Medusa falling a cosmic.., p.2
Sanguine Summer: A Novel, page 2
Ruth had heard this a million times before, of course. It came with the territory of working understaffed retail—so many pitying looks, so many supportive nods, like this woman’s. The truth was, Ruth had gotten a raise! She received one every year, after her annual performance review. This year’s was a whopping fifteen cents, while last year’s had only been ten. So things were looking up, she thought.
In reply to her customer, Ruth merely answered, “It’s not so bad.”
The woman sighed. “Couldn’t pay me enough to deal with the public.”
By that point Ruth had finished ringing up her items and the woman’s credit card angrily demanded to be removed from the card reader. Ruth handed the woman her bag.
“Have a wonderful rest of your night,” Ruth said with a smile—a real one this time.
Truth be told, Ruth loved working with the public. She loved meeting so many peculiar faces, so many personalities from so many different walks of life. And it was a good reminder, she thought, that no matter how difficult things might seem, she was never alone in that everlasting struggle. Life itself was an ongoing battle, but a beautiful one. And in many instances, she was reminded that things could always be worse, and to be grateful for what she had.
She worked her line down customer by customer, until suddenly the store was eerily quiet. She leaned against her register with a satisfied sigh, and scanned the narrow aisles she would need to begin vacuuming soon. And yes—she would need to juggle that task while handling any additional customers who might wander to her register in the meantime. That’s what the little bell on her check stand was for.
Nights at the dollar store often felt like a one-woman show.
As she enjoyed a moment of silence, Ruth caught the sound of a single sniffle coming from the office behind her. The assistant manager—also known as Gracelyn—was still in there. Ruth had nearly forgotten. She knocked on the office door and spoke in a whisper.
“Gracelyn?”
The door opened as Gracelyn pulled the handle from the other side, letting Ruth in. Otherwise the door locked as soon as it was shut and needed a key from the outside.
The office itself was a cramped space, with a built-in desk along the opposite wall where they kept the office computer and the money-counting equipment, as well as the store safe tucked neatly underneath.
Upon letting Ruth in, Gracelyn plopped herself back down into the chair she’d been sitting in all night, where a mess of used tissues were scattered across the desk.
“Is everything okay?” Ruth asked.
She regarded her manager with a mixture of pity and confusion, as well as a certain amount of fondness.
Gracelyn was eight years Ruth’s junior, at nineteen. She was just a kid, basically. She’d only been employed at Dollar Delights for a year, whereas Ruth had worked at this particular store going on three years now. For many, that might beg the question: how was Gracelyn already an Assistant Manager while Ruth remained a cashier? The answer was quite simple, and more common than one might expect: Judy, the Store Manager, the head honcho, was also Gracelyn’s mother.
Some might cry foul, might cry nepotism, and while technically correct, Ruth wasn’t personally bothered in the slightest. She’d observed the responsibilities of an Assistant Manager and quickly decided she liked the responsibilities of a cashier much better. Cashiering kept her busier overall—on her feet longer, with more tasks to juggle, more to occupy her time which made her shifts fly by. The Assistant Manager position seemed to involve a lot of puttering around, disappearing for hours at a time, and worst of all, dealing with customers only in the foulest of circumstances. After all, nobody ever asked to see the manager to give their compliments.
To Ruth’s question, Gracelyn had to fight off another wave of tears. Her face scrunched up before she hid herself away in her hands.
“It’s nothing,” she answered into her sweaty palms. Ruth remained silent, waiting for the answer she knew would come eventually. “It’s just my stupid boyfriend.”
“Brandon,” Ruth said.
She knew his name because Gracelyn liked to complain about him regularly. And as she began to do so once again, Ruth stood and listened, offering the occasional ‘oh my gosh’ and ‘are you serious?’ when appropriate. As with her customers, Ruth didn’t mind listening. At worst, Gracelyn’s personal drama was interesting, and at best, Ruth enjoyed the opportunity of lifting someone’s spirits if they were open to it.
She wouldn’t get that opportunity tonight, however.
Halfway through Gracelyn’s meandering tale, the bell on Ruth’s check stand began to ding.
“Oh, that’s me,” Ruth said.
She excused herself as Gracelyn continued mopping at her eyes with tissues. She stepped out of the office, head bowed politely as she returned to her register, the office door locking shut behind her.
“Hello, how are you this evening—”
Ruth stopped dead in her tracks as she discovered the man standing across her register. He wasn’t looking at her, his downturned eyes focused on digging some cash out of his wallet.
“I’m fine, thanks,” he said, pulling a couple bills out onto the counter.
He flicked his eyes in her direction, finding her standing perfectly still, her eyes on him. His gaze electrified her—shocked her senses back into place so that she remembered herself. She cleared her throat, reached for his items on the belt. Her heart was beating out of her chest.
“How are you?” the man asked with a curious inflection, as he must have noticed her surprise.
“I’m good!” She glanced his way without truly seeing him, forcing a smile.
She scanned the first item—the only item, actually—which was a ninety-nine-cent birthday card. Then she dared to meet the man’s gaze a second time, his warm brown eyes shocking her as much as the first, unfortunately.
“Would you like a bag for this?”
“No, thanks.”
She placed the birthday card on the counter as she traded him for the two dollar bills in his hand. She noticed he wore a wedding ring, as she pulled the cash from his grasp.
“Whose birthday?” she asked.
“Oh, just a friend,” the man replied.
Ruth opened her cash drawer, stuffing the bills into their tray.
“You can keep the change,” the man said.
He swiped the birthday card off the counter and gave Ruth a cursory smile of gratitude as he turned for the doors. Ruth watched him go, open-mouthed with an awe she couldn’t hide.
With no additional customers, Ruth allowed herself to float toward the front windows, where she watched the man cross the empty parking lot to his car—a bright blue Subaru parked under one of the tall light posts. She didn’t blink. She didn’t want to blink, or else she’d miss him as he climbed into his vehicle, out of sight. The Subaru’s crimson taillights flared to life as he started the engine.
“Hey, Ruth?” Gracelyn said, emerging from the office.
“Yeah?” Ruth answered, never taking her eyes off the blue Subaru as it darted across the vast abyss of the shopping center parking lot.
“Would you mind cleaning the bathrooms tonight? When you’re finished vacuuming, I mean. I need to catch up on some stuff in the backroom before we close up.”
Those red taillights shrank with distance, until finally the Subaru pulled out onto the road, where it vanished entirely into the night.
“Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” Ruth murmured.
Already his face was etched into her memory.
2
HARD WORK
Dario Caruso lay buck naked on top of his bedcovers, head propped on his pillow as he watched the gentleman dress himself at the foot of the bed. The man caught Dario watching, and could scarcely conceal his grin.
“Do you have to watch me like that?” the man asked, still grinning.
Dario grinned likewise.
“Oh, now you’re shy?”
The man pulled up his pants, pulled up his zipper, then did up his button. Next he grabbed his shirt from the floor and draped it around his back, slipping each of his arms into the sleeves.
“It feels weird afterward, that’s all,” he said.
“Still?” Dario said. “How many times have we done this?”
The man rolled his eyes—again, still smiling. “I guess it just never stops feeling weird.”
Dario playfully bit his lip as he continued to watch. The man watched him right back as he proceeded to button his shirt, studying Dario in kind. Dario could sense that he fought the urge to look away, willfully defying his discomfort. He lost that battle, however, as he began struggling with his buttons halfway through. In an attempt to distract Dario, the man grabbed an envelope from the motel dresser and tossed it onto the bed beside Dario’s naked body.
“That’s for you.”
“For me?” Dario said.
Dario had already seen the envelope, of course. The man had placed it on the dresser as soon as Dario let him into his room, though he was careful not to ask about it in advance.
He flipped open the freshly sealed envelope flap.
“What’s this, now?” he said, pulling the card out from inside.
It was a birthday card he held, with an illustrated cake on the front, the words ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’ strung across the top of the illustration. Dario’s coy smile melted away as he opened it. He was stunned, to say the least. It was partly the card itself—that his client would remember such a thing—and partly it was the thousand dollars that fell out onto his bare chest. Ten crisp hundred-dollar bills.
His eyes darted back and forth along the fallen trail of bills across his body. He scrambled upright, sitting cross-legged, the card held open so that he could at least pretend to read it, even though his thoughts were still circling the cash sliding off his body. He made a concerted effort to read what was written inside the card aloud.
“Thanks for all the fucks, here’s a thousand bucks… Zach.”
“Some would describe me as something of a poet.”
“Zach, you really didn’t…” Dario lowered the card to peer at the man at the foot of the bed, whose shirt was now properly buttoned. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know,” Zach said. “That’s how gifts work.”
“This is a lot of money.”
It was seven-hundred dollars more than Dario’s hourly fee, to be precise. He regarded the man before him—older, dark hair beginning to gray along his sideburns, looking especially distinguished now he was fully dressed in his shirt and slacks, unlike Dario who was still as naked as the day he was born. Suddenly Dario felt a little too exposed, sitting with his client’s generous bonus sprinkled about his lap like confetti.
“I just wanted to make sure you felt special on your birthday.”
Zach came back to the bed, where he sat on its edge and twisted to face Dario beside him.
“I can’t believe you even remembered.”
“I’m really good at birthdays, what can I say?”
Zach smiled, though his gaze wandered up and down Dario’s figure. Most of Dario’s clients didn’t instill in him any true sense of flattery—he’d heard it all before, numerous times, to the point of coming across as obligatory—but Zach certainly had a way about him. Dario fleetingly wondered how often Zach flattered his wife this way.
These thoughts dispersed as Zach leaned in, a hand on Dario’s face, and kissed him sweetly on the cheek.
“How old are you now, anyway?” he asked.
Dario took a great deep breath, so as to give the illusion that he needed to think about his answer.
“Twenty-one.”
Zach reared back a little, feigning surprise.
“Well… whatever you do, don’t waste all your money at the bars now, huh?”
“You say that like I’ll be buying my own drinks.”
That gave Zach a good laugh. Dario enjoyed the sound—hearty, just the right amount of wheezy. Again, a flattering response. He leaned in a second time, this time kissing Dario on the lips, before pulling back slightly, their eyes close.
“How could they resist?”
He gave Dario’s bare leg a gentle pat before standing and making his way to the motel room door. There he checked himself once over, making sure his pants were still buttoned, along with the rest. He opened the door and gave Dario one last grin and a wink.
“Thanks again,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
And with that, he was gone.
Dario looked about the room, then traced his eyes across the money on his bed. He gathered it all up, nice and neat, all ten bills.
A thousand dollars.
For one single hour? That certainly put a smile on his face. For a short while, anyway. He slapped the money onto his nightstand and strolled into the bathroom to relieve himself.
As the toilet went on flushing behind him, he went to the motel room window, where he pulled the curtain aside and peered into the dingy parking lot. Zach’s car was already long gone. He peered toward the main office, the short part of the L-shaped motel, where the ‘Vacancy’ sign in the window shed its sleazy red light onto the cracked pavement for out-of-towners to see.
As he stood with the thick curtain in his hand, standing naked behind its dusty fabric, he was suddenly overcome with the strangest sensation—one that sent goosebumps climbing up his buttocks, his back, his shoulders.
It was the distinct sensation of being seen.
He pulled the curtain shut a little more, his view just a sliver as he glanced to the main office again. No one there. The only cars left in the lot tonight were his and the owner’s. Still that feeling persisted. Finally he let the curtain fall back into place, and all at once that unsafe sensation fizzled away. Night and day. He moved away from the window, turned his attention to his nightstand instead where his latest payment lay in a pretty little stack. He snatched the birthday card from the bed and read it over once more.
Thanks for all the fucks, here’s a thousand bucks. -Zach
It should have been funny. It was funny. Dario knew that. But now, left alone in his motel room, Zach’s message was just another reminder of something Dario already knew but preferred not to acknowledge.
Before he could think too much on it, Dario’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. He eagerly replaced it with the card in his hand.
It was merely another notification from his ‘work’ app. Another potential client. Dario tapped the notification reluctantly, opening his messages.
The most recent read: Are you available tonight?
Forty-five minutes later Dario once again stood naked at his window, watching as another vehicle’s brake lights flashed bright before pulling out of the parking lot, disappearing not toward Brewster, but in the other direction. Toward Nashville. He crossed the room to his nightstand, kicking his pile of clothes along the way—clothes he’d only put back on so that his client could take them off again—and added another $300 to his nightstand, this time all in twenties.
He sat on the edge of his bed. He took up his phone once more, checking to see if he’d received any new notifications. It was now after 11 p.m., his birthday nearly over, and there were no new messages.
He set his phone aside and took himself to the bathroom, where he vigorously brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. When he returned, climbing under the covers and switching off his bedside lamp, his phone gave another buzz. He almost dreaded looking at it—dreaded the disappointment of seeing another faceless horn-dog looking for an exchange.
Instead the phone continued to vibrate. Not a message, but a phone call. Dario picked it up. The caller ID read: RiRi.
He couldn’t answer the call fast enough. He lay back in the dark, his head on his pillow, staring at the ceiling as he put the phone to his ear and spoke with a genuine smile.
“Hey.”
RiRi’s voice came across the line in a scratchy, barely audible whisper, but her words were clear just the same.
“Happy birthday you little Gemini bitch.”
His sixteen-year-old sister could hardly spit the words out before she choked on her own laughter, hissing and wheezing in late-night secrecy. In the dark, under the covers, Dario burst into full belly laughter right along with her. He couldn’t help it.
Nor could he help the flood of tears that filled his eyes.
3
LATE NIGHT APPETITES
Nineteen-year-old Mike Williams hated to let her go, so he didn’t. He kept his hands around her waist, feeling the curve of her back as they stood against one another outside her family home, her face against his chest. The surrounding neighborhood breathed with crickets and distant traffic.
Eighteen-year-old Sabrina Coleman pulled away from him, blinking with sleepy, smiling eyes. They locked their hands together and swayed back and forth, in and out, away from and against each other’s weight, each of them reluctant to be the one to say goodnight.
“Okay,” Sabrina said. “I have to go. For real this time.”
“For real this time,” Mike parroted, as he pulled her toward him again, their bodies bumping like ocean buoys.
“I mean it,” she said, though the devilish smile she wore suggested otherwise—not to mention the way she gripped his hands much harder than he gripped hers.
“Then go already. No one’s stopping you.”
Sabrina fought not to laugh. Instead she braced her bowed head against his chest for a moment. Then she straightened, pulling back and letting go of his hands at last. One step, two steps back, her feet whispered across the front lawn where they stood in the house’s shadow.
“Goodnight, Michael,” she said, continuing toward the gate at the side of her family’s yard.
She was the only person who called him that. Michael instead of Mike. He liked the way it sounded when she said it.
“Goodnight, Sabrina,” he replied, taking not a single step, rooted to the lawn like a garden fixture.
Sabrina unlatched the gate, stealing glances at him the whole time. She slipped partially behind, peeking out to see him, her pearly-white grin bright in the shadows.
