Save Yourself (3 page)

“Sure,” she said, and gave him a limp smile.

Patrick got quite drunk that night. Drunker than he meant to; drunker than was warranted, given that it was just a Wednesday and he was just in his living room and tomorrow he had to work (although not until midnight). Mike and Caro drank, too, and eventually Patrick noticed that the hand Mike was keeping between Caro’s thighs was becoming less and less appropriate, so he stumbled upstairs to bed. It wasn’t long afterward that he heard the thump-and-giggle sound of Mike carrying her upstairs to their room and the double thud of their bedroom door being kicked shut. Caro said words he couldn’t quite catch and Mike said, “Oh, god,” but it was more of a moan.

Patrick fumbled for a CD. It turned out to be Metallica and the empty space in the room filled with noise like it was water. He was drunk, he was drowning, he was sinking into blackness. He went down gladly.

There were a few times the next morning when he was dimly aware of Mike or Caro moving around the house: a door closing, the sound of
the television downstairs. Once, he dozed off to a fragmented dream of tawny hide flashing in headlights, dream-felt a thud, and woke in a startle with his heart pounding. But he fell back asleep again in a few minutes.

When he woke up for real everyone else was at work. He did some laundry and made himself an over-easy sandwich with a slice of American cheese, hungover enough that the previous night felt far, far away. He had no desire to bring it closer. After he ate his sandwich, he decided he wanted a Coke and got as far as grabbing his keys and stepping outside. Blinking in the noon sun, he saw his car parked where he’d left it, in front of the house next door. A thick layer of grime coated the windshield. Everything he’d forgotten snapped back into brutal clarity and he looked at the car and thought, no, hell no, he didn’t need a Coke that badly.

He spent the day doubting that he really had the gumption to walk to work that night, but when he stepped outside at eleven thirty, one look at the car made his skin crawl and the night was warmish, so he set off on foot. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The dingy strips of paint peeling off the houses on Division Street didn’t show so much at night, and when he got onto the highway and away from the streetlights, the wedge of moon blurred the speed limit signs into afterimages. He was between haircuts at the moment, and the feel of the breeze moving the long strands against his neck—like gentle fingers—almost made him want to never cut his hair again. There was a dreamy quality to being out this late, when everything else was shut down: like time had stopped and the rules no longer applied.

When he walked through the door at Zoney’s at midnight, the blue-white fluorescents frizzled that nice blurry dreaminess into nothing. The back of his candy-striped work shirt was damp with sweat and his hair stuck to the nape of his neck. The guy he was relieving signed off on his deposit and left; Patrick counted the drawer, shoved it back under the register, and wiped the counter clean. It felt like he’d only been away from the store for a few minutes, like he’d
stumbled through some reality loophole to a universe that was all Zoney’s, all the time.

By the time the cop who stopped in every night for a scratch ticket and a Snickers left, Patrick had downed two cartons of chocolate milk, and no longer felt perched on the edge of his own grave. If it had been a weekend, a steady stream of drunks would have trickled in through the early hours, with a surge around four when the bars closed and then nothing much until sunrise. But on Thursday nights, even people who drank their paychecks were back in bed by two so they could drag themselves through the next day to get to the real weekend. The highway outside was so deserted that he could have stretched out in the middle of it for a nap. The classic-rock station playing in the store was automated, all music and condom ads. When Patrick had first started working at Zoney’s, there’d been a CD player, and he’d played Black Sabbath while he worked. The loud and angry was a nice antidote to the quiet and bright and made him feel more
him
, as if, candy-striped shirt or no candy-striped shirt, he could broadcast this little piece of his soul to every poor schmuck who came through the door for a Red Bull at three in the morning. It got people’s attention, reminding them that the world was real, that it was alive. But one morning he forgot to take the CD home with him, and when he came in for his next shift, the CD player had been replaced by a note from the manager about appropriate work music. So that was that. One more fragment of his being shaved away, and all he got in return was minimum wage and a nearly perfect command of every Eagles lyric ever. You could check out anytime you liked, but you could never leave: truer words, man. Truer fucking words.

Things started to pick up around six, and by seven he’d fallen into a kind of waking coma of jingling change and beeping cash registers. When a voice in front of him said, “I brought you coffee,” he woke with an unpleasant start.

On the other side of the counter, paper cup extended, stood the goth girl. Today she wore a purple dress with a half dozen belts hanging
loosely from the waist. Her boots were big and cartoonish and she’d probably had to drive to Pittsburgh to buy them. The bag over her shoulder looked like it had come from a surplus store.

She smiled. “A peace offering, okay?”

Patrick didn’t smile back. He looked at the impatient-looking woman in panty hose and sneakers in line behind her, and said, “Come on up.” As he rang up the woman’s Slim-Fast and got her a pack of Capri cigarettes, the goth girl stood and watched with an almost anthropological interest.

“What to avoid becoming, exhibit A,” she said, when the woman was gone.

“Fuck off.”

The girl rolled her eyes. “Relax. Do you want milk and sugar in your coffee? I left it black because I didn’t know. It’s the good stuff. From Starbucks.” When he didn’t move to take the cup she grimaced. “Look, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not going to go psycho on you. It’s not your fault Ryan’s dead. You didn’t kill him.”

This wasn’t happening. He was not standing here among the raspberry-coconut Zingers and jerky sticks, earning minimum wage and listening to her say these things. “Next,” he said, and sold a large coffee and a chocolate cream doughnut to a fat guy who didn’t need any more doughnuts.

“Let’s start over,” she said, smoothing her already impeccable black hair. “My name is Layla. Like the song. You know:
you got me on my knees
.”

This girl. This little high school kid with her stupid boots and her Addams Family wardrobe and her skin as white and floury-looking as unbaked bread. Pillsbury goth girl, just out of the can. He wished she’d go cut herself or snort Ritalin or do whatever the hell goth girls did when they weren’t blocking his counter and saying things like
It’s not your fault Ryan’s dead. You didn’t kill him
.

He sold five dollars’ worth of gas to a kid in a Slayer shirt and then there was nobody left in the store but the two of them. The girl
leaned her elbows on the counter and said, “I looked your yearbook picture up in the school library. You had a really dumb haircut back then.”

Patrick cashed out the register, taking the keys to the storage cabinet from behind the bill tray. He unlocked the cabinet, pulled out a carton of low-tar menthol something-or-others, tore it open, and started stuffing the packs of smokes into the overhead racks. “Why?” he said.

“I wanted to see what you looked like in real life. I have kind of a thing for monsters. Are you going to drink your coffee?”

The paper cup with the Starbucks logo sat on the counter where she’d left it. “I don’t drink coffee.”

“Oh.” Her face seemed to fall. “Do you want something else? Gin and tonic?”

Patrick finished the cigarettes and slammed the cabinet door closed. “I want you to leave me alone.”

“People think I’m a monster, too. Zombie Girl, Freakshow, Bride of Dracula—your friend yesterday wasn’t exactly the first person to come up with that one, you know.” She shrugged. “I don’t really care. If they didn’t call me Zombie Girl they’d call me Geek Girl, or Blow Job Girl, or whatever. I used to be Jesus Girl, if you believe that.” There was a display on the counter of plastic toy cell phones filled with gum. Picking one up, she pressed a button on the side, and the toy went
Brrreeeep
. “Hey, are you doing anything this afternoon?”

“Why? Do you have an open slot in your stalking schedule?”

She laughed. “Funny. No, monster, if I was stalking you, we’d be having this conversation in your living room. I just thought maybe if you weren’t doing anything, and you wanted some company, we could hang out, that’s all.”

Patrick stared at her, incredulous. Before he had time to say anything the bell over the door jingled again and this time it was Caro. Her unwashed hair was pulled back in a messy knot. Mike’s Penguins key chain dangled from the front pocket of her cutoffs. She pointed
toward the back of the store, said, “Coffee,” and disappeared behind the Hostess display.

The goth girl lifted one perfectly penciled eyebrow, her white-powdered face faintly amused. “Busy after all, are we?” she said, then lifted the toy phone up, hit the button—
Brrreeeep
—and dropped it into her army-navy bag.

“Hey,” Patrick said, but she had already turned and walked out of the store. Caro emerged from between the aisles with a large coffee in one hand.

“Your store does not have good coffee. I ate a doughnut back there.” She yawned.

Patrick bit back his annoyance. “That’s cool. People have apparently given up paying for things around here, anyway.”

“Don’t get snippy. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to pay.” Caro handed him a five. “Who was your shoplifter, Marilyn Mansonette? You didn’t try very hard to stop her. Do you know her or something?”

Through the window, he watched the goth girl climb into her big shiny car, one of those new round retro-modern things that looked like a cartoon hearse. As the driving lights came on, a pounding bass line kicked in. Nu-metal techno shit. “Not even a little bit,” he said, and made Caro’s change.

“That’s some car she’s driving,” she said. “Somebody is certainly Daddy’s best girl.”

He wanted to change the subject. “What are you doing out this early, anyway?”

“It’s not voluntary.” She folded her arms on top of the cash register and rested her chin on her wrists. The top of her head bobbed with each word. “Mike let me take his truck since my stupid battery has been so flaky lately. I just drove him to work. You can get him tonight, right?”

“Nyet.”

“Fuck you, why not?”

Because driving scared him and he didn’t want to do it anymore. “My car’s out of commission. From hitting the deer. I told you.”

She blinked her green eyes and frowned. “You didn’t say it wasn’t working at all. How did you get here?”

“Walked.”

“You’re not going to turn into that creepy long-haired guy who walks everywhere, are you?”

“My hair’s not that long.”

“It’s getting there.” She yawned again, bending her face down toward her shoulder to cover her mouth. “You should have asked for a ride.”

The door bell jingled yet again. This time it was an old duffer wearing a flannel shirt that looked as ancient as he did. “Need a Match 6,” the duffer said, pulling a scrap of paper with some numbers scrawled on it out of his pocket.

Caro stepped back. “I’ll tell Mike to call you.” Then she lifted a hand and left. The duffer started reading off his numbers and Patrick punched them in. As he waited for the ticket to print, he happened to glance out the big plate-glass window and see Caro. He watched as she put her coffee cup down on the running board of Mike’s huge jacked-up truck, pulled the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her hand, and reached up to open the door. Then she freed her hand, picked up her cup, and hoisted herself nimbly into the cab. She didn’t even spill the coffee. It was impressive.

The lottery machine whirred. Patrick looked back at the old duffer. His eyes were the same place Patrick’s had just been. “Wouldn’t mind a piece of that,” the duffer said.

“You want her number?”

The duffer laughed, his mouth opening wide to show stained teeth and a yellow tongue. Patrick asked him if he needed anything else.

“That’ll do me,” the duffer said.

·   ·   ·

Bill had the next shift. A few minutes before he was supposed to arrive, the phone rang. “Dude,” he said, sounding at least as hungover as Patrick had been the night before. “Cover for me for a few hours.” And extra money was extra money, so Patrick did. By the time he got home, it was close to noon. Caro was at work and the house was empty. He took off his candy-striped Zoney’s shirt, dropped it on the floor next to the armchair, and dropped himself onto the couch. ESPN Classic was showing an old Pirates game; it was the playoffs, and the Pirates were winning. The last time that had happened, Patrick had been nine. His mom had been alive and his dad had only been a social drunk. He vaguely remembered this game, these players. Baseball cards at recess, or something.

He fell asleep before the fifth inning and woke up to a clattering crash. Which turned into a fast riffing guitar, and the Zeppelin song he used as his ringtone. He grabbed for his phone and pressed buttons until the noise stopped. “Hello?”

“I didn’t know your car was that bad,” Mike said.

Now the TV screen showed a man in a cowboy hat clinging to a bull the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Patrick groped for the remote. The announcer’s cornpone accent was the most annoying sound he’d ever heard. “Yeah,” he said, still groggy. “What’s up?”

“Caro’s phone is dead. Probably out of minutes. When she gets home, tell her I picked up a double, so she doesn’t need to come get me. I’ll get a ride with Frank tomorrow morning.” Patrick heard a shout and a laugh in the background. Mike was calling from the phone in the warehouse office. “She might be pissed. We were supposed to go out tonight. Tell her something nice for me, okay?”

“Tell her yourself,” Patrick said, but Mike had already hung up.

Patrick looked at the clock on the cable box. He’d been asleep for six hours, but it wasn’t enough, and his skull felt stuffed with cotton. On TV, some poor son of a bitch from Tulsa got dragged around the
arena by his left arm and the cornpone announcers said,
Good golly he shore did get hung up there dint he
and
I tell you what that is one tough Okie
.