by Aletto, Anna
“Sounds rough.”
“The other day I heard something that woke me up in the middle of the night. Scared the shit out of me. I grabbed a baseball bat to see what it was. It ended up being her stumbling through the kitchen, confused about where she was.”
“Maybe you could take her to a doctor.”
“What would a doctor tell me? Put her in a nursing home? Fuck it. She took care of me when I was a kid. I’ll take care of her now the best I can.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I need to tell you something,” Terrell said.
“What?”
“I’m interested in your sister, but I don’t want it to cause any problems between us.”
“She’s old enough to make her own decisions. She told me she was with you the other night after she was done babysitting.”
“I only kissed her some. That’s all we did. I wanted to talk to you before I went any further. I don’t want to fuck up our friendship.”
“Just be honest with her,” I said. “You do that and I’m good.”
Sunday is my first day as a donation collector. I’m scheduled for the eleven o’clock service. Angela attends with me. Britney and I have plans to meet later for dinner at her apartment.
During the service Angela and I sit together in a back pew, off to ourselves. About halfway through the service I have to walk to the back of the church. A tall, older gentleman named George, the head of the collectors, stands at the back. He hands me a wicker collection basket. I’m designated for the row of pews that Angela and I are sitting in. I walk to the front of the row and hand the basket to the first person. The basket then gets passed down the row, back to the next one, and so on all the way to the back. I stand next to Angela, the last person in the last row. When the basket reaches Angela, I turn toward her. She turns toward me and pretends to put some money in the basket. Instead she grabs a fistful of bills from the basket and quickly stuffs them in her purse, our bodies shielding the act. I take the basket back to George, who holds a large black leather bag into which each collector dumps the money from his basket.
After church on the way back to the car Angela asks, “What kind of old person do you want to be?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was sitting in church, looking around at everyone. I saw all these old people and it made me think about it.”
“So what did you decide?”
“I don’t want to be the type of old person who ends up, like, crippled, sitting in a chair all the time. I want to be active no matter how old I get, travelling around, enjoying life and still hitting on cute guys.” She laughs. “How about you?”
“I don’t want to get old,” I tell her as we step into the Toyota. “I think when I get to that place, when I’m fifty, sixty, whatever, whenever I start feeling old, that’s going to be it for me. I don’t want to end up hobbling around on a walker or be in a wheelchair or something. And I couldn’t stand having my mind go on me, making it so I need people to take care of me because I can barely function. The day I feel I’m at all headed in that direction I’m buying a gun and a putting a bullet in my brain.”
“Are you seeing Britney tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a date with Eddie this Wednesday.”
“Cool.”
“I know what you can say to get Britney to sleep with you.”
“What?”
“Try this line: ‘Do you need prayer? Because I’m willing to lay hands on you.’”
At Britney’s apartment that evening, for dinner, she prepares oven fried chicken with mash potatoes and gravy. Afterward we sit together on her couch. Thinking about the banter between Angela and me earlier, I look at Britney and say, “Want to practice speaking in tongues with me?”
“What?” she asks confused, not realizing it’s a joke.
“Nothing.” I chuckle and kiss her neck.
We start making out and she’s much more aggressive than usual, pushing me backward onto the couch. I start with my hands on her waist, then move to her back and before I squeeze her ass. She slides her right hand down my chest, abdomen, then starts to unbuckle my belt. Suddenly she freezes.
“Keep going,” I tell her.
Britney hesitates and says, “You’ve definitely had sex before, right?”
“Yeah.”
She gets off me and sits back up. “I’ve been thinking about it and … I always thought I’d wait until the night I got married to have sex, but I don’t know … Being with you has totally fried my brain. Part of me feels like I’d like my first time to be with you.”
I rub her leg.
“I know lust is a sin, but this feels more like love to me. It doesn’t feel sinful.”
“Good.”
“If we did it, since I never have, would it hurt? I probably wouldn’t be any good at it.”
“Just talk to me and I’ll do my best to make you comfortable.”
She listens.
“You ready to keep going?”
“I’m on my period,” she says.
“That doesn’t bother me.”
“Do you mind waiting? It’s just … I only get one first time and I’d rather it be when I’m off. I’d rather my memory of it be that way.”
Somewhat frustrated, I coolly say, “It’s fine.”
“It’s so weird,” Britney remarks, staring away. “I always feel extremely sexual when I get on my period. Really, it’s overwhelming. And it’s always been like that for me. Do you think that’s normal?”
“I’ve had other girls tell me they’re the exact same way.”
She looks at me and says, “How many girls have you been with?”
“I don’t like talking about the past. Let’s just enjoy being with each other, right here and now.”
At Platinum Pleasures strip club, Terrell leaned against the wall across from the main stage and eyed the crowd. Curtis Reznok sat at the stage and his associates milled around the room. Curtis stood and went to the bar for a drink. He spoke to the bartender and a couple strippers on break.
While he was at the bar, another man – black, late thirties, dreadlocks, wearing baggy jeans and oversized white T-shirt – sat in Curtis’ seat. This went unnoticed until Curtis returned and informed him.
Taking offense and not realizing who Curtis was, the man jumped up and shouted in Curtis’ face. Before anyone could intervene, the man shoved him back a couple steps. Curtis only smiled and some of his men whisked Curtis back to the bar.
Terrell hesitated, afraid that one of Curtis’ men might pull a gun.
Instead, one of them quickly approached Terrell. “That guy over there,” he said, pointing to the man. “Throw him out. Out into the back parking lot.” He slipped Terrell a few hundred dollars.
Terrell pocketed the cash.
The man was again in Curtis’ seat, watching the girl dancing on stage, sitting as if nothing had happened.
“You’ve got to go,” Terrell told him. “Right now.”
“I ain’t going nowhere, motherfucker.” The man jumped up again. “Why you hassling me?”
“You don’t walk out, I’m dragging you.”
“Fuck you.” The man swung a wild right hand.
Terrell ducked the punch, barred the man’s arm and kicked him hard in the head. Terrell released his arm, wrapped the man into a full nelson, and dragged him out the back door. Terrell slung him into the gravel parking lot.
A swarm of Curtis’ men had followed outside. The man staggered to his feet, blood running down his face, and stumbled to his car. Curtis’ men got into a car of their own and followed him off the property.
Terrell went back inside where Curtis sat at the bar with a few of his men who had stayed. Curtis stayed at the club until closing time, later than he usually did, and took a stripper home at the end of the night.
The man who shoved Curtis was found the next day in his apartment – his arms, legs, and head hacked off and set neatly besi
de his torso on the living room floor.
Police showed up at the strip club, asking questions about the man and the last time he was seen. The brief altercation with Curtis was mentioned, but the bartender and strippers vouched that Curtis had been at the club until closing time. And one stripper told police that she went home with Curtis and spent the entire night and following morning with him.
Police asked Terrell why he threw the man out.
“He was drunk and getting belligerent,” he told them.
“Was anyone in particular not getting along with him? Or did anyone follow him after you escorted him outside?”
“No, not that I saw.”
Not long after the police left, Curtis’ man who gave Terrell three-hundred dollars showed up. “What did you say to the police about me?” he asked.
Terrell looked at him. “I’ve never met you before, have I?”
The man grinned and patted Terrell on the shoulder.
“Maybe I have a bad memory,” Terrell mused.
A date between Angela and Eddie is scheduled for a Thursday. She tells him she has a late class in Film Lecture that ends at six o’clock. She suggests he pick her up from there to go out to dinner. That evening I drive her to the University of Arkansas and drop her off in front of Kimpel Hall forty-five minutes beforehand, just to be safe.
I have dinner at home with my mother. Afterward we watch television together. My mother asks what I want to watch and I tell her I don’t care. She flips to the Discovery Channel and we watch an hour special on how the sun is expanding and will eventually envelope the earth. Near the end, during a commercial, I drift off to sleep.
I have an intense, weird dream that starts off inside a huge college classroom. It has light-colored, specked linoleum floors and a tan tile ceiling and a chalkboard, but no desks at all and the room is absolutely enormous. And there is probably fifty or sixty of us all standing around in there. It looks like the building I left Angela at earlier.
All the people with me – the students, I guess – are people I’ve never known or seen in real life, though in the dream it is like I know them all. There doesn’t seem to be any teacher. But for some reason, we all start to walk out of the classroom and out of the building. Across the street is a towering building. It isn’t that wide, but there are several steps up to the front door, and the building stretches upward to the heavens. The building starts off as a library but then starts to look like a cathedral. It is an ornate, old stone structure with a tall, heavy front door. I, along with several other guys in our group who are taller and bigger and stronger than me, start to pry open the front door. But once we do that, there is another door behind it. And behind that is another one. We go through about six doors, all of them tall and painfully heavy. Almost all of the students at this point are helping, using whatever force they can muster to pry the doors open. By the time we get to the seventh door I notice pieces of the building from up above starting to crumble. Little pieces of rock start to fall. I am scared and stop helping though everyone else doesn’t pay any attention and they continue on. It starts to make noise and crumble even more so I run as fast as I can off the steps and to the sidewalk alongside the building. I look back and the building starts to collapse, crushing the people right by the door. I run across the street just to be sure I will be clear of all the debris as it continues to fall. Everyone is trapped and they are all screaming, being crushed by huge pieces of stone. I briefly consider running over and trying to help them, the few who still remain. But then I feel warm, relaxed, and I just think, ‘Fuck them.’ They will probably all die but I am going to live and that is all I really care about. I stand there a while looking at the rubble feeling content and lucky.
When I wake up, the living room is dark and I’m all alone, on the couch, and the home phone is ringing.
I answer and it’s Angela and she tells me to come pick her up at Pomfret Hall, the freshmen dorm. When I arrive she walks out from the lobby and gets into the Toyota. “He thinks I live there,” she says, as we start back home. “Luckily I slipped into the lobby after some other kid swiped his dorm card and opened the front door. It’s starting to get chilly; I would’ve frozen my ass off outside waiting for you.”
She recounts her date with Eddie to me as follows:
After he picks her up in his silver Miata Eddie asks, “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Angela says. “Drive around and I’ll pick somewhere.”
Eventually she chooses an upscale Italian restaurant on Dickson Street.
The waiter asks if they would like to see a wine list.
Angela looks at Eddie, hoping he’ll buy a bottle.
“I think I’ll just have a Coke,” he tells the waiter.
The waiter looks at Angela and she says, “Me too.”
The waiter walks away and Eddie says, “I think this will be better if we’re both completely sober.”
Angela forces a smile.
They sit together, and after several seconds of uncomfortable silence, Eddie laughs and says, “So what should we talk about?”
Angela thinks a moment and says, “Oh, I know. What kind of old person do you want to be?”
He smiles and asks, “Where did that question come from?”
“Uh, it was just something I was talking about the other day with my brother.”
“Hmmm … let’s see. Okay, I think I got it. I’d like to still be living around here.”
“The same place you grew up?”
“Sure, I’m used to it and I like it. Why not?”
Angela nods.
“And by the time I’m old, I want to have a happy marriage that’s lasted a long time. Let’s say at least fifty or sixty years.”
“I guess you want to get married sometime soon then.”
“Well, yeah. In the old days people always used to get married young and it worked out fine. Nowadays you have people dating all the way through their twenties and thirties and even forties, switching from partner to partner to partner. They don’t want to grow up. It’s really immature.”
“But what about having life experiences? And being comfortable alone and not needing to be codependent?”
“I hate that word ‘codependent’. Human beings aren’t meant to be alone. God created a man and a woman. He didn’t create just a man, or just a woman. He meant for them to need each other, or be ‘codependent’ as some call it. And as for life experiences, they’re meant to be shared between a husband and wife. And when you have kids – be fruitful and multiply, as it says in the Bible – you share the experiences with them too.”
Wanting to argue with him, Angela instead bites her tongue and comments, “I’ve never thought of it like that.”
Eddie smiles contently. “What do you want to be like when you’re older?”
“My answer isn’t as good as yours. I just thought I’d like to still be active and having fun and enjoying my life.”
“Well, that’s important,” he says. “We should cherish every day God gives us. What was your brother’s answer?”
“Oh, um … I don’t remember.”
For supper Angela orders mushroom ravioli.
“What kind of person were you in high school?” Eddie asks her. “I picture you as the popular cheerleader who all the guys tried to flirt with.”
“Popular? No. Most of the girls at my high school hated me and the feeling was mutual. I get along much better with guys, so the friends I had were mostly male. Cheerleader? Definitely not. I’m not into sports. Plus I’d never be caught dead in a cheerleading outfit, though I’m sure I’d look good in it. And yeah, guys did flirt with me. But most of them were too immature or just couldn’t keep up. I mostly like guys a little older than me,” she says. “How about you? I picture you as someone would was involved in everything – Student Council, Key Club, maybe a sport. As far as popularity … um, maybe. I don’t think all the girls were after you, but I bet there was at least one or two who fell for you pre
tty hard.”
“You’re pretty accurate, actually. I was in all the clubs. I was even the president of the Young Christians and the Young Republicans. I played second-base in baseball. I was popular. For my senior year I was Vice President of the Student Government. And as for girls, you’re pretty much spot on. There was one girl, in particular. We started dating when we were sophomores and we were together all the way until graduation. She was involved in everything too and had a close relationship with God.”
“So what happened?” Angela asks.
“She got a scholarship to a really good college out of state. So we decided to break up but stay friends. I didn’t want to, but she had to do what was best for her.”
“I think you did the right thing. At least that was the mature thing to do.”
“The bad thing is that I haven’t had a serious relationship since then. I’ve wanted to, but I’ve had a hard time finding someone with the same values as me. Being in college with so many people on campus, I thought it’d be easy to find a good match for me, but it’s still hard.”
“I have the feeling that you have high standards. Not that that’s a bad thing.”
“I do have high standards. I’ve always believed God will send me the right girl who is not only beautiful, but has strong Christian principles. So why should I settle for any less?”
“Good point.”
“I’ve dated girls who claimed to live each day for Christ, only to find out later they weren’t who I thought they were. It’s hard to get to know a person on a date,” Eddie comments. “Everyone wants to portray themselves in way other than what they really are.”
“Well, why don’t we agree to just tell the truth without filters?” Angela suggests. “That way we can just relax and be our true selves.”
“Deal,” Eddie agrees.
After they eat their meals, they order dessert.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” Angela asks.
Eddie considers it. “You know, that’s a good question. My initial response would be that you’d need to learn a person’s values and learn what type of relationship they have with God before you could truly love them. But then again, maybe God sometimes blesses people by letting them just find each other and feel that love instantaneously. I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my dad. Why do you ask?”
