I missed work. Once you get into something so hard, you inevitably go through withdrawal. You think you are a part of things, but then you go out and it’s like you were never there. The world goes on. You get lucky enough to come back and it is like you never left. People see you or they don’t. You’re not indispensable. You’re just a body. Someone to do the calls, someone to talk to. Not indispensable. Sort of visible and invisible at the same time. Meat in the seat.
I didn’t want to be one of those guys who was always hanging out at the office, or stopping by every time I saw one of our rigs on the roads. I thought maybe I would hang out with Carrie more. I was getting worker’s comp but no overtime, so I was really short on dough. I figured I could make it up to her by offering to do projects about her house, things I could do with one arm. I painted her room, and I did a nice job at it, though it took me a while. I still only got to stay one night a week if I was lucky.
“You need to go home by six,” she said when she got home from work. “It’s not fair to my roommate, you being here all the time.”
“But she’s at work tonight, and I’m hardly ever here, aside from all the time I’ve spent painting.”
“That isn’t the point. You don’t pay rent here. She does.”
Rent? I thought, what about the two hundred dollars a month I was giving her? “Ask her, I’ll paint her room too, the bathroom, the hallways, everything. I just want to spend the night in your arms.”
“I’m sure she’ll like that, but she specifically told me I could only have overnight guests one night a week, and we’ve abused that a bit in the past. I just want to be fair to her. And I don’t want her kicking me out, which she can because I don’t have a lease.”
So I painted by day, and went home to my room at night. Even the nights I stayed seemed to lack their usual vigor. I took her to more and more expensive restaurants, but it seemed not to make an impression later on. Instead of making her giddy, the wine made her sleepy. When I brought marijuana over, instead of making her happy, it made her remote.
“You look like you’ve got a tapeworm,” Carrie said. “I don’t understand how you’re losing weight with all you eat when you’re with me.”
I was losing weight because I’d stopped weightlifting and wasn’t getting enough protein to support what muscle I did have. I was starving myself. The only other good meal I got was at my mom’s, and she said the same thing. “You look terrible.”
They had a big explosion one day at the civic center. They had ambulances in from all over, and I had to watch it on TV, wishing I was there. Over a hundred people were hurt; sixteen died. I saw all the old faces on the news—there was Fred doing CPR on a man—and I saw plenty of new people I didn’t know. Everyone in the company who worked that day got a commendation from the mayor.
Thanksgiving dinner, I was able to make it to my mom’s after all. My mom, my sister and myself. It was depressing.
“How come you didn’t bring anyone?” my sister asked.
“Because I didn’t invite anyone.”
“What about your girlfriend?”
“She’s having dinner with her family.”
“She didn’t invite you?”
“Don’t you have anything nice to say?”
“She didn’t want to come. You could have brought your partner.”
“Are you talking about Fred?”
“No, not that doofus. I’m talking about that Tom guy you work with, the good-looking one.”
“What do you know about him?”
“I saw him at the Wendy’s. He was in there getting a burger. I told him I was your sister. He said he’d take me down to the casino some night.”
“Stay the fuck away from him.”
“I can see whoever I want.” And she stuck her tongue out at me.
“Suit yourself then. You’re twenty. You can wreck your life, see if I care. Enjoy your venereal disease.”
“Mom!”
“Stop it, the both of you. This is a family meal.”
At least I got a decent meal out of it. Afterwards we all watched Groundhog Day together. I spent the night on the couch. My mom came down in the middle of the night and wrapped a blanket around me. I pretended to be asleep. She must have sat there an hour watching me.
***
I started getting strange vibes from Carrie some nights when I’d call her just to say hi, maybe hoping to finagle an invitation over on an off night. She acted like she didn’t have time to talk to me. “What is going on with you? Do you have someone there?”
“Yes, some friends from work. We’re doing a project, having pizza and trying to get our deadline met. Things have been hectic.”
“I guess they have. Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, why don’t I just meet you at the Olive Garden?”
“All right.”
After we ate that night, she said she was all of a sudden not feeling well, and went home alone. I laid out sixty bucks for dinner and wine for her and got nothing but a disinterested peck on the cheek in return.
One night I decided to stake her house out. She usually arrived home from work at four-thirty to five depending on whether she stopped at the store. I let Fred use my car in exchange for his tinted-window Camaro. I backed into a space on the far side of the parking lot, but with a good view of her front door. I had a pair of my dad’s old binoculars, a Double Big Gulp from the 7-11, a notebook to write down any thoughts and two cans of Vienna sausage in case I got hungry.
At ten after five, I saw her grey Yugo pull into her assigned spot. She got out, and went around to the passenger door, and took out three bags of groceries. I saw a loaf of French bread sticking out. She was cooking pasta, no doubt. She always bought French bread when she cooked for me, which she’d done a fair amount when we were first seeing each other, but hadn’t for a while. I also saw her take out a box of wine. She liked to drink red burgundy.
I waited. Who was coming over? She usually told me seven when she was cooking. It gave her time to smoke a little reefer if she had it, make the sauce, clean up the house, and take a long bubble bath, which was where she would start in on the wine. She always liked to have a good high going when I got there. I could taste the wine on her breath when she’d put her tongue in my mouth as soon as I came through the door. Just thinking about the way she used to greet me, the passion coming off of her—passion for me, I believed—got me excited sitting there. And it made me feel like a pervert, hiding behind tinted glass, spying.
The living room blinds were partly open, but I couldn’t see in from where I was. I wondered what would happen if I waited a little longer until she was in the tub, then cracked the door and went in. Would she be surprised to see me? Would she scream and call the cops, or would she smile and take me inside?
At seven on the button, a big black Chevy truck pulled up, and Jimmie Winslow got out. He was carrying a six pack of beer and headed straight for her door.
He rang the bell. He waited, looked at his watch, and then I saw the door open and the dread sight—Carrie in her bathrobe, letting him in.
After vomiting in a plastic bag, I sat there crying like a baby. I didn’t know whether to keep crying or whether I ought to knock down the door and kill them both. I certainly could understand why some people committed sudden acts of violence. I looked in my back seat and saw my crowbar. I thought about getting out and doing a number on his car, smashing the windshield, the front lights, calling him out to fight mano a mano or, because he had a good eighty pounds on me, mano a crowbar. Instead, I just took what was left of my Big Gulp. I walked over to his car, spun off the gas tank, and poured it in like it was STP. For good measure, I let the air out of his back passenger-side tire.