J. Osborne: Black Gum

“If you steal from me, I’ll kill you.” He turned back to his laptop.

The steam from the dish pit left a layer of grime that I couldn’t shower off. I pulled the accordion hose down and sprayed the pots and listened to music on my phone and cleaned the rubber mats. I mopped the floors and joked with the cooks. We smoked cigarettes out back and they talked about their kids and wives. We talked about which waitresses we’d fuck and exactly how we’d do it. I would laugh and watch the snow collect on the chairs out on the empty patio and I’d go back in and spray more pots. I’d scrub them with a wire brush. It gave me time to think.

I pushed down the door to the dishwasher and I learned to enjoy the sound of the water moving.

After work I’d buy a six pack and walk home. One night I was in the corner store and a woman in a caftan was talking to the beer through the glass. “You’re so cold. Pretty. You’re so pretty and cold.” I grabbed my beer and she turned to me and adjusted her giant glasses and said, “I’m the heir to a concrete fortune.”

“Can I have five bucks?” I said.

She looked back through the glass. “It’s so pretty.”

Netflix and Chihuahuas till I passed out.

Then I woke up and did it again. For a time, it was exactly what I needed.

I met my mother at Chili’s. I brought her a Reese’s peanut butter cup.

We ordered our food and talked.

Every time we met, she talked about my father. She told me that she should have known better. That of course he wasn’t at the gym at that time of night. She told me about a swingers’ retreat he took her to. All the porn. She talked about how she’d take him back now, but it was too late. New loves, new lives. She missed him. Last time they met up he touched her hair. Now they hadn’t spoken in years.

When she talked about him, it filled me with a deep fear. Every young man fights the truth that he’s half his father.

I told her about my job and my place and her face lit up.

“I was worried about you.”

“I know.”

“You’re my boy. I can’t have my boy being so sad.”

I started crying into my fiesta chicken. She came around the table and gave me a hug.

A cook and I were on our break. We were smoking cigarettes out in front of the restaurant. Across the street, a bearded man in a suit fell off his bicycle. He cursed at it and picked it up and tossed it into the street.

The cook said, “Looks like Frog is back on the sauce.”

“Why do they call him ‘Frog’?”

“He hops from town to town. Is what he told me.”

I watched Frog kick the bike. Cars backed up and honking.

The cook said, “He comes in every day. Weird little fucker. Told me he had pills of weed. Panhandles enough to get a margarita and then sings songs and plays his harmonica.”

“I like harmonica.”

“You’re whiter than shit.”

“That is true.”

“A couple days ago he had that suit on and he had a Bible. Said he was going to church.”

“Looks like he missed church.”

“Looks like he went to church.”

Frog stormed off down the street. Bike still out in the road.

We heard a noise and turned to look into the restaurant. The college kids were tanked, and this was their last stop after the bar closed.

A brolic in a polo picked up a scrawny dude and bodyslammed him through a table. The cook and I recoiled and made a sound.

I turned back to him. Thought about it a bit. I said, “I need to go back to college.”

I met a woman and for the first time in a while it felt natural. Her name was Shara. I asked her out like a normal human being and she said yes and we ate tacos and drank beer out of fishbowl margarita glasses.

I hadn’t spoken much to anyone in a long time, but when I talked to her I got my language back.

On our second date, she asked me about my wife.

“You guys aren’t divorced?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Just haven’t gotten around to it yet, I suppose.”

“Do you two still talk?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You can answer,” she said. “You’re still gonna get laid.”

After our third date we stripped out of our clothes and hopped the fence into the apartment complex pool and it was so cold but we held each other. Our lips turned blue and the groundskeeper kicked us out and so we went back to the apartment and played with the Chihuahuas and smoked with my roommate and fell asleep on my air mattress.

For our fourth date, I hung out at her place and she showed me an ayahuasca vine she’d ordered from the internet. We checked the internet for tips as to how to strip it and make tea, but we never did it.

I held her cats and my face itched something fierce, but I didn’t mind.

She’d check her phone and tell me, “It’s time for you to go. He’s coming over.”

I’d tell her we should fuck first.

She’d say, “He’s literally on his way.”

Then we’d do it frantically, quickly, and she’d shove me out the door with my pants still down.

The fifth time I saw her, I went to a party and we shared looks but said nothing. All the men at the party swarmed her.

We kissed behind a door quickly and she ran off.

Our sixth meeting, she gave me books to read. I met up with her and her man and their friends at a bar and we all laughed and carried on and I touched her leg under the table.

Seven was the park. We sat in the empty outdoor stadium on the stone steps and watched Renaissance Fair kids practice sword fighting.

Eight was when she told me that she couldn’t be in a relationship, and she just had a need to explore and find out what worked for her, but that she couldn’t tell her man because he wouldn’t understand. She was torn that way: there was a wild life that she wanted and then this gravity, this man with feet firmly planted. So she did both. All of it. When she wanted.

I loved that she was that way. I loved that when we were together, we were best friends, but that when I left, there was someone else to be her best friend.

Our ninth date, she took me to a greenhouse. She named the plants for me. There was a tree in the greenhouse from Africa that only needed a few drops of water a year. “Any more than that, and it will die,” she said.

We turned on music back at her apartment. We smoked a bowl. Laying in bed, she said, “We’re all our own. That’s all we can be.”

I liked that.

I liked her.

My steps were light.

I had found the track.

Shane texted me on our tenth date. Shara and I finished up a game of minigolf. I told her about what to expect. Her eyes went wide. “We can roll tonight?” she said. “Let’s fucking go.”

When we pulled up there were cars parked on the lawn. Bass rattling the house. Shara kissed me quick on the cheek and hopped out. I followed.

Charlie greeted us at the door.

“No Mustang,” I said.

“Yeah, I finished it,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s in much better shape, but the guy seemed happy. So whatever.”

He handed us beers.

I saw Shane sitting on the couch. I sat down next to him. Shara wandered into the kitchen to mingle with the hoodrats.

Shane nodded at her. “Nice, man.”

“Thanks.”

“How have you been?”

I chugged half the beer. “I’ve been good, man. You?”

“Better. Things have been better.”

Outside it began to pour sleet.

“How did all that shit go?”

“I paid them.” And that was all he said on that.

He reached into his pocket and brought out two pills. “One for you, and one for your girl.”