Amelia Gray - Gutshot - Stories

This is the literal goddamn opposite of two middle-aged people going on their first date in a coffee shop. If this dirty car spinning its shit is on one side of the world, the opposite side of the world is a coffee shop where a fifty-three-year-old woman named Dolly describes the clay pots and saucers she is fixing in her greenhouse. Carl is not aware that there exist fifteen different kinds of peppers and three different kinds of lettuce. If he has in fact seen a basil plant, he called it a fagweed for the benefit of no one but himself, doused it in kerosene, and lit it on fire. He watched it burn and felt deeply satisfied.

Carl is the operator of this filthy camouflaged vehicle flipping endless J-turns just off this dirty shit Raton Pass stretch of road. The car is a Chevy Camaro IROC-Z from the year 1986. Carl puts nineteen dollars and eighty-six cents of premium in the tank and orders the cashier to keep the remainder of a twenty. It is the only kindness Carl affords. He leaves exact change for his breakfast in town. Waitresses don’t dare say to his face the shit they say behind his back. These waitresses have heard of basil, but they are wary.

Say one word against Carl’s Chevy Camaro IROC-Z and Carl will kill you. If you are scared that there is nothing you can be sure of in this world, you can be sure of that.

Carl has lived a hard and terrifying life. He draws great pleasure from fucking a waitress named Dolly in Raton, where the closest thing to a motel room is a janitor’s closet with a door that locks. People who say that the desert is God’s land and it should be protected are not referring to the city of Raton. The best thing to do out there is to spin your tires and curse every injustice in your own language as you grip the wheel of a Chevy Camaro IROC-Z crafted during or after the year 1986.

This car is spinning its shit into the hot earth, chewing up cactus spike, scattering wild creature. Carl is not wondering what happens if the cops come down and see the demolished twelve littered in the backseat. He does not think, Who can I trust to share my secret thoughts? Carl’s thinking that if this was the opening scene of a movie he would call it GO FOR IT AND RAISE HELL.

Carl is coated in the filth of the world. Carl does not believe that the meek shall inherit. He knows that you never know what is enough until you find out what is more than enough.

If you asked Carl what the point of it all was he would spit into a cold cup of coffee and say Handjobs. After he left, Dolly would pocket his exact change and shake her head, but she wouldn’t say a thing because she knows that if there is any man in this world who can impregnate a woman by raising his voice, it is Carl.

There is a Carl on the other side of the world. This other Carl might put on a black button-down shirt, with sleeves, and go out with a woman who talked about what it was like to grow fifteen different kinds of peppers. He might observe this woman while she applied lip balm and wonder in his lizard brain if she had the kind of meaty ass you get when you stand all day every day. His name might also be Carl, but he would drive a pre-owned Honda and feel like a pussy all the time.

Carl imagines the first minutes of GO FOR IT AND RAISE HELL. Dolly’s there, except she has these stacked fake titties, and she’s wearing this silver bikini that shows off her Grade-A Prime. In the movie she’s sitting in the passenger seat of the Chevy Camaro IROC-Z as Carl flips these righteous bitches. She is speaking but it’s too loud to hear her and too dirty to see her dirty mouth.

Dolly knows that the way to a man’s heart is through his vice. She knows how to make it count. Slowly she is speaking, and speaking slowly she is saying GO FOR IT AND RAISE HELL.

Dolly and Carl on the other side of the world would get married. Dolly would wear a wedding gown that held her body like a fat man sliding down a mountain, and Carl would duct-tape tin cans to his Civic. But here in Raton, they’re doing just fine. Here, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, and that road is paved with handjobs.

Marcy noticed the pimple when she came home from the hospice center. She dropped her bags, her mother’s bags, and the plastic tub containing her mother’s jewelry and saw it right away, examining herself in the hall mirror. It had risen overnight. It stretched her cheek’s skin with a soreness that assured Marcy it would surface and disfigure just in time for June’s wedding that weekend. She produced a tube of benzoyl peroxide and dabbed it on before going to bed.

It was even worse in the morning, warm to the touch. Marcy frowned, her bleary eyes struggling to adjust to the morning light.

Over the sound of the faucet, she heard her mother’s voice: DON’T TOUCH IT.

She froze. “Mom?”

The woman’s voice came again from the spot on her skin. YOU’RE JUST GOING TO MAKE IT WORSE.

Prodding the pimple, she felt her mother’s presence. “Mom,” she said. “Listen. I’m so sorry. I meant to get to you sooner. There was a flight delay, and you know how those are, and when I asked the attendant—”

QUIT FUSSING, her mother said. YOU’LL BE LATE FOR WORK

She dropped her hand.

* * *

One of her coworkers had left a condolence gift of a small potted plant in a mug by her keyboard. Marcy took it with her into the bathroom. She craned her neck in the mirror.

WHAT DID I SAY.

She jumped back. “Jesus Christ.”

JESUS WON’T HELP YOU NOW.

“Of all the places you could end up, really.”

The pimple was silent. She jabbed at it with a wad of paper towels.

WATCH IT, MISSY.

“This is a big week, you know, I have stuff to do. June picked me as her maid of honor after all. You remember June. There are going to be pictures.”

OH, IT’S GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN.

Another woman came in and entered one of the stalls. Marcy applied lipstick while she waited for the woman to finish, but it quickly became clear that the woman was going to wait Marcy out, and so she took the potted plant and decamped to the breakroom.

“This comes at an exceptionally bad time,” Marcy said.

TELL ME ABOUT IT. I WAS ABOUT TO PAVE THE GARDEN.

She dumped the plant out in the breakroom trash and filled the mug with coffee. “Couldn’t you possess something at my place? That slow cooker you gave me would be fun to haunt.” She bought a candy bar from the machine. “I’ve got some red shoes you could make dance whenever I wear them. We could do a road show.”

I DON’T APPRECIATE YOUR ATTITUDE.

“I’m trying to talk some sense into the situation.”

YOU KNOW, THAT CHOCOLATE’S JUST GOING TO MAKE YOU BREAK OUT.

“I can’t take a meeting looking like this.”

AND FORGET ABOUT YOUR FIGURE.

A man looked up from a nearby cubicle. Marcy ducked behind the wall. “I’m going to spray someone with pus in the middle of a sentence,” she said, keeping her voice down and holding her hand over her mouth for good measure.

I’LL TRY TO CONTAIN MYSELF.

“I highly doubt that,” Marcy said, though in truth her mother did seem subcutaneous in the way that could ache for weeks without coming to a head.

Tucking half of the candy bar in her desk for later, she organized her tasks for the morning. She would have an early lunch with June, who would know what to do.

* * *

“Everything is ruined,” June said. They liked to meet at a sit-down Mexican place between their two office parks. The pimple counseled Marcy to order an iced tea and a salad, which she stabbed at obstinately. June was eating a tomato sandwich that she had brought from home. “I’m making a huge mistake.”

“You’re having completely normal thoughts. You’re an intelligent woman and right now you’re simply considering all the angles.”