Robin Wasserman - Sloth

This was how it always was in their friendship: Miranda waiting on the sidelines, while Harper fought the battles and reaped the rewards. It was better that way, Miranda had always told herself. Harper was the strong one, who could take anything, as she’d just proven to herself and everyone watching.

Miranda was the one who cringed at every blow, as if she were the one being struck. And when it was all over and Harper was left battered but still standing, Miranda was the one who cried.

Beth woke up as someone laid a cool, damp washcloth across her head, but she didn’t open her eyes. It was too easy just to lie there, on the small cot in the nurse’s office, and let someone take care of her. The nurse’s small radio was set to an easy-listening station, and the numbing sound of light jazz, punctuated only by occasional static or a soporific DJ, had lulled Beth to sleep shortly after the nurse laid her down for “a little R & R.” She would have been happy to stay that way. But the cot was uncomfortable, the washcloth was dripping down her face, and eventually, as Beth shifted around, trying to force her body back to sleep, the nurse realized that her patient was finally awake.

”Feeling better, dear?” she asked, sounding significantly more sympathetic and nurselike than she had the last time Beth encountered her, trying to teach sex-ed to a horde of hormonally crazed teenagers. She seemed much more relaxed and competent here in her natural habitat. “Ready to sit up?”

Beth had only passed out for a few seconds, but when she awoke to find herself flat on her back in the middle of the hallway, twenty or thirty faces gawking down at her, the nurse had insisted on taking her down to the office. Beth wasn’t about to resist; her mind was still sluggish and fuzzy, and she was happy to leave it that way for as long as possible.

They didn’t trust her to drive herself home; probably for the best-she didn’t trust herself. And she couldn’t pull her parents out of work and make them lose a day’s pay just because she couldn’t handle her stress. She’d be burden enough, once they found out the truth. So the nurse had let her recuperate in her office for the rest of the day, and Beth had stayed there, sleeping on and off, hiding out from her tests and her projects and her meetings and her decisions until the final bell rang, and it was time to escape.

“I’m feeling a lot better,” she said truthfully. “Thanks for letting me hang out here.”

”Are you sure?” The nurse frowned with concern. “I still think I should send you on to a doctor, have someone check you out.”

”No, no, I’m fine,” Beth protested. “I didn’t eat anything this morning, and it just… got to me. Really. I feel okay now.”

She had a job interview after school, one that might actually pay off, and she couldn’t miss it, anxiety attack or not. Except I don’t need the job now, do I? she asked herself. What would she do with spending money in reform school? Or prison?

But she forced herself to stop thinking about what she’d heard that morning, and what she was going to do about it. She needed to be rational and plan her next move, and to do that, she had to make it through the rest of the day. Tonight, she promised herself, she would figure everything out. She would find a way to live with herself-she would have to.

Beth waved off the nurse’s concerns and gathered her stuff, then, steeling herself, rejoined the outside world. Managing to make it down to the parking lot without speaking to anyone-not too difficult, considering that she’d run out of friends weeks ago and so only needed to dodge the handful of acquaintances who needed something from her-she got into her car and wrapped her hands around the wheel.

I could crash too, she told herself. I could pull out onto the road and crash into anything. No drugs, just me. Just an accident. It could happen to anyone.

But it was no comfort; yes, some deaths were random, some accidents were really just that. But some effects had causes-some victims had killers.

”Stop,” she ordered herself again, aloud in the empty car. She couldn’t think about it while she was driving, not unless she really did want to crash into something. (And she didn’t, she assured herself. Much as she hated herself and what she’d done, it would never come to that.)

By the time she’d pulled into the lot of Guido’s Pizza, she’d reassembled herself into some semblance of calm. She smoothed down her hair and did a quick mirror check: She wasn’t exactly decked out in a suit and heels for her interview, but then, given Guido’s usual T-shirt and grease-smeared apron, her faux cashmere and khakis would probably do the job.

Just keep it together, she begged herself. Just for one more hour, keep it together.

And she did, all the way across the parking lot, up to the door of the restaurant, where she almost slammed into a guy backing out the door carrying a large stack of pizza boxes.

He turned around to apologize-and she nearly lost it.

”Hey,” Reed said, his smile just peeking out over the top of the boxes.

”Hey.” Her heart slammed against her chest. Would he be able to tell, just by looking at her? she wondered. Was her guilt painted across her face?

”Listen, about yesterday…”

“I’ve gotta go,” Beth said quickly, clenching her stomach and trying to keep her lower lip from trembling. She brushed past him and stepped inside, immediately blasted by a wave of garlic that made her want to throw up.

”See you later?” he called hopefully as the door shut behind her.

Beth pressed both hands to her face and took a deep breath. God, I hope not.

It turned out that “Guido” was actually Roy, a sixty-two-year-old widower from Vegas who, having a hankering for small-town life, had moved west to find himself. He’d found Grace instead, a go-nowhere, do-nothing town in dire need of a pizza parlor, however mediocre.

And that’s pretty much all Beth took in from his half-hour monologue as she trembled in the chair across from him, willing him to continue talking so that she wouldn’t have to speak. It was hard enough to listen when there were so many loud thoughts crowding into her head.

“My daughter, she wanted me to move in with her and her husband. They fixed up the room over the garage real nice.”

My life is over.

“I raised her right-but that’s no life for a man, livin’ off his daughter, wasting away the days starin’ at someone else’s walls.”

My life should be over. I killed her.

“It’d be different if there were grandkids, but you know how it is today, no one s got any time for family. ‘What’s the hurry, Dad?’ she keeps asking me. ‘What are you waiting for?’ I say, but she just laughs, and that husband of hers… it’s not my place to say, but if you ask me, he doesn’t want the bother.”

I didn’t mean to.

“He’s not a worker, that one. Never did a day’s hard work in his life. Not like me. Twenty-five years at the casino and now here I am, shoveling the pizzas every day, and let me tell you, life couldn’t get much better.”

But it’s still my fault.

“Couldn’t get much worse, either, if you know what I mean. That’s life, eh? Gotta take that shit and turn it into gold, I always say. And it’s not so bad. Rent’s low, sun’s always shining, and customers know better than to talk back.”

Ruining my life won’t change anything.

‘”Course, can’t say as I don’t miss the old days. Vegas now? That’s nothin’ but a theme park. But in my day… yeah, you had your mob, and you had your corruption- but you also had your strippers and your showgirls and your cocktail waitresses. And then there was my Molly…”