Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

Just then, Nikki’s brother Doug’s battered grey Honda pulled into the trailer park. He headed for the back-the best place to park even though you sometimes got a ticket. Her brother anticipated a big winning in another month and seemed to think he was already made of money.

Nikki ran over to the car and rapped on the window.

Doug jumped in his seat, then scowled when he saw her. His beard glimmered with grease as he eased himself out of the car. He was a big guy to begin with and over 400 pounds now. Nikki was just the opposite-skinny as a straw no matter what she ate.

“Can you take me to work?” she asked. “It’s too hot to take the bus.”

He shook his head and belched, making the air smell like a beach after the tide went out and left the mussels to bake in the sun. “I got some more training to do. Spinks is coming over to do gallon-water trials.”

“Come on,” she said. It sucked that he got to screw around when she had to work. “Where were you anyway?”

“Chinese buffet,” he said. “Did 50 shrimp. Volume’s okay, I guess. My speed blows, though. I just slow down after the first 5-8 minutes. Peeling is a bitch and those waitresses are always looking at me and giggling.”

“Take me to work. You are going to puke if you eat anything else.”

His eyes widened and he held up a hand, as if to ward off her words. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s a ‘reversal of fortune’ or a ‘Roman incident.’ Don’t ever say puke. That’s bad luck.”

Nikki shifted her weight, the intensity of his reaction embarrassing her. “Fine. Whatever. Sorry.”

He sighed. “I’ll drive you, but you have to take the bus home.”

She sat down in one of the cracked seats of his car, brushing off a tangle of silvery wrappers. A pack of gum sat in the grimy brake well and she pulled out a piece. “Deal.”

“Good for jaw strength,” Doug said.

“Good for fresh breath,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Not that you care about that.”

He looked out the window. “Gurgitators get groupies, you know. Once I’m established on the competitive eating circuit, I’ll be meeting tons of women.”

“There’s a scary thought,” she said as they pulled onto the highway.

“You should try it. I’m battling the whole ‘belt of fat’ thing-my stomach only expands so far-but the skinny people can really pack it in. You should see this little girl that’s eating big guys like me under the table.”

“If you keep emptying out the fridge, I might just do it,” Nikki said. “I might have to.”

Nikki walked through the crowded mall, past skaters getting kicked out by rent-a-cops and listless homemakers pushing baby carriages. At the beginning of summer, when she’d first gotten the job, she had imagined that Renee would still be working at the t-shirt kiosk and Leah would be at Gotheteria and they would wave to each other across the body of the mall and go to the food court every day for lunch. She didn’t expect that Renee would be on some extended road trip vacation with her parents and that Leah would ignore Nikki in front of her new, black-lipsticked friends.

If not for Boo, she would have spent the summer waiting around for the bizarre postcards Renee sent from cross-country stops. At first they were just pictures of the Liberty Bell or the Smithsonian with messages on the back about the cute guys seen at a rest stop or the number of times she’d punched her brother using the excuse of playing Padiddle-but then they started to get loonier. A museum brochure where Renee had given each of the paintings obscene thought balloons. A ripped piece of a menu with words blacked out to spell messages like “Cheese is the way.” A leaf that got too mangled in the mail to read the words on it. A section of newspaper folded into a boat that said, “Do you think clams get seasick?” And, of course, the bagel.

It bothered Nikki that Renee was still funny and still having fun while Nikki felt lost. Leah had drifted away as though Renee was all that had kept the three of them together and without Renee to laugh at her jokes, Nikki couldn’t seem to be funny. She couldn’t even tell if she was having fun.

Kim stood behind the counter of The Sweet Tooth candy store, a long string of red licorice hanging from her mouth. She looked up when Nikki came in. “You’re late.”

“So?” Nikki asked.

“Boss’s son’s in the back,” Kim said.

Kim loved anime so passionately that she convinced their boss to stock Pocky and lychee gummies and green tea and ginger candies with hard surfaces but runny, spicy insides. They’d done so well that the Boss started asking Kim’s opinion on all the new orders. She acted like he’d made her manager.

Nikki liked all the candy-peanut butter taffy, lime green foil-wrapped “alien coins” with chocolate discs inside, gummy geckos and gummy sidewinders and a whole assortment of translucent gummy fruit, long strips of paper dotted with sugar dots, shining and jagged rock candy, hot-as-Hell atomic fireballs, sticks of violet candy that tasted like flowery chalk, giant multi-colored spiral lollipops, not to mention chocolate-covered malt balls, chocolate-covered blueberries and raspberries and peanuts, and even tiny packages of chocolate-covered ants.

The pay was pretty much crap, but Nikki was allowed to eat as much candy as she wanted. She picked out a coffee toffee to start with because it seemed breakfast-y.

The boss’s son came out of the stock room, his sleeveless t-shirt thin enough that Nikki could see the hair that covered his back and chest through the cloth. He scowled at her. “Most girls get sick of the candy after a while,” he said, in a tone that was half-grudging admiration, half-panic at the profits vanishing through her teeth.

Nikki paused in her consumption of a pile of sour gummy lizards, their hides crunchy with granules of sugar. “Sorry,” she said.

That seemed to be the right answer, because he turned to Kim and told her to restock the pomegranate jellybeans.

Nikki’s stomach growled and, while his back was turned, she popped another lizard into her mouth.

The glass-enclosed waiting area of the bus stop was full when Nikki finished her shift. Rain slicked her skin and plastered her hair to her face and neck. By the time the bus came, she was soaked and even more convinced that her summer was doomed.

Nikki pushed her way into one of the few remaining seats, next to an old guy that smelled like a sulfurous fart. It took her a moment to realize he was the hound’s tooth suit-and-cane guy from the bus stop that morning. He’d probably been riding the bus this whole time. Still jittery from sugar, she could feel the headachy start of a post-candy crash in her immediate future. Nikki tried to ignore the heavy wetness of her clothes and to breath as shallowly as possible to avoid the old guy’s stink.

The bus lurched forward. A woman chatting on her cell phone stumbled into Nikki’s knee.

“’Scuse me,” the woman said sharply, as though Nikki was the one that fell.

“I’m going to give you what you want,” the man next to her whispered. Weirdly, his breath was like honey.

Nikki didn’t reply. Nice breath or not, he was still a stinky, senile old pervert.

“I’m talking to you, girl.” He touched her arm.

She turned toward him. “You’re not supposed to talk to people on buses.”

His cheeks wrinkled up as he smiled. “Is that so?”

“Yeah, trains too. It’s a mass-transportation thing. Anything stuffed with people, you’re supposed to act like you’re alone.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “You want everyone to act like you’re not here?”

“Pretty much. You going to give me what I want?” Nikki asked, hoping he would shut up. She wished she could just tell freakjobs to fuck off, but she hated that hurt look that they sometimes got. It made her think of Boo. She would put up with a lot to not see that look.