Whiteout Conditions

by Tariq Shah

  “Almost done here. I’ll get our food,” Vince says.

  I give him a thumbs up and split.

  It’s dark and stinks of urinal cakes. The ventilator fan blades chop up a street lamp’s orange glow, and it’s like whizzing in a silent film. The hand soap looks like phlegm. No paper towels, no toilet paper, obviously.

  When I get out, Qasra’s by the curb, snacking on a bag of Sour Patch Kids, whimsically faded. She is lightly swaying on her heels to music that isn’t there, cocooned in some warm personal thoughts that seem to stave off the cold.

  “Wait now, just a minute—seriously, what are you two about?” she asks me. Her hand goes to my chest, stopping me as I’m about to push open the restaurant door.

  “About? What’s that mean?”

  “You and the other one. I can see it on your faces, how you walk… like you’ve been sentenced. Like you’re on your way to the gulag. Call me crazy.”

  “Okay, you’re crazy.” I give a nice-guy smile, and Qasra knows it’s a nice-guy smile. Nice, clean, empty, fake.

  I tell her we’re on a pilgrimage. I tell her it’s nothing sad, no big deal, bit of cabin fever, more like an errand, a business trip practically, pretty boring, nothing worth mentioning, might catch a show but we don’t know yet, nothing’s final, just going to play it by ear. I know I’ve failed miserably at something the moment I finish all my telling. Qasra’s little hand drops, she gestures oh well, pirouettes away from me, and I hurry back inside.

  But I don’t want to say, don’t want to get into it and spoil the nice feeling I’d been enjoying, and it dawns on me it was because Ray had slipped from my mind. Just like that. Just like years ago, until I turned on the TV last week and remembered, was forced to remember, how far apart the houses were, that a baseball diamond stood just down the block, with a chain link fence that drooped, trash drums always crawling with wasps, across the street from Bad’s, all the do-nothing hangs we had outside its doors, watching skateboarders practice popping ollies off the curb until their elbows and knees were bloody patches— me, Vince, Ray, scrawny-looking in our XL K-mart t-shirts—all I could do nothing about.

  “She said a dude had a seizure or like an episode or something in there earlier,” Vince tells me when I sit down.

  “Just one?”

  He takes a chomp of his roast beef.

  As we’re eating, a family in the back, who must’ve come in while we were in the car, is getting ready to leave when their toddler chucks a baby fistful of horsey sauce packets at the sleeping guy, and the mom scrambles to fetch them. Her guy keeps his eyes hidden by the bill of his Fighting Irish cap. When the toddler slaps the table, he gives it crayons.

  “What happened to Gavin anyway?” I ask.

  “You miss him?”

  “Please, chew your food. Was just wondering. He still living with his grandma?”

  “Granny Kwasneski’s gotta be dead as a doornail by now, I would think. I don’t talk to them—haven’t spoken to her or him in years. I do know he got swept up by police the night his mutt attacked Ray. Who knows what they’re going to do with him. Won’t be enough, whatever they got in store.”

  “Probably hit him with reckless endangerment, negligence, something along those lines.”

  “What they should do is hit him with a cinderblock.”

  “Thought you were a pacifist.”

  “Tell me to ease up, Ant. Tell me to chill. See what you get hit with.”

  “Boy, you sure are bloodthirsty…”

  Vince takes another big bite. When he swallows, he seems to swallow his wrath down, too, dismissing his threat with an eye roll, a shake of the head. Like he always used to do.

  The guy in the corner makes a shriek like someone just stomped him. He glares around the restaurant in wide-eyed outrage.

  “Who in the hell are you?” He bellows at us, “What are you doing?”

  Qasra strides back in from out front. “Bijan, shut it. You had a bad dream, that’s all.”

  “It was no dream. I know what you’re trying to do.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Vince says.

  He clears his tray into the garbage quickly to avoid notice, and I’m behind him, wishing he’d go quicker.

  “Hey, you,” Bijan says, wriggling free of his sleeping bag. He gets up in my face, clutches my arm, not like he’s going to hit me or anything, but like he’s got something urgent to say. I kind of just let him do it.

  “You’re not fooling me. You’re not fooling anybody,” he says.

  “I’m not trying to…” I say, and give a yearbook portrait smile.

  Vince is honking in a kind of Morse code for “Let’s Go.”

  “He doesn’t mean anything by that, he’s—you know…” Crossing her eyes, Qasra winds her finger around her ear.

  Bijan approaches the window. Cupping his hands around his face, he looks out to Vince, who is basically leaning on the horn now. But he can wait. I’m beginning to come down.

  “I’m glad you work at Arby’s. It’s my favorite fast food restaurant. That’s not a lie.”

  As I’m walking out I hear, “I have made that pilgrimage before, you know…”

  I stop.

  “…It’s bullshit.”

  At that moment she is wildly believable to me, and then her father takes over the register.

  *

  From the hotel just off the Edens pike you can hear the change being tossed at the toll plaza glowing orange in the surrounding darkness. We lurk through the parking lot, seeking an empty spot.

  “The marquee says vacancies,” Vince says, but I’m holding my breath, fearing a jinx and more driving.

  “So. Qasra, huh.”

  “That’s her name,” Vince says.

  “Must be tough, working at the slowest Arby’s in the world.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Food was good at least.”

  “It’s Arby’s. You can’t not eat good at Arby’s.”

  “There!” I shout, pointing out an empty parking space which might be handicapped but who cares.

  We get out and Vince’s like, “Go get us a room, I’m gonna polish off this pinner real quick.”

  After snagging the last bed they have, I check out the view from the little balcony. There is not much to see. Vin’s down there babbling to himself between the parked cars and the rail guard separating the lot from the frozen island toll barrier. Rehearsing a joke, or an excuse.

  He has no idea what room we’re in, nor that I am observing him. If I were still high, the traffic might be more entertaining. I might launch a snow ball, a soda bottle, an ice bucket, if I were still high and had any one of those items.

  He’s slowly wobbling around in circles, head back, gawking at some light blinking in the sky. I can just make out his lips moving as he then gazes down at that roach between his fingers.

  “Hey, stupid!”

  That gives him a start, and he looks around like he just received the word of God. I give a wave.

  Vince dabs the roach to his tongue, stumbling toward the red wrought iron stairs leading up to room 229.

  *

  They’re out of cots. Vince claims the bed so I sprawl on the floor. Before we hit the hay, he can’t relax until he rings Caroline up.

  “—Sure. Sure. Ant?” he says.

  Vince clubs me in the head with a throw pillow.

  “—Ant’s the same, we’re getting along fantastic, things are fine. Wouldn’t you say, Ant?” He’s nodding his head yes.

  “—What else? Oh—put a new battery in the whip.

  “—Because. Just—because, all right? It’s just responsible car ownership. It was time for a replacement. Because I keep track of things like this.

  “—Put June Bug on.

  “—Hey there. Being a good girl for Mom? Say that again, I didn’t hear…

  “—Who told you that? Who put that in your head?

  “—Hello?”

  “She hang up on you?” I ask.


  He looks at me, amazed. “‘Dada, do you love me still?’ Can you believe a question like that?”

  “You sound shook.”

  “Well you wonder where a five-year-old kid gets these ideas,” he says. He waits for some kind of answer, but I’m still thinking about June’s question, how the call just ended out of the blue.

  “Just call them back then, like a normal human being.”

  He dials again, brings the phone with him as he paces, waiting for the line to connect. “Still ringing,” he says.

  “I see that.”

  “I don’t know, man, I don’t like this…”

  “Quit overreacting.”

  “—Hey, Caroline. Sorry, I think we got disconnected. Everything good over there?”

  “—Because I don’t know, June said something…

  “—She—never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’ll see you soon.

  “—Okay, night.”

  “You’re a good father,” I tell him. He rolls his eyes, timbers into bed like a felled redwood. I click off the lamp.

  “Tomorrow’ll be pretty hard,” he says into the quiet. I’m listening to the tinnitus whine in my ears—it’s a weird comfort—hoping my silence is taken to mean I’m out. “It’s going to be terrible, don’t you think?”

  “I think it’ll be okay.” I yawn.

  “Probably right. What’s the big deal? Just burying a kid. Big whoop. Sure it’ll be a real heart-warmer. Did live a long and productive life, after all. Spent his days on this earth doing good works. Could’ve been worse. Went peacefully in his sleep, at least. Not a bad way to bite the dust. Oh. Hold up. That’s 89-year-old cousin Phil. My mistake. We’re talking about the torn-apart-by-a-pit-bull kid. Nah, yeah, it’ll be pretty mellow.”

  “I kind of like funerals,” I say.

  “Yeah, you would, creep.”

  “They might be my favorite thing.”

  “You’re a sick fuck, Ant. Pleasant dreams. Try not to have too much fun tomorrow. His mother’ll be there.”

  A little while later I hear, “Ant. Ant.”

  I’m through faking sleep now. “Just talk, Vince. Why you need to have me say ‘what’? Just go.”

  “I was just wondering. I keep forgetting. What is it that you’re doing out there now anyway? You still play?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  “…Well?”

  “You did. I was wrong.”

  “Oh, lord… sorry for asking. Wasn’t bad, having music in the house all the time. Your practicing got aggravating as hell but now I miss it. Kind of. Don’t make fun of me.”

  “…I play when I can. That isn’t very often. In the downtime, I work where I can. Temping. Substitute teach, now and then. I don’t mean to be a prick. Wish I had some kind of spectacular answer for you.”

  “Ah, you’re keeping secrets…”

  We’re silent for a while, but I can sense he’s brooding. It’s too quiet.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “I just remember thinking,” he says, “looking at that dog—he was lording over Ray, like, you know, a lion over a kill. I thought, Jesus Christ, that’s—I am looking at Death itself, live, in the flesh. That was what went through my mind. Felt like I was face to face with… not a dog. Not just a dog.”

  I sit up, strain my eyes to fix on Vince through the fuzzy gloom. “That’s not so weird to me, Vince.”

  We go back to being fake-asleep.

  In the dark before sleep comes I watch the floral wallpaper abstract to become different patterns, the ceiling’s mild rippling stucco, hear the heat come on like a fire touching off. I like how headlights coming through the windows sweep the room like a copy machine, and when it’s dark before sleep to think about Wendy.

  We’d drink from the same cup, she and I in the morning before leaving for our dumb jobs—a mug of green tea that would get lukewarm, hardly had, or she would make coffee with the special press of hers I never figured out how to use. Our mug read “Might Be Gin.” She found it in a picnic basket of crap outside an empty home’s aluminum mailbox, left by someone who moved away for good and didn’t have room. We were just hitting our kitschy knick-knack prime.

  I would drink my share, long sips now and then, before forgetting about it, then she would pick it up, drink her portion, and forget about it, and that’s how mornings went between Wendy and me.

  And I would see her off with our secret little handshake.

  I like digging them up, all of these pointless specifics. I like to think about Wendy the way I like to pick at scabs, peeling off the dead parts until I draw a bead of blood, a bright scarlet pinhead. I like doing this, at night, in the quiet, picking away the necrotic rind of my heart stinging fresh, and I feel something real again at least.

  That Labor Day she snapped my photograph in the backyard for no real reason. A precise flower blend I could never pinpoint, which her side of the bed smelled of to me. The night she poked fun at me in front of everyone and we were wine drunk and she placed her temple to mine and gave me amnesia. How it was as simple for her to just quit, shelve it all and go as getting the mail, because it was better that way. I curl into the hurt like a stiff, dead leaf, and listen.

  A specific sound will catch and pull me inside out, like a shirtsleeve hooking on a twist of fence. The rummage for correct change in a leather purse, perhaps. A sniffle, an uproar, muttered swear words at the front-door lock that you have to have the magic touch to make work.

  The lowlight reel returns. Further back, more backward, until she will stroll my way, a benevolent sorceress in old blue pumas, and it’s the day Wendy walks right past my table, trailing the perfume of the orange she’d just eaten. Then everything works out right, I think, lying to myself. A low form of necromancy, I’d claim, that is, she’d reply with a wink, just routine masochism in the end.

  Sometimes the hurt will gush, as if she and I collapsed only an hour ago, or stun me stupid like the last time, when I was one of dozens, maybe hundreds, who were missing her, dumbstruck where they stood, having expected to go on seeing her for a long time and we were all wrong.

  I think about all that I have expected that turned out to be wrong, in the dark before sleep, remind myself the joy and love and success found by all the regular people I know are not meant for me, and when I remind myself of this, I can picture the look on my face, and would prefer no one sees it.

  I recall, at night, when we had finally severed our lives from one another, how she hoped I was happy, wanted the best for me and how that stunk like a lie. How her generosity was the worst part, and how thinking that is the worst part is not good. Not good. I remember thinking I hope she’s miserable. That I hope she’s devastated I’m devastated. That she is listless and guilt-ridden, judged by her friends, who, I remember thinking, surely were on my side, knew I was the good guy in all this. The victim. That she cannot, for the life of her, figure out what she did to draw their disdain. For the life of her. What my bitterness cost I’ll never manage to calculate. The debt appreciates. I’d rather not know.

  I’m listening, keeping watch for the burnt orange sky to freckle with stars, for them to offer some kind of solace, even though I absolutely know better than to expect anything other than deeper cold, more raps on the snout for hoping a change in luck is just around the corner. What are you looking at us for? the stars seem to say. We thought you were someone else.

  Until I start thinking I should grow up, for all sorts of reasons, but in tonight’s case, because of Ray. Because it is vile, because it is disgraceful. But the inertia of my self-pity propels me on, this is the perfect setting for thoughts such as these—here where they will not spread or spoil the days and moods of less troubled people. Here I let them roam, where it is dark and warm enough to incubate these monstrous hopes and regrets and wishes and tastes, and enable their growing up big and strong and cruel, into the Gavin Kwasneskis this great state must one day reckon with.

  Wendy would probably disagree, if she were here, too.
Where I see a beyond-drunk maniac speeding to make the light, hit Wendy and run, Wendy would have just seen some lady named Regina driving home from happy hour, who had to pee really bad and just a few blocks to go. She would remind me conjuring maniacs is my quaint attempt at sparing myself the grief mundane truth is always screwed into.

  In the dark I should know there is very little stopping one from cold-blooded appraisals of all the catastrophes and thefts and faults your life sops up, and how, and why, and you, your part in the job. Best to take a good look at yourself in dim light, when you are small, closest to sleep, to death, when I can almost feel it, I think, or feel anything, acknowledge that this is what is happening to me, that I can feel it happening, feel myself warping, my branches twisting, hardening my heart. And it is scary and dispiriting, yet it is a good feeling too. How good it feels to have nothing to fear, nothing tender left, not a single weak spot, to understand you are soon to be what the miserable world dreads and teaches its children to beware. It is thrilling, I think, enough to keep me awake in the dark all night long.

  I was sure is the point. About her, I was always certain. That was the problem. And the point was we had, were supposed to have, plenty of time. Wendy, who wasn’t even my wife—yet—she was never always anything. The point was I knew. The problem was Wendy, seeing that, let the world continue its swerve toward her. If there is some kind of cosmic lesson in this I refuse to learn it.

  Vince is retching in the bathroom, hacking up a lung. Half-awake, I crack open one eye, in the heavy static dark and look: outside, in the sky, very far away, see the bright grain of light I came so close to? Just a plane, lit like a comet, distant enough to appear stock-still.

  I think I’ll ask whether Vince worries in similar fashion, at night, in his bed, beside Caroline, if she wards off his disquiet, if he prays that nothing steals the largesse of human care and tenderness in which crude Vince is cushioned, like a bubble-wrapped tomahawk. Does it trouble him and if it does, does he pray and worry if and when his present circumstances might change? Is he afraid of earthquakes?