CHAPTER NINE
I wake to the smell of bacon and weed.
Before I try to make sense of the olfactory assault, I sit up in my bed, rub my face with one hand to push away the sleep, then wince when my hand comes away peach. Concealer. Because I didn’t wash my face last night after getting home, and now it’s all over my pillow.
I sigh, pulling the pillowcase off and tossing it into my hamper. Then I stand, plod into the bathroom, and do the job I was too annoyed for last night. When the concealer is gone, my freckles are on full display rather than properly hidden. They’re light, in a spray that straddles my nose and runs onto each cheek. Redhead’s curse, I suppose. Just one more cross to bear. One more fault for Plain-Jane Abigail, with her straight hair and tiny nose.
We can’t all be perfect little club girls.
I consider holding onto the thought then think of my mother’s wisdom and decide to let it go. There’s really no question that Mom is a psychology genius; the only reason I’ve always resisted is because there’s also no question that she’s obnoxious about it. Her book Mesmerize hit the bestseller list, and that left her delighted. But for me and my siblings, it quantified the number of people who’d be reading stories about her offspring’s shortcomings.
Mom always said we hold onto offense, anger, and disappointment as if holding onto them will change something. But the minute you realize that handsome men who come into your diner will eventually run off and sleep with predictable sluts regardless of your feelings, it becomes a truth-will-set-you-free scenario, where everyone manages to win.
It’s a bit chilly in the apartment and plain in the bathroom mirror that my nipples are making tents against my sleep shirt. I don’t care. It’s only Lisa out there, and as far as I know, she has no interest in my boobs.
As it turns out, there’s no need for my mind to be creative about what I smelled on waking. There’s nothing burning; there are no stoners here having come fresh from breakfast at Denny’s. It might have been fun to play how did that smell happen, but Lisa has made it entirely too easy.
She’s smoking a joint while making bacon.
“Hell, Lis,” I say. “Do you really have to do that?”
“I thought you liked bacon?”
“I meant the pot.”
“I’m using a skillet.”
I reach out, pluck the joint from her mouth, and stab it against the counter. I usually don’t like to do things like that, but Lisa does it all the time. Our pretty slate countertop looks like it’s been hit by many tiny asteroids.
“Prude,” she says.
“I’m going to get a contact high. I told you not to smoke in the apartment.”
“No you didn’t.”
I told her yesterday. And every day before that.
“I’m so hungry,” I say.
“Must be all the weed. Some bitch gave you a contact high.” She picks up the joint, now extinguished, and puts it back between her lips as a prop. “Might as well get the real thing. You want me to blaze this back up and we’ll share?”
“I think my answer is in that little stain on the countertop.”
“This is Push,” she says. “Good shit.”
Push is Lisa’s favorite strain of weed. It’s also the reason she moved to Inferno Falls. Push was born here, just as Lisa’s very hungry baby will be some day, once she meets the perfect stoner to share her life with. I’ve stopped trying to figure this out. Lisa has tried many times to explain to me why Push is her favorite strain, and doesn’t seem to understand that my real question is one level up. Who even has a favorite strain of weed?
“I’d rather have bacon.”
“Good.” Lisa steps aside and opens the oven. I see four cookie sheets full of sizzling bacon. It has to be five or six pounds total. Like half a pig.
“Hell.”
“I was hungry, too,” she explains.
I see this situation is as in hand as it’s going to be, which is to say that there’s nothing I can do to make it less ridiculous. So I sit at our kitchen table, figuring that a 100 percent bacon breakfast is better than no breakfast at all. It has fat, salt, and nitrates. Everything a growing girl needs.
“You have work today?” Lisa is moving bacon to paper towels. The only container big enough for this wealth of pork, apparently, is an enormous wicker thing my grandmother gave me after one of her yard sales, so Lisa has lined it with paper and is shoveling fatty meat into it as I sit. It’s as if she’s preparing a greasy gift basket for someone, and I just know that the next time I want to use that basket, it’s going to smell like hog.
“Twice,” I answer. “I was already on at the Pit for lunch, but last night Danny asked me to work another evening shift at the Overlook.”
“Two weekend shifts back to back?” Her eyebrows go up. The beads she threads through her straight blonde hair swing as she looks over. “You hit the jackpot.”
“What can I say? I must have done such a fantastic job last night that he couldn’t resist.”
“Good job. You’ve been digging for weekend shifts forever.”
“Or, more likely, Cokehead Meg was scheduled tonight, so I need to cover that one now that she’s fired, too.”
“You didn’t give me the full story there. Meg was stealing from Danny?”
“That’s the full story, as far as I know.”
Lisa shakes her head. “Drugs make people do such stupid things.”
I watch Lisa empty the first of the four cookie sheets into the paper-towel-lined wicker basket and decide not to comment.
“So how was it? Last night?”
I sigh. There’s no reason to give anything less than a positive answer. But I guess I can’t help it.
“It was okay.”
“Just okay?”
“It was a shift waitressing. How great is it going to be? Do you expect me to be jumping off the walls?”
“Abs, you’ve been bitching about being stuck on Tuesdays and Thursdays forever. You got to listen to music and make tips.”
“Yeah, but … ”
“Are you feeling unfulfilled or something?” She chews on a bit of bacon, nodding, though whether it’s in agreement with herself or because of the bacon’s flavor, I don’t know. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re unfulfilled.”
“I’m not unfulfilled.” I make it sound like an absurd idea.
“Yes, you are. You keep telling me how unfulfilled you are. Remember last time, when you pulled out your mom’s personality matrix and — ”
“I knew I never should have shown you that.”
“Well, you’re unfulfilled. You’ve said it; I’ve heard it; it’s out there in the universe. Look, if you want to write, just write. I don’t think you’ll get fulfillment in a club no matter which shifts you work. Not if you’re an Instigator.”
Lisa is remembering my mother’s personality matrix wrong. I’m a Shameless Creative. She’s the Instigator. As if there should be any doubt, as she instigates over bacon.
“You’re right,” I say. Finally, the bacon makes its way to the table. She’s even arranged it artfully in the basket. It’s flopping out over the sides as if on display. It looks like a disgusting flower just bloomed in the middle, and the strips are its petals. I take a piece. The weed scent in the air seems to flavor it, and I wonder if my intense hunger means I’ve caught a contact high.
She sits across from me. The baconquet is shoved aside from its centerpiece position.
“Maybe that hot guy will come to the Pit again today,” Lisa says.
I roll my eyes. Not because I think she’s wrong and grasping at fairy tale straws, which is what I’d have thought yesterday afternoon, but because I’m afraid she’s right.
“Hey, it could happen,” Lisa adds.
“Do you know who he turned out to be? The guy I told you about yesterday between jobs?”
“He was somebody?”
“Gavin Adams. Have you heard of him?”
She thinks for a second, but it’s only a second. “Oh, yeah. I know him. Musician. I saw him at the Overlook a time or two and … ” Lisa trails off then begins again with a dumb smile on her face. “Oooh, now I see. He was hot. Like, superhot.”
“He was — ” I begin, but Lisa’s not finished.
“Crazy hot. Like, I’d-let-you-have-all-of-this-bacon-to-buy-him-away-from-you hot. And so sensitive. OMG.” She spells it out: oh-em-gee.
“‘Sensitive,’” I scoff.
“Yeah,” Lisa says defensively, and I get the impression she’s gone from barely caring about this conversation to recalling she’s the president of the Gavin Adams Fan Club. “Do you know his story?”
“I don’t care about his story.”
Lisa’s looking at me with her jaw seesawing slowly back and forth. I can only see it from the corner of my eye because I’m looking away. It’s Lisa’s thinking mannerism. It means she’s about to say something I’ll regret.
“What’s with you, Abs?”
“Nothing is ‘with’ me.”
She waves a piece of bacon at me. Minuscule bubbles of fat hit me in the wrist. “Bullshit. What’s going on? When you came back between shifts, you were all wet for him. Then — ”
“I was not!”
“I couldn’t get into your room after you left, Abigail. You know why? It was flooded. Because you threw your panties in there, and they were so wet, they flooded the apartment! Now do you want to answer the question … or do you want to get the shit into your room with a sump pump before I tell the landlord?”
I don’t think there actually was a question, but I should move to intercept now rather than later. Lisa isn’t great at letting things go, and she obviously thinks she’s being hilarious. I can see her trying to keep a straight face, but she’s clearly got the pot giggles.
“He was a total asshole last night.”
“Gavin?”
“Yeah. I didn’t realize who he was until he was already onstage. And then, as he started playing, he looked right at me. Like, right in my eyes.”
Lisa has put her chin on her palm, but her sweet look is ruined by the way her jaw keeps chewing. She sighs anyway, making an “Aww.”
“And he did seem … touching, I guess? Onstage. I’ll admit it; I got kind of eager to talk to him again. But then afterward, all these slutty groupies swarmed him.”
“A man can’t be blamed for his groupies.” Lisa says it like a Zen koan.
“But you should have seen him up there.” I mimic an exaggerated version of Gavin Adams, making my face like a cocky rock star’s, pantomiming the signing of autographs. “He was totally into it. He wasn’t exactly fighting them off.”
“So he gets groupies. You said he seemed nice.”
I think about that. He did seem nice. And, in fact, that’s part of what hurts me a little: The man at the Nosh Pit yesterday afternoon was an entirely different man from the one who took the stage (or at least left the stage) last night. Even the phony who came over and tried to talk to me was a different man. That one seemed so fake, so on despite pretending to be casual. Gavin is different one on one, and I’ll bet he’s different when you get him totally in private, too.
It’s how Brian was, so my alarms are all blaring. Brian was a charismatic showman, wooing friends and acquaintances the way he wooed clients. But he wasn’t as confident when we were alone, or as nice as everyone seemed to think. He was like two people. One reeled people in with over-the-top personality. The other — the real Brian, insecure and petty — lied to his fiancée about the other’s many, many boisterous dalliances.
“Well, he’s not. He was just putting on an act like he probably does for all sorts of women, and I fell for it.”
“So you didn’t even talk to him?”
“I had to wait hours for his gaggle of admirers to disperse.”
“But after?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him after. He hung out with these slutty women forever. Just plunked down and did his I’m-a-hot-music-guy-and-bitches-throw-themselves-at-me thing. All kicked back, like … ” And I do a bit more pantomime that I didn’t actually see Gavin do, but that I’m sure he does all the time because he’s an asshole. “Then when he was done with them, he decided to move in on me again.”
“What, did he try and take you home?” Lisa says this in a way that could be good or bad. Scandal or jackpot. She’s been a groupie a time or two, for sure.
“No, he just — ”
“Did he throw those other girls at you? Come over with one of them and act like an ass?”
“Well, no … ”
“So what did he do?”
“He just kind of talked.” I realize I need to say something else because there was so much more to it. “But you could tell, he was all cocky and full of himself! Like, I guess I was just supposed to jump into his arms now that he’d finished up and finally had time for me.”
“What did he say?”
Dammit. Lisa isn’t getting it. Gavin was a superior asshole. I’m just having trouble conveying it because it was subtle, all between the lines.
“He’s all, Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.” I’m sure to deliver the line with proper vocal swagger.
“You’re working tonight, right?”
“Well, yeah. But — ”
“So you will see him tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to see him!”
“Because he predicted it, you mean?”
I sigh dramatically and stand up. Where is my coffee? I need caffeine to counteract all the nitrates and cannabis.
“You’re always like this,” Lisa says.
I turn to face her.
“Brian ruined you. You think every guy is working an angle.”
“Every guy is working an angle!”
“Well, yes. Okay. They are. They all want the pussy. But if you want to give it to him, then it’s a wash and everyone wins, right?”
“I do not want to give him ‘the pussy.’”
“Keep it for yourself, too, of course,” she says, as if I may have misunderstood.
“I doubt he’s into me. Everyone in that club was his best friend. He was even all rock star with the guys. He was all smarmy and networking with everyone.”
“But you said he was sweet when it was just the two of you.”
“Which makes it worse. It means he’s two people. I hate phonies.”
“Maybe he’s just nervous, and this is how he covers it.”
“Like a boy on the playground? He likes me, so he throws rocks?”
“Did he throw any rocks at you, Abigail?”
I turn fully away and pour my coffee. It’s not ready, and I’m a stickler about waiting until a pot is fully brewed before taking any, but my need to turn from Lisa trumps it.
“He left with some girl,” I’m surprised to hear my voice. It’s angry — a shock because I have no right to be. But it’s also a little quiet, like the idea makes me sad. “Some slutty girl who was all over him at the end.”
“After he tried to talk to you and you blew him off?”
I don’t say anything. We just kind of lock eyes.
“Eat more bacon,” Lisa finally says.