“I’m tellin’ ya, man. Time doesn’t exist. Well it does, but it isn’t linear, ya know?”
Spit was on a roll, and there was nothing good on the coffee table. No duffel bags filled with drugs. No coke. Just Clair’s weekly planner.
Monday:
- Get more money from Jimmy
- Pay rent by end of week
I didn’t know why Amity thought Clair, Spit, and Jimmy could help me.
On the carpet, dark pink stains curled away from my feet. Were those there yesterday? They matched the pattern on my ruined shirt. They matched the way Verona’s hair would fall around her face. I patted my pocket for her Xanax, but all I felt were keys and cards.
Spit wouldn’t stop talking.
“The eternal return, reincarnation, Zeno’s paradox—the details are different, but it’s all the same shit. As a species we’ve just all agreed to live in a shared delusion, ya know?”
I didn’t know what Zeno was. “Do you have any drugs?” I asked. “Is Jimmy out picking up or something?”
I leaned forward and started to flip through the pages in Clair’s notebooks as if the answers were in there.
Tuesday:
- Figure out when electricity is due
- Jimmy says he’ll have the money soon
Spit’s teeth clicked as he bit into his thumbnail. “Man, you’ve been gone for a while.”
Over his shoulder, some newscaster with golden eyes reported from the muted TV. Her lips silently popped open and closed as the ticker tape below her face said reward for missing paintings draws large search party.
“Everyone’s gone, man,” Spit continued. “Even the suppliers. We haven’t heard from them in weeks.” He chewed his nail deeper, and my stomach growled. “Clair won’t admit it,” he said. “But I think we’re kinda fucked.”
I flipped to another page.
Thursday:
- POWER BILL DUE
- Jimmy hasn’t answered his phone since yesterday
Friday:
- RENT DUE
- Where the fuck is Jimmy
“Oh,” I said.
On TV, the newscaster was replaced with some cartoon of a giant, smiling sun.
Too hot for teacher? End of school year brings record drought.
Spit winced, and blood trickled into the corner of his thumb from biting his nail too deep. “But don’t worry,” he said, sucking the red from his skin. “You know how great Clair is. Especially with money. You’re a good friend. We got you.”
With one yank, Jimmy ripped the rest of his hangnail free. Blood bubbled from the exposed bed as he spit out the white bloody chunk. The thing arched over the coffee table to land in my lap.
I had lived this moment a thousand times but couldn’t remember how it was supposed to end.
The digitally rendered clock flashing in the corner of the newscast said it was 11:55 PM. Friday. I tried to subtract that from the time I got here but I didn’t know when that was anymore.
I flipped Clair’s planner to the next page. Saturday.
There was nothing written down.
“Do you…have anything to eat?” I asked.
Spit turned out his pockets, pulling out his own mess of keys and cards. “Uhh…I think I have a free delivery coupon from Sidewinder.” He picked up one of the paper rectangles and studied it close. “Only good on weekdays though. Do you know what day it is?”
I shrugged.
Whisper-shouts woke me up. I peeled my cheek from the dried drool I left on the couch and squinted my eyes. The TV was still playing, but the hushed voices didn’t match the lips that were moving on screen.
“He can’t stay here,” a woman said. “Fuck, even we can’t stay here. They’re evicting us at the end of the month.”
“What about Jimmy?” the other voice asked. “He could still come through, ya know?”
Something thudded against a wall. “Jimmy’s gone, Spit,” The first voice said. Clair’s voice.
“Jimmy’s gone. Amity’s gone. Nathan’s dead. Kurt may as well be dead.” Another thud. “And our only source of income has skipped town.”
On the silent TV, some actress I had seen a thousand times but whose name I couldn’t think of, raced a luxury convertible through an empty, black and white desert. The camera framed her face, and she stared at me through the screen as she accelerated harder.
I started to remember something.
“Well maybe they shouldn’t have thrown away those nazar’s I bought them.” Spit wasn’t whispering anymore. “Maybe Nathan, maybe all of them, would still be here.”
A chair scooted out in the kitchen and it creaked as someone sat down. Clair breathed like a cat dying on the side of the road.
The motorcyclist on screen leaned into the wind, revving her engine as the ground disappeared beneath her. Large, block words flashed over the scene.
Desire. Danger. Beauty.
Both the actress and the bike fell through the air. Weightless. An open ocean below.
It was getting clearer.
“What are we even doing here?” Clair’s breath turned into sobs. “I couldn’t help any of us.”
The splash in the commercial didn’t make a sound. Water frothed around the actress, and she stretched out her arm, breaking it through the surface.
The saltwater clouding her face rubbed off her eyeliner and teased her hair—swishing and matting it together.
Like flattened roadkill.
He said it wasn’t supposed to hurt.
It all clicked together at once. The actress on TV. The one silently drowning in the open ocean. It was the same girl that killed Verona.
“Why are you still here?” Clair asked Spit between tears. “You could’ve left with everyone else.”
The girl on TV was much prettier than I remembered. In real life, she didn’t have all her hair. She didn’t have white teeth, or clear skin. Then again, in real life, she was dead.
How old was this commercial?
“I can’t help you anymore,” Clair continued. “I can’t even help myself.”
The camera followed the actress deeper into the water, until everything around her faded to black. Until it was just my reflection.
“I…uhh…ya know,” Spit said to Clair. “I…I think I love you.”
The spring in the couch moaned as I pushed myself up. But my stomach started boiling, hot and sharp, and the ceiling twisted around itself.
Clair cried harder, and the sound bounced around her empty cave of a house. The twisting ceiling fell towards me, flipping my world upside down. I slipped back against the cushions, until my head hung over the side. Upside down.
“I think…I love…you too,” Clair said between sobs.
My necklace slapped my jaw. Verona’s necklace. Spit’s necklace.
Shit.
I knew what I had to do.
I reached into my pocket, pulling the storage key free, and the TV light from some new commercial I had never seen before bounced off the metal. Clair was the only drug dealer I’d ever met who budgeted. She was the only person I’d ever met that never asked me for anything. Still upside down, I pulled the nazar over my head.
Neither her or Spit.
Keep Right.
Yield to Oncoming Traffic.
Don’t Pick Up Hitchhikers.
I sat up, again, but this time my stomach didn’t cramp or grumble. My finger’s didn’t even shake as I tied the leather strap of the necklace to the key.
Ten-thousand dollars. Spit and Clair? They could become anyone they wanted to be.
I placed the combined object against her planner, against the empty page marked Saturday, and got up to leave.
I knew what I had to do.