Aftertaste Read online

  Fat chance of that ever crossing anyone’s mind, but okay. “Is it really that special?”

  “Didn’t you notice a faint fishy taste to it?”

  Galavance nods. “I did. Is it supposed to be like that?”

  “That’s our focus for tomorrow,” Patty says and continues staring at Galavance as if expecting her to bow, walk backwards a few paces, then turn around to part her wizened company.

  “Well, if that’s everything,” Galavance says, “Drive safe.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. And the day after. I’m in Raleigh through the weekend,” Patty says, as if she enjoys laying this sentence down on Galavance. “But, listen, Miss Petersen … if I could steal one minute of your time before you go back to sending sweet nothings to your gentleman callers on your phone—yes, I saw that …”

  Galavance fights the urge to cross her arms.

  “Forgive me my assumption that you’re somewhat thick, but I feel inclined to repeat myself. You need to buckle down if you want to continue working here. I’m glad you have a life outside of work. But to support that life, you need to make money.”

  “I understand the idea of employment.” Daring.

  Patty takes the sass, grins a little, and surprisingly decides to ignore Galavance’s snark. “But do you understand that keeping yourself employed means showing up on time? Being present, being reliable and accountable and at your job when you are scheduled?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Tomorrow, you and I are going to spend some time together. I can tell by the look on your face you are not thrilled about it. I’m okay with that.” Patty pauses, squinting at Galavance like she’s the most confusing thing that’s ever passed in front of her eyes. “Do you even have any interest in moving up? You’re the wait-staff manager. How you got that promotion is beyond me, but is this where you want to spend the rest of your life, at this rank?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Patty shakes her head. “See, it’s things like that—what you just said, ‘I don’t know’—that we’re gonna work on. You’re not alone in this; I think it’s a generational thing. None of you know how to make a decision because us old people have always made them all for you. Shame, really. Tomorrow, be on time. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Patty gets in her car, slams the door, starts it up, and leaves.

  Galavance waits until Patty turns the corner out of the lot and onto the highway before raising two middle fingers above her head. She turns to go back inside, seeing the windows along the front of Frenchy’s all have a customer or two framed in the tinted glass. They all saw her do that. Does Galavance care? Not especially. Because if today wasn’t bad enough, it’s all but certain that tomorrow will be worse.

  Galavance spends an hour on Facebook stalking people she went to high school who ended up more successful than her, staring at pictures of them with their kids. She’s careful not to accidentally “Like” anything because she’s not friends with any of them. When she’s green enough with jealousy, she moves over to her own page to update it. But swear words are all she can think of to type in the status composition. Or she could confess to running over a man on her way to work. She decides to not post anything after all and logs out.

  Galavance decides Patty’s been gone long enough and she’s unlikely to return the rest of the day. She uses this to punch out and end her three-hour shift, and reluctantly leaves the air conditioning of Frenchy’s for her car, melting in the back lot. At least she didn’t get fired. Now to deal with Jolby.

  She runs her hand along the man-shaped dent in the hood. Her finger bumps against something hard—it’s a button halfway pressed through the sheet metal, like a coin that’d proven too big for its slot. She tries wiggling it loose, but it doesn’t come free, it’s really in there. Feeling the gaze of her coworkers still inside, still on the clock, watching her leave early after showing up late, Galavance gets in, starts up her car, cranks the AC, and returns to the highway.

  An hour later, crossing back through Raleigh, Go-Go’s on the radio because she has no choice, Galavance takes the exit for the town of Franklinton, North Carolina.

  If one were so moved they could do ass-naked cartwheels up and down its main street and likely never get noticed. There are no open stores anymore—they’d all closed before Galavance was in high school. She passes the old vinyl siding factory—closed, the gas station—closed, and the feed and seed store—closed. Then there’s the “black school,” the single-level plain red brick building set way off the road, and a block down, the now-integrated school, what was once for whites only, with its stately pillars and three stories and immaculate lawn and fences and army of pristine school buses.

  She feels the ghosts of that place as she goes past. She hated high school at the time, but now looks at those three years fondly because, really, it was the only time in her life that things had been simple. She should’ve enjoyed it. If she knew she had days like this to look forward to, she would’ve. But she cannot look at the building completely fondly—because it’s where she’d met Jolby.

  He’d moved to Franklin County freshman year. He was beautiful. All the girls fawned over him; they seldom got transplants—he was fresh, hot blood, and they all wanted a taste. The other boys hated him, which only made him more desirable; he was dangerous, a new element among the shallow gene pool. Immaculate Jolby Dawes, back when he was fifteen and gorgeous and funny and knew all the best music and had giant mind-busting opinions about the universe and science and art and drove this really cool car and Galavance, in the passenger seat, would watch the girls he’d rejected in favor of her glare as she went by, seething with jealousy. She’d give them the smallest, sharpest smile—I win.

  Now, she’d probably accept a trade with any of them, on any terms. Jolby for a pint of expired coleslaw? Deal, he’s all yours.

  Since her car’s mashed front end might raise questions with Sam the sheriff, once she gets to that end of Franklinton—and its only really the one road—she parks around back. The police station was once a general store, and you can still tell; among other things, it has a malt counter. Behind it is where Sam stands, removing his hat because he’s in the presence of a lady. Old school. His moustache hides his mouth, nearly to his chin, and it adorably exaggerates his smile. Jolby, on the other side, unlike Sam, is chained to a chair and not smiling. He’s slumped in his seat, gut prominent behind his well-worn and food-stained Metallica T-shirt, floppy hair in his face, pierced lip trembling.

  Most people wouldn’t notice, but she knows him well enough to tell he’s been crying. Just puffy around his eyes, the tip of his nose a faint shade of pink. He doesn’t look at her, even as Sam, loudly, greets her. Sam was friends with Galavance’s mom. They, too, went to Franklinton Public. Galavance wonders how Sam can sit at a large-windowed station every day, directly across from that place, and not end up burning it down. Perhaps because he didn’t wind up with some human fail-heap.

  “What’s the damage, Sam?” she says amiably.

  After giving the price to spring Jolby, Sam adjusts his bolo tie and uncuffs Jolby as Galavance writes out a check. Jolby, head down beside her, rubs his cuff-dented wrist.

  Galavance signs the check, rips it free, and hands it over.

  “Court date’s set for the nineteenth,” Sam drawls. “Should get him into some kind of program. I like seeing you, Gal, but not for these reasons.” Sam cranks the ancient cash register—like the counter, it was too heavy to move when the place became a police station—and slides the check within. Bye, eighty-five bucks. Probably more like a hundred and eighty-five, after overdraft fees.

  “I know,” Galavance says to Sam, but really to Jolby, “but I think he might be a bit too old for obedience school.”

  Sam laughs and Galavance makes herself smile despite the pinch she feels in her heart. Older men hate Jolby, she assumes because boys like Jolby, to Sam’s daughters and other older men’s daughters like he
r, are like sink-holes. Sometimes Galavance wishes her mom, instead of hooking up with Asshole Amos after dad took off, would’ve gotten with Sam. Galavance could’ve used some of that Jolby-hatin’ encouragement. Someone to send him scurrying off their front door’s stairs with a well-timed porch light. Or spray him with the hose whenever he threw pebbles at Galavance’s window in the night. But Asshole Amos likes Jolby. Because they’re exactly alike. And, well, at least the worst has been avoided. Galavance takes the pills when the dial-a-baby-banishment tells her.

  Jolby shuffles ahead of her and out the door, Galavance bids Sam farewell, and the couple goes out into the street. The sun is just at the beginning of its descent. The air is still thick and hot, and a bat who woke up early flits soundlessly overhead against an orange sky.

  Jolby hesitates when he sees her car, and Galavance nearly runs into the back of him.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he says.

  “I hit a deer on the way in to work,” she answers at once, ready with the lie. She moves in front of him before he can notice the button wedged into the hood’s metal. Even Jolby’s smart enough to know deer don’t wear things with buttons.

  But when she looks at him, really wanting him to make a stink about her car mere seconds after she paid to get him out of spending a weekend in jail, he’s no longer studying the front of the car, but the passenger seat, his hand hesitating on the door handle.

  “What’s his name?” he says.

  “What?” Galavance says, going around the car and waiting for a pickup to pass. “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “The seat, Galavance. It’s been moved back. So who’s been riding in the car with you? What’s his fuckin’ name?”

  He can’t see his girlfriend is dying from double shifts and calling her mom every other month for money just to keep them afloat, but a fucking seat being slid back an inch? That he sees.

  “I gave a friend a ride,” Galavance says. “Jesus. Lower your voice, we’re in public, you know.” There’s no one around, just the dead summer wind sliding about Franklinton, but still. It’s embarrassing nonetheless.

  “I don’t fuckin’ care. Who was it?” Ts make Jolby’s lip ring click against his teeth.

  “Just a friend. Get in, Jolby.”

  “No. I wanna know who it was.”

  “Just this person I work with.”

  “You fucking slut.” His voice carries up the block and back. Slut. Slut.

  Over the top of the Cavalier, she shakes her keys at her boyfriend. “You listen to me, Jolby, and you listen good. I didn’t have to pay that just now. It would’ve been cheaper to just let you sit in jail for the weekend, so you should be nice to me,” she says. “Things have gotta change. Because this crap you and I go through all the time, with this,” she indicates the police station with a backhand slap, “and with you not making any money … You’re almost thirty goddamn years old, Jolby. It’s time to hang up the one-hitter and get some of your life squared away.”

  Jolby stares at her for a moment, then as if he didn’t even hear any of it, begins trying the handle on his side. Clunka-clunk-clunk. She hasn’t unlocked the car yet and she isn’t about to. Not yet.

  “Take me to my whip. I wanna go home.”

  “We’re talkin’ about this, Jolby.”

  “Right here? Right now?” he barks, brushing hair out of his eye again. “Come on, I’m tired. I just spent almost the whole fuckin’ day in that place, Gal. All Sam talks about is the root beer he makes in his basement. Unlock the door.” He tries it again and again, jerking at the handle until she unlocks it. He immediately scrambles in, slams the door closed.

  She sighs, savoring the second she has alone outside the car. Then she gets in as well and they share a claustrophobic silence. Her heart is racing. She really wants to smack him.

  “Could you start it up? It’s hot in here.”

  “Babe, we really got to get some things figured out here. Can we talk?”

  “I’m sweating. Turn on the AC.”

  You’re always sweating. “Jolby. We’ve really gotta—what happened to your arm?” she stops herself. She hadn’t even noticed that his wrist is bandaged. She guessed it was the way he’s compulsively always got his hands in his pockets, but now that they’re in the car and sitting casually, she sees it—gauze all around his left wrist. Galavance reaches to touch at it mindlessly and Jolby pulls away like a kid with an ice cream cone from a sibling.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did you give Sam trouble?”

  “No, it happened before. At the place.”

  “At the house?”

  “No, before I got busted me and Chev were doing this quick patch-up for this guy, this dude Chev knows. Some of his shingles blew off ’cause of that storm last week, and I was up on the roof and slipped. A nail caught my wrist.”

  Galavance winces sympathetically. “How does it look?” The bandages are on thick.

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Let’s just go.”

  “Wait. You got arrested doing shingles?”

  Jolby sighs, sad and embarrassed. “We were up on the roof. I slipped, did this to myself, and then when I got down—Chev was freaking out, screaming for someone to call 911—and the dude whose place it was came outside with his buddy. The dude went and got a towel and some tape and I made the joke that I was just a skosh stoned and that normally it doesn’t affect my work. I guess I said it because I was nervous. There was, like, a lot of blood. And then the dude’s buddy is all like, ‘Can you repeat that?’ and I’m, like, okay and I say it again: ‘Being stoned doesn’t normally affect my work.’ And Chev’s giving me this weird look, like, his eyes are all big and shit? And then the dude—not the dude whose house it was but his buddy, this big guy with sideburns—asks if I could empty my pockets and I … I … he wasn’t wearing his uniform, but he was a …” Chin down, he sniffles.

  “Oh, honey. You got to admit, though, you walked right into that one.” The sourness changes and becomes—son of a fuck—pity.

  “Yeah, I know,” he says, corners of his mouth tugging down.

  “Aw, come here,” Galavance says and it’s pure mom-all-the-way. She absolutely cannot stand the sight of anyone crying. Even if there’s a kid at Walmart bawling its eyes out in the parking lot that she’s never met before, she will run and get him a soda at least, a temporary tattoo from the coin-machines, anything to get a smile. With Jolby, it’s a bit different. If he’s upset, typically a bottle of some cheap beer or a quick BJ—they’re always quick, admittedly—will do, but since they’re in public and broke, she just hugs him. She promises she had no one in the car worth fretting about, which is true. The dude claimed to be a reanimated corpse, eww, right? She rounds it out with saying everything is going to be okay. Jolby is out-and-out crying now and Galavance consoles him the best she can. A pat and a swirly-rub on the back of his neck followed up with a peck on the cheek.

  “Let’s get your car and go home,” she says. “I’ll fix dinner.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you think you want?” she asks, starting the car.

  “I dunno.”

  “We got a frozen pizza still, I think.”

  “Naw, me and Chev took that over to the house other day.”

  “Okay,” Galavance says, pulling out of the spot, and checks her mirror even though there’s absolutely no traffic—nor is there ever—to worry about in Franklinton. “What else do you think, then?”

  He twists around to look in the back seat. “Did you bring leftovers from work?”

  “I had to leave to come get you. I wasn’t really thinking about sneaking anything home.”

  “Can we go out, then? Tacos or something?”

  “I just dropped bucks on your freedom, sweetheart. I don’t think we should be going out. Besides, you know how Mexican wreaks havoc on your stomach.”

  “One night of the trots is totally worth some primo tacos, though.”

  “Says the guy who doesn’t do t
he laundry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, sweetness. Nothing at all.”

  The ride is mostly silent. Jolby takes a cigarette from her pack without asking and lights it, inhaling in little gasps like a stoner taking his pot drag. Old habits. It’s annoying. Galavance turns the Go-Go’s up louder.

  She drops him at the end of Whispering Pines so he can get his car. The minute he’s out of sight, at the next stop sign, she is punching the steering wheel and screaming until her throat’s raw. She has to pull over to fully void her meltdown from her system. Afraid he might make it to the trailer before she does and restart the whole accusation game about cheating, she uses the mirror to fix her hair where she was tugging at it and uses the hem of her work polo to dab her tears. The Go-Go’s Greatest Hits is playing “Vacation.” Galavance murmurs along with it, finding it relatable, especially the part about having to get away. But the second she makes eye contact with herself, she shoves the mirror in a different direction. “Fuck you.”

  She beats him home, probably because the guy can’t pass a gas station without getting a Slim Jim. After changing—balling up her polo shirt and pitching it into the dark depths of the closet—she comes back outside and has a seat on the front porch in jorts and a tank top, running her bare feet back and forth through the scratchy Astroturf until the soles of her feet are numb. All the while, she examines the damaged hood of her car from where she’s sitting. All of the ruined work Jolby’s put into it, and the money that, originally, should’ve been used elsewhere.

  The sun dips over the horizon, gone, and the crickets start up. He’s still not home. A neighbor goes by in his ancient pickup and waves. Galavance waves back. The guy’s window is down and he has “Bad Medicine” going full-blast. She savors the song for as long as she can hear it, before the pickup goes down the trailer park’s far bend. Still humming inside, Galavance turns the air conditioner up to the coldest it can go and goes for the third drawer down in the kitchen. Where the corkscrew is. Now, for some good medicine.