by Bethny Ebert
“Uh, no, I have no idea who that is,” Parker said. He felt the bile in his stomach threaten to rise, and he prayed it would calm down for just a minute. Vomit would not help his cause.
“She says you pushed her into one of the cafeteria tables and stole her purse,” Marcus said. He shoved Parker, who didn’t move. Maybe if he played dead. “Where’d you put her purse, huh? You want my sister’s money?” He shoved Parker again.
“Hey, hey,” a female voice said from behind them. “Back off, Marcus.”
A pair of manicured hands pulled Marcus off Parker. A girl in an old hand-me-down dress looked into Parker’s eyes, then shoved Marcus. “What the hell? You dummy, I said Bart Crabaugha, not Parker Beloit. Are you deaf? This guy wouldn’t know a purse if it bit him on the ass.” She eyed Parker. “No offense.”
“Yeah, whatever, it’s cool,” Parker said. He just wanted to get out of there.
“Sorry, man,” Marcus said. He pulled Parker from the wall, patting him on the shoulder a few times like he was trying to get the scuff marks off his suit. “Didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Parker said.
“You seen Bart?” Marcus asked.
Parker pointed someplace far away. “Yeah, I think he’s over there somewhere.”
Marcus and Lexie ran off.
“Thank you!” Lexie yelled over her shoulder.
Parker figured it was leaving time. He left school, walking by himself in his stupid pinstriped suit. His parents were probably still awake, watching the evening news while his sisters slept. His homework was done already.
He wandered over to Nick’s. The door was unlocked. It was a good thing he wasn’t a thief or an axe murderer.
Nick’s parents were getting ready for one of their study-abroad trips. Their house exploded in a state of creative disarray, with duffel bags and suitcases all over the place, clothing on the kitchen table and chairs.
No wonder Nick had OCD.
Nick sat on the living room couch in sweatpants and a green Alkaline Trio t-shirt, watching an old zombie movie. Parker sat down next to him, and he looked up.
“You’re back,” Nick said.
Parker tried to sound cool. “Yeah, prom was nuts. These evil robots showed up so I had to kill them. Then I got expelled for disturbing the peace.”
Nick laughed. “Nice.” He swung a hand over Parker’s knee, feeling the fabric of his dress pants. “Where’d you get this?”
“Bargain Bin,” Parker said. He grinned, remembering the lame radio jingle. “We sell everything cheap…”
“…but the quality’s neat,” Nick sang along with him.
“God, I hate that place,” Parker said.
“You look good, anyway,” Nick said. “For real, though, how was prom?”
“Boring.”
“You should have stayed here with me. They had a whole zombie movie marathon going. It was pretty sweet.” Nick brushed his burnt-orange hair from his eyes. He’d been growing it out lately. It was almost down to his chin. He smelled like soap.
They watched as a George Romero movie played on the television. The words were different than Parker remembered. “What’s this one?” he asked.
“Night of the Day of the Dead of the Bride…” Nick started, then stopped. “Um. Night of the Dawn of the Day of the Bride, um… Day of the Night of the Dawn of the Day of… um… god damn it,” he said, finally. “This movie is fucking impossible.”
Parker grabbed a bag of popcorn from the kitchen pantry. Mine, he thought, and kissed Nick’s shoulder. “Sounds great.”
Chapter thirty
April 2009
Austin shaved his face in the bathroom upstairs. His mother was at church. They were going to the Easter party at 1:00 PM after she came back. Hard to believe it was Easter, considering the blizzard.
The party, as usual, was at Uncle Jim’s. He and Aunt Gretchen had this big-ass house in the middle of the woods with a swimming pool. They’d buy all sorts of vegetables and show off their tempura machine. The cousins would swim and play soccer and roast marshmallow Peeps in the microwave and watch old movies on the big-screen TV. Aunt Gretchen would make cilantro salad.
Without fail, every year was the same.
But this year, he had a girlfriend to show off. This would make him a man in their eyes.
Austin didn’t like it, the idea of love being a measure of manhood. It seemed like a real test of masculinity required solitude. A man should be able to stand on his own.
But this was impossible. Life was great. He had a girlfriend, beautifully fat with his baby, stomach like a smallish soccer ball.
He wondered what it would look like – his sloppy mess of hair or Corey’s sweet smile.
He inspected his chin, noted a zit growing underneath the shaving cream foam. He liked the smell of shaving cream. It was a strong smell, masculine, like deodorant. The zit could wait. He wasn’t worried.
Again he lifted the razor to his chin.
A scream from downstairs.
He dropped the razor, ran as fast as he could down the staircase. But it was already too late. In the basement Corey lie in bed, clutching her stomach. She screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Hey,” he said quietly. He tried to touch her hair or her shoulder, something.
She slapped away his hand and screamed harder. Her face was bright red. With a shock, he realized the mattress was covered in blood.
He looked around the room, useless dumb arms like a gorilla, unfocused eyes. He felt blind. He found the phone through the noise and called the ambulance.
The red and blue police lights were too much. They didn’t need to be there. The police just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a domestic. You never could tell in this neighborhood, the policeman said. He gave them a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“My fucking baby is dead and you’re asking me if my lover hits me? Fuck you, asshole.”
Corey spat on the ground. She had bad aim, and it was windy out. The spit dribbled down her chin. She put her hands in fists, she would have punched the shit out of the first cop for talking like that, but the dispatcher led her by the arm into the ambulance.
“Stay here,” Corey commanded when Austin tried to follow them.
He stood outside the ambulance, looking at her, helpless.
“Don’t look at me.”
The world continued to move, as worlds do, but his head felt stuck. His feet were made of glue. He paged through the Bible in his head, trying to remember old words, some prayer to comfort him. Like God, the words were gone.
Nothing remains in this life, he told himself.
It would have been a beautiful baby.
The ambulance drove away, taking with it the excitement of sirens and lights, taking his girlfriend, the mother of his child, the only woman he’d ever love.
He waited outside in the cold air, watching the snow fall. It felt like permanent winter, a frozen numb feeling that settled in his bones. It started that night and never really quit. He lit a cigarette and waited for his mother to get back from church. He wanted to get to the Easter party. Aunt Gretchen always kept good German beer in the fridge, and he planned to get good and drunk.
He couldn’t handle the cold basement by himself, the blood-soaked mattress, the toys and baby shoes. Everything so hopeful. It made him want to die.
Chapter thirty-one
August 2003
Brooke got off the train in a lonely Amtrak station in New Jersey. It smelled sour, like piss. The brick walls were painted grey, with graffiti scratched in. So-and-so is a dick. What’s-her-name likes it up the ass. God hates fags. God hates homophobes. God thinks you’re ugly.
It kind of looked like a jail cell.
She found solace in the fact that other people had been to this Amtrak station. Presumably, they hadn’t all been shot or mugged, since a few of them had enough time on their hands to write graffiti.
What a trip.
She’d bought tickets, ridi
culously expensive ones. She could have hopped trains, but she didn’t know how, and the risk of falling was too great. One train in Wisconsin, another in Illinois. A ratty baseball cap and men’s button-down flannel shirt for disguise. On the train, a greasy old man with a frizzy beard and snaggle-teeth eyed her, looking hungry and wild. He reminded her of a cartoon wolf, licking its chops. You could almost see the drool. He started reading to her from his book, a dog-eared copy of Paradise Lost. Every few pages he’d pause to recite the Our Father, then sing a few verses from “Bad Moon Rising”.
Brooke wasn’t superstitious, but she knew an omen when she was being harassed by one. She got off the train somewhere in the boonies of Ohio.
That was a month ago.
Ohio was dusty, a tired place. She stayed at a women’s shelter filled with screaming, smelly babies and whiny women, abuse victims, eager to blame another person for their mistakes. It sucked. Some of the girls seemed nice, but there was too much drama. People tied their arms and shot dope right there in bed. She learned to ignore it.
Mostly, she kept to herself.
After a few days Brooke got bored with sitting in bed reading Stephen King and searching the classifieds for work. She took a walk, no destination in mind, and ended up on the rougher side of downtown.
There was a gentleman’s establishment called The Pink Pearl. Brooke imagined it was a reference to female anatomy, but perhaps they sold jewelry.
You never know.
In the spirit of adventure, she wandered inside. The Pink Pearl was pretty much as expected, shelves of DVD’s and magazines, posters of thin tan women with large breasts licking on bananas, cotton candy, cucumbers, penises.
They were looking for girls, the guy behind the counter said.
“For what?” she asked.
He looked over at her, adjusting his eyeglasses. “Well, you know, girls. Dancers.”
She studied her Vans, not really sure about it. She did need the money, or soon she’d only be able to see the tips of her Vans, if even that. She couldn’t afford the procedure on her own. And it wasn’t like anyone else was in a hurry to hire her.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
He exhaled onion-and-tuna scented breath through his mouth. “Ever done it before?”
She glared at him, jutting her chin out. “I’m a fast learner,” she said.
He laughed. “Right. Well, come in tomorrow. I’ll need an ID before we can legally send you out on the floor. How old are you?”
Old enough, she thought. “Nineteen.”
She reached into her fake crocodile-skin plastic wallet and handed him her ID card.
He squinted at it.
She wondered if her ID photo looked like a stripper’s ID photo. She could feel her stomach twisting. Maybe she was making a bad choice.
“Can you come in tomorrow?”
Her mouth felt dry. “Sure.”
“Okay,” he said. “Pick a name, not your real one, we don’t want any trouble. Bring some clothes in. We don’t supply shoes or makeup.” He tapped his fingertips on the glass counter. It displayed an extensive collection of glass dildos and ben wah balls. “You start at eleven-thirty.”
“What sort of clothes?” she asked.
“Anything,” he said. “Bras, panties. Crotchless panties. Garters.” She blinked a few times, and he smiled, looking strangely proud at his ability to shock her. “If you’re comfortable and don’t look like shit it doesn’t really matter. Most guys are happy with whatever, long as a woman’s wearing it.”
Well, that was comforting. Jeez.
“We get a lot of repeat customers,” he continued. “All you gotta do is talk to them. Be nice. Don’t let them touch you or you’re fired. I hire dancers, not whores. Got it?”
She nodded. She got it.
Her first day was rough. The first customer expected a different girl to be there, and he wasn’t happy with the new girl. “Where’s Ashley?” he kept asking. He slammed a hand up against the glass booth, making the whole thing shake. He had a lot of tattoos on his arms, veins sticking out everywhere, and his mouth was white. He licked his teeth. “Where’s Ashley?”
“I don’t know,” she said, over and over. She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, so she wouldn’t aggravate him. “I’m new.”
“You find Ashley,” he said. “Tell her we got business to discuss. Tell her I’ll be waiting.” He punched his open palm, so she understood the message.
Her breath caught in her throat. She wondered if this was how rats felt before they were gobbled up by boa constrictors. If there hadn’t been a half-inch of glass to separate them, he could have reached through and choked her to death. The expression on his face told her that was what he wanted. Maybe he had a sick sadistic fetish for scaring half-naked women to death.
After he left, she smoked cigarette after cigarette, trying to forget the scary guy. Make her mind a blank. She had to be ready for other customers. This was no time to cry about anything or lament her position. Babies cried. Grown women kept their cool.
Hopefully they weren’t all bad.
One guy, a fat old man with an underwear fetish, did nothing but talk about lingerie. His stomach was covered in curly black hair. He visited her nearly every shift. All he did was talk. She could see his fat boner straining through his khakis as he pawed at himself. Gross. She sold him a few pairs of underwear for extra cash. Only the thongs, though, and cheap shit she wouldn’t have to replace. The lacy ones she kept for herself.
Another man had problems with his wife. Their sex life. He needed to complain. His wife was the worst lover in the world, wouldn’t even give him head anymore. Brooke did her best to talk him into finding a solution. He wouldn’t listen, though. After a while he started hitting on her, convinced she was a hooker. She referred him to the sex toys and pornography department. It would help bring the spark back to him and his wife’s relationship, she said.
He didn’t come back after that.
She started painting her nails, a thing she hated before for the most part. Waste of time. Well, she had plenty of time now. She bought a pair of red stilettos and a matching set of lacy red undergarments.
It was an okay job, all things considered.
Interesting, anyway.
Could have been worse.
She didn’t tell any of the other girls at the shelter. Most of them were under the impression that she couldn’t talk. Stripping didn’t bring in a whole lot of money, but it helped to save up.
Brooke ate at soup kitchens, didn’t bother with cell phones or drugs. She didn’t mind the attention from the men, usually. A job was a job. Men were the same everywhere.
She kept a notebook with her to pass the time and write anecdotes about some of the customers, draw pictures of some of the really ugly ones. Maybe she could join another punk band and put all these experiences into her songwriting later, when things got better.
Some of the other girls made extra by whoring themselves out. Brooke thought about it, but she couldn’t go through with it. Suppose a guy was an undercover policeman. Then she’d end up in jail. She didn’t have enough cash to bail herself out.
She made up lies when they asked about her personal life. Did she have a husband? Any kids? Did she fuck women? Sometimes her husband was an Army man, sometimes a firefighter. Once she married her former basketball coach. She invented an affair with a college professor. He was a Mormon, she said, with huge testicles. His other wife was a large-breasted bisexual porn star. She had great luck in the marital department these days. No, she had no kids. Pervert. And yes, of course she liked women. Pussy was the best. She had a bevy of fictional lesbian lovers – black girls, Chinese, blondes. She told stories of frat party infiltration in butch drag, and the rowdy gay college boys she met there, all the gay orgies she got into. The customers loved it. She left Ohio with almost a thousand dollars.
She claimed it as a moral victory against the patriarchy. If those disgusting men were too stupid and sex-
crazed to hang onto their money, they deserved to lose every penny.
She bought her train ticket to New Jersey and never looked back.
Chapter thirty-two
October 2010
“My dearest baby brother:
I am typing this letter ((on a typewriter. Badass, right?) To announce that that not only will I be visiting, you rememberour phone call buut so will another person. our Graandma Roche, right She wants to say Hi. One moment, she’s takiing g ttthe typewrihelloooo Nicholas, o boyy!1 we’re gonna get ya! Look out! Aahahahaaa Oh my god, ignore her, we’rre not coming to ‘get’ anybody. Crazy oldd woman
but we’ll see you soon, bro. Peace. – B”
Chapter thirty-three
October 2010
“How ‘bout that,” Austin said, chewing on a pickle and looking over Nick’s shoulder. He looked kind of dopey. Smelled like pickles and Jack Daniel’s.
Nick closed his eyes, breathing through his nose, deep inhalations like he learned in dialectical behavioral therapy.
God damn Brooke. He didn’t want to see her. Not after so much time had passed. She was the most inconsiderate sister ever invented.
He stomped upstairs to his room, where Parker sat cross-legged on his bed paging through a worn copy of Anna Karenina.
“Parker,” he said.
“Nick,” Parker said.
“We gotta go.”
Parker looked at him for a moment, then returned his gaze to his book. “Where? Why?”
“Pack a duffel bag,” Nick said, “and don’t ask any questions until I figure this out. Bring your birth certificate.” He knew he sounded bossy, but he didn’t care.
“What do I need my birth certificate for?”
“Because,” Nick said. “We’re eloping. And then we’re going to Hawaii.”
“You don’t have enough money to go to Hawaii.”
“We’ll hitchhike,” Nick said, trying to make him laugh. His heart beat hard and fast, like thick shoes pounding the floor of a very cramped apartment. He paused to catch his breath. “I, um, Milwaukee,” he decided. “We’ll elope and our honeymoon will be in Milwaukee.”
