Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

"Let's get together again."

"Come by the store soon."

She wanted me, Rhonda, to come by the store. Handa and Rhonda. On my way home, I dropped the camera off to get the film developed.

The next night, Vern came by a little after midnight to work on the pruno. He unwrapped it from the T-shirt. Gases had made the plastic bag swell up, pregnant. He opened it and dumped in all those sugar cubes, squeezed in the packets of ketchup, and added some water.

"Are you going to tell me or what?" he said.

"The couch?"

"Yes, the fucking couch," he said, licking some ketchup from his finger.

"It belongs to a friend," I said, and right when I was about to tell him the whole story, I heard the guy's voice again. Old lady Rhonda's husband. Screaming. Walking out front of our building. I ran over to the window, and there he was, carrying a TV out into the middle of the street. Old lady Rhonda was more aggressive in her defense of the television, punching her husband in the back.

"Live your own life!" the guy was saying. "Stop watching other people live on TV!"

"Please don't do this," she said.

Vern stood next to me at the window

"We have to help her," I said.

"I don't do that damsel-in-distress thing."

"My arm is busted. I need your help."

"You go. I'll tend to the pruno."

"We have to help her."

Vern glared at me. "Look, I like you. We're friends, right? But did I get off my barstool when that guy hit you with a cue stick? Did I come save you? No. Why would I help some woman I don't even know?"

"I'm going," I said and took off down the stairs and came out onto the street right when the guy drenched the TV in lighter fluid.

"Hey!" I barked at him, feeling all heroic. I looked at my bent arm, wondering what I'd do to defend myself if he wanted to tussle.

"Don't," old lady Rhonda said to me. She looked really scared, and her frightened eyes made me remember Karla and the way the man's wedding ring had punctured my nose, the taste of blood slipping down my throat, me crumpled up on the sidewalk after he kicked me and strutted away.

"Who are you?" the guy said. He had huge front teeth, the size of playing cards.

"You don't have to burn the TV," I said. I looked at my good hand. Worrying about a fistfight. It looked so small and useless. Like I saw an ultrasound of myself. Me, Rhonda, a fetus. Me, with the buzzing fetus hand. "Just give it away. Give it to me. I don't have one."

"I'm teaching her a lesson," he said.

"It's the same lesson. Either way she doesn't have the TV."

The guy mulled my offer over for a minute. You could tell that he really wanted to burn something and was disappointed that there might be another way to solve the problem. I was sure he'd incinerate it anyway. But finally he agreed to give it to me, and old lady Rhonda kept thanking him and he was saying, "Yeah, yeah," while walking back into our building. She looked at me and winked. I shot one back at her.

When I got done struggling up the stairs with the TV, I kicked my front door until Vern opened it.

"I wouldn't light a cigarette too close to this idiot box," Vern said, "unless you want to burn the place down."

"Will you help me?"

He sighed and grabbed a side of the TV, relieving my crooked arm of the excruciating weight. We walked in and set it on the couch.

"I'm proud of you," Vern said.

"Are you teasing?"

"No, seriously I thought that guy was gonna burn it for sure.

"Thanks."

"Let's not get all sappy, soldier," he said and walked straight to the door and left.

I kept peeking at the pruno. Nothing had really changed since Vern added the ketchup, water, and sugar cubes. The bag had lost all of its pressure that had made it swell so big before, but it was showing signs of bulging again slightly around the edges, beads of condensation collecting on the inside of the bag.

I couldn't tell you why, but I kept getting out of bed every couple of hours, walking into the kitchen and checking on the pruno. Making sure everything was all right.

Finally' about five a.m. I snatched the pruno off of its nest of spaghetti crumbs in the kitchen and set it down on the floor next to my mattress. I sent the klutzy, dying hand from my bent arm over to touch the pruno every time I stirred in my sleep.

Two nights later, old lady Rhonda and I were on the burned couch, watching "Wheel of Fortune." A man from Boise, Idaho, spun the wheel and lost everything. BANKRUPT! Pat Sajak shook his head like he was astonished; he apologized to the man and said, "There's more where that came from."

The couch had dried out nicely. It smelled like singed hair and mold, but neither of us minded. Old lady Rhonda brought American cheese sandwiches and a bottle of cheap vodka, which we drank on the rocks, out of coffee cups. I'd back-washed a big piece of sandwich crust into my drink, and it sat on the bottom like a decomposing fish. Her long gray hair was pulled into a pony tail. It was the only one I'd ever seen that actually looked like a horse's tail.

On the TV. two words: a person:

"Figure it out yet?" old lady Rhonda said.

"Not yet." I tried to grab that piece of crust from my cocktail, but it only broke up, lying in brown clumps.

A guy on TV said, "Is there an L?"

"No, L," Pat Sajak said.

"I've already got it," old lady Rhonda said to me. "I'm not good at much, but `Wheel of Fortune' is my game."

"What is it?"

"I'm not telling," she said.

TV: "Is there a IV?"

Pat Sajak: "No TV."

"Have you ever thought about going on the show?" I asked her.

"I'd probably freeze up. Stand there looking stupid. That's what my husband says, anyway."

"Fuck him," I said.

TV "An M?"

Pat Sajak: "Yes."

Vanna White walked over and touched the M's illuminated spaces.

"Got it yet?" Rhonda said.

I was convinced. "Yes."

"What is it?"

"Crash man," I said.

"What the hell's a crash man?"

"It's like a stunt man who deals exclusively with crashes."

"There's no such thing," old lady Rhonda said, "and besides, look at the TV again. That wouldn't say crash man. It would say Crashman Man."

I got up and finished my drink and went to the fridge for some more ice cubes. I dumped them in without rinsing the backwash out of my glass.

"Are you sulking?" she said.

"No." But I might have been. I drank an entire glassful of vodka before filling it again and coming back to the couch.

"I got to go," old lady Rhonda said. "Got to have dinner ready before my husband gets home from work."

"Is he good to you?"

She looked at me, her lips pursed. "What do you mean?"

"Is he nice?"

"When he's not burning my stuff, sure, he's nice."

"What are you doing in the morning?"

"No plans," she said.

"Let's have breakfast."

She hugged me. "You ask if he's nice, but no one's been as nice to me as you are in years. Do you like waffles?"

I nodded. We were still hugging.