19
It was late and the interstate across the cornfields had hushed save for the rain’s steady drone on tarmac. He let the water drip from his face into the sink and gathered himself. In the next unit, someone was watching American Idol, the applause seeping through the vent as he regarded himself in the motel mirror, his bangs cut short and revealing his high forehead.
He stepped out of the bathroom, into the thirty-nine-dollar room at the Motel 6 off Silas Deane Highway, where a man was lying naked on the bed, smiling awkwardly at him. The boy hovered a bit, unfamiliar with desire’s choreography in late-night motels. But the man took his hand and drew him in until he was stretched atop the man’s bristled chest, their arms hooked like the necks of swans.
The boy watched as the yellow streetlight filled the hollow where the man’s missing ear once was—lighting it like a gold coin. The man was just back from Iraq, he had said when they got into the room, his tone apologetic. For a while they lay side by side, the cigarette burns throughout the sheets scratching their arms and legs, the rain drumming the gutters above, both of them ejected onto the shore of something too massive to define, stranded now in each other’s arms.
As the man drew close, the boy spoke to the little coin. “Okay, okay,” he said, without knowing what he was affirming. His nerves so newly opened under the man’s sweet heat, he hadn’t noticed his error, so he paused and moved his head to the man’s other side, the one that could hear, and began again. But as he did this the man’s back tensed, the corded muscles suddenly torqued under the boy’s hands.
“No,” the soldier said, putting a wide palm against the boy’s tiny cheek, fixing his face before his. The rain outside sounded, somehow, like fire eating through dried leaves. “Keep talking into the other one. I like your voice better in the other one.”
“But there’s nothing—”
He gently cupped the boy’s back to the coin, which had now grown dim. The man’s Maybelle auto repair uniform was draped on the chair, the word Tom stitched in red cursive on the chest. The boy read the name aloud to the coin and discovered what the man’s own name did to the bones in his spine, how the vertebrae seemed to gorge with the single syllable as they found a rhythm to work. Tom the regular. Tom, who came in a week ago and sat hiding his ruined ear as he ate the plate of green beans and mashed potatoes and gravy the boy had prepared.
The boy focused on the ceiling, cream and spotless save for a single brown halo from what must’ve been hundreds of people lying where they were now, smoking and thinking, the circle murkiest at the center, then fading into pale yellow rings as it waded out. What you see might not always be what you feel. And what you feel may no longer be real. Somewhere inside him the boy believed this law was what turned the planet on its axis.
After, both of them sitting on the bed, their bodies dew-wet as they dressed facing the blank wall, he asked the soldier if he ever considered getting a prosthetic ear, recalling how his mother once gave a pedicure to a woman with a missing calf. The boy stared into the cavity of his boot before sliding his foot inside.
“They don’t make ’em in Dominican yet,” the man grinned. The ones the VA offered were either too dark or too light. “But they’ll have one soon.” He raised his hand, as if to touch the hollow, but scratched his chin instead. “What are you reading there?” He nodded at the paperback the boy was tucking into his jeans pocket.
“Just a novel. About an old war.”
“Could probably tell you a couple things about that.”
“I bet. Wanna get some pizza? I know a place that just opened.”
The soldier regarded him with puzzled relief—then laughed a laugh so big and ripped open, the boy heard the tiny scream inside it. “I could eat,” he said, nodding to himself. “I could eat.”
They rose from the bed, the room somehow emptier than it was before. It was late, but not enough for anyone to look for them—and neither of them moved for a while.
The man stood, his frame pillared and austere, a soldier again; then he gave him this crumpled look—as if the boy were an arrowhead freshly pulled from the man’s side.
On the wall, their shadows were so faint they could be mistaken for smoke as the sound of TV applause seeped through from the other side.
It rained all week, then cleared. March arrived with cold, sun-washed days, dark-green water sliding past the bankside oaks dusted with frost. It was well into 2010 and the shine of a new year marking the first decade of the new millennium had already dulled, pocked with dispatches of horror. The massive Chilean earthquake from February had left a humanitarian crisis, and the Red Cross sent a lady with pink earmuffs each day during lunch rush, asking customers for donations. The country was still gutted by the recession, and Obama’s popularity was already waning from his push to bail out corporations that were “too big to fail.” In Cyprus, three men were detained for stealing the corpse of their former president, and eleven endangered Siberian tigers, of which only thirty remained in the wild, had starved to death in a Chinese zoo. The detective on the Rachel Miotti dragging case, face bloated with bloodshot eyes, had returned once more to question staff and customers—to no new leads.
Because his mother worked six days a week in Meriden, in the opposite direction of East Gladness, Hai was able to avoid running into her this whole time. He still rode his bike with his hoodie up just in case. But one Tuesday night, while on a run to grab Pedialyte for Grazina’s upset stomach, he spotted her in the CVS half hour before closing.
He looked up from the shelf and saw her distinctive L.L.Bean fleece jacket, decorated with blue and red flowers, the one he had gotten for her fortieth birthday. Her head was down, looking at a bottle of shampoo. He quickly maneuvered to the opposite aisle and stood very still. She took a few steps closer to him, then stopped to read a text on her phone. Through the thin shelf between them, he could hear her breathing, the clinks of her earrings as she moved her head. It was the closest they’d been in months. “Ma,” he wanted to say, with nothing to say. “Ma, Ma, Ma.” But he stood stock-still. When she made her way toward the back of the store, he bolted to the register, checked out, and flew home on his bike.
At 16 Hubbard, Grazina was getting worse by the week. She’d turn to him while they were watching The Office and seemingly pick up a conversation from decades ago, much of it scrambled, like someone turning a radio dial to a random channel. “Did…you get out and get the rest of it?” she asked him with gravity. “Did you get the deposit for Lucas’s dance classes? Well, she must’ve filled out the carburetor to get it, don’t you think?” She’d also started crying out of nowhere—not big sobs but quick spurts of tears that abruptly ended, sometimes with an eerie chuckle, the memory gone but its sadness remaining, like smoke from an invisible fire.
The only thing that stayed constant was HomeMarket, which went on operating like it did the year before, and most likely the year before that. It was slower the first two months since people were sticking to their New Year’s diets, but by March they came back strong, as expected, and the mac and cheese would have to be refilled by one p.m.
There was also the nor’easter that trapped the crew one night after the dinner rush. Within a half hour they were all in the dining room surrounded by burning candles, waiting for power as the snow climbed a full foot above the windows. The only customer with them was Cherry, who was withdrawing from heroin, not by choice but because her dealer was in the pen, and Wayne had to wade to his car in the blizzard to get his pistol flask to hold her over. When that ran out Maureen passed around a metal Yoda tumbler filled with chilled whiskey while singing, in a scratchy drawl, the opening to what sounded like an old Irish folk song. “That song saved my life, if you can believe it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Cherry, grabbing the tumbler from her. “And I’m Princess Diana in witness protection.”
One day Hai was sweeping the dining area when this man came in looking agitated. His head was bald and exceptionally small compared to his body, so that, when not looking directly at him, it resembled a raised fist in the corner of Hai’s eye. The fist-head floated toward the counter, where he stood waiting with hands on his hips. When no one noticed him, he dinged the metal bell nonstop.
“What can I do you for, bud?” said Wayne, wiping his hands on his apron.
“First…” The man spoke as if his nose were being pinched. “Remove your soiled gloves before wiping them on your damn uniform. And second, where are the pizza bagels?”
Wayne looked around like the man was speaking to someone else, then realized. “Oh. You’re the RM. Hello, sir. Um…” He read the plastic name tag on the man’s shirt. “Mr. Vogel! I’m Wayne. I think we met last summer when you came through.” Wayne extended his hand, which was ignored.
“Where’s BJ?” The man lifted his chin and the fist rose above his shirt collar. He seemed like the kind of man who wore his Boy Scouts uniform for his senior yearbook photo.
“I’ll get her,” Hai said, and leaned his broom on the wall.
Hai knocked on the office door and poked his head in. “Some kind of manager’s here and he wants you.”
“One sec.” BJ was hunched over the tiny keyboard, uploading a track to her SoundCloud. “Wait, a manager?” She swiveled around to face him. “You mean a blue shirt?”
Hai nodded.
“Fuck.” She wiggled herself out of the chair and hustled to the front as Hai followed behind.
“Hey there, Mitch! What’s going on, boss?” BJ extended her arms wide and greeted the RM with her pitched customer-service voice, the one she used when someone plopped an undercooked meat loaf on the counter asking for a refund.
“Don’t hey there me. How come the pizza card isn’t on the menu yet? We launched weeks ago.”
“Well, we got two posters in the drive-thru and they’re selling pretty good. We just haven’t had an electrician come fix the light behind the card, see? My guy had to reschedule when that snowstorm blew in.”
Vogel stepped back, uneasy with BJ towering over his five-foot-three frame. “That’s no excuse. If it’s not up there, they won’t point to it. What kind of promotion doesn’t have any pictures of what’s being promoted? Pictures get their salivary glands going and they order more. Images increase counter turnover by twelve percent. You should know that.” He made his voice travel so the other employees could hear. “What kind of ship are you running here, Cheryl?”
“It’s Jean,” she mumbled. BJ had a habit of touching her hair, as if patting it on the back, when she was nervous.
“That’s funny cause your file says Cheryl.” He stretched the name so it lingered in the air. By now Maureen, Sony, Russia, and Wayne had gathered around the counter. Vogel leered at BJ and pressed forward with his scolding.
“Can we do this, like, in the back?” BJ asked. “What if a customer comes in?”
“Don’t worry, big girl.” Vogel grinned like a fifth grader who had just hit you with a spitball. “I locked it on my way in. Sit down, Cheryl.”
BJ fell into the metal dining seat as if released from puppet strings. There was a current of uneasiness in the crew seeing BJ treated this way. Vogel started pacing back and forth before the front counter, his thumbs hooked in his pants pockets.
“Listen, kids,” he breathed through his nose. “While your manager here,” he put manager in air quotes, “is throwing grandmas around in leotards…” He glanced at BJ. “I saw the flyer outside for your little bar fight. Posted on company property, by the way. Well, while she was doing that, a brand-spanking-new McDonald’s just opened on Mercer and Cumberland, a seven-minute drive from us. Know what that means, folks? You there,” he nodded at Hai, “you know what that means?”
“More burgers?”
“Are you remedial or just being a wiseass?” Vogel’s bald spot was growing red as he spoke.
Hai shrugged—a part of him had this wild urge to be fired on the spot.
“It’s competition. A McDonald’s within a five-mile radius from a HomeMarket will decrease sales by 7.4 percent. Monthly. It means we’re fighting for our lives here!” He shouted this part so loud Russia dropped his drive-thru headset. “Every store on the Eastern Seaboard that Bill”—this was the other regional manager—“oversees is scrambling to keep up. And guess what? The store in Redding increased meat loaf sales by fifteen points. All while you chumps put on sideshow fights for dropouts and drug addicts.” He watched his words enter BJ, whose forehead was now lit with sweat.
“It’s that cold case,” BJ said, looking around for help. “Customers don’t wanna go in here knowing that girl was picked up in the lot across the street and murdered all through town, and that fat cop keeps coming in, asking everybody questions. It leaves a bad taste in their mouths.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Vogel…” Wayne stepped out from behind the soda machine. “Redding is a more conservative county, and from what I hear, conservatives will eat more meat loaf than liberal folks.” With that he took a step behind Maureen, who took another step to the side to avoid him.
“Conservatives eat more meat loaf?” Mr. Vogel said, his eyebrows so high they nearly sat on top of his fist-head. “You’re telling me meat loaf is political?”
“We are in a historically blue district.” Maureen nodded vigorously.
“Well—” They all turned toward Sony, who was standing behind BJ. “Actually, there’s an argument for meat loaf being, at the very least, fiscally conservative.” He wrung his hands. “After all, like the Salisbury steak, meat loaf is made from leftover animal protein, sometimes from multiple animals and their end-parts. This is also true of sausage. Historically, hamburger was a way of salvaging leftover meat. One could make a case that meat loaf is a right-leaning dish only because cultural conservatives tend to be fiscally so as well, though not always—”
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And what is this crap?” The fist pointed at the tray of fresh-baked corn bread cooling in the pan. “There’s a sheen on the crust. That means there’s too much sugar.” He picked one up, turned it in the light, then pinched the top crust and dropped it on his tongue, swallowed, and winced. “Jesus! This is basically a muffin! How? If you wanna sell muffins, go to Dunkin’ Donuts with all the other community college moms.”
“But sir,” Sony saluted the man, who took a step back, looking at BJ for an explanation, “with all due respect, it’s the best-selling item we have. It’s also a special recipe from BJ herself and—”
“Can you shut it?” BJ called out. “Just let the man finish. That’s an order. But yeah,” she added, folding her arms in wounded pride, “our customers swear by our corn bread.”
The fist threw the bread, baseball style, into the trash. Russia tiptoed toward the bathroom, and Wayne, spotting an opening, headed toward the back door, fishing for the pistol flask in his back pocket.
“First off,” Mr. Vogel said, “corn bread isn’t calculated in sales since it comes with every meal, so that claim can’t be proven. Secondly, why are you—” he pointed a crooked pinkie at BJ, “adding sugar to my corn bread? You want our customers to get diabetes?” The pinkie had a long nail, and Hai wondered if the guy had taken a bump of coke in the car beforehand, which would explain this impressively sustained burst of energy.
“That’s enough,” Maureen said weakly, but no one heard her.
“And what the hell is this?” He gestured at the nearby “Employee of the Month” wall. “Why are there mug shots on your HomeWall?”
“That’s a professional basketball player,” Sony added.
“Sony.” BJ covered her face with her hand.
Vogel suppressed a disbelieving laugh, then stood blinking at Sony. “Alright, alright. Wow. This is truly insane. I can’t believe Bill missed all this. BJ. In the office, now. Please.” For the first time since he got there, Vogel seemed genuinely sad and bereft. His agitated charade had dislodged the few reddish strands of his balding comb-over. Tamped down with drugstore pomade, they now hovered above him as if he were underwater. “And you,” he said to Hai, “get rid of those scraps of paper on the tables. What were you doing, sweeping air this whole time? There’s trash everywhere.”
“Oh, that’s not trash,” Hai said.
“That’s…that’s my origami.” Sony tensed up.
“If it’s not relevant to HomeMarket, it’s trash.” He walked over and snatched them one by one off the seven dining tables and tossed them into the bin. “Now open this godforsaken place already,” he shouted as he closed the office door.
Sony rushed over and picked his penguins out the garbage, Maureen helping him. Hai was too angry to move.
“Why would he do that to my penguins?” Sony cried, earnestly confused.
“It’s alright,” Maureen said. “Here, this blue one will be pretty good once we get the sweet potatoes off.”
Hai went over to the office door and pretended to fiddle with the punch clock as he listened in. The door wasn’t closed all the way, leaving a pencil-wide crack.
“Hey, man. Look,” Vogel said. He started to sit down but changed his mind. Hai could hear BJ’s labored breathing. “You cool? Hey, I’m sorry about the Cheryl thing. I shouldn’t have…”
“I’m fine.”
“Look, you know I had to do that, right? I respect you—really, I do. You’ve been with us since, what, right after 9/11, right?”
“Sure.”
“And by the way, I was doing you a big favor, Cheryl. You know that? Cause next month…” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “you’re gonna have to let go at least one from this crew, maybe two.”
BJ was silent, but her chair creaked.
“And what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna blame it on me. Bill’s doing the same spiel in Worcester. You can just tell ’em, whenever you’re ready, that big ole Mr. Vogel from evil headquarters made you do it, okay? Attagirl.” He let out a heavy sigh. “This way, you’ll keep your costs down and morale high. They’ve even mentioned this method a couple times at headquarters. Let us RMs be the bad guys.”
“Thanks?” BJ mumbled.
“And before you ask, it’s nonnegotiable. I need it done. And it’s not just your outfit either, it’s all of them except Redding. Remember, we’re in a recession.”
Hai turned away just as the door opened and the blue shirt darted out. He didn’t know where to go and didn’t feel like talking to BJ, so he opened the walk-in fridge and stepped inside. He sat down on a crate of lettuce and caught his breath. He didn’t know how long he was in there, but at one point the door opened. It was Maureen. In the half dark, lit only by a night-light, she didn’t see him and headed to the corner, where she stood leaning her forehead against the wall. Not knowing what to make out of this, Hai stayed still. When she didn’t move for what seemed like a long time, he finally said her name.
Maureen startled around. “Oh, it’s you. Why didn’t you say anything? Why you in here anyway?”
“Why are you?”
She had this pained blue gaze, her usually blasé demeanor far away.
“Hey,” he stood up. “That guy was a total dick, but BJ’ll be fine. And Sony will make new penguins. Hey, hey…what’s the matter?”
She didn’t say anything and just looked at him funny, her eyes filling. “I’m a little nervous.”
She half turned toward the sacks of BBQ sauce on the rack. He was surprised by the fear in her voice. “I have this lump…in my chest.” She touched her right breast. “And I know what it is. My grandma had it and so did my aunt Patty and I just know it. I knew it for months.” She shook her head, the white roots of her dyed red hair showing.
“You can get it checked, right? Don’t people put ’em in that panini-press-looking thing?”
She nodded vaguely but looked like she couldn’t see him clearly. She was going to say something, but a shaft of light cleaved the room in half and the door opened.
“What you guys hiding for?” Russia said. “Dude’s gone.” He grabbed a huge sheet cake on the rack, rimmed with pink frosting. “Come on, we got a birthday booking at twelve. Remember?”
Maureen and Hai followed Russia out, where he placed the cake on a counter and lit the candles before carrying it out front. Wayne, Sony (somewhat recovered), and BJ, her cap back on, her manager’s bow tie cinched up, led the procession, clapping as they staggered out from the kitchen, singing “Happy Birthday,” their faces lifted into masks of glee as they crossed the rubber mats and onto the warm brick tiles of the dining room, where a family had gathered around a girl with a pink crown on her head, the wax number 6 hovering toward her as she shrieked with pristine delight, scanning the crew’s faces, then turning to her parents—no older than twenty-five—regarding them with what looked like the invention of gratitude, unbridled to the point of levitation.
Russia set the cake down, Band-Aid hanging from his cheek, and the crew swayed as the song emptied out of them, the applause rising and falling, the father shaking BJ’s hands, conspirators of this tiny miracle of joy, as MGMT’s “Electric Feel” came through the speakers, and underneath that, under the giggles, the clicking of plastic forks as they’re passed around, and the footsteps of each worker returning to their stations, the mounted TV in the corner, its voice announcing, Multiple suicide bombings, including one at a hospital, have killed at least thirty-three and wounded more than fifty people near Baqubah, Iraq. And everyone kept on working, and the family set down the pink-wrapped gifts around their girl as Maureen stood watching the family eat cake through an opening in the stainless-steel machines that made up what was called “the back of the house.” And winter was over.
