17
“It’s basically a pizza bagel. Any of you brainiacs confused about that?” BJ held up the brochure and pointed with an overgrown fingernail at the cheese-oozed pizza printed across the center foldout. HomeMarket headquarters wanted the pizzas added to the menu by next week, and BJ, stuffed into the driver’s seat of the catering van, was briefing the crew on the new product.
“Not exactly Thanksgiving-themed, is it?” said Wayne from the back.
“Paul and I had pizza the Thanksgiving my husband left us,” Maureen offered. “The best Thanksgiving I ever had.” She was beside Wayne and looking out at another mist-wet night in East Gladness. Sony was in the middle row by himself and Hai was riding shotgun. The van was parked in the back of Hairy Harry’s, a dive bar surrounded by rye fields off I-84. Despite the brooding evening coming on around them, the crew was giddy—they were about to see their manager fight the biggest match of her life.
“But that’s like going to a Chinese buffet and getting chicken tenders.” Wayne clicked his tongue. “Who the hell would buy pizza from us?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Sony.
“Long as I’m not the one making ’em,” said Wayne.
BJ turned around. “Headquarters did one of their surveys last year and it turns out kids love pizza bagels. Apparently, our clientele is aging and we gotta switch it up.” She cracked her knuckles. “We’re gonna split the job between the drive-thru and the dishwasher. And we’re gonna master these little pizzas before that skinny-ass regional manager comes back next month.”
“This mean we’re losing money?” Hai said. A light rain was sprinkling the windshield.
“Of course not!” BJ jabbed Hai on the shoulder. But she quickly hid her eyes by pretending to search her pockets for something. “It means we’re expanding. Companies like us can’t just sit by and let Pizza Hut do all the talking. Here, Sony, take this and study it over the weekend. You have a photographic memory, right?”
Sony slipped it into his chest pocket. “That’s what my grandmother said.”
“Oh shit!” BJ’s cell phone was open; the blue light filled the van. “My boy Rob just texted. That producer I was telling you guys about—DJ Red Card—is literally inside right now, at the bar. Wow.” BJ pinched her temples. “This is my fucking chance, dude. I gotta ace it tonight. You guys get it? Any wrestler that this guy makes an entrance song for takes off! He’s like the Dr. Dre of entrance songs.”
“Hold still,” Hai said, reaching for BJ’s makeup case on the dash. “Let me fix this one part.” He took the brush and dabbed a bit of white on BJ’s face, which was done up in a monochrome plaster reminiscent of the Insane Clown Posse. “There. Now you’re good.”
In an hour, BJ would be in a wrestling ring set up on the dance floor of Hairy Harry’s, performing as “Big Jean” for a one-on-one match with Miss Magician, a fifty-two-year-old grandmother and fan favorite, in one of six matches in the annual New Year Grand Slam, sponsored by the local rock station PWR 89.7.
DJ Red Card, who was also an unofficial talent scout for the WWE, BJ explained, was famous for showing up at random shows and putting up a red card when he was impressed by a certain wrestler. “Then he goes backstage and offers you a recording contract. So I gotta kill it tonight.”
Just then the windshield crackled with bits of ice. The rain had turned to sleet. BJ dipped her head and winced at the murky sky. “You freakin’ serious right now? Come on. Snow? Snow!” She turned to the crew. “The biggest night of my life and it’s gonna fucking freezing-rain on us.” It was the second week of January and the snow had been coming on and off. The ground was paper white for a few days but had since browned to muddy slush. “See? This is why there’s no good wrestlers coming out of Connecticut. Soon as we get our shit on, there’s a fucking nor’easter. Every damn time.”
“It’s okay, dear,” said Maureen, sensing an emergency. “It’s just a squall. It’ll die down in ten minutes. You can tell by the way the flakes spin.” She traced them half-heartedly with her finger.
Hai took a Dilaudid from his jeans pocket and popped it in his mouth. “You want one?” he offered BJ. When she shook her head he slapped the second down his throat.
“You got this.” Maureen reached from behind and massaged BJ’s shoulders. “Big Joe is gonna make her claim to fame in this year of our Lord 2010.”
“It’s Big Jean. I already told you.” She wiggled out of Maureen’s grip. “Just make sure you do your part, okay? You’re my pinch hitter.”
“Wait,” said Wayne. “Maureen’s wrestling with you? She’s barely five foot two!”
“My driver’s license says five four.”
A shadowy figure loomed up to the driver’s side and knocked on the glass.
BJ rolled down the window, revealing a Jim Carrey–looking white guy smiling through a pornstache, his narrow face shrouded in a hoodie. “Sup guys, I’m V-Bean, your MC for the night. Short for Vanilla Bean, ha-ha.”
“I figured,” said BJ, unimpressed.
V-Bean took out a clipboard and started writing. “I’m guessing by the face paint that you’re wrestling tonight? Can I put you down for…” he leaned back to look at something on the side of the van, “Deez Nuts?”
“The fuck you talking about?” Flurries were catching and melting on BJ’s knitted brows. A gust of wind blew fast-food wrappers against the van.
“It says ‘Deez Nuts’ on your van, my dude.”
“She’s a woman,” Hai said.
V-Bean narrowed his eyes. Wayne opened the sliding door and examined the spray-painted graffiti. “It does say ‘Deez Nuts,’ ” he confirmed, and shut the door. “Those damn graffiti kids on Route 4.”
“For what it’s worth,” V-Bean shrugged, “it’s a pretty dope wrestler name. It’s bold, you know. Like you don’t give a fuck.”
“Except I do, man,” said BJ with a sigh, then thought on it a bit. “You really think it’s good, though?” Her knuckles gripped the steering wheel. “You know what? Fuck it. Put me down as Deez Nuts. The universe is telling me something.”
“Right on, man. I got you.” The MC offered his fist for BJ to dap, but BJ was already rolling up the window.
“Deez Nuts,” Hai repeated, letting it roll out slow. “You sure about this?”
BJ was texting on the flip phone. “I’m trying to get Rob to tell me how many people are in there already.” Cars were pulling into the lot now, people talking excitedly as they huddled toward the bar dressed for a night out, mostly biker guys with girlfriends in sweatpants and white boys dressed in Carhartt hoodies and baseball caps of defunct lawn care services.
BJ dropped the phone while texting. “Fuck me. These buttons are terrible.”
“Her fingers are too fat. Like mine,” Maureen whispered to Wayne. “That’s why you gotta get a BlackBerry.”
In the bar’s kitchen, which was cleared to serve as a makeshift locker room, hulking wrestlers sat on stools wrapping their hands, their bodies shining with oil and sweat, globed muscles gleaming under fluorescent lamps, the air a mix of Old Spice and BO, latex and leather, Hai sat beside BJ, keeping her company and calming her nerves. She’d been sitting on a whiskey barrel near the janitor’s closet with her headphones on, going over her sequences. She was supposed to win tonight, at Miss Magician’s insistence. Magician had remained undefeated for over two years, and this win would introduce Big Jean, or rather Deez Nuts, to the community. They’d apparently been working on it for months. BJ went over and peered through the curtain draped across the kitchen door.
“One, two, four, five…maybe six.”
“What are you counting?” Hai said.
“Black people,” said BJ, peeping from behind the curtain at the crowd. There were about sixty-five people in the bar now, most of them standing a few feet back from the stage in clusters, hands in their pockets, bobbing their heads to the eighties rock blasting between the matches. The first two sets had already gone and BJ was up next.
“There’s only four,” BJ said.
“I see six, I think.” Hai searched at the faces. “Did you count Wayne?”
“Yeah. And that’s an Indian couple.” BJ let the curtain fall and groaned. “Fuck. How are there only this many Black people at a wrestling match?”
“Are you kidding?” said Hai. “It’s an amateur wrestling match. In a dive bar where biker gangs make drug deals.”
“They don’t even look like they’re from East Gladness,” BJ sighed.
“Well, I see Russia with one of his friends and…oh, looks like Cherry came too.” Cherry was one of the sex workers at the rehearsal. “So you got support. Don’t worry, okay?”
“Hold on, are my mom and dad out there?” BJ moved the curtain and searched the crowd until she found Ruby in her fur coat sitting along the wall, hands folded in her lap like she was at Sunday mass. Beside her was a man with a majestic grey beard and leather jacket.
V-Bean came up and tapped BJ’s shoulders. “Yo, Deez Nuts, you ready, man? I have you coming on hot in five.”
“Is DJ Red Card still on the floor?”
“Don’t worry. The guy sees everything. Just do your thing and be chill.”
“Wait, where’d Maureen go?” Hai asked, looking around. “Isn’t she part of your set?”
“She’s in the bathroom getting ready. She’s a real artiste when it comes to what she does, trust. We got this.”
Hai was glad to see a calm come over her.
“Now go out there and enjoy the show, rook.” BJ tapped him on the chest and winked. “We’re about to make Stone Cold Steve Austin look like Mr. Rogers.”
V-Bean took the stage, extended both arms, and shouted into the mic, “Ladies and gentlemen! Aaaaaare you ready to SMAAASH??? You ready for New England’s second, and I say SECOND, ranked amateur wrestling show to ever grace the valley with more homegrown talent?” The crowd, noticeably drunker now, jostled to attention. A few beer-clutched fists shot out from the front row. “Alright. Now put your hands together for…” He fumbled with his piece of paper, tilting his head to catch the handwriting. “Oh yeah! Make some noise for…Deez Nuts!” A few people looked at each other with raised eyebrows. DJ Red Card, a chunky white dude whose bald head was hidden under a Kangol hat, flashed a smile at a nearby woman and shrugged before taking a sip from his Solo cup.
But the crowd cheered in earnest as the guitar in Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” ripped through the smoke-machined air and BJ swaggered through the curtain in a taxi-yellow velour sweat suit. Hai, Sony, and Wayne looked on with bated breath as Hai realized, with sudden dismay, that BJ looked like an unhinged Big Bird from Sesame Street. It turned out two teenage boys a few rows up had the same thought and were now shouting into cupped hands, “Go get ’em, Big Bird! Yeah, go Big Bird.”
Still, BJ held her own, growling to the entry song she had recorded in the HomeMarket office. Some girls in the front had even let go of their boyfriends’ hands and started bobbing to the bass. Sony, wearing earbuds to dull the noise, nodded along, wide-eyed and awestruck. His general was actually glowing onstage, the sweat dripping from her nose and chin like literal diamonds.
Much to the crew’s relief, perhaps even surprise, the audience was eating this up. BJ then made her last circle around the ring, when something no one expected happened. BJ grabbed the microphone from V-Bean and urged the crowd to clap along with her. “Now I need you to get ready for a special treat from my main girl, Maureen! Are you ready for something fucking special?! Some once-in-a-lifetime exclusive?” She jabbed the mic into the crowd as they roared with a collective Yes.
Then the song was cut. The crowd murmured with confusion. Maureen stepped through the curtain wearing an Irish saffron kilt. Pulling her suspenders tight around her shoulders, she took a deep breath and raised a banjo from her hip and started plucking away, doing a jig down the aisle that, with her bad knee, looked more like a walking seizure. The crowd seemed to have taken a step back in unison. A woman in the front row lunged toward Maureen as if to help her but then, realizing she didn’t know how, sat back down. Maureen began moving about a mile per hour down the aisle.
“The fuck is this? Dude, tell me this is a joke,” said a white boy to his friends, relishing this unintentional farce.
“What the hell is going on?” Wayne turned to Hai.
“It sounds like bluegrass music. Played by Maureen,” Hai said as the crowd started to boo.
“She never told me she played the banjo. It’s kinda sexy.”
Hai spotted DJ Red Card, whose eyes were shut in laughter. That’s when the boos grew into a deep and resonant roar, rooting into the floors and felt through the soles of everyone in the bar. BJ, sensing this, waved her arms to cut the track, but somehow it kept going. A balding biker in a silver ponytail was the only one rocking enthusiastically. Maureen, oblivious to it all, played on, her cheeks jiggling to the plucked chords as she hobbled around the outside of the ring, while BJ did some half-hearted taunts on the turnbuckle, the boos intensifying.
All this was made worse by Miss Magician’s legendary entrance, which began with an eternal twenty seconds of blackout, the anticipation mounting through the building before Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” slammed right into its chorus as a pandemonium of lights tore through the smoky room, searing everyone’s eyes. The bar’s roof almost lifted off with cheers as a toned and tanned grandmother, whose government name was Nora Jiménez, stepped through the curtain wearing a cape of sequins and a pink magician’s top hat studded with jewels, which she then removed with both hands and placed on the head of perhaps the most adorable eight-year-old girl within fifty miles. The place erupted. A sideburned biker wiped away a tear, thrust his Bud Light bottle into the air, and shouted, “That’s my fucking mom! Fuck yeah, Mama!”
The match went on as expected. Most of it was BJ and Miss Magician trading backhand chops to each other’s chests and one of them pulling the other into the ropes, then clotheslining the other in slow motion. This was considered “light” repertoire, Hai learned, which avoided body slams and was common when working with older wrestlers with back problems. All this while Maureen paced back and forth outside the ring, strumming her banjo like a displaced panhandler. It ended with BJ missing an elbow by nearly three feet. Miss Magician, who was thrown against the ropes but too slow to get to the elbow in time, collapsed anyway, as if she’d been struck by a poltergeist before crumpling into a heap of glitter. BJ then attempted her finishing move, the “Bahama Bomb,” which required carrying the frail Nora Jiménez across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then slamming her spine down between BJ’s legs. But since this move would certainly put Nora in the hospital, BJ had Miss Magician kind of slide, slow-motion, off BJ’s shoulders, anticlimactically rolling the grandmother off her arms and onto the mat. It was less of a slam and more like laying a drowning victim by the side of a pool. BJ then went on all fours to pin her, covering Magician’s body almost completely—without putting any weight on her—as the ref counted the pinfall.
It was terrible. Everyone immediately resumed booing as BJ’s music came on. She had not defeated a long-standing powerhouse, but rather destroyed, in bizarre fashion, an elderly and beloved local icon. Afterward, the only sign that Deez Nuts had ever been in the ring at all was a cluster of sweat droplets and glitter, around which coiled a single saffron ribbon that had come loose from Maureen’s kilt.
BJ pressed her head into the steering wheel as Hai sat mute beside her, the heat from her body steaming up the windows. The bar’s neon signs purpled the van’s interior. “Tell my parents to go home, man. Tell them not to wait for me,” said BJ to the floor.
“I’ll do it.” Maureen, eager to get away from her role in the disaster, dashed out of the van.
“And tell them I’m sorry,” BJ called, but she was already gone, gingerly dodging ice puddles across the lot.
It wasn’t until her mouth said sorry that BJ lost it, her shoulders jerking as she cried. Hai placed a steady hand on her back. Her white-and-black face paint was melting; what once looked like Big Bird had devolved into an underworld Ronald McDonald. The van shook with BJ’s crying and the rosaries that Maureen tied around the rearview mirror began to sway. “The entry fee was three hundred dollars! I could’ve bought my sister a new coat and boots. She needed new boots.”
“It cost money to get on that stage? I thought it was a local display of talent.”
“It’s a ring. And yes, it’s a competition. You pay to enter a pie baking contest, don’t you?”
“Look, it’s alright. You…” Hai searched the blurred window for the right words, “performed. You did your thing. People know you now. Isn’t that the point?”
“They know me as a joke.” A bright lace of spit had stretched from the wheel and was dripping on the leg of her yellow suit.
There was laughter outside the van, coming from a group of kids walking by on a smoke break. “Dude, check it out. It’s Deez Nuts.” The windows were too fogged for them to notice anyone inside. One of the kids squatted outside the van and posed by the graffiti. “They call me Deez Nuts. Aka Hillbilly Big Bird!” Their cackles erupted before fading toward the venue, where the muffled bass of the next entrance song was already picking up.
“Look, just don’t worry about those—”
“Oh shit. It’s DJ Red Card. He’s coming over here. Fuck, fuck.”
“What? How do you know?”
“Look!” BJ wiped at the windshield. “He’s walking over. With fucking Maureen!”
“The hell?”
“Get back so he can sit, go, go. Make room!” BJ grabbed Hai by the collar and basically threw him into the back seat as the passenger door opened. Maureen ran a hand through her red hair and adjusted her suspenders. “I found this kind gentleman who wants to talk to ya.” She winked at BJ, whose mouth was half open. DJ Red Card stepped out from behind Maureen and fell into the passenger seat with a grunt.
“I’m gonna go fetch the others,” Maureen said. “You two get to know each other.” She winked again and walked away. Red Card pulled at his white turtleneck sweater and said it was hot in the car. The immense turtleneck, Hai realized, was to hide a massive skin rash.
“Look,” BJ said, seeing her chance at redemption. “I know that shit looked wack and weird as fuck. But I have a reason for it all, okay? I even had a vision board and everything for this show, and I just—”
“How much?”
“What?” BJ glanced back at Hai. “What do you mean?”
“How much you want?” Red Card spoke in an affected, subdued whisper, like a man who had survived getting stabbed in the throat or, as Hai soon realized, like someone imitating Don Corleone in The Godfather.
BJ mulled it over and shrugged. “I dunno. I-I-I never thought about it.” BJ sat up and blinked. “I mean. I never considered how much a manager would be. I guess…I guess I’ll take whatever the standard is—”
“You fucking with me?” Red Card leaned forward. “I said, how much you want? Like, how much you need? Are we a bunch of amateurs here or what?” He glanced back at Hai, then let out a big sigh and shifted to remove something from his pocket. “Here, there’s a deuce and a quarter ounce. I also got nickels but you look like you could use more than that.” In his palm were two baggies of weed, one larger than the other. “Like I said, how much you need, my man?”
Hai leaned back as BJ’s face fell.
Red Card, clocking this, regarded her from across the cab, his shock melting to sincere, open pity. “Awww, man. You thought I was talking about a deal deal. Oof. You mean to tell me that shit you did was no spoof? That wasn’t no Weird Al Yankovic shit? Damn.” He looked out the window and shook his head.
“Are you signing anyone from tonight?” BJ asked.
“That skinny kid who went before you, Young EZ? He’s got it. Kid’s got that Rey Mysterio high-flying vibe but with a pretty face. Plus he’s rolling eight hundred deep in MySpace friends. So yeah. Him for sure.”
“That’s Mitchell Kelleher. His dad owns the Ford dealer in Millsap. He’s fake as fuck. What I’m doing is real, man. It has roots.”
“Listen, buddy—or ma’am—I don’t make the rules. You think I make money off this shit? Why you think I’m in here trying to sell you trees? This isn’t no American Idol. Sob stories don’t work in this business.”
“Just give me the fucking deuce.” BJ handed him a twenty and Red Card slipped the baggie into her chest pocket.
“Listen, friend,” Red Card said, resuming his Godfather tone, “don’t hate the player; hate the game.”
He then patted BJ on the shoulder, threw up a peace sign, and hopped out.
“Yeah, happy New Year to you too.”
“Yeah, happy New Year to you too!” Hai added more forcefully.
BJ looked at Hai, exhausted, then wiped her nose and started the engine.
They were driving back, the fog thickening by the minute, as if it knew to take over the town soon as people left the roads and shut themselves in. BJ was rubbing the music-note birthmark under her suit like it was a fresh wound as they stopped at the light, the only car on the road.
Wayne exhaled. “Well, I’m ready to go home, put my feet up, and have a Twinkie.”
Maureen sat up, her eye shadow so blotched it looked like she was wearing makeup for a panda costume. “You know in another universe tonight never happened, right? I’ve been looking into this. It’s called the Mandela effect.” The Mandela effect, as Maureen explained, is when a large part of the population remembers something that never actually happened, at least not in the current universe.
“Oh, please,” said Wayne, hugging Maureen’s banjo case. “The last thing the poor girl needs is more of your flat-earth shenanigans. In my universe there’s this interesting thing called physics.”
“Like C-3PO, for example,” Maureen went on. “In my timeline, the one that I belong to, he was all gold. Did you know that? He didn’t have a silver leg like he does now. Now his leg is silver like they forgot to finish painting him. Where I’m from, George Lucas had the good sense to paint him all gold.”
“Maybe they made it silver for disability representation,” Sony said, looking out the window. “My counselor says that’s starting to—”
“The point is, he was never all gold in this universe. It’s fucked up. I was ejected into this universe, probably after a mass extinction event. It happens to a lot of us. Paul’s still alive in the original timeline, and my husband…” She cut herself off and turned away.
Wayne squeezed her shoulder. “For what it’s worth, it was all gold in my timeline too,” he whispered.
BJ stepped on the gas. “Okay, then. Is there a universe where you don’t wear suspenders?” She was looking at Maureen through the rearview. “Why didn’t you tell me you were gonna dress like some redneck grandpa?”
“This was what my granddad wore when he played the banjo, the one who taught me this thing you so desperately wanted in your little charade. It’s also ergonomic. OSHA.” Maureen’s voice was barbed for the first time. Under her breath, she added, “You wouldn’t know, since we had three violations this year alone.”
“Alright, alright, come now,” said Wayne. “We don’t gotta make this worse for each other. It was an okay night.”
“Actually, why did you have the banjo in there in the first place?” Hai asked, genuinely puzzled.
BJ inhaled and trained her eyes on the road. “The banjo,” she let out a heavy sigh, “has roots all the way back to the Middle Passage. Before all those bluegrass folks used it, it was an instrument from West Africa. Did anybody know that? Huh? Exactly. When slaves in the cargo holds started dying on their way to America, these slave traders figured out that if they just played the fucking banjo, it would keep the stolen people’s spirits up long enough to make it through the journey. So they played it all across the ocean to keep their cargo alive. Before it was bluegrass or low-grass or whatever, it was African. My mom taught me this. That’s what I was trying to do. And I asked Maureen to join me cause she plays a mean-ass banjo. I was trying to give these wrestling heads knowledge.” She spat into a drink cup and scowled at the road. It wasn’t clear if she was about to scream or cry again.
“Fascinating,” said Sony, nodding to himself.
“I told you it was a good idea,” said Maureen. “And I happened to already know this little tidbit about the banjo before she asked me.” She started rubbing her knee. “Now my cartilage is down to zero. Listen, you looked like a real star out there, okay? No one can take that away from you.”
“I am a real star,” said BJ.
They took a left onto Route 4, starting the long straight shot toward HomeMarket. Maureen patted BJ on the shoulder. “You’re just ahead of the curve, is all. You did good, kid.” Then, deciding her part was done to satisfaction, she grabbed at the bag of Doritos in Sony’s lap. “This one’s Cool Ranch, right?”
They got to the HomeMarket and BJ cut the engine. The restaurant was dark and the only cars in the lot were Maureen’s and Wayne’s.
“Now I need some St. John’s wort,” Maureen said, buttoning her coat. “I’m getting depressed.”
“You and the whole world,” said BJ.
“No, really. I can feel it coming. It starts in my shoulders and makes its way down.”
“How far down?” said Wayne, nudging her with his elbow.
“Further than you could reach.”
They all sat for a moment, none of them really wanting to get out.
“I’m ordering a pizza,” BJ said decisively. Everyone murmured in agreement.
“Let’s try them for once.” Hai pointed at the Sgt. Pepper’s across the way, the shop blazing like a crash-landed spaceship. BJ called the number and put in an order for two large special pizzas, no mushrooms (for Maureen), extra cheese (for Wayne).
As they sat waiting, held in the van’s warm lull, the only sound the occasional rustle of somebody’s jacket, the misty parking lot an immense sweep around them, Hai considered Maureen’s multiverse. He wondered if there was another timeline where he was also sitting in a van in a parking lot at the beginning of a new year. If there was also a group of people waiting for a pizza after a long night of disastrous adventure. If wrestling and novels were merely the result of people trying to cast yet another universe where they’re the more heroic, patient, and capable versions of themselves. He wondered if they looked the same—if his mother was still lying on the floor next to her bed, staring up at the ceiling with the same dreams she had in this world. He thought of Grazina, who must be falling asleep now before the TV, an empty tray of Stouffer’s in her lap, and Aunt Kim in her cell at York Corrections, her bunkmate snoring beneath her. He thought of Bà ngoại and Noah, both ashed to atmosphere. He thought of the hogs he had put to death a few weeks back, their huge eyelashes fluttering to their final thoughts.
“Pizza’s coming!” BJ jabbed a thumb at the windshield. A figure was walking out from Sgt. Pepper’s, a thermal bag hoisted over their shoulders.
“I’m starving,” said Sony, sitting up.
Once they neared the van, the delivery person slowed, then stopped about ten feet from the bumper. It was a young woman wearing a UConn hoodie, her hair tied in a ponytail under a red cap. At first her shoulders started to shake, vapor blowing from her mouth. Then she removed the pizza box.
“The hell is this?” BJ threw up her arms. “Hey! What gives?”
“Maybe she’s scared?” Hai offered. “You wanna go out and give her the money?”
BJ sighed and was about to open the door when the girl flung one of the pizzas hard as she could at the car. Everyone screamed as it landed, cheese-first, on the windshield. Then she did the same with the other pie, this one folding like a glove over the side-view mirror.
“No wonder they don’t have any fucking customers!” shouted Maureen.
The girl marched over to BJ’s side and started shouting. Up close, she looked no older than fifteen. Though her voice was muffled behind glass, the crew caught most of it. It turns out she had lost it when she realized she was delivering pies to HomeMarket employees. “Is this some kind of stupid joke to you? You put up a huge sign for pizza bagels this morning, like you aren’t already robbing us of our customers with your nasty chicken? Now you want to take away the only fucking thing we sell? My dad worked his ass off to get this dump!” The thermal bag fluttered in the wind as she spoke. “You’re a dumb fucking franchise. You don’t even have green tea! None of this even matters to you. We only got one place. Ever.” Her voice cracked and she had to stop herself.
The crew stared, blinking. The girl was gonna say something else but glanced away, at the lurid void across the road, the river lying somewhere behind it.
“Go eat your stupid bagels.” She flipped them off and hurried across the lot, the empty bag flapping behind her as she ran.
“Alright,” Maureen declared, “I’m fading. That’s a sign for me to hit the hay.”
“And I’m overdue for my insulin shot,” Wayne added.
With that, she and Wayne got out and lumbered off, their goodnights growing fainter as they reached their cars. Before her Beetle pulled off the lot, Maureen rolled down a window and shouted, “Your mom and dad were happy, BJ. I saw it with my own eyes. That’s all that matters.” The car sped off before BJ could answer. She sat there staring at the pizza glued to the windshield. “Fuck it.” She opened the door, grabbed a slice off the glass, examining it. “Still good. You want one?”
“Sure.”
“Sony?” She handed each of them a lukewarm slice, and they sat chewing in silence.
BJ held the slice away from her face. “This is actually not bad. It’s kinda, like, pretty good even. Damn.” Hai and Sony nodded in agreement.
“You know what my favorite kind of light is?” Hai said after a while, chewing and staring at the Sgt. Pepper’s sign.
“What kind?” said BJ.
“The one that comes from a microwave left open in a dark room.”
“Say again?” BJ looked at him over her pizza.
“I can’t explain it. But it’s the kind of light that makes you think about people. You feel both lost but also at peace with everything, and it makes you want to call somebody on the phone for no reason.”
“Why the hell are both of you so damn weird?” She took a final bite. “We need to all get the hell out of this dead-end town. Is there a light that beams you out of here?”
Sony turned to his hero with a hurt look. “But I love it here. East Gladness is the best place on earth. We have two McDonald’s and a GameStop. Who can say that? Only New York City, probably. But it’s too noisy and dirty there. We also have a higher life expectancy than all of Mississippi.” He turned to Hai. “Seventy-four point six years. And besides, when I needed a place to stay, the town gave me a room at the Meyer’s Center. No charge.”
“Are you kidding me? This place?” BJ stared out the window. “Where some girl gets dragged from a car for, like, ten miles and nobody knows who did it, even with all the fucking cameras? This place that snows for seven months and summer is twenty-four seven swamp-ass and a shit ton of mosquitos? Where the concerts are packed with white kids with glow sticks and the wrestling shows are full of diabetic hicks? Where nobody appreciates real, authentic music and technical grappling?” She was near hyperventilating. “I’m not gonna stay here forever. I’m—” She stopped, her head completely still. “The fuck is that?”
A warped-looking shape had appeared at the edge of the parking lot and was now moving toward them. The snow had frozen to a fine powder and blew across the pavement in a monochrome tundra as the figure, which looked more like a giant worm, its belly dragging along the ground, came closer. A shock of hair spilled out of the wormlike torso, but no features were distinct enough to make out. Hai leaned forward. “Is that real?”
“What can it be?” Sony said.
BJ narrowed her eyes. “Looks like a coyote caught in some kind of trash bag. Don’t get out. It could have rabies.”
The thing kept shifting and gyrating, then collapsed, curling into itself with an anguished thrash.
“We should call animal control,” said Sony. “Right?”
“Hold on. Shit’s heading to the store.” The animal hugged the glass wall and made its way to the entrance, where it crumpled into a fetal position by the front door.
“Great. A coyote’s blocking the doorway,” Hai said.
Sony looked to BJ. “You’re the manager. It’s your duty to clear the path. We’ll help you, of course.”
“I dunno,” Hai said. “Like you said, it could have rabies.”
“Alright,” said BJ, gathering herself. “Sony, give me one of those catering trays from the back…Yeah, that one. Now, when I go out, you guys file in behind me, you hear? Don’t do shit until I say so.”
Moments later, BJ, crouching from the wind behind the huge aluminum catering tray, still dressed in her taxi-yellow suit, face full of chipped paint, led their way toward the coyote, Sony and Hai flanked on both sides like some postapocalyptic SWAT team. When the animal twitched, BJ stopped and banged on the tray, making hooting sounds to scare it off.
“Maybe it’s hurt,” Sony offered.
“It’s probably half-frozen.” Hai clung to BJ’s sweat suit.
When they got close enough to see how large the thing was, much larger than a coyote, they stopped. “Oh shit,” BJ whispered as the shock of hair rose from the fabric, which appeared to be some sort of sleeping bag, and the pair of human eyes blinked at them over the zipper. BJ dropped the tray and ran over. “It’s a dude! I mean, you—you’re a person!”
The man, his bearded and filthy face gnarled from cold, said something unintelligible and tried to sit up, but fell on his side. He was in bad shape, his lips dead purple. BJ took out her key bundle and quickly opened the door. She then bent down and scooped the tiny man into her arms and carried him in the store as Sony ran ahead to flick on the lights.
BJ set the man down in a dining booth, where he stayed curled up and shivering. It wasn’t until the lights hummed on that Hai got a good look at him. “Wait. You’re the dude under the bridge. You’re the one on your phone laughing all the time.”
“I usually make it through a night like this no problem.” The man felt for his lips with both hands, making sure they were still attached to his face. “But my second bag, the good one I keep on the outside, blew down the embankment into the river. I tried to chase it but twisted my ankle. You…” He struggled to sit up but couldn’t. BJ pulled him to a seated position, his head lolling like a rag doll’s on the seat. “You spotted me. Thank God. I mean, thank you.”
“We got any carrots?” Hai said, remembering Grazina’s theory.
“I’ve never seen a single damn carrot in here,” BJ said. “Go grab some corn bread.”
Hai took some leftover corn bread wrapped in plastic on the counter.
BJ instructed Sony to fill a pot with warm water for the man’s feet. “You just hang tight, my man. I’ll fix you some of our hot chocolate. I would get you real food, but it’ll take forever to fire everything up right now.”
The man waved her off. “It’s alright. I just want to be warm for a little bit. Then I’ll go.”
“You stay long as you need. Here.” BJ removed the man’s bag, untied his soiled, frozen boots, and wrapped his rootlike feet in her yellow jacket.
Sony came back with the pot of water. They sat watching the man eat, his fingers shaking. He bit into the corn bread and his face opened, a discernible personhood unfurling through the matted hair and beard, like a blooming diabolical flower. He looked up at each of them. “Wow, this is amazing.” He shook his head, crumbs in his beard, then put another piece in his mouth.
“BJ made it,” said Sony, eager to point out the masterwork.
“You made this, my man? Damn.” The guy nodded. “Right on, dude.”
“Sure did.” BJ nodded, her head tilted slightly as if someone were whispering some secret good news into her ear. “It’s my recipe.” Hai thought he saw her eyes glisten, but it could’ve just been the light. Underneath her jacket she’d been wearing a black HomeMarket T-shirt that read HomeMarket 5K Walk for Domestic Violence: Summer 2003.
“Fuck it, you know what?” BJ said, standing up. “I’m gonna go ahead and fire up this grill and we’re gonna eat like champions tonight. Sound good to you, boys?”
“Jesus. Really? Bless you, brother. God bless you all,” the man said, and stuffed the remaining bread in his mouth. “Wait a minute.” His eyes widened and he pointed to BJ’s peeling face paint, finally noticing it. “Who the hell are you anyway? Some kind of vigilante?”
“No.” BJ stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I’m the fucking manager.”
