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He gets in and slams the door,
slurps his beer. He smells, not like smoke but like the inside of a
smoke-filled lung, like skin saturated with the straight nicotine
of one hundred cigarettes, and when he turns toward me his head
lolls like a baby’s. “Hi, beautiful,” he says, and his breath
carries vomit.

Orange streetlights pass over the
hood, the windshield, Donny’s hand. His fingers tap his thigh to
the music on the radio. His other hand holds his beer against his
stomach and the aluminum makes hollow popping sounds under
clenching fingers. “Good day,” he says. “It was a good day.
Sheathin’ today, trusses tomorrow.” He looks at me. “The
roof.”

I nod and smile. “Right.” I turn up
the radio.

“You’re very pretty,” he yells, and
“very” and “pretty” run together to sound like “vurpurdy.” His head
falls on a shoulder and he watches me.

“Thank you,” I yell.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Sure, I do,” I say.

He shakes his head. “Nah. You don’t
mean it. You—hey, you wanna turn that down?”

I turn it down.

“Hurt your ears, that way, music so
loud you can’t hear yourself talk or nothin’. What I was sayin’
was, you said—what was…? Yeah. You said ‘
thank you, oh thank you, mister Donaldson,’
like you—you looked at me and saw…you didn’t look
at me, but I saw your face, and you didn’t mean it. You said it
like you’re a robot, or like you think I want to have sex with you
just ‘cause I say you’re pretty.”

“Like a robot?” But that
is
what I think when
they’re drunk, when they slur
Gee, honey,
you must make a lotta tips
, or
You sure are a bitch, ain’t you
’
It’s what I think when they won’t
just sit there and look straight out the window.

“A robot,” he says. “No emotions.”
He pounds his chest. “You say
thank
you
but you mean
Fuck you, you old man, you pervert
.
Sure, I’m old. Older than you, seen stuff you’ll never see. But not
old, not an old person. So what if I say you’re pretty?” He tips
his can into his mouth, but it’s empty. He sets it on the floor and
holds it between his feet. “You’re beautiful. What’s wrong with
sayin’ that? It don’t mean I want to take you home, don’t even mean
I like you. Everyone has beauty.” He presses his palm to his chest.
“There’s beautiful people all over. It don’t mean Donny’s sayin’
‘Fuck me’.”

“Okay. I get it.”

“It don’t mean I think you’re more
beautiful than no one else. I knew this ugly woman once—no joke,
she was damn ugly—but she was still the most beautiful person I
ever met. Ever. You ain’t got nothin’ on her.” He shakes his head
and picks up his can again, tries to drink from it, and puts it
back between his feet. “Stop at that gas station there so I can get
some beer.” He slides his window up and down. “If I’m to put up
with this bullshit I need some beer.”

“What bullsh—”

He pounds the armrest. “You don’t
know what I seen, don’t know what kind of man I am, but you sit
there and think I’m tryin’ to get you into my bed, just a kid.
What’re you, twenty?”

“Twenty-six.” I pull in and park by
the door.

“Don’t know nothin’. Don’t know me
or what I seen and you think you can judge me. I’m old enough to be
your daughter.” He picks up his can and gets out of the car, and on
his way inside drops it in the trash.

I check the dashboard clock—five
fifty-two—and pick up the mic. “Shellie.”

“Yes, little miss Mia?”

“We stopped at a gas station, so
it’ll be few more minutes.”

“Okey-dokey. Dollar for the stop.
Tell me when you get your gas.”

Donny’s house is on the way to the
cabstand, so I drive over to the pumps and stand by the trunk while
the tank fills, hands in my pockets to keep warm. The night air is
a strange mix of cool and muggy. Inside, the gas station looks
inviting, warm and alive under bright white fluorescents. A girl in
short sleeves mops the back of the store near the coolers, behind
the bright reds and blues of chip bags and cracker boxes and sacks
of candy. She steps aside for Donny and he lifts his six-pack in a
thank-you, carries it to the front and stands in line
behind

Jake

it has to be Jake same height same
uniform jesus oh god there he is it looks just like him

a man in BDUs, just some man. One
who hasn’t left, yet, or who’s come back, for whatever reason. He
pushes open the door while stuffing a chew tin in his pocket and
the door swings closed behind him. He stops to put on his hat and
nods at me and smiles. I turn away and pretend to check the dollar
amount on the pump and lean, not entirely steady, against the car
and touch my face, hot. Sweat stings my hair follicles. If my heart
keeps doing this I’ll have an attack and fall dead at the Yancy
Street BP and no one will know but Donny—Donny and L.D.’s, because
Lenny will come looking for the car. Jake is my only emergency
contact—that needs changing—so no one will know who to call and my
body—

“What the hell!”

—will be left in a Dumpster behind
the gas station.

Donny cuts across the way with his
arms held over his head, one of them dangling silver and blue
cans.

“I look out and you’re gone and I
don’t know how I’m goin’ to get home!” He laughs. “Damn, girl, I
thought you left me. Thought I was goin’ to have to call Lionel and
tell him to fire you.” He winks and gets in the car and I finish up
and pull back onto the road.

“You saw that man?” he
says.

“Mm.”

He salutes. “That’s me. Donny
Donaldson. Airborne. Vietnam,” he says. “
Doctor
Donaldson. I took care of ‘em.
You know.” He holds out his arm and pushes up his sleeve and uses
an invisible needle to push an invisible injection into a
shockingly dark blue vein. “Gave ‘em morphine when they needed it.
Saved their lives. Some of ‘em young, younger than you, for sure.
Eighteen, one of ‘em. Can’t remember his name. I try, nights, but I
just can’t. ‘N’ somethin’. Nesbitt. Nelson. Nur—Nur-somethin’.
Don’t know. Don’t know, don’t know, and you’d think I’d…” He draws
a set of stripes in the fog on his window. “I come back here,
and…”

I ask because I think he wants me
to. “What?”

“Never came home,” he says. “Not
here. No one saw Donny, no one was there, didn’t…” He trails off
and pokes at his can. “Bullshit!” He leans close to the window and
his hair leaves squiggled lines on the glass. “Hurry up. I don’t
feel like talkin’.”

It takes about a minute to reach his
house. At the curb he says, “Come in with me.”

“I can’t. I have to get the car
back.”

“So what? Get the car back. Then
come on over in your own car. Have a beer.”

“Thanks, but I have to get home. And
your wife…”

“What ‘bout my wife?”

“Well, I mean—she must want to see
you, because you said that she’s—anyway, it’s dark out, and
everything.”

“So what if it’s dark?”

“I should get home, is
all.”

“She’d love you,” he says. “I want
you to meet you. Aw! Hear that, what I just—sometimes, I just
don’t—what it was, what I meant to say, ‘s that I want
you…
to meet
her
.”

“Sorry. Really. I can’t.”

Donny rubs his feet together to
break off some of the dried clay. “Well. Another time.”

“Mm.”

“You’re an angel. Now, don’t look at
me that way. You are. A beautiful angel.” He digs in his pocket.
“How much?”

“Same as always.”

“Well,” he says, “I don’t remember
right now how much that is. Whyn’t you just tell me, goddamn
it?”

“Thirteen,” I say, and that heat
comes back to my eyes, so I pretend to scratch them. “I mean,
fourteen. It’s fourteen. Because of the stop—dollar for the
stop.”

“A damn dollar for a stop? Charlie
don’t charge a dollar. What the hell’s goin’ on, over there? I got
to talk to Lionel about this.” He hands me a twenty. “Keep it this
time.” He wipes the window with his sleeve and looks out at his
house. One room, the one with the largest window—living room,
probably—shows light behind the curtain. The rest of the house is
dark. He pushes open the door and gets out, leading with the beer.
“Careful out there, y’hear?”

Lenny takes ownership of the cab
with a football team’s jacket slung over his arm and, “How’d you
enjoy that joint? Don’t even pretend to be miss perfect, ‘cause I
know you kept it and smoked it. I shoulda charged you for the damn
thing,” before getting in the car. He opens the window to yell,
“Next time fill the damn thing up all the way, goddamn it! I’m
bringin’ it back in the mornin’ a quarter tank gone.”

As soon as I’m through the door I
ask Shellie to turn on the news, and I watch it while she collects
her money and Lionel’s money and the government’s money. I leave
with fifty-one dollars and fifteen minutes of a news fix, just
enough to assure me Jake is safe. His unit wasn’t part of the air
strike.

I try not to divide fifty-one by
twelve, try to fight the instinct to calculate the day’s earnings,
but I can’t help it. On the way home I don’t stop at the
drive-through coffee shop for my day-end treat, and I don’t stare
out at the glimmer of the lights reflecting on the black, rippled
surface of the river. Four twenty-five an hour is what I’m
thinking. I take the roads by rote, stop reflexively at stop signs
and red lights, brake for a loose dog without flinching and toss
the bills in the air and watch them fall on the floor, flutter to
rest under the emergency brake handle, make a star on the passenger
seat.

At home, Chancey’s food bowl is
empty. I fill it. Slime layers the bottom of his water dish. I
rinse it and pour him fresh water. I close the curtains. Rinse my
travel mug for morning and set it beside the coffee pot. Straighten
throw rugs. Slide the left corner of the oversized chair an inch
forward because it isn’t in line with the rug. Turn on the news,
and it is a brown morning and four are reported dead from a
firefight. Look at the machine for a blinking message light. The
window displays a rectangular, red ‘0’.

Hum-de-fucking-dum.

________

Sleep doesn’t come. One in the
morning and the room is television-blue and my legs make shadows
like waves under the comforter. Chancey lies curled between my
feet, a furry raft. I flip over and he readjusts. I flip again and
he jumps down and waits on the floor, watches me punch my pillow
into shape and jerks at the high-pitched squeal of the television
turning off.

I turn it back on and make sure
nothing happened in the seconds it was off and find a volume that
isn’t too loud, but that I don’t have to strain to hear.

________

Blankets tangle down at my feet and
I hold his shirt close with one hand, eyes closed tight, and I
think so hard the pressure pounds my ears like wind. Trying too
hard, trying too hard, and it never works that way. “Just relax,”
he would whisper with a soft touch and then go back to it until,
indeed relaxed, I finished. But this is different. This is…if I
could just separate, split myself in two, or lose my mind entirely,
I could do it. If, if, if.

I stuff his shirt under his pillow
and pull up the blankets, cold now, and press the volume
button.

“…saying ‘No’ to any hostage
negotiations. And in Minnesota, truckers driving, on average, ten
miles over the speed limit. See how this could affect…”

MARCH 26, WEDNESDAY

March 26

Jake,

I hate this fucking war. I hate the
President and I hate congress and I want each of them to wonder if
it’s possible that the one person they think they couldn’t live
without died an hour ago. No, three hours. And all that time, those
three hours, they’ll have gone on with life as usual and with no
idea they should be mourning. (It’s strange, you know, to think
that you could die and I could not know. How could I not
know?)

It’s just today. I don’t feel like
this every day.

But you can’t know that.

So I guess I won’t send this one,
either

eijgjklkjlskljsfd

March 26

Jake,

Hi! How are you?

Okay. So I lied. I’m
writing.

Chancey and I are great! We watch
the news together at night and he snacks on the Christmas tree
during the day (I’m working toward taking it down). Driving is the
same as ever…some good money days (someone needed a ride to the
airport yesterday, so I brought home $100), and some bad (the day
before: $51). I’m still thinking about quitting, so I hope the
offer you made before you left was serious. I might need your
money!

I see Army men walking around,
every now and then, and every time I do, it’s like…it’s…I don’t
know if you can know what it’s like; you won’t until you see a
brunette girl about five feet tall wearing an orange t-shirt like
mine, jeans like mine, and sandals like mine.