CHAPTER NINE

            It is spring. Nick Kohl, who turned twenty-three yesterday, is at his brother’s house. They’re hanging out by themselves. It’s early the next day: Nick had dinner with his parents at around six and then went out to drink with his friends. But after that, instead of doing the right thing and taking the car back to his parents’, he got into a kind of sentimental drunkenness and decided to speak with his melancholy but decidedly grand and dignified older sibling, whom he hadn’t spoken to very much since the shooting. The drive over was pleasant and the roads were finally starting to show some signs of life. The thaw had come later than expected (thanks to a moderate snowfall the first week of April and a week of frost afterwards) and the grass on the sides of the highway and the trees were starting to stand up straight and melt the last of the long winter away. The tulips at TulipFest had answered the call and come out by the hundreds and stood up straight and proud to herald a new chance for everything to shine for a while, inviting them, even though they knew it’d only be a couple of months, but look, they said, everything comes back, everything comes back good and strong, enjoy it, make it the best, come on, they would plead to the wandering, panicky Albany residents that shuffled through the festival, almost in single file, with their tweed jackets and new slacks and their hands on their ugly wives’ shoulders, and the Times-Union tucked under their arms, c’mon, they would plead. Keep it going, now, don’t give it up, just try and carry it over a bit, that feeling.

            But it was so natural to them, Nick thinks on the drive over. They, they have no choice. But what about me? What is my choice?

            One can hardly blame Nick for thinking this, after all, he’s just survived a brush with death and is feeling great about stuff in general. He sees the possibility in everything, a new birth coming. He’s out of the cop shit (WHAT WAS I THINKING, he thinks) and has settled all his debts and now has a nice sized bank account to move down there with-- (shit I haven’t told him--)

            “Denis,” Nick says, looking up from the chessboard.

            “Nick,” Denis says, swishing his finger around the slide, hoping to somehow unclog it. But it’s not working. Nick looks at him and he’s furrowing, concentrating, and his eyes are now almost completely shadowed by his eyebrows, especially in the shadows.

            “I’m moving to New York City in three days.”

            Denis looks up briefly but doesn’t really react as if it is big news. “Thursday?”

            “Actually Saturday Morning.”

            “That’s five days.”    

            “Whatever,” Nick says, kind of annoyed but hoping it’s not showing, because it’s not that big of a deal. “I’m moving to New York City, though.”

            Denis continues picking at the glass slide with a pen cap. He blows into the stem. His cheeks puff out and eventually the seed gives way and dislodges from the bowl and goes shooting across the room. It actually hits the lamp and lands on the chessboard, very close to Denis’ red bishop, which is on his ass. But the game is more or less even, at least more even than it usually is this late in the game. Nick came out blistering and took both of Denis’ knights and two pawns to Denis taking one knight and one pawn. And Nick had position. He thought he had a chance to win straight out, but now Denis had battled back, as he always does. After all, it is spring.

            “Interesting,” Denis said. “You have money?”
            “About four thousand to waste.”

            “What do mom and dad think?”

            Nick looks at the board. Denis rises to his feet and walks slowly over to his dresser for the bag of weed (he got an ounce the other night, to make sure he had for a while before he could make connections in New York City, Nick did) and Nick sees he’s got his ear heightened and wants, or at least is intrigued by the possibilities of, Nick’s answer. “You mind packing this again? I’m out,” he asks casually, his hand already in the unzipped Ziploc. “Of course man,” Nick says. “Pack away.”
“Is it your move or mine, Nick?” “Mine.” “What do you have of mine anyways?” Nick looks: “Two pawns and two knights,” he says. “Mmm. A pretty even game,” Denis is standing with his back towards him, working on something concerning the slide’s seal. He goes to the sink to change the bong water.

            “And a bishop,” Nick says, completing his move.

            “With the queen?”

            “M-hm.”

            “Thought so.”

            “And as an added bonus it protects the rook.”

            Denis sits back down with a freshly packed bong.

            “And I haven’t told them yet.”

            Denis laughs. “You haven’t?”

            “Nope.”

            “They’re going to die.”

            “Die laughing I hope. Trust me, they’ll be glad to see me go.”

            Denis moves his queen up and takes Nick’s free pawn, as expected. The game is pretty much Nick’s for the time being. Nick knows Denis has to be plotting something, and is not going to let him get away with something so cheap as a knight split on his rook and his king. Nick isn’t sure, but he thinks it been about two years since he beat his brother.

            “I don’t know. They’ll miss you.”

            “Yes,” Nick said. “But they’ll be glad to see me go.”

            “Maybe. So what the hell are you going to New York City for?”

            Nick does the thing with the bishop that he’d been planning on. He knows that just a little more focus, a little more, a little bigger push, and he’ll have the game won. He laughingly plans to retire from chess after this game, if he ends up winning, of course.

            “I have the plan,” Nick says, as Denis tries in vain to block the march of Nick’s queen with a measly PAWN, Nick thinks. He obviously doesn’t see-

            “Shit,” Denis says as soon as Nick puts his hand on the bishop.

            Nick moves, and says: “I’m going to move down there and get away from this whole shit. I’m going to buy into the New York City thing. All my life, it’s been in my face and more or less in my backyard, only one hundred and fifty miles away, and this town is shit, no offense, and I want something new and different and exciting, and I have the money and I have nothing up here to look forward to and, well, basically, I feel like this town has shown me all it could ever show me. So what I’m going to do is head for the bigger show.”

            Denis gets passed the bong eventually. He knows he’s done unless Nick fucks up majorly, but he knows that isn’t going to happen. His game is just too amped tonight. He really is going, Denis thinks. He looks at him and briefly catches this younger brother of his staring intently at the chessboard, thinking he can solve it all, staring at the chessboard because he wants to stare at something and tell it that he’s got it all figured out but he can’t look at me because even though he’s got the right attitude and swagger, he knows he’s still too afraid to know for sure that he’s got it all worked.

            But right now, Nick thinks, I ain’t got the mastery of that down but tonight I got the chessboard down and it’s all working my way tonight, and I’ve mastered this city just by denying it any relevance in my life and by showing it I need to get away from it. And what I need to do is get myself in order so I can figure out just what it is I want out of my life, after being shot, good lord, isn’t that a sign that I should find out what the whole thing is and then go for it? And where, anywhere around this city, where can I go and make sure I find it? New York City. I’ll be there in three (five) days. And I’ll be there in five days. Right after I take this game. After all, it is spring.

                                                                                    ~

            Nick Kohl wandered back from the kitchen clutching a sweaty, half full bottle of Budweiser and a bag of unopened Doritos. He raised the bottle to his lips for a second as he sat down and then tipped it back and let a swig of liquid drop down his throat. His eyes watched on the screen intently

and did not move as he tossed the bag of chips on the bed next to him. Its brown comforter was tussled and lumpy on the queen-sized mattress, waves stilled for a second against the purple night leaking in his windows from Division Street.

            Nick, just back upstairs from the bar, removed puffy brown envelope from his back pocket and tossed it on the desk. The top side of the fold began to lift, trying to erect itself into a right angle. Nick tapped it down and then bent under the desk and opened the small compartment in his desk that held the safe. This was his money. After rent and business expenses, Nick usually was able to put aside as savings the complete take from the last three days of each month. He had close to two thousand dollars now, and was so impressed with himself, being able to save again. All of his money evaporated immediately when he lived in New York. He never had more than five hundred dollars to his name, and often found himself living paycheck to paycheck. This is even with all the stuff that Kit paid for, but, Nick remembered, they did live pretty good when they were together. In fact, he admitted, the only times he was ever in dire need of cash were the times that he and Kit were apart.

            He put the stuffed envelope, containing four hundred dollars, in the safe. Besides, he thought, it’s better to have it around as cash, just in case. It was now March 31st (no, early April first) and he still hadn’t heard anything new on Y2K. When he first heard about it he expected it to be a major problem but fixable, but he hadn’t heard any news at all over the past month or two. So he felt justified in removing his money from his personal accounts. For all practical purposes, he couldn’t kill the business accounts and such, but figured that if anything happened, the business would be insured. But what about him? He couldn’t afford to assume that the government would put a high priority on tracking down his measly two-thousand dollar bank account if it were to disappear. Plus he liked the feel and the visual aesthetics of a big pile of secret money in the house.

            The screen glowed with the failed conversation he had tried to write. He was trying to edit it somewhat but was having major problems with the plot. He had figured from the beginning that he was going to have the narrator find out gradually that this guy, Johnson Trevor, was in some kind of serious trouble (by deducing what he saw from across the street, something to do with the guys across the street) and then because his new girlfriend reminds him of an old girlfriend, seek her out and, with the help of his friend George, either try to help this guy, or, just out of plain curiosity try and figure out what the details were. What he didn’t know was where the narrator’s whole shit figured into it. He was obsessed with the idea of being able to try and coherently express what had happened with he and Kit, why it failed; he knew that it could have some kind of effect on how the plot turned out and why. The narrator’s using short stories about Johnson Trevor to at the same time work out his (the narrator’s) shit and muster up somehow the courage and inspiration to try and do something productive, i.e. try and help someone out of trouble.

            Down in the street, the Buick had gone and the lights had gone off in Johnson Trevor’s place. He could see his feet dangling slow with hers, just off the border of the mattress. But for the first time in weeks they were not the thing on his mind. Or perpetually in his sights. It was a black 1988 Ford compact parked on the corner that held his eyes. Nick’s car. The reason why the safe was close to two thousand when last week it had just passed four thousand.

                                                                        ~

            Okay, Nick typed, eventually.

                                                                        ~

            Okay.

            If this is going to be the way it is, I better tell it my way and soon. After all, this is my shit, my issues, that are bringing this matter to a swelling point in my mind.

            Her name was Katerina. We dated for about two years a while back, and now that it’s come to mind we haven’t even been apart longer than we were together. Just to give you some frame of reference. So you can get what I’m driving at. We had an intense relationship, the kind of over the edge shit you only hear about your friends having or the kind that will eventually end up as a novel, or a great film. It was my own muse, my own fuel I wanted to push me through the days, as fast as I could go, in the only city in the world that I’d found could keep up with my own head. It, the relationship, was, how can I describe it. It was just one of those moments of release, like a good sneeze, or an apex of emotion when seeing a great live band while tripping, or the tingle of my body next to hers, or goose-pimpled skin, touching, cold but warm, souls smiling, the moment when nothing’s particularly funny but you want to just laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

            Drawn out for two years.

            I lost her when I passed myself, kind of ran myself over. Our relationship was not of such a nature where fidelity, or loyalty, or sincerity and honesty were even questions. We were always bluntly honest and fiercely in loyal because we were in love, but there was the underlying foundation that it was just what we knew we could expect out of each other as human beings, as people who would just be together, forever, because how could they not?

            It was expected, you see.

            But there’s two ways you can look at that. Think of it as a second-order expectation translating as first-order and fronting as foundation. If you can. It was an expected thing, but for her, for Katerina, it wasn’t expected to be expected. It was just there in the future, looking at it as it had already happened. It was already part of her.

            I was waiting for it. That was my downfall. When she finally gave me the ultimatum to get married or split up, the initial question kind of took me off-guard at first because it hadn’t been on my mind, at least lately, seeing as how we were riding a real good wave in our relationship after a tough tumble there for a while, and I guess I was too much riding the wave to all of a sudden come down to foundational maintenance and upkeep. It angered and confused me and I know she didn’t take it as fear of commitment, but something she felt kind of bad about pushing but this was what she wanted, marriage, and it had to happen, and I asked her why now, and she answered why not now, if we’re soulmates and it’s going to happen and it’s good right now and we’re doing well with money and we can start having kids - no, don’t get the wrong idea, we both wanted them, badly - well, then, why now now? and if not now,, when? which I figured, in the end, were perfectly valid questions. It kind of left me wordless, without any good answer. And while I wanted to give her an answer, I really couldn’t feel that bad about it, no matter how much I wanted to.

            So we just kind of sat on that for awhile, and nothing really happened about it, and shit happens, you know, like it always does, and a family emergency called me home and I’ve been here ever since. But not as long a spell as Katerina and I were together.

            That whole thing I tried to push on you, about the grand conversation that happened? Well, I couldn’t push it anymore because that, unfortunately, was not the way it went down. It went down like great rainstorms do, playing and toying and fucking with the physical world beneath it, but in the end it just kind of... passes, and everyone comes outdoors and plays in the sunshine. But the fools! If they had any kind of respect for the kind of power that they had just witnessed, if they even understood

                                                                        ~

            No, no, no, Nick thought. Not that.

                                                                        ~

the end it just kind of... passes, and everyone comes outdoors and plays in the sunshine. But oh, the storm knew the relevance of itself. And just like the rainstorm, which is not really gone but just somewhere else, the relationship, is itself somewhere out there, laughing at us.

                                                                        ~         

            Greg Matterson turned the corner with unexpected agility and began immediately to fumble for his keys. It was approaching four o’clock now, and he grudgingly told himself that this would have to be the absolute last night he would stay up for sunrise, whether he was off the next day or not. He couldn’t remember, thanks to all the drinking he’d had to do to erase the day, why he had decided to take the forty minute stroll to his apartment. There were a few factors, of course, some of them being the clean bill of health from his doctor in spite of the chest feeling worse, the clean in his lungs since he made the successful cut from a pack and a half a day to a pack, his Thursday-Friday weekend that had now officially started, the lift in the weather...

            One of the streetlights a little further up Madison Avenue flicked on and shone a paused ray of light that rolled up on Greg’s house like a throw rug. His destination in sight, he began to unconsciously twirl his key ring around his index finger and grab the batch of keys in his palm, like an Old Westerner spinning his gun. He did this over and over again as he passed over the tiles of  the still salt-stained sidewalks, which sighed relief with every step, knowing the worst of it was over, mourning for their brothers and sisters that were consumed by a pothole cancer or had simply collapsed under the weight of winter, happy to come through it in as good shape as they were.

            A police car zipped past, its solitary officer not even turning his head to inspect Greg, looking almost as if he were looking straight ahead like a frightened child being led through a funhouse by his father. Greg stepped out into the street behind it and watched it turn down Lark Street, two lights up, making a left turn on a red light. He crossed without looking both ways and comforted his weary legs with the promise of a big ottoman and two (just two) solid bong hits to drift him away to the middle of the afternoon when he’d wake up at four but now, with the darkness starting to recede, he’d have around two hours of daylight.

            Yes, things are just great, Greg thought, spinning through his vestibule. He had his bar back, and he’d actually gotten an affinity for this new guy. From the way Chuckie had told it, Greg thought that after Denis died they’d have to for sure sell the place but it turned out the resourceful kid had a will, of all things. The kid must have known he was sick already because he had made a will even before he was diagnosed. Like, knew it. A premonition. Greg shook his head and laughingly ascended the stairs.

            Denis left everything concerning the bar to his brother, Nick, knowing that he’d be the only one in the family with the wit to make sure the sale went through without anyone getting screwed over. But then he wanted to come here and run it himself for some reason. When Chuckie told him this he had to confess to Greg that he had no idea what kind of bar he’d try and turn it into, God knows, he’s coming up from New York City and he’s going to inject this place with all kinds of fucking trendy shit and bring in a whole new crowd, like whole new crowds and employees, Chuckie said.

            Greg dropped his keys at the top of the stairs, right by the door. He’d tried to turn the key too quick and it had gotten jammed for a second, and he had to fuck around a while to get them out. Then he dropped them. The sound of the keys was muffled by the linoleum, but there was still a top level of sound beyond the floor that reached his ears and particularly bothered him, the jangling of the keys and they tinkled against each other. He bent down to pick them up and his back creaked, his knees all of a sudden felt the sixty-three they were, and his heart clenched again, out of spite; Damn arteries, he thought. Damn heart disease, no matter what the doctor said. The scotch was the only thing that Greg felt was keeping his blood thin and his veins loose and flexible enough to get it through.

            But then Chuckie came to him one day and said, hey guess what. He’d met the guy and there was going to be no problem. Why, Greg had asked. Just wait and see, Chuckie said. So Greg went in the next day and introduced himself as the new guy opened the bar. They talked for a good bit and when he saw Chuckie that night they winked at each other with old-school grins. This guy? They couldn’t have been more wrong. Nick wanted to sit on the bar for a few months and just get his head straight. From what they could tell by the little he’d told them, he’d been fucked over by some woman in New York and was here to save up money and clear his noggin and then maybe try to go back and work it out. He had no plans at all about the bar, and from what it sounded like, he’d be tossing Chuckie some extra cash to help him run the place outright.

            But then, this book, this book that he kept talking about, as he stood there fingering shot glasses with dirty towels and shrugging at the mirror behind the bar, this book had become some kind of obsession for him, and he’d actually used the term Great American Novel with a straight face. A straight, but very outward and serious face that made Greg kind of uneasy at times. This book. What he’d been shown of it so far was mediocre thriller stuff, but Greg was much more fascinated by the fact that reading his work was a better key to figuring this guy out than talking to him. It was all there. And, surprising Greg, the writing had gotten better. He conceded he knew next to nothing about novels and literature as such, but couldn’t see it being that much worse than other shit out there.

            Greg laughed off the shiny sky blue of his bathroom tile. He’d decided to stay. He bought a little shit car. He extended the bar’s lease for six months starting tomorrow (today, this morning, Greg thought), April first. April Fool’s Day. How funny! Greg didn’t believe in this kind of thing but thought, for those out there who believed in shit like signs and omens and non-coincidences, what, just what, do you make of that?

            He thought briefly about the amount of shit, including what he was shitting right now, that he’d excreted during his sixty three years. Briefly. Then he slept as planned.

                                                                        ~ 

            Agnes Rolen was sitting in the dining room smoking a cigarette and watching the sun set over Western Avenue, her guilt having gotten the better of her. She liked to work mornings; she preferred mornings. And she usually worked mornings and nobody could really say anything about it. She’s been head manager of this particular Royal Burger for close to seven years, after being assistant manager for about four years, after being crew for another five. So nobody really bitched that she never had to close the store. The other managers also had kids but pitied her general situation, having worked for the company so long and apparently not going anywhere anytime soon, so they never said anything, not to her face, anyway. But every so often she’s feel bad and decide to close the store for two or three nights in a row, usually at the end of the month. Her three night stint at the end of March rolled over to today, the last of it. The humor of it being April Fool’s Day did not escape her.

            She also liked to set it up so that she was closing with a competent crew so she wouldn’t have to do much on the floor and would be able to take more cigarette breaks like the present one. Her store was the only Royal Burger of the district that still had a smoking section, and the joke among the crew was that it was because Agnes herself smoked and wanted it that way and so it is. This, admittedly, had a ring of truth to it. So did the talk of her arraigning a good crew for herself on the nights she decided to close. After all, she observed, she had Caitlyn, Gina, and Henry tonight, probably as good a three as she would be able to muster up, given her pick. And she had her pick and she’d chosen. And why the fuck not? Agnes would think. She smiled and snubbed her cigarette out in the light brown aluminum foil ashtray and rose from the table, brushing her hands across her lap absently. She exchanged nods with Caitlyn and Gina (never, never Henry) and returned to the office.

                                                                        ~

            Caitlyn watched Agnes slide into the office with a cautious eye over her shoulder, her head tilted just so and her arms extended, holding two extra large soft drink cups under the soda fountain nozzles, one for Sprite, one for Diet Coke. Gina and Brittany Gorgeous were getting ready to handle a crowd of SUNY students that had just strolled in the front door, two packs of two women and two guys. Caitlyn peeked around the corner. All but two of them were hanging back, gazing up at the sign, shuffling a bit to their left, towards the entrance to the ropes that defined the line for customers. Brittany Gorgeous was patiently entering in items as they were grunted to her by the man and woman who had approached her and were ordering as one. Gina stood at the other register, waiting, looking a bit unsure what to do.

            “Gina,” Caitlyn called, snapping two large lids on the sodas simultaneously.

            “No pickles,” someone said.

Gina turned her head quickly and gritted an unsure wince in Caitlyn’s direction. The pack was in the early stages of deciding what they wanted, but had not as of yet formed a coherent line. Brittany was erasing something. The woman at her register, a petite, obviously uncomfortable Long Island-type with big nose and hair and a Guess sweatshirt rolled her eyes.

            “Get me order sixty-six,” Caitlyn said, tossing a nod in the direction of the two chicken sandwiches Henry had just tossed on the chute. “While they’re deciding.”

            Gina turned abruptly and grabbed the receipt, loosely flapping on the top of the printer behind her. Two of the pack, white-caps, stopped in their tracks, confused. Caitlyn popped the drinks in the cardboard holder and opened the window. A thirty-something-ish woman on a cell phone took them without comment, without a glance. By the time she had turned around, Gina was approaching her with the order.

            “Fries in there?” she asked.

            “Yeah,” Gina replied. “Fries in there.”

            Caitlyn turned and in order grabbed ketchup, napkins, straws, and salt and pepper. During rushes she didn’t even bother asking. The point was, no matter what she had learned from her orientation video, that what managers wanted more than anything was to not have to deal with customers. Customer service was important, of course, but the priority was that the people not wait. The less they waited, the happier they were. And that, more than anything, kept them coming back. Caitlyn often wondered if the managers were even aware of this irony; that they hated people coming in, wanted them out as quick as possible, this supposedly guaranteeing that they’d come back the next day, which is at the same time what the managers are supposed to do but also don’t like doing. The harder they worked as managers, she thought, all they were doing was guaranteeing themselves more work that they didn’t enjoy.

            But Caitlyn, watching the woman with the phone attached to her head drive off and the next car, a purple Acura, drive up right behind it, perfectly timed as if they were on a conveyer belt, understood wanting to get them, the customers, out of your face as soon as possible. Even though they kept coming and no amount of work, no possible effort, would ever stop them from coming.

            A large portion of her four to twelve shift was dinner rush, which usually lasted about three hours and of which for a good spell she could just kind of get into the zone, just work and work. A lot of her job was repetition and rhythm. She would tell register trainees that, believe it or not, ninety percent of the job was physical; scooping the right amount of change out on the first try, being able to get a tray up and snatch the receipt as it came out, etc. to minimize the time that it took to handle a transaction. During the rushes, Caitlyn would just be a wonder to watch. She would continuously pace up and down the front end, always making sure she did at least one thing on every return; fluffing out bags and grabbing burgers off the chute, napkins and ketchup in one swoop, start a soda, start a shake, fill the fries, and then turn and finish the soda and the shake, put them in the cardboard holder while taking the next order. When Gina started, Caitlyn intuited that she would catch on rather quickly and told her on her first day, “Just watch.” Gina was amazed by the fluidity of her movements and the precision with which she piled condiments on top of meat patties and the speed! the speed at which it all happened. “Pickles, ketchup, onions. While the cheese is melting. Look.” The microwave beeped and was opened and emptied before Gina blinked. “Mayo. Look-” pointing at the screen, “-No tomatoes, no lettuce. There.” It was wrapped and on the chute. “Next,” Caitlyn declared proudly, pressing a greasy vinyl glove to the CLEAR button, wiping the order from the tasteless, orange screen above, which displayed and organized the orders with all the grandeur of a Commodore 64.                                                       

            Ah, the good old days, Caitlyn mused. No more. It was not much different working up front, at the drive-thru, just a different set of Pavlonian hand movements and turns and incidents that demanded attention. But more annoying just for the simple fact that she had to deal with customers. And, she figured, she’d better get used to it. It all made sense to her now. Her at drive-thru, tonight, on Agnes’ shift, Brittany cutting her hours. She was being phased in. She knew the promotion was as good as hers. Nobody had told her anything yet, but now Brittany was, according to Brittany, as good as gone. And as much as she knew it would only be another fifty cents an hour, it certainly meant less real work and as a bonus, ROYAL BURGER would look a lot more respectable on any kind of resume with the word SUPERVISOR next to it. Wouldn’t it?

                                                                        ~

            A snag. Caitlyn instantly snapped back to reality. The large Coke in her hand gave in to a rather light squeeze, popping the lid off and producing an audible, momentary gasping sound that Gina, standing right there with her soundless mouth open, couldn’t figure out the source of, be it the pop of the cup or Caitlyn herself. She consciously decided not to laugh and left the scene with a lowered head and a smile. Caitlyn, soda dripping down her hand, placed the cup on the counter and grabbed a handful of napkins. She turned to the guy at the window, who was smiling, still. She smiled back, always enjoying guys’ attention at the window. She always loved it that when somebody did not automatically assume short hair and attitude meant dyke. He had rusty hair and a kind of sloped forehead, maybe late twenties, wearing a beat-up striped shirt that might have come out of her dad’s closet. The sun gleaming through his windshield made his face seem still and bronzed, but when he turned his head to laugh at her fuck-up his face grinned with every muscle. His eyebrows arched and his cheeks rolled. His ears wilted. His left arm hung out the window with its palm turned up, expectant. He gaped in mock surprise.

            “Sorry, sir,” she said, a shit-eating grin on her face. “I’ll get you another one.” She finished wiping her hands and crumpled the napkins into a little ball, a bit of soda leaking and spilling down her shirt. “Shit,” she said, grunting a chuckle.

            “Not a problem,” he said. And then, after a pause: “I guess April really is the cruelest month, huh.”

            “What?”

            “I said I guess April really is the cruelest month. It’s T.S.-”

            “No, no,” she said, leaning towards the window. Her eyes caught a last glimpse of daylight and held it. “I know the poem, it’s one of my favorites. I just never thought I’d hear it quoted to me at the drive-thru window.”

            “Well,” the man said with a shrug. “Guess you never know.”

            “I guess you never do.”

            Caitlyn went to get his order and returned with a fresh soda, upgraded from a large to an extra-large. He noticed and winked at her as he handed her his twenty dollar bill and thanked her. She noticed the bill had a pair of sunglasses quickly inked over Andrew Jackson’s eyes. They exchanged another mutual smile.

            “Thanks for making my day,” she said, as he held up a water-softened palm and coasted away.

                                                                        ~

            Thanks for making my day, Nick said to himself. He ran his hands over the top of the steering wheel on his car. His little car. He laughed. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

            So she thought he was cute, at least. That way he didn’t have to feel stupid about what he’d done. He just hoped she’d noticed what he’d written on the twenty. But if she didn’t, he could always go back. There was something, wasn’t there? Some kind of ...chemical thing; he didn’t know. He laughed again at the sunshine coming in blue from the slice of tinted windshield his eyes were turned up at and looking through. And it was just like that for him that day.

                                                                        ~

            “Guess who’s here,” Gina said, smiling just a little too broadly for Caitlyn’s liking. Her frame was bobbing up and down slightly as Caitlyn hunched over the shake machine.

            Caitlyn peered around the corner but from her angle, couldn’t see. “Hm?”
            “What’s up?”

            “Oh,” Caitlyn said, blinking and shaking her head. “Who’s here?”

            “Everything all right?” Gina bent back in a restrained recoil, seeing a weird look in Caitlyn’s eye.

            “I’m fine,” Caitlyn said, walking towards the drive-thru window with two chocolate shakes. “What happened?”

            “Who was that?” Gina asked, slowly understanding.

            “Just some cute guy,” Caitlyn said. “He was cute and cool, that’s all. You know it is, sometimes, with random customers.”

            Gina winked and smiled, and hinted at a mild blush. “The guys are here. Turk and them. The whole band.”

            “Here?”

            “They just walked in.”

            Caitlyn clamped her teeth down and mouthed John? to her and grinned ear to ear when she saw Gina’s enthusiastic head nodding. As Gina turned around and the band, The Gateway Drug, all four of them, came into view, Caitlyn pushed slightly at Gina’s back directing her towards John, who was following Gina to the counter with mutual grins and red cheeks,  as she extended her arms towards a fist pumping Turk, with Marshall and Hank bobbing behind them in the background. Caitlyn gave Turk a hug and peeked over at Gina and John, who awkwardly kissed each other on the lips and laughed.

            “After the gig Saturday...” Turk began.

            “I know, man,” Caitlyn whispered to his ear. “I know, she told me.”

            They looked at each other and laughed, and Marshall and Hank approached to shake hands, and John and Gina joined them after a moment. Around the convergence there were two customers, just about to wait in line, and when she saw the minivan pull into the parking lot, her eyes soon fell to Agnes, sitting by the window, balancing a cigarette on perched elbow with a delicate, almost warm, smile, and knew that she would have to break this up, or at least break the appearance of this up, as soon as she could. So she walked away, her thumb resting on the talk button on her headset. Turk watched her walk away, with half an eyebrow raised, and shared a laugh with John and settled on a number three, extra-large sized.

                                                                  ~

            “You should at least ask her,” Gina said, tossing a bucketful of ice into the huge bin underneath the soda machine.

            “I think Brittany would have told me if there’d been any more news,” Caitlyn said. She was filling ketchup bottles from a large foil bag with a precision and markmanship that Gina could not match. She always had found the bag of ketchup too awkward to handle and the plastic holders too lightweight. She would fuck up at least once every time. But Caitlyn was performing the task like a professional. Her hand never moved, her eyes never left the top of the bottle she was filling.

            “It’s not that,” Gina said, now wiping. “I’m saying ask her if it’s going to be you. If Brittany G is leaving, which it looks like she is, then, frankly, you have a right to know if you’re the replacement that she has in mind.”

            “Hm,” replied Caitlyn, massaging the ketchup out of the bag.

            “So you can start preparing, you know, spiritually,” Gina said, stuffing napkins by the handful into the holders that were stacked by the drive thru. “And you know what, Cait, I think that frankly I, as an employee, deserve to know who my manager feels is best to run shifts here, shifts that I will be working.”      

            “If Caitlyn ever runs a shift we’ll all end up fired,” Henry said, poking his head up from scrubbing the fry bin. Caitlyn and Gina turned their heads to him and then they all watched as Agnes floated by the floor in front of the office, clipboard in hand. She glanced at them oddly and removed the final cash till from the front register. She then returned to the office without so much as a sniff.

            “What? Are you crazy?” Gina hushed. “Me, you, probably Felipe, with Caitlyn running the shift? How sick would that be? We’d fucking be able to do whatever the fuck we want!”

            Henry seemed disinterested already. “It doesn’t even really matter to me anyway, who manages. I’m here to work, not to socialize.”

            “God, you’re such a drag,” Gina said.

            “At least it wouldn’t be that prick Newcastle.”

            “Look,” Caitlyn said. “I’m going to go talk to her. You two try not to kill each other.”

            Agnes was oscillating on the stool when Caitlyn approached, silently counting a stack of five dollar bills. Caitlyn expected to hear a soft “twenty-five thirty thirty-five forty” but noticed Agnes wasn’t counting on her lips, or nodding or anything, just starting intensely at them. God, how long has she been doing this? Fifteen years, something like that, Caitlyn thought. I can’t imagine.

            “What’s up?” Agnes said, raising her head. She straightened the pile of fives and pushed them under their flap on the till in front of her. She grabbed the fluffy stack of twenties and held it in her hand, looking at Caitlyn.

            “Is that the last till?”

            “No,” Agnes said. “This is yours. I still need to count Gina’s from the front.”     

            “Oh.”

            “What’s up?”

            “Well,” Caitlyn said, “I was just wondering if you’d heard anything further from Brit- Sarah, I mean.”

            Agnes smiled. “No, Miss Gorgeous has not handed me her two weeks yet. But she’s told me it could come at any time. I thought you knew that.” 

            “I did, I did,” Caitlyn said. “It’s just-”

            “Look, Caitlyn,” Agnes said casually. “I know. If and when Sarah leaves the shift position is basically yours if you want it.”

            “Serious?”

            “Well, yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious. I’m assuming none of the morning people with seniority over you will want it, of course. The only one with seniority over you in the evening is Henry and I think we have an unspoken understanding that he’ll never be a supervisor here.”

            “I kind of figured.”

            “Look, you and Sarah are friends, you’re both good workers, you’d be a natural fit to replace her, to take over the job.”

            Caitlyn, shocked with the ease of the conversation, laughed. “Thanks, Agnes, I really appreciate it.”

            Agnes turned her head back to the twenties and began flipping through them. Her voice, previously pleasant, stayed light, but turned indifferent. “We’ll see, when Sarah has news for me.”
            Caitlyn nodded soberly. “Sure thing. I was just wondering, that’s all...” Through the window, over Agnes’ thinning dome of hair, she saw Gina leaning against the front register, watching Henry. He was bent over the fry bin scrubbing vigorously, poking his head up every once in a while. She saw his lips moving, framed by his trademark look of indifference. Gina looked exasperated.

            “Say,” Agnes looked up, pausing her count. “She hasn’t told you anything, has she?”

            A-ha! Caitlyn smiled. “No, I was actually wondering if she’d gone to you, told you something. You know, on a business level.”

            Caitlyn began to back out of the room, smiling politely. “Say, wait. Caitlyn,” Agnes said. She’d been flipping through the bills and had stopped. “Check this out.”

            Caitlyn peered over and saw that Agnes was holding one of the new series twenties, the one with the glasses and goatee on Andrew Jackson,  the one she that cute guy had given her earlier. “Isn’t that funny?” Caitlyn laughed but had an urge to snatch the bill of her hands.

            “I don’t like these new twenties,” Agnes said. She lifted it up a bit to the light. “The face watermark freaks me out.”

            “I know,” Caitlyn said. She noticed, as Agnes held the bill up, that there was something written on the back. “Let me see that, Agnes. The glasses are funny.”

            Agnes handed her the bill. Caitlyn picked it up and stared at the front of it, handling it carefully, not wanting Agnes to see what was written.

            “The face is too big. Looks like Monopoly money.”

            Caitlyn glanced at Anges in reply and slowly turned the bill over.

            “It’s too big. Too much,” Agnes said.   

            On the back of the bill, scribbled neatly in layers of blue ink, was:

                                    HEY TS ELLIOT I BARTEND AT LAST CALL
                                           LIBERTY AND DIVISION

                                                  COME SAY HELLO

          Caitlyn gave the bill back to Agnes. Last Call? That’s interesting, Caitlyn thought. She couldn’t figure out what to make of it, couldn’t figure out if she even wanted to follow up on this at all. Highly flattered and somewhat excited and confused, Caitlyn left the office. She was blushing slightly. Gina and Henry were leaning against the broom closet, waiting to punch out.

            Gina saw Caitlyn about to burst out laughing and asked, “What?”

            Agnes was peering at all of them, holding a twenty dollar bill up to the light.

            Henry asked, “Do you guys need a ride home?”
            “Yes,” Caitlyn said. She punched out and grabbed a grinning Gina by the arm and tugged her away.

            “What, the job?” Gina whispered, as Caitlyn led her through the dining room, towards the front door.

            Caitlyn was muffling laughs through pinched lips. “Well, yes, babe, kinda. But really just something else entirely.”

            “Oooh!” Gina said, and they burst out the front door, arm in arm, laughing. Henry, walking towards the exit, saw them and his face shifted from indifference to annoyance.

                                                                        ~         

            Nick almost shot out of bed that night. He hadn’t been drinking or anything, just came up from the bar clearheaded and tired and was set to pass right out. But he didn’t. He thought of his book and what was left unfinished with it and just let his thoughts carry. Eventually he followed them to a point where he would not forgive himself for forgetting, and he was way too tired to ever remember these ideas without writing them down. So he got out of bed as a kind of survival instinct, knowing that the benefits of this action would carry over for a few days, whereas sleeping would have only ensured him of being fully rested for the next day. So he was thinking big picture for doing this.

            But there was one thing. This next scene was to be the first scene where the narrator has dialogue with another character. And he knew it would come eventually, but he figured he might as well get choosing the narrator’s name out of the way. While the computer was loading, he got up and took a piss. When he came back and started writing he figured he would just write the first name that came to him.

                                                                        ~

            George is the fidgety type. Even though he called me up and says he got some prime news for me and he needs my help and I expected him to be nervous and even more fidgety than usual, even though I knew all of this, it’s just not the kind of thing you get used to. It’s a disruption in your physical reality, what you perceive to be your normal physical reality. Like thinking, people just aren’t supposed to behave like that. You know, there are just certain things about people that simply cannot be tolerated in any kind of intimate setting. Certain things can be simply too much of a disturbance, too much of a bother. When you’re meeting about something important, you’d rather the other party be cool and normal and copasetic. But I went anyway, and I knew it all and generally I was fine with it.

            And George had to know I was nervous too, but for different reasons, and he’ll never really understand and this is why he’s making me nervous all of a sudden. It’s abrasive to experience, him across the bar, waving his hands in time with his words, and the jukebox, and the distinct pour of certain types of liquor, like good brandy, just there, in time, perfectly constant and seeming to never end, not really in any way that matters, anyway, just a constant. It makes my dislike for him grow, as I listened to him talk out of his gray tweed suit all nervous and temples sweating and the fingernail thing, god. I wished I didn’t have to know him. But the way things had been these days, our relationship had turned out to be necessary. Home town was better than out of town. So I listened.

            “Well Luke this is the way it was,” George said. “You’re probably wondering why, no, you’re probably not, but let me just tell you all the same. My words are fuddled. I was with the guys down at the plant, we were at this bar, you know, Horace’s brother’s place over on the East Side, with Charlie and Rocco and Fenster and all those clowns and what do you know but Ernie shows up. So I’m right in the middle of this whopper when he shows up, not much of anything, but I was telling them about the guys you saw in the car and how they’re fucking with this dude across the street. It’s nothing to start, the story, but I’m getting wonky from the sauce and starting to stretch it all a bit, lay it out, more to entertain myself than anyone else, and there all of a sudden is Ernie and he’s saying, what? What guys? And I’m like no, man, it’s nothing, because, you know, Luke, Ernie is fresh off that job where Frank got sealed and he thinks it’s some heathens over from Greene Street, those Albanians. So he hears the long and the short of it from Rocco, the big fucking mouth on him, and all of a sudden this guy wants details on what I seen. Like I’d had to say that I knew these guys weren’t Feds or pigs or anything, and fucking Rocco trapped me without even knowing, damn...”     

            I paused gently, letting him trail off. “They think them know ‘em?”

            “No, they don’t know ‘em is the problem. They’re aware of the shit that’s coming up here from New York, they know what kind of business they see ripe here. It’s fertile land, and Ernie’s guys own it. I mean own it. They see this happening and think someone’s moving in. But it ain’t right. Now they want me to just look. Not do anything, Just look. Just see, and tell them what I see.”           

            “And? How much?”

            “Luke, I got ten thousand due me if I get a license plate number.”

            “Shit.”

            “They trust me. Ernie is my man, man. And I really wasn’t bullshitting, so I couldn’t tell them no, cause I had seen shit. And I told them yes, I’d probably see shit again.”

            “Or at least hear about it.”
            “That’s where you come in.”

            “What?”

            “You’re involved now, like it or not. It’s your story, man. You got me involved. Don’t worry, you’ll get your money but you will be the eyes and ears or you will at least let me use your place for a few nights or something. Either way, I’ll pay you. But know you’re involved.”

            I knew. And I was okay with it. Now I had an excuse. An excuse to get to her, find out the essence of what it was. She gave me the same basic feeling without knowing her. It was looks, but, it was more. If I can approach this right, I can get the clues as I need them, and figure it out in my own damn head.

            Then again, we didn’t even have to talk to them or get near them again. But I felt it would happen. After all, we were now, at least technically, involved. To what degree that word matched the desired emotion in our (my) head was up to us (me).

            “You know you’re going to do all of this, right? That I’m only telling you this because I’m telling you what you have to know, right? I’m out of this.”

            “Well, you know,” I said. “You’re at least going to have to answer to Ernie.”

            George leaned far over ther table, so far I thought he was right to pass out there and there. He was looking at me funny. He wasn’t, he was serious, but just from the way he was serious I couldn’t help but want to laugh. He was right shaking and trying to look me in the eye but kept moving a bit, looking away. I didn’t have any intention of doing anything to the guy, I was more than happy, you know, to help the guy out. But still, it was funny, the thought that if he ever did get mad enough to want to kill me he probably still couldn’t.

            He said: “Listen to me,” real tight, “This is your fucked up head. You’re the one fucking spying on people.”

            “I’m not,” I say, and I have him.

            But, he said: “Luke, I know you too well to think that you’re going to bail out on me straight up and down the line so I don’t know why you’re doing this. But now that we have this understanding about how it is going to go down- and you better have this understanding- Don’t even try and fucking hustle me. You think I’m nothing but I’ve got people who wouldn’t like the whole story if I told them. People who wouldn’t like you fucking around with me and your shit. You’re the one telling me how you see what these guys do, you write fucking stories about them trying to exorcise- whatever it is you’re exorcising. You- you fucking know your part to this. That’s all I got to say.”

            I smiled, I remember smiling to communicate two things to him: that one I knew it, and I got it, and two, to let this motherfucker know that he still couldn’t touch me because I was fucking with him all along and he knew it and couldn’t stop himself from getting worked up about it. “It’s cool, man,” I said, sliding out the word ‘cool’ so friendly it bordered on sounding like a parody (but he bit), “You know I’m not going to fuck you over on this, something of this importance.” I had won.

            George swilled the rest of his drink and stood. He straightened his tie and kind of poked his head towards me to indicate he was going to leave, and I kind of just nodded my head and shifted my forehead muscles and just like that he turned around and walked right out. I returned to my drink and my eyeballing of the stunning redhead who, over George’s shoulder during George’s threat, had been initializing eye contact with me. Her male companion had gone to the bathroom and she was enjoying a cigarette by herself. I guess we both felt kind of sarcastic, kind of dirty and juvenile but appreciating it for the amusement, and that’s why we smirked at each other, wanting it. We knew it would go away as soon as her man got back but we were both doing it anyway, because we wanted to and there was no reason not to.

            One of those things where you remember it precisely because you tell yourself at the time you don’t think it’s something worthy of being brought back up.