. She got sick of waiting so she walked five miles to the Trolley and when she got there she was so tired.