Bad People

Bad People

Evan Cobb

Copyright © 2011 Evan Cobb

Published by Vauk House Press

* * * * *

Bad People

Evan Cobb

Chapter 1: Connie

Sirens. Lights. Blood. All that came later. The loneliness…when had that begun?

What is
, he used to ask her,
this aloneness in you?
Then a time came in their marriage when he confined himself to more practical questions, like
where’s my shirt?
—which he had asked her that morning, standing at his closet without looking at her.

She had stood at her own closet, ignored his question, and pulled dry-cleaner’s plastic away from a blouse. She put the blouse on, then freed the suit from its own plastic. She shimmied into the skirt. She tugged the jacket on. She mulled shoe choices. She was running late.

She moved across the room, still shoeless. She took a travel alarm clock from the nightstand drawer where it lived, ready to be pressed into service during power outages. The forecast happened to call for storms in Seattle late that evening but she needed the travel clock for the trip down to Portland. The alarm on her phone had proven unreliable. She had mis-set it before a nap at her last gig, and woke later than she’d wanted to.

At night she slept three hours, or three-and-a-half, never longer, no matter how tired she became. A full night’s sleep was not in her DNA. A quarter hour’s sleep in the afternoon could make up for those lost and fitful half nights. She relied on naps, especially when traveling.

She considered working this discovery into her material, but worried it would come off like bragging:
I am more successful than you because I get more done than you, and I get more done than you because you sleep too much
. She didn’t want to give that message.

She opened the alarm clock. Its numbers did their best to flicker to life, then failed. She slid the back off and extracted the single double-A. Intending to use it as a reminder to buy a replacement at the service station when she gassed-up for the road, she attempted to slide the battery into the side pocket of her jacket. She had sacrificed sleekness when she bought these three identical suits with pockets, because she needed pockets.

This suit, however, still had its pockets stitched shut, so the battery missed and conked on the floor, then rolled loudly south, with the grade.

Hardwood flooring in the bedroom, not
her
choice. The house tilted (
but the foundation is solid
, he liked to say).

The battery kept rolling, in the direction of the doorway, the direction of the hall, its hollow thunder echoing in the bedroom. Bedrooms shouldn’t echo like that.

The battery bumped, arrested by the thick sole of his brown shoe. He looked down at it. He threw on his jacket. He made sure his collar wasn’t messed up. He could’ve picked up the battery. He didn’t. He had looked at it, but without seeing it.

He lifted his feet to move and go check himself in the mirror. The battery tapped against the baseboard. Satisfied with his appearance, he came over and kissed her goodbye. He wished her luck in Portland.

She told him good luck too. He had meetings today, and she reminded him also to have fun tonight at the game. He left.

Their son was still asleep in his room, enjoying the final weeks of his summer before beginning his final year of high school; she was essentially alone in the house.

She definitely was late leaving now, but she had no plane or train to catch. Driving, she would make up the time. She stayed where she was standing, feeling like a barnacle. She looked out the portrait-wide window, with its view of the back. She gazed over the patio roof and across to the pool. Normally, the pool water appeared blue this time of morning, but it displayed a definite green cast today, as if it had been out partying too late. Her gaze drifted on further north, to the hills sloping down, and then further still to more hills that sloped up behind these. Green hills and wooded. On the news the other day they reported someone had spotted bobcats out there. Bobcats had come down to grow fat on the raccoons which had, in their turn, come down to grow fat on this still-newish neighborhood’s garbage.

The city stopped, and the wilderness began at her garbage and the city was going to
stay
stopped there for a long time. No one was doing any new building now.

She listened. The house was quiet. The wilderness was quiet too. Something was wrong; but not
that
wrong. She was unhappy, but not
that
unhappy. Simple, ordinary misery. Nothing to fear.

Sirens. Lights. Blood.

All that came later.

Soon.

Chapter 2: Barry

Months earlier, Barry Taupe sat in one of those arty coffee places on the Hill. It so happened that Back Hill, where Barry lived, was a hill too, but the new Seattleites that had come and ruined everything back in the dotcom era didn’t know that. Fire Hill was
the
Hill, the only Hill in the twenty-first century, as far as the trendy new people were concerned, and that was all that mattered.

“What’s your story?” asked the barista-girl, causing Barry to blink. Blue eye shadow, bright flamey tattoos (they called it “ink” here on the Hill), she came forward, wearing a sparkling grin, and bearing a fresh espresso which she rested next to his spent one. He hadn’t ordered it. Young enough to be somebody’s daughter. He became conscious of the fleece vest he was wearing, the full beard, so out of place here. He’d been thinking about a goatee, but his cheeks were fat.
Chipmunk cheeks
they used to call him.

He mumbled something to her about not having any story. Barry feared he was an edgeless person. Not fat: he ran, he fought it, but even in his youth he’d been soft. Never the sharp cheekbones of this spider-girl, and never the sunken-sallow face of every man that women creamed over from Iggy Pop in his era to Jude Law today. A goatee wouldn’t give him that edge. But an edge was needed, so an edge he had recently found in himself. He had a story now, oh, a hell of a story, if she only knew. He wondered if someone her age could even understand, let alone see. She probably thought she could. How would she know differently? Maybe someday, after a good long drag through the muck of life.

She raised an eyebrow and peered down at the manila folder he had put on the tabletop. He panicked and put his hand on it in a hurry.

She formed and extravagant pouty frown. “Don’t share, then.” She moved the espresso cup closer to him. Grazing the cup’s rim with a chipped purple nail she said, “On the house.” She turned and he watched her go, as she was surely aware he would. She glanced back. Her eyes flashed, telegraphing that she noticed this.

He looked away. Outside. Crappy gray morning and in the hour he’d been there not a soul had come in. She’s bored, he told himself; she’s not flirting. He checked the green numbers on his watch against the white numbers on his phone and the black hands on the wall clock. 11:07 give or take. Give it eight more minutes, he told himself. No more. That would make his party 45 minutes late and that was enough. Business was business. Even this kind.

The barista-girl sat down.

“I’m expecting someone,” he said too rapidly.

“Did you get stood up?”

His cheeks burned. “I’m working. It’s a meeting.”

She leaned sideways in the chair and stared out the window. “Nice job,” she said. “Wish I could make a living sitting in a cafe all morning,” completely unselfconsciously. “What kind of work do you do?”

“Sales.”

Come alone, the guy had said. Now watch, the guy was going to show up, see Barry not alone, and that would be that.

“Amway individuals come in here a lot to meet suckers—I mean clients.” From the way she said
individuals
he knew she meant people, her own way of expressing herself.

“I’m not Amway.”

She dismissed that with her fingers. “Sales. I used to do sales. Some fucking cell phones in some fucking mall. Do you know what fucked up my sales? A soul. No soul, I would’ve had
mad
sales. Bank. Anyway, you look like an individual in love. I didn’t think you were selling anything.”

“I’m buying.”

“Ah. You
are
in love.”

“I don’t follow….”

“What is it you’re getting? Something for her?”

He felt sly now. “It is actually.”

“Oct-chu-lee,” she said, teasing.

“Come on, I didn’t say it like that.”

“I hope she likes it. Is it a surprise?”

“It better be.”

Her smile disappeared. “Are you joking around?”

He didn’t answer right away. She shouldn’t be sitting there anyhow. She should be working, and he had work to do also. Fuck her. “I don’t want to keep you from what you’re supposed to be doing,” Barry said.

She rolled her eyes. “I must be in Seattle.”

“Huh?”

“If this was home it’d be ‘hey I’m busy, out of the chair, bitch’—
bee-yotch
.”

“No, no. It’s just that I am here for a meeting.”

She got to her feet and leaned in, gripping the lip of the table in both hands. Her tee-shirt billowed—purple bra. “So busy you’ve been sitting here opening and closing that folder every thirty seconds for about an hour.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

She forced a stern expression onto her face, but couldn’t hold it. Her nose wrinkled again and she grinned showing very many white teeth. He noticed she had freckles. “Fuck.” She snorted. “Nothing personal,” she repeated, laughing like he’d said the funniest thing in the world. She doubled over, contracting so hard sound had to fight its way out. She wiped away a tear that forced its way out of her closed eyes. “Stop, stop” she said, waving a hand. “Serious. Serious now.” She breathed. “Excuse me but I have to make a phone call,” she said suddenly. Forcing those words out caused her to explode again.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“Nothing, nothing.” She drove a palm into the side of her tummy. “I…I,” she ran behind the counter, picked up a towel and bit into it. With the other hand she felt around for the wall phone. Breathing deeply she recovered, but lost it again when they made eye contact. “Stop looking at me!”