“Some girl,” I said quietly. He tilted his head. “When you were telling Carla who you worked with, you said just some girl.”
He stared at his muddy shoes and felt guilt. That was exactly what he felt. It was probably written on his forehead; it was just invisible behind his hair. The audience in my head cheered in victory.
“Cut,” I said.
A knock on the door interrupted us. I looked to the doorway, and Snake mirrored my movements.
And there she was, karma manifested in the prissy and ever-pregnant form of Carla, both hands folded over her bulging stomach. Snake took a step back, thanking his unlucky stars that she hadn’t caught him touching me. Her ruby red hair whirled down her back, her golden eyes like shimmering treasure. She was feminine beauty incarnate (see: mega exaggeration) (also see: worst kinds of people). She blinked shyly as she absorbed the scene.
“Hey, Reggie,” she said.
I half nodded in response.
“Hey, babe,” Snake whispered. “What are you doing here?”
Babe?
Babe?
BABE!
Was he effing serious? I wasn’t sure whether to punch him in the stomach, groin, or face. Too many attack options. The way he talked to her was infuriating. It was like she was a fragile shard of very broken and expensive china, and he was some kind of master craftsman. He sickened me.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly. “Alone?”
Translation: I’m about to either A) drop-kick you to Waikiki and don’t want any witnesses. Or B) burst into tears about something entirely absurd and don’t want any witnesses.
Snake glanced at me. By the way he shrugged his shoulders, you would have thought that we had a secret code of body language, and shoulder shrugging fell under “I’m totally whipped.” He followed Carla out the trailer door and into the parking lot.
Babe.
Ugh. I dwelled on that sweet and disgusting expression as I worked through the closing-time checklist. As I swept the floor, I could feel a familiar viciousness budding inside like a weed emerging from the pit of me.
Anger. The trigger emotion. The bully. The menace. With anger came panic. It victimized my thoughts and scraped them through a giant shredder of unrelenting emotion that was a lot like getting multiple tetanus shots at once. Sting. Ache. All the throbbing imaginable. My mind was hazy again. Every thought was louder than the last.
Thought 1: I lived in a deadbeat town I would never escape.
Thought 2: I was surrounded by ordinary and boring people who were stupid enough to enjoy their ordinary and boring lives.
Thought 3: There would always be something standing in the way of me becoming one of those stupid and ordinary people (see: happiness).
Thought 4: I was too intelligent and self-respecting and, frankly, good for a wannabe liar like Snake, who was willing to cheat on his pregnant girlfriend just so he could hate and be hated at his whimsy.
Thought 5: I wanted to be the one Snake Eliot called babe.
Thought 6: Thought 5 made me exceptionally pathetic.
The shredder went a little something like that. And coincidentally, so did Stage 1. I realized I was kind of beating the floor with the broom at that point. I knew I had to get home before I cried in front of Carla Banks, or before Snake could see me cry and realize I wasn’t exactly made of steel. Floors dusted, sinks washed, countertops disinfected, and machines down, I strutted toward my car to face the music.
They were huddled next to Snake’s chick-magnet lady-killer (see: Prius). He held her body as close as her belly would allow, rubbing her lower back with his hands like those sappy boyfriends from vomit-inducing romance movies. She was crying against his chest, her mascara tears staining his Oinky’s shirt.
Aw, he wiped a tear. Wasn’t he the sweetest thing? Wasn’t she lucky to have him? Watching him hold her like that, no one would ever know he was the kind of guy that hooked up with a girl five minutes after he met her or kissed another girl while five-minute girl was toting his baby squash under her dress. He glanced in my direction, and I shot him a very crude hand gesture that I don’t feel the need to elaborate on, given the circumstance. (Side note: I also called him six different curse words in my head, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it should have been.)
When I side-jumped into the minivan and turned the key, my mother’s spiritual guide station shot on, blaring high-pitched, delicate harmonies that made me so irration-ally furious I wanted to break the system. I opted for a less dramatic response and flipped to a head-banging rock station that was so anger-cliché it was just cliché enough to work for me.
As I drove by high school’s sorriest example of soon-to-be parents, I rolled down my window and called, “Hey, you want to know what I would do if I were directing the movie?” Snake glared at me like he was afraid I would say something that would get Carla’s designer panties in a bunch. She peeked up from his chest, batting her wet lashes. “I would switch the male lead. That guy is a dick. The odds of him getting the girl are slim to none.”
I glanced at Carla, a sour smile sketched on my lips, a display of scorn that only depression and Snake Eliot could yank out of me. “And you. I get it. Pregnancy sucks. But look at it this way, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve had a boy under your dress.”
I sped away before I could bask in what I was sure was her appalled reaction, depicted with gunky black tears and a pouty-lipped plea to Snake for reinforcement. The minivan bumped along Sun Street, hitting every pothole in its path. The stoplight was red, but I floored it through the intersection anyway without glancing back.
All these theories exist concerning why depressed people do the shit they do. Stuff like, Depression hijacks the logic center of the brain, thus resulting in intensified levels of emotion that can lead to disastrous outcomes and blah blah blah. They’re usually coupled with these genius “philosophies” about depressed people’s carelessness being biologically instilled and likewise untreatable. Ludicrous theories, if you ask me. Psychological white noise.
I didn’t speed through the red light because I was biologically instilled to be careless. I sped through the red light because there was no one there to tell me not to. Unfortunately for science, my untreatable carelessness didn’t kill me. It wasn’t until I made it home that I realized Snake’s shirt wasn’t the only one with tearstains.
Chapter Eight
ONCE A MONTH, I GOT THURSDAY off work. And on that rare and glorious day, pork chops sizzling in the frying pan was proof of that fact. Karen called it Chop Thursday. I called it Just Put a Bullet Through My Head and Be Done with It.