There sure is.
It’s not like when we were kids, the woman said. We had pressures, but it wasn’t like today.
It’s a different world.
How old is your son? the woman asked.
Fifteen, Sammie said.
Does he keep active?
Sammie thought about it. He’s pretty active, she said.
Into sports?
Yes. And your son?
My son, the woman said. He was on the swim team at school. He’s been swimming since he was five. He wanted to be an Olympian. He quit awhile ago. Without telling us. He just quit.
Well, maybe swimming isn’t his thing, Sammie said.
He’s an excellent swimmer. He could have got a scholarship. Maybe gone to the Olympics.
Well, it might not be too late. Maybe he’ll want to get back into it later.
We hope so. He put on a lot of weight. I think he didn’t like people seeing him in his Speedo. Plus, I just don’t know about these friends of his.
Now about these pills…
Oh, I’m sorry. Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t anything.
So you don’t know what they are? They say W-E-L.
A pharmacist would be able to tell you better than me. Just don’t panic about it. There’s probably a simple explanation.
Yes.
There’s no manual for being a mother. It’d be nice if there were.
It’d be nice.
You just learn as you go along, don’t you?
Yes.
Look, the woman said. I know it’s none of my business, but it’s important you don’t jump to any conclusions. You could end up pushing him away.
Yes. I know.
Our relationships are fragile.
Yes.
Then you’ll wish you could take it all back.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Yes, I hope so.
And good luck with your son, Sammie said.
They grow up fast, don’t they?
They sure do.
They grow up fast and leave us behind. Sometimes it’s like they don’t like us anymore.
Yes, Sammie said. I know.
You just hope they turn out all right.
You hope.
You only want what’s best for them.
You do the best you can.
You can’t do more than that, the woman said, can you?
THEY ALL WAIT FOR YOU (SO LONG,
PART I):
Dying didn’t really matter to Dan. It was just another one of life’s great kicks in the nuts. He didn’t give a shit about it one way or the other. What he hated was sentimentality; he hated the TV shows where the man lies in his bed and his sons and his wife come in and they all forgive each other, and cry, and the man dies, but he dies with peace. Those shows could suck Dan’s dick. There was no point in turning—just because a guy was on his way out.
There was cancer in him and he had waited too long. Now he was going to die. He felt fine—he was in OK shape—he didn’t feel that bad now and it really didn’t matter. One thing was for sure; he wasn’t going to let himself get run down—he was not going to go like that. He would take himself out when he needed to. He would not waste away. Life wasn’t that important. He’d been in ‘Nam for Christsake. He’d learned a thing or two about life. When he went in they called him Baby-san, and when he came out, twenty-three months later, they called him Papa-san. He knew something about death. He knew it could be long and ugly and painful and specific, or it could be short.
After the diagnosis, he went down to the Trolley. The doctor had tried to put his hand on Dan’s shoulder, to comfort him. I really don’t give a shit, doc. Really, it’s no sweat. I really don’t give a shit. Just leave me alone please. Then he had gotten lost walking through the hospital, forgetting which door he had come in. He could not remember the door. He found himself in the cafeteria and decided to sit down and eat. He was feeling tired and weak. He sat for a long time, without rising to get food. When someone sat down at his table, he got up and tried to find his way out again.
No one was at the Trolley but the bartender and a fat woman on the solitaire machine. Dan had been coming to the Trolley for years and he rarely talked to anyone. Hardly a soul. The bartender’s name was Charlie and Charlie knew Dan’s name, or once had, but neither had ever really called the other by name. Dan spurned company at the bar and everyone knew it. He didn’t want to know everyone’s business. He didn’t want everyone knowing his. It was none of their goddamn business. The last thing he needed
Where was he going to go after the Trolley? Where he was going to go, he had no idea. He stayed on his stool and kept drinking while the bar filled up; people came and sat on each side of him, drank and talked. Dan kept his head low, his shoulders high and squared, he drank, looked up at the TV. He hated TV. But look at those young girls and their young bodies… Jesus Christ. There were some things he would miss.
Probably should give the ex a call. Probably should talk to his son. Dan wondered where his son was now. What was he doing? Out of school, into a job. Married, maybe. Kids? Grand-kids? What’s next? Death? Dan wasn’t going to work anymore. He was going to stay in bed and read history books. He would read history books and watch baseball during the days and come down to the Trolley in the afternoons and drink. He had enough money saved up to live like this for awhile. Enough to last six months, anyway.
It was no big deal but it was just so goddamn confusing. He just didn’t get it. He’d always kept in pretty good shape. He didn’t do drugs. He didn’t smoke. Occasionally he’d get loaded, but who didn’t? He had escaped the war without major injury. He had not gone down the path so many weaker men had gone down upon returning. He had lived through a car accident that should have killed him. He slept eight hours a night. His mother was still alive at eighty. Dan wasn’t even sixty. He should call his mother. She was the one he should call first. She’d cry for him. He could see her dropping the phone and sobbing into her hands. She would be hysterical with grief. Well… It doesn’t matter much now anyway.
Yes, when the time came he would do it himself. No use dragging things along. Getting sloppy, lying around a hospital ward, puking all over yourself, waiting for your lungs or your heart or your brain to give up on you. No use lying around in pain, staring up at the fucking TV, unable to walk or talk or piss or shit by yourself. He’d seen it happen to his old man. His old man had gone like that. His old man, he had gone that way.
But goddamn, wasn’t this a piece of bad luck. You just never saw it coming, did you? You just never knew it was coming for you.
Someone would have to take care of his dog. He didn’t want them sending that dog to the pound after he was gone. He’d have to make arrangements. It was a good dog and he loved it. He loved it and he would miss it. Maybe he wouldn’t have the chance to miss it. He hoped he could miss it. He’d rather not—He’d rather not just close his eyes and that’s it. He hoped there would be something more. An afterlife. Supposed to go somewhere. Someone to welcome us. Goddamnit, where the fuck was his refill? Can’t you see I’m empty?
After the bartender filled his glass, Dan threw another dollar on the counter and went into the bathroom to piss. He pulled his dick out and shot into the trough.
It was going to hurt. There was going to be a lot of pain. He’d been in enough pain during his life and he knew that what was coming would be much worse, much more insistent. He didn’t want to live the rest of his life in pain and he didn’t want to live like a junky. He’d like to get laid again. He’d like to go back to Vietnam. He’d like to see his wife and his son and his mother.
Some punk was sitting in his seat when Dan came back from the bathroom. Whaddya mean you didn’t know someone was sitting here? What the hell is that fucking beer doing there, Einstein? Don’t tell me to chill out, you little pissant! Don’t you talk to me like that! And then the bartender came over to settle things down. I’ve been coming here for fifteen years, Charlie
! I don’t want some punk kid talking to me like that! I was coming here when there were woods across the street! You wanna tell this little punk to—
I hear you, the bartender said. Relax. Your next one’s on me.
Jesus Christ, there were some things he wouldn’t miss!
Where was
And where is
Fuck it. Fuck God. Fuck Jesus. Fuck Allah. Fuck Mohammed. Fuck Buddha. Fuck it. Fuck all of them.
They’d never been around when he had needed them. There wasn’t any use hoping now. Maybe he would say a prayer right at the end and settle things. But that could wait. Maybe he wouldn’t say a prayer, after all. Fuck it, they were never around. Who cares?*
So what did he have? Man, I have nothing. He wanted to go home and see his dog, but he didn’t want to get off the barstool quite yet. He wouldn’t call the shop and tell them anything. He just wouldn’t show up anymore. He’d let them wonder—he wouldn’t answer the phone and then after awhile they’d get the message—send someone around to his house—he’d tell them, I quit, I’m tired—they’d move someone up to foreman—maybe Keith—they’d probably give Keith the job—Keith would make a good foreman. Maybe after awhile he’d call Keith and wish him good luck.
Dan drank a few more, watching the TV shows—those motherfuckers wouldn’t know drama if it bit them on the ass—and then he got up off his stool and nodded goodbye to the bartender. The bartender nodded back and said, See you tomorrow, and Dan nodded his head again. He put his jacket on and headed towards the door. Then he thought about it and—Wait—turned around, slid his jacket off his back. Maybe I’ll have another one. Give me one more. No point in
* I.e., maybe there is no Savior and no one is coming and no one will ever come.
INTRODUCING…
You didn’t know what to say to something like that. But I wasn’t surprised. I’d known him since we were kids. I just moved on to the next thing. He was living then in Sea-Tac and wanted to get together sometime—he wanted to start a band—and when it was his stop, he rang the bell and stood up. He gave me his number at what I assumed was his sugardaddy’s house and I told him I’d give him a call which I never did. We’d used to do a lot of drugs together and now I had different people I did drugs with. So I didn’t call him. But I did always wonder what happened to him.
Well, I’m cleaned up now and much better, and I’ve got a little girl. It’s true that you start thinking about the world a whole lot differently when you have a kid—I mean, the world seems a lot more dangerous now that she’s in it, when back then it was all kicks. The world didn’t seem so diseased, so sick. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly wrong with it, and with the way we were living, but now that she’s here, I look back and think about some things and it really gets me down sometimes. It’s hard to explain.
But I was walking into the mall the other day and somebody yells at me out the passenger window of a truck, and I stop and the truck stops, and Brent gets out. I hadn’t seen him since that time years before on the bus. He looked a lot better—he was bigger, he looked like he used to look, the way I remembered him from growing up—a little older, maybe—a little fatter—he still—he would always get these little white bubbles around the corners of his mouth when he talked—I’d always assumed they were from using—he still had those and he wore a pair of dark sunglasses. I asked him how he was doing and he said he thought people were following him all the time. He said he thought he was famous and everyone he saw, he thought he should recognize them, and he should recognize them because they recognized him and that was because he was famous. He told me this very matter-of-factly—he wasn’t freaking out or anything, just making observations. But he said that, although he knew in reality it wasn’t true, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a conspiracy going on, that everyone he saw was looking at him, that he had become famous, but for what he didn’t know.
Sometimes, he said, I could just about kill somebody.
There were certain things that I still felt bad about, ways in which I had dealt with him poorly in the past—things I should have done differently, treated him better and so on—I wanted to know what else was going on with him, how he was doing, and he told me he was living with his dad, that he was off everything—no speed, no downers, no acid, not even weed anymore. He’d been on Zoloft but he wasn’t taking it anymore because it gave him a headache. He said his head was much clearer now anyway but he was tired of thinking that he should recognize everyone, tired of thinking he was famous, tired of wondering why he was famous, tired of thinking about how tiring it is being famous, because he knew—and he stressed this part—that he was not famous in the least. He was working graveyard shift at the Circle K and he’d just gotten off and he liked the job because it was quiet and he could think better late at night and in the early morning because everything wasn’t so chaotic then and there weren’t so many people around, and this town is too full these days, he said, there are too many people, too many stoplights, too many banks, clothes and grocery stores, too many fast-food restaurants and bargain warehouses, too many people he doesn’t know, more people than he has the capacity to know, who don’t know him and don’t have the capacity to know him, too many traffic jams these days, and there are Circle Ks all over the place and it’s very easy to get transferred to a different one and, someday, move to a different town, out of Federal Way, which is what he wanted to do. I said, Didn’t Circle K merge with British Petroleum? because I wanted to show him that I was interested in his life and he said he didn’t know, BUT THERE ARE EIGHTY-THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED FIFTY OF US AND WE’RE NOT EVEN ON THE MAP.
His dad was waiting in the truck, so he had to go—I don’t really know what else we talked about—something else—I remember he mentioned he had run into an old friend of ours recently and that the old friend had told Brent that he and I hung out once in awhile. I hadn’t seen that guy in a long time, either. I’d wondered about him also, and I couldn’t figure out when I had hung out with him last. In fact, I knew I hadn’t seen him in years. When did you run into him? I said, and Brent thought about it and said, About two years ago. Then he gave me his number and said we should get together. It had been nice to see him—it put a lot of questions to rest, but I didn’t really want to see him again. I told him I’d call him. I said it was good to see him again and I hit him on the shoulder.
ONE MORE
The dead man took a deep breath and walked inside—OK—and—Get it together—to the back. He handed the phony prescription to the girl behind the counter and she looked at him, said just a moment, then went into the back room. He tried to keep cool. Turned and looked at other customers, smiled, looked up at a security camera, smiled nervously. He shifted his weight as if to ease a pain. He tried—bit down on his lip—to think—he took a quick wet breath through his nose—tried to control his breathing—tried to think of and focus on—to breathe right—something that would steady him.
The pharmacist cleared her throat and dialed 911. She had remembered his face. Nicely dressed. He was black but that didn’t matter; what mattered was that he was back. She hoped he wouldn’t get scared and leave. The woman on the line told her to stall him until the police arrived. If he wants to leave, don’t attempt to keep him there, but stall him if you can. She said they’d be there soon.
The pharmacist took a moment to steady herself. Looked in the mirror. Her heart was beating fast. Fixed her hair. OK, Relax. She took a drink of water from the cooler, wiped her lips, a deep breath, and walked back out. She told the man it would be another moment, someone was filling his prescription in the back. She made small talk so that he wouldn’t leave.
What did they talk about? Later, when people would ask, and later, while she was alone, she wouldn’t be able to recall.
That they talked about the elections, and of the consequences of the current drought. They talked about the weather, and the cold, and about how dark it was so early now. He’d been on the boats up into Alaska, an
d he’d seen the weeks and the months when the sun wouldn’t rise at all. It stayed hidden just below the horizon for so long, and of course there were the Northern Lights, and
as he shook, as he shook and drew quick breaths, and as his eyes watered and he cleared his throat and cracked his joints, as he told her about the waves of light,
at that moment, though she wouldn’t remember it, the pharmacist was remembering a painting that had been hanging in her family’s garage when she was a child, a painting of a yellow sun rising into a vivid orange sky. She had loved that painting and now she wondered where it had come from. Who had painted it, and where had it gone? Had her father taken it with him when he left? Had her mother, perhaps seeing something in it that she hadn’t, thrown it away?
The pharmacist nodded and stepped back and looked to the floor. Let’s go. The cops took the man out, past the makeup aisle and checkout lanes and people standing in lines; they led him out, one on each side. Sat him in the back of the squad car. Now sit tight.
No need for handcuffs, no need to pat him down.
He was old and tired and well-dressed.
They went back inside and interviewed the pharmacist. They asked her questions and took notes. This sort of thing happened all the time and they weren’t in any hurry to take the man in. One of the cops wanted to take the pharmacist home and make her. She was sexy as hell. The other was remembering something significant that had happened to him as a child, something that had only recently resurfaced during therapy, something he hoped no one else in the world would ever know. None of it was your fault she said. She said none of it had anything to do with you.
The pharmacist answered all their questions with the utmost gravity. But inside she was very excited, slightly tremulous; she looked forward to telling her roommate all about it when she got home. Her heart beating fast, she opened a bottle of spring water and took a sip, could see through the window, the red blue lights raced around the telephone pole across the street. Shadows seemed to cross themselves, then back again. Nothing like this had ever happened before. And she had handled herself well.
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