“I need to finish this up.” He gestured in the direction of the El Camino. “But there’s beer in the fridge if you want to hang around. This won’t take more than about ten minutes.”
Well, that was the best offer I was likely to get today. I headed into the trailer and snagged two beers out of his fridge. A frying pan on the stove held congealing bacon fat, and the kitchen table was covered with old newspapers and engine parts—both combining to give a faint bacon/engine grease tang to the air. It didn’t bother me. I was pretty used to it since I usually slept over here as often as I could. Randy’s furniture was old and battered, and the carpet had more stains on it than a bum’s underwear, but the trailer didn’t have roaches, rats, or my dad.
I plopped down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, shoving aside a stack of old Car and Driver magazines and about six remotes. Even though Randy didn’t seem to give much of a shit about his living arrangements, he took his entertainment pretty seriously : wide screen HDTV, Blu-Ray/DVD player, Xbox, and a kick-ass stereo system. Yet another reason why I preferred spending my time over here.
I didn’t turn the TV on. After the day I’d had, I was more in the mood for quiet. No fights. No insults. Nothing weird or disturbing.
I’d finished the first beer and was well into the second by the time Randy came in. He headed straight to the kitchen, returning after a moment with a beer in one hand and baggie in the other. He cracked the beer open and took a long swig, then snagged an already-rolled joint out of the baggie and lit it. After several puffs he passed it to me.
I took a long hit, then tipped my head back and waited for it to take effect.
“You been to Pillar’s since the other night?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said, without moving. The mellow hadn’t hit yet, and I felt that if I shook my head it would kill it.
“Me neither.” He paused. “Gotta admit, I was kinda surprised to see you come by here after all that.”
Damn. Must have been more of a fight than I thought. I took another hit off the joint as a missing fragment of memory abruptly slid into place. Oh yeah, he’d gone off with some chick, so I’d tried to get back by flirting with a guy I didn’t even know. Then the guy had offered to drive me home, because I was way too drunk to drive. Or too stoned. I didn’t remember drinking all that much. No, wait, the guy had been buying me drinks. But I didn’t leave with him. I was sure of that. There was no way I’d go off with someone I didn’t know. I could be stupid as all hell sometimes, but I knew better than to do that. So instead I tried to walk home. Yeah, that was so much smarter.
“Guess that’s why I haven’t called you.” Randy was still talking.
I took another pull on the joint, a hard one, as if I could get it to take effect faster. Why the hell wasn’t I high yet? “Umm, okay.”
He frowned down into his beer. “You know I didn’t fuck her, right?”
I blinked at him. “Hunh?”
“Alison,” he said. “The chick I left with? You came after me, asked where the fuck I was going. Acting all jealous and shit—”
“I remember,” I interrupted. “And you laughed and said you were gonna go bang her in the parking lot.”
A grimace flickered over his face. “I was just fucking with you,” he muttered. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. I was going out to take a look at her car. She was having trouble with her battery. Then I came back in and you were all over some asshole. Pissed me off.”
Yeah, I’d believed him. It wasn’t as if he’d never cheated on me before, though now I could see that doing so in the middle of our night out together would have been a stretch, even for him. And I’d overreacted like a moron, trying to make him jealous. I remembered that much, though I couldn’t for the life of me remember who the other guy was. Hopefully I hadn’t made too much of an ass of myself.
“Well, it was a dick thing to say,” I told him.
“I know,” he said with a wince. “Sorry. So how’d you get the job?” It was pretty obvious he wanted to change the subject, but that was fine with me. If we kept hashing over what had happened at the bar we’d probably end up in another fight.
“Umm, through my probation officer,” I said after a second of mental scrambling for an answer. I wasn’t totally sure why, but I didn’t want to tell him the truth about the whole thing. Maybe ’cause he’d want me to explain, and I didn’t know how to? “It’s a weird gig, but kinda cool, too. And it even has benefits.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nodded. “After three months I get health insurance, and if I stay ten years I get vested in their pension plan.”
He laughed out loud. “The day you keep a job for ten years is the day I grow a twelve-inch dick.”
“Fuck you,” I shot back. “That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, you’re one to talk.”
He grinned and gave me a light punch on the arm. “I know, that’s why I said it. You and me, we’re too alike. Hell, I’ll be shocked if you can keep this job long enough to get the health insurance.”
I scowled. “Gee, thanks for having so much faith in me.”
“Aw, c’mon, Angel, lighten up. It’s not that. You like to do your own thing too much to stick with the same job for so long.”
And what the hell was my own thing? Whatever it was, so far it sucked.
“This is shit pot,” I announced after a moment, stubbing out the half inch of joint that was left. Normally I’d smoke it down as far as possible, but I still wasn’t feeling any buzz. Didn’t seem to be any point to smoking the rest of it.
He shrugged without looking at me as he picked up a remote and turned on the TV. “So get your own.”
“Seriously,” I said. “I don’t think that’s pot. I’m not feeling a damn thing from it.”
He flicked a glance my way. “It’s the same goddamn bag we started the other night. You liked it enough back then.”
I grimaced, then stood.
“Where y’going?” he asked.
“Dunno.” I rubbed my arms. Everything felt weird and faded, like the world was turning into a black and white movie. And the dialogue and music on the TV seemed flat and tuneless. But I wasn’t feeling the beer or pot at all. I was still cold sober and I didn’t want to be. “Home, I guess.”
“Nice.” His mouth curled into a mild scowl. “You come over and drink my beer and smoke my shit and then leave? What’s up with that?” He grabbed my hand and gave it a small tug, then offered a sly smile. “C’mon . . . stay.”
I hesitated. I liked sex with Randy, even though we were so on-again off-again that I’d pretty much lost track of whether we were dating or not. After almost four years, we were so damned used to each other that whenever we were together we ended up in the same comfortable patterns.
And I knew what part of that pattern would be. I’d stay, we’d screw, then we’d get high on whatever he had around, and I’d probably oversleep.
“I can’t.” I tugged free of his grasp. “Sorry. I gotta go. I have work tomorrow. Y’know? That job I won’t last at?”
“Are you actually pissed at me about that?” he asked, a frown forming between his eyes.
“No! I’m not,” I insisted. “I just need to get home. I can’t screw this up.”
“Sure. Whatever,” he muttered. He didn’t reach for my hand again and shifted his attention to the TV. For a brief instant I wanted to go ahead and pick a fight, simply to see if that would snap everything back into focus. Get him and me all riled up and see if that could somehow get him to act like he gave a shit if I was around. We’d yell and scream, then we’d make up and get high and fuck.
And I’d oversleep and lose my job, I thought. I knew myself too well. But it’s only a job, right? Whoever wrote that letter can’t have been serious about the whole go-to-jail thing. . . .
I shook my head, scowling. God, I was weak. How could I even be considering risking it?
The same way I’ve risked everything else in my life. By not giving a shit. Or getting so fucked up I couldn’t give a shit, even if I wanted to.