TWELVE
The Proposal
The bathroom is unisex, and the place only has one. Someone's rattling the doorknob. She mumbles for them to piss off, but she doesn't have the heart to say it loud enough for anybody to hear; a rare moment.
It's like a closet in here. Tight. Bright. Blue. Everything is blue. Robin's egg blue. Sky blue. Picasso's blue period. The blue of someone choking on a meatball and dying blue.
She hears the distant clang of a red snow shovel. She feels its heavy weight on her back.
In the mirror, she sees a glimpse of ghosts from future and past: Del Amico, his throat almost comically swollen with his own tongue; Ben Hodges, the back of his head blown out like a juiced pomegranate; the old man, Craig Benson, stroking his bent erection with hands curled into arthritic claws; Louis, an electrical tape X over each eye, mouthing her name again and again. A shiny balloon floats up, and for a moment, it seems to blot out the light above her head, even though she knows it's not real…
The door rattles again. The ghosts are gone. Miriam pushes her way out of the bathroom, past some blonde country yuppie in pink.
The waitress approaches, carrying an almost-impossible armload of plates.
"Your friend said you were done eating?" she asks Miriam, gesturing to the plates with her chin.
"Uh. Yeah. Yes, thanks." She pauses. The words come out of her mouth before she even thinks to speak them: "Do you have a Honda? A Honda hatchback?"
"No," she says, and Miriam's heart leaps like a bullfrog with a dart stuck in his ass. A tiny glimmer of hope grows wings and starts banging against her insides, a bee against a window. "But, you know what? I have been thinking about getting one. Old Tremayne Jackson down on Orchard Lane, he has one sitting out in his driveway. Was his daughter's, I guess, but she got a scholarship – first one in the family to go to college – so now the car's just sitting there, collecting pollen and leaves and whatnot on the hood. He said he'd sell it to me, but I hadn't decided yet. Heck – maybe I'll go for it! I'd forgotten about it until now."
Miriam's insides tighten. She screams within her own head. The thoughts rage at her, throw things, kick down mental doors and hurl bricks through windows: See what you did? See how it all happens? You say something, and bad shit happens. Before she wasn't sure about buying that goddamn car, but now you open your lippy bitch mouth, and now she's got the idea planted in her head like a bad seed growing an ugly tree, and one night she's going to get crunched into that tree by some drunk dumb fuck in a pickup truck – way to go. You have to keep trying, don't you?
And even then, a littler voice chimes in: Tell her no. Tell her that Honda hatchbacks are known to spontaneously burst into flames when you turn on the radio. Or better still, go down to Orchard Lane and stuff a rag in the gas tank and blow that sucker to Timbuktu. Or maybe take fate into your own hands right now – grab a butter knife off the counter and saw this stupid woman's head clean off. If you kill her first, it doesn't count, right?
But Miriam just smiles, shrugs, and pushes past.
The waitress watches her go, equal parts confused and pleased.
Miriam sits, and Ashley's polishing off his coffee.
"So, how's Flo bite it?"
"Car accident. Truck slams into her." He cocks an eyebrow. "What, do you want me to prove it? Hold on, we just have to get to my time-traveling Delorean parked out back by the dumpster. We'll go back to the future and you can see I'm telling the truth."
"All right, all right, let's say I believe you."
"Lucky me."
"I have a proposal for you."
"No, I will not marry you. The baby's not yours. It's a mixedrace baby, and last I checked, you don't look Eskimo."
"I want to work together."
"Work." She says the word like she's looking at a dog turd. "Really? Us? Work together?"
"Like a volleyball team. You set 'em up, I spike it. Let's be frank, Miss Black – you need my help bad."
"I need neither shit nor shinola from you." Under her breath, she adds: "Not that I know what shinola is."
"The old bastard. Benson. With the dick pill problem. He had a safe, right?"
"So?"
"So, people keep things in safes. Important things. Money. Guns. Jewels. Gold doubloons, whatever. I can crack a safe."
"Who can actually do that? Is that what they're teaching at community college these days? You're telling me you can actually crack a safe."
"You bet."
"I don't need what's in a safe. I told you, I don't get greedy." She reaches into her bag, finds some money, tosses it atop the bill. "There. I'm paid up. This is where we part ways. Thanks for the fun time last night. All that… violent monkey sex? With the choking and shit? It was a lovely time. But I'm done here. You have a great life."
She stands.
He puts his hand on her wrist. He tightens his grip. It doesn't hurt. Not yet.
"You're only going where I tell you to go," he says, giving her a flash of that winning smile. He loves this, she can tell. "I will call the cops. I will sell you up the river. Furthermore, I've got one more little surprise for you."
Miriam ponders breaking his nose. It'll draw attention, though.
"I did a little look-see into your past. It's not like a girl like you has a big trail, but it did lead me to your mother. She's alive and well. Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn't. But I can see the way your lip is twitching that this is getting to you. It's okay. I have a mother, too, and I know how it can be. Love and disappointment, those perpetual dance partners, right? You bail on me, and I'll go to her. I'll tell her everything. Maybe she'll believe me, maybe she won't. But I think she'll know the scoop. I think she'll be sad to know that you're out there, banging rednecks and losers, stealing from the dead, and just being an all-around tramp. You want that?"
Her teeth grit together so hard, she thinks they might snap into little pieces.
"Are we in business together?" he asks.
"You going to tell me what's in that metal suitcase under the bed?"
"Nope." He smirks.
"I hate you," is her response.
"You love me, because we're the same." He stands up and reaches in to get a kiss. She turns her cheek, and that's where it lands.
Ashley lets go of her wrist and heads to pay the bill.
Everything feels like a wave crashing down on her. She closes her eyes and thinks, maybe this is how it has to go. This is fate, after all. Destiny. The undertow will pull her down one of these days. It'll drag her out to sea. Forever lost within the swaying seaweed and fish bones.
The diary will be done, and that will be that.
It is what it is.