Train Wreck Girl (2 page)

I walked the tracks home from work, so lost in thought that I almost didn't see that freight train until it was too late. Its whistle wailed and snapped me out of my head just in time to take two steps to my right and feel the wind of the train whizzing by. I'd gotten so used to the sound of train whistles that I hardly paid attention to them anymore. They were just part of the landscape. And I had bigger things to think about.

With less than forty-eight hours left in Flagstaff, I had to decide whether to breakup with Libra or take her with me to Florida. I walked next to the tracks and weighed the pros and cons. On the pro side of things, if Libra went with me to Florida, she'd be with me. I'd gotten used to having her around. I liked it. She was a good kid. But more than that, there were moments when she would do things so thoughtful and generous that I would feel, I don't know, more human or something. Or she'd completely drop her guard and let me see the Libra that she was when no one was around. During those times, I could picture a future with me and Libra stretching into old age. So of course I wanted her to go to Florida with me.

On the con side, though, if she came with me, she'd have to quit college, move two thousand miles from home, and get the first job of her life all so she could camp out with a loser like me.

And I guess there was a third option. I could've stayed in Flagstaff. I had a good gig tending bar downtown and I had a cool girlfriend and I had a friend to hang out with and plenty of free time to read and ride my bike around town and sleep when I was tired. But that wouldn't work. This was no time for status quo. I was turning thirty in a few months. It was already too late to die young. And if I had to keep living, I had to come up with a new plan. I had to go back to the place where everything went wrong and start fixing things from there.

The decision about what to do with Libra became more and more clear in my mind. I climbed down off the tracks, hopped the fence into my backyard, and went into my trailer.

Libra paced back and forth across the living room floor. She moved quickly. Her pacing took up most of the room. I had to time it right just to get over to the rocking chair by the wall heater.

I sat in the chair and unlaced my boots. “What's up, kid?” I asked.

Libra didn't stop pacing. She said, “Where have you been all night?”

“At work.”

“You smell like a bar.”

I pulled off a boot and the wet sock underneath it. “I work in a bar.”

“Oh, you've got an answer for everything, don't you?”

I looked up. Libra's pacing was making me dizzy. I said, “You're gonna wear a hole in the floor if you're not careful.”

Libra stopped. She looked at me. Her mascara was spread across her eyelids like a fog. The rest of her make up had been washed off, making the freckles on her cheeks all the more prominent. How could I ever leave this girl? I asked myself. And: how could I not? How could I condemn her to a life with me?

Libra kinda snarled and said, “Don't look at me like that.”

I figured I knew what the problem was and said, “Talk to your mother today?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you did. Sit down. Tell me about it.”

Libra didn't sit. She crossed her arms and said, “My mom wants me to see a shrink.”

“Really?” I let out a little laugh, because for all my talk of Libra being crazy, I always knew that I was the one who really had the problem. So this surprised me. I said, “Are you gonna go?”

“I can't.” Libra sat on the couch. She crossed her legs and kept her arms crossed and this made her look so vulnerable that I got a little sad.

“Why not?”

“She made the appointment for tomorrow. I gotta go to the med center tomorrow to get my annual check-up.”

As soon as she said this, I got another idea. Because those med center doctors are always good for drugs. I said, “What? Your pap smear and shit like that?” Libra nodded. “Listen, Libra, can you do me a favor when you get there?” Libra looked at me kinda surprised, like it was totally inappropriate for me to be changing the subject right now. Which it was. So I hurried. I said, “Will you tell the doctor that you have really bad cramps? Tell him that you can't sleep some nights because the cramps are so bad. He'll prescribe you some Vicadin, and we can have some fun with it.”

Libra drummed her fingers on her bicep. I could see it was about time to wrap things up. I knew I had a long bus ride ahead of me and I wanted two scripts out of Libra's med center visit. I added, “Can you also tell him that your grades have been slipping because you can't seem to focus in class?”

“My grades aren't slipping,” Libra said.

“Yeah, but Ritalin is fun,” I said.

“I'm not your drug dealer.” Libra shot me a dirty look like this was the final word.

I said, “Please.”

She said, “I thought we were talking about my mom. And me going to the shrink.”

I'd already planted the seeds for the drugs, and that was enough. I figured it was time to let her talk now.

The first thing she wanted me to know was that she absolutely refused to go to the shrink. And not just because of the med center visit. Because, as she put it, “Fuck Mom.”

So I prodded her to talk more about her mom's plans. The biggest problem, according to her mom, was that Libra was shacked up in a trailer with me. Even though Libra's mom had never met me in person, she couldn't stand me. She couldn't stand the thought that her daughter was involved with a guy like me: who had never gone to college, had no prospects, no future, no skills, no nothing. I didn't even have a running car.

And there was this other thing about Libra's parents. They were loaded. And not just well off. Loaded. Loaded like Libra would never have to work a day in her life, if she didn't want to. Loaded like they could've bought her this trailer and the property around it and the whole neighborhood around it. Loaded like it was clear that Libra never had to live like this, like the way she lived with me. So Libra's mom was convinced that this whole affair was just a rebellion against her, that Libra was slumming with me just to piss her mother off. That the sooner Libra got rid of a loser like me, the better. And this was why Libra's mom wanted Libra to go to the shrink: to get to the core of the rebellion and end it as soon as possible.

Another thing about Libra's mom was this: even though we'd never met, I pretty much agreed with her. I was pretty sure that Libra was just slumming with me to get back at her mom. I was pretty sure that Libra would come to her senses when she had one semester of college left, and she'd meet a nice, wealthy business school standout and plot her course for the suburbs. And, let's face it, I
was
pretty much a loser with no prospects, no future, and no car.

The only point I disagreed with was the one about me having no skills, because I was a skilled welder. I'd been a union iron worker for four years. I'd gone to all the classes that the union required of me. I built condos all along Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral. I'd even worked at Kennedy Space Center. And my welding made that possible. And I'd still be doing it now, only I'm deathly afraid of heights.

But all that's neither here nor there. Suffice it to say, Libra's mom was pretty much right about everything.

Normally, I didn't want to tell Libra this. I usually bit my tongue when the subject came up. But on this night, Libra threw a wrench in the works. She said, “Mom said she was gonna cut me off if I didn't end things with you.”

This stunned me. This was serious. Libra's trust fund was huge. I couldn't let her lose that. “What did you tell her?”

Libra lifted her chin, all proud-like, and said, “I told her she could shove her money right up her ass.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She said that's it. I'm cut off.”

I shook my head. “That won't do,” I said. “You gotta apologize.”

“Fuck that,” Libra said. “I can't be bought.”

“We can all be bought,” I said. I paused, but not long enough for Libra to interject. “I just… I'm just not worth it.”

Libra came across the room and tried to sit on my lap. The rocking chair creaked under the weight of us, and I lifted Libra off me.

“No, kid,” I said. “Your mom's right. I'm just a phase you're going through. You may as well get out of this while you still can.”

Libra crossed her arms again. “What are you saying, Danny?”

“You don't give a shit about me. I'm just a fling. Someone you can talk about at the country club in a few years.”

“That's not true.” Libra's eyes watered up again. “I love you.”

“No, you don't,” I said. And, I didn't want to be mean, but I knew I should be. I knew I should be at least mean enough to make the breakup stick. So I said, “I don't love you.”

“You're not an asshole, Danny. Don't act like one.”

I got up from the rocking chair and walked to my backpack. It was lying on the linoleum kitchen table. I unzipped it, dug out my Greyhound ticket, and handed it to Libra. “I am an asshole,” I said. “We may as well end this now. I was planning on leaving, anyway.”

Libra looked at the ticket and saw that I really was leaving in less than two days and a spark flared up in her eyes. It was enough to start the fireworks. Yelling and screaming and throwing shit. She told me I was a loser and a waste of time and the worst mistake of her life. Which was all fair enough. She called me white trash. Which hurt. The “trash” part I can take. But I don't know why she had to throw “white” in there.

I only winced at the insults and didn't yell back. I figured it was her time to lose her temper. She was justified. I guess she took my lack of a response as apathy, though, so she started doing anything she could to get a reaction out of me. She started breaking stuff. That was fine with me. I was planning on leaving it all behind, anyway. She ripped the arm off my record player. She snapped the rocker off my chair. She stuck my boot in the oven and turned the oven on. She heaved my favorite metal sculpture through the living room window. In the midst of her tantrum, I wondered, Could she be The One? What if she is The One and I'm blowing it right now? Could I stop this?

I decided, no, I couldn't stop it. She'd blown off all her steam already and I needed to get my boot out of the oven before it caught fire and burned the trailer down. When I got back from the kitchen, Libra had exhausted herself. She called her brother Angus to come pick her up.

It only took her brother about five minutes to get to the trailer. I waited out that time on the couch. Libra spent it in the bedroom, packing up shit. I told her that I should be the one to leave, since I was leaving anyway and rent was already paid on the trailer, but Libra wanted to go. Or at least that's how I interpreted all her
fuck yous.

Angus rattled on the trailer door and I opened it. Libra came flying out of the bedroom with her pink parka on and a backpack slung over her shoulder. She rushed between Angus and me. Angus stood there, glaring at me, looking like he wanted to kill me. I could tell he was thinking about taking a crack at me, but the poor kid was way smaller and younger and dumber than me, and barely smart enough to realize this.

Something in his eyes burned brighter than whatever had been burning in Libra's eyes. At least with Libra, there was some love mixed in with all the hate. Not with Angus. He glared at me like,
one day, motherfucker… One day.

I still had one scene left to play out with Libra. It came after closing time the next night.

I'd finished my last shift at The Corner Bar. All the night's money was locked away in the safe. All my side work was done: the bar mats had been hosed down and left in the kitchen to dry, all the glasses were washed and stacked in the drying rack, the wells had been wiped down. All the stools but one were stacked on the bar. Sal sat in the last stool, drinking one last draft. I stood on the other side of the bar, drinking my first and last of the night. The front door should've been locked, but it wasn't. It was just before two
A.M.
My Greyhound left at six
A.M.
So this was my last nod to Flagstaff. A two-man going away party. Sayonara, Danny.

I'd told Sal all about the breakup. He sided with Libra. I couldn't blame him. I kinda sided with Libra in this one, too. And speaking of the devil, Libra burst through the front door.

She was lit. She leaned on her right leg so hard that her left leg came off the ground and I thought she was gonna topple over. She wagged a finger at me and said, “You're a fucker.”

I didn't say anything.

Libra righted herself. She brushed a lock of red hair off her cheek, changed her tone, and said, “Hi, Sal.”

“How you doing?” Sal said.

“Not good.” Libra shook her head. “Not good.” She fumbled through her parka pockets for a second. It seemed to take way too much out of her, like she was wearing herself out just trying to get her hands on something. After a couple of seconds, she dug out what she was looking for. “I just want to give you something, you fucker,” she said, apparently to me, seeing as how I was already established as the fucker in the room. She hurled a prescription bottle at me. I caught it in one bounce off the bar. It was Ritalin.

“Thanks,” I said.

“I'm not done.” She started fumbling again, even more awkwardly. She had her left hand in the right side pocket of her jacket and she spun in a little quarter circle. When she found the other bottle, she whipped it out of her pocket like she was pulling a gopher out of its hole. “Vicadin,” she said. “Lucky you.”

She threw this one in my general direction, but it hit the leg of one of the stools on the bar and landed on a beer cooler behind the bar. I walked over and picked it up.

“Some of the Vicadin are missing,” she said. “I took ‘em when I got my tattoo.”

“You got a tattoo?” Sal asked.

“I did indeed,” Libra said. “Wanna see it?”

Sal looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders. Sal said, “Sure.”

Libra staggered across the floor. Part of me wanted to help her. She never got this fucked up, and she wasn't handling herself well. I didn't like to see it. I wanted to protect her, to take care of her, to get her home safely and tell her everything would be okay. But I couldn't. No way. This breakup had to stick. I had to fix my own shit before I could help anyone else. I had to hop that dog at six
A
.
M
. I had to get back to Florida. So I let Libra stagger on her own two feet.

She made it up to Sal, put her right foot on the bottom rung of the bar stool, and rolled up the leg of her jeans. She had on a red and white striped knee sock. She rolled the sock down. And just above her ankle danced the sorriest, crustiest little Betty Boop I'd ever seen.

Aww, man, I thought. An ankle tattoo? A Betty Boop one? A picture you got off the wall in a downtown tattoo shop? Libra, you gotta be more original than that. I felt so sorry for the kid. But, really, who was I to talk? I had a dozen bad tattoos. None of them came off a tattoo parlor wall, and none of them were cartoon characters, but they were all mostly ugly. So I didn't say anything. Sal said, “Cute.”

Libra smiled and batted her eyelids like she was taking on a new Betty Boop persona. “Ain't it?” she said.

And, see, it just goes to prove my theory that Libra wasn't crazy at all. All of her rebellions were in comfortable, socially acceptable ways. She had the rebel boyfriend in college, but it ended before it got too serious. She got her tattoo, but in a cute and easily hidden way. It was all very safe, very forgivable. It was healthy, even. I'd read that freshman psychology text. I knew exactly what Libra was doing. It was all like that Murray Bowen guy said: you need to differentiate yourself from your family and establish your own sense of self. That's exactly what Libra was doing. It could be explained to her mother very clearly. One trip to a shrink and she'd have her trust fund back. So, okay, I told myself. It's okay.

Libra said, “Do you like it, Danny?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh fuck you,” she said. “Fucker.”

“I am a fucker,” I said. “You're better off without me.”

“It's true,” Sal said.

“Fuck both of you,” Libra said. She looked over her shoulder. Her brother and his crew walked past The Corner Bar. “Angus!” Libra called out, even though he couldn't hear her. “I'm gonna go hang out with my brother,” she said to Sal and me. “Fuck you guys.” She turned and ran to the door. Just as she got there, she looked back and said, “You're gonna be sorry, Danny.” Then she ran off.

Angus and his crew were already out of sight by the time she left The Corner Bar. I couldn't see if she caught up to them or not. But I knew even then that she was right. I'd be sorry.