The Future for Curious People

by Gregory Sherl

  Behind the cooler doors there aren’t many choices—the normal domestics, the normal imports, the forties I haven’t touched since sophomore year of college when I went to a party and a Colt 45 was duct-taped to each hand, and I wasn’t allowed use the bathroom until I finished both—I want them all.

  Thirteen dollars cannot buy them all.

  I do some slow math in my head before walking away from the rows of beer. I need to be smart with my money. I need liquor.

  I scan the shelf of spirits. Vodka, no. Rum, God no—never again after that night. Whiskey. Yes. It’s cold out, and whiskey is just really fucking good anyway. I’ll count that as a double win. My eyes keep going until they fall on a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Too rich for my blood. Then I see it: On the bottom shelf, a fifth of Evan Williams. And the price below it: a smooth $11.99. There’s only one left. I grab it, cradle it like a firstborn, and walk to the checkout. As I set the whiskey on the counter, my brain says, Where’s the pear-shaped brooch? It’s not on the counter. I look up expecting Mr. Fontana, but it’s Mrs. Fontana.

  “This is it?” Mrs. Fontana says.

  “No,” I say. “I paid Fontana ten bucks to keep the pear brooch out where everyone could see it. So where is it?”

  She glares at me, but this time I hold her gaze. Finally she pulls a cell phone out of her pants pocket and hits a speed-dial number.

  I wait.

  She says, “That little shit who wears the mittens is here.” The little shit who wears mittens? I don’t care for that at all. She pauses, listening. “Yeah, he says he paid to have some brooch on display. That right?”

  Mrs. Fontana raises her eyebrows. “What? When?” She’s pissed. She looks up at the surveillance camera. “How much are we out?” She waves her hands in the air. “I’ll tell him. He’s here right now, drunk off his ass, staring at me.” She hangs up.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Stolen.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody stole it.”

  Now I look up at the cameras. “Did you get ’em on tape? I have to see who did it.”

  “Like I’m going to stare at all that footage to see if something that we didn’t lose any money on got stolen.” Mrs. Fontana scares me. I once heard her tell a vendor that she’d gouge his eyes out, and I kind of believed her.

  I feel sick about the brooch. Gone. Some fucker stole it. Evelyn Shriner will never get my message. “This all you getting or what?” Mrs. Fontana says.

  I nod hesitantly.

  Mrs. Fontana rings me up. She hands me the change, then, glancing at the receipt, she says, “You’re a winner?” She’s surprised. I don’t blame her. I’m surprised, too. In fact, I don’t believe her until the receipt is between my fingers, the black ink already too dry to smear. I stare at the words: You’re a winner. I run my thumb over them.

  “I’m a winner,” I say.

  “Twenty percent off your next food purchase,” she says flatly.

  I’m a winner. This means something. This strip of cheap paper — a transaction for a fifth of whiskey—is giving me more hope than Madge has in the last month. That’s some kind of fucked up.

  I look past Mrs. Fontana. What would a winner do in this situation? I could go back to the party and apologize for the toast, for the abstract art. I’m not an artist, I could tell Madge. I am just a collector of lost goods. And I could apologize to Bart and Amy. I’m an ass; they should expect this by now. Besides, they’re just boat shoes. Thousands of people wear them, and now someone I know wears them, too. It happens.

  Mrs. Fontana puts the Evan Williams in a small brown paper bag and hands it to me.

  I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward.

  Someone stole the fucking pear-shaped brooch and now no one will deliver my message. I’ll have to deliver it myself.

  I turn to walk out of the place but then I see a pay phone. Those still exist? It’s been here all along? This might be the last living pay phone in Baltimore. And under the pay phone, a phone book. How many times have I been in Fontana’s and I have never seen the pay phone? They say you won’t notice a piece of art on the wall until you’re ready to, and maybe it’s the same for pay phones.

  I walk up to the pay phone and for a minute I forget how to use a pay phone. How long has it been, years? The phone book’s locked to the pay phone, like phone books are in demand. I imagine Mr. Fontana waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, throwing on his shoes and driving to the store to check on the phone book.

  I flip through the book. The thin pages stick together, and I have to lick my finger to find S. I get to P and then somehow I’m at U. This goes on for about two minutes. I check the time. Fontana’s closes in three minutes. Finally, I find the S’s. I scan through the pages with my finger. My finger stops.

  And she’s listed.

  I didn’t expect to find her, but of course I should have. I’m a fucking winner, and this is what happens to winners. I have a receipt in my pocket to prove it. I look at her phone number and then remember the change Mrs. Fontana gave me. Eighteen cents won’t pay for a call.

  I look back toward the cash register. Mrs. Fontana is reading an issue of Soap Opera Digest. Her head is down. It’s now or never.

  I check the time: two minutes until close.

  I can’t decide if I should fake a cough or sneeze, so what ends up coming out is a hybrid. But there’s enough noise that I’m pretty certain Mrs. Fontana doesn’t hear me rip out the phone book page with Evelyn’s address printed on it. In moments, the page is folded and in my pocket, nestled with the eighteen cents.

  I’m out the door.

  Evelyn

  THE SMELL OF HAPPY

  Dot and I are getting drunk on my California king. We were waiting for the glue gun to get hot so we could glue plastic flowers to the new rain boots, which Dot says she paid for with her own money; I’m proud of her. But, fact is, we’re too drunk for glue-gunning and so we decide to concentrate on the matter at hand. We’ve got a mission. This is a purposeful drunk we’ve got in progress.

  Dot’s finished her second glass of wine and is pouring her third, topping mine off, too. “Look, we’re going to set this shit straight,” she says.

  “Right. And how do we do that?”

  “You think of everything that’s wrong, one by one, and as you think of it, you sprinkle-tap your forehead and say, ‘It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit.’ ”

  “Hmmm.” I feel like my bed is a giant ship deck and we’re at sea. My bed is so big it takes up 90 percent of the room. My dresser lives in the closet. My record player lives on the bed. It’s playing some Pixies; we’ve picked through my Modest Mouse, Silver Jews, the National, and Elliott Smith. I look at the poster of Bruce Springsteen’s ass—the album cover for Born in the U.S.A.; it was something my sister had in her bedroom when she died. I found it in a box marked MEG in my parents’ attic. “And sprinkle-tapping your forehead works?” I ask.

  “It’s how I got over my mother voting for George W. Bush twice. Twice! And middle-school gym class. It’s how I combat my loathing of Christmas-themed sweaters and dogs in cute outfits and guys who drive Hummers. It’s how I put one foot in front of the other, Ev. For real.”

  “My life is in your hands.”

  “What’s first?”

  “I got fired from a volunteer job,” I say.

  “You did?”

  “Reading to the blind.”

  “How?”

  “I made up alternate endings.”

  “You can’t do that. It’s literature.”

  “Are you here to judge me or to help me move on?”

  “Okay. Say it out loud and tap your forehead.”

  I tap my forehead. “It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit.”

  “See?” Dot says.

  Weirdly, I feel a little better. It could be that I’m getting drunker. But I want to go again. “I broke up with Adrian and am now afraid th
at I will die in this apartment alone, mauled by bears.”

  “I don’t think there’s a real bear threat in the city.”

  “Is this practice reserved for rational problems only?”

  “Sorry.”

  “And I’m concerned about the calcification of my heart. I mean, what if my past loves, including Adrian, have each effectively toughened a part of my heart, and what if I’ve got three more bad relationships to go before it’s completely hardened? What if it’s worse than that and there’s only one more relationship until it’s just a chunk of char or ice?”

  “I have more confidence in your heart than you do,” Dot says, taking a swig. “Tap it out.”

  I tap my forehead and say, “It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit.”

  “What else?”

  “I had an insane envisioning session that scared the hell out of me. And Adam Greenberg was in it. He was wielding a gun.”

  She looks at me askew. “Why was Adam Greenberg in it?”

  “I might have punched his name in—it was a moment of panic.”

  “Should I be jealous?”

  “I’m not going to steal Adam Greenberg from you. Don’t worry. But I want to tell you this: that man is crazy about you. I know you don’t believe in this stuff, but he’s kind of a badass when he’s not wearing a sweater vest.”

  “Okay,” Dot says. “I trust you. Tap it out.”

  “Oh, and Chin almost blacklisted me.” I tap my forehead. “It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit.”

  “What about you?” I ask Dot.

  “What about me?”

  “Don’t you have something to tap out?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Really?”

  “My mother is staying with me for twelve days. So I’m like prepping for a PTSD situation.”

  “Tap it out.”

  “I have. I do. It’s a regimen.”

  It’s quiet a moment. “What if it’s not all bullshit?” I say.

  “Some stuff is bullshit and some stuff isn’t.”

  “How can you tell the difference?” I ask.

  “One wrecks your heart and doesn’t go away, even if you do a hundred ‘It’s all bullshits.’ ”

  I think of Godfrey Burkes, declaring his love for me by the pool.

  “Do you think Greenberg really gets all those books for his mother? Sometimes I think she’s just a cover, and he reads them himself,” I say, changing the subject.

  “I like him either way.”

  “Eventually Adam will have to pick something to read all by himself,” I say. “You don’t just stop reading because Oprah did.”

  “Tell me what happened in the session,” she says.

  And so I do, as best I can.

  “I was really in jail?” she asks somberly.

  I open the next bottle of merlot, a five-dollar one we found on sale. We go cheaper and cheaper as the night progresses—finally ending on the worst tasting since we’ve basically lost taste by that point. I refill our glasses. “Adam Greenberg was not happy about it.”

  “I bet he was cute in his rage.”

  “So dreamy in that V-neck undershirt,” I say, “waving that gun.”

  “He was fighting for my honor.” She brings a hand to her chest. “Unlike someone I know.”

  “Sorry, I was busy sleeping next to Mark Standing. I’m just a simple girl with priorities.” I lower my voice and make it sound smoky. “ ‘I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.’ ”

  “It’s weird that I know your Dorothy Parker voice,” Dot says, and then she sits upright. “I almost forgot!”

  “What?”

  “I got you a gift!” She crawls off the bed awkwardly, then down onto the floor where her coat is. She digs through a pocket. She climbs back up on the bed and holds out two fists. “Eenie meenie.”

  I close my eyes. “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. And my mother said—”

  “Here!” Dot says, opening one of her fists.

  And there sits a little pin with a pear on it. I screw up my face and give her a look. “Did you pay for this?”

  “Yes, kind of.”

  “Yes and kind of are different answers.”

  “I was caught in a smarmy overly earnest look-at-me I-might-be-important-one-day part of town at this supermarket/pawn shop, and I overpaid for about seven items, which added up approximately to the price of said brooch.”

  “Give it back.” I push the brooch at her.

  “I can’t,” she says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s yours. I mean, I rescued it from that completely bullshitty part of town, and I mean, who else would wear this pear brooch? Plus, it was on display like Please for the love of God take me! ”

  “I love the pear brooch, okay? I love it in all of its pearness and broochiness. But you have to give it back.”

  Dot shrugs. “I’m just going to reverse steal it.” This means she’s going to give it to me without me knowing.

  I want to give Dot something in return, but I’ve got nothing so I decide to confess a nicety. “Sometimes I tell your mother that you’re like a sister to me,” I say. “Because I think I want your mother to think of me as a daughter.”

  “Mrs. Fuoco?” she says. “Evelyn, take her. I swear to God, she’s yours.” And then Dot mumbles something under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “You heard me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You’re better than a sister, Evelyn, because you’re like a sister I got to choose. You were not thrust upon me by birth, like, you know, feudalism.”

  This makes me very happy. “One day I’m going to hug you, Dot Fuoco. I am. You have been warned.”

  She shakes her head. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  “Do you think there’s a hole in me that can’t ever be filled?” I ask.

  She thinks about this a moment. “I think our souls are always being hole-punched, like old train tickets. In the end, we’re all perforated. If we were buckets, we wouldn’t hold water.”

  “Like that song about the hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.”

  “Exactly.”

  That’s when we hear a tap on the window. We both turn around and look at the window. It sounded like a big bug flew into the panel, but there aren’t any bugs in Baltimore in February.

  Then another tap.

  “Did you hear something?” Dot says.

  “I think so.”

  Dot sets her glass of wine on the floor and log-rolls out of bed. She moves to the window, spreading apart the blinds with two fingers. “You’re not going to believe this shit,” she says.

  “What?” I say.

  “Come look for yourself,” she says.

  I sigh, log-roll out of bed, and walk to the window.

  Dot still has part of the blinds spread apart. “Look.”

  “What am I looking for?” I say. “It’s all just darkness.”

  “To the left,” Dot whispers, “then down just a bit—guy throwing pebbles at your window, all Romeo and shit?”

  I want to tell her there’s no need to whisper. But then I see him.

  Godfrey Burkes.

  “Holy shit,” I say. I step back from the window. “Holy shit, holy shit.”

  “You just said that.”

  I look at Dot. “But holy shit.”

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “Godfrey Burkes, that son of a bitch.”

  “And to think Mark Standing shot him and he’s back already.”

  “I am not understanding what is happening right now.” Now I’m the one whispering. “I can’t believe he found me.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t that hard. You know, with the Internet and everything.”

  I’m smiling, but I know I shouldn’t be smiling. “This is real, right? This windo
w isn’t a video screen?”

  “We’re not at Dr. Chin’s.”

  “Godfrey Burkes.”

  We both turn back to the window. Dot parts the blinds again, and we peer through it. “Look at him shake,” she says. “It’s got to be, what, fifteen with the windchill?”

  “Maybe less. He’s not even wearing a hat.”

  Dot grabs the cord and gives it a tug. The blinds shoot up.

  “What are you doing? He’s going to see us,” I say.

  She looks at me, genuinely confused. “Isn’t that the point? Why else would he be standing outside your window throwing stuff.”

  Dot’s right, obviously. She turns back to the window and slides it open, letting February into my bedroom.

  I take the comforter off the bed and wrap it around myself.

  The weather doesn’t seem to faze Dot.

  “You’re creepy,” she calls down to Godfrey.

  I lean against the wall out of sight.

  “Who are you?” Godfrey says back.

  “I’m Dot.”

  “Oh,” he says, like that makes perfect sense. He shuffles his feet a bit while he looks at his hands before looking back up at the window. He had to be the cutest fucking kid in the world. “Dot? Dot,” he says. “I’m sorry you end up in jail and all that. I’m sure you’re not guilty.”

  Dot puts her head back inside my bedroom and looks at me. “Does everyone know?”

  “I keep saying you need to stop stealing shit.”

  Dot ignores me and sticks her head back out the window.

  “I’m glad you opened the window when you did,” Godfrey says. “That was my last pebble.”

  “Where are your gloves and hat?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “You didn’t think this through very well.”

  Godfrey considers this for a moment. “My heart was beating very fast at the time.”

  Dot looks at me and smiles before turning her head back toward Godfrey. “Evelyn is scared to talk to you because she wants to make babies with you.”

  “Dot!” I scream, shooting up in front of the window.

  “Evelyn!” Godfrey shouts.

  I shout down to him. “Who are you, just showing up here like this, Godfrey Burkes!”