Halle Butler - Jillian

“Now that has two refills, and it’s free of charge, ok? I’ll cover it.”

“Thank you so much.” She breathed this, lower than a whisper.

When the doctors and patients had left for the day, Jillian said, “Hey, I’m sorry for leaving you all alone yesterday.”

“It’s ok.”

“Yeah, everyone’s being really nice about it. No one’s mad and Dr. Schraeder just gave me a prescription for some 30-milligram Tylenol T3s with codeine,” she said. “You know, for the pain of my injuries.”

“Oh, wow, I didn’t even know she could prescribe that.”

IT WAS ALWAYS INTERESTING the way things worked out, thought Jillian on the ride home, the train taking her where she needed to go, chugging along, her thoughts free to roam. A bottle of mid-grade painkillers in her purse. A kind of general hilarity all around her. She’d thought she might get fired or reprimanded and she’d been planning to settle into a comfortable depression, but no. They’d been really nice. And Megan hadn’t said anything about the dog, and it tickled Jillian that Megan could be so understanding.

I was in a really bad car accident, she thought. She carried herself like someone who had been in a car accident. She rubbed her shoulder and drew a breath in through her teeth. She visualized the deer and how she hadn’t screamed and how Adam had thought it was exciting. The dog barked at the deer to protect them all from the deer. The deer wasn’t hurt, it ran away, just smashed up the car real bad and now she had horrible back pain. She shook her head and exhaled.

If anyone asked, she’d tell them that’s what happened. “Oh my gosh, that happened to me, too,” they’d say.

Sunset on the train was great. It was only 80 dollars a month for the pass, maybe she could get Elena to pick up Adam all the time. This might have been the best thing that had ever happened to her, getting into this silly car accident.

She got home and let Crispy out of the bathroom. She’d pooped on the floor and chewed up the bath mat. Jillian picked up the bath mat and Crispy lunged at it. “Oooohhh, I forgot to leave you your bone, didn’t I, you crazy girl?” she said, tugging the bath mat while Crispy bore down on the other end. “Time to go on out,” she said.

Dinner was cooking when Elena came by to drop Adam off.

“Hey, you want to stay for dinner? I made plenty.”

“No,” said Elena. “I have to get home and make dinner for my own family.”

“Oh, ok,” Jillian said. “Well, anytime, you know. Thanks for picking him up.”

They laughed at the movie while they ate dinner. It was great that the apartment was still kind of clean from the weekend. She changed her boy into his pajamas, tucked him in, and then went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. She slipped into a fresh nightgown and washed her face, something she didn’t always do. She brushed and flossed. Then she went into the dark apartment and found her purse on the kitchen chair. Crispy walked up to her and looked at her.

“Hi, Crispy,” she whispered.

She got the bottle of medicine just so she could put it away in the cabinet.

When she was back in the bathroom, she looked at the bottle and said, “I’ve been in a bad accident.”

Things were still pretty awkward between Megan and Randy, and she hadn’t heard anything from or said anything to Amanda since the fight. But did she still go to the grocery store and buy dinner and stuff? Oh, totally, yeah, of course, of course, because life just keeps grinding on, right?

That day she thought, “Fuck it,” and went to the smaller grocery store. The store was for rich people, but fuck it, right? There were delights there.

She wanted to make something out of vegetables. The selection was small but everything did look so much healthier. There were summer squash the size of a baby’s arm and baby bok choy that looked clean and smooth and not like a bunch of slugs had been fucking and barfing on it in the back of a truck for weeks. So this is how the better half eats. She picked out two well-formed bunches of baby bok choy and put them in her basket. There was a wall of salad dressing in a refrigerated shelf that she stared at for five minutes. Next to that was a section for juices and anciently formulated teas with helpful bacteria. On one of the teas was a drawing of a thin female torso with a spiral on it that looked like a twister. Detoxification. Gotta get this inside me. It was five dollars. She picked up the bottle and stood in front of the case for two minutes staring at it. It was a glass bottle. She needed a sweet potato. They were two dollars, but they didn’t have those suspicious grey holes bored into them that she was used to coring out. That would be fun. Just wash it and bake it. That would be fun, yeah.

And something fun to eat. The snack aisle. Oh, yeah, I like this, she thought. Cruelty free agave dino gummies, gluten free cookie mixes, puffed and naturally flavored corn and rice balls, crackers made mostly out of raw seeds, a bag of dried Himalayan goji berries. Yeah, cool.

Ultimately these things were too expensive, so she picked a small-farm cheese and a six-pack of nice beer. “I mean, I work all the time. This is why I work, isn’t it?” she mumbled. “I’m a hard worker. I can buy this cheese. It’s just cheese, I guess.” She was standing by the cheese case, holding the cheese, looking at the cheese and pumping herself up to buy it. “Fuck it,” she mumbled, and tossed it in her basket.

When she got home, Randy asked, “Oh, cool, what’s the occasion?”

“I dunno,” said Megan. “I just wanted to get us some fancy groceries.”

Randy poked through the bag. “No snacks?” he said.

“The snacks were all stupid,” said Megan. “It was all, like, tiny bags of dried Himalayan berries for nine bucks.”

“Hey, nice cheese.”

“And I got some fancy beer.”

“Can I have one?” he asked.

“Obviously,” said Megan. “And look at how nice that bok choy looks.”

“Oh yeah,” said Randy. He wasn’t looking at it closely enough. He was looking for snacks. “Do we have any bread for this cheese?” he asked.

“God fucking damnit.”

“What?”

“No, we don’t have any fucking bread for that cheese.”

“Oh, it’s ok, baby.”

“Well, what’s the point of the cheese if you can’t eat it?”

“We could put it on the potato. Hey, don’t look at me like that.”

“We’re not going to put the cheese on the fucking potato,” said Megan. “That’s stupid.”

“Well, hold on,” said Randy. In the cabinet he found some stale tortilla chips. “Here. We can eat it with these.”

“Are those even good?”

“They’re probably fine,” said Randy.

Megan baked the potato and cooked the greens with hot pepper. They ate the nine dollar cheese on the stale tortilla chips and Megan said, “Well, I guess this nine dollar cheese is pretty good.”

“Oh come on, it’s great.”

“It would be great if we didn’t have to eat it with these shitty chips.”

Randy sighed. “Do you remember Kelly?”

“Uhhh, sort of,” said Megan.

“She’s opening up a vintage clothing store in the neighborhood.”

“Wow.”

“And,” said Randy, looking at her sideways, “I’m doing the website for it.” He wiped his mouth and took a sip of beer.

“Oh, cool. What’s it going to, uh, look like?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t started it yet. But she’s having a launch barbeque thing in two weekends, so that’s my deadline. She’s going to give out business cards and coupons and stuff. It’s going to be a pretty big thing.”

“Sounds fun,” said Megan. Sounds like my fucking nightmare.