Fingerless Gloves (7 page)

“Where should I drop you off?” Beth asked as her car came back to life.

I shrugged it off and checked the text message. It was from an unknown number beginning with a weird area code. It read: “Meet me at the Insta-Mart in the next half hour.” The cryptic message was marked and read, then discarded. I checked the blinking clock on Beth’s dash as it spouted out 11:40.

I asked Beth, “Um, can you just drop me off at the Insta-Mart by the gas station? I’m supposed to meet someone there.”

“Anton, how the fuck, after all these years, do you still manage to be one of the shadiest kids I’ve ever met?”

Normally, I wouldn’t go meet some random, mystery texter in a convenience store parking lot. In this case, things were different. First, I needed to smoke again…well, I didn’t really NEED to, and there was no guarantee that the person I was meeting would want to. It was worth a shot. I had about half the baggie left and all the heaviness with Beth was really starting to press me into this weird, stoner pancake. I needed to pick myself back up. My head was like
Finding Nemo
. I had a million thoughts swimming and getting lost, but the most important thoughts were far from my comprehension. I wondered what James was up to, if he had gotten out of the hospital or not, but I refused to let those thoughts materialize into a phone call. I would have rambled on like a maniac. Instead I was wrapping my head around half-hearted realizations, such as the fact that Beth’s brand of perfume had gone unchanged since we were in high school. She bought it from some department store. It smelled cheap, but smelled like her. I’m not sure why I found this so fascinating, but that one thought kept me from spinning off the planet.

The blue and white Insta-Mart sign flickered from down the road. It was a beacon for taquito-craving late night bottom-dwellers. Cigarettes and greasy coffee with pre-made sandwiches and zip-sealed beef jerky could about the only viable things to be purchased from the highway respite. The parking lot was unusually empty…just a few stragglers trying to assuage some type of hurt feelings with sleeves of processed potato thins. Since I was old enough to appreciate night drives on my own, the Insta-Mart seemed like the end of the world. It was this point on the highway where you felt, if you continued any further, you’d drop off a flat map. The family that ran it, rumor told, had been robbed so many times that they kept a loaded double-barrel behind the counter…just like in classic convenience store holdup scenes.

Beth pulled in, parked, and gave me a long look. I could tell she wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of just leaving me here. I guess, once you care about someone, it’s hard to just erase that completely, without any pencil smudges and faded marks. Deep down, I knew Beth would always care about where she dropped me off, what was bothering me in the corners of my brain, whether or not I had more real friends than just James and if I’d ever turn my job into a career, relocate to a better place, build some type of life for myself. These are the wishes we have for the people we’ve shared so much with. There was some comfort in knowing that, perhaps comfort that I took for granted. No one ever faulted a person for wishing they were better…for wishing they knew how to treat people. After she turned the music down a few notches, Beth leaned on the center console and looked at me saying,

“Well, keep me posted with James. It’s decent to see you. You should try to not smoke so much…it just doesn’t suit you.”

With that, Beth leaned over and gave me an awkward hug. It was one of those neck hugs that overlapped my trying to get the seatbelt off. Her fingertips awkwardly touched my neck and I leaned in, then leaned back too soon…neither movement executed with any kind of grace. I popped the plastic lock up on the door, not waiting for her to use the power locks, and stepped out into the parking lot. As I closed the door, Beth rolled the window down. I turned around and, seeing as I might have left something unsaid, leaned back into the car. I spoke out over my forearms:

“Thanks for driving me around all night. I’m sorry Vin is such an asshole. I’m going to get a Snickers, then I’m going to grab a ride back to the high school and get my car. I’m starving. You know, if candy is your only option, and you have nothing else, Snickers is the most nutritionally balanced bar.”

I think Beth was about to offer me a ride back to my car, but before she could say anything, I had already pushed off the car door and turned my back, starting for the fluorescent interior of the Insta-Mart. The door clicked closed as I contemplated how clever or well thought out my Snickers remark was. I heard her tires groan against the pavement, then begin to roll across the parking lot. Her car kicked up the little rocks that had come to make up most of the unpaved Insta-Mart lot. Right as I reached the pull-to-open door, I turned and saw Beth merge back onto the main road. Her taillights went out of view as she hit the gas and disappeared, alone, back where she came from.

The interior of the store was filled with random things no one buys…things like ice scrapers and sunglasses, used DVD’s and impossible-to-discern stuffed animals. Then, there were the things everyone buys: gigantic sodas, cigarettes, overly fat hot dogs, beef jerky, serve-yourself coffee, ice, etc. I wonder if the owners of Insta-Mart realize just how much higher their profit margin could be if they got rid of the things people never buy- the toy cars and half-assed, year-round Halloween costumes… and stocked up on Icees and pre-made burritos. I never understood economics, but it just seemed like common sense. The place reeked like stale pizza and synthetic sugar. In an effort to level out the buzzing in my head, I bought one hot dog, one Snickers, and one bag of spicy-Jalapeño beef jerky. I was sure I wasn’t hungry, just mainly bored. The man at the counter looked me up and down, assessed that I wasn’t a threat and that I wasn’t remotely sober, then sold me the snacks. I made my best effort to avoid his judging, seen-some-things-in-this-life eyes. The unmarked, black plastic bag was wrapped around my wrist as I headed for the door.

Once I got outside, I slipped behind the dumpster and proceeded to pack the one-hitter again. Over time, and over many weird nights, I learned about the one-hitter and began to understand its functionality. I knew just how much pot was required to not clog the piece. I knew just how long to drag on it and how long to hold the smoke in. I knew how to light the end of it so I didn’t burn the tube. For some reason, these things felt important…they felt like a necessary part of a larger skill set. I put the fake cigarette up to my lips and lit the end. As the orange light pulsed in the middle of a certain silence, I was convinced I could actually hear the weed burning. It cracked and whistled…hissed and dissolved. I blew the smoke around the back of the dumpster… towards the houses on the adjacent side street.

“Anton, you fucker. I knew you’d show up.”

The voice belonged to Streets Anderson. I knew this immediately. Francis “Streets” Anderson was one of those rare neighborhood kids in our town whose home life was less than ideal. We didn’t exactly grow up in the roughest town, plagued by poverty and flanked on all sides by oppression. Francis Anderson had a father who, when we were kids, owned a pool hall a few towns away. The man was consistently serving liquor without a license, to his customers. Once the cops found out, they warned him once, then twice, then they closed the place down, hastily pasting court orders all over the walls and windows. In the years since the pool hall closed, all that booze that was being sold illegally found a new home: in Mr. Anderson’s stomach. Francis’ mother was nowhere to be found. I think we were too young to remember the day she packed up and left in the wake of her husband stupidly losing their main source of income. As hard as I try to remember what she looked like, I can’t.

In high school, Francis Anderson discovered the perils of being in a single-parent home with said parent being an alcoholic. On the day that Francis stopped going home at night, he became Streets Anderson. Rumors were that he slept on park benches or under the high school bleachers. If you ask me, the guy just went home really, really late…after his old man was already passed out. Despite everything, Streets was drinker, a smoker, and he was rumored to have once made a profit off of stolen diner desserts. He would lift pastries out of the diner’s huge clear case, one at a time, and bag them up, then sell them in the hallways to kids who hadn’t slept the night before. He was well known, and, in some circles…circles way out on the fringe of our town’s pecking order, well respected.

“Streets, good to see you too. Where’d you get that shirt?”

I gestured at his grotesquely second-hand yellow flannel shirt. The sleeves were unbuttoned and the back was frayed and tearing. The top of an undershirt was visible under the lopsided, worn down collar. His jeans looked new, as did the tri-striped Adidas Gazelles on his feet. He wore a floppy, brown beanie that just revealed enough of his greasy head of dark brown hair.

He watched me exhale a long hit then said, “You know, I got this shirt off some guy’s back. But I find things in those Goodwill bins…and you know it kept someone else warm, so why can’t it keep you warm…you know?”

I guess he had a point, but that still didn’t explain the shoes and sneakers. Shockingly, Streets Anderson didn’t ask to smoke any of my pot, even after he watched me light up and take another slow drag off the orange end of the one-hitter. I figured that it had to be after midnight, but for the sake of appearing rude to my oft-rumored homeless accomplice, I didn’t bother to check my phone. Streets was half leaning up against the scratched window of the Insta-Mart while I took two more exaggerated hits to bring my high back up to an acceptable level. For two people, one of whom requested that the other shadily show up in the parking lot of a convenience store, things were rather normal and seemingly serene.

I put the one-hitter and the lighter back in my pocket and walked over to the front window, peering past the cigarette and lottery advertisements. I asked, “Streets, you know I don’t have your number anymore. Why am I here?

I watched as Francis Anderson removed the oldest cell phone I had ever seen from the back pocket of his jeans. The phone was a Motorola with a single-line LCD screen for caller ID, no color anything, a broken antenna and a scuffed outer casing. The antenna was bent at a hundred-degree angle. The thing looked like it had been through hell, then spat back onto the surface of the earth. As the green screen glowed, Streets cycled through what I assumed to be menus and earlier texts until he said,

“I meant to send that text to some girl; the name below yours on my list. You know how these things go when they tell you that you’re dyslexic. I know I’m not, but that’s what they used to tell me…that I’d see things backwards. I see things as forwards as they come…never been able to deny that.”

I had no idea what the hell was going on. Assuming Streets was lying to me, my mind began to burn away the fog of paranoia in a futile attempt to figure out what he needed or wanted. As Streets spoke in circles, my cloudy head was prevented from making any sort of sense out anything he said. All I understood was that I wasn’t meant to be at the Insta-Mart. It had all been a mistake. I pulled out my phone to reveal 12:10am. Not only was this a mistake, but I had no idea how I was going to make it back to the high school and to my car.

Streets kept going,

“Well, it’s not a total wash. You’re here. That pot you’ve been selfishly smoking out of that tiny piece, maybe we could get some more of it? I’ve got a twenty and couldn’t think of anything better to spend it on. Where’s your car? We’ve gotta go now.”

The Insta-Mart was about a mile from the high school. It was a mile to be covered on back roads…no highways…not how we were feeling. Come to think of it now, Beth must have thought I was insane not being dropped off back at my car. In our time together, she’d watched me literally place myself, no questions asked, into some dicey situations. She’d never mention it or call me reckless because that’s the kind of girlfriend she was. As weird as I ever got, and as much as I allowed this marginal life to drag me along, she never questioned a thing a said or did…just let me go. I imagined her at that moment, up in her room with a lamp on, sitting around on the computer or watching trashy TV, thinking about what maniac I could possibly be meeting with at an Insta-Mart after midnight. I felt bad.

Streets and I covered the distance in silence. He spent most of the walk texting on his ancient phone while I looked around paranoid corners for non-existent passing cars and police officers. We took some shortcuts through parking lots and backyards, scared off some nocturnal wild life and, at 12:30 on Saturday morning, we crossed the clearing through the church lot and entered the high school grounds. The Escape was the only car in the empty lot. The cafeteria lights were out, as was the billboard advertising the student of the month and the current, ongoing charity food drive. The air had grown colder and moister. I buried my hands deep in my hoodie pockets until my fingers were tightly balled up into fists. After the remote lock pushed the doors open, Streets swung his legs ungracefully and landed in the passenger’s seat. I firmly believed that my vision, blurred at the edges and playing catch-up with reality, still afforded me the coordination to get behind the wheel. I turned to Streets and told him, “Listen, you’ll get your weed, but I have to stop somewhere first. James Squire went to the hospital tonight.”

Streets looked up from his phone, “James Squire…you mean the kid who looks like a de-Britished Jude Law? I knew him, I think. We going to the hospital? I don’t do well at hospitals…the smell of rubber gloves and floor cleaner sends me back to a certain place…a not-good place.”

The car ground to a start. The dashboard lit up green, casting a sci-fi glow over the interior. I turned to Streets and politely told him,

“If you want weed, this comes first…I don’t care if you’re allergic to linoleum or what kind of trauma your spotty medical history forced you to deal with. Buy a Yoohoo from the vending machine and put together a puzzle or something….there’s a snack machine there. After the hospital, I’m taking you to buy drugs. Be happy.”

Streets, obviously somewhat offended and simultaneously robbed of the words and moment that would have afforded any type of verbal comeback, simply closed his phone and sat back in his seat. There was no music playing…just the sound of tires treading over an old town highway - a highway filled with dozens of winters’ worth of potholes, leaving it desperately in need of repaving. The shocks on the Escape were still holding up, even after my failing to ever change them in the face of high-pitched squeaking. While some fathers teach their sons about cars, I started thinking that my father never really taught me much of anything. I didn’t know how to unclog a sink or properly tie a tie. I had to teach myself, with much violence, how to shave. I was useless in a fight or on the football field. I never even knew that I couldn’t match black pants with brown shoes until my junior prom date told me. I wondered, sometimes, why I never played Little League or learned the drums. I never played soccer or tennis, never went to summer camp…I bought my own first bike with a combination of birthday and Christmas money… I was never warned about the dangers of not wearing a helmet. I guess when I started going, I just went.

I don’t smoke and drive. I never have and never will. Don’t confuse smoking and driving with smoking THEN driving. I keep drugs and paraphernalia locked up in the glove box of my truck and, while I’ll drive high; I refuse to hot box…to roll up the windows, lock them, turn the heat on and fill the car up with smoke. I think it’s an odd sort of paranoia that a young man develops after so many years on this planet. Some guys don’t use white lighters, others only use black garbage bags. I knew girls who only tied their shoes bunny-ears style. It’s the border between obsessive-compulsive and eccentric.

I pictured myself, on the side of the road after an accident…and whoever found me having to see a flat doobie in my mouth as I lay there, crushed under rubble. My car overturned somewhere off the road, sending smoke of different varieties into the air. There’s this image I revisit where everything is destroyed, the car, my body, everything after this imagined accident. It’s all because I couldn’t handle the hot box…because I tried to maintain a visual handle on things as I overloaded to excess. When I drive, I like to be able to see out the windows, breath the air…not have to take my hands off the wheel to scratch at my Ben Stein eye-drop-commercial eyes.

There are things I believe in, principles if you will. I never considered myself a stoner because of these rules that govern my experiences with recreational drugs. I, on the other hand, am experiential…a collection of moments spent baked. I remain composed and collected at all times when high. I would never drive the wrong way down a one-way, crash my car into a drive thru speaker box, or make a scene in a movie theater. Sure, there have been moments when my head bubbles over like burned soup and my knees turn into loose Tinker Toys, but I can, and have, always held it together. This is why, when Streets asks to light up from the passenger seat, I politely tell him,

“This is a very, very strict car. You will not soil the sacred canon by which I’ve governed myself since forever.”

He looked at me stunned. I always hold it together when I’m stoned… most of the time.