Michael Bunker - WICK

The “real world” way that lovers meet, the second kind, usually starts with a shared look from across the room. There is nothing of loathing or hatred in it. In fact, usually, the look is followed by the man being immediately and lethally struck down by the woman’s ethereal beauty. Slayed by Cupid, he can do nothing else, from that point on, but pursue the woman until he captures her heart. There is no soundtrack, save that one in the heart, but in this kind of story, the man’s heart skipping and the woman’s cheek blushing give hint of the music to come.

Or something like that. Either way the story is familiar.

Neither one of these well-worn paths was the route to romance trodden by Cheryl Woolsey and Clay Richter. Instead, it came down to the cost of a roast beef sandwich.

The total price for his meal on that blessed Monday—his first day with Cheryl in his life—was $6.25, and he paid for it with a crisp, new $10 bill. She did her magic with the cash register and promptly handed him his change. $2.75. Looking him directly in the eye and smiling innocently.

He looked at the pile of money in his hand—fully $1.00 short of what he was owed—squinted his eyes threateningly at her, harrumphed, and then moved silently on to a table to eat his meal in defeat. He did not once look back at this thief, this grifter, this circus con-woman with her big floppy Burberry and her skinny long legs and her dark heart hidden behind a too-ready smile. Who wears a Burberry hat, he thought, in-doors? And he ate in a kind of plotting silence.

The next day, Clay, seeing Cheryl perched on her wooden stool at the register on the far end of the lunch line, purposefully placed on his tray the exact same items that he always had and went through the line as he had the day before. Reaching the register, he placed his food before her and, once again, Cheryl smiled at him sweetly while blatantly and fearlessly stealing a dollar from him. He looked down at his $2.75 in change, grimaced indignantly, thrust it into his pocket and went to his table to eat his meal.

It was all he could think about. He was obsessed. He didn’t study that night at all.

The following day, the pattern continued, only this time, after receiving his change minus the dollar Cheryl had again stolen from him, he smiled back at her sweetly, pocketed the change, then reached over and picked up a roll of mints (priced at $1) and stuck them in his pocket with his change. He winked. At that, her eyes narrowed a bit and they shared a long and knowing stare before he finally retreated to his luncheon table.

The fourth day of this unique courtship with Cheryl, Clay loaded his tray with the identical lunch items, and she rang up the sale on the register. He noticed that the bin of mints had been removed from the counter, an obvious sign of one-upsmanship. He could see it behind the counter, just beyond his reach, almost as if someone had calculated his height and the stretch of the fabric he would be wearing that day, and had gone through the motions to calculate the lean of his body, the inclination of the packaging. The mints had been put… just… beyond… his reach.

Without so much as a pause, he reached into his pockets and pulled out the exact amount he owed. $6.25. Nothing more, nothing less. He counted it out quite deliberately making a show of each bill, then slowly dropped the change in the center of the bills, letting the last quarter drop dramatically from his hand and roll slowly in a lazy circle on the formica before it began to spin, increasing its speed as it collapsed, dying slowly and dramatically and rhythmically on the countertop. Clay smiled, nodded his head in victory, and then began his triumphant walk towards his table. It was then that, without warning, he was struck in the back by a hastily thrown roll of mints. He turned around slowly, and balancing his tray in one hand, he casually bent down and picked up the mints. Snapping a single mint out dexterously with one thumb, he popped it into his mouth, winked again at Cheryl, and went to the table to eat his lunch.

Not long after what became known as The Mint War, he met Cheryl in the campus bookstore. He smiled at her and she smiled back and the first word she ever said to him dropped from her lips.

“Jerk.”

“Thief.”

“Meanie.”

“Reprobate.”

They stood and smiled at each other. Smiles of shared affection. The rest, as they say, is history. Not even a year later they were married, and they had a hard and fast rule after that. No stealing. Even if she was only doing it out of psychological curiosity—to see who would notice.

Thursday

Twenty years had passed since that meeting, and here he was, a lonely widower, staring up at a filthy, water stained popcorn ceiling in a cheap motel room. The weight of the last few days suddenly hit him. God, or Fate, or inertia or chaos—whatever ruled the world—had led him to this place in a conspiracy of silence, simply standing by and watching as his life transpired. He suddenly felt melancholy, sad, and alone, like he was moving to an end, but the purpose of that end suddenly seemed less clear.

He knew that getting home would help everything. Having just been in a real home with Veronica and Stephen had reminded him of what he was missing. But, he also knew that without the people in the house to make it a home, he would still be wandering the rooms like before, listening for the sounds of others.

He put this thought out of his head. Sometimes giving in to thoughts makes them become self-fulfilling prophecies. He willfully meditated, instead, about what he would do when he got to Ithaca. Maybe he would get a milk cow—he always liked Jerseys—and some goats and chickens. I could do that , he thought, as he finally began to stir from his reverie, to shake the morning cobwebs from his head. He had no real sense of freedom yet, but the idea that there was a future for him, and that the future involved home and peace, made him smile. Still a bit of a journey , he thought, but the only way to get there is a step at a time.

He took stock of his body, particularly his legs. Tight. Muscles sore, but in a good way. His feet hurt. I should have done this six years ago rather than lock myself away in that urban prison. But, I can still do this. I can. Man, it would be so beautiful to have Cheryl and the girls with me… but I don’t.

He knew there would be no water in the tiny bathroom, but he couldn’t help trying the rusted faucet anyway. After check-in, the managers had brought in a couple of buckets of dirty, rusty water to be used only—they had carefully explained several times—to flush the toilets. He still had the three bottles of water Veronica had given him back in Harlem, so he used a judicious amount out of one bottle to splash water on his face and brush his teeth. There were three energy bars left in his side pocket, so he ate one of them, and for some reason that he couldn’t rightly identify, he wasn’t able to get himself to throw the metallic wrapper away. He folded it carefully and stuffed it into one of the side pockets of the backpack. Why did I do that? He couldn’t really say. There was some need to conserve now, to make everything count, as if whatever materials had come his way had done so for a reason and he had a responsibility to make them count. Or perhaps he was just getting nervous. Maybe what had happened with Sandy was not the end, but just the beginning. Maybe things were going to spiral downhill in the aftermath. He remembered the Christmas blizzard of a few years back, how some of the stores had run out of food in an astoundingly short amount of time, making shopping in them like walking through a Soviet-era bread line. After that storm, you had to be happy with whatever could be found on the shelves and not ask questions—just pay for whatever was available, and be glad you got it.