Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Chapter Two

I hate those days when you wake up thinking: today is going to be different. Today is when it all changes. Because you know it never does.

We woke up in spoon position, and we've been talking like humans since then. I'm in the bathroom trying not to gag on my toothbrush, and he's in the bedroom not getting ready for work.

And there's my hair in the mirror. That messy morning-hair I always see in the mirror at 8:15am is bright blue and can be seen from space. It's a good day.

I'm down the stairs in fifteen minutes with my cereal, running a hand through my blue hair. Warren is upstairs talking to himself because he missed me telling him I was leaving the bathroom. Then I hear him on the stairs, and he comes into the kitchen, his orange hair shining in the morning sun.

“You dick,” he says.

“I told you I was going downstairs,” I tell him.

He's laughing about whatever stupid shit is in his head now, and after a moment of him filling a glass with water, I say: “Learn my routine.”

He scoffs and says “Nope.”

Then he walks into the living room with his water and I keep eating my cereal. Because cereal tastes awesome with blue hair.

*

I've been at work about an hour when my assistant manager knocks on the office door. Then she opens it without waiting for me to say come in.

That irritates me. I turn in my chair and she stares at my hair as she talks, combining every thought into one run-on sentence.

“Aaron some guy says to see if you work today I told him I'd make sure you were here,” she says in one breath.

I hate my job. Hate, hate hate. My job.

I am a fast food manager. It simply does not get better for me.

“Martha,” I say to her, calmly, “You may inform him that I'll be right there.”

She nods and leaves without closing the door. And somehow, that's the worst thing in the world. I wonder sometimes if she seriously just leaves doors standing wide open wherever she goes. Bathroom doors, the front door of her house. Her car doors. I really do.

I stand up and walk out of the office, closing the door behind me, and walk between the sandwich boards and my mostly-teenaged employees to the front of the store.

And it's Harrison. So I say: “Why are you up at 10am?”

That makes him laugh. I hand him a cup for some free soda or something. I think he likes Root Beer. I don't know. He takes it and smiles at me, and I look over at the fries to stop the warm feeling in my stomach. Greasy, gross fries. Full of animal parts. “Want some fries?” I ask him.

“I'm not hungry. I just wanted to say hi, since I was here anyway.”

And that's when I notice he's with his sister. She always looks like this angry blonde supermodel, always scowling. I don't even bother greeting her, because she hates everyone. She doesn't need any free soda, either. Or fries.

“You should come over tonight,” I say to him. “I'm totally not cooking spaghetti.”

“I like spaghetti,” he says.

Greasy fries, I think. I look over at the broiler and think: dead cows, or kangaroos. Or whatever. I don't know what that shit's made of anymore. I look back at him, and he's looking right at my hair with his eyes. My hair and his eyes are the same color.

“We'll be having dead cows,” I tell him.

He laughs. Then he looks directly in my eyes and says: “I think Warren's still mad. Maybe another night.”

I smile and reach into the cookie container on the counter and toss him a packet of cookies.

*

Warren comes in for lunch and we're sitting in the dining room eating. Martha is busy screwing up hours of hard work for me, so that I'll have something to do when I get back in.

“Totally got a million compliments on my hair,” Warren says to me over his chicken/octopus/panda tenders.

“Yeah me too. And a few blank stares. And that guy down the road flashed everyone again.”

“He's gonna get put away one of these days,” Warren tells me, quietly.

“If and when the police stop finding it funny, yeah.”

He laughs and we look up at each other. I look into his eyes, and something makes me smile. Some stupid piece of shit glimmer of hope.

And out of nowhere, he says “I love you, Aaron Dunn.”

“You're a bastard,” I tell him. My face is all red now.

“You love me, too. Even if you're evil.”

“I do, okay? I love you. And I'm not cooking spaghetti tonight.”

Warren's eyes are huge under his brows and he says “No spaghetti?” all sarcastic.

“I'll turn you into whopper patties,” I tell him.

*

So I'm actually kind of excited about making dinner. Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Whatever.

I'm on the bridge over the freeway on my way home and I think: Wouldn't it be fun to just let go of the wheel right now? I don't always understand why my brain does this. It just does it. And I think: let go, listen to the cars hitting their brakes as you veer toward the guard rail.

And then there's that moment of ecstatic revelation as I picture the front of my car peeling the guard rail away, and the whole thing plummeting into oncoming traffic and exploding.

Yes.

I open my eyes just in time to slam on the brakes and avoid hitting a car stopped at a red light.

*

I've got dinner almost ready when the front door explodes open, and in come all of Warren's brothers. There are about four of them, and all of them under 20. Warren has apparently been expecting them. He's all hugging them and using that stupid word I hate: Dude. I hate that word so much. He only uses it around straight guys.

And in my head, I picture everything on fire. The walls are in flames, and the table is on fire too, the dishes cracking and melting in the heat. And just as quickly, the image is gone. Because it's time to play the gracious hostess. Motherfucker.

*

“I wish I would've known you were all coming over,” I tell them all, my eyes on Warren, neither of us smiling.

He stabs a piece of chicken with his fork and says nothing.

I looked around at them, their silent awkward teenage faces. I employ most of them. “I would've made a cake too.” I say to them, smiling.

A couple of them smile back at me, but mostly it's still awkward.

My plate of food is completely untouched.

*

After they've all gone downstairs, I sit at the table alone with the dishes. And these aren't normal dishes. These are bitter, broken dishes. In my mind, I have an ax, and I just smash that fucker down the middle of the table, sending them flying as the wood splinters around the ax head. Then I spend ten minutes smashing the dishes to bits and then I light it all on fire and walk out smiling.

And then I get up and clear the table and do the dishes, looking up at the pink siding next door occasionally.

Then I leave. I just walk out without telling anyone I'm leaving, and I vanish into the night. Forever.

*

Maybe not forever. But it's tempting.

All I wanted was dinner. Things were wonderful until then. God damn. Fuck my life.

I'm sitting on a bench. This bench just happens to be outside Harrison's building, on campus. It also happens to be a bus stop.

And I'm waiting for a bus.

I can take the bus downtown to the station, then take a charter bus out of town.

I've to a hundred my wallet and my debit card, and a couple credit cards.

I can do this.

I think of Warren and all his brothers passing a joint around in the basement, completely oblivious to the fact that I did all those stupid fucking dishes. I think about it and I want to scream. I want to cry in a fetal position. I hate my life.

I only have to wait about fifteen minutes for the bus. I get on and show my old student ID and sit down. Students ride free. And for my purposes, I'm still a student.

Middle finger, bus system. I don't owe you anything.

It's a 20 minute ride to the station, and I get a soda and a candy bar and I sit down, overwhelmed. Where do I go? My brain won't work. I can't think of where to go. I plan this every night, and I can't think of a single place to go now that I'm here.

After about an hour, I'm near tears from panic. I can't think of where to go. And then I don't want to leave. But I don't want to go home. Maybe if it were just me.

I look at my phone. No messages or missed calls. Give it a while. He'll notice.

After another hour, I give up, toss my empty soda bottle and candy wrapper in the trash, and get on the bus back to campus. The sun is starting to go down.

*

This bus, for my purposes, might just hit a train, which will then explode. But probably not.

And as it turns out, except for picking up a drunk or two in the Morningside addition and silent dancing crazy woman, the ride is uneventful.

I get off the bus and I'm starting to walk away when I hear a familiar voice. Harrison. And he's across the street, calling to me, and I'm like Oh no... panic... ignore?

But I smile and wave, and he waits for traffic to clear and comes running over. He smiles at me, then at my hair, and my hand goes up to my hair by reflex.

He looks back down at me and says “I was about to get something to eat. Are you hungry?”

*

So against my better judgment, I follow him to the Subway on University Strip. And we eat. Because I haven't eaten.

I give Subway $7 worth of my freedom for chicken salad on shit bread. The world closes over my head.

And as we're talking about what happened, and he's looking at me with his eyes and I'm trying not to look at him, I see my phone finally start to vibrate. I've been gone 4 hours at least. Maybe 5.

I look up at Harrison, and see that he's looking at Warren's name on my phone as though Warren were in the room. I look back down at the phone and send his call to voice mail. Then I turn it off. Then I throw it at the wall and it explodes. Okay, so I don't really throw it at the wall.

I look up at Harrison again and smile at him, my half-eaten sandwich a total mess on the table. I've been picking at it and moving pieces of it around the whole time we've been here. I say to him: “5 hours later, he calls.”

Harrison stares at me, and I start laughing, because screaming is the only other option.

There's something unidentifiable in Harrison's eyes right now, like he doesn't know what to think, or he doesn't want me to read him. But then he smiles, and he puts his hand over my hand, the one holding the fork I've been using to dismember my food. And his skin on mine is like lightening. I try to pull away, but his grip tightens instantly, just like Warren, and I stop pulling away and just let him touch me.

I'm just staring at his hand on mine, and then I look up at him like a dumbass and I start tearing up right there in the middle of Subway, because my life is such a fucked up piece of shit. They're quiet tears, but they're there. And Harrison's eyes are sad now, like he's watching a kitten die. And maybe he is. But it's the kitten's fault.

“You don't deserve to be treated like this,” he says to me, his voice quiet. And he bites his lower lip, still staring at me.

The words are amazing to hear. My heart is pounding so hard I might be dying.

“You have no idea how special you are,” Harrison says quietly, his eyes making me squirm, his voice crossing lines I never realized I was behind.

My stomach is in knots, and his hand is burning mine. Who am I to be feeling this way? What the fuck kind of person am I?

I try to pull my hand away, but he tightens his grip again, and I give up. He leans over the table and his eyes deepen and he says “All you have to do is call me. You can call me any time you need to talk. I want to be your friend.”

And then he lets go of my hand and sinks back into his side of the booth, and I stare at my hand all open-mouthed like a total idiot.

*

And when we're walking out the door, I finally burst into tears, and we sit down on a bench and I cry.

It's night now. The street lights make all of this worse.

Harrison listens to my dumb sob stories and tries to help. His hand plays with my blue hair, and I'm suddenly okay with that.

And I picture him and I doing things that would make a prostitute scream for forgiveness.

I'm such a bad person. I hate myself.

*

I'm on my way home now.

And there's something dark growing inside me just thinking about what I'm coming home to. I could just keep walking past the house. I could walk forever, or even right into the river and drown.

I can still feel Harrison's hand on my hand, and it makes me sad.

My feet look small and far away, and there's a sense of unreality to it all now.

I don't even know who I am anymore.

I'm this stupid person with blue hair living in a green house with black shutters.

*

I've left quite a scene downstairs. First of all, there's Warren on the sofa, drunk as fuck and comatose with a pool of saliva under his face. Then there are at least two of his brothers sprawled around on the other living room furniture, and another sitting up watching TV in the dark. I'm not sure where the last one is.

And don't get me started on the dishes. The fucking dishes. God damn. I had to do dishes again before I came up here, or my brain would never have let me sleep.

Those baked assholes.

I'm just now at the top of the stairs, and I turn to look out the window, and I see the top of the college, and the building Harrison lives in is somewhere in that mess. I sigh, my insides full of warm new pain, and I turn to go down the hallway.

Fuck my life, I say to myself, each word being a step down the hall. Fuck. My. Life. Fuck. My. Life. It's a song. I swear it is.

It's my god damn theme song.

And I'm locking the door to the bedroom. Fuck it.

*

And I lay there with my eyes open and my brain refusing to shut the fuck up for about 5 hours.

Shut up, I think. Shut up. SHUT UP.

I hear Harrison's voice saying “You don't deserve to be treated like this.”

Over and over. I put the pillow over my head and pray for suffocation.

And I look over at my phone on the table by the bed.

All you have to do is call me.

You idiot, I tell myself. You're a moron.

I roll over so I'm not looking at it, but it's still there.

And then I hear it vibrating. Text message this time. I think about ignoring it. After all, it's old people early in the morning.

But then I roll back over and look at it.

Harrison, it says on the screen.

Pure curiosity leads me to pick up my phone and read the message.

I hope you're okay, it says.

And I'm so fucking not okay. I'm so fucking not.

My world is collapsing, and I can't tell him it's because he touched my hand. Because that's ridiculous. And I'm simply not that person.

I love Warren. I do. I swear to god.

And my fingers are shaky as I type the response: I'm okay. Thanks for listening to me.

And then I put the phone back on the table and roll over and wait for death.

Kill me, I say to whoever is in charge of this fucked up planet. Asteroid, lightening. Do something. Make it stop.

But nothing happens. And eventually, I close my eyes.

(c) 2011 Roman Theodore Brandt

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