Fingerless Gloves (4 page)

At the end of the strip there was the arcade, glowing with purple black lights and neon, that had a group of about ten high school kids hanging out front smoking. Back in my high school days, that area was off limits. You only went to the arcade if you had something to prove: A high score to defend, or to find the guy who was rumored to be talking shit, or to throw down in air hockey. You went there to smoke and you kept cologne for when you had to go home. Parents were weary of the stereotypes that hung around the arcade. Those kids were burnouts and metal heads…genuine freaks and maniacs. They came from other towns, or, for all we were concerned, the end of the world. At the end of an arcade night, once you’d either staked your claim or left with your tail between your legs, everyone smoked outside. The smell, even from where I was standing, nearly 8 years after my being at the arcade was anything close to acceptable, was undeniably menthol. It mixed with some perpetual air of burning wood that seemed to engulf this area of our town. Further down the strip, snaked around the arcade, is the pancake house, still lit up blue and orange and full of late-dinner patrons.

The pancake house stands awfully generic and old. Every girl in this town, regardless of clique, has worked as a waitress there at one time or another. The food, to this day, remains fair at best. Often, the eggs are served overcooked and the pancakes err on the dry side. Yet, it never closed. The pancake house was never in danger of going under. They never got a terrible rating from the health board. Families made it a point, on Sundays, to forego better diners or chain restaurants, and come to the dilapidated pancake house. The funny thing about places like that is how the quality of the food doesn’t really make a difference.

After every high school dance (including the morning after the prom), every football game or broken-up house party, the pancake house came alive. Tables were filled with undone ties and half-drunk girls, heels off, allowing their bare feet to graze the sticky floor. During the weekdays, the pancake house belonged to mechanic and laborers or the families traveling through suburbia to get to the highway. On the weekends and at night, during the very defining moments of an open 24-hours shift, the pancake house used to belong to us. Now, of course, during those times it belongs to the respective high school class. If a college graduate is seen in the pancake house during primetime, he or she is regarded as a scummy local…a person who could never quite break off from the umbilical cord of nutrients that a hometown has a way of force-feeding. Stoned or not, I would have been seen as infantile if I made an appearance in the pancake house. The parents of boys and girls who had gone on to colleges or careers in other cities and other states would be having dinner. That night, the situation would have proved humiliating, especially given my chemical-induced state.

At 9pm, I was back in the Escape, parked across those two parking spots in the back of the lot. My high had begun to wear off, leaving me hints of an approaching headache. After swigging the rest of a diet iced tea I found lodged in the pouch behind my passenger seat, I loaded the one-hitter and smoked again. As I exhaled, I watched from across the lot as the eyes from the arcade begin to sniff the air, and then begin to search the lot. Even from this distance, cannabis smoke travels in such a way. It was time to go. The key turned and the car rolled on. I did my best impression of a sober man backing out of a parking space. The glowing LCD above the radio spoke and told me 9:10pm.

After this second round of illegal narcotic consumption, my mouth had dried out. I began smacking my tongue around and making all sorts of sucking noises. I felt like a newborn. All in all, it was an ugly scene. When it came down to it, I needed fast food quickly, which meant I’d be pulling through the drive-thru. The question remained - which chain would get my business? I think I chose Border Blaster because of the legendary-when-stoned Baptism By Fire Burrito. This burrito is not only an instant cure for munchies, but also for the common cold. It has been known to explode clogged-closed sinuses clear as day. It took us 17 years on the planet before we discovered Border Blaster. It wasn’t anywhere near walking distance from any of our friend’s houses. The restaurant itself was extraordinarily tacky, with all employees required to wear foam sombreros. The décor was a fake adobe complete with every stereotypical, south-of-the-border cliché imaginable - from giant chili peppers to the restaurant logo of a tortilla chip with a frightening face. It was offensive to put it lightly. James could never handle the food there. His lips would swell and he’d start sweating and turned 5-alarm red, even in winter.

The Baptism By Fire is pretty basic: chicken or beef, cheese, beans, jalapeños, cayenne, and two different kinds of lathery, velvet pepper sauce. Nothing could top the burrito in sheer girth. Combo-ed with fried tortilla chips (topped with liquid cheese pumped from an ominous stainless steel container), and a liter of blue-raspberry soda for $5.99...the meal was beyond reasonable. That night, the car line was deep, however, nothing could deter me. My tongue felt like it was five sizes too big for my mouth. I thought about getting a burrito for James, for when he got out of the hospital. This was an idea I could have only formulated at that very moment. As I pulled up to the speaker and became enamored with the fuzzy voice cracking my order back to me, I realized that Border Blaster has this bad habit of traveling very poorly over time and distance. I had second thoughts about getting James food. I’m sure my thought process was, “James and I will be sufficiently high enough for this again in a few days. No sense ruining that with a cold burrito now.”

As the speaker seemed to subtly vibrate, I noticed all the kids sitting around the parking lot, on dividers and hanging off low ledges, stuffing their faces. It looked like a scene out of
The Warriors
. The air was thick with spicy sauce and grande nachos bell grande. It must have been the paranoia gripping me as the speaker voice dipped into “cassette-tape-about-to-break” depths. I felt like this whole lot was teetering on the edge of a fight as hard-shell tacos were being ingested at an alarming rate. I pulled up to the second window and met the human being behind the robotic order voice. She couldn’t have been more than 18, with the foam sombrero and matching ill-fitting blue polo that mark her title as “burrito specialist.” She took my debit card, swiped it, and then threw away the resulting receipt without asking me whether or not I wanted said receipt. I never understood people who kept receipts for certain purchases, like Chinese food on a Friday night or convenience store coffee at 8am on a Monday. She handed me the blue and green plastic bag first, then the soda that was almost too big for her to safely grip. My arm seemed to extend into forever as I reached out the window to try to meet her grip on the food. I think she knew exactly the state I was in because she looked at me like she’d seen me dozens of times. My side-flopped hair, little pudgy mini-gut that was too relaxed to retract, bloodshot eyes half-closed, one hoodie sleeve rolled up unintentionally…these are the dead giveaways. She could read the signs; this is an absolute fact.

When the food opened inside the Escape, the entire interior immediately began to smell like hot sauce, vinegar, and opened, discarded cheese. The grease had turned the paper wrappers transparent. The pungent odor, on any normal night, would be absolutely offensive. On that night, however, with the windows down and the music seemingly at maximum volume, the smell of the Baptism by Fire (with chicken, not beef) was divine. The smell would undoubtedly embed itself into the Escape’s cloth interior. I kept thinking that when I woke up tomorrow to move the car, in the middle of a weed hangover, I would, no doubt, feel nauseous. As for that moment, I actually couldn’t think of anything I’d rather smell more than that food - not the inside of the video store, not new car interior, not even gasoline.

I took a few turns to get out the back exit of Border Blaster. The high had taken me on a rather righteous path, and I needed, at that moment, to avoid the highway. I ended up on our town’s back roads, with the windows down despite fall hinting at changing weather. The plastic Border Blaster bag’s handles came alive and waved to slap against each other in the cross-vent. I recognized each intersection, where I had those cliché nights that involved doing the kind of nothing that felt like doing everything all at once. Those street corners are where we used to unload stolen candy, trade Magic: The Gathering cards, talk about pro-wrestling. We constructed whole evenings around hanging out on a corner, walking around the town at night, or trying to find a house with a cool enough video game console. There was still no phone call from James, his family, any of our friends, any ex-girlfriends or old teachers. I didn’t worry because if it were serious, someone would have told me already. I figured the whole town would come out in an epic rally against James’ hospitalization. I made another turn into an even more eerie quiet. The night was in its infancy, but things were shaping up to be weird. The dark was finding its way into the spaces usually reserved for the last moments of sunlight.

My high school’s parking lot was absolutely deserted. No back-corner drug dealings, no kids trying to execute grinds on the worn out curbs or the edges of the still-lit “Upcoming School Events” sign. The sign listed the name of the “student of the month” …it also reminded students that there would be free hearing and vision tests being conducted in the coming week. There were letters stolen or missing from the sign, dark with the bodies of a million dead bugs. The clock under the text was pouring a red “9:35” onto the asphalt. This place used to be my default spot to do everything. I’d broken up with girlfriends, drank warm beers, learned to parallel park - all in this lot. My father set up cones and we’d stay until I could swing the front end of his V8 monster in properly without flattening the orange plastic. That night, for what will probably amount to the 70th or 80th time, I’ll be eating a meal while stoned in this lot.

I looked down at my phone and the light from the screen was pulsating in my eyes. I figured I wouldn’t need to smoke for a fair amount of time. I took the foil off the soft taco I forgot I added to my order. In three obscene bites, the sour-cream infused warm-up was over. The food moved down into my stomach like a clogged faucet. I felt that taco travel every inch of esophagus, and could almost hear it drop into bile. It rolled like a snowball. The blue raspberry soda made my throat feel like a finger, ungloved, in the grip of a teenage winter…freezing cold. The more I tried to shovel down, the more numb my throat and chest became. The soda had little-to-no taste, but the carbonation was amongst the top-5 things I could have been feeling at that moment. The Baptism by Fire did not go down as smoothly as anticipated. My lips felt swollen to the point that they were protruding an uncomfortable distance from my face. My throat went from blue raspberry-cool to Yule-log burnt. Of course, the reality of the situation was just cayenne and jalapeño, but it felt so much more serious. It was pain for pleasure. I was absolutely enjoying every minute of this meal, but simultaneously paying a steep price. As my eyes began to tear up during the last few bites, the cellular phone sitting on my passenger seat began to loudly vibrate and glow. I heard it bouncing across the cheap cloth seat. I didn’t make any attempt to read the number as my greasy finger hit the green “answer” button.

“My parents saw you in front of the waffle house. They said you didn’t look good.” The voice on the other end of the phone belonged to the ex-girlfriend of mine, Beth Fallow. She wasn’t “an” ex-girlfriend…she was “the” ex-girlfriend. Beth and I dated from the winter of my senior year in high school right up through my sophomore year of college. We thought we were airtight. We were going to be the couple to last through college, to enter the real world together, to slowly build a life out of this thing we had between us. On November 16th, a few weeks before my second collegiate Christmas break, Beth Fallow cheated on me, and then called me to tell about it. I’m not sure how long after she actually cheated she decided to confess to it…for all I knew, it could have been days or weeks. After admitting it, she told me the whole story, minus the dates. I confess I only heard select bits and pieces of her story. Beth was just my type, a girl who lived three blocks away and whom I’d known all through high school. I saw her in high school, but it took me four years to actually see her. Back then, she wore light scarves and denim jackets and layers in the fall. She had a red peacoat for the winter. She had (and still has) friends, but not too many. She didn’t play a sport and wasn’t particularly smart. She had no reputation amongst the guys in my class. Beth Fallow was normal, decent, with a few common flaws, but nothing glaring. She was a cheap date, hated material gifts, and was a terribly awkward dancer.

She was the second girl I’d ever had sex with, but the first girl I made love to. There really is a difference. If you don’t know, you will. She was a good Valentine and a fantastic movie date. She never got up in the middle to go to the bathroom. She wasn’t loud when she ate popcorn. When I let her pick the movie, it was usually a nature documentary or a Frat Pack comedy. She loved John Hughes because she thought Sloane from
Ferris Bueuller’s Day Off
would make the perfect best friend. I didn’t mind the fact that she rarely unpacked her suitcases after returning from a trip. She hardly ever made her bed. Her most embarrassing possession was a CD of
Now: That’s What I Call Music: Volume 1.
The best concert she’d ever seen was Counting Crows and she absolutely hated the big city and the prospect of high-stress careers. Beth Fallow’s hair stood on end in the morning and it took a solid 30 minutes of flat ironing to break the frizzing bonds. Her favorite thing was a t-shirt from the pizzeria where she worked through high school. She liked James, even though it initially took her some time to warm up to him. She always insisted that there was just something about him that seemed dishonest…whatever that meant. While the two of them never had a heart-to-heart talk, they were civilized enough that we could hang out together. She preferred house parties to bars. She came alive at house parties. The way she was with me all the time could only translate during those precious hours between arriving at a house filled with debauchery and the moment the ever-vigilant town police showed up to break it up.

It took exactly 13 months, 29 bad dates, and hundreds of cigarettes to get over Beth Fallow and the shit she took on every emotion I could possibly feel. I went through all the typical phases: never thinking I’d date again, deep self-loathing, self-doubt, anger, depression, introversion, etc. I used to think those things were reserved for the kids in high school who broke up with their significant other right before college started. I read about breaking up in books and saw it happen to actors and actresses in movies. I even saw it happen to other kids in my town…it was this foreign thing. How could anyone ever really feel bad enough to become a hermit or drink themselves into oblivion. Now, at 25, I can tell you that you never stop feeling those things after a breakup or a divorce or whatever forces itself between you and love. You might not harm yourself or anyone else, but the mark stays there. It’s like stitches in the back of your throat: they dissolve and you might not ever have a scar, but you’ll never forget the moment you first heard that you had to get stitches…in the back of your mouth…and just how terrifying even a common medical procedure can be. Breaking up with Beth Fallow was like getting my tonsils out: people felt bad enough to feed me pudding, and eventually I healed…but I could still tell you exactly what was on television while I lay bedded up in the outpatient section of the hospital.

Beth was working as a substitute teacher in another town’s school district. Her dream, she used to say while staring up at the ceiling, was to build houses in Third-World countries. Since college, I guess that dream had morphed into her teaching second graders. I know for a fact that every Sunday, she looks at the JobSearcher insert in the newspaper to try to find a staff position in some school district, anywhere in the state. Those jobs are few and far between…hell, considering the overall ratio and the way things have panned out, most professions and professionals fall somewhere between “under” and “un” employed. I imagine her dressed like a teacher, in some generic clothes from a department store…slacks and a blouse …hair pulled back and up …or whatever it is that girls do with their hair. The thought of her like this makes me a bit sad, as if someone really extraordinary were being folded up into a paper football and slid across a table, hoping to catch and stop on an edge. Beth and I speak now and again, maybe once or twice every handful of months to catch up. A phone call from her was still unusual and, more often than not, would either give me the feeling like severed hands were crawling up my spine or that my heart had some air caught in the valves. Given the fact that I couldn’t see the caller-ID on the screen, I answered.

“I didn’t look great, but I’m sure it wasn’t terrible. James got rushed to the hospital and I’m trying...well… I tried to find out what happened, but I couldn’t. I smoked…ok, I smoked and got a burrito. I’m eating it in our high school parking lot.” This ramble would have continued on and on into the night had she not interrupted me.

“You’re stoned when your best friend is in the hospital? What the hell, Anton? Can you just stay at the high school? I’m coming over.”