Our father left when I was three and Mom was pregnant with my sister, so Jessica is the only family I have. But whatever. She abandoned me. She could go fuck herself.
When I glanced at Keri, she looked worse than ever. We had been walking for what felt like an hour.
“Are we getting close?”
“Maybe we’re halfway. I don’t know if I’m going to make it, Aiden.”
“You’ll make it.”
“I feel like I need to sit down. Like right now.”
“Let’s sit down for a minute, then.”
We were on the sidewalk of a major thoroughfare. There were more people out now, and most of them appeared to be going nowhere, or at least not in a hurry to get there.
“I need some water,” she said. “Why didn’t we bring any water?”
“I guess I thought we’d be there by now.”
She wasn’t looking at me. Her hands were trembling worse than ever.
“I have to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“I’m… I’m sort of addicted to Oxy. Like, painkillers in general, but mainly I use Oxy.”
“And you’re out.”
“Yes. But I’m hoping Jimmy will have some. He always has something.”
“Let’s hurry up and get there, then, so he can fix you up.”
“Okay,” Keri said, “but then what? Even Jimmy won’t have, like, an endless supply.”
I wondered why she wouldn’t look at the new world as the perfect excuse to stop using but didn’t see the point in saying it. You can’t tell anyone to get clean. They either figure it out or they don’t.
“I’m really scared, Aiden. I haven’t been this frightened in my whole life.”
I could tell Keri wanted to be held, so I leaned forward and embraced her. Her stomach rumbled. Neither of us knew what else to say, so we just sat for a while.
I was starting to wish I could have made this trip myself.
Later, we saw a 7-11 that Keri believed was on the way to Jimmy’s place. Suddenly she was confident we were headed in the right direction. Her mood improved and her hands shook a little less.
“So how’d you lose your job?” she asked.
“Economy went south and the company cut back on payroll.”
“I don’t understand why the economy goes up and down all the time. Why don’t people just keep buying stuff the way they always do? It’s not like I ever want to stop.”
“It’s more complicated than people buying stuff.”
“What else is it?”
“Like maybe the housing market goes to shit because people borrow money to buy a house when they know they won’t be able to pay it back.”
“So? I never got a bad mortgage. Why do I have to pay for someone else’s problem?”
“I don’t really know. But when people can’t pay what they owe, banks don’t have enough cash to go around, and that locks up the system.”
“Seems like a lot of made up shit to me,” Keri said. “Like one person freaks out and that makes someone else freak out and suddenly everybody stops buying shit.”
Keri’s childish grasp of economic theory was beginning to grate on me, so I shut up and hoped she would take the hint.
At that moment we were walking past a shopping center that housed a couple of deserted chain restaurants and fast food outlets like Jimmy John’s and Smashburger. The center was anchored by a Whole Foods Market, where someone had put up a handwritten banner that said CLOSED: Out of food!
Keri hadn’t spoken in a while, probably because she had taken the hint, and I didn’t care for the silence after all. Without the noise of her voice to cover it, I could hear the awful sound of my mind unraveling.
“So,” I said. “Your mom moved away with some asshole?”
“Yeah. She finds a new jerk every couple of years who will put up with her shit. This is the first time she’s left Dallas, though, so maybe he’s the one.”
“Did she not treat you right?”
“She’s just selfish. She didn’t mean to have me, but she also doesn’t believe in abortion. So here I am.”
“Does she know what you do? What your job is?”
“She knows I strip. She gives me shit for it, but I think that’s because I can do it and she can’t.”
“How did you get into it?”
Keri laughed. “Guys always want to know that. It’s no fucking surprise. I didn’t try very hard in school, so I can’t get an office job. For a while I was a waitress at a nice restaurant. Every so often some rich asshole would leave me a giant tip and write his phone number on the receipt. I mean, I have nice tits and I’m not fat, so.”
“You’re a lot more than that,” I lied.
“Sure, I am. Except I met you at Cinnamon, and that’s why you were there, right? For the tits?”
“I was there because of Jimmy.”
“Well, anyway. I was making decent money as a waitress, but after a while I got to thinking I could make a lot more money at a club. I started out waiting tables, but the real money is in dancing, so here we are.”
“Do you like it?”
“No, I don’t fucking like it. Guys shell out good money for me to sit in their lap, and for what? Why don’t they watch free porn at home? Why don’t they find themselves a woman who will make them happy?”
“Not everyone can find a woman like you, Keri.”
“Don’t say shit like that. They don’t know anything about me. I’m just an empty shell to them. A body they can ogle and squeeze in all the right places.” Ahead, on the sidewalk, a family approached: Dad in the front, followed by his wife and three kids. All five of them wore backpacks. The dad and both sons carried rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Shit,” Keri said. “Let’s cross the street.”
“I don’t think they’re dangerous. The guns are for protection.” “Aiden—”
I took her hand and kept walking forward. The two boys were young teens, maybe fourteen and twelve years of age. The daughter was less than ten. When we had almost reached them, the dad said something to his wife and put up his hands.
“We’re not looking for trouble,” he said in a manner that sounded rehearsed. “Just let us be on our way.”
“We aren’t looking for trouble, either,” I said.
Keri and I veered off the sidewalk and into the street. The dad glanced at her as he walked by, and Keri noticed.
“Hey,” she said.
All five family members turned toward her, and the dad stopped walking.
“You have any water?” Keri asked. “We’re pretty thirsty.”
“We have limited supplies,” said the dad in the rehearsed voice again. The sons must have been given instructions on how to behave, because they both stared at me as if I were a terrorist. The daughter looked like she had been crying and might start again at any time.
“Just a swallow,” Keri said. “We’re parched.”
The dad hesitated, and his wife didn’t like it. She leaned close and whispered harshly in his ear.
“I’m sorry,” said the dad. “We have nothing to spare.”
Now the daughter burst into tears. “Daddy—”
“Let’s go!” growled the dad. “Move! Now!”
As Keri watched them go, her face hardened, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or scream.