The Best American Short Stories 2015 (27 page)

They danced four songs in a row when she suddenly leaned into Liam, turning her face so that her temple met the inside curve of his neck.

The feeling it gave him was this: Miriam had been dead for years. She now had returned for one night to dance with him in a large house with all these people who couldn't see her ghost.

He felt an emotional pain so sharp that he staggered into an elderly couple dancing nearby. Miriam apologized and rolled her eyes at Liam. She led them into the next dance, a slow Latin song that brought a little cheer from half the dance floor. It appeared that the entirety of Tennessee had been taking ballroom-dance class since he moved out to California. The best dancers, he noticed, were the grandparents who didn't know the steps but brought with them a generational knowledge of the cha-cha and the Texas swing so that their pear-shaped bodies, their flat and wide rears, their bony shoulders, were all infused with such lightness and grace that the song didn't feel at all foreign. Miriam's right thigh gently pressed the inside of his right leg and they rocked back and forth. The half erection caused by this movement was little more than an erratic wandering of the blood, the result of breaking up with Crystal three months ago. Miriam must have felt the hardening between his legs but instead of moving back she drew him nearer. He realized she must be drunk. When he didn't push her away he realized that he was drunk too.

“What's this type of song called?” he asked over the music.

She said a word in Spanish that he forgot almost immediately, but the word sounded like it could mean both
hello
and
goodbye, so long
and
please come here
. When the song came to an end Miriam walked away without saying a word or looking at him, exiting through the tall doors that led out to the back porch. A fiddle swelled into a country tune that everyone knew the chorus to. He excused himself across the dance floor. Outside the paper lanterns dimly lit the porch where a few smokers had congregated, and Miriam waited at the top of the steps for him until he saw her. She disappeared into the dark backyard.

Liam walked down the steps and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The moon was bright and high, and the sky was full of different shades of gray and dark blue clouds. It felt like it might rain. It felt like it would be a terrible idea to have sex with her in the long insect-ridden grass. He would find her, lead her back inside, and order them both a club soda. He would make sure she found a sober ride home, and the next morning, he'd invite her out to breakfast to let her know there was nothing to be embarrassed about. The grass was wet and cold and Miriam had discarded her shoes, one after the other. He picked these up and held them in his left hand by their straps. He could recall what she had been like before this kind of loneliness. And then everything that had happened to her happened to her, and afterward it was like she carried a bomb inside that couldn't explode. Maybe it wasn't such a terrible idea. Maybe it could make them happy. He found a mark on Miriam's shimmering pale dress and followed it through the trees.

VICTOR LODATO

FROM
The New Yorker

T
HE SUN WAS
a wolf. The fanged light had been trailing him for hours, tricky with clouds. As it emerged again from sheepskin, Jack looked down at the pavement, cursed. He'd been walking around since ten, temperature even then close to ninety. The shadow stubs of the telephone poles and his own midget silhouette now suggested noon. He had no hat, and he'd left his sunglasses somewhere, either at Jamie's or at The Wheel, or they might have slipped off his head. They did that sometimes, when he leaned down to tie his shoes or empty them of pebbles.

Pebbles?

Was that a word? He stopped to consider it, decided in the negative, and then marched on, flicking his thumb ceaselessly against his index like a Zippo. His nerves were shot, but unable to shut down. No off button now. He'd be zooming for hours, the crackle in his head exaggerated by the racket of birds rucked up in towers of palm, tossing the dry fronds. What were they doing? Ransacking sounds. Looking for nuts or dates, probably. Or bird sex. Possibly bird sex. Maybe he should walk to Rhonda's, ask her to settle him. Or unsettle him. Maybe he wanted more.
Share
was what she should do, if she had any. He always shared with her. Not always, but it could be argued.

Rhonda was a crusher, though, a big girl, always climbing on top. Her heft was no joke, and Jack was a reed. Still, he loved her. Ha! That was the tweak coming on. He'd never admit to such a thing when he was flat. Now his immortal brain understood. He wanted to marry Rhonda, haul her up the steps of her double-wide, pump out about fifty kids. In the fly-eye of his mind he saw them, curled up like caterpillars on Rhonda's bed.

Jack picked up the pace. The effect of his late-morning tokes was far from finished. Though he'd pulled nothing but dregs (the last of his stash), it was coming on strong, sparking his heart in unexpected ways.

So much gratitude. Jack made a fist and banged twice on his chest, thinking of Flaco, a school friend, now dead, who'd first turned him on to this stuff—a precious substance whose unadvertised charm was love. It was infuriating that no one ever mentioned this. The posters, the billboards, the PSAs—all they talked about were skin lesions and rotten teeth. Kids, sadly, were not getting well-rounded information. If Jack hadn't lost his phone, he'd point it at his face right now and make a documentary.

Traffic, a lot of it. On Speedway now, a strip-mall jungle, which, according to his mother, used to be lined with palm trees and old adobes, tamale peddlers and mom-and-pop shops. Not that Jack's mother was nostalgic. She loved her Marts—the Dollar and the Quik and the Wal. “Cheaper too,” she said. She liked to buy in bulk, always had extra. Maybe he should go to her place, instead of Rhonda's, grab some granola bars, a few bottles of water for his pack. Sit on the old yellow couch under the swamp cooler, chew the fat. He hadn't seen her in weeks.

Weeks?

Again, the word proved thin, suspect. “Mama,” he said, testing another—an utterance that stopped him in his tracks and caused his torso to jackknife forward. Laughed to spitting. He could picture her face, if he ever tried to call her that. She preferred Bertie. Only sixteen years his senior, she often reminded him. Bertie of the scorched hair, in her sparkle tops and toggle pants. “What's it short for?” he once asked of her name. She'd told him that his grandfather was a humongous piece of shit, that's what it was short for.

Of course, Jack had never met the famous piece of shit, had only heard stories. Supposedly he and Grandma Shit still lived in Tucson, might be anywhere, two of Jack's neighbors. He might have passed them on the street, or lent them an egg or a cup of sugar.

Jack tittered into his fist. What eggs? What sugar? There was fuck-all in the fridge. In fact, depending on his location, there might not even be a fridge.

Buses roared past, their burning flanks throwing cannonballs of heat at the sidewalk. Jack turned away, moved toward himself, a murkier version trapped in the black glass façade of a large building. Twenty-two—he looked that plus ten. Of course, a witch's mirror was no way to judge. The dark glass was spooked, not to be trusted. Hadn't Jamie said, only yesterday, in the lamplit corner of the guest bedroom, that Jack looked all of sixteen? “Beautiful,” Jamie had whispered, touching Jack's cheek.

Beautiful
. Like something stitched on a pillow, sentimental crap from some other era. The lamplit whisperings had made Jack restless, the dissolved crystal blowing him sideways like a blizzard.

To hell with Jamie! Last week, after partying all night, Jack had woken up to find Jamie lying beside him, the man's hand crawling like a snail across the crotch furrows of Jack's jeans. Half dead, in deep crash, Jack hadn't even been sure they
were
his jeans—the legs inside them looked too skinny, like a kid's. He'd watched the snail-hand for a good five minutes, feeling nothing—and then, with a gush, he'd felt too much. When he leaped from the bed, Jamie screeched, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!”—apologizing profusely, claiming he'd flailed in his sleep.

“Why are you in my bed
at all?
” Jack had asked, storming into the bathroom with shame-bitten fury. He'd got into the shower, only to find a bar of soap as thin and sharp as a razor blade—scraped himself clean as best he could, until he smelled breakfast coming on hot from the kitchen. It had turned out to be silver-dollar pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate chips. Jack's favorite. Could the man stoop any lower?

Jamie just didn't add up. A bearded Mexican with a voice like a balloon losing air. Wore pleated slacks, but without a belt you could sometimes glimpse thongs. Didn't smoke, but blew invisible puffs for emphasis. And the name—Jamie—it sat uncomfortably on the fence, neutered, a child's name, wrong for anyone over thirty, which Jamie clearly was. Plus he was fat, which made his body indecisive, intricately layered with loose slabs of flesh—potbelly and motherflaps. “Stay with me, why don't you?” he'd said, for no discernible reason, at the Chevron restroom sink, where Jack had been rinsing his clotted pipe.

That had been a week ago, maybe two. They'd been strangers in that restroom, the obese man appearing out of the gloom of a shit stall. His words,
stay with me
, had seemed, to the boy, vaguely futuristic, a beam of light from a spaceship.

Jack should have known better.

The sun drilled the boy's head, looking for something. He closed his eyes and let the bit work its way to his belly, where the good stuff lived, where the miracle often happened: the black smoke reverting to pure white crystal. A snowflake, an angel. He smiled at himself in the dark glass. It was so easy to forgive those who betrayed you, effortless—like thinking of winter in the middle of July. It cost you nothing. Reflexively Jack scratched deep inside empty pockets, then licked his fingers. The bitch of it was this: forgiveness dissolved instantly on your tongue, there was no time to spit it out.

He'd have to remember to speak on this, when he made his documentary.

“Welcome to Presto's!”

The blond girl stood just inside the black door, her face gaily frozen, as if cut from the pages of a yearbook. Jack comprehended none of her words.

“Welcome,” he replied, attempting a flawless imitation of her birdlike language. Jack was good with foreigners. Most of his school buds had been Chalupas.

The girl tilted her head; the smile wavered, but only briefly. Her mouth re-expanded with elastic lunacy.

“Ship or print?”

Jack was taken aback. Though it was true he needed to use the bathroom, he was disturbed by the girl's lack of delicacy in regard to bodily functions.

“Number one,” he admitted quietly.

“Ship?” she persisted.

Jack felt dizzy. The girl's teeth were very large and very white. Jack could only assume they were fake. Keeping his own dental wreckage tucked under blistered lips, he lifted his hands in a gesture of spiritual peace. “I'm just going to make a quick run to the restroom.”

“I'm sorry, they're only for customers.”

“George Washington,” Jack blurted, still fascinated by the girl's massive teeth.

“What's that?”

“Cherry tree,” he continued associatively.

“Oh, like for the Fourth?” asked Blondie.

“Yes,” Jack replied kindly, even though he knew she was confusing presidents. Fourth of July would be Jefferson or Adams. Jack had always been sweet on History. In school, when he was miniature, he'd got nothing but A's. Again he sensed the expansiveness of his brain, a maze of rooms, many of which he'd never been in. It didn't matter that he hadn't finished high school, there was an Ivy League inside his head, libraries crammed with books. He just needed to pull them from between the folds of gray matter and read them. Close his eyes and get cracking. See, this was the other thing people never told you about meth. It was educational.

The girl informed him that there were no holiday specials, if that's what he was asking about.

Jack nodded and smiled, tapping his head in pretense of understanding her logic. As he moved quickly toward the bathroom, the girl skittered off in another direction, also quickly.

Perhaps she had to print too. Or take a ship.

Jack giggled and opened a door leading to a storage closet.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Jack said to the man inside the closet. “I understand what you're saying.”

“What am I saying?” asked the man.

“Perfectly clear,” said Jack. He held up his peace-hands, walked back through the room of humming and spitting machines, and exited the building—behind which he quickly peed, before resuming his trek down Speedway.

As soon as he knocked at the trailer door, he was aware of the emptiness in his hands. He should have brought flowers. Or a burrito. He knocked again. Sweat dripped from under his arms, making him feel strangely cold.

“I have flowers,” he said to the door.

“Go away,” said the door.

“I'm not talking to a door,” said Jack. “I don't take orders from doors.”

“You can't be here. Why are you here?” The voice was exhausted, cakey. Jack could picture the pipe.

“Baby,” he said. “Come on. Why are you being stingy?”

“I'll call the police, I swear to God.”

Jack was silent, but stood his ground. He scratched at the door like a cat. After a while, someone said, “Please.” The word sounded funny, like a flute. Jack tried saying it again. Even worse. It almost sounded as if he were going to cry.

When the door opened, it did so only a few inches—most of Rhonda's mouth obscured by a chain.