So went his afternoon. Cars would slow down and survey what he had. Some stopped; others sped away, leaving him witness to three near fender-benders. By the time he hauled out the old carpet remnant that he used in the living room, huffing and sweating beneath the cumbersome roll, cars had pulled over all along the street.
He sold the carpet outright for twenty dollars; he never liked it much anyway.
People jockeyed to ask him how much he wanted for lamps, chairs, a kitchen table, and stacks of dishes and glasses. He threw out prices off the top of his head, dickering on a few items, but usually settling for any fair offer. One man offered him ten dollars for his stereo, which he declined. The man told him he could get one twice as good off the back of a truck downtown for fifteen bucks. Jack recommended he take the bus; downtown was a good five miles away, a fact he could testify to. An hour later, he sold the stereo to a girl from City College for thirty-five dollars.
He taped a sign to the front door of the apartment claiming MORE FURNITURE UPSTAIRS, to save him from lugging the sofa, bed, and entertainment wall unit down the steps. He used masking tape to mark prices, and laid out the rest of his clothes on an old blanket, including the ruined suit and shoes. A man he assumed was homeless stared at these for nearly fifteen minutes before offering him $6.37 for both, most of it in small change. Jack accepted the offer.
As the day turned to evening, and most of his possessions were rendered into cash—not so much as he might have hoped—a white Monte Carlo pulled up, the motor grumbling and farting blue oil-smoke. His landlord stepped out and walked over, navigating the bargain hunters like a righteous man through lepers. “Are you moving or something, Lantirn?”
“Eventually,” Jack remarked, selling his entire CD collection for seventy-five dollars—nearly a buck a piece. “I needed to get rid of a few things early, though.”
Lou Palmino, Jack’s landlord, managed his properties by proxy. A superintendent took care of the tenants, a contractor maintained the plumbing and electricals, and a lawn service trimmed the grass and shrubs. That left Lou Palmino with the task of collecting rent; one he enjoyed wholeheartedly. Jack had never seen the man in anything but ripped undershirts with yellowed armpit stains; in the winter, he would add a sweater that was worn through at the elbows. Jack was actually glad he only bothered to come around for rent, the man long ago bypassing peculiar on the road to repugnant. His discount store glasses, lenses as thick as Coke-bottles, were forever slipping down his enormous, hooked nose, and his tongue had a tendency to dart out suddenly and lick at his dry, chapped lips like some tropical iguana tasting the air for food. “Well, where are ya going?”
“I don’t know,” Jack answered truthfully. “Did you know I lost my job?”
“No.” And from his tone, it was obvious Lou didn’t care. “About this sale, are you gonna have anything left when you’re done?”
“I hope not.”
Lou Palmino chewed on this answer for a time. Jack waited a moment, just to be polite, then walked away. He crossed out the sign on his pots and pans, changing it to $5.00 for the lot. An older woman watching shrewdly from the side immediately snatched up the whole collection before he could step away. She asked if he had any bags and he told her no, taking the five and leaving her struggling to contain her bargain in her arms. He did not feel inclined to thank her.
“You know, it’ll take me a couple months to lease this place out,” Mr. Palmino pursued doggedly, trying to confront Jack as he moved about the lawn sale.
“I suppose.”
“Well, if you can wait that long, you won’t be out two months rent, Mr. Lantirn.” Jack suspected he was being formal not out of politeness, but mere ignorance; he likely could not remember Jack’s first name. “Any renter violating the end of the lease will be required to pay for two full months of occupancy, whether the renter occupies the property or not,” Palmino quoted. “It’s in your lease.”
“I know. I’m not leaving yet, anyway,” Jack said, not adding that by this time tomorrow, he hoped to be far away from here. He made a mental note to stop by the bank tomorrow morning and close out his account. No sense letting it sit idle in his absence, the duration of which was, as yet, unknown. “I’ll be here for a little while longer,” he added, thinking that a lie might be the best way to end the useless conversation with his landlord and encourage him to go away … or, at the very least, discourage this line of questioning. “We’ll work it out.”
“Uh-huh,” Palmino said in a tone that suggested otherwise. His tongue flickered out nervously, sanding chapped lips. “Well, where are you going?” he asked for a second time.
“I don’t know?” Jack answered again for the second time. “I’ve got nothing keeping me here, so I figured I’d take off. Try a fresh start somewhere else.” Behind him, a man and his son were struggling to carry the mattress and box spring down the steps, having decided, for whatever reason, to take both at the same time. They had paid $200 for his entire bed, which Jack thought was possibly more than it was worth, but he had already undersold the television, and was feeling tired and not particularly charitable. The two loaded the bed’s frame, comparatively worthless strip metal, into the back of their rust-worn pick-up on the previous trip. While momentarily distracted by their Laurel and Hardy antics, Mr. Palmino attentions returned to Jack, apparently awaiting an answer; one he did not have.
“Unless there’s something else I can do for you,” Jack said as politely as possibly, “I’m really kind of busy. If you’re interested in buying something, let me know. There’s a box of paperbacks over there for a quarter a piece if you’re a reader.”
Mr. Palmino blinked a couple times, tongue nervously dancing around his mouth, then started shaking his head. Through the thick lenses, his eyes appeared to swim in a blurry fluid like strange black and brown creatures from the ocean floor. The thicker edges bent his face until it disappeared, leaving only the gaping goldfish eyes that seemed to be sizing Jack up for a straitjacket, or maybe a sixty-year old man’s attempt at giving a young punk a fat lip. Instead, Mr. Palmino said only, “The appliances came with the place. If I find ‘em missing, I’m calling the cops.”
Having said that, Lou Palmino left.
The man and his son, the same ones who bought Jack’s bed, walked over, asking, “Did I hear him say something about the appliances?”
After looking over his shoulder to be certain his landlord had left, Jack suggested four hundred for both the stove and the refrigerator. The man countered with three hundred and fifty in cash, and a deal was struck. Everything must go.
* * *
By early evening, the sale was over. Jack pulled down the signs and piled what was left into a pair of boxes, hauling them back upstairs to his now-empty apartment where he left them in the middle of the living room floor. His kitchen floor was filled with the contents of his sold refrigerator, and somewhere along the way he had apparently sold all of his garbage cans, though he could not remember when.
All told, he had cleared over seventeen-hundred dollars; enough to keep him going if things got weird—amend that to weirder—on his journey. It said little for two years of possessions, that they could be liquidated so easily, and for so little.
He boxed up the food from his cupboards; there was a soup kitchen down the street operating out of the First United Baptist Church. They might be able to use it. He would drop it off in the morning before leaving for downtown and the train station. There was no sense letting it go to waste. It was bad enough that the food from his refrigerator would be left to spoil.
Not that he’d be around to see that happen.
Jack made himself another sandwich from the pile of food on the floor, ravenous; strange days gave one an appetite. He sat cross-legged on the floor, enjoying the last meal he would eat in his apartment and feeling strangely detached, as if all of this was happening to someone else, an amusing story he was reading in a book.
Instead of worrying over his naked apartment, or sell
ing appliances that were not his to sell, he finished eating and started gathering perishables up off the floor, collecting them in a large bowl that wouldn’t sell because of a chip in the rim. He took all of it outside and left it along with the bowl near the Dumpsters, assuming something would eat it: rats, dogs, crows, whatever. Not his problem anymore.
When he got back upstairs, he packed the last few things in the bathroom into a toiletries kit that he left on the sink for tomorrow morning. Then he went back into the living room to lie down on the sofa; even at thirty-five dollars, he couldn’t find a buyer. Some setbacks were inevitable.
Anyway, it gave him a place to sleep.
He had barely lain down when there was a knock at the door. Perhaps Lou’s returned with the cops; come back to check on the refrigerator and stove you sold, he thought with detached amusement.
But it wasn’t his landlord. It was Jools.
“I saw the signs when I was driving by,” she said by way of explanation. “Are you moving out?”
He realized he was dumbly staring at her—not moving, not speaking, only staring—and a part of him wished it had been his landlord with the police. It would have been easier. Jools looked uncommonly beautiful framed in the doorway. He could smell her perfume; it had not been so long that it didn’t still catch his attention and scramble his thoughts. And Jools knew it.
Jack surprised himself by managing to answer. “Umm, yes. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
She seemed a little surprised. Perhaps she expected him to make some long, drawn out affair of it. Certainly he was not the type to move in a matter of days, not Jack the stable, Jack the predictable, Jack the dull.
He kept her standing there in the doorway, knowing she would not ask to be let in, and pleased with himself for not wanting her to. She was part of a life he was leaving behind as of tomorrow, and good riddance.
But Jools seemed as content as he to let the silence build between them, knowing him well enough to know he would eventually break it.
And she was right. “Jools, why did you stop by?”
“I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m okay,” he answered. “I should get my key back, though. Since I’m moving out.” His reasoning was sound, not cold or vindictive. Still, it felt awkward.
Jools nodded reasonably and took his apartment key from her purse; it was already off her key-chain. This moment would likely have happened no matter what. Only before this morning and the train ticket and the Writer, it would have eviscerated him. Instead, it felt like nothing at all.
“So where are you going?” she asked, key held out to him.
“I have a job opportunity out west.” No sooner did he say it then he realized how vague the answer—and the truth it concealed—really was.
“Really. Where?”
An easy enough question to answer. At least, it should have been. But his situation was unique, and he found himself searching for the most suitable answer that did not make him sound like a lunatic. What he settled on was not really an answer at all. “Does it matter?”
Jools looked at him for a moment, and he thought he detected a glimmer of hurt in her stare, a small flaw in the veneer. Then it was gone. “No,” she answered coolly, “I don’t suppose it does. Goodbye Jack.”
“Goodbye Jools.”
She turned and left, leaving him staring out onto the empty landing at the place where she once stood, the empty scene her character had vacated.
Burn all your bridges, Jack. Ever forward, never back.
Jack shoved the extra key into his pocket and closed the door. Then he stretched out on the sofa and read until he got tired. He wasn’t sure he would be able to sleep, what with all that had happened that day, his anticipation for tomorrow. Questions buzzed about his brain like hornets, and each one he considered seemed to explode into a dozen more. The one question that kept recurring was whether or not he had gone insane; whether all of this was a lunatic’s first steps, or a desperate man’s last charge at freedom—of the mind, the soul, the heart, take your pick.
He couldn’t decide which, but was surprised to discover that whichever it was, it had freed him somehow, giving him a strange sort of courage, even serenity. No sooner had he closed the book then he was comfortably asleep.
* * *
Jack dreamed of a train, an old iron locomotive belching smoke and puffing steam as it screamed into the station, wheels squealing and grinding to a halt, rogue sparks smacking out from the rails. He watched from the edge of the platform where he stood, ticket in hand, wearing a vest and cowboy boots, an extra from a bad spaghetti western.
The door of the train slid back, and the Writer stepped out in a conductor’s uniform and cap. “Ticket, please.”
And Jack handed one to him.
“Someone will take care of your baggage, sir,” the conductor informed him. But he didn’t have any.
The conductor did not find this unusual.
Neither did he.
Jack turned then to the sound of footsteps racing across the platform, running towards him. A man in a light-colored suit and white fedora halted behind him. “That’s my train, boy!”
The Writer frowned. “He has a ticket.”
“So do I,” the man declared, a gun pointing directly at Jack.
With exaggerated slowness, Jack saw the revolver’s hammer rock back, the man’s finger tighten upon the trigger, the movement agonizingly slow as though the gears of the universe were filling with glue, jamming up, slowing down.
Then the hammer fell.
An explosion …
… and Jack woke up.
Outside, the roar of a transmission and shifting gears, a truck pulling away from the nearby corner, farting out one more backfire of smoke for good measure as it passed outside Jack’s apartment window.
But not your apartment anymore, boyo?
Jack looked around with a foggy, disconnected feeling. He did not exactly remember where he was (an empty living room?), or why he was here (sleeping on the couch?). The fading remnants of the dream were slowly being replaced by a flurry of recalled memories from the day before. Kicked out of his office. Leaking radiator. The crow talked to him, so he abandoned his car at work—only not his work anymore. Then he ran through the rain until he found the Café Tangier … and the Writer.
It all started coming back, a trickle turning into a flood: raspberry-mocha lattés which tasted like Godiva chocolate truffles, the offer to become a writer and the caretaker of some “special place,” a ticket for a morning train—this morning! —at a mythical station that did not exist. Then he walked home and sold everything he owned.
Or was he still dreaming?
Jack Lantirn looked slowly around, first light pouring in through the open windows, bare walls and a naked floor mocking him.
He sat up quickly, head still muddy with sleep. He searched for a clock before remembering he had sold it, and looked at his watch instead. 6:15 am.
“Oh God!” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until stars sprayed across his vision like hyperspace. “I’ve lost my goddamn mind!”
Had he actually left his car derelict in a parking lot? Had he actually thrown away the keys for the sake of a busted radiator? Had he actually come back to his apartment and sold every … single … thing … he … OWNED? Goddamn insane! Nothing was spared. He even had the balls to sell appliances that weren’t even his.
“Jesus, you’re fucked,” he chided. “What the hell were you thinking, huh? What?”
By the door, his remaining possessions were packed in a green duffel bag beside his laptop, two years old and already out of date. He bought it with money left over from his student loans; loans he was still paying off, though apparently not after today.
He was completely insane.
Then his eyes found the corner of the ticket in the duffel pocket, a reminder of a question he couldn’t answer: what’s keeping you here?
He had over seventeen hundr
ed dollars. It would be possible to replace the appliances before his landlord found out. He could buy a couple sticks of furniture with the remainder—not much, but he couldn’t afford to be choosy—and get to work on finding a job. The backfire probably belonged to the newspaper truck, which meant that the morning edition was in the box out front. He should grab a copy and start perusing the want-ads. That would be the practical, sensible thing to do. You remember being laid-off, don’t you, Jack? That you remember, right? Do you think that sixty days plus six stinking weeks of severance is forever? It’s not. Look at the jobless rates sometime. You’ll need a good five months to find a new job. And by the way, a bum is currently wearing your only suit while he hocks your only pair of dress shoes for a bottle of Thunderbird.
But there was still no answer to the question. What was keeping him here? Was he any better off before he sold everything to follow a crazy man on a train that likely didn’t exist?
Nothing and no. He was halfway down the rabbit hole, and trying to go back offered no better prospects than the empty promises pulling him forward. It was time to find a new place, make a new start. There was nothing for him here. Less than nothing, really. Just questions he could not answer, and actions he had to answer for.
No, better he go with his gut for a little while longer. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Or penny wise, pound foolish, the sensible voice in his head answered back spitefully. Pick your adage; they’re all equally useless.
But the decision was already made. It had been made a long time ago.
So Jack Lantirn started his first official morning of unemployment much the same as any other morning. He got up early, showered and shaved, then got dressed. Not for work, no. That was over now. A comfortable pair of jeans, and a casual button-down shirt. Sneakers to replace the leather shoes lost to the elements and his sad excuse for a reality.
The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) Page 4
