Writing on the Wall

by Christopher Cleary

  “Do you mail the bills or can I just pay at the office?” Megan spoke into the receiver. “You know, I like to cut back on the use of paper products. Save the trees and all.” She shrugged her shoulders and smiled at Donnie. “K. That’s all I need right now.” Donnie waved at her. “Wait a second…”

  Donnie whispered, “How long will the special run?” Megan liked that he was finally taking an active role in their secret project and gave him a thumbs up.

  “How long will the special run, sir...K. Well, then…, oh wait!” She thought of something else. “One more question – how old do you have to be?... K. Thanks! Bye!”

  Donnie waited silently as she scribbled down a few notes. “Good thing you called,” he said. “I’m a lousy note taker.”

  “What are you talking about? Your notebook is filled with notes.”

  Donnie changed the subject, “I can’t believe you just called Parkside Storage.”

  “I can’t believe that you only have pencils in that backpack.”

  Donnie lamely defended his writing utensils, “They’re mechanical pencils.”

  “Nerd,” she said, finishing up her notes. “Pens are where it’s at. Preferably purple.”

  “Like I’m going to use a purple pen.”

  “Pink?” Megan offered with a smirk.

  “How do you erase your mistakes?”

  “I don’t make any.”

  Donnie reached across the table and turned the sheet of notes so he could read it. “You misspelled ‘storage’,” he informed her.

  “Oops.” Megan turned the paper back around. Instead of using the eraser, she scratched it out and rewrote it.

  Donnie observed, “That’s how you do it.”

  “Yeah, Donnie,” she imitated his post-pubescent deepened voice, “That’s how I do it.”

  It was endearing to see her pretend that she was him. Grinning at her, he said, “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  “No, you shut up.”

  “Do you want to know what he said or what?” Megan asked.

  “No.” It was a lie and she knew it. Of course he wanted to know.

  She tapped the pencil on the table a few times and said, “K. You want something to drink?”

  “All right. I want to know. What did he say?”

  “I’ll tell you after the pizza gets here.”

  Donnie folded his arms across his chest. Megan smiled and went inside to get a couple of sodas.

  As they shared the pizza, Megan said, “We’re going to need to get jobs.”

  “How much is a unit?”

  “One-hundred and nineteen dollars after the first month.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “No.” The excitement Megan had originally exhibited had disappeared from her tone, but internally she was still buzzing from the idea. “I’ll apply at that ice cream shop restaurant place. What’s it called?”

  “Friendly’s?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. They had a ‘Servers Wanted’ sign in the window.” She wiped her mouth with a linen napkin and said, “Now what about you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “K, but you promise to think about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No freeloading.” She wagged her finger at him. “You have to pay for your half.”

  “All right, Megan. I’ll get a job.” He took another slice from the box. “What did he say when you asked how old you had to be?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Donnie dramatically dropped the slice of pizza on his plate. “Well, there’s no hurry for me to get a job then. It’s going to be two years until we can rent it.”

  She smiled, biting one side of her lower lip as she did. “You find a job and leave that to me.”

  THREE

  Donnie Betts walked Megan Priddy to her first day of work at Friendly’s.

  She didn’t have any difficulties landing the job. She was cute, smart, and willing to work for minimum wage. Her interview lasted only ten minutes. All she had to do was flash her fake smile, which everyone fell for, and utter a few intelligent and mature thoughts. She had never been on an interview before, but she didn’t consider the questions difficult.

  When the manager asked, “What’s your work ethic?” the answer was obvious.

  “I’m committed to performing tasks in a timely and efficient manner, ma’am.”

  “Have you ever worked a cash register?”

  Megan substituted her every day “fun girl” voice for one that was as adult as she could make it. She also tried to use as many words with more than one syllable as she could conjure. “I haven’t had the opportunity to acquire that skill as of yet, but I am an A student and excel in mathematics.”

  “Have you ever taken down a customer’s order?”

  “This would be my first server position; therefore, I do not have experience with taking orders. I do, however, have an excellent memory and take plenty of notes at school. I would be dedicated to maintaining Friendly’s high standards, and customer satisfaction would be a top priority.”

  The manager didn’t let Megan leave until she agreed to start work on Saturday.

  “Here we are,” Donnie announced as if Megan didn’t realize they were standing in front of the small restaurant and ice cream shop. “You nervous?”

  “Hell yeah, I am! It’s my first real job!”

  She seemed to be playing it so cool that her volatile reaction was startling. “All right. Take it easy. Relax,” Donnie prompted her.

  “‘All right. Take it easy. Relax.’ That’s all you’ve got? You ask me a question like that and when I freak, that’s what you say? ‘Relax?’ That’s all you’ve got?”

  Donnie held up a hand. “Whoa. You’re still freaking out and it’s starting to freak me out.”

  Megan’s words shot out like the sharp strikes of a typewriter, “Why are you freaking out?”

  “You’re usually the one who has it together, so when you freak out,” the pitch of his voice raised, “I get freaked.”

  “You can’t right now, Donnie. You need to be the rock. You need to be the one to say something good.”

  “OK.” Donnie licked his lips and thought for a moment. “You’re the smartest girl I know and renting one of those storage units was a really cool idea. Anyone who can come up with something like that can work at Friendly’s blindfolded and wearing earmuffs.”

  Megan took a breath. “I guess that’ll have to do.”

  He added, “Plus, you look really good in that uniform.”

  “I do?” Megan thought that neither the plain black pants nor the short-sleeved shirt with thick alternating red and white stripes complemented her figure.

  Donnie’s broad smile betrayed his sincerity and revealed his jest.

  “You jerk,” she said and slapped him on the arm. “Go find a job.”

  Donnie’s smile vanished. His face turned somber.

  Megan tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “What is it?” she asked, attempting to ascertain why he suddenly looked offended.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Say what?”

  It pained Donnie to speak the words, “‘Go find a job.’”

  “But you need to.”

  He was visibly irritated and upset. “I know, Megan.”

  “I wasn’t…. I didn’t mean it mean. I just meant…”

  “I know.” His eyes looked everywhere except at Megan. This bothered her. She felt disconnected from him. Even worse, Donnie appeared disconnected from the world. “Just, if you gotta say it, say, ‘seek employment’ or ‘look for work.’ Just not those exact words.”

  “K.” Megan quickly agreed. She didn’t like seeing Donnie so distraught. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

  He had brought his bicycle along on the walk so he could ride it after Megan went to work. Staring at the seat of the bike, he told her, “You’ve got to go to work. Some other time, huh?”

  “Yeah… All right.”<
br />
  Donnie threw a leg over the bike and took off down the street. He wasn’t exceptionally strong, but his lanky body was well-proportioned for bike riding.

  He only knew one speed – fast. This helped him clear his mind but prevented him from seeing all of the storefronts. He slowed down enough to start considering some of them as a place where he might find employment.

  Without going inside any of the stores, he concluded that there wasn’t a good place to work on Memory Lane. The jobs were either unappealing, or if the shop or restaurant was hip, he assumed you had to be a special breed of person to work there.

  Starting a new job was also intimidating. A job meant responsibility and responsibility translated into opportunities for failure or making a fool of himself or both.

  Tugging at him from the other direction was Megan. He didn’t want to let her down. She couldn’t wait to find a job and had applied at Friendly’s the following day. He wanted to duplicate that excitement of hers and the surest way to achieve it was to get a job and help pay for his part of the storage unit.

  Donnie turned down a side street that he normally didn’t ride on with the hope of locating a new business that was hiring.

  In a short amount of time and distance, the side street became vacated of pedestrians and cars. The road spilled into the woods, splitting them like the part in a person’s hair. He had never biked on that road before, but he figured it to be an obsolete route to the next town. That town would be too far to bike several days a week for work, but he was enjoying the journey and had no immediate desire to turn back.

  The noon-time heat of the Indian summer, combined with his exhaustion, made Donnie thirsty.

  There was a clearing that extended several hundred yards on the left side of the road. At the end of it, nearest the street, was a gravel parking lot. In it sat five cars and a brown rectangular shack with a black saltbox roof. Against its side, shining like the solitary jewel of a tarnished crown, was a soda machine.

  The artificial breeze created by his bike cutting through the air was Donnie’s only relief from the heat. When he came to a halt in the gravel parking lot, the day’s humidity immediately caught up with him. Perspiration covered his face and his shirt began to stick to his body.

  There was the sound of golf clubs smacking golf balls, but he knew that it wasn’t a golf course. He purchased his soda and walked around the shack. A bunch of guys were lined up in a row and hitting golf balls into the open field. It was a driving range, where golfers practiced their swing.

  Donnie, trying to cool down before resuming his search for employment, sipped his soda and took in the scene.

  “Come here!” the man from inside the shack called to Donnie. His natural voice sounded like it was being projected from a drive-thru speaker.

  Using the hand that was holding the can of soda, Donnie extended his index finger and held it against his chest.

  “Yeah, you,” the man said, slightly annoyed that he had to specify even though no one else was standing around the kid.

  Donnie walked up to the long rectangular window of the shack. He spotted a half-eaten box of doughnuts next to the man who wore a baseball cap that looked like it had been buried by a dog. Hair stuck out of every part of his body that was exposed. It grew on his face, fled from his nose, and extended from underneath his hat. Hair poked out of two or three quarter-sized holes of his brown T-shirt like weeds growing through a crack in the driveway. Where his short sleeves stopped, a layer of hair covered his arms all the way down to the middle of his fingers.

  “How old are you?” he demanded.

  “Sixteen.”

  “You here to hit golf balls?”

  “No. I stopped for a soda.” He held up the can as proof.

  A neatly dressed golfer asked for another bucket of golf balls. The hairy man in the shack charged him five dollars and told the buyer to help himself to any of the buckets on the counter.

  “You’re tall for sixteen,” he said once his attention returned to Donnie.

  Donnie considered the meatball-shaped man to be short for whatever age he was, but when he asked, “You need a job?” Donnie thought of him as some type of fallen leprechaun angel serving penance at a driving range.

  Donnie scratched his cheek and inquired, “Doing what?”

  “‘Doing what?’” the man said, making sure that he heard the words right. “‘Doing what?’” he repeated in disgust. “What’s your name?”

  “Donnie Betts.”

  “Donnie, they call me Dirt. Turn around.” Donnie was hesitant to do so. The man leaned forward on the counter. The sharp pitch of his voice crackled, “Ain’t nothin’ goin’ happen to ya. Turn around.”

  Donnie did as he was told.

  “You see all them golf balls out there?” Dirt asked. Donnie nodded. “I need you to pick them balls up.” Donnie continued to stare upon the open field well after Dirt finished speaking. “Turn back around!” Once Donnie was facing him again, he continued, “There’s a lot of them, huh?” Donnie nodded again. “I’ll give you two cents a ball for every one you pick up. No. Wait.” He reconsidered. “I don’t want to count all them damn balls. I’ve pay you four-fifty an hour, under the table.” Donnie’s face crinkled in confusion. “You don’t know what ‘under the table’ means?”

  “No.” It was the first word Donnie uttered since he had told Dirt his name.

  “Means the government gets none of it. I’m paying you less than the minimum wage,” his voice lowered and sounded somewhat menacing, “which we won’t tell nobody about, right?”

  Donnie didn’t understand exactly why, but he knew that he better respond in the affirmative. “Right.”

  “But even so, you’ll still make more than you would after the government taxes the shit out of it. We both win. Comprendé?”

  “I get it.”

  “Step around the side here.” Dirt disappeared out of sight.

  Donnie walked around to the side of the brown shack. Dirt opened the door and lowered a baseball helmet on Donnie’s head. It was so large and loose that it rattled any time Donnie moved. Dirt threw an empty newspaper bag over Donnie’s shoulder and handed him a stick with a scoop and small basket on one end.

  “Careful,” Dirt cautioned. “Them balls sting if you get hit.”

  FOUR

  It did not take Megan long to find her groove at Friendly’s. Since she was one of the younger employees, the manager usually scheduled her to work the ice cream window. Once winter swept in, sales from the outside window slowed. This provided Megan with more opportunities to work as a server inside the restaurant. The servers at Friendly’s did not make the largest tips, but it was a decent sum for a fifteen year old.

  Donnie’s job required much less brainwork. He simply had to fill the newspaper bag with golf balls and return them to the shack, a process that he repeated numerous times during a shift.

  There was a lot of open space where the golf balls might fly, so the probability of being hit was low. He also avoided working during the busiest times to lessen that chance even more. In the six weeks that he worked there, it only happened once. And Dirt was right; it did sting.

  A man hollered “Fore!” Without thinking, Donnie turned to look. That wasn’t the smartest move because he was exposing his face. He saw the hard white ball headed straight for his noggin. He backpedaled away from the tee boxes, but it was hard to move quickly carrying a full bag. The golf ball nailed his foot on the fly. The foot bruised and he limped for a week, but it healed with time and no permanent damage was done.

  Whereas Megan received a paycheck every two weeks, Donnie was paid in cash at the end of every shift. Before they started spending their earnings on frivolities, they needed to save enough money for the first three months’ rent by late December. This was crucial for their plan to work. They did agree, however, that a new helmet that properly fit over Donnie’s wavy black hair was a necessity worth spending money on.

  Megan’s sister, Kara, came ho
me from college one week before Christmas. It was her first year away at school and Megan’s mother had missed her a great deal. Megan missed her too but for selfish reasons. Without her big sister around, Megan’s mother’s doting was no longer spread between the two of them. Megan caught the full force of it. She loved her mom and she enjoyed the attention, but sometimes it got to be too much. Megan was also happy to see her big sister because Kara, unbeknownst to her, was a vital component in renting the storage unit.

  The day after Christmas, Kara slept in just as she had done every day since she had returned home. Megan liked to sleep in, too, but on the twenty-sixth of December, she had to wake up early. On most days when her alarmed buzzed, she was reluctant to get out of bed. On the day following Christmas, she had no trouble springing out of it. Megan dressed in blue jeans and a pretty, new sweater that she had just unwrapped the day before.

  Without windows on the east wall of the room, very little sunlight slipped through the closed shades of Kara’s bedroom. Megan waited in the doorway to confirm the rhythmic breathing of her slumbering sister. Careful to test the floor for potential squeaks before putting the full weight of her body down with each step, Megan quietly moved toward the dresser on which Kara’s purse rested.

  Megan had thought about asking her older sister if she could borrow her license for an hour, but Kara would want to know why. Megan didn’t want her to know because Kara could someday use it against her as blackmail. Megan also couldn’t tell her because she had made a promise with Donnie not to tell anyone. So, she had to “borrow” it without Kara knowing that she was “lending” it.

  When reaching inside Kara’s purse for her wallet, Megan’s fingers came across a couple of unfamiliar items. Megan seldom carried a purse and curiosity made her pull them out. The darkness of the room prevented her from fully figuring out what they were, but she had a few ideas. They were items that Kara shouldn’t have or, at least, things that their parents would not approve of being in her purse.