by Carey Lewis
She raced across the parking lot and waited for the sliding glass doors to open. She rushed in to see Martha, a retired woman who took the job as something to fill her mornings. She told Alexis Manager Mike was looking for her.
“He sent you here to tell me that?” Alexis asked, feeling her world deflate.
“No dear, I’m the Greeter today.” She smiled.
So Alexis lowered her head and forced her feet to walk down the aisles of promised lowest priced items and turned back time items that were on sale because they couldn’t give them away. Jesus that commercial. Bunch of models wearing All-Save smocks, dancing like assholes hitting price tags to make them drop to a lower number while Cher sang about turning back time. Bunch of assholes wearing shit eating grins with lasers going off behind them.
She heard the tsks and laughs from her coworkers as she made her way to the back. They weren’t laughing at her, but the situation. No one took this job seriously, except Manager Mike. The whole thing was absurd.
“Do you take this place seriously Alexis?” Manager Mike asked. Alexis was now in his office, staring at the pimple-faced eighteen year old seated behind the desk, feet up on it, leaned back in the chair, peeling an orange. “Or your job? Do you take your job seriously?”
“I know I’m late.”
“And yet you were.”
That didn’t make sense to her. Instead of screaming at this kid that took his minuscule power way too far, she looked away. The walls were covered with smiling All-Save employees with slogans about team work, working hard, everyone makes this shit a success and so on.
“It won’t happen again.”
Manager Mike took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Alexis, I believe in you. I think you could amount to great things in the All-Save family,” he said. She had twelve years on this kid who was telling her that one day she could amount to something. “But I have to see the desire in you.”
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
“You think I got where I am by being late? We’re a team here. A family. We can’t have one person on the rope not pulling. It brings everyone into the mud.”
“The rope?”
“Tug of war Alexis. It’s a metaphor. We all get dirty when someone doesn’t pull their weight.”
She wanted to ram her head into the wall.
“I’m going to let you off with a warning Alexis, but you’re on washrooms today.”
“It’s not my day.”
“I can’t let this slide. Them, out there, they can’t see this slide. You’re on washrooms today. And don’t prove me wrong Alexis. I believe in you.”
What Manager Mike did after that, he waited there, staring at her. She knew what he wanted from her and she wasn’t sure if she could do it.
“Thank you,” she eventually said, then left the office.
GORDON SAT THERE FOR a few minutes after Alexis left, picking the eggs off his clothes and the table until he decided he was wasn’t hungry anymore. He brought his bourbon and coffee with him as he went upstairs to the attic to collect his manuscript. He was upset, sure, but he wouldn’t let it bring him down.
He brought the manuscript downstairs, went into the dusty living room and set it down on the coffee table at the back of the room. The furniture was mismatched, the decor being whatever was on sale at a thrift store. Aside from the couch, there were three other chairs in the room, one blue, one green, one violet, all angled toward the twenty-seven inch TV. Not that they needed this many places to sit, they never had company.
Gordon took his time arranging the pages, making sure none were sticking out, the entire book flat and presentable on the table. He stared at the title page again, feeling a sense of pride. He wrote a book. Alexis never wrote no book.
Then he went over to the chair Alexis always sat on and for the first time, noticed the picture frame placed down on the small end table. He lifted it up and set it upright - a picture of him and Alexis on their wedding day. Shit, what was that, ten, twelve years ago?
He picked up the phone beside the picture and dialed a number. He was greeted with “The fuck?” from the other end of the line.
“You up?” Gordon asked.
“No.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Gordon?”
“Yeah?”
“No.”
Gordon hung up. He went back to the attic, collected his bottle of Wild Turkey and grabbed a bottle of vodka from his desk before leaving the house.
Then he came back in, went through the living room, into the kitchen, up the stairs, back up into the office and grabbed his smokes from the desk. Then he left the house again.
He walked down the tree-lined street, taking a few pulls from the Wild Turkey, approaching a house that had blankets up in place of curtains and grass two feet long. Siding was falling off the ailing house and was covered in a mix of dried and fresh eggs that were thrown at it. Gordon knocked on the screen door hanging by a single hinge.
After his third round of knocking, it opened.
“The fuck?” the man said, squinting at Gordon through the screen. He wore boxers and a bathrobe, his hair unruly on top of his head as well as his bushy beard. White socks pulled up to his calves completed the wardrobe.
“You got egg on your house,” Gordon said.
Hayden pushed his cheek against the screen, looking to the side, unable to see the eggs on the outside of his house. “Teenage delinquents again,” he said.
“I finished it,” Gordon said.
“What have you completed Gordon?”
“My book.”
Hayden backed away from the door, disappearing into the room. Gordon followed him in, unable to stop smiling, finally able to tell someone what he had done.
He watched Hayden walk over to a beanbag chair in the sparse room. Three beanbag chairs with a coffee table in front of them, all facing a giant flat-screen TV with a game console sitting on the floor. Hayden crashed on one of the beanbags and grabbed the bong beside it.
“That’s quite the accomplishment,” Hayden said, searching the pockets of his robe for a lighter.
It’s what Gordon had been dying to hear. Dying to get recognition for this great thing he had done.
“What is this great prose you have scribed?”
“It’s called ‘The Last Year of My Life by Gordon Nolan.” Gordon was on the bubble of excitement, barely able to stop himself from popping.
Hayden took a hit from the bong and held his breath. “Is it a leap year?”
“Huh?”
“Care to venture into the contents of your novel?”
“You want to read it?”
“Nothing would bring me more elation,” Hayden said, offering Gordon the bong. He refused, taking another pull of Wild Turkey instead. “Did you tote it on your adventure to my abode?”
“It’s at my house, sitting on my coffee table.”
Hayden slowly let out the smoke while he stared at Gordon.
“Alexis’ll get home from work and read it then she’ll freak the fuck out.”
“You contain that much confidence and bravado in your work?”
“It’s called ‘The Last Year of My Life,’” Gordon said.
“You mentioned that.”
“That’s why she’ll freak out when she reads it.” Gordon stared at Hayden, who was staring back at him. This wasn’t the way he wanted this conversation to go either. Hayden didn’t understand.
“She’ll get home and read it,” Gordon said.
“You mentioned that.”
“And she’ll freak the fuck out.”
“Again, you repeat yourself.”
“She’ll freak the fuck out because the book is about the last year.”
“I gathered that from your apt title.”
“The book ends with my suicide.”
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