“Wait right here,” Atomic said. “This won’t take long.”
I try to wait, but like always I’m no good at it. I rewrap my coat around my body and then do it again because it doesn’t feel right. I button and rebutton the buttons, but that doesn’t work. My coat feels crooked and even though it is freezing out, I take it off and put it back on, over and over, until it feels exactly right.
I wipe the fog of my breath away from the window. I try to figure out which lonely woman Atomic will go home with, which woman he is going to tie up and not untie until she gives him her PIN number.
“If you don’t fuck everything up,” Atomic told me before he went inside, “this plan will work great.”
Another bell rings. Atomic grins at a woman with horse teeth. A bus passes and shields me from the wind for a few seconds. A show has just let out at the movie theatre down the block and I watch everyone sprint to their cars. I lean into the building, hope for a little heat to leak out of the bricks.
Sometimes at parties or at the bar, people ask Atomic and I how we met.
“We were high school sweethearts,” he’ll lie.
“We worked at a mystery dinner theatre together,” he’ll say.
“She saved me from drowning,” he’ll tell them.
Atomic’s a good liar. He’s funny, he’s charming. He has kissable lips, good teeth. He knows that everyone would rather hear something interesting than something true.
Here’s how we actually met: A year ago I got pissed off at my last boyfriend and I got on a Greyhound bus. When I got off, Atomic was standing in front of a building hitting a pickle bucket with some drumsticks.
He said, “Hey you, come here,” to me.
And that’s what I did.
I can’t wait any longer, so I don’t. I walk inside the bar and find a table with some nametags on it. I take one that says “Ms. Rita Johnstone” and peel off the backing. I slap it on my shirt above my tit.
The bell rings again and instead of looking around like I’m lost, I sit down across the table from a man with a nametag that says “Stephen.” He’s wearing a navy-blue sweater. His skin has a grayish tint, the color of canned meat.
“I’m Rita,” I say. “Sorry I’m late.”
I read somewhere that if you say something over and over again enough times to yourself you will begin to believe it. Other people have told me this is true, that if you repeat something enough your brain will finally just give up and make whatever you keep repeating your new reality.
“Yep,” I tell Stephen. “I’m Rita, Rita, Rita.”
Even though it is the middle of winter, Stephen’s sweating. Beads of sweat form under his wispy hair and he wipes them off with his sleeve. The sweat immediately forms again. This time he takes a paper napkin and dabs it away. Unfortunately the napkin is maroon and it leaves a burgundy stain on his forehead.
“I work in the restaurant supply business,” he tells me. “I can get you stuff at cost.”
“Wow,” I say. “What stuff?”
I’ve decided to say everything in this little girl voice, high and squeaky. I notice there are little pockets of spit forming in the corners of Stephen’s mouth.
“Industrial mixers, pots and pans,” he says. “Professional ovens, pastry racks, ramekins.”
“That’s incredible,” I tell him.
“What do you do?” he asks.
I tell him I’m a pediatric nurse, even though I really work part-time at a sandwich shop. I make up a sick child for my lie too, a boy named Eric who has bad lungs. I tell Stephen all about Eric, how each breath he takes is a struggle, how inspirational he is to everyone in the ward. I tell him how Eric drew a picture of me with angel wings and how I framed it and hung it right above my bed so that each morning I’ll see it and remember how precious life really is.
“You sound like a saint,” Stephen says.
“Part saint,” I say, “and part sinner.” I wink at Stephen as I say the word “sinner” and he nearly chokes on his drink.
The bell rings again and Atomic sits down next to a woman with a dark-brown bob who has a ring on each of her fingers. I flop down in front of a man named Graham. Graham is skinny and bald, with a crooked nose. He tells me he works as an urban planner. He says he has a condo with a view of the river. He takes a cloth from his pocket and wipes off his glasses and I take a tortilla chip from the basket in front of me and put it in my mouth and crunch down.
“Do you like my mouth?” I ask him. “Some people have told me they really like my mouth. Some people say that it’s the best part of me.”
“It’s a good mouth,” Graham says.
Someone has left a cocktail napkin with some questions on it at our table and I start asking Graham these questions rapid fire, not leaving him any chance to answer.
Where do you see yourself in five years, how do you feel about kids, if I went blind or lost my legs would you stick by me, what is your spirit animal, what’s a perfect day to you, how long is a long backrub, do you have any hang-ups about psoriasis?
Other than the psoriasis question, these are the kinds of things I often ask Atomic. He gets annoyed at me when I do this, calls me “Magazine Quiz.” Jesus, he’ll say, we might not be alive in five minutes and here you are wasting your time with this?
When I run out of questions on the napkin, I start making up some questions of my own.
“How do you want to die?” I ask Graham.
“Fire,” he says immediately. He seems like he has actually prepared for this question, which I appreciate.
“Really?” I say. “Me too.”
“It would hurt for a bit,” he says, “but then it wouldn’t really matter, right?”
After I’m done with the questions, Graham goes into his bag and pulls out a cardboard tube and spreads some onion skin sheets out over our table.
“This is my latest project,” he explains. “Here’s the green space, here’s the ample parking. The bottom floor is zoned for mixed use.”
I can tell he’s testing me, seeing if I like the same things that excite him. So I show him that they do. I run my fingers along the edges of the blue-lined paper. I ask him questions about his project, I smile and nod at his answers.
“Things get torn down,” he tells me just before the bell rings again, “and then new things push out of the earth to fill the void. It’s like a new tooth cutting through your gums to replace what’s missing.”
I sit down across from Atomic. His nametag says “Willem.” It has started to peel off his chest, but he presses it back down, smooths it out.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, “I told you to wait outside.”
“I got bored,” I say.
“You always get bored,” he says. “What if I got bored with how bored you get? What would happen then?”
A few months ago Atomic tied me to a chair. He said it was an experiment to help me learn more about myself. When he left to go get some cigarettes, I chewed through the twine he tied me up with, something he hadn’t figured I’d be able to do. The next time he was more careful. He handcuffed me to the door of our refrigerator.
“You’re going to ruin it,” he says. “You’re going to fuck up the plan.”
I look around at the other people here, lonely people trying to put their best foot forward, people who weren’t ready to meet someone when they still looked good enough, people who work too many hours, people who drink too much or can’t stop themselves from doing weird shit, like going to grocery stores and breaking all the candy bars in half when no one is looking.
“Let’s go live in the country,” I tell Atomic. “We’ll open a restaurant. You’ll flip the burgers and I’ll bring out the plates. We’ll grow some weed in the basement of our house and sell it to all the high school kids. We’ll have a kid and name it Atomic Jr. and call it Tommy for short.”