Chapter Two

Rosa showed up to work fifteen minutes before her shift was supposed to start. She had a huge smile on her face and an old paperback in her hands. 

“Good morning, Sunshine!” she sang as she ran up to the counter. I returned her smile and put away my new laptop. I had been working on a new journal entry about those teenagers in the van while the details were still fresh on my mind, but it could wait.

“Morning, Rosa.”

She dropped the book onto the counter and exclaimed, “I loved this story! I couldn’t put it down! It was so good!”

I had to laugh. She was referring to the campy sci-fi drama about space cowboys that I’d loaned to her a couple of days earlier. One of my favorites, highly entertaining, but certainly not “good” by any stretch of the imagination.

“I’m glad you liked it,” I said.

“I kept thinking how I didn’t want it to end!”

“Well, you’re in luck. It’s actually the first one in a series.”

Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Yeah, but you might want to hedge those expectations. They get progressively weirder with each installment. The author came down with dementia while he was writing them, and the entirety of the last book was scribbled on a bathroom wall and transcribed by his editors.”

“Well, I can’t wait to see how they did. Maybe if you loan me book two, I could pay you back with coffee sometime.”

It didn’t sound like a joke. It sounded like something else entirely. I had no idea what she was getting at.

“Coffee is free for employees,” I explained.

“No, I meant maybe we could go somewhere else for coffee.”

“Somewhere where coffee isn’t free?”

“Exactly!”

She wasn’t making any sense.

“Why would we want to do that when the coffee here is free for employees?”

She didn’t have any response other than a blank stare and prolonged, “Uhhh...” 

Have I done that thing again where I accidently make someone feel uncomfortable? Did I say something? Did I not say something?

The sound of a car door slamming prompted her to look away, but only for a moment. When she snapped her attention back to me, her cheerful demeanor had been replaced by a look of pure distress. I knew something was wrong, even before she leaned across the counter and frantically whispered the coded message: “Casper Van Dien!”

The words instantly put me into super defense mode—the benefits of which included heightened alertness, racing pulse, stress sweat, a stomach ache, and the inability to breathe normally (super defense mode was a lot like a miniature panic attack). I sat up straight and scanned the gas station.

“Where?!”

She gave a subtle nod in the direction of the front door. When I looked out at the parking lot, I could see exactly what had prompted the warning. 

Oh no… Not this guy again.

The cause of Rosa’s emergency Casper-Van-Diening pulled open the front door, trying to act subtle and failing spectacularly. Everything about him screamed “suspicious!” From his red ball cap and sunglasses to the Matrix-style black trench coat. He stepped inside, looked up at the corners of the ceiling, then slowly shuffled towards the drink case, keeping his back to the wall and eyes pointed at us.

This was Jerry’s brilliant idea (the coded message—not the man in the trench coat). After learning about the demon Donald Glover incident, Jerry insisted that we come up with a way to quickly and discreetly warn each other should we ever find ourselves in a situation where danger was imminent. When I agreed to go along with it, I didn’t realize how seriously he was committed to the idea, even going so far as throwing “fire drills,” which consisted of him screaming the warning (“Casper Van Dien!”) immediately before tossing a tennis ball at my head. He would wait until I least expected. When I was on the phone. When I was walking out of the bathroom. When I was ringing up customers. After more balls to the face than I care to remember, my subconscious finally got with the program. Now, as soon as I heard those words, I knew trouble was coming.

“That’s him!” Rosa whispered. “That’s the guy I was telling you about!”

“Of course it is.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

His name was Beaux Couvillion. He was (to put it nicely) an enormous asshole. I had plenty of memories of Beaux going all the way back to when we were children, none of them good. He hated me ever since that day in third grade when he ordered me to stand guard outside the boys’ bathroom so he could poop on the floor for some reason, and I told him I wasn’t interested. Evidently, he couldn’t find another lookout, went forth with the plan anyway, and ended up getting caught red-handed by the vice principal. Somehow, Beaux convinced himself that the ensuing PR storm and relentless teasing from his fellow classmates were all my fault.

 For most people, “poop-vandal” is not the kind of title you bounce back from. But in tenth grade, Beaux found an opportunity to reinvent himself. During extracurricular sign-up week, he attempted to form his own club, one meant to celebrate Anglo-Saxon heritage by driving four wheelers around in the mud on weekends. Lest there be any confusion, he wanted to name it the “Kool Kids’ Klub.” 

After he failed to collect the required five signatures in time to register as an official student organization, Beaux’s father stepped in and sued the school board on the basis of “racial discrimination.” To a certain group in town, that made Beaux into a sort of teenage folk hero. They quickly settled out of court for what the rumor mill considered a “very generous sum.”

The sudden influx of money and popularity went straight to Beaux’s head. He started unironically using phrases like “learn your place” and “you will respect me!” Soon, he was shopping for clothes exclusively at Hot Topic and wearing his ginger-orange hair in punk-rocker spikes. When his small-town fame began to wane (as small-town fame is wont to do), he became desperate to recuperate the cool points by any means necessary.

He took to selling cigarettes in the school parking lot, spray painted a bunch of dick-swastikas all over the English teacher’s car, and threatened to sue anyone who so much as looked at him wrong. But despite all his rage, he was still just another angry dumb teenager. He ended up getting expelled for bad grades and chronic truancy a couple months shy of graduation. His family sued again, of course. I never heard how that case ended, nor did I care.

I was happy to forever remember him as the “poop vandal” who flew too close to the sun. But for small towns like mine, where the rumor mill is like Facebook on crack, you never really get the opportunity to forget people like Beaux. I overheard enough to keep up to date. He was still angry and dumb, and he still blamed everyone else for everything wrong with his life, from his multiple DUIs to his sudden premature hair loss and inexplicable weight gain.

In the grand scheme, he didn’t command any more headspace than any other former classmate, and he likely would have remained nothing more than an inconsequential background character forever, if not for the fact that he had recently started casing the gas station and was quite obviously working up the nerve to rob us.

While Beaux was never one for subtlety, his current behavior had reached near-comical levels of suspicion: always wearing that stupid hat and trench coat, parking his truck at the edge of the lot with tinfoil over the plates, sometimes coming into the store twice a day without buying anything. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to take notice.

“He keeps showing up when I’m all alone,” Rosa explained through careful whispers. “He tried talking to me a couple nights ago right before your shift started. At first, I thought he was hitting on me, but now I’m starting to think it’s something a lot worse.”

I kept an eye on Beaux, who was now pretending to read the nutrition facts on the back of a can of ham, and asked, “What exactly did he say?”

She used the finger quotes liberally. “He said that this was a ‘dangerous job’ and a ‘tiny thing’ like me might not be so safe. Then he asked me if we had any ‘hidden weapons’ in the store, because if I needed it, he was more than happy to ‘stick around’ and offer me his ‘protection’ for ‘free.’”

“Why would he think that was okay to ask? Did he not realize how guilty that makes him sound?” 

“I think he thought he was being seductive. He kept doing that gross eyebrow wiggle thing.”

“I guess that’s the power of self-delusion for you.”

“He’s in for a big surprise if he tries to rob us tonight, huh?”

Just when I think I’m getting the hang of this whole casual conversation thing, Rosa goes and throws me a curveball.

“What do you mean?”

She responded slowly, “You do know what day it is, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s Saturday.”

“It’s Monday, Jack.” She sounded disappointed.

“What? That can’t be right.” I pulled out my phone and confirmed it on the spot. Rosa was correct. More time had slipped between the cracks. “I guess all those teenagers are dead by now,” I muttered silently to myself.

“What was that?” Not silently enough, apparently.

“Nothing important.”

“Well,” she said with a proud smile. “It’s a good thing you’ve got me here to remind you, huh?”

I could tell I was missing something, but I couldn’t put my finger on what, and I couldn’t figure out a way to gracefully ask, “What are we talking about?” Instead, I nodded and said, “Yeah, good thing.”

“We are still on for tonight, aren’t we?”

Crap. Oh crap. What happens tonight? Crap. Did I make plans? Crap! Why would I do that? I never make plans. Think, brain, think! I was drawing a blank.

Right then, the universe decided to throw me a bone. The front door opened, and a man in the deputy sheriff’s uniform entered the store.

I called out his name loud enough to ensure my voice reached the corner where Beaux thought he was hiding. “Deputy Love! Good morning!”

Our babysitter had arrived a few minutes early, and for once I was happy to see him. If we were lucky, he might have a few words with Beaux. If we were really lucky, that might be enough to derail whatever he had planned.

We were not lucky. The deputy didn’t even bother looking at us. He just held up his hand, palm outstretched in my direction as he made his way to the bathroom, saying, “I’m not on the clock yet. Give me five.”

Once Love had passed, I looked back to see Beaux standing still, watching the authority figure from a safe distance. As soon as the bathroom door had shut, Beaux checked his watch, took a moleskin and pencil from his trench coat pocket, and made a short note. With that, he pulled his ball cap down even further and shuffled out the front door.

“...and there he goes without buying anything,” I said. “Again.”

Rosa turned back to face me. “Can’t we just ban him already?”

“Legally, there’s not much we can do until he commits a crime.”

“Did O’Brien ever leave you that gun like she was talking about?”

I thought carefully about my answer. “Let’s say no.”

 

***

 

Rosa had already clocked in and taken over the safe by the time Love finished up in the bathroom. He topped off his steel thermos with a suicide-drink from the soda fountain before making his way over to the counter, his shirt half untucked and a barbeque stain on his collar.

Deputy Love’s appearance was a testament to everything else in his life—the bare minimum to stay within compliance. He was the kind of guy who cut his own hair but shouldn’t. The kind of guy who probably didn’t own a mirror. The kind of guy for whom a daily routine did not necessarily include such trivialities as shaving, combing, or bathing.

He was in his early forties with two heart attacks under his belt. Based on the way he was deep panting after that short walk up to our counter, I’d say number three could be right around any corner. In a town where most people’s body type gravitated to either unhealthy extreme, Love somehow managed to encompass both. His arms were as skinny as mine, and from the neck up, he looked downright malnourished. Yet he also had a bad case of Dunlap Disease, with a beer gut that suggested the baby was due any day now.

Rosa gave him a polite wave and cheerful, “Hello, Deputy Love!”

He gave her what could be considered a smile and said, “Hey there… you.” Then, he turned his attention to me and asked, “Ready, Jack?”

I grabbed my crutch, pushed myself up, and answered, “Ready.”

“Don’t forget,” Rosa said as I made my way around the corner. “Nine o’clock, sharp!”

Love took a big gulp of his drink and asked, “What happens at nine?”

Thank God! Love was finally useful for something. I still had no idea what these plans were that I had forgotten, but by this point, way too much time had passed to admit that.

“Oh,” she answered. “We’ve been planning this for a while actually. Tonight, Jack and—”

“Never mind,” he interrupted, “I don’t actually care.”

Dammit, Love, you giant bag of butts!

He didn’t speak again until almost ten minutes later. We were halfway through the awkward drive home when Love decided to make things even more awkward.

“Welp,” he started, reaching into the center console. “I guess this is the end of the line for us, huh?”

My everlasting paranoia misinterpreted this situation as Love reaching for a weapon to finish me off for good. Super defense mode ensued. I tensed up, wrapped my fingers around the crutch, and prepared to smash it into the deputy’s face. 

“What do you mean?” I asked, quickly calculating my odds of surviving a car crash at this speed. (They weren’t great.)

When he pulled his hand out of the center console, it wasn’t holding a weapon, but a small bag covered in pink and yellow stripes. I relaxed, but only a little. “I figured, since this was my last day and all, I should do something special. Don’t make a big deal out of it, but I got you a present.”

My overdue memories finally collapsed into place. Today wasn’t just a Monday. Today was the Monday. The day O’Brien was scheduled to return to gas station duty! 

It had been several weeks since the internal conduct investigation had reached its anticlimactic end. The powers-that-be had decided that, while her behavior was questionable, it did not warrant termination. Her slap on the wrist came in the form of a mandatory retraining course somewhere out of state. Once complete, she was going to be quietly reinstated as the official guardian of the gas station. To commemorate the occasion, Rosa and I were planning a surprise Welcome Home party.

One of the nastier side effects of my chronic insomnia was the memory loss. It had been there from the start, but I couldn’t deny the fact that things were getting worse. I found myself losing chunks of time at an alarming frequency. Sometimes hours. Sometimes more. I started rereading entire books after they had slipped away. I didn’t even bother learning the names of our part-timers until they’d been with us for a week (or unless a horrible accident befell them). 

Memory loss was just another part of my life. But some things were more important. Some things were meant to be remembered. This was the first time I felt genuine guilt for forgetting something. (Or, at least, I think it was…)

“Go ahead and open it,” Love ordered. 

I looked at the striped bag sitting in my lap and asked, “It’s not another gun, is it?”

He winced at my suggestion. “What kind of irresponsible shit-brain would give you a gun?”

“Never mind.” I untied the string, reached inside, and pulled out the gift. “Oh… It’s a flask… and…” I shook it to confirm my suspicion. “It’s not empty...”

“Yeah, I figured you’d appreciate it, on account of how you like to tie one off sometimes at work. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“Umm—”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m in no position to judge. Some days take a little extra effort. I know what it’s like. In fact, I think there’s a lot more of us than you realize.” For the first time in the entire six weeks I’d known the man, I heard Deputy Love’s laugh. It was a noise I definitely could have gone without hearing.

“Thank you,” I said, watching him take another swig of the drink that I just now realized was probably spiked to hell and back. “That’s very... thoughtful.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” A short moment passed before he added, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Didn’t you get me anything?”