Lee Johnson - Nitro Mountain

“To go,” I said.

“It’s ten cents cheaper if you stay,” he said. “And we got the paper for you and everything. And I’m here.”

“I’ll pay twenty cents extra,” I said. “It’s to go.”

Reece put the mug back like it was something he’d bought just for me and now didn’t know what to do with it. He was younger than me. At the small college studying remedial stuff with plans of working in forensics. If he knew half my story he wouldn’t have even been trying. I walked across the street with my steaming cup. Fog on the hillsides beyond the buildings. I noticed something in the pawnshop window, an electric bass. It looked familiar. I stopped. That beat-up headstock. But it couldn’t be. Or could it?

Leon, is that you?

People come and people go.

Let him go.

—

I clocked in, cleaned up and at noon I unlocked the doors and took my spot behind the register. The lunchtime drinkers crawled in and then the early-bird losers. From now until two, beer was only a dollar and all the games were free. The sign said so. You wouldn’t believe the scum this deal brought in. And then he showed up.

Him. For real.

He was keeping his head down but I recognized how that body moved, forcing itself forward. He stopped in front of my register and looked at me like he was trying to think of the best way to describe me.

“A day late and a dollar short,” he said.

His head was shaved. His eyes were clear and his skin was pure. Like I’d never seen him. Like he was finally in total control.

What was I supposed to do now? Everything that happened since he’d been gone, since I left, all the things I learned about myself — the time fell away.

But some things were different. He turned his head and on the back of his neck I saw these purple and white scabby pocks. They were part of him now. Scars on him for once. I held up my hand. He was right across the counter but it felt like I was waving to somebody far away. He said he liked what I’d done with my hair. I hadn’t done anything to it.

“How are you doing here right now where you stand?” he said.

I didn’t answer.

“So,” he said. “Sounds like things have changed.” He wouldn’t look away from me. “It’s nice to see you, Jennifer. Jennifer, standing here while the world spins around her. I’ll see you again. You’ll see me again.”

When he walked back out the door the air pressure dropped. I hoped I hadn’t pissed him off.

—

I was breaking down my register at the end of the day when Don came by. “The door’s already locked,” he said. “Just close it tight when you leave so nobody gets in. Hear?”

I took my time counting.

“One more thing,” he said. “I don’t know who that was that stopped by, but you don’t need to be hanging out with him anymore.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I won’t tell him anything.”

I put the bills in a bank bag, zipped it up and locked it in the drawer beneath the register. Then I sat there thinking for a long time but didn’t get anywhere with that.

A security light flashed on in the parking lot when I pulled the door shut behind me and pushed on it to test the lock. And when I went around the corner of the building there was Arnett, sitting in a rusty hatchback with his arm out the window and a cigarette between his fingers. He pulled his arm back into the car, raised the cigarette to his face and the tip glowed.

“Need a lift?” he said.

“No.”

“You don’t have a car and I do.”

“I like walking.”

“Let me give you a ride home in my car. You don’t have one. Come on. Ain’t nothing wrong with my car, is there?”

Inside it smelled like gasoline. “Spent days getting this fucker running,” he said. “Still illegal as shit. But so am I.” He tapped a bag sitting at the base of the stickshift. “Ain’t smoked in months but I did just now. I feel like King James.” He turned to me. “You’re a fucking bitch.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. It was the truth.

His short-sleeve shirt showed a fresh tattoo of teeth and eyes moving on his arm. Just a lazily drawn sketch of a nightmare. Scar-dots had crawled over onto Daffy’s face. I let him talk all the way to my place about how shitty it was being back in Kingsport. “Ain’t no opportunities to be opportunistic about here,” he said. “I refuse to believe you ran off to this boring-ass shithole. I’m just glad I found you. It’s a sign of the covenant of our relationship.”

I stepped out, thanked him for the ride and shut the door.

“Hey now, whoa there,” he said. “How late you work tomorrow?”

“Late.”

“How late? I need to be leaving soon. We don’t have a lot of time to do this.”

“Six.”

“That’s not late. I’ll pick you up here at six and show you how not late it is.”

—

I woke up to those same birds screaming. They only knew one song. And it said only the one thing.

I stayed in bed all day. I didn’t go in to work. I let the sun go down. The window started catching the colors of the clouds. Those birds sounded no different as the dark came on.

—

I was now a responsible person who worked long hours, and because of this I had no clean clothes. The clean sheets were from Don. I wished he’d bought me some clothes.

I walked to the coin laundry in stained sweatpants and a wrinkled T. I didn’t have enough time to do this. He would come looking in an hour.

It took longer to wash everything than I thought it would. I shouldn’t have even bothered. I put it all into a dryer, went outside and smoked. Cars drove by.

What were we supposed to do when he got here? Talk about the good old days? We didn’t have any. Or about what he planned to do with the rest of his life, which would be behind bars? I was going to tell him I wouldn’t be there for him. While he was locked up or once he got out, if that ever happened. I was here now, but this was the last time.

I reached into the dryer and grabbed up my hot clothes and the brass buttons on my jeans burned my forearm enough to make me drop my nice shirt, the one I wanted to wear tonight, on the floor right into a puddle leaking from one of the washers.

“God damn everything,” I prayed. The first words I’d spoken all day.

Then my cell phone vibrated with a voicemail. Arnett. He’d been thinking about me. Couldn’t wait to see me. He loved me. He loved me. He sounded buzzed and pissed. “I bet you’re having trouble with your words lately,” he said, “so I’ll help you out. Say it with me now, say it with me.”

By the time my shirt was dry for the second time, I was already late to meet him. I walked down the dark street with my clothes basket on my hip. I saw Arnett waiting on the stairs beneath the porch light. Had his back turned. Long muscles showing through his shirt. He slapped a bug into his shoulder, inspected his hand, then he turned and looked straight at me. I stepped off the pavement behind a grove of cedars. Did he see me? He was still looking in my direction. He turned away again. No, he hadn’t spotted me. Thank God, because I was still in those filthy clothes. What would he think? I peeked out of the cedars and untied the drawstring of my sweatpants.

I pushed my thumb under the elastic waistband of my underwear, which had gone a week without washing. I dropped them on the ground and peeled off my socks. Where was the blue pair? They had to be in here. I found one. But where was the other?

Bent over the basket without anything covering my bottom, I scattered clothes on the ground and kept looking. The nicest gift I ever had, now I’d lost. The one secret I promised to keep, I’d thrown away. I looked down at my thin, white legs. What was I doing out here like this? I found a clean pair of panties and put them on. I picked my jeans out of the basket and gave them a shake as I poked my head around the bush. I couldn’t see Arnett but his car was still there.