—and the mark tells you the rest. But the fake Jamaican had no way of knowing what he knew. No possible way. I watched my shoes mash through the weeds. This man had just ruptured the thin fabric of all I believed to be—
I walked right into a girl, broadsided her, felled her like a tree. I saw, to my horror, that it was Jennifer Lopez.
YOU KNOW HOW to tell if you’ve been single too long? When you help a girl to her feet and get a rush of excitement for the two seconds you hold her hand on the way up.
“Jeez, sorry,” I said as Jennifer picked up her beer bottle. “I was walking away from, uh, you know, voodoo. Thing. Flying voodoo man.”
She was in denim shorts and a tank top, hair in a ponytail. I guess I should point out that this was not the famous Jennifer Lopez, but rather a local girl I was fond of who happened to have that same name. I guess it would have made a better story if it turned out to be the singer/actress and if you want to picture J. Lo whenever I mention this girl, feel free, even though my Jennifer only looked like the famous one when she was walking away from you.
She worked as a cashier at Home Depot these days and I made it a point to show up in her lane buying the manliest items in the store. In my apartment I now had an ax, three bags of cement mix and three different crowbars. On the last visit I bought a ten-pound sledgehammer and, looking disappointed, asked her if they had a bigger one. She didn’t answer, not even to count back my change.
As she brushed grass clippings off her butt I felt the intense urge to reach over and help her. I managed to restrain myself.
“I’m really, really sorry. You okay?”
“Yeah. Spilled my Zima a little, but . . .”
“What are you doin’ here?”
“Just, you know. Party.” She gestured vaguely with her hand at the crowd and music. “Well, good seein’ ya . . .”
“I’m, uh, here with the band,” I said, following her while using the most casual, non-following stride I had in my walking repertoire. She glanced up at the band, then back at me.
“You know they started playing without you, right?”
“No, I don’t, like, play an instrument or anything. I’m just . . . well, you saw me at the beginning there. I was the guy that fell down and died.”
“Well, I just got here.” She walked a little faster.
“Well,” I said after her, “I’ll see you around.”
She didn’t answer, and I watched her walk away. Intently.
She met up with some blond kid in droopy pants, a sideways ball cap and a band T-shirt. The whole sequence depressed me so much I didn’t think about the floating Jamaican again until . . .
THREE HOURS LATER, John and the crew were packing their scratched equipment into a white van with the words FAT JACKSON’S FLAP WAGON spray-painted on the side. That was the name of the band before they changed it a few months ago.
“Dave!” said John. “Look! Can you believe how much sweat I have on this shirt?”
“That’s . . . somethin’,” I said.
“We’re all meeting at the One Ball. You comin’?”
That’s the One Ball Inn, a bar downtown. Don’t ask.
“No,” I said, “I gotta go to work in seven hours.” John had work, too. We both worked the same shift at the same video store. John had been through six jobs in three years, by the way. Some girl came up behind John and put her arms around him. I didn’t recognize her, but that was normal.
“Yeah, me, too,” he admitted. “But I gotta buy Robert a beer first.”
“Who?”
“Uh, the black guy.”
John gestured toward a group of five people, three girls and two dudes with their backs to me. One was a huge guy with red hair, next to him was the rainbow beret and dreadlocks of my voodoo priest.
“See him? He’s the one in the white tennis shoes.”
Not only did I see him, but he turned toward me. He made eye contact and shouted, “You owe me a beer, mon!”
“The man likes his beer,” said John. “Hey, I heard there was somebody from a record company out there tonight.”
“I don’t like the guy, John. He’s . . . there’s something not right about him.”
“You like so few people, Dave. He’s cool. He bet me a beer he could guess my weight. Got it on the first try. Amazing stuff.”
“Do you even know how much you weigh?”
“Not exactly. But he couldn’t have been off by more than a few pounds.”
“Okay, first of all—never mind. John, the guy does an accent. What kind of a person goes around like that? He’s phony. Also, I think he might be, uh, into somethin’. Come on.”
“ ‘Into something’? You are so quick to judge. Have you thought that maybe he was raised by his father, who was a fugitive from the law? And that, to conceal his identity, his father had to fake an accent? And that maybe young Robert learned how to talk from his dad and thus adopted that same fake accent?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“No.”
“Come on, John. My car is behind the trees back there. Come with me.”
“Are you goin’ to the One Ball?”
“No, obviously not.”
“Then I’m ridin’ with Head in the Flap Wagon. You’re still welcome to come if you want.”
I declined. They loaded up and left.
I felt a little abandoned. There wasn’t anybody else I really knew there, so I wandered around for a bit, hoping to run into Jennifer Lopez or at least that dog. I did find Jennifer, where she was sitting in a cherry-red ’65 Mustang making out with that blond kid. He looked barely old enough to drive. This made me furious for some reason and I sulked my way back to my underfed Japanese economy car, shoes kicking up little sprays of moisture from the tall grass as I went.
The dog was waiting for me.
Right there by my door, like it couldn’t understand what had taken me so long. I unlocked the door and “Molly” leapt into the passenger seat. I gawked, half expecting the dog to reach around with her teeth and pull down the seat belt. She didn’t. Just waited.
I flung myself down into the little Hyundai, feeling like a thousand questions were squirming around my gut. I dug into my pocket for my car keys. I pulled my hand out—and screamed.
Not a full-fledged female-victim-in-a-slasher-movie scream. Just a harsh, rasping “WHAH?!?” On the palm of my hand, etched into the skin, was the phrase, YOU OWE ME ONE BEER.
I sat there, in the dark, staring at my hand. I did this for several minutes, felt my stomach clench, then decided to lean out the door and vomit in the weeds. I spat and opened my eyes, saw movement in the puddle. Something long and black and wriggling.
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned back in my seat. In that moment I decided to go home and crawl into bed and pretend that none of this had ever, ever happened.
TELLING THE STORY now, I’m tempted to say something like, “Who would have thought that John would help bring about the end of the world?” I won’t say that, though, because most of us who grew up
