One Ghost Per Serving (9 page)

On his way out of the crowd, Eric lunged sideways like a fencer to take two containers from a woman’s basket. The melee filled in the space Eric had just vacated and the customers, now at least seven or eight of them – Eric didn’t stop to count – groped the shelves, confused at where the rest of the containers went. They breathed like Eric might after a strenuous bike ride, and they felt abnormally hot.

Eric ran with his cart to checkout while a dairy team member yelled about the mess. He finished his checkout, put the yogurts into bags himself, as he always did, then ran out to the bus and stashed his haul in the back. He kept the coolers packed and left the rest in plastic bags.

He would need a fridge now. Maybe two, or one really big fridge. He sat cross-legged on the floor of the bus. Sure, he could just take off the foil lids since that’s the only thing he needed, but money was tight and he’d have to eat the yogurt. He ran back into the store and got a local paper. Some of the customers from the dairy melee were wandering unevenly around the store holding their heads like they weren’t sure how they got there.

Eric sat in the driver’s seat of the Princess and read through the classifieds. He circled three ads for used refrigeration equipment, but his favorite was for a frozen pizza truck that was getting new equipment and selling its current outfit.

He took out his phone and jumped at a sudden knock on the window. He glared out at a man in his late twenties with sandy hair and what Eric presumed was a deceptively guileless expression. And even though Eric lived in a town where some people didn’t bother to lock their house doors and left their keys in the ignition, he ignored the man. He made sure the door was locked, then dialed the number again. A sudden, loud knock on the window made him fumble and drop the phone.

“Eric Snackerge?”

Eric sighed and rolled down the window.

“Eric Snackerge? Lanson Hark, reporter, Jamesville Tribune.” He stabbed his finger toward Eric. “I thought I recognized you from the piece I did back in,” Eric spoke along with him, “Fall 2002.”

Larson flashed a toothy smile and slapped his notebook on his leg. “Yeah! My first big feature. Local boy gets a full ride to an Ivy League law school then POW!” Larson slapped his hand and notebook together. “Has a precipitous fall. Loses scholarship, doesn’t even graduate college. Disappears for more than a year. Comes back to his hometown and gets work as a,” he glanced at his notes, “shot boy, serving bachelorettes and girls’ weekend parties at the Buckhead Inn, a rustic lodge restaurant known for its taxidermic displays.”

Eric unlocked and opened the door, making Larson stumble back. Eric leaned against the bus, crossed his arms and one leg over the other.

“What do you want, Hark?”

Larson held up his notebook. “Just a quick Q&A. I’d love to just follow up, tell my readers what happened and why, and what you’re doing now.”

“Apparently you know all about it,” Eric said.

“Just a few minutes of your time.”

Eric rubbed his wrist against the bridge of his nose. “You know what? I’d rather go on a long car trip with my great-aunt Tig.”

Larson squinted and half-smiled. “Does that – What does that – Are you being ironic, or … ?”

Eric pushed off the bus and looked down several inches to Larson. “It means I’d rather do anything else than regurgitate my personal life for a complete stranger to disseminate incorrectly to other strangers. It means that taking a car trip with my great-aunt, a foul, mean-spirited woman, is the very last thing I would ever want to do. And I would almost rather do that than talk to you.”

“They’re not strangers. They’re your neighbors,” Larson corrected. “This is a close-knit town.”

Eric took Larson’s notebook and pen and threw them as far as he could into the muddy grass. Then he got back in the bus, locked the door, and started her up.

“I’ll write it anyway,” Larson yelled. “I don’t need your side of it.”

Eric rolled down the window. “No one needs my side of it. Leave me alone, you …” he tried to think of something Taffy had said. “Fluke sack.”

“Hey!” Larson said. But Eric had already pulled away.

Larson Hark’s feature story on the rise and fall of local star Eric Christopher Snackerge was published the next day in the Jamesville Tribune.

JAMESVILLE TECHNICAL COLLEGE, HVAC TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT, FACULTY LOUNGE

Willa’s nemesis, David Midthunder, held an antacid-beverage in one hand and the spine of a newspaper in the other. He sipped his drink and flapped the paper so it rustled. “Isn’t this your husband?”

Willa opened the fridge and pointed to a moldy plastic container. “Isn’t this your wife?”

David laughed, a nasal HA-HA-HA that always made Willa think of a creepy ventriloquist dummy, its jaw hinging down then straight back up, its eyes soulless and empty, an empty vessel ripe for demonic possession.

“I guess you take home the bacon, huh?” He took a step forward as though to poke her in the arm, but thought better of it and swung his arm around in a slow, Popeye-esque right hook.

And Eric brings home the antlers, she thought. She liked to think of herself as Artemis and Eric as Actaeon, the hunter she turned into a stag, with some modifications to the story. When he did put on those antlers (and she loved him for wearing something he associated with a job he didn’t like just to please her) everything else fell away. She thought of the moment she first saw him in college, tall, lean, shirtless, and sweaty from a hot room with a garage band at a house party, big blue eyes fixing on hers from across the front lawn, making the rest of the world shrink down to the two of them. He knew what he wanted, then. He had stared right at her, went right to her, and she was his. They kissed before speaking, like they were coming together again after lifetimes. But now … her eyes burned and she pressed a fingertip into her temple.

David lingered.

“Don’t you have an acidic cesspool to ooze back into?” Willa said, genuinely angry now that her co-worker was in the same room, angry that her marriage had fallen apart, angry at her husband, angry at herself. She wanted a strong family. She wanted to provide for them, build a legacy for them and carry on the one from her father, and she expected some loyalty and gratitude in return. Was that too much to ask?

David emitted one lone, half-hearted “Ha.” He tossed the paper on the table and left with his mug and a haughty air.

Willa rubbed the back of her neck as she glowered at the paper. Finally she picked it up and opened it.
When Eric Snackerge met Willa Fellier – Miss Jamesville Crayfish ‘97, Lutheran Chili Cookoff winner ‘96, and HVAC instructor – it was love at first sight.

“Yes, it was,” Willa said.

JAMESVILLE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, JR/SR SCHOOL, EAST HALL LOCKERS

Taffy accepted the girl’s deposit for an order. She filled out a receipt from a carbon-copy book and noted the girl’s ‘LOVE’ shirt.

“My mom read about your dad and says he could’ve made something of himself, but now he wears nothing but horns and his underwear at work,” Love Shirt said.

“Flavor,” Taffy said, eyes flat.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Flavor.”

Love Shirt folded her arms and pouted. “Pizza.”

“Size?”

“Eight-piece,” Love Shirt said. “You heard what I said, right?”

“Pickup? I’ve got Friday after second period or after fourth period.”

“After fourth.”

Taffy noted these selections.

“Eight-piece custom order of pizza-flavor candy for pickup Friday at my locker after fourth period.” Taffy ripped off the receipt and presented it. “Thanks for your business.”

Love Shirt girl scrunched up her face then haughtily stalked off.

Taffy opened her locker. Inside, she had glued a walnut-color laminate material to the otherwise standard white particle board locker shelving unit. A rechargeable DC power pack and an AC/DC inverter powered a tiny cooler. A calendar of famous chemists hung on the inside door, and each day before the current one was X’d out with a red pen. Taffy took a can of club soda from the cooler. It was ice cold – colder than one from the vending machine. She replaced it with a room-temperature club soda.

Love Shirt returned with a friend, Purple Headband. Taffy knew that Love Shirt wasn’t done with her yet, and brought in Purple Headband as backup. But she also knew that Purple Headband would put in an order, because most kids did. That’s how she could afford to buy pretty much anything she wanted for her bike, and a few things for her lab. So she waited for them to speak first while she drank from the can.

“Brooke says you make candy?” Purple Headband said.

Taffy raised her eyebrows as though to say ‘Go on.’

“You do custom flavors?”

“Almost anything.”

The girls lingered. “Why do you wear neon orange high-tops?”

“Is that a flavor?” Taffy said.

Purple Headband cocked her head. “Uh, no.”

“It’s funny how your name is Taffy and you sell candy,” Love Shirt said.

“That’s clever. I’ve never heard that one before,” Taffy said without inflection.

“Really?”

Taffy had a business to run, and couldn’t care less what people thought about her or said to her. But it rankled to hear people talk crap about her Dad.

“You always wear the same thing,” Love Shirt said. “Like those high-tops, those jeans, some stupid shirt with something weird on it. But then, your Dad wears like, hot pants or whatever.”

Taffy finished her drink and tossed the can into a nearby blue bin. “
Your
Dad’s been with Diane Holliday about twenty times this year. In a baby-making way. Saw him when I was riding my bike.”

Love Shirt gasped, and Taffy delivered the final blow.

“I’m pretty sure that’s where he’s been getting his Oxycontin, too.”

Love Shirt burst into tears and ran down the hall.

“That was mean,” Purple Headband said.

Taffy shrugged. “Both of you came over here to mess with me. Some would say
that’s
mean.” Then, “Do you want to place an order?”

Purple Headband considered this. “I could probably get it from someone else.”

Taffy smiled. “Nope. I’m the best at chemistry, and I’m the best at making flavors.”

“Your Dad’s in the paper, you know.” There was a gap of silence. “Aren’t you embarrassed?” She gave Taffy a section of the paper from her bag, which had a pattern of tiny black Scottie dogs.

Taffy pulled on her backpack. “You know what embarrasses me? That the school system barfs out people like you and your friend.” She headed to chem lab, thinking that it was hard to operate a candy business when people kept insulting your shot boy father. On the way, Taffy looked at the article.

Eric and Willa have a daughter, Taffy, age 12, whose hobbies include bike riding and modification, chemistry, and emerging infectious diseases
–

“Hobbies?” Taffy said loudly and with disdain, causing other kids to look at her.

She was working on undescribed projects that were ‘none of your [expletive deleted] beeswax’ when I spoke to her.

Taffy swore under her breath. She vaguely remembered someone calling a few days ago on her red emergency phone. At the time, she figured he was calling from the classifieds to clarify her posting to form a bike collective, though she had very little hope that she would find the right people.