“Don’t you motherfuckers sell drugs?”
I told him, “Mostly I eat them.”
“You ever heard ‘The Ten Crack Commandments?’”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t take?”
“No.”
Turtle and Little John stood up to leave. “It’s like this, guys. Your buddy here hooked it up. And we’ll subtract the four grand we were gonna give you guys. That puts it at ten-five. I don’t want it from this little faggot, I want it from you, Shane. It was your job, and this is your fuckup.”
Shane drummed his fingers lightly on his knees.
Turtle waved. “I’m being nice, but only because I hate Danny Ames even more than you do right now. Holler.”
Little John said, “Don’t holler in the house!”
They left.
Charlie held Shane in a bear hug. The tattooed man thrashed and screamed. Black gums bared.
I watched.
Shane calmed and eventually fell asleep.
Charlie got a blanket out of his room and covered his cousin sleeping there on the floor.
He said to me, “If you’ve got somewhere else to go, you’d better go there.”
I slept in my car.
Like that it was over.
I lived my whole life on a path and for a moment there I strayed. I lived low and found out that I wasn’t equipped for it. Charlie didn’t call me anymore. I lived in my car for a bit.
Shane disappeared.
I just kind of floated.
Then I decided to try life again.
III
FALLING BACK INTO IT
At one point my wife and I fell back into it. I called her and sobbed into the phone and she told me to come back over. The dog was happy to see me. When I walked back into the apartment I could smell who I was. She showed me her paintings and we listened to the songs she’d had on repeat.
All the old nicknames and shorthand came back. I was learning how to speak again. There are hundreds of tongues out there but you only really speak when you’ve invented your own language.
After spending the night together talking about everything, she left for work early the next morning. I lay in bed looking at the Christmas lights strung up along the wall and everything there was heavy. I thought about the bed. I thought about when I used to wake her up with a song and she’d stay quiet til I fixed the coffee and we went our ways.
I took a shower.
I left.
I lucked out. A friend of mine was out of a roommate. She offered to let me stay for a month without rent. She had four Chihuahuas. I sat on her couch and played with the dogs and slept on an air mattress in the guest bedroom.
I walked back into the hot dog restaurant. I filled out an application and the owner read it over and said, “You look familiar.”
I said, “I get that a lot.”
“You don’t look like you get that a lot.”
I said, “I’m ready to work.”
He said, “Well, we need a dish man.”
“I am your dish man.”
“Welcome aboard, dish man. Show up to work on time, and never fucking steal from me.”
“Okay.”
“If you steal from me, I’ll kill you.” He turned back to his laptop.
The steam from the dish pit left a layer of grime that I couldn’t shower off. I pulled the accordion hose down and sprayed the pots and listened to music on my phone and cleaned the rubber mats. I mopped the floors and joked with the cooks. We smoked cigarettes out back and they talked about their kids and wives. We talked about which waitresses we’d fuck and exactly how we’d do it. I would laugh and watch the snow collect on the chairs out on the empty patio and I’d go back in and spray more pots. I’d scrub them with a wire brush. It gave me time to think.
I pushed down the door to the dishwasher and I learned to enjoy the sound of the water moving.
After work I’d buy a six pack and walk home. One night I was in the corner store and a woman in a caftan was talking to the beer through the glass. “You’re so cold. Pretty. You’re so pretty and cold.” I grabbed my beer and she turned to me and adjusted her giant glasses and said, “I’m the heir to a concrete fortune.”
“Can I have five bucks?” I said.
She looked back through the glass. “It’s so pretty.”
Netflix and Chihuahuas till I passed out.
Then I woke up and did it again. For a time, it was exactly what I needed.
HALF
I met my mother at Chili’s. I brought her a Reese’s peanut butter cup.
We ordered our food and talked.
Every time we met, she talked about my father. She told me that she should have known better. That of course he wasn’t at the gym at that time of night. She told me about a swingers’ retreat he took her to. All the porn. She talked about how she’d take him back now, but it was too late. New loves, new lives. She missed him. Last time they met up he touched her hair. Now they hadn’t spoken in years.
When she talked about him, it filled me with a deep fear. Every young man fights the truth that he’s half his father.
I told her about my job and my place and her face lit up.
“I was worried about you.”
“I know.”
“You’re my boy. I can’t have my boy being so sad.”
I started crying into my fiesta chicken. She came around the table and gave me a hug.
FROG
A cook and I were on our break. We were smoking cigarettes out in front of the restaurant. Across the street, a bearded man in a suit fell off his bicycle. He cursed at it and picked it up and tossed it into the street.
The cook said, “Looks like Frog is back on the sauce.”
“Why do they call him ‘Frog’?”
“He hops from town to town. Is what he told me.”
I watched Frog kick the bike. Cars backed up and honking.
The cook said, “He comes in every day. Weird little fucker. Told me he had pills of weed. Panhandles enough to get a margarita and then sings songs and plays his harmonica.”
“I like harmonica.”
“You’re whiter than shit.”
“That is true.”
“A couple days ago he had that suit on and he had a Bible. Said he was going to church.”
“Looks like he missed church.”
“Looks like he went to church.”
Frog stormed off down the street. Bike still out in the road.
We heard a noise and turned to look into the restaurant. The college kids were tanked, and this was their last stop after the bar closed.
A brolic in a polo picked up a scrawny dude and bodyslammed him through a table. The cook and I recoiled and made a sound.
I turned back to him. Thought about it a bit. I said, “I need to go back to college.”
SHARA
I met a woman and for the first time in a while it felt natural. Her name was Shara. I asked her out like a normal human being and she said yes and we ate tacos and drank beer out of fishbowl margarita glasses.
I hadn’t spoken much to anyone in a long time, but when I talked to her I got my language back.
On our second date, she asked me about my wife.
“You guys aren’t divorced?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Just haven’t gotten around to it yet, I suppose.”
“Do you two still talk?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You can answer,” she said. “You’re still gonna get laid.”
After our third date we stripped out of our clothes and hopped the fence into the apartment complex pool and it was so cold but we held each other. Our lips turned blue and the groundskeeper kicked us out and so we went back to the apartment and played with the Chihuahuas and smoked with my roommate and fell asleep on my air mattress.