speaker, stared at him with disapproval as she walked into the store.
“Thank you for shopping at Accu-mart,” the speaker said pleasantly.
“Eat shit and die,” Mitch said to the speaker
Another woman entered.
“Thank you for shopping at Accu-mart.”
Mitch turned and walked to his car.
CHAPTER 4
“HOW COME YOU don’t have a girlfriend?” Linda asked. “You’re such a nice guy.”
Doug wasn’t sure he was comfortable with the question. They were driving home after a shopping trip to the mall, during which Linda had insisted he buy a shirt that he knew he would never wear despite her enthusiasm about it being “so in-style.” It was a dark green, striped monstrosity that Doug thought made him look like either an attention-seeking hipster or a Hispanic drug dealer, neither of which was a look he was going for. In fact, in his clothing choices, he wasn’t going for anything except affordable, which this wasn’t. He had laid out forty-two dollars for the shirt, mostly because he hadn’t wanted to hurt Linda’s feelings, but also because she had hinted, obtusely, that it would increase his chances of becoming sexually active again. But at $9.50 an hour, which is what he made at the restaurant, he calculated that, with taxes, he would have to pick up five extra hours this week to compensate for the damned thing, which would have to be on Sunday morning, the brunch shift, the only shift any of the other line cooks would willingly surrender. So on their ride back home, he had been secretly fuming that because of their little shopping trip he was now going to have to work Sunday morning, and then Linda, whom he had only recently decided was a decent human being, was suddenly asking him a personal question that he didn’t want to answer, or think about.
“Uh… dunno,” he said.
Linda was regarding him with amusement. “Is there anyone you like?”
Doug was staring out the window, watching the town go by. On days like this, wintry and wet, Wilton looked dirty and the snow that everyone said looked so beautiful when it was falling had been shoveled into exhaust-blackened piles at the edge of every parking lot. All the supposedly beautiful snow ever did was showcase all the environmental damage caused by everyday events like driving, and the cold and moisture made the diesel fumes from buses and trucks hang heavy in the air, giving Doug the feeling that the town wasn’t dying as much as it was being killed.
“I don’t want to date anyone here,” he said.
“In Wilton?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not?”
Doug grunted and pointed out the window as if to say, Look at this. Don’t you want to escape? Linda just laughed, seeing it as an attempt to change the topic, and asked again.
“I’ve been thinking about moving out West,” Doug said finally.
“I thought you were going to be a chopper pilot.”
“Yeah. Out West.”
Linda rolled her eyes. “You need a girlfriend.”
“Why?” The conversation was making Doug defensive and he was starting to see why Kevin was always complaining that Linda was a nag. She seemed to have a need to constantly improve everyone around her.
“So she can get your shit together.”
“My shit is together.”
Linda laughed again and Doug smiled. He figured that she had improve-yourself conversations with Kevin all the time, that she did it instinctively, and it was nice for her to have one with nothing at stake. It was like a cat practicing its predatory skills by playing with a toy.
“What about that girl at the convenience store?”
“Awww, man. Kevin has a big mouth.”
“What? He shouldn’t have told me about that?”
Doug grunted.
“Are you blushing?”
“No.”
She regarded Doug cheerfully for a second as she pulled onto his street. “I think you should go into the convenience store and ask her out. Wearing that shirt.”
Doug was playing with the door handle, indicating a desire to escape the vehicle. “I gotta go to work,” he said.
Linda pulled up outside his apartment and, to Doug’s surprise, shut the engine off, giving him the impression he was supposed to ask her to come in. He didn’t think it would be a good idea as Mitch’s car was in the driveway and Mitch never had a good thing to say about Linda, and, besides, he had to be at work in an hour.
“Mitch is home,” Doug said, hoping she would get the hint.
“Yeah, I know.” Linda was looking at him again, more intensely than he liked, the fact that he found her pretty all of a sudden just adding to his discomfiture. He had noticed that at the mall the salespeople they had spoken to had considered them a couple, and he had realized that he missed that feeling, the feeling of being seen as part of a unit. How long had it been since he’d had a girlfriend? Coming up on two years now, he thought. His last girlfriend had been a waitress at the restaurant, a seemingly shy hippie girl who had inexplicably turned into an obsessive and domineering motormouthed bitch after just a few months, and her subsequent decision to move to New York City and not invite him to come had sent him into a black hole of emotional devastation which had lasted for over a year. Even thinking about her now, or hearing her name, Annalisa, sent him into a funk. Mitch, noticing this, had eventually dubbed her The One We Don’t Speak Of. It was an attempt at a joke, but Doug found the terminology strangely helpful, as if it was the actual mention of her name which caused pain.
“Honestly, I never really liked The One We Don’t Speak Of,” Mitch had offered one day while they were getting high in a field outside Wilton, looking at the smokestacks of the metal-refinishing plant belching soot into the sky.
“Her name’s Annalisa,” Doug had said, and knew that it was over, that he might still care but that he had survived because saying the name didn’t cause a stab of misery anymore. The misery had been experienced and it had left. There was no sense of victory, just relief. Not the pure type of relief that causes happiness but the type of relief you might feel if you had driven off the road, crashed through a guardrail, plummeted into a ravine full of alligators, and then realized that, physically, you were OK. You still had problems, but things could be worse.
And here was Linda, suggesting he plummet back down into the ravine.
“I have to pick up Ellie,” Linda said, her voice suddenly heavy. Doug thought she was sad, that she wanted to say something else, and he was going to ask her if she was OK but then she added, “I want you to promise me something.”
“OK.”
“Promise me you’ll wear that shirt. Just once.”
Doug was strangely touched by the request. She must have known he hadn’t intended to.
“OK,” he said. “I promise.”
“Promise me you’ll put it on and go ask out that girl at the convenience store.”
“Awww, fuck.” He looked at her and laughed, then noticed she was about to cry, and he didn’t have any idea why. “OK, OK,” he said. “I swear.”
She gave him a sad smile. “Call me,” she said.
“OK.”
“No, really.”
“I will.” He had no idea why she wanted to spend time with him but she seemed so serious about it that it made Doug feel cheerful by contrast. He wanted to make a joke to lighten the mood but nothing funny came to mind.
“I have to go pick up Ellie,” she repeated suddenly.
“Oh… OK.” She’d seemed so needy a second ago and now she was throwing him out of the car. He stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’ll call you.”
“OK,” she said, as if it was his idea. She started the car again, looking out her window into the street to check if it was safe to pull back out into the street. “Bye,” she said as he shut the door and she peeled off.
Doug watched her car fly down the street.
“WHY DON’T YOU come work with me?” Kevin asked as he packed the bong. They were sitting in Doug and Mitch’s living room. Night was falling and Mitch was lying on the couch with his shoes off, staring at the ceiling. Doug had just left for work. He had ignored Kevin when he had come over, which both Mitch and Kevin had found strange.
For Mitch, the energy from the emotional turmoil of being fired had worn off and had been replaced by a vague sense of relief that he would never have to look at Bob Sutherland again. Then it had been replaced by a fear that he wouldn’t be able to come up with rent or money for the bills or gas or car insurance, that the few
