Picking Up the Tab

Craig washed his hands in the bathroom at The Italian Garden Restaurant, having been sent to a new memory. In this part of his life, it was the night of his high school prom. He was on an arranged date with Janna Cunningham. Janna was dumped by Bobby Keaton, and Craig didn’t have a date to begin with, so it worked out for the both of them. The majority of the kids with them tonight he wasn’t familiar with except for Rose Farrow, and she was the one in his Biology class who had arranged his date with Janna. Senior year, and this was the final hoorah, aside from graduation. His powder-blue suit was purchased from the thrift store. His mother bought it for fifty bucks. The waistline was a tad too tight, and the extra tension made it feel like he was full of gas, but this was the big night.

Prom night.

Brandon’s pep talk before he left the house went like this: “You’re eighteen and graduating. Go attack the world. I’ll help you get an apartment.” And you'll help me get the hell out of your house, right, Daddy?

Why had he wanted to go to prom so badly? He didn’t have that many friends, and his best friend, Alice, refused to attend. She detested it and wrote up anti-prom posters in the school cafeteria to promote her cause. Pictures of couples holding babies, facts about early teen pregnancy, the cost of raising children, and the statistics of condoms and birth control methods failing was her poster material. Alice had been sent to the principal’s office, but beyond a talking to and a call to her parents, that was the extent of the reprimand. He didn’t relish prom either, but that was before he had a shot at dating Janna Cunningham.

He’d taken a piss before the memory started, and now, he washed his hands and held them under the air dryer. Standing there, Craig realized something.

Damn it, I missed Parker’s answer to my question. Dr. Krone, you’re timing is shit. The look on the priest’s face was priceless. Caught. The man even blushed. That meant it was true. He was having fun with his mother between the sheets.

But now he had a new worry. This night was one of the most embarrassing in the history of Craig Horsy. He didn’t want to leave the bathroom. He was stuck standing there, nailed to the floor in fear.

If this is your idea of therapy, Dr. Krone, then you suck.

“I have to leave sometime.” He squeezed his fists together. “You won’t let me go into the next memory until I do so, huh? Is that the catch?” Growing defiant, he shoved down his apprehensions and built himself up. “I’ll be proactive. Fuck it.”

He trudged out of the bathroom. Ahead of him, the restaurant was dimly lit. A semi-romantic Saturday evening at a high-priced restaurant. The walls were styled with columns like an Italian coliseum. Painted murals of vineyards decorated the walls, men and women in rough-neck clothing picking precious grapes from a vineyard. He saved money from working extra shifts at the Burger Barn for two months to afford this expensive evening, but his excitement and hard work was ill-fated.

The table in the back, his table, was empty. All eight seats. Janna was missing. The bill was propped intentionally in front of his seat. The bill was over three hundred dollars.

It burned him so bad in that moment his pulse pounded and pounded. The guys at the table were jocks on the football team, and it was typical they’d play a joke on Craig Horsy, the unpopular and unknown kid. It was easy to pick on somebody without friends, he thought bitterly. And here he was the helpless victim, fooled by his gullible good intentions.

He called his father for the cash that night, but Brandon immediately turned him down, saying, “You let those kids bamboozle you, then you’re going to fix your own mess, you idiot. I don’t have the goddamn bread to pay for your friends’ meals.”

No—wait! What am I thinking?

He skirted to the window, and he caught the group romping and bursting out in laughter in the parking lot. He did this the first time it happened, but he was too hurt and afraid to challenge them. Craig simply watched them carry on with the night.

They hadn’t left the parking lot yet. He couldn’t leave without committing mischief. What did he have to be afraid of? This was his mind, and he wouldn’t be arrested. He wouldn’t be grounded. The moment was truly his own to decide.

He ripped the fire extinguisher from the wall, cackling at the flurry of ideas spinning about in his head. He jacked open the window and crawled through, a new energy surging through him, willing him on to commit his darkest desires. It was well into May, the night air a brisk sixty degrees. He couldn’t help cackling again at the prospect of revenge, even throwing his head back in delight. This is what he dreamed of all these years.

Revenge.

He recalled the owner, Rick Margolia, forcing him to wash dishes for a week to repay the debt. Prom didn’t happen. He was stuck at the place until three in the morning that night.

Pacing faster toward them, he whispered, “Oh, they’re gonna get it now.”

Janna noticed him first, catching the darting figure in the corner of her eye. Mark Stolburg was next to spy him. And then Jack Neilson, Bryce Johnson, and Alex Cartman stepped out of the car one after the other to challenge his challenge. They were the defensive line for the Theodore Roosevelt High School Bears. They went to state, but lost the championship. They wore matching black suits with bright red cummerbunds. This was the joke to commiserate the loss of the game.

The other girls wore pastel dresses. They screamed, knowing what was coming, and looking into Craig’s diabolical face, they knew it was coming without mercy.

They’re not yucking it up anymore! Yuppie bastard assholes.

Mark, the burly lineman, stepped up to intercept Craig, waving his hands to stop him. “It was a joke, man. We were coming back in.” Forming his hand into a fist and punching his open hand, he threatened, “Seriously, put that down or else I’ll beat your ass.”

“That’s why Janna’s got the getaway car started, huh, you were coming back for me?” He lifted up the fire extinguisher. “Beat my ass after this!”

He sprayed the extinguisher at Mark’s face, caking him in white foam. Caaaaack! Mark charged forward, slipping on the foam and crashing to the pavement with an audible collapse. “You fucker—!”

“Tackle that prick!” Jack lunged for him. “Get him!”

He showered the rest of the group in white, laughing in glee, unafraid of the group approaching him, knowing he’d ruin their precious prom night. They battled to avoid the flurries of whipped white, but they couldn’t dodge it. “This one’s for Craig Horsy, assholes!”

Janna’s face looked like an opened container of whipped topping, the white staining the front of her dress and between her breasts.

He channeled his scorn into words. “Jokes on you, bitches!”

Alex Cartman swung a punch, being close enough to him now, but Craig rammed the butt end of the extinguisher into his stomach. “Uggggh!” He faltered to the curb on his knees, coughing and groaning in pain.

Craig challenged them, feeling on top of the world. “Who else is next? Want some more anyone?”

Janna wept next to the car. Her real date was in the passenger seat, Hank Pinzer. He was pissed, he could see, but the expression was muddled by a dollop of white foam across his nose and lips.

“I have one last parting gift,” Craig shouted. He hurled the extinguisher at the back windshield and shattered it. “Pay for that with your own money—maybe you can wash dishes inside to pay it off, you dick lickers!”

 

 

“It looks like they screwed you over,” Dr. Krone tsk-tsked. He was finishing his linguine and clams inside the restaurant, and when he was finally done, he wiped his lips clean with a burgundy napkin. “Ah, yes, the meal’s free tonight. Compliments of Rick Margolia—and this wouldn’t be the first time some kids ripped you off, is it?”

Dr. Krone stood up from his table to intercept the owner. “It’s a terrible shame. Kids aren’t grateful. Snot-nosed brats have no respect these days, do they?”

Rick’s thick black eyebrows furrowed. He ran his hands down his white dress shirt and gray pinstripe pants, his Italian blood burning hot. “Those kids were trouble, especially that last one. He just leapt out the window. He wasn’t afraid of me. I’d like to pound his ass. I’d send him to the hospital. I’m serious, I don’t care how young that punk is, I’d smash his face in.”

Dr. Krone downed the last of the glass of wine in one hearty gulp. “It’s a real fine establishment to knock over, huh? Kids are so disrespectful. There’s no getting through to them.”

“No, there isn’t.” Rick spoke as if winded, “This isn’t the first dine-and-dash in my restaurant. The other kid who did this, I had arrested. Nobody robs the Margolias, especially some punk kids. And this one thinks he’ll get away with it.”

The doctor patted his back. “What if I can bring one back to you?—the one who stole your fire extinguisher and disrupted your fine establishment?”

“You could do that?” He brightened, imagining the kid in his mind and mentally squashing him. “The things I could do to that kid, he’d know true pain.”

Dr. Krone heartily shook his hand. “It’d be my pleasure, sir.”