We were in the ice cream parlor when Ira, my bigmouth boyfriend, noticed Soldier Boy staring at a torn band poster on the corkboard near the entrance. Ira jumped off his sparkly stool so fast it spun.
“You tear that poster, kid?”
Soldier Boy shook his head. “Shoulda,” he said. “This band sucks.”
“That’s my band.”
“I know,” Soldier Boy said. He sat down on the square bubble-gum dispenser, his red coat shifting up like a buoyant lifejacket.
I turned on my wobbly stool and eyed him. “Leave it, Ira.”
Ira didn’t leave it. “What do you listen to listen to? Barney the Dinosaur? The high-school marching band?”
“Armed Forces Radio,” Soldier Boy replied. “I’m a soldier.”
Damn it, I thought. Not this again.
“The hell you are,” said Ira. “You know damn well they don’t let retards enlist.”
I got off my stool, pissed. I hadn’t even ordered yet.
Soldier Boy stayed put on his gumball machine, arms folded. “What do you know about it, kike?”
Ira yanked off his glasses and told me to hold them. “No way,” I said. I edged past them and pushed the door open into the frosty vestibule. Ira stuck his head out to chastise me.
“Quit giving this kid cigarettes,” he said, jerking a thumb at Soldier Boy.
I turned and left. I walked home on the icy sidewalks. It took me two and a half cigarettes to get home. I was always walking—I didn’t have gas money and Ira didn’t have a car. I held onto anything I could to not slip. I almost wished Ira was walking with me so if I went down I could take him too.
*
I don’t know what happened at the ice cream parlor after I left, but later that day while I put a load of sheets and towels into the Maytag at Mount-Wash-More, Soldier Boy watched me, leaning against a dryer, talking into his wrist-watch. Just as I’d pushed the quarters into the slot, he’d come over to ask me for change. Fifty leftover cents were safe in my pocket.
“I’m broke,” I said.
He looked at me—he had a face like an onion, big and white, always peeling. His yellow eyes were too far apart.
“You’re a Yankee,” he said. He’d suddenly adopted a molasses drawl.
“This is Minnesota,” I said, “and I’m from sixty miles south.” I looked around. We were alone.
“Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.
I tensed. “It’s my last one.”
Soldier Boy put his chin to his wrist and spoke to his watch again, his eyes still on me. “Sergeant York,” he said, “we got a problem down here in the thirty-ninth squadrant.”
“Here,” I said, and thrust the box at him, half-crushed in my fist. “Don’t ask me for matches.” I grabbed my basket and my color-safe Era and headed out the door. Two hours later when I lifted the lid in the empty Laundromat, the pee-stink hit me like a fire-hose blast. Soldier Boy had pissed in my laundry. I could have left the sheets. I should have, but they were Michael’s.
I drove to Ira’s on fumes and banged on his door with the basket steaming on my hip. His skateboard sat in front of the door, and I placed a foot on it, rocking it back and forth. I banged again, and my shaky leg shuttled his skateboard off the pavement, across the frosty grass, and into the street. Footsteps pounded down the stairs and Gwen, one of the many squatters who filled Ira’s house, flew out the door. She bounded after the skateboard with her flannel shirt flapping behind her tiny frame, picked it up and tucked it under her arm, then walked up and glared at me.
“Ira,” she shouted up the stairs, “some bitch is trying to steal your skateboard.”
“It was an accident,” I said. Those were the first words I’d ever said to her, after months of her hanging around Ira’s place like a dirty towel, staring at me from corners.
He came down the stairs, rubbing his scalp. “Oh hey,” he said. “She shaved my head for me. It’s hard to get the back.” Gwen pushed past him and vanished from sight.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“What’s up?” He looked like he’d been sleeping.
I shoved the basket under his nose. “That smell Downy fresh to you?”
His head snapped back on his skinny neck and he swallowed hard. “What is that?”
“Soldier Boy’s toxic piss,” I said.
“Are those Ewoks?” he said, pointing at the navy blue sheets.
I set the basket on the glazed asphalt at his feet and didn’t answer.
“Didn’t you say you lost your virginity on Ewok sheets?” He looked down. “What am I supposed to do with them?”
“You are to wash them,” I said. “Three times. Then give them back to me and never speak to me again.”
He shook his head. “Some of the stuff you say.”
I got into my car and sped away until I ran out of gas by the Dairy Queen at the corner of Fifth and Westwood. I threw it into neutral, got out, and pushed it into the parking lot next to a concrete bench. I didn’t know what to do, so I popped the glove box and pulled my notebook and pencil out. On the cold bench smeared with fuzzy butterscotch and ice milk, I opened the book and started the letter again for the sixth time.
Friday, January 10th, 1997
I didn’t forget your birthday. I ignored it. So you’re twenty-one now, and I’m somewhere near the end. Every day I’m ten years older. I gave away my last cigarette. I didn’t even smoke until someone told me you’d started. I guess having a baby made you nervous.
I crumpled the paper, tossed it into a sticky trash bin and started over.
Someone here has the same name as you, and he spray-painted it in blue on the train trestle that runs parallel to the bridge I walk across every day. Every day I see it. Over the same river that runs through our hometown. The same river that ends where you are now.
I wish you would come home. I’m not angry about the baby. I don’t hate the girl. I’m sure she’s a better person than me. You’re a better person than me.
I ripped it out and shoved it in my pocket. I started again.
You’re a horrible vile bastard. I will never forgive you as long as I live. If you had just stuck around—we could have gone to school together and we might have gotten married the way everyone expected us to. You could have made that baby with me and I probably wouldn’t have been happy about it but at least it would be mine. I don’t even know that girl. Neither do you. You are a despicable, stupid, careless, hurtful human being.
I didn’t rip that one up but I turned the page.
Please come home. My boyfriend is a jackass and somebody peed on your sheets today.
I feel like I’m dying every time I go across that bridge.
I put the pencil between my teeth and bit down until it snapped. My jaw would be sore for days, the taste of wood and graphite on my tongue no matter how hard I brushed. I walked across the street to a payphone. While crammed in the booth, I noticed Soldier Boy milling around the Dairy Queen parking lot. I caught his eye and turned away. With my back to the street, I dialed a guy I knew from a job I’d quit and he came with gas and a funnel, because lately I had fallen into thin friendships with people who could get anything at any time—absinthe, mercury, canisters of gasoline.
*
On Monday, Ira came over with a television.
“I don’t want that,” I said.
“No job,” he said, bolstering the archaic picture box with his knee. “No more school. You sit in one corner of this dump all day. What else are you going to do?”
He hefted it onto my dresser, plugged it in and messed with the antennae until we picked up Oprah.
“Don’t,” I said. “My mother watches this.”
“Two local channels—that’s it. It’s either this or news.” He settled down onto the floor with me, where I kept my bed—two pilled comforters and a ratty childhood pillow.
“You’re not staying,” I said. “Where are my sheets?”
“I gave them to Gwen,” he said. He saw the blood in my eyes. “To wash,” he added quickly. “I have to pay for laundry. She’s got her own machine.”
“Good,” I said, but didn’t mean it. Gwen would make pants out of them. She made pants out of ugly or stupid fabric and wore them out to the coffee shop. She walked around stoned, giggling to herself. She went home with anyone who asked. Somehow, I had become part of her little circle, in this brain-dead town full of community college drop-outs. I was no good to anyone. And Michael, he was south of the border building fences and digging irrigation ditches. He was putting galvanized zinc roofs over the heads of little kids with big brown eyes and goats for pets.
I caught myself.
He was making babies with some hippie in a hardhat.
Ira leaned in and stuck his fingers in the pocket of my hoodie. “Got a cigarette?”
“I quit,” I said.
He laughed. “Sure you did. Clara and Nin around?”
“You passed them on your way in,” I said, staring at the wall while Oprah gave away cars. He bounded up off the floor and went down the hall, looking for my roommates. They didn’t smoke. When I finally managed to pull myself up and leave the room, I found him at the kitchen table with Nin on his lap like a child. He was feeding her from a bowl of Lucky Charms. Milk spilt down her chin as she chirped her tiny Korean laugh. Clara sat opposite them, taking pictures.
“I want my goddamned sheets,” I said.
Nin started and grabbed the spoon from Ira’s hand, shaking milk everywhere. She made a half-twist in his lap and smacked the cold metal against his bald head.
“Ow!”
“Give the woman her sheets,” she squeaked. Nin could be on anyone’s side in a second. She would just as quickly turn and come at me with the spoon, ready to gouge my eyes out like melon balls.
I left the room before she could do so, and walked through the lobby and out the front door. Our student-style apartment building currently housed around fifteen dropouts. We all pretended to go to class so we could keep our leases. I would have to tell my parents soon, because I was hungry, and running out of money. Work-study in the theater had at least kept me fed on bologna and cheese. Now, when Nin caught me stealing her sugary cereals she threatened to tell the Super, and Clara kept her food under lock and key in her bedroom.
I sat on the frigid cement step and longed for a cigarette when something red caught my eye, coming through the trees at the edge of the parking lot. Soldier Boy, his mouth bent to his raised wrist, mumbled as he came across the faded tar. He glanced at me with what looked like zero recognition, then made a sharp left and headed straight for my car. My thigh muscles twitched, ready to stand, to run. I sat still and watched.
He stopped at the rear door, pressed his palm once against the window, and spoke audibly into his watch.
“We’ve got a civilian vehicle here, captain. Abandoned. Navy blue in color, make and model—unknown.”
“It’s a Chevy Celebrity,” I shouted from the steps. “Nineteen eighty-four.”
Soldier Boy kept his wrist raised and turned to look at me.
“Unruly female civilian. Calling for backup.”
“Get away from my car,” I said, rocking forward on my haunches. I was unconvincing as aggressor.
“Ma’am, is this the same vehicle that was left unattended at the Brainerd Dairy Queen just days ago?”
“Unattended for all of five minutes,” I said. “Then I drove it away. It’s attended now, and it’s mine.” I started walking toward him, wrapping my arms around my shoulders to shield from the chill. My voice started to shake. “Do you need something?”
He looked at me hard, brow lowered, jaw fixed. As I came closer his pale face seemed to expand like a balloon. Suddenly he grinned, his cluttered teeth caged in braces. A crusty sort of spackle hung at one corner of his mouth. I took a half step back.
“I left something inside,” he said. His wrist went up for a second, then down. “I left a very important thing in there.”
I hesitated, then approached the window and looked inside, my hands on either side of my face against the glass. I felt his vinyl jacket brush against my elbow, his loud, fetid breath settling on the blue fiberglass. The back seat was empty. “I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Underneath,” he said.
“Why did you put something in my car?” I asked, straightening.
“I didn’t know it was yours,” he said. “I thought it belonged to your bald kike boyfriend.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Ira.”
“I don’t know his name.”
“It’s not his car,” I said. “Whatever you left in there for him, you can take out.” I opened the door and motioned for him to retrieve his very important thing. “Hurry up,” I said. “It’s cold out here.”
Soldier Boy stood very still, staring at me.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
My head hurt. “No.”
He glanced across the back of the lot toward the convenience store where the kids bought condoms and pizza by the slice. “Were you planning on buying a pack soon?”
“Can you just please take your shit out of my car now?”
He bent forward, but came up after less than five seconds. “It’s not there,” he said.
“You said it was under the seat,” I said. “I didn’t see you look there. Now look there and take it out. Feel underneath.”
“Your boyfriend took it,” he said.
My arms ached to throw a punch, but I never had. I didn’t know how to land one. “God damn it,” I said. “He hasn’t been in my car. He didn’t take your—thing. Just reach in there and get it and get out of my hair.”
I braced, waiting for the small spring-loaded boy to go ape-shit on me.
“I changed my mind,” he said quickly. With that he backed up two steps, turned abruptly and jogged up the side of the street and across the highway, barking out a military march.
“Christ,” I breathed. I watched until his red jacket disappeared over the hill. Then I slid into my own backseat. I ran my hands underneath—I never had before, because if I had, I would have realized that there was no place to put anything—only a wall of upholstery. I checked under the front seats just to be safe and found nothing but a soft-drink cup I’d crammed down there myself, a few odd wrappers and dead French fries.
I closed the door and locked myself in, watching my forehead in the rearview mirror until my eyes closed. The cold seeped through the seals. I reached forward and popped the glove box. I sat in the cold, composing.
I think you would like this kid. I mean, he’s gross, but you always had patience for, and interest in, people who gross me out. His hands today were coated in blue paint. I thought for a second that it had to do with my car, like he had the power to take the paint off through manual osmosis. But I think it’s spray paint. I think he painted your name on the train bridge. I think that’s his name too.
There goes Ira, out the door—he doesn’t see me freezing to death in my car, and why should he? He’s never seen me. He doesn’t even have a hat, that asshole. If I was a good person, I would offer him a ride. But I don’t have my keys and I’m not a good person. I wish Soldier Boy had left something in here, for me. I don’t know what—some kind of talisman. A charm to make me disappear, or turn into someone good. I need something like that. I need my luck to change. But there’s no such thing.
I put my hand inside my kangaroo pocket and felt along the very edge where the fabric was sewn. A bent cigarette was lodged there, soft and torn—away from Ira’s thieving fingers and, until now, mine. I pulled it gingerly from its fleece house, put it to my lips, found matches in the glove box and lit it. I had to pull hard through the broken paper and spilling tobacco. I cracked the back window and sat smoking for a while before the stale taste had coated my lips and tongue, and my eyeballs ached and my head swam, and I wished I’d never found it.
I went inside, past Clara and Nin, into my room, where the TV was still on. Two local channels. I watched the five o’clock news. They’d be watching it too—Mom and Dad, Michael’s parents, his brothers and sister, people we used to know and still knew and those we hadn’t met yet. We’d all be aware of life in Brainerd, Duluth, Bemidji, Saint Paul—the little explosions in our lives that wouldn’t make it past the local news, cracks and fissures in our sidewalks, leaks in our showerheads, aches and pains of a daily nature. And in such a small space—a box on my dresser, inside a room in a building, in a town, on a map, on a wall inside my room.
*
I gave the television back to Ira. I told Nin to keep him fed, and wrote her a check for the stolen cereal. I hoped that Gwen did wear the Ewok sheets in public, because they were stained with semen and blood, and now urine, and were threadbare and would split the moment she wiggled or shimmied, empty-faced in the middle of Coco City Coffee. It would have made him laugh to know that and I considered putting that in a letter—a real one I would mail, but not right away.
Downtown, Soldier Boy leaned against the icy rail, gazing at the tagged trestle over the Mississippi. I sidled up next to him, trying on someone else’s patience, someone else’s nerve. He turned to look at me as I reached into my pocket, his eyes wide, almost fearful.
“Is that my important thing?” he asked.
I withdrew a fresh pack of Marlboro Reds, unopened. “No,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Can I have a cigarette?”
“Actually,” I said, handing him the box, “you can have them all. I quit.”
“Just now?” he said.
I smiled and nodded. “Sure, why not? This very instant.” He grinned and took them, began unraveling the foil with fingers surprisingly deft.
“I’m leaving town,” I told him, “to go on a reconnaissance mission. Or maybe you’d call it personnel recovery.” He looked at me blankly. I lifted my chin to the horizon over the brown river. “There’s a very important thing out there.”
He scrunched his eyes up in the white light. A single Rock Dove dipped under the bridge. “I don’t see anything.”
I pointed at the smokes. “Anyway, that’s my parting gift to you.”
Soldier Boy didn’t ask me what I saw or why I should give him a gift after he’d pissed on my sheets and left imaginary revenge inside my car. Nor did he thank me. He smoked, looking out at empty January. I had the sudden urge to touch his shoulder.
“Be sure to share them with your platoon,” I said.
He brightened, his sticky mouth breaking into a garish smile. “I’m in the Army,” he said.
“I know, I heard. So, see you around.” I turned to leave, hesitated and turned around again. “Is your name Michael?” I asked him.
He shook his head no. He didn’t offer any more than that.
I waited a moment, in case he changed his mind. He didn’t. As I walked back toward the apartment, more careful than ever on the icy sidewalks, I took in the frigid air like long drinks of lifesaving water, feeling a healthy stretch with every inhale, still a rattle with every breath out—but I knew it would fade by the time I reached the Gulf.
______
Photo credit: Nico86* / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND