Bones & All (11 page)

“What, you deaf, bitch?” the drunk guy was shouting. “Hear
this,
you dumb ho?”

“Hey!” Now someone else was striding down the aisle behind me. He passed me and stood in front of the woman's shopping cart. He had tousled dirty blond hair and was wearing a green baseball jersey, jeans, and work boots. “You can't talk to a lady like that. You're out of control, pal.”

“Pal!” the cowboy scoffed. “I ain't your
pal
.” There was spittle in the corners of his mouth. Yup. Rabid.

From the back I could tell the guy in the green jersey was older than I was—eighteen, maybe twenty. He gave the woman a look over his shoulder. Mouthing “Thanks,” she turned and wheeled her cart out of the aisle. I should have left too, but you know how it is when somebody's behaving badly in public. You're riveted to the spot just waiting to see what will happen next.

The drunken cowboy reached for the boy in green, but he neatly ducked out of the way. “Now you listen here, you dumb-ass pretty-boy son of a bitch,” the cowboy yelled, making another grab for the boy's shirt, “you ain't got no right to tell me what to do.”

The boy turned his head and looked at me then, and a funny feeling ran clear through me. If he felt it too, he didn't let on. He turned back to the drunk guy and said, so calmly it gave me goose bumps, “You're right. But either way, I think we should take it outside.” Without another glance at me he walked toward the back of the store, which struck me as odd, but the cowboy probably couldn't think that clearly even when he was sober. He stumbled after the boy in green, dropping his basket on the floor, but then he doubled back and picked up a six-pack of beer before staggering out of the aisle. I peeked in the overturned basket: beef jerky and a jumbo bag of Milky Way bars. A can of baked beans rolled out onto the white linoleum.

For a while I wandered through the aisles—garden tools, pet food, cosmetics—trying to calm down after what I'd seen, not just the crazy drunken cowboy but the boy in the green jersey too. I still felt weird, like when I found Mrs. Harmon and the floor fell away from my feet.

A mother and daughter were poring over the Maybelline display. “Here, how about this one,” the woman said, handing her daughter a compact of pale blue eye shadow. “That'll go good with your eyes.” The girl didn't look old enough to be wearing makeup. At least, Mama wouldn't have thought so.

I went back to the canned goods aisle, picked up a can of chickpeas, and put it down again. What was wrong with me? I needed to eat, and making a decision shouldn't require a spreadsheet. It wasn't like having ten bucks left would actually do me any good if I held on to it, like it could keep me fed beyond a couple of highway diner meals.

I didn't
have
to spend it. I'd never shoplifted before, and as I weighed the prospect I temporarily lost my appetite. I didn't want to be that kind of person, and anyway I wasn't hungry enough to shoplift.

That's true,
I thought.
But I will be eventually.

A can of chickpeas, such a stupid thing to steal—it only cost fifty-nine cents—but I figured taking something cheaper wasn't quite as wrong. There was no one else in the aisle. I stuffed the can into my rucksack and walked out of the canned goods section as casually as I could.

It would have been a mistake to leave the store right away, so I forced myself to keep wandering. I turned the corner into the stationery aisle, looked over a shelf of three-subject notebooks, and noticed something out of place: a shrink-wrapped sandwich. White bread, tuna salad, a colorless leaf of iceberg lettuce peeking out. It was like it had
Take me, you might as well
written on it in big red letters. I picked it up and stuffed it in with the chickpeas. I didn't even want the stupid sandwich, but it would fill me up and no one else would have bought it anyway.

And then, before I realized it, I was back in the candy aisle. There was nobody here now, and the drunken cowboy's shopping basket was still tipped over on the floor. I jumped when the next Walmart special came chirping out of nowhere:
“Get ready for the best Memorial Day ever with a brand-new Weber grill, fifty dollars off for a limited time only! Grill those burgers in style!”

I headed back to the front of the store, past the cafeteria and the checkout aisles and the lawnmower and patio furniture displays. I thought about the drunken cowboy and the boy in green. I've been to a hundred Walmarts, and there's never an exit in the back.

I passed through the automatic doors and sighed. No alarm went off and nobody came running after me. I sat down on the curb past the shopping carts, but I didn't take out the sandwich. I wasn't all that hungry now that I actually had something to eat.

A fluorescent bulb flickered in the twilight. I heard the automatic doors open and close, and a shadow fell across my lap for the second time that day. I glanced up and saw a skinny boy in a blue polo shirt standing at the curb a few feet away from me. He worked here. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”
Man,
I thought,
his acne is really bad.
I turned back to my sneakers. I hate it when there's something wrong with somebody and you end up thinking of them as the girl or boy with the problem, as if the hundred extra pounds or the lazy eye is the only important thing there is to know about them.

The boy pulled out a pack of cigarettes and stuck one between his lips. “You got a can opener in your purse?”

My heart began to thud. “What?”

“That tin of beans.” He struck a match and lit the cigarette, and for a second it made him seem older. He couldn't have been more than eighteen. He had the biggest Adam's apple I'd ever seen. I didn't say anything. “It's a strange thing to steal,” he went on. “Usually girls take lipstick or nail polish.”

“You were watching me?”

“I didn't see you do it. I just noticed the can peeking out of your bag as you were walking out.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “If you have to tell your boss, I understand. I wouldn't want you to lose your job.”

The boy shrugged. “My boss steals shit all the time. Especially stuff from the electronics department. We're supposed to send the floor models back after a while, but sometimes he'll tell the home office they're damaged so he can keep them. He must have a TV in every room in his house by now. Bathrooms too.”

“That's crazy,” I said.

“Lots of people steal and never get caught.” He looked me in the eye as he took a drag on the cigarette. “I don't see why you should.”

I might as well tell him about the tuna. “I took this too.” I drew the sandwich out of my bag.

“Probably past its sell-by date.” He shrugged again. “Doesn't count as stealing if it was going in the Dumpster.”

“Oh.” I pulled off the cellophane and offered him half, then felt stupid for doing it.

“Nah,” he said. “Thanks though. My name's Andy. What's yours?”

“Maren.”

“That's a nice name. I've never heard it before.”

“Yeah,” I said between bites of tuna fish. “Usually it's Karen.”

“It's nicer than Karen.”

“Thanks.” I watched Andy take a puff on the cigarette and exhale through his nose. “You shouldn't smoke.” Then I laughed. Me, calling out somebody else's vice!

He gave me a funny look. “Are you still hungry?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, you are. You look like you haven't had much to eat lately.”

“It lasts longer if you don't eat as much.”

“Money, you mean?”

I nodded, and he paused. “Listen—I get off in an hour. Do you want to stick around?”

I nodded again. Andy was nice, and it wasn't like I had anyplace else to go. Maybe he had a couch I could sleep on. In my head a little voice said,
Watch it.

He stamped out his cigarette, and I followed him back into the store. The can of chickpeas was burning a hole in my bag. I was amazed nobody took any notice of me.

Andy pulled out a pack of cinnamon gum and offered me a stick. “No, thanks,” I said. Mama had never let me chew gum.

“I'm in receiving,” he said, “so I'm usually in the back. I'll meet you by the TVs at nine, okay?” I nodded, and he disappeared through the swinging doors into the storage room.

I went to the home furnishings department and hid my bag under the dust ruffle on one of the show beds, and then walked to the canned goods aisle to return the chickpeas. I went through all the aisles of toys, watching kids beg for Pokémon cards or Spice Girls dolls from their parents. I passed by the little girls saying “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease,” and everybody looked straight through me. It felt good to pretend I was invisible.

I wandered back to the electronics section. It was time for the nightly news, and President Clinton's face was on every television on the wall. Someday all these TVs would belong to Andy's boss. There was still half an hour left before Andy got off work, but I kept watching because I was tired of going up and down the aisles looking at all the things I couldn't buy.

They showed a piece of old footage, from the whole impeachment thing earlier that year. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” said the president.

“It's one thing to tell lies,” I heard someone beside me say. “It's something else to do it on national television.” It was the other guy from the candy aisle—the boy in green.

“Yeah.” (Why couldn't I think of a better reply?)

“You from around here?”

“No. You?”

“No.” He didn't say any more after that, so we just stood there for a while, in silence, watching the wall of TVs. Monica Lewinsky had hired new lawyers.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around. Andy was carrying a plastic bag. “Ready?”

“See you later,” I said to the boy in green. I just wanted him to turn around and look at me, but he didn't take his eyes off the TV screen as I went by behind him. It seemed like he was trying to act like he didn't care. “See ya,” he said.

Something nagged at me as I turned the corner out of the electronics section. That hat … He hadn't had a hat on before. And now he was wearing a Stetson.

Before we left I went back to the bedding department for my rucksack. I walked a few steps behind Andy to the far end of the parking lot, to a gold Chevy Nova loaded with bumper stickers.
MEAN PEOPLE SUCK. FOREVER GRATEFUL, FOREVER DEAD. WHEN I GET MY POWERS BACK, YOU WILL ALL GROVEL BEFORE ME.

He unlocked the passenger's-side door first and handed me the bag. “I'm not going to take you anywhere,” he said. “Not unless you want me to. I just thought we could sit for a while and you could eat and we could talk.”

I stashed my rucksack in the backseat, sat in the front, and opened the grocery bag in my lap. He'd gotten me a snack-size package of Oreos, a banana, a carton of cherry yogurt (spoon included), and a shrink-wrapped corn muffin. Andy slid into the driver's seat and closed the door. I thanked him, and he watched me eat. I offered him an Oreo, and for the second time that night I felt like an idiot for asking him if he wanted food that didn't belong to me.

As I was eating the banana, I nudged a book on the floor with my foot. I picked it up:
The Master and Margarita
. On the cover was a grinning cat holding a pistol. I opened the book, flipped to a random page, and read:

Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.

For other people, maybe. Definitely not for me.

“I'm reading that for Russian lit,” Andy was saying. “It's really good. Do you like to read?” I nodded. “What's your favorite book?”

“I have a lot of favorites. I like
The Phantom Tollbooth,
and
A Wrinkle in Time,
and the Narnia books.”
Spare Oom.
I shivered.

“Are you cold? I can turn on the heater.”

“No, thanks. I'm all right.”

“Well, if you like those books then you'd probably like
The Master and Margarita
. Have you read Gormenghast?” I shook my head. “That's one of my favorites. It's a trilogy. If I see you again, I'll give you my copy.”

“You're being too nice,” I said as I polished off the yogurt and tied up the plastic bag with my trash inside. I looked at him and waited.

He reached over and took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine and letting them rest on the console between our seats. “Can I do this? Is this all right?”

“That's all?” I asked. His breath smelled like Fritos and Pepsi and cigarettes.

He nodded. His hand was warm and sweaty, but it felt nice. For a moment—just the one moment—I felt safe.

“No.” I took my hand away and tucked it in the crook of my knee. “You shouldn't.”

“It's okay.” He ran his fingers along the bumps on the steering wheel. “You don't have to do anything.”

“I don't
want
to do anything.”

“That's okay. I just want to sit here and hold your hand.”

“You want more than that though.”

He shrugged. “Every guy wants more than that.” He hesitated. “But it's not only that.”

“No?”

“Listen, I know what it's like. I'm on my own too. Left home last year—I had to. My dad is horrible when he's drunk. I moved out after he put me in the hospital.”

“What did he do?” Andy lifted his shirt, and I gasped at the sight of a wobbly pink gash across his ribs. “Broken beer bottle.” He paused. “I keep trying to get her to leave him, but she won't go.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not your fault the man who spawned me is a jerk.” If a laugh could slice an eardrum, this one came close. I knew my father would never do something like that. Mama had married a good-hearted man.