Rhymes With Nothing (pt 2).

You are surprised to see John’s car in the driveway – you can’t stop the hope from lighting up inside of you that this might be the night, that he was having drinks with clients in some over-decorated lounge and decided it was time to come back to you for real. But no, he’s in his office again, hunched over spreadsheets again. His pencil hesitates when you fill up the doorway: it’s not that you’re not allowed inside but it’s a great magic trick the way the air thickens if come uninvited like a vampire breaking the rules. I have to get this ready for tomorrow, he says when you ask him to come to bed. And that’s all there is to say: the spreadsheets pay for everything. You go down the hall to your own office; he can’t hear the phone in there, and you pay the bill to keep him from seeing all of the nine hundred number charges. You talk to them men and they talk to you, and it’s ludicrous the things you and these men say you want to do to each other. At some point you hear John call down the hallway that you’re out of coffee filters and could you get some in the morning.


*

He dozes behind the wheel of the rental and no one disturbs him. Sometimes it seems like he’s dreaming with his eyes open, staring at the heat shimmers coming off the pavement. A door at the rear of the diner kicks open and he sees Jan appear, dragging trash bags behind; he strong-arms them into a dumpster and then sits in the building’s shadow, fanning himself with his notebook. His body is darkly tan for this early in the season, and hard with muscle – his hair is chlorine-blond and his scar stands out like a bubble gum lightning bolt.

The kid looks up, shading his eyes. Lee waves as he approaches. Taking a break?

As the kid watches him he comes into the shadow, leaning against the rock walls that catches at his clothing, tugging at it like little sucking mouths as he slides to the ground, breathing heavily. Please don’t call the cops, Lee says, I just had too much to drink.

The kid glances over his shoulder at the back door, and then digs into the cargo pocket at the leg of his shorts – he comes up with half a granola bar and offers it. I better not, Louis says, fighting back his gorge. Thanks, though.

The kid scribbles in his notebook, his hand sure of itself – he holds it up so Lee can see a cartoon of himself holding his stomach as Faye (with black teeth) places in front of him a steaming plate of roadkill with an apple in its mouth. You’re good, Lee tells him. I work for magazines. I paint their covers. You’re good.

The kid smiles. He’s missing two teeth. He draws another cartoon of Lee, though this time he is driving crazily through traffic with drunk Xs over his eyes. I’m not driving, Lee assures him, and then sighs. Besides, I’m all out.

There’s a noise from inside, a crash and then Faye’s voice yelling; the kid rolls his eyes. The heat shimmers up from everything around them, the sunlight so bright. It shouldn’t be this hot, not yet. An old Calico is walking delicately along the painted fence wall that separates the parking lot from the cemetery behind; the kid abruptly goes in and returns with a glass of milk, going to the fence and holding the glass at an angle so the Calico can drink. A deformed fifth leg hangs from the cat’s side; the kid pets it so carefully that Lee thinks that he should do it now, find a rock and hit him with it as many times as he needs to. His body is vibrating like piano wire.