Matt Cowper

THE CLERK

To my parents, for believing in me

PART ONE

Chapter One

As he stood on the beach watching the sunset, Thomas thought about the midlife crisis he wasn’t having. It was his fortieth birthday, and this was supposed to be a terrifying number. He should be grieving over missed opportunities, pining for thin, shining-eyed girls who existed in the lost past, bemoaning the fact that he wasn’t a “success,” and wishing for more “fun” in his life. He should throw off the shackles of his old life and start on a bold new path.

But he didn’t feel like doing that. It seemed immature, and anyway, the day was too gorgeous. Golden late-afternoon light shone on the dunes and beach houses. Willets scurried about, pecking at the wet sand. To the west, the beach houses, the pier, and the tall Scotch Bonnet Hotel were smoky silhouettes. There were only three other people in sight: one far to the west, nothing more than a black smudge, and two people a few hundred yards east, an older couple strolling hand-in-hand down the beach. It was tragic that only four people were out on this section of beach to watch this beautiful sunset, but such was life on the North Carolina coast during winter.

Thomas had taken a day off work to celebrate his birthday. He’d slept in, eventually rolling out of bed at the almost shameful hour of ten AM. A bit of reading. Lunch. A long walk on the beach, during which he saw a grand total of ten people, including the three now in sight. And now this sunset.

Yes, it had been a good day… except for his conversation with his sister. Emily had called him in the morning to wish him happy birthday, and, to her surprise, he’d actually picked up.

“I thought you’d be at work,” she said, confused. For the past fifteen years, she had called Thomas at exactly eleven AM on his birthday. For the past fifteen years, the call had gone to her brother’s answering machine, then his voicemail once he’d finally gotten a cell phone. Reason: Thomas was at work. Therefore, she had left a quick message, usually including a punning phrase about aging which was then balanced by an uplifting quote she’d found on goodquotes.com. Thomas usually called her back in the evening, and they would chat for ten minutes or so. But this year, the big Four-Oh, Thomas had answered. Why?

“No work today,” he replied. “Took a one-day holiday.”

His sister processed this. Finally, she replied with “Oh.” Thomas had never before taken a day off work for his birthday, or even a half-day. Emily didn’t like it.

Thomas anticipated a lengthier comment from his sister, but nothing else came. It appeared she was discombobulated, for some reason or another. This wasn’t anything new, of course.

“Yeah, so,” he said, chuckling, “guess what I’m doing today? Hint: it’s really dangerous and exciting.”

“What?” The one-word question was thick and hard, like a cement block.

“Skydiving!”

Pause. Airtime seconds blinked by, unused.

“You are not,” Emily finally said.

“Yes, I am. Don’t you wish you could go with me, sister? You could still come, I guess — but that would mean you’d have to be spontaneous.”

“I’m more spontaneous than you know,” Emily said emphatically. “And you are not going skydiving. You wouldn’t do that.” Finally she was rallying. Her brother had caught her off-guard by daring to answer his phone at eleven AM on the morning of December 3, and now he was teasing her, just like he did when they were growing up. If she were honest with herself, she would admit that Thomas, despite being three years older, hadn’t been a malicious big brother, and his teasing had been harmless. But in her quickly-developing black mood, she only remembered endless persecution. Images of thumb screws, cracking whips, and body-consuming bonfires crawled through her mind as methods of torture equal to what she’d been through.

She’d tried to be happy, or at least not venomous, since it was her big brother’s birthday, but he’d gone and fucked everything up by answering his phone when he should’ve been at work and by throwing out his little quips. (She was also dealing with Issues — or more specifically, an Issue, even more specifically a man who wasn’t her husband — but she had that under control.)

“No, you wouldn’t do that,” she repeated, “because, as you said, it would be dangerous and exciting, and you never do anything dangerous or exciting! Every birthday since, oh, age nineteen, you’ve done nothing but drink a few beers.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Because it’s your birthday. You’re supposed to do something special.”

“To me, that is special.”

“No, it’s not. It’s what you do every day.”

“Doesn’t make it less special.”

“By definition, ‘special’ doesn’t mean something you do every day.”

“Actually, you’re right. I do need to do something special. Maybe not sky-diving, though.” He pretended to ponder for a moment. “I know! I’ll go to a strip club. Pass around a few dollar bills, get a lapdance. What do you think?”

Emily had been a “hard-core feminist” (her term, and the hyphen between “hard” and “core” was very important for some reason) since age eleven. She’d snarled at sexualized TV commercials, argued with cheerleaders about their outfits, and stole and then shredded their father’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue from its well-known hiding spot beneath their parents’ mattress. Despite this contrarian behavior, Emily always had plenty of suitors galloping after her. She was long and lean, with an ass that announced its succulent presence to the world no matter how baggy her jeans, and her angular face usually had an expression of magnificent disdain mixed with (in Emily’s case, unintentional) coquettishness, an expression like women wore in perfume ads. During her teenage years, when everyone else was dating, Emily had treated her suitors with the scorn she thought they deserved — that is, until a stud named Brett Hickman came along.

Emily had fallen head over heels for him, despite her claim that she was a “strong, independent woman,” and despite Brett’s sarcastic remarks about her “childish bra-burning.” When he eventually dumped her (“You just can’t keep up with me, girl”), she’d seemed to wither away until she no longer had the energy to write her ungrammatical polemics for the high school newspaper. Thomas had sat on her bed and tried to comfort her, telling her that all men were scoundrels, and he knew because he was one (hey, it might make her feel better, even if it was a lie) but she’d simply stared up at the ceiling unblinking, like a corpse, still shockingly attractive, laid out in a funeral parlor.

She’d eventually recovered (quite well, Thomas thought, since it seemed his sister had a new boy toy every month, though she couldn’t have gone to bed with all of them — could she?) and resumed her fight against the “objectification of women.” At NC State, where she majored in philosophy (though she usually rejected any philosophy written by white males, which was most of it), she’d met a law student named Dan Dowling, and they’d dated and then married. They were now living in Raleigh, and while Dan worked 80-hour weeks at a semi-prestigious firm, Emily volunteered at a rape crisis center, wrote condemnatory letters to newspapers and advertisers regarding saucy billboards, railed against the patriarchy with five or six women (and two doe-eyed men) at her feminist book group, and ferried Dennis, their now fourteen-year-old son, to and from school.

So Thomas knew that mentioning a strip club would annoy his “hard-core feminist” sister. What he didn’t know was that she’d actually launch an artillery strike so intense it would’ve made Napoleon proud.

“Typical!” she yelled. “Soooooo typical! You can’t get a woman in real life, so you waltz on over to some shitty fantasy-land and toss money at poor, ignorant girls! It’s disgusting! You might as well just burn their souls away with… with… gasoline! You’re pathetic! Miserable and pathetic… and the worst part is you won’t admit it!”

“Listen,” Thomas growled, “you’re not going to talk to me like that…”

But she’d already hung up. And her maniac voice had bounced in and out of his head all day. It was there as he munched on his lunchtime sandwich, it was there as he watched the pelicans skim along the ocean, it was here as the late-afternoon light turned from gold to liquid orange. He knew his sister often acted like a petulant child, but this was harsh even by her standards. For some reason, her “you can’t get a girl” comment stung. He actually had a friend-with-benefits, but he’d never told Emily about Kara. So why did her comment bother him? Perhaps because he knew that his “relationship” with Kara was waning?

He sighed now, rocking on his feet. Maybe his sister was going through one of her “rough patches” — but he tried to put all that aside and focus on the pleasing scene before him. The clouds had turned purple, like billowing royal capes, and a somber grayness was descending on the beach. The sun was melting into the ocean, as it did at Atlantic Beach during the winter months. Its orange light was glorious; it was giving one last salute to the world, like a theater actor bowing before an applauding audience.

It was remarkable how a day off rejuvenated him. The eight-hour days at the grocery store were more grueling than they used to be. In his twenties, he had flown through them, working quickly and sometimes recklessly to show off how strong and able he was. In his thirties, his pace had slowed a bit; he no longer flew, but glided. Now, at age forty, he fluttered and hopped like a bird with a lame wing. His feet ached more, and if he lifted something too quickly or in an improper manner, he felt a twinge in his back. After work, he sometimes found himself dozing off in his recliner. He accepted all this without rancor. Evidently some people believed they’d never grow old, but Thomas was not one of them.

His position at Oxendine’s Grocery wasn’t in jeopardy. He wasn’t going to get tossed aside and replaced by some young stud. Old Vernon Oxendine didn’t operate that way. He was a man from the old school. He had the quaint notion that an employer should have some sort of responsibility to his employees. If a person put in a good effort, their employment was guaranteed. If they stuck around for a while, they got a raise — a small raise, but a raise nonetheless. If they got sick, they could take a day or two off without worrying about getting fired, and Vernon’s portly and gregarious wife Yolanda would personally deliver a get-well card, its message written in her indecipherable cursive. Oxendine’s Grocery had yearly Christmas parties where the employees bought gifts for each other and Vernon dressed up as Santa Claus. He would pat his potbelly constantly, bellow out endless strings of “Ho ho ho,” and hold mistletoe over his head with a glint in his eye, hoping that one of the younger female employees would give him a peck on the cheek.

Yes, Vernon was what some people called a “character.” He told dirty jokes. He laughed often, without restraint. He cried whenever an old friend died, or when he watched a movie that showed heroism or outstanding displays of character. He kissed his wife in public, sloppily, and pinched her belly fat. He flirted with female employees and customers, and called the males “buddyrow.” His white hair was never combed, his face was pock-marked, and his wardrobe consisted of tan Dickies work pants and checkered shirts in bright colors. His handshake was bone-crushing, and he looked everyone in the eye.

In his youth, when he first started working for Vernon, Thomas didn’t realize there was anything wrong with being a “character.” He laughed at Vernon’s jokes and teased him about his slowly-growing potbelly, and Vernon said he was a foolish youngster who was not too long out of diapers. But one day Thomas’s father said something that confused him. His father was reading the Wall Street Journal as Thomas recounted one of Vernon’s dirty jokes. After the punchline was delivered, Frank Copeland flipped down the paper and grunted instead of laughing.

“Don’t try to emulate that man, Thomas,” he said, pointing his finger at his son for emphasis. “He doesn’t know how to comport himself.”

“Hunh?” It was not the most eloquent response, but it was all Thomas could muster at that moment.

“You’ll figure it out.”

So Thomas started to pay attention to his boss’s “comportment,” or rather how people responded to that “comportment.” When Vernon tried to talk to certain customers, the conversation was one-sided, with snickers and sidelong glances directed at Vernon. These customers were usually office workers from Up North or from Raleigh (as they reluctantly told Vernon), and they seemed surprised that this huckster was trying to talk to them. They were either pale and flabby or ultra-fit and bronzed. Certain employees, too, chuckled patronizingly when Vernon told the one about the two nuns bicycling down a cobblestone road. These employees (daintily pretty and mumbling girls, clean-cut mumbling boys, whose parents worked in offices) usually quit after a few months. Thomas began to pick up on the pattern, though the lesson he was learning wasn’t the one his father wanted him to learn.

He wondered if Vernon recognized this pattern as well. After more observation, he had no doubt that Vernon was well aware of how he was perceived — not that he let anyone’s opinion stop him. Certain sly comments (“What type of shoes are those? Bet they cost more than my pickup truck!”) were staples of Vernon’s inoffensively offensive manner, and he seemed to delight in making certain people uncomfortable — but not in such a way that someone could accuse him of being downright malicious.

Yes, Vernon could be sly, but only when the person deserved it. Thomas had been working at Oxendine’s Grocery for twenty-five years, and he’d always been treated fairly. He’d gotten numerous raises — a quarter here, fifty cents there — and he was now paid $10 an hour. He worked forty to forty-five hours a week, usually early morning to late afternoon, Wednesday to Sunday. Of course, he by no means earned an extravagant amount of money, but he was able to pay all his bills and live in a comfortable one-bedroom apartment. He even got a week’s paid vacation. It didn’t feel shameful to be a grocery store clerk at age forty. It felt right. He’d had a glimpse of the other side when he was young, and it had left him feeling cold and empty. He wouldn’t want to feel like that day in and day out, not for any amount of money.

The sun had sunk below the horizon. The wispy clouds were black, the western sky a thick cobalt. Thomas gazed out reverently. The faraway silhouette to the west had disappeared, and the older couple, after passing by him with nods, were now silhouettes themselves. Watching this sunset had stirred him perhaps more than it should — but then again, if one day such things passed him by without eliciting a response, he would know it was time to step away from the table and cash out his chips.

The afternoon had been pleasant, but it was much cooler now in the twilight; he could feel the chill on his ears and nose. It wasn’t ideal grilling weather, but grilling was what he was going to do. It was his birthday, after all, and he deserved a nice steak seared over a charcoal fire. He thought hungrily about the marinated ribeye sitting in his refrigerator as he walked back to the Circle parking lot. During summer, the tourist horde would throng to this spot on Atlantic Beach, and it would be a challenge to find an open parking space. Today there were only five cars in the entire area, all of them parked in the sandy lot closest to the beach. Some of them belonged to patrons of the low-slung Driftwood Tavern, a bar right on the edge of the sand which stayed open all year. The soft interior light and flickering big-screens beckoned, and Thomas could probably get a free drink or two if he mentioned it was his birthday, but he didn’t really feel like going in. The day had been too pure. He didn’t want to tarnish it by drinking expensive beer and eating greasy food while televisions radiated at him and half-drunk locals babbled about the weather and the bartender loomed over him every three minutes to ask how he was doing and if he needed anything else. No, a personally-cooked steak, a few beers bought at supermarket rates, and a movie in the solitude of his apartment would be a fine end to the day. If Reggie were here, he would insist on dropping in to the bar, but Reggie was at work, like he was most nights. Thomas regretted that their schedules prevented them from hanging out more, but at the same time he had a feeling that theirs was a friendship that wouldn’t last if they saw each other all the time.

There was a brand-new black Camaro parked two spaces away from him. The engine was running and he could hear a murmur of conversation, so he looked over as he unlocked his own Malibu. Under the glare of the boardwalk lights, he saw a pretty female face in the passenger seat, her hair straight and glossy, and a square-jawed, square-headed man on the driver’s side. He thought he saw a base sticker on the windshield. So he was a Marine, either from Camp Lejeune or Cherry Point, out with his darling to enjoy the twilight. They looked over at him briefly, then resumed their smiling chatter. It was a scene that invoked contradicting emotions: Thomas felt touched to see two smitten young people, but he expected that their marriage (and if they weren’t married, they would be, because Marines always got married) would end in disaster, since that’s how military marriages usually ended. Smiling happily at having avoided the marriage trap himself, Thomas got into his car and pulled away.

There was little traffic, and Oxendine’s Grocery, sitting there on the corner of Atlantic Beach’s big intersection, looked deserted. Thomas thought briefly about stopping in, but decided against it; it was his birthday, and his day off, after all.

Thomas drove towards Morehead City after only a quick stop at the intersection. Thank god they wouldn’t change the timing of the stoplights until summer was near. During the off-season, the lights changed quickly, so that no matter which direction you were going, a green light would soon blink on and let you get on your way. During summer, each light stayed green for minutes upon minutes, even after the bulk of the traffic was gone and there were only a few stragglers moving through the intersection. Thomas supposed they had studies showing how efficient the system was during the bustling summer months, but he’d never believe it was better, no matter how many numbers someone threw at him.

As he summited the bridge leading back to Morehead City, he looked down at Bogue Sound, black and still, at the glittering port to the east, and at the white glow to the west hovering above Morehead City’s strip mall/Big-Box/fast food area. It all looked pretty in the clear night, but if he had to pick the best sight, he would choose the waters of the sound. He would love to take a boat out there at night, and just run along slowly to the west, into the darkness, with the shore-lights shining on each side of him and the equally-bright and only slightly more mysterious stars twinkling overhead. He imagined it would feel much like his nighttime beach walks, where he seemed to be the only person in a darkened but still wondrous world.

He twisted around to look out at the black water as long as he could, not really worried about wrecking; there were no pedestrians and only one car behind him, far back at the crest of the bridge. Then he turned around and thought of home, and his soon-to-be-grilled steak.

Chapter Two

It had been at least a month since he’d grilled anything. White-gray ash still sat in the ash catch, the mound bringing to mind tombs and crematory urns, and the grill bars were covered with burnt gunk. Thomas poured the ash into an old coffee can he used for a repository, sneezing as some of it got in his nose. He cleaned the bars with a wire brush, dumped a heap of charcoal into the rounded bottom of the grill, doused the black nuggets with far too much lighter fluid, then ignited them with a foot-long match. A fireball roared up, and the heat blasted against Thomas agreeably, sending the cold scurrying.

As the fire got going, Thomas looked over to the one second-story apartment next to him. Its tenant rarely used his landing. Pine straw matted the concrete floor. A plastic lawn chair lay toppled and covered in mold. Inside, thick curtains kept any light from escaping save for a sliver in the gap between curtain and carpet. Thomas stood there pondering and sipping his beer. He couldn’t exactly recall when he’d last seen his neighbor outside on the landing. Had it been two months ago, or three? He remembered a thin man leaning against the metal railing, smoking a cigarette. He had a thick beard and deep-set eyes. Mid-20s. Jeans with holes at the knees and a black t-shirt two sizes too big. It had been early evening. He’d greeted Thomas with a quick grin when Thomas emerged from his own apartment, and Thomas had smiled back. No one said anything, and in a few minutes the neighbor had ground his cigarette butt into the concrete and returned inside. Thomas didn’t regret the silence. In the ten years he’d lived here, he’d only met a few of his fellow tenants. Most people moved in, then moved out in a year when their lease was up. Where they came from or where they went, Thomas couldn’t say. There were several long-termers (people living on disability and/or social security, single moms living on alimony and child support), but they kept to themselves even more than the transients, and seemed astonished and a little frightened when someone tried to talk to them. So Thomas kept to himself as well, only interacting with the two or three people who reliably returned a greeting.

The charcoal had turned gray, and an orange light smoldered between the pieces. Thomas got his marinated ribeye from the refrigerator, plopped it on the grill, and sighed contentedly as it sizzled and flames shot up to lick the meat. After a few minutes, he flipped it over, then went back inside for another beer.

While he was inside, his phone buzzed out “Tolling Bell” from the kitchen counter, which meant his parents were calling. It was early for them; they usually waited until he’d just gotten into bed before calling. It was as if they had hidden cameras in his apartment, and knew exactly when he was about to tuck himself in.

“Hello?”

“Heyyyyy there, birthday boy!” It was his mother, her bright, energetic voice shooting an explosion of confetti into the room. “The big Four-Oh is here, isn’t it? Oh my, what a number! That means we’re getting older, too, if we have a forty-year-old son!”

“Yes, it does.” Thomas couldn’t help grinning. Jean Copeland’s irrepressible good-nature could drive a person mad if they had to deal with it in person, but over the phone it was bearable.

“How are you, son?” It was his father’s gruff voice. Frank Copeland, despite being sixty-five and his son being forty, still thought he had to treat said son as a hopelessly wayward teenager. He didn’t chit-chat; he imparted wisdom. He didn’t ask light-hearted fatherly questions; he insinuated. His “How are you, son?” wasn’t a simple greeting; it was as loaded as a cannon.

For years, Frank Copeland had been certain his son would shoot himself in the head with the Remington twelve-gauge Frank had erroneously let Thomas take when he moved out of the house all those years ago. He could not see how Thomas could avoid doing this. His son worked at a grocery store, was paid a low wage, had no steady woman in his life, and had few friends. That Thomas could be a well-functioning adult seemed impossible. Frank Copeland knew how society treated its dregs, and he knew about suicide.

Frank had grown up in a “decaying country manor” with five other siblings, all of them female. Frank was the last child Carol Copeland gave birth to; Wallace Copeland wanted a boy, and when his wife finally gave him one, he patted her tenderly on the shoulder as she lay sweating and dazed on the hospital bed, and said, “Well, we can stop with the hanky-panky now.”

For the first few years of Frank’s existence, life was easy. His father was the clerk of court, a job that paid decently, and more importantly, had a certain prestige. Wallace Copeland had a joke or kind word for everyone in the courthouse, be they judge or janitor. He indulged his children, especially his youngest daughter, Sarah, who was a mischievous little sprite. (Frank, as should be expected, had hated her.) He even bought thirty acres of farmland, though he was no farmer. He just liked the idea of owning a piece of good earth — and who knows, maybe his children would want to stay in Carteret County when they grew up. If they did, he’d give them land to build their own homes on.

But then he lost his position in a contentious election. His opponent and the press accused him of “dereliction of duty.” There was talk that certain funds had been mismanaged, and that Wallace had been a little too friendly with a secretary. Wallace Copeland mustered fiery rhetoric, swearing to wreak vengeance on the “libelous blackguards” hounding him, and promising Carteret County voters that he was a man of integrity and grit, and that they’d do well to elect him for another term.

But after the votes were counted, Wallace Copeland, clerk of court for sixteen years, was booted out of office. The fire that Wallace had conjured was instantly extinguished. For the remainder of his days, Wallace Copeland did so little that one could accurately say he barely existed. He got up at dawn, shambled downstairs to his recliner, turned on the radio, and sat there stupefied. He did not get up except to use the bathroom or to eat meals. When it was eight or nine o’clock in the evening, he switched off the radio and shambled back upstairs to bed. It was a depression Gothic and irrevocable.

With Wallace immobile and atrophied, little money came into the household. Carol did all she could, taking on odd jobs and getting loans from her relatives, loans both parties knew would never be repaid. Eventually, however, the thirty acres of land had to be sold, as did many heirlooms. Frank became acquainted with poverty, and with its attendants, shame and humiliation. He vowed that, once he escaped this rotting house and this disgraceful family, he would never be poor again.

And then, when Frank was twenty years old and getting his start at McAllister’s Furniture, Wallace Copeland killed himself. Frank could vividly remember cleaning up the gore left behind by his father on a pretty spring afternoon. At first, his father’s suicide had confused him, and threatened to pull him down into the same depression that had cannibalized his father. But as that afternoon waned, he’d righted his ship. He would stay the course: he would be successful, and he’d never succumb to sloth and resignation as his father had. He’d made good on his vow: he’d become a successful businessman, and now lived in comfortable retirement in Florida. His mental state was lucid and strong.

His son, on the other hand…

Frank Copeland was sure (pretty sure) that Thomas was unhappy. Destitution and loneliness had to have taken their toll on him, even though no toll had ever been evident. Thomas seemed perfectly content. It was infuriating, it was a slap in the face. If poverty and the specter of suicide frightened Frank Copeland, if they had acted as black-robed riders driving him forward when he was tired and his mind was depleted, they should have that effect on everyone.

“I’m fine, Dad,” Thomas said cheerily. He’d been through enough of these talks to know most of what his father was thinking. “Took a day off work, had a nice long walk, and now I’m grilling a nice juicy steak.”

On the other end of the line, Frank ground his teeth. As he seemed unable or unwilling to speak at the moment, his wife gladly took over. Jean Copeland believed herself to be the world’s cure-all, even though the world emphatically did not want to be cured, and told her so often.

“Well, that sounds fan-tab-bu-lous!” she exclaimed. “A day off work for some rest, a nice walk for some exercise, and a steak for a nice supper! What more could one want on their birthday?”

“One could want many things,” Frank said gloomily.

Ignoring her husband, Jean continued: “Did you get our card? I mailed it on Monday, but you never know about the post office, sometimes it’s two days, sometimes three, and well, sometimes it’s even four or even five days before it arrives — you just never know!”

“Yes, I got the card and the check.” Before they’d moved to Florida, his parents had always taken him out to eat on his birthday and given him gifts (such as a “low intensity” shoehorn or a magnetic pocket diary) that he neither wanted nor needed. After they moved, they began sending him a $200 check as a gift, enclosed in a flowery card. Thomas much preferred the current arrangement.

“Good!” his mother chirruped. “What are you going to spend it on? Is there a… lady in your life for whom you might want to buy a little something?” To Jean Copeland, young women were exotic, manipulating, promiscuous, and overbearing. That she was of the same gender didn’t seem to matter, and she’d long ago rationalized away her own youthful adventures.

“No, there isn’t,” Thomas replied. It wasn’t a lie, because Kara was no lady.

“Well, you’ll find a nice girl eventually! There’s a Soul Mate out there for everyone.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Thomas said.

“So how’s that steak coming along?” Jean asked. “We’re sitting here jabbering away, and you’re trying to cook! I hope we’re not disturbing you.”

“Of course not.” Thomas had been flipping and prodding the steak throughout the entire conversation, and now it was cooked (medium-well, which was the only way to cook a steak) and sat oozing on a plate inside. “I can multitask. The steak’s done, anyway.”

“Well, then go eat it!” Jean exclaimed. “Can’t let it get cold, now can you? We’ll talk to you later. We might send an e-mail tonight, just to let you know what we’ve been up to.”

“Sounds great. Thanks for calling.”

“Oh, you’re welcome! Enjoy the rest of your birthday!”

“Happy Birthday, son,” Frank Copeland said, though few people had ever made “Happy Birthday” sound so dire. He wasn’t done, either. He cleared his throat, and Thomas knew his father was about to deliver a Frank Copeland Important Statement: “Take some time to reflect, if you haven’t already. I find that birthdays are a good time to do so — I would even venture to say it’s a necessity.”

Thomas had already reflected on his life, but hadn’t reached the conclusions his father no doubt had. He didn’t want to argue, though, so he simply said, “I will. Thanks, Dad.”

“Good-bye!” said his mother sweetly.

“Good-night,” muttered his father with finality, as if they’d never talk again on this plane.

After hanging up, Thomas stood tapping his cell phone, pondering. Finally, he tossed it onto the couch and sat down with his steak. It was still warm, and tasted delicious.

Before Thomas went to bed, he checked his e-mail. After deleting the spam, he saw he had two messages from actual people: one from his parents and one from Emily. He clicked on his parents’ first, and was, as always, amused by his mother’s formatting, or lack thereof. None of the words in her e-mail were capitalized. Jean Copeland, like many adults her age, thought that computers were malevolent, nearly-sentient machines hellbent on frustrating their users. Each time she used one, she believed she was one keystroke away from erasing its hard drive or from weakening the system somehow so those evil hackers could get in. Typing out the e-mail was frightening enough for her; she wasn’t going to tempt those zeros and ones inside the machine by using the shift key, or God forbid, the caps lock key. Unfortunately, this meant she couldn’t type exclamation marks, which was always a disappointment, but one she lived with.

hello there thomas,

it was nice talking to you today. dad and i are always glad to hear from you. it’s comforting to know you’re doing well and that your birthday was splendid.

things are fine down here in florida. i keep busy around the house and in the garden, and i’m still doing my volunteer work at the food pantry. they are working on a grant for a summer feeding program for kids, so i’m helping polish up that.

dad is as busy as ever. he’s taken up painting, which is exciting to me. he doesn’t want my help, though. you know how he his. you know how much i love painting, but he’s got to do it his way.

that’s about all. love you,

mom

Thomas replied with a few lines of happy nothingness (and used two exclamation marks, which would satisfy his mother) and then read his sister’s e-mail. This one, though shorter, had much more substance to it.

I’m sorry I got angry with you today. It wasn’t fair to you on your birthday. I’ve been going through some tough times recently and it’s affecting my mood.

I don’t know if I need to see a therapist or what.

Anyway, sorry again, and look forward to seeing you at Christmas.

Emily’s e-mails were usually written in a telegram-like style, as if she was too busy to type out complete sentences. As such, Thomas usually deleted them without a second thought. This one, however, was a heartfelt, pleading message that demanded a sympathetic, brotherly response.

He didn’t feel like sending one, not because he was callous, but because he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Emily went through “tough times” every few months. When Dennis was born, she had postpartum depression. When Dennis went off to school, the empty, silent house threatened to swallow her soul. When Dan forgot their anniversary (for the second or third time), she drove all the way to Asheville by herself and booked the most expensive hotel she could find: “I’ll celebrate our anniversary by my lonesome. I don’t need my forgetful husband.” When she got a nasty case of strep throat, she felt like death was close by. When a female candidate lost a local election, she raged against the “omnipotence of the patriarchy” and got absurdly drunk on poorly-made White Russians.

Thomas didn’t necessarily think his sister was a weakling to let these things thwart her. (Well, he did, but he pretended he didn’t). What really galled him was her response when others tried to help her. She would mention she was going through a “tough time,” but when help came rushing to her, as it seemed she wanted, she became angry: “I’m not a child, and everyone needs to understand that before I say or do something rash.” No one apparently understood that, so she said and did rash things. Dan’s hugs, pecking kisses, and carefully-delivered advice were ridiculed, her mother’s consoling e-mails triggered firestorms, her father’s terse commands were shot back at him with razor blades attached, and the friends who dared to commiserate with her were strung up with barbed wire. Needless to say, Thomas had learned to stay away from the carnage.

Still… Emily had never even considered the possibility of therapy before. What had happened to her?

He tossed the question aside. He had a buzz, it was his birthday, and he’d just watched Blade Runner on Netflix. He wasn’t going to deal with anyone else’s issues, even his sister’s.

He typed out a straightforward message:

Sorry you’re out of sorts. If it’s really that bad, then I think you should see a therapist, like you suggest. Good luck.

He hit the send button, then brushed his teeth and crawled into bed. Within minutes he was asleep and having fantastical dreams, like he always did after he’d been drinking.

Chapter Three

“So how was the Big B-Day?” Vernon asked as Thomas walked through the back door. He was sipping coffee and pacing around, looking at the mounds of stock piled up, his eye repeatedly drawn to a stack of canned green beans. One of his vendors had given him a deal on this product, and he’d bought five boxes. Customers, however, didn’t buy green beans in the quantities they should. Vernon knew this going in, but he could never resist a deal. Well, he reasoned, at least they won’t go bad anytime soon.

“It was good,” Thomas replied. He took off his jacket and hung it on the heavy oak coat stand which stood eternally by the door, like a silent sentinel. That same coat stand had been there when he’d started work here twenty-five years ago. “Had a nice, relaxing day.”

“And now it’s back to the daily grind, huh?”

“That’s the way it goes.”

“First your money, then your clothes,” Vernon replied, chuckling. Thomas chuckled as well; he should’ve known that phrase was coming. “What’s the plan today? The usual?”

“Yup. Start with dairy, go from there.”

“Alright. Would you mind cleaning the bathroom today? Ain’t been done in a while.”

Thomas glanced over at the closet-sized bathroom, trying — and failing — to suppress a frown. Oxendine’s Grocery didn’t have bathrooms for customers (and thank goodness for that, Thomas thought) but it did have one for employees. The toilet dated from the 1970s, and stopped up if you put more than two squares of toilet paper in it. The sink dated from a similar period; its once-white porcelain was now stained and chipped. There was no mirror, and more importantly, there was no ventilation; if someone “did their business” in the enclosed space, the smell stayed potent and compacted, and once the “business doer” opened the door, the noxious fumes rolled out in one big cloud, contaminating the back room.

It was an old, dirty thing, and Thomas hated cleaning it. Vernon had taped a note to the wall that said “We aim to please. You aim too, please,” but that didn’t increase the accuracy of the male employees’ penises. Coagulated urine dotted the toilet edge and floor. Occasionally, some even landed on the side of the sink or on the trash can. Errantly discharged hand soap was splattered everywhere. The floor tiles were rutted and cracked, so dirt, dead insects, and other unclean things found their way into the holes and gouges.

Yes, it was disgusting to clean, and once cleaned, it still only looked marginally better, and Vernon would inevitably ask him if he’d got around to cleaning the bathroom yet. A bit peeved, Thomas would say yes, he had, he’d cleaned every square inch of it, and Vernon would nod sheepishly and say yeah, OK, guess you can only do so much, what with it being old and beat up.

Turning back to his boss, Thomas nodded. “Yeah, I’ll get it done this afternoon.”

“Alright. ‘Preciate it.”

“Who worked last night?”

“Lemme see… Carly and Maureen at the registers, Eddie in the deli, Noah at clerk.”

Although Thomas was mainly concerned with who had worked as clerk (an all-purpose position tasked with stocking shelves, bagging groceries, retrieving shopping carts from the parking lot, cleaning, joking with ironic locals, and informing tourists that yes, it sometimes rained during people’s vacations, but there was nothing anyone could do about it), as that was ostensibly his position, he considered the other employees Vernon had listed.

Carly was a tall, buxom, permanently-tan sixteen-year-old. Her shorts were usually scandalously short, her pants usually scandalously tight, and she had a tendency to lean over her checkout counter whenever there was a slow moment, jutting out her firm, enticing behind. Vernon, though he loved looking at it, would tell her to stand back up “for propriety’s sake.” Carly would give him a “Who me? I’m as innocent as a saint” look as she straightened her long body, and Vernon would roll his eyes. Yes, she was a dangerous one, Thomas reflected. He tried to avoid conversation with her, and kept himself content with furtive glances at her body.

The other woman, Maureen, was the exact opposite: a tubby, bespectacled, matronly woman of sixty-eight years. She greeted every customer with the same effusive “How are you!” and sent them off with the same effusive “Have a good day!” The lonely set, the bachelors, widowers, or anti-socials, would go to her checkout line just to hear her undeviating kindness. For some, this was the bright part of their day, and the rest of the time they spent in brooding grayness.

The deli worker, Eddie, was a buffoon. Like Vernon, Eddie told dirty jokes, but unlike Vernon, he delivered them with manic energy and demanded that you laugh at them: “That was a good one, won’t it? Eh? Won’t it?” Despite his buffoonery, he was an excellent deli man. He would be blaring at Thomas while he was slicing meat, barely looking at what he was doing, and Thomas would apprehensively watch as his fingers flashed within millimeters of the whirling blade. Thomas always expected spurting blood and digits sliced to the bone, but Eddie never cut himself. Miraculously, he had a college degree (in mathematics, which was even more miraculous — though if a customer asked what a half-pound of $8.99 a pound ham cost, Eddie was stumped), and had moved back in with his parents while he “saved up some Benjamins.” (He claimed the job market for mathematics majors was poor.)

Noah was lazy. Ostensibly a clerk, he did little work during his shift. Since Carly had been working last night (as she usually was when Noah was on duty, since Vernon scheduled them together for some unfathomable reason), it meant he would be up front, bagging for her and staring at her ass. He was sixteen, in the same grade as Carly, and he gloated to his buddies that he got to stare at that juicy ass all night at work, while they only got a few glimpses during the school day. Carly, being the tease she was, talked to him in such a way that Noah firmly believed he had a chance with her. He just had to be persistent, and wait for her to dump her current boyfriend(s). That he was short and round, with greasy skin and mossy teeth, didn’t seem to register.

Thomas had hinted that Noah’s pining was futile, and Vernon had been blunt: “She’d sooner sleep with a flea-bitten dog than you.” But Noah just laughed his huh-huh-huh laugh: “Ya’ll just jealous. I’ll be gettin’ that one day.”

Noah’s laziness was a concern this morning. Nothing would have been done last night, so Thomas would have more stocking to do than normal. Luckily, it was winter, the slowest time of the year. Oxendine’s Grocery, thanks to its prime location in Atlantic Beach, made most of its money during the summer by snagging beach-goers before they went down the road to Food Lion, or across the Morehead City bridge to Lowes Foods, Harris Teeter, and the other Big Box stores. For the other three seasons, it was mostly a slow, steady procession of customers: beach fishermen, day-trippers, and a handful of locals.

“Well, with Noah as clerk last night, guess the shelves are pretty much empty,” Thomas groused.

“He’s a rascal, for sure,” Vernon said, nodding.

“So it’s about time for him to get fired?” Thomas replied. “He’s been here about a month, right?”

At Oxendine’s Grocery, new employees were usually given two months to “get into the flow.” Vernon thought it was a more than fair acclimation period. Thomas disagreed: he thought it should be far shorter. Give them two weeks, and if it’s obvious they’re worthless, boot them out. Vernon had been burned too many times by lackluster employees, in Thomas’s opinion: they stole merchandise, toked up in the bathroom, arrived late to work, insulted customers, or were simply inept dullards whom no one liked. But Vernon had his ways, and he wouldn’t change them.

Then again, maybe it was all for the best. Thomas thought back to the long-ago conversation they’d had when Thomas wanted to quit after his break-up with Danielle Shaw. Vernon had stuck with him back then, hadn’t he? Yes, Thomas had been — and still was — a good employee, not like Noah or some of the other idlers, but other bosses would have said “Godspeed, son” and sent him off with a handshake. Not Vernon.

“No, it’s not quite time,” Vernon said. “I’ll give him another month or so. But I agree, he’s not good quality. And I swear, if he stares at Carly’s derriere any harder, he’ll burn a hole through her britches.”

“Yeah, Carly is certainly a distraction,” Thomas said, though thinking about the past had made him waver on the justice of firing both Carly and Noah.

Vernon smiled mischievously, revealing he caught the hint. “You’d like to see her gone, too, I guess? Well, she does her work, and the men-folk love her — for obvious reasons. I swear, last night there were four people lined up at her register — three men and one woman; guess the woman was a lesbian — and little old Maureen only had one. You know, one of those hangdog folks that always shambles to her line. After she rang that one up, she hollered out ‘I can help the next person!’ and you shoulda seen the face on that last man in Carly’s line. It turned as sour as vinegar. He knew he should go to that other lane — it was open, and he only had a six pack of beer! But he wanted to be checked out by that hot young thing, not an old woman. You could see the struggle. If he said no, he’d look like a fool — not that he didn’t already! You don’t think it was obvious to everyone what was going on? Four in one line, zero in the other! Come on!”

He took a sip of coffee and chuckled. Thomas smiled, waiting for the story to continue.

“And finally — finally! — he dragged himself over to Maureen, and she was sweet as can be, like she always is. But this guy is pure gloom by this point. After she rung him up, he took one last look behind him, to that hot piece working the next register, then he walked outta the store so slow a snail would think he was slow-footed. It was like he’d been thrown outta paradise. And the same thing happened with the next guy! ‘I can help the next person!’ and he looks over at poor Maureen like he’s going to the guillotine.”

“And you’re standing there enjoying it all, aren’t you?”

“Damn right I am! I tell ya, it’s hard to keep a straight face when stuff like that goes on. I want to laugh and poke fun at those salivating boys, but I gotta be careful. Some of ’em may be sensitive.”

“Since when have you cared about peoples’ sensitivities?”

“Oh, I do, I do. I just have to be selective. Some people you can roast for hours, while others’ll collapse if you say word one to them.”

“That’s true, but sometimes I don’t think you can tell the difference,” Thomas said, just to be argumentative.

“Oh, I can always tell the difference,” Vernon said impishly.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“That’s right, I am the boss, and no one better forget it,” Vernon said sarcastically. His eyes suddenly lit up and he abruptly reached into his pocket. “Speaking of forgetting… let me give you this before I forget. It’s your B-Day present.” He pulled out a plain white envelope and handed it to Thomas.

“Thanks, Vernon,” Thomas said as he opened it. Inside was one of Yolanda’s hand-made cards. On the front, small white and black beads formed the Cape Lookout lighthouse, and blue watercolor paint depicted the ocean. Seagulls were made from small pieces of cloth, the dune grass from some sort of bright-green fiber. Thomas opened the card, and Yolanda’s script hollered from the inside, saying “Happy Birthday to our awesome employee!!!!” Other people would not have been able to decipher the message, but Thomas had been reading Yolanda’s handwriting for years, and he could understand all of it. A check was also nestled inside. Thomas flipped it over and read the amount: $200, the usual amount the Oxendines gave him on his birthday. On the memo field of the check, it said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” followed by three smiley faces.

“A nice gift, like always,” Thomas said, nodding sincerely. He folded the check and put it in his pocket, but he held the card gingerly. “Tell Yolanda I save all these cards.” It wasn’t a throwaway line to make the boss’s wife feel good; he really did have a shoebox filled with every card he’d gotten from her. He’d dated each one on the back with a black pen. Occasionally he rummaged through the box, and it was interesting to see how consistent Yolanda’s craftwork was. She didn’t experiment; she always crafted beach scenes using the same materials and technique.

“You tell us that every time you get one,” Vernon replied, “but I’ll tell her again. It’ll make her day.”

“Alright, boss,” Thomas said. “Guess it’s time to get to work.”

“Alright, buddyrow. Guess I need to get going too. There are invoices to curse and vendors to yell at — and about three more cups of coffee to drink.”

As expected, the dairy section looked shoddy. Gallons and quarts of milk sat back in their holes, as if they were hiding. Thomas shook his head; if Noah didn’t want to restock, he could’ve at least fronted what remained on the shelves. He took out a small pad and a pen, and jotted down what was needed. He really didn’t need to do this — his memory was fine — but he liked the exactness of a written list.

Once he’d made his list, he returned to the back room, grabbed a hand-truck, and entered the cold roar of the walk-in cooler. He rummaged around, stacked a few milk-filled plastic crates onto the hand-truck, and rolled the load out. When he arrived back at the dairy section, Eldridge, the head of the meat department (and, really, the only person who worked in the meat department, except when Vernon filled in sometimes), was nearby inspecting the meat packages sitting on the cool shelves.

“Morning, Eldridge,” Thomas said.

Eldridge looked up, and, as usual, Thomas was struck by how ugly the man was. His face was jowly and pale, and his lifeless yellow-white hair stuck to his head like a form-fitting helmet. A jiggling belly protruded over his belt, and his chubby hands were bloodless. He smoked a large number of cigarettes, and was thus possessed with a raspy, sometimes inscrutable smoker’s voice. But he was a damn good meat man. He kept the meat section well-stocked and spotless, and was deft with knife or band saw.

“Morning, Thomas,” he said gruffly. He’d said it the same way for the past decade. Other people, having listened to this greeting every morning for years, would have eventually taken offense, and demanded to know why Eldridge didn’t greet them with proper sunniness. Thomas, however, wasn’t bothered; Eldridge wasn’t a sunny person. He was one of those old-timers who drank and smoked, grumbled incessantly at the world’s idiocy, and ignored or belittled those he disliked — but who still took pride in his work, and could be counted on when the chips were down.

But sometimes pride in one’s work isn’t enough. Eldridge had worked in the meat department at Harris Teeter until the long-time store manager retired and a new one had come along, fresh from a term as assistant manager at another branch and ready to turn his new kingdom into “the best grocery store on the Crystal Coast.” This new manager, a clean-cut man is his mid-40s who drank protein shakes and biked in spandex, didn’t like Eldridge’s gruff demeanor or how he mocked company policies such as “The Five Keys to Freshness.” But mainly, he didn’t like how Eldridge said good morning to him. And so he’d fired him, saying he “wasn’t a team player” and that “his poor attitude drove customers away.” (This was true, in part: he drove the idiots and the arrogant away if they asked him stupid questions or tried to act superior.) Vernon heard about all of this through the grapevine, and hired Eldridge immediately. Vernon’s long-time meat man, an equally-gruff man named Braxton, had been grumbling for years that he wanted to retire, if only Vernon would find a decent replacement so the meat department wouldn’t go to hell when he left. And so Eldridge came on board, and the two gruff men talked gruffly to each other for a few months in what the Harris Teeter manager would’ve called a “transition period,” and then Braxton retired and Eldridge took over.

His morning greeting over, Eldridge returned to work. Stubby fingers played across plastic-sealed meat packages (Eldridge’s packages were the tightest and neatest Thomas had ever seen), checking dates and freshness. Thomas watched for a few seconds, then returned to his own task. In a few moments, he’d placed all the new stock on the shelves. He stacked the now basically weightless crates back onto the hand truck and rolled to the back. He went back into the cooler to look for some Nestle Cinnamon Hazelnut Coffee Creamer, even though he was almost certain they didn’t have any more in stock. Still, better to be sure.

After taking a piss break, he moved on to produce. The packaged mushrooms were low, and the tomatoes looked like they needed to be picked through. He loaded up the tank-like four-wheeled cart (nicknamed “Tank”) and went to work.

At noon, Thomas sat down with a ham and turkey sandwich from the deli cooler and a Kiwi Kornucopia smoothie. There was no true break room at Oxendine’s Grocery; instead, Thomas sat in the all-purpose “sink room,” at a metal table covered with old, now-obsolete scales, half-eaten bags of potato chips, sticker dispensers (“SALE,” “BUY ONE GET ONE,” “FRESH”), and out-of-date canned goods. Behind him were the three industrial sinks, the sink on the far right constantly dripping its one-drop-every-three-seconds drip. (The timing hadn’t changed in at least fourteen years.) Thomas sat on a tall wooden stool that had been carved with dozens of employee initials and hip in-jokes over the years, munching contentedly.

Across the way, Vernon was in his office, the door shut. He was likely napping; rare was the day when Vernon Oxendine made it to one o’clock without dozing off in his squeaking office chair. The rest did him good; he would emerge after thirty or forty-five minutes “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” as he would say. When Thomas first starting working at Oxendine’s, Vernon never napped, but then they were both much younger back then.

Cynthia, the deli worker today, bustled into the room with a cutting board and knife, which she dumped into one of the sinks. Thomas glanced at her as he sipped his smoothie: she was an earnest, wholesome girl of twenty-five with wide hips, thick arms, and a nice bust. She walked the fine line between “thick” and “fat,” and in the five years she’d worked here, Thomas had seen her veer from one category to the other several times.

When she’d first started, Thomas had appraised her surreptitiously, much like he was appraising her now. Even though he was much older, Thomas knew he was still a reasonably attractive man. It wasn’t bragging; it was objective fact. He was thin, with a few muscles in the right places, and his face was unwrinkled save for a few crow’s feet around his eyes. No gray had entered his thick brown hair. Someone once told him he had a face like a young Paul Newman — but another person had said he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio. Thomas couldn’t reconcile the differences. He thought his face looked like any somewhat handsome face: it was angular, with full lips, thick brown eyebrows, and deep brown eyes.

He’d dated and had sex with younger women before — but, he’d had to admit, not with a girl fifteen years younger than him. Nonetheless, he’d felt confident — mostly.

But after a few conversational sallies towards Cynthia, Thomas had abandoned any thought of courtship. Cynthia was too wholesome; it was like talking to a choir girl. He’d shivered when he imagined how their sex would be. He would be too afraid to be rough, lest she gasp in horror and start crying. Even their fights would be wholesome: he could imagine Cynthia sitting him down and producing a typed report and/or list, and then calmly reading him said report/list, and then asking in a calm, mediating voice, “I hope you understand how I feel now. What are we going to do to fix this situation? Let’s come up with rational solutions. Or, if you dispute my report/list, please tell me how I erred. OK, dear?”

Her laugh was also distressing. It was like something out of a Disney movie. Fairies or helpful spirits giggled like that, not human beings.

So they’d remained work friends — though the shirt Cynthia was wearing beneath her apron today did reveal ample cleavage—

“I didn’t know it was your birthday yesterday!” Cynthia said, jolting Thomas out of his fantasizing. “Vernon told me this morning, but I haven’t really gotten a chance to talk to you today…”

“Well, it was,” Thomas replied after hastily swallowing a bite of sandwich, and trying not to look at the aforementioned cleavage, though it was now less than three feet from his lips. “The Big Four-Oh.”

“Well, belated happy birthday! Did you do anything special?”

“I did things that were special to me,” Thomas said slowly, “but other people would probably think they’re boring.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I just did a few things,” he replied. “Took a walk on the beach. Drank a little.”

“Sounds like fun!” she replied. If he had said he’d spent the day counting the fibers in his carpet, her response would’ve likely been the same. “Forty years old! Well, you don’t look a day over thirty.”

“Well, thanks,” Thomas said, immensely pleased, though he knew it wasn’t true.

“Isn’t forty when people start having midlife crises?” Cynthia asked.

“Yes, uh, I guess this is the age when people start to question things.” He coughed unnecessarily. “But I feel great. I don’t really understand what the big deal is. I guess people want to have this perfect life, and when they look back and things don’t look perfect, they panic.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re able to look at things so maturely.” She paused, studying him shyly. “I… well, my parents want me to have this ‘perfect life,’ like you call it, so I know what you mean. They keep bugging me to ‘do something with my life,’ as if I’m not doing anything now! I live in a nice house with three other roomies, and we split everything, so it’s not like I’m drowning in bills. And I’m five minutes from the beach! And I’ve got a nice job! Oh, it burns me up sometimes!”

It wasn’t like Cynthia to unload like this. Thomas reluctantly commiserated: “Sounds like we’re in the same boat. My parents — well, one of them, and my sister, too — they say the same thing sometimes.”

“Really?” she asked, her eyes shining. “But… they don’t understand your position? How you feel? I mean, you’re pretty settled in here, right?”

“Naw, they don’t understand,” Thomas replied, though he was leery of the shining eyes. “They think being ‘settled in,’ as you put it, is a bad thing — in my situation, at least.”

“Exactly! My parents want me to be a carbon copy of them. And I’m not.”

“I think most parents are like that, though they always deny it. Just ignore them. You’re not living with them anymore, so you don’t have to put up with their crap.”

“I know. But still… it’s hard sometimes.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know what else to say.

“So… have you guys had fights or anything? Over the years? I haven’t really heard you talk about your family…”

No, this was getting too personal. Thomas shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t want to share any of that.”

“OK, well, sorry if I, you know, brought up bad memories…”

“Oh, it’s fine. You didn’t bring any up. They’re the ones who have bad memories, not me.”

“…I see.”

“Just keep your chin up,” Thomas said, though he immediately regretted uttering that banality. If someone had said it to him when he was gloomy or pissed off, he would’ve growled at them. He tried to come up with something better, and finally remembered one of Vernon’s aphorisms: “Don’t listen to the insects drone, as Vernon would say. They all end up kamikaze-ing into the nearest light anyway.”

Cynthia smiled. “That’s a good saying. He has a bunch of them, doesn’t he?”

“He certainly does.”

“Well, I’ll get back to work!” she said, though her enthusiasm seemed forced. “Enjoy the rest of your lunch.”

“I will, thanks.”

She shuffled out of the back room. Thomas could hear the plastic double-doors swish and creak as she pushed through them and returned to her deli post. He munched the rest of his sandwich thoughtfully.

“Did you clean the bathroom yet?”

“Yes,” Thomas replied with a glare. “I cleaned it top to bottom.”

“Huh,” Vernon said, grinning awkwardly. “I guess you can only do so much to it, it being old and decrepit like it is. One day I’ll get around to renovating it…”

“You’ve been saying that for at least fifteen years.”

“Oh, you don’t think I’m serious? Just you wait. It’ll be done before the year’s out — actually no, it’s already December. Next year then. I’ll get it so fixed up and shiny, the Queen of England wouldn’t mind setting her royal derriere down on our toilet.”

“Queen of England? If she saw how that bathroom looks now, she’d start another war with us just to rid the world of its awfulness.”

“Aw, stop it,” Vernon said, laughing. “You’re hurting my feelings.”

Around two o’clock, as he was stocking some box dinners, Thomas heard Rock Lewis’s foghorn voice blaring from the front of the store. He was likely picking on Peggy and flirting with Orianna, the two cashiers on duty today. Thomas grinned and waited for his own blaring treatment, which would happen sooner or later.

In a few seconds, Rock comically skidded to a halt at the end of the aisle. He squinted as he peered at the blurry male putting up cartons; Rock had poor vision, but almost never used the generic drug store-bought glasses that sat in his shirt pocket.

“Thomas Copeland!” he hollered, once he was certain it really was Thomas standing there. “What you up to?”

A native of Harker’s Island, Rock possessed the strange brogue of those hard-nosed people. He was a “high tider” (pronounced “hoi toider”) and proud of it. He enjoyed accosting dingbatters with his incomprehensible accent, and laughed when the dit-dots squirmed and tried to understand him.

He walked towards Thomas, a grizzled, sun-baked old man in a hole-filled t-shirt and faded jeans that were already worn out when Thomas was still a baby. He was as hairy and burly as a bear: white hair poked out from his ears, rose from his arms like a protective matting, and stuck out from his shirt collar as if it was angry at being held back by cotton fabric. His forearm muscles bulged, and his neck didn’t exist. Even though Rock was pushing seventy, Thomas wouldn’t want to tangle with him.

“I’m working, Rock,” Thomas replied. “What about you?”

“Work! I wish I had some. I’m poorer than a church mouse, ol’ boy. Tough toimes.”

“No boats being built?”

“I dunno. Ain’t done that in some toime.”

Rock — so nicknamed because of his powerful physique, which in his youth had been truly intimidating — was one of the area’s ne’er-do-wells. His father had been a commercial fisherman, but Rock had never really gotten into that — you had to get up too early, and if you got in the meat you had to bust your ass, because fish were fickle, and these might be the only ones you’d catch all week. After his parents had booted him out of the house after high school (an injustice he’d never forgiven; all he’d done was bring a girl or two home for some bed-shaking fun, which as a grown man was his right) he’d joined a painting crew. He didn’t like that either; it was so goddamn boring, just swiping a brush or roller back and forth hour after hour. No wonder most painters were drunks or drug addicts. This cycle had continued for decades: Rock would find a job, tire of it within six months, and then quit and try out a whole new industry. Most recently, he’d been working with a boat builder over on the Island, but he’d reached his six month limit in November, and so he’d quit.

“Well, you gotta do something,” Thomas said in a comically scolding tone. “Man is made to work, haven’t you heard that?”

“I’ve heard it all my life, and every toime it makes me laugh. I’ll survive. Always have. I don’t need much.”

This was true. Rock had been living in a camper shell attached to his ancient but seemingly invincible Ford pickup for decades. When he was young, he’d tried living in various semi-derelict cottages tucked away on the area’s marshy and mosquito-infested back roads, but the thing about those places was the landlords wanted their rent on time. Next he’d tried cramming into slightly-better accommodations with roommates so the rent would be split four or five ways, but the roommates, the damn killjoys, wanted to sleep at least a few hours each night, while Rock wanted to stay up until dawn drinking and playing cards. He’d finally abandoned conventional living and bought the camper shell, which he loved more than anything on earth. Yes, it got cold in winter and hot in summer, but during spring and fall it was a snug piece of heaven.

He’d been coming into Oxendine’s for decades because he could talk to whoever he wanted for as long and as loudly as he wanted. The bigger stores were always so damn busy, and the employees just hustled you in and out with plastic courtesy. He wanted to talk to people — or more accurately, talk at people.

“Say, whaddaya know about that pale girl up front?” Rock asked. “She new?”

“Orianna?”

“Hell, I don’t know her name. I said the pale girl up front, and there’s only one up thar that fits that description. Peggy may be pale, but she ain’t a girl — fact, she’s never been a girl. Trust me, I knew her growin’ up. I could tell you some stories.”

“Yeah, I know who you mean. Her name’s Orianna, like I said, and she is pretty new here.”

“Orianna? That’s a new one on me. Mean anything?”

“I don’t know. Never asked.”

“Well, I’ll ask. I ain’t scare’t.”

“If you’re scare’t, say you’re scare’t.”

“That’s what they say, and like I said, I ain’t scare’t.”

“So, about you needing a job… what about working here?”

“Thomas, you ask me that ev’ry toime, and I tell you no ev’ry toime. Vernon ain’t gonna hire me. He knows better.”

“Vernon’s been known to hire some hopeless cases like yourself.”

“Haw! You say that ev’ry toime too. Naw, I wouldn’t want to work here and then foul everything up and have ya’ll mad at me. This is one of the few places left where people act neighborly. Everywhere else is gettin’ all reserved — feels like you’re in church or some goddamn place like it. It’s right sad.”

“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. And the next time you come in here out of work, I’ll try again.”

“You’re a good kid, you know that? Good as gold. Wish I could stick things out like you have. Why, you were thin as a reed, still goin’ through puberty, voice all squawky and squeally, when you first started working here. And now look at ya!”

“Yeah, I’ve been here twenty-five years. Doesn’t feel like it though.”

“Shit, twenty-five days at some piece-o’-shit job drives me up the wall. You’ve got the fortitude, Thomas. Maybe when old Vernon keels over, you’ll get the store, hunh?”

Thomas would have been lying if he said that scenario had never occurred to him. The Oxendines were childless — Yolanda was evidently infertile — and, to his knowledge, neither Vernon nor Yolanda had any close relatives who cared about the store. Sure, Vernon might sell the store to the highest bidder when he was ready to retire, but it wasn’t outlandish to think Thomas might have a chance at getting it; after all, Vernon had gotten the store from Jack Caldwell, back when it was the Corner Grocery. Thomas knew most of that story.

Jack Caldwell had been married and divorced twice, and had a total of three children. He despised both his ex-wives (“Lazy, gold-digging whores who would steal the coins from a dead man’s eyes”) and all of his kids (“Lazy, good-for-nothing rabble-rousers who want to burn this fine country to the ground.”) He hadn’t got shot at by the Japs in Okinawa so that his own sons could torch American flags and insult Lyndon Johnson, who was only trying to keep the damn Reds from taking over all of Asia. He vowed that none of them would get his grocery store — which was fine by everyone, since his ex-wives had married richer and more tractable men, and his sons, after the requisite campus radicalism of the age, had all moved on to well-paying white-collar careers.

Who would get the store, though? Jack Caldwell didn’t want to sell to just anyone. Some jackass might just raze down his beloved store the first moment they got and build something tacky — and likely more profitable and easier to run. He wanted to sell to someone who “got it,” preferably one of his employees.

Vernon Oxendine, his long-time employee, got it. Yes, Jack Caldwell had employees who’d worked longer for him, but they were either shiftless sumbitches who he kept on the payroll out of charity; ball-breaking women who, riding feminism’s second wave, had come to believe themselves infallible; or ghost-like old men who, realizing their inadequacies, mumbled through the day and tried not to bother anyone.

Vernon had none of these flaws. He was a good man, an honest man, a garrulous man, and like Jack Caldwell, he believed in a day’s work for a day’s pay. Jack called Vernon into the office one day and told him what he was thinking. After telling his boss to stop pulling his leg, Vernon finally realized this was serious talk, and he wept uncontrollably. This slightly embarrassed Jack, but then he found himself sniffling too, so he said to hell with it and opened the floodgates.

Several years later, when Jack finally decided to retire, the store was sold to Vernon at a price jealously speculated upon by those who knew about the sale. Vernon did change the name to Oxendine’s Grocery, “since I’ve always wanted to shout out my name from a glowing sign,” but other than that, he kept things about like they’d always been.

Yes, history could repeat itself — but Vernon had never mentioned anything about giving him Oxendine’s Grocery, and so Thomas had pushed the idea into the back of his mind.

“Yeah,” Thomas replied, “maybe so.”

“Maybe I’ll put in a good word for ya. Actually, scratch that, my word ain’t worth two cents. But I’ll be rootin’ for ya, if he does up and die.”

“Thanks, Rock. Glad you’re in my corner.”

“I’m in everybody’s corner, provided they ain’t a stuck-up peckerhead. Speaking of, how’s your old man doing?”

Thomas laughed, as he always did when Rock lazily denigrated his father. There was history here. Years ago, Rock had worked for Frank Copeland at Copeland Furniture, but he hadn’t lasted long; turns out furniture was pretty heavy, and people got angry if you gouged their walls while carrying a bed frame or dining table into their home. After Rock had knocked over someone’s “priceless” glass angel sculpture in his hurry to get a couch where it was supposed to be and out of his damn hands, Frank had summoned Rock into his office, called him “shiftless, sorry, and scungy,” and told him never to come into his store again.

Rock had been impressed with the alliteration (though he would later call it “those repeating ‘ess’ sounds”), but his rebuttal was even more scathing: “You know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Your paw was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and so are you. I seen how you shave off a quarter hour here and there from our wages, and how you cut our lunch breaks short after you told us when we was hired that we’d have thirty minutes to eat. Bet if I could take a look at them books I’d find a lot more shenanigans. Well, you can fire me, sure, cuz I was gonna quit anyway.” He got up to leave as Frank Copeland clenched his desk and ground his teeth. As Rock opened the office door, he turned and said one last thing: “I hope you get yourself right before you get too much older. Remember what happened to your thievin’ old man. Wasted away to nothing, then shot hisself in the head. Turr’ble end. Wouldn’t want that to happen to you. Take care now.”

Frank Copeland very much wanted to fight this impertinent swine, but he was scared of a drubbing. Though he preferred laziness, Rock was still prodigiously strong; if Frank tried to fight him, Rock would likely become un-lazy in a hurry.

So he let Rock leave, and then sat in his office the rest of the day sipping from the Jack Daniels bottle he kept in a desk drawer for times such as these.

Rock, who was as gregarious and forgiving as a dog, had long ago erased any enmity for Frank Copeland from his heart. He still thought Frank was a stuck-up peckerhead, but that was just telling it like it was. Frank, however, had never forgotten Rock’s slight. Yes, he’d dealt with disgruntled employees on many occasions, but none had had the temerity to bring up his dark family history. Even now, all these years later, he still felt the need to drive up to North Carolina, find Rock Lewis, and tell him exactly where he could get off.

“He’s fine, Rock,” Thomas replied. “He keeps himself busy.”

“I believe it. Stuck-up peckerhead or not, he was a go-getter. Why, he’d be at the store before anyone else’d get there, and then he’d be there after we all left.”

“I remember.”

“Course ya do! What am I saying? You know he was — and is, I reckon — tough as shoe leather.”

“He’s one of a kind.”

“Sure is. Now you’ve got me remembering — ah, I’ll leave you to it. You’ve listened to this old codger rant enough. I’m-a go grab some Beanie Weenies and head out. Purdy day out there. Might go out on the beach and just set there awhile. Take care, Thomas.”

“You too, Rock.”

Rock ambled away, humming to himself. Thomas resumed stocking, shaking his head at the crazy old coot, and thinking about his father. No, you couldn’t find two people who were as different as those two were. He wondered why on earth his father had even hired Rock. He’d surely known of his reputation. When asked about it, Frank would just say “I don’t want to talk about that man,” which left Thomas to toss out various conjectures. Perhaps he’d owed someone a favor, though Frank Copeland hated owing anyone anything. Or, like Vernon, he may have decided to give Rock a chance to see if he was finally ready to make something of himself. Frank Copeland did give people chances from time to time, but unlike Vernon, he didn’t have the temperament to put up with poor workers. His altruism would soon turn to icy rage, and the person would be quickly fired.

A few minutes later, Thomas heard Rock up front, blaring at someone again. After a moment, he reappeared at the end of the aisle, a plastic bag in hand, likely filled with Beanie Weenies, and whistled to get Thomas’s attention.

“Says her name means golden dawn!” Rock yelled.

“Huh,” Thomas said. “That’s interesting.”

“It’s interesting in that it don’t fit. She’s about as golden as a fish’s belly, and she ain’t no dawn, not that I can see. She’s cool as a cucumber.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty quiet.”

“Orianna — huh. Names are funny, ya know. I’m called Rock, but my momma and daddy named me William. I like Rock, it sounds real. William is the name of that dumbass prince over in Merrie Olde England. And there’s you, with Thomas. Not Tom or Tommy. Thomas.”

“That’s just what I prefer, Rock.”

“I know. It fits you. Makes you sound like the upright man you are. Alright, enough jibber-jabbering! I’m gone!”

“Later, William,” Thomas replied, grinning. “Enjoy yourself out there.”

“Always do, Tommy, always do!”

Later in the afternoon, Thomas moved to the beer aisle and starting fronting Heinekens and Mike’s Hard Lemonades. For such a small store, Oxendine’s had a good selection of beer. Of course there were the old standards made by Anheuser-Busch and Miller, but the microbreweries were also well represented: six-packs from the Weeping Radish brewery up the coast, bottles from Highland Brewing Company all the way from the mountains. There were some strange varieties, beers that involved blueberries and pretzels, which bamboozled Thomas. It was too much flavor for him; he liked the simple taste of a Bud Light.

He worked his way through the coolers, moving towards the front of the store. He wanted to talk to Orianna before he left for the day. She was fairly new to Oxendine’s, and he wanted to get to know her better.

Ori was quiet and self-contained, confident in an unobtrusive way. She was rail-thin, with smooth ivory skin and short ash-blonde hair. She usually wore a bandanna as headgear, and her right arm from elbow to shoulder was covered in tattoos. Based on appearance, it would be easy to classify her as a hippie, an “alternative” girl, or whatever terms were currently en vogue, except she claimed not to use drugs and quietly ridiculed “those counter-culture people who think they’ve got life all figured out.”

The phrases she used (“We have a tyranny of the minority more than a tyranny of the majority”) and the statistics she delivered (“The United States has 4 percent of the world’s population, but we hold 22 percent of the world’s prisoners”) showed a certain intelligence, an intelligence unsullied by higher education. Some of the college graduates who worked or had worked at Oxendine’s (Eddie being the prime example) were dumb as posts. Orianna, Thomas suspected, would run circles around her peers if she ever made it to a university — that is, if the cretin professors didn’t try to harness her.

He wanted to ask Orianna about Cynthia’s “issues,” mainly as a stepping stone to a more personal conversation. She was the closest thing Cynthia had to a confidant at the store (mainly, Thomas believed, because they were close in age, since their personalities differed quite sharply), so it made sense to try out this strategy. However, he didn’t want to get himself dragged into a pity party. If Cynthia really needed help or a shoulder to cry on, she should get it — just not from him. He’d have to tread carefully, and not give Orianna reason to believe he was willing to be Cynthia’s psychiatrist.

He was at the last cooler. He slid a few six-packs to the front and then poked his head around the corner. No one was checking out at the moment. Ori was standing by her register, arms crossed, looking out into the parking lot. He walked over, hands in pockets.

“Hey, Ori,” he said. “Got a moment?”

She turned towards him, arms still crossed. As always, he was struck by the large tattoo on her arm. A flame-spewing dragon curled through three large, blue orchids (Ori said they symbolized rarity), and a foaming wave, similar in style to the ancient print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, caressed her bicep. Several words in several languages spoke from her flesh. Thomas only knew the English one: “Verity.” He’d never asked about the others.

Her bandanna today was white with stylized blue flames racing across the fabric. Even though its kinetic design didn’t mesh with her still demeanor, Thomas still thought it looked attractive. There was something about a bandanna that made a woman look spunky and earthy.

“Yeah,” she replied softly, and a bit warily, in Thomas’s opinion. “What’s up?”

“I had an… interesting conversation with Cynthia earlier. She seems a little out of sorts. Know what’s going on with her?”

Ori nodded. “I know a bit. I know she’s under a lot of pressure. Her parents are acting despotic, and her roommates seem to have switched to retard-partier mode.”

“Hunh. I thought she liked her roomies — thought they were nice and quiet.”

“They were, but then they became involved with guys who weren’t nice and quiet.”

“I see. Thank god I live alone.”

“I second that. Well, technically I’m still living above my parents’ garage, but I’m pretty much by myself.” She said this a bit sheepishly, as most twenty-somethings do when they admit they’re living with their parents. “I think Cynthia’s thinking of moving out. Her parents know this, and it sounds like they want her to… well, upgrade herself if she does. You know, move away from this backwater, go to college, etcetera.”

“Damn. Talk about being supportive… they’re like hyenas going after the weakest member of the pack.”

“Yeah, pretty much — and nice analogy, by the way.”

“Thanks. I have the erudition.”

Ori smiled faintly. It was like a patch of moonlight poking briefly through the clouds. Thomas felt himself grinning cheekily.

“Another nice witticism, Mr. Copeland,” she said. “By the by, did I hear it was your birthday today?”

Nice segue, Thomas thought thankfully. It got them safely away from Cynthia’s problems.

“No, it was yesterday, actually,” Thomas replied.

“My fault. I must’ve misheard.” Another faint smile flickered onto her thin face. “You’re forty, I was told.”

“Yes, I am. And please don’t ask me if I’m going to have a midlife crisis.”

“Uh, OK?” she replied, momentarily puzzled. Then she figured out his meaning and shook her head. “Have a lot of people been asking you that?”

“Well, not a lot. A few.”

“Don’t worry about it. People have to say something, so it might as well be something that’s been said a billion times before.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Still — not very comforting to be asked.”

“Nah, I bet not.” She paused, then put on a different sort of grin. It wasn’t at all faint; it was full and toothy, with a large portion of mischief. “But if that question does make you uncomfortable…”

“Don’t even start.”

“…then maybe…”

“Quit it.”

“…you are having a midlife crisis. After all, a man of sound mind would let that question just roll off of him, wouldn’t he? So…”

But Thomas was back-peddling and holding up his hands.

“Nope, I’ve had enough. Nice chatting with you.”

“That’s right, run from your problems,” she said, laughing. The laugh was thick, with each “hah” being laughed separately, but it was still somehow endearing — mainly, Thomas supposed, because it was so rare to hear her laugh.

At the other register, Peggy had been watching this exchange. She was an older woman, but she had none of Maureen’s indiscriminate goodwill. She was censorious and frigid: from her tall frame, she sent her gaze sweeping through the store like a lighthouse-beam. Thomas caught her eye as he retreated, and he knew that this little episode would enter into the dispatches of gossip she delivered to the lady-friends she went to church with: “Outrageous flirtation, and him seventeen years older than her! Why, if that isn’t robbing the cradle, I don’t know what is.” Thomas frowned at her. Why was she up here, anyway? There were few customers, so she should’ve been doing something else, like cleaning some shelves or sweeping the front porch. Peggy didn’t flinch under Thomas’s frown, not one bit, and her return frown could’ve withered a small section of rainforest. Thomas looked back to Ori, hoping her smile would counteract Peggy’s frown, but Ori had a customer, and she was ringing up unsalted peanuts and lemon pepper spice.

Chapter Four

It had been an eventful day by Oxendine’s winter season standards. Thomas didn’t know what had been more interesting: the travails of normally-sunny Cynthia or the cool warmth of Orianna.

Thinking about these two women inevitably led him to consider another woman in his life. As he stood on the boardwalk in the evening, watching the stars twinkle, he thought about Kara, his friend-with-benefits.

Actually, even friend-with-benefits was a misnomer. They now saw each other so rarely that they were barely acquaintances-with-benefits. Thomas counted off days: thirteen… no, fourteen days since they’d last seen each other. As usual, Kara had been sullen and malleable. She was like a large electronic doll that spat out flat, rote phrases: “Kiss me.” “Hug me.” “That was nice.” It almost made Thomas shudder to think about their sexual encounters. Almost. He could still get off, and he supposed she did too, though he didn’t know for certain.

He was irritated that she hadn’t gotten up with him on his birthday, but then he couldn’t remember if she even knew when his birthday was. If she did, she’d probably conveniently forgotten the date.

Their “relationship” began a few months ago. Thomas had been letting off some steam at a bar called Sharkey’s in downtown Morehead City. He rarely went to bars, but his sister had said something that riled him during a rare phone call — something about Dan forgetting their anniversary, and how Thomas was somehow also at fault for her husband’s forgetfulness — so he thought he’d get drunk and pick up a chick. He usually failed whenever he tried this, but like men everywhere, he knew that this time would be different. He ordered a burger, and then once he’d scarfed that down, he began chugging draft beer in earnest. He scanned the dark-wood interior, but there were few women available. A group of girls dressed in denim skirts and flowing pastel-colored dresses were sitting at a booth, but their giggles and screeching voices terrified him. He could handle one girl by herself, but four of them together would rip him apart if he, a 39-year-old man, approached. At another booth, two chunky women chatted quietly and looked about meekly as they sipped fruity cocktails, well aware that they were the ugliest women there, and the last choices for most men.

There was one possibility at the bar. She was a few pounds overweight, likely in her late 30s or early 40s. Her lipstick was fire-engine red (if the fire-engine had been decommissioned and left out in the weather), and she hadn’t stinted on the rouge, mascara, or eye shadow (it was caked onto her face like some tribal mask). Her best feature was her hair: it was jet-black and lustrous (though probably dyed), and gleamed in the bar’s light. Running his hands through it would be worth the price of admission. (Maybe.)

She looked around the bar, affecting boredom, her eyes never settling on anyone in particular. Whenever the bartender, a hatchet-faced shaggy-haired fellow, walked over to ask if she needed anything, she brushed him off with an icy shake of the head and a quick motion of her hand. She was every bit the former diva who didn’t realize age and chubbiness had destroyed her magnificence.

Nonetheless, Thomas was interested. Yes, she was likely a bitch, but he need not deal with her for more than one night. He just needed to build up his liquid courage a bit more, so he’d be primed when he approached her.

Before he’d accomplished this, however, another man had appeared from somewhere (he could no longer keep track of everyone in the bar; he was feeling a little wobbly-headed, but the liquid courage was apparently late in arriving) and sat down next to her. As Thomas watched, this balding-but-somewhat-muscular man went to work. He was likely one of those middle-aged fitness fanatics, the kind of person who latched onto popular exercise regimens and diets (CrossFit and the paleo diet were in now) with the tenacity of a snapping turtle.

A smiling remark. A light touch on the arm. A laugh too loud and hearty. The woman sat there laconically, smiling Sphinx-like, coolly appraising. Apparently this man was not a loser, as she didn’t send him on his way — at least, not while Thomas was there, because, disgusted and seeing no other options for female intimacy, he had paid up and stormed to the exit.

Outside, it was dark and cool. The burst of fresh, chill air cleared his head a little. Thomas zipped up his jacket, stuffed his hands in its pockets, and shuffled down the sidewalk. Morehead City’s nightlife was in full swing, which meant there were three other people visible. Overhead, the absurdly numerous six stoplights dangling above the half-mile of Morehead City’s downtown area showed green, and the train track running through the middle of the street headed with certainty to the port; it looked like an airport runway trailing off into the distance. A diesel truck rumbled past, its engine blatting out in a way its owner must have thought manly.

Thomas turned a corner, to the small lot where he’d parked. It was by the Amy Kirkpatrick Slade Park, which as far as Thomas could tell, was nothing more than a quarter-acre of grass ringed by crepe myrtles. As he fumbled with his keys, he saw Kara for the first time.

It was not the most captivating sight, and his beer goggles were firmly in place. She was kneeling by a black Honda Civic, lug wrench in hand, loosening lug nuts from the flat rear passenger tire. He saw a large, canyon-like buttcrack and a lower-back tattoo. (He’d later learn it was a red rose surrounded by thorns, because, as Kara put it, “I’m sweet as a rose, but thorny too, if you piss me off.”) Her upper arms, covered in a long-sleeved shirt, looked meaty. As he got closer, he thought he saw sweat on her neck and hair, despite the coolness. She looked to be in her mid-30s, though she would later claim to only be thirty-one. (Thomas, disbelieving this, had snuck a look at her driver’s license one day, and confirmed that she was indeed thirty-five.)

Thomas cleared his throat. He’d waited too long to approach the raven-haired woman in the bar, but this time would be different. There was no one else around, so that meant no competition, and no one who could snicker at him if he failed.

“Flat tire?” he asked.

Kara pivoted on a foot and looked up at him. The lug wrench was held mid-twist, like a clock that had stopped.

“Yes,” she replied blandly. “I must’ve run over a nail or something.”

Her face was slightly better. It was a bit too round and the nose was too stubby, but her skin was smooth and her thick lipstick-smothered lips would fit nicely around his penis.

“Need any help?” he asked. “I’m parked right here.”

“No, I think I got it.”

“Oh, come on, let me feel manly.”

Slowly she stood up. As she did so, her shirt rolled up a bit, revealing some chub. Thomas thought about telling her that she had a spare tire right around her midsection, so there was no need to use the donut that was lying on the ground, but he dismissed the thought as the wildly inappropriate silliness of a half-drunk man. She may have caught him looking at her belly, though, as she quickly pulled down her shirt and tucked some of it into her sweat pants.

“OK, if you really want to,” she said, handing him the lug wrench.

Thomas crouched down and inspected her handiwork. She’d loosened all the lug nuts save one. Disappointed, he went to work slowly, hoping to extend his period of usefulness. The girl crouched down beside him, getting her scissor jack into place.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Kara.”

He waited, but she didn’t ask for his.

Sharply: “I’m Thomas.”

Dully: “Nice to meet you.”

She said nothing more.

Who did this bitch think she was? What kind of conversation was this? He’d offered to help her, after all. She was like the girl in the bar: out of shape and no longer sexy, but still maintaining an aura of haughtiness and entitlement. Finished with the last lug nut, he angrily let the lug wrench drop, and was satisfied with the clatter it made when it hit the pavement.

As Kara started jacking up her Civic, though, Thomas tried to send some rational thoughts through the beery sloshing of his mind. He was the one who’d inserted himself into this situation, even though she’d said she didn’t need help. She was no damsel in distress. She was perfectly capable of changing a tire — though he noticed it was taking her forever to jack up her car. He needed to stop being a goddamn over-sensitive jackass and walk away.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Thomas said as evenly as he could. “Looks like you’ve got it handled.”

Kara stopped turning the jack and wiped some sweat from her forehead.

“You don’t have to leave,” she replied, the barest drop of emotion in her voice. “I’m glad for the help. Really. I’ve just got a lot on my plate, so I’m kinda exhausted and not feeling very talkative.”

Thomas stopped mid-step, torn between staying and leaving. It was usually like this: he approached a girl, and she recoiled — but if he then retreated, as it seemed the girl wanted him to do, all of a sudden she didn’t want him to leave. Thomas sighed and looked up at the dark sky. The lights of the town hid the stars, but the crescent moon was glowing softly. Thomas stared at it, but it had no answers for him, nor had it cast a romantic light on this encounter.

“What’s all on your plate?” he asked with trepidation, fearing he’d be assailed with a tale of incomparable woe.

“Well, I’ve got work, I’ve gotta take care of my kid, and now I’ve gotta deal with this,” she said, pointing at the flat tire.

Thomas locked on to the word “kid.” Either this woman was already in a relationship, or she was a single mom. He was fairly certain it was the latter. He steered clear of single moms: they were more infantile than the children they tried to raise, more self-dramatizing than the most narcissistic Hollywood starlet, more clueless than the most sheltered agoraphobe. And he was not going to be a surrogate father or a stepdad. Even if he liked children, he wouldn’t become these things. But, as he didn’t like children, it made the decision even easier. Children were illogical and manic, and they grew up to be spiteful, arrogant teenagers — and then they became adults and left the nest, leaving an unfillable vacuum in their wake.

So he should have taken a bow and made his exit, but he’d apparently used up all his rational thoughts for the evening. The beer sloshed downwards, flooding the chambers that held his personal code, and submerging the humiliating memories of certain women that he would, if sober, have gripped tightly to dissuade him from acting foolish.

“Sounds rough,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. “Are you married, or…?”

“No, I’m a single mom.” She made it sound like the most important and righteous thing in the world. “Trying to raise my little boy. He’s my world, but he’s a handful, too.”

“The father…?”

“He’s a Marine. We were married a few years, but it didn’t work out.”

Of course. Why hadn’t he considered that sooner? This area was a wasteland of shattered relationships. There was Camp Lejeune over in Jacksonville, and the air station up at Cherry Point, both belonging to the Marines, the most idiotic branch of the military. Between these two bases, there were enough gullible hayseeds for pretty much every woman who wanted one. Being hayseeds, they didn’t know how to handle themselves when money (and its camp followers, women) came their way. After they got pulled into marriage and had a few kids, the wife invariably decided to leave them, to their bafflement. Thomas could easily recall the empty machismo certain Marines had spewed as they tried to convince others that they were the ones who’d actually done the dumping. It was pathetic, like a child trying to convince his parents that he’d beaten up the school bully, when his bloody nose and blackened eye clearly told a different tale.

The rational voice made one last gasp, telling Thomas to run away and save himself, but the chambers were flooded, and the voice was soon drowned.

“Where’s your kid now?”

“He’s at my mom’s. I came down here for some me time. Nothing too special, just had a few beers over at the Peppy Pepperoni.”

“Love their subs.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Silence. Kara’s car remained tilted sideways, the flat tire sitting a few inches off the ground. The lug wrench lay there. A cloud stumbled in front of the moon.

“Well, what are you doing the rest of the evening, Kara?” Thomas finally asked. “Because I’d love to spend it with you.”

He was surprised how directly and modestly he’d said those sentences. He wasn’t grinning mischievously or braying like an alpha male pick-up artist. He’d spoken like a man of integrity and chivalry. (Then again, the beer could have been inflating his self-estimation.)

It did have an effect on Kara, however, so maybe he really had done something awesome. She smiled for the first time, and looked very, very pleased. But, like a typical woman, she wasn’t going to give in that easily.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Maybe I should head home. And I’ve just met you, so…”

“Oh, come on. Don’t play hard to get. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. “I’ve had some bad relationships lately — you know? I have to be careful.”

“You won’t have one with me,” Thomas said, in what would turn out to be one of the least-prescient sentences he’d ever utter.

“Well — if you promise to be a gentleman.”

“I promise.”

“OK, you’ve convinced me,” she smiled. “What do you want to do?”

It was the last smile he’d get for some time.

Now Thomas fiddled with his phone, wondering if he should call Kara. He looked up at the stars, then east to the blinking lights on the sea buoys trailing off into the ocean. Every fifteen seconds, the beam from the Cape Lookout Lighthouse flashed in the darkness. Even though it was no longer a crucial navigation guide, Thomas still felt the lighthouse’s power and majesty, and was humbled by its age. Mariners in times past had lived and died by that swiveling beam. It always filled him with pride, as if he’d help construct it himself.

He looked up and down the beach, to the cottages and mansions lining the shore. Most of them were dark; it was December, and tourist season would not be here for months. Despite this, the houses didn’t look depressing; they looked somehow more stately, more at ease. During the summer, people roared in from all over the country, paying $3,000 or more a week to stay at these cottages. Every house would be lit then, like little festive amusement parks. During the winter, the horde departed, and the houses rested, and there was a nice solemnity to the beachfront at night.

He watched as the lighthouse-beam winked by several more times, still wondering if he should call Kara. It would be perfectly fine to stand here and enjoy the glowing lights, listen to the murmur of the ocean, and look at the looming beach cottages. But he dialed the number. She picked up after the second ring.

“Hey,” she said flatly.

“Hey, Kara. What’s going on?”

“Oh, the usual. Busy doing what I have to do.”

At the parking lot where they first met, Kara had had a lot on her plate. Apparently that plate was never depleted. There was always something, even if that “something” was a chore so minuscule most people did it without thinking. Kara could turn a five-minute dish-cleaning task into a taxing hour-long affair. She would wet the sponge and put some Dawn Springtime Radiance dishwashing fluid on it, but then she’d feel she needed to check on little Grayson. Grayson, who’d be on his bean bag watching some bright bit of inanity on Nickelodeon, would tell her to leave him alone, she’d just been in ten minutes ago. Then she would get irritated, and scold him in her mild, unintimidating manner. Then she would need to pee, but when she sat down she would find out she needed to poop too. Then she’d return to the kitchen, and clean one dish, but then she’d wonder about the mail, so she’d walk outside to the apartment complex’s gray metal mailbox, and retrieve two identical catalogs from Bed Bath & Beyond and a sheet of coupons from Burger King. Once she returned indoors, she checked on Grayson again, who sighed and buried his head in his bean bag. Then she would clip the Burger King coupons and throw them in her Coupon Container, which was a plastic container designed to look like a flower-covered Winnebago. Finally she would clean the remaining three items in the sink, and claim the thankless task of dish-washing had taken her an hour.

And this was a normal day at home. At work — she worked fifteen hours per week as a gas station cashier — she suffered greatly. Customers were rude, and her boss was always flirting with her. She did the work of five people, but was never appreciated. Thomas doubted all of this, and tartly pointed out that she didn’t need to work anyway, since child support, alimony, and “loans” from her parents seemed to cover all of her expenses. Kara replied that she wanted to work out of pride, that she wanted to pull her own weight. Thomas said he wished he could only work fifteen hours a week and get by, and Kara countered by saying those fifteen hours felt like fifty, especially since she was away from her darling child. Thomas rolled his eyes, and changed the subject.

Thomas wished he was immune to Kara’s uninflected statements about her hectic life, but he was not. Every time she said she was overwhelmed or tired, he ground his teeth.

“Well, got any time to hang out?” he asked peevishly.

“Hm.” A long pause to check her mental schedule. Thomas mockingly imagined what she was thinking: three hours to brush her teeth, two hours to change into her pajamas, one hour to turn off all the lights in the apartment.

“Well? Yes or no?”

“No, not tonight. Grayson’s been feeling a little bad today. I’m going to stay in and keep an eye on him.”

He’d heard this many times before, and he didn’t buy it. Thomas had encountered the five-year-old on three occasions, and on none of those occasions had he seemed like a sickly child. He was clear-eyed and intelligent, and, Thomas had to admit, he actually had just the right amount of energy. He bounced and hollered, but not so much that it exasperated the adults around him — except Kara, but Thomas believed that if Grayson uttered only one sentence a day, it would still be exasperating to his mother. For his part, Grayson seemed to regard his mother as a helpless creature who by some twist of fate and reproduction was his caretaker. He’d talked to Thomas in a strangely direct and grown-up manner, and when Thomas had said something obviously banal, he’d rolled his eyes and found something else to do.

Thomas suspected Grayson’s non-existent infirmities were just excuses Kara used when she didn’t want to see him. He also suspected there was another man (men?) in her life. She had unashamedly answered text messages while they were lying in bed naked, and he found it hard to believe they all came from her mom, as she claimed. Her Facebook page was also littered with cryptic posts from several men. Not that Thomas was jealous — but he still wanted to get laid at least a few times a month.

“OK, that’s fine,” he replied huffily. “Call me sometime, when Grayson isn’t near-death.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I just haven’t seen you in two weeks.”

“So?”

“So? Isn’t that a fairly long stretch of time?”

“It hasn’t felt like it. But I guess that’s because I’ve been busy.”

“You always are. There’s always something on your plate.”

She ignored his sarcasm, if she even detected it. “Yes, there is. And you don’t want to date, so…”

As usual, the “d” word made Thomas sweat. He’d been very careful, very precise, in his dealings with Kara. The first night she’d come back to his apartment, Thomas had made it clear, in between foreplay, that he was not looking for a girlfriend, nor was he going to be some girl’s sugar daddy. He wanted a friend-with-benefits, nothing more. (Actually, he wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend, but he’d never date a single mom — he told himself.) Kara, fumbling and slurred of speech from the Stolichnaya she’d guzzled, had said that was fine, and then she’d gone down on him. Thomas felt like a king as he watched Kara’s mouth slide along his penis. He would get sex from this woman whenever he wanted, and not be burdened by an actual relationship or see his bank account depleted.

But the king’s castle was soon besieged. Kara would want to go out to eat, and then she’d manipulate him into paying the bill: “Do you mind? I just had to buy Grayson some new clothes.” Thomas soon nixed that activity, reiterating that he was not a meal ticket. He was also embarrassed to be with her in public, since she always looked so sloppy and always treated servers, sales associates, cashiers, and other low-tier workers with scornful abruptness. (She didn’t seem to consider that she was also a low-tier worker.) Kara had possibly pouted when Thomas had put his foot down, but it was hard to tell. Her emotions were sometimes difficult to analyze; it was like trying to distinguish between the bricks on the side of a building.

She didn’t “pout” for long, though. Next, she started asking for commitment instead of money, though Thomas suspected money would be asked for once commitment was obtained. She floated the “d” word around: “If we date, I can fit you into my life easier, because I know you’re there for me. Not like now, when we’re… whatever we are.” Thomas reminded her that they’d agreed to just be friends-with-benefits. Kara said that things changed. Thomas said he wasn’t going to raise another man’s child. Kara said she didn’t expect him to, but it would be nice if he could babysit from time to time. Her mom babysat Grayson all the time; wouldn’t it be nice to give her a break? Thomas said he would never babysit any child — ever. Kara said he was being mean and irresponsible. Thomas asked her why he should be responsible for other people’s children… and so it went.

But the castle’s walls held. Thomas was proud of himself. In earlier years, he would’ve succumbed to every blandishment a sex-dispensing female threw at him, but he’d become tougher over the years — to a degree.

Instead of continuing the siege, Kara had withdrawn her forces and sought out other castles to plunder. Apparently she’d found some. She made herself frequently unavailable, and Thomas felt like their non-relationship was fizzling. Still, if he could get with her a few more times…

“No,” he replied, “I don’t want to date. I’ve made that clear, yet you keep bringing it up.”

“Well, we can’t go on like this.”

“Why not?”

“Because we can’t.”

“Nice reasoning.”

“Look, Thomas, it was fun for a while, but I’ve got a lot on my plate. I need a man in my life who’s willing to help me. You just want to make love to me.”

“You just wanted sex, too. We agreed about all this the first night we hooked up.”

“Yeah, well, things change.”

The conversation bored him. It was the same argument, even the same words. He looked to the east, to the Cape Lookout lighthouse shooting bravely into the night. He looked out at the black ocean, so vast and mysterious. The beach cottages sat there, empty and content. The sea buoys seemed to be bobbing guideposts to some strange, enchanting island kingdom. And here he was, forty years old, trying to get sex from a chubby girl with the personality of a rock. The lighthouse beam rolled by again, and this time it seemed to pause a moment, like a cyclopean god fixing him with a disapproving eye.

Thomas sighed, but there was a weary sort of happiness mixed in with the exasperation.

“Alright then,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

He hung up before Kara could reply, and stuffed his phone back into his pocket. It buzzed once after a few seconds, meaning he’d received a text message. It was likely a poorly-spelled missive from Kara trying to convince him to get back on the hamster wheel. He ignored it, and gazed out into the night.

Chapter Five

“Wat r u up to today??” read the text message from Reggie. It was a Tuesday morning, and Thomas, since it was his day off, had slept in. It was now 9:45, and he was just getting to breakfast. As he munched on his Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs and sipped his fruit juice, he composed a reply message. Since Reggie had texted him this early, it meant he was off work as well, and wanted to hang out. Thomas sent back “Off today. Want to do something?” and within twenty seconds Reggie replied with “Yeah man. Come on over.”

Thomas continued eating, thinking about their friendship. He assumed it was a friendship, but perhaps it was just an acquaintanceship, or some other term the sociologists had dreamed up. He couldn’t quite comprehend how he and Reggie Willis were buddies now. Yes, they’d been in the same class in school, but they’d each belonged to different social strata. Thomas was sort of in the middle tier, a good-looking, occasionally witty guy who was neither a jock, a nerd, a goth, or a hippie. Reggie was far above him: he was darkly handsome, brawny, and he never said anything dull. He belonged to the surfing clique — though he wasn’t much of a surfer himself — and no one looked cooler in sandals and baggy shorts. He always had a girlfriend, until summer rolled around. Then he chucked whoever he was dating and went after tourist girls with abandon. These thin, fresh teenagers succumbed to his seductions with panting willingness. Even college girls, who believed him when he told them he was eighteen, gladly let him fuck them.

All through high school, Reggie had mated for his father aboard the Faust, and his swashbuckling demeanor had earned him large tips and the admiration of any females who happened to come out on a charter. He fucked many of them once they got back to land, to the consternation of many parents, who were never actually certain that their daughter(s) was/were having intercourse with that brash, salty young man, but they had a strong intimation — a very strong intimation. It seemed obvious to continue mating after graduation: the money was good, the pussy was good, and he got along with his father fairly well.

But Reggie became bored. He’d gotten laid so much, by age twenty, that it was no longer exciting. There had been ditsy gigglers, caustic bitches, silent poets, and pseudo-dominatrixes, and they all thought they were unique, they all thought they were complicated sexual puzzles that few men could solve, but he’d solved them all easily. He began to handicap himself in various ways when talking to a prospect: he would claim he was “mostly into guys right now,” or he’d only speak in monosyllables. This deterred many woman, but not all. He still got laid with regularity.

Next, he created sexual-attainment Challenges for himself, and used all of his energies on a single one at a time. He’d never had sex with a woman over forty, so that was a Challenge, one he completed in two months. He’d never had sex with a woman over two hundred pounds, so that was a Challenge, one he completed in two days. (He’d thought it would be grotesque, but it was surprisingly fun. The girl certainly enjoyed it.) He’d never had sex with a tourist girl in her parents’ vacation cottage while the parents were home, so that was a Challenge — one that finally undid him.

The girl, who he’d met the day before on a full-day charter, was at first terrified of Reggie’s proposition: “They’ll hear! They’re just downstairs!” But he’d nibbled on her ear and neck, and soon they were thrashing against each other, on the parents’ bed, no less. This was indeed heard downstairs. The father, a stern functionary used to crushing petty environmentalists for his Republican boss, rushed upstairs, threw open the door, gasped, yelled, dragged Reggie off his shrieking daughter, and readied his fist. Reggie, however, was twenty-two years younger, thirty pounds heavier, and used to scrapping with uppity tourists his own age. A few hard things hit the politico — he didn’t quite know what they were; they couldn’t be fists, could they? — and he slumped to the floor, his blood dribbling on the carpet. Reggie pulled on his clothes quickly and rushed out of the house, easily outpacing the invective-spewing mother who chased him, and was soon laughing and driving back into Morehead City at an illegal speed.

In his youthful invincibility, he didn’t expect repercussions. He figured the father would be ashamed that he got trounced by a kid roughly half his age, and the mother would want to protect her desecrated daughter from further ignominy. He was wrong. The next day, the mother and father were standing on the dock as the Faust, back from a half-day charter, pulled into its slip. Reggie gulped.

The two fathers had words, right there on the dock, while Reggie stood by helplessly. Whenever he tried to say something, his father, who immediately grasped the situation, told him to shut the hell up. The mother glared at him with the fury of hell. He should do something, save the day with his charm, as he’d done so many times before — but how? His innate boldness seemed to have been drained out of him by some evil force.

Rape was mentioned. Reggie sweated. His father called him many ingenious names. The politico used lots of big words. His wife glared. But no accord was reached. Reggie’s father finally prevailed upon the aggrieved party to meet in private, away from prying eyes and curious ears. But before they adjourned, he turned to Thomas with pure disdain, and said, “You’re no longer working on this boat.”

Reggie would later remember those words as marking the end of an era. While his father had eventually placated the parents, and all Reggie had to do was apologize and promise never to contact their daughter ever again, the damage was done. Not only did his father throw him off the Faust, he put the word out that his only son was not to be trusted as a mate. There were only so many charter boats in the area, and his father knew all the captains, so Reggie was effectively blackballed. He had skills he would likely never use again, unless he moved far away and hoodwinked someone into hiring him.

He eventually found work as a dishwasher at Clamshells, an Atlantic Beach seafood joint. Him, a dishwasher! Him, cloistered inside with a bunch of idiots, when a few months ago, he’d been out in the Gulf Stream helping cute eleventeen-year-olds reel in dolphin and watching hooked blue marlins surge out of the water like angry gods! Him, breaking his back carrying all these plates! Him, grubbing around in all this ooze and sogginess! He hated the job, but he had bills to pay — he lived alone in a garage apartment — and his father had made it clear he would get no financial help. He kept at it, if only to prove to the bastard he wouldn’t be beat.

It was during this time that he and Thomas stumbled across each other. They were both at Sharkey’s on a busy Saturday night, and both were planning on getting laid. Reggie, fearful of another scandal, had abandoned his cocky Challenges, so he knew he had a 95% chance of taking a girl home, while Thomas had no such confidence. They were both sitting at the bar, and they both recognized each other, but neither approached at first. To Thomas, Reggie was one of the cool kids from back in high school who looked like he’d grown up into a cool man. He saw no reason to go talk to him. To Reggie, Thomas looked different than he remembered — more solid, somehow, more mature. He found himself walking over. Thomas was caught off guard, but he recovered quickly enough. As the conversation unfolded, as old memories were dredged up and present-day situations were explained, they both found that the man they were talking to was different than the boy they’d known — different, but not wholly foreign.

Their friendship, such as it was, had continued on its mellow way for eighteen years. They hung out once a week or so, then returned to their work and lives. For years, Thomas had expected Reggie to drift out of his life, since they were, after all, different people. Reggie was a ladies’ man and still partied hard. When they first became friends, he was always inviting Thomas to “chase after some strange” or “pound a few beers.” Thomas went along at first, but he was soon making up excuses to avoid these adventures. He felt like a winking candle next to a roaring sun whenever he went cavorting with Reggie. Reggie did all of the talking, all of the wooing, and most of the drinking. Thomas could do little besides sit there and watch the girls fall at the feet of his friend.

But Reggie didn’t drift away, and he even accommodated his pal’s quieter sensibilities. By unspoken accord, it was usually just the two of them when they hung out. Reggie still occasionally asked Thomas to partake in a bacchanalia, but by now he understood that Thomas was probably going to say no. Instead of pressuring his friend, Reggie would simply nod, make a smart-ass comment about Thomas’s penis size, and let the matter rest.

Thomas walked up the steps to Reggie’s apartment and knocked on the door. Reggie still lived in the same garage apartment; by now, he was practically a son to the Weavers, the elderly couple who lived in the house and rented to him. Their own son, who lived in San Francisco and worked as a software engineer, rarely visited.

“It’s open!” Thomas heard through the wood and glass. He entered the apartment, stepping directly into the small kitchen. There was only a hot plate, a micro-fridge, a sink, and a few cabinets that had been haphazardly nailed to the wall. A nostril-burning miasma rose from the overflowing trash can. The sink was filled with gunk-encrusted dishes. Thomas shook his head and walked past the thin partition into the living room/bedroom. Reggie’s bed was stuffed into a corner, unmade. A heap of dirty laundry swelled out of a large plastic bin. Reggie, shirtless and sockless, was sprawled out on what he called his “swank” leather couch, watching ESPN on his old clunky cathode ray tube television. In the age of flatscreens, it was as strange as a Model T suddenly appearing on a modern-day interstate.

“Wassup, Tommy?” he barked. Thomas didn’t like Tommy, or Tom, or Tom-Tom, as his mother called him when he was young. His name was Thomas. He’d tried to correct Reggie years ago, but Reggie ignored him, and Thomas eventually learned to live with his friend’s nicknames for him.

“Not much,” Thomas replied. “The apartment looks a little rough, you know.”

“So fucking what? Is Your Highness offended by some trash and bad smells? Do I need to get Jeeves to summon the carriage so you can return to your château?”

“Nope, not necessary. Just pointing out your slackness.”

“You cut me, you cut me deep. C’mon, man, you know I’ll clean up sometime.”

This was true. Reggie would clean the apartment in a quick burst, and it would be spotless and smelling like roses — or Proctor & Gamble’s approximation of roses. Then it would deteriorate until it looked much like it did now, until Reggie had another cleaning burst.

“Is it safe to sit on the couch?” Thomas asked. “Or have you been fornicating?”

The couch was semi-famous throughout Carteret County. For some reason, Reggie liked fucking girls on its “swankness” instead of on his bed. Maybe it was the coolness of the leather, or maybe he wanted to be closer to the television, which he usually kept on during sex. It had been covered in many different types of bodily fluids over the years, and had witnessed just about every sexual position. It was also only cleaned whenever the rest of the apartment was cleaned, so Thomas was wary of sitting on its thick, almost certainly befouled cushions.

Reggie grinned, but didn’t reply. He unsprawled himself and patted the cushion next to him. Thomas sighed and sat down slowly.

“Don’t be such a damn girl,” Reggie scoffed. “You act like that every time you come here.”

“Not when you’ve cleaned.”

“You sound like a wife, man. You gonna make me a honey-do list?”

“Nah.”

“Good, you fucker. So, what have you been doing lately?”

“Nothing much. Work, some beach walks.”

“You and your beach walks…”

“You’d enjoy them if you stayed out there for more than ten minutes. Your mind slows down, you start to think clearer…”

“If you say so, Confucius. To me, an empty beach is like an old woman’s vagina: worthless.”

“The beach is never empty.”

“You know what I mean. I want to see girls, Tommy. Girls in their itty-bitty bikinis. Girls rubbing sunscreen or tanning oil all over themselves, or dripping wet from the ocean. Girls standing there with three-quarters of their butt hanging out, like they’re oh-so-innocent and they’d never think of having sex with anyone, especially me. When’s summer getting here, huh? It’s colder’n a witch’s titty out there.”

Magnificent, sensual visions floated in front of him. The Reggie of twenty-some years ago may have been bored from chasing tail, but the Reggie of age forty felt like he needed to grab everything he could get. Forget those handicaps and Challenges he’d had back in the day. Forty may be the new thirty in Hollywood, but this was the North Carolina coast. At age forty, you were nearly old.

“You know it’s not cold here,” Thomas said. “Not really. Try living in Minnesota or somewhere Up North, then you’d know a real winter…”

“Fuck no. Let those Yankee fucks freeze their asses off. I’ll stay right here.”

“So stop complaining.”

“I’ll complain all I want.” He scratched his balls with near-orgasmic relish. “Would be nice to be down in Florida right about now, though. Nice and warm. How about the Keys? Heard it’s wild down there. People dressed in drag, a lot of faggots. Hippie girls, too. Huh. You know, I haven’t had a hippie girl in a while. They’re a strange breed. Think they’re different, that they’re tapped into the primordial chakra essence or whatever the fuck they call, but they ain’t. They’re the same as the rest of ’em, except in those heads, they’re even more fucked up than normal chicks.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever been with a hippie girl myself.”

“Count yourself lucky.”

“You know, my parents drove down to Key West once, after they’d moved to Florida. I believe my old man called it a ‘cesspool of sin.’”

“Yup, that sounds like Frank Copeland.”

“I can’t imagine what would happen if one of those cross-dressers or queers tried to talk to him… what would you do if one of them tried to pick you up?”

“Do?” Reggie mulled over the question for a few seconds. “I probably wouldn’t do nothing. Laugh about it, maybe. Or if I was really drunk, I might fight the guy. Who knows.”

On the television’s low-definition screen, a conglomeration of sheeny hair connected to an ESPN analyst was discussing the “heart and hustle” of an NBA player.

“By the way,” Reggie said, “don’t think I forgot to get you something for your birthday.”

“I don’t think that. You did text me, remember? And I’m sure you got me beer, like every year.”

“You got it. It’s in the fridge. A six-pack of Rolling Rock.”

“Rolling Rock? That’s one of the cheapest beers you can buy.”

“Lissen to ya. What, you want me to get you some overpriced microbrewed shit? I can go return that six-pack and get you something with super-special Madagascarian hops or whatever the fuck they use, if that’s what you really want.”

“You know I’m just fucking with you. Rolling Rock is fine. Thanks, man.”

“So what’d you do on your birthday?” Reggie grunted. “Hang out with that Kara chick?”

“No, I didn’t. I wanted to have a day to myself.”

“Tommy, you have too many days to yourself. Me, I’d want to get some ass on my birthday.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been with Kara. She’s been… distant. I pretty much broke it off.”

“Pretty much?”

“Yeah.”

“So you told her to go fuck herself.”

“Not exactly.”

“So you told her you’d never stick your dick in her rotten pussy ever again.”

“Nope, afraid I didn’t.”

“So what’d you say, exactly?”

“She’s been avoiding me, and when I finally do get up with her, she tries to lure me into dating her. So I just kind of let things slide away.”

“Slide away? Tommy, you pussyfoot around these hoes more than anyone I know. Just tell her that she’s a selfish cunt and walk away.”

“Yeah, I know that’s the Reggie Willis way to handle women, but I’m not you.”

“No, you ain’t. You ain’t got the swag. I tell you, though, you could be like me, if you worked at it. For one thing, I do believe you’re aging better than me, Tommy ol’ boy. I’m a bit heavier than I was back in the old days, and I keep finding these damned grey hairs.”

Thomas looked over at the shirtless man beside him. Reggie was right about his weight: he did have a paunch, although his arms were as muscular as ever. Thomas, however, saw no gray hairs in his wild black mane.

“That’s because you nibble all the time at Clamshells,” Thomas said. “Cut that out and you’d be solid as a rock.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Reggie replied. He was always picking at the french fries and hushpuppies when there was a lull. When he was a dishwasher stuck in his dishwashing hovel, this hadn’t been a problem, but the manager, recognizing his irrepressible personality and agile mind, had long ago promoted him from dishwasher to server. It was ten times better than lugging around all those goddamn plates, paunch or no paunch. It was just like mating for his father: he got big tips and met lots of women.

The bustling, however, wore on him more each year. Like Thomas, he felt age slowing him down. Not too many years ago, he would be antsy for weekend nights in the summer, because he knew he could race around to five or six tables all shift, throw food and charm at them, and rake in the bucks and telephone numbers. Now he dreaded them.

“But I’ve never been one to resist temptation,” Reggie continued, “and I don’t think I should start now.”

“Yes, the Reggie Willis mantra: the only way to beat temptation is to give in to it.”

“Damn straight.”

Reggie grabbed the remote and started flicking through the channels. Crime dramas, SUV commercials, and deserted-island survival contests blinked across the screen. Thomas fidgeted; Reggie was an expert channel surfer, and could while away hours doing exactly what he was doing now.

“So,” Thomas said, “what do you want to do today?”

“Dunno. Got any ideas?”

“It’s a little cloudy, but no rain on the forecast. Beach walk?”

“You and your damn beach walks.”

“Well, do you have any ideas?”

“Dunno.”

“Dunno,” Thomas mimicked.

“Hell, I know what we can do. Let’s drive up to Havelock and sneak into the air station. I think it’d be fun to create an international incident.”

“Two idiots from Morehead City sneaking into some random Marine base wouldn’t even make the local news.”

“I’d make it make the local news. If I beat up a few Marines and broke a helicopter windshield, I bet it’d get some attention. I can still take those jarheads, too. Well, not the real young ones, but the ones close to my age.”

“Sure you can.”

“I can.”

“How’d your last fight turn out?”

“Why, son, I hit some Master Staff Sergeant, sir, with the Hammer of God, sir, and he dropped like an anchor, sir.”

“Incredible. A trained killer, and you beat him easily.”

“Trained killer? They don’t teach those boys to do nothing but salute and shine shoes. Shit, there’s an ex-Marine working on the line at Clamshells, and he’s about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.”

“Well, anyway, as much as I enjoy watching you wear out your remote, how about we get out of this pig sty and do something?”

“OK, fine. Let’s get some lunch. Then we can go do whatever.”

“Where will we be dining, Mr. Willis?”

“Clamshells. I work there enough, I might as well spend my damn free time there too.”

“You just want to get the employee discount.”

“Well, of course.”

Chapter Six

The rain-patter on his umbrella was soothing. It reminded him when rain had pelted the tent’s canopy during childhood camping trips with his mother and sister, bringing Nature even closer than it already was.

Thomas trudged along the shore, watching the raindrops make tiny depressions on the ocean. Rain makes it glassy, as the surfers said, and it was certainly true today. The waves weren’t big, but they broke crisply, like miniature waterfalls. He wished he could wade out there, just so he could duck under and listen to the rain splashing onto the ocean’s surface, but the water temperature was far too cold for that, unless he put on a wetsuit, which he didn’t own.

As expected, there was no one else on the beach. Were it summer, a few hardy tourists would have opened their beach umbrellas, pitched their circus-sized tents, or simply sat in their folding chairs with hats or towels on their heads or shoulders to ward off the rain. But it was winter, and the beach was deserted, and the rain had smoothed out the footprints of previous beach-walkers. Thomas felt tough and intrepid, as if he were actually walking through an uncharted wilderness instead of a beach dotted with endless cottages, hotels, and condos.

He kicked at a piece of driftwood, startling a nearby seagull that had been sitting quite comfortably on the sand. It squawked, flew a few dozen yards, then stood watching him.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said, smiling. The seagull’s head twitched as it regarded its surroundings, but its one squawk was apparently all it had to say.

Up ahead, the hulking limestone elegance known as The Villas at Indian Beach stood on the beachfront like an aristocrat who had stumbled into a trailer park. Its eight stories towered over the petty buildings around it. It grew in size as Thomas approached, and he found himself looking up at it quizzically, as he always did. He didn’t look at it with covetous anger, vowing to one day own one of its condos and show the moneyed elite he was worthy. Yes, it was nice, but why would someone live there? It was basically a large apartment building. Yes, the balconies looked formidable, and the windows looked like they kept out the weather, and he was sure the interiors were sumptuously designed, “a triumph of style and utility,” but it was still basically a large apartment building. With the money it took to buy one of its condos, Thomas could have bought any number of worthy houses on the mainland.

And he never saw anyone outside on those formidable balconies.

He continued on, passing by another set of condos. He didn’t know the name of this place, and perhaps it didn’t deserve a name when placed next to The Villas. Several excrement-brown, horseshoe shaped buildings lined the shore, their roofs dotted with rusty HVAC units. Once, people would have found these five-story buildings charming, but now, with The Villas looking down on them smugly, they were as desirable as cardboard boxes.

But Thomas always saw people outside on these balconies. Even today, in the rain, one older woman was leaning on her metal railing and peering out into the gray rain-speckled ocean. When she saw Thomas look in her direction, she threw up a quick wrist-flick of a wave. Thomas waved back.

He trudged on, thinking about Orianna. Intrigued by their teasing conversation on the day after his birthday, he’d approached her again a few days later. She was wiping down the conveyor belt on her checkout lane, her tiny biceps and triceps muscles rippling.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

She looked up at him. There was no cool warmth — just coolness.

“Good,” she said. “Yourself?”

“Just fine.”

She nodded and returned to her wiping. Thomas stood there, hands in his pockets, watching her pale arm swing back and forth. So it was like that, huh? He already wanted to walk away, but, after a long hesitation, he decided to try again. He didn’t want to talk about Cynthia again, so he’d prepared some conversational topics beforehand.

“Read any good books lately?” he asked. “From what I’ve seen and heard, you seem to be a pretty intellectual person.”

“Intellectual?” she said, frowning. “I don’t like that term. It’s pretentious. ‘Intellectual’ is reserved for those who’re college-educated and white collar. You never hear electricians or plumbers being called that, for example — or supermarket cashiers.”

“Uh, yeah, I agree with you there,” Thomas said, mildly annoyed. Why didn’t she just answer his question instead of nit-picking a word? No matter; he’d roll with it. “Well, then scrap ‘intellectual,’ replace it with ‘intelligent,’ or whatever word suits you — and I ask again, read any good books lately?”

She finally smiled her ghost smile. The paper towel she’d been using was now blackened and filthy, so she threw it into the small trashcan beneath the register, ripped off a new bunch of paper squares decorated with flowers and bumblebees, and doused them with Formula 409.

“I just finished The Fountainhead,” she said. “It was good. Overblown, but I guess that gets the point across.”

“I’ve read it, but it’s been years ago,” Thomas said, desperately trying to recover some of the plot. There had been an architect named Howard Roark, fighting against Society’s crushing conformity. He had red hair. He dove off a cliff. He scoffed at a vacationing family, because a real man doesn’t need a vacation. But before he could settle on a theme to discuss, Orianna was speaking.

“You have?” she asked. “I mean, not doubting you, but it’s a book that’s kind of off the beaten path.”

“No, it’s not,” Thomas replied, perturbed. Did she think she was the only one who read Great Books? “It’s a well-known book.”

“Well, yeah, it is, in certain circles, but I mean in comparison to Harry Potter or Twilight, it’s invisible.”

“I agree, but some people do read other stuff besides whatever’s popular at the moment. I remember discussing The Fountainhead with Vernon and Eldridge when I first read it, for example.”

“That’s interesting,” Orianna said. “What did they think of it?”

“Eldridge loved it. Vernon thought it was all hokum. Pretty sure that was the exact word he used.”

“What did you think of it?”

“I thought it was hokum, like Vernon.”

“But what about individuality? Don’t you think it’s pretty much obsolete today?”

“No, not at all. I mean, people act like there’s some force controlling our every move, but there isn’t. Society isn’t that powerful. The people who worry about getting crushed by it are just over-sensitive, in my opinion.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Orianna said, though her tone made it clear she thought those who looked at it that way were completely wrong. It was almost a challenge, and Thomas wondered if he should pick up the thrown gauntlet and start a philosophical argument. It would be fun to teach this youngster a lesson, as she clearly thought she had it all figured out. But he’d come up here to get to know her, not to score points in a meaningless contest.

“Well, anyway,” he said, smiling, “that’s just my two cents.”

“Yeah.”

“So, how do you like the winter around here?” Thomas said, abruptly moving to Conversational Topic Number Two. “Me and a friend were talking about it the other day. He hates it, can’t wait until summer rolls around. Me, I think it’s fine. No tourists, you have the beach to yourself, and it doesn’t get too cold.”

“I like all the seasons,” she replied, throwing another dirtied paper towel into the trash can. She didn’t pull off another; it seemed the conveyor belt was cleaned to her satisfaction. “Every one is different here. Well, they’re different everywhere, but here we have all the tourists during the summer, so we really notice the changes.”

“What about all those stud tourist guys that come down?”

Her already cool look dropped a few degrees in temperature. “What about them?”

“Well, I know a lot of guys get excited about the… new opportunities that appear, so I suppose some girls do too.”

“Yes, I’ve known a few of those… womanizers. I don’t mess around like that. I want a relationship, not a hook up.”

“Are you in a relationship now?”

“Why? Are you interested?”

The question stunned him, though he knew it shouldn’t have. He felt misused, as if Orianna had reached inside his mind and pulled out a cherished fantasy. He did like this pale, languid girl, and it seemed she was very much aware of this fact.

She was looking at him, a water fountain frozen into solid gracefulness, waiting for his response. His best move would be to keep up the banter, reply with something light and witty. But he’d already stumbled, and it seemed inevitable that the fall should continue so he’d end up flat on his face.

“Uh… not really, no… don’t want you to get the wrong impression…”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t have any impressions.”

“That’s good…”

Mercifully, a customer appeared in Orianna’s line, her basket filled with groceries, and this allowed Thomas to escape with a lame “Well, time to get back to work.” Orianna said nothing to this; she simply nodded.

Once again, Peggy had watched the whole scene. Her gaze scorched the carnal flesh from their bones and sentenced their souls to damnation. Thomas had been defiant the last time she’d eavesdropped, but now he slunk to the back like a whipped dog.

Once he was safely in the back room, however, he let his anger loose and started kicking a few flattened cardboard boxes. Cardboard boxes were not cathartic things to kick when angry. They didn’t shatter or explode; they flew lightly through the air or skidded lazily across the floor. The most a person could do was kick a hole in one, and even that wasn’t very satisfying.

Thomas heard Vernon’s office door open.

“What’s going on back here?” he bellowed as he walked towards the commotion. “You practicing your karate kicks or something?”

Thomas stopped his assault and looked at the small mess he’d made. The various-sized boxes, none of them very damaged, seemed to be laughing at him.

“Nothing’s going on, boss,” Thomas replied. “Just got mad at something, so I decided to kick a few boxes.”

“Well, at least you didn’t go punching the water cooler like what’s-his-face way-back-when. Remember that? Knocked the jug right out of the holder, and if fell to the floor and cracked open and it was like a tidal wave back here.”

“I remember.”

“What was his name?” Vernon rubbed his chin, scratched his hair, closed his eyes, sucked his teeth.

“His name was Marcus,” Thomas finally said, although he felt sure Vernon knew the name.

“Marcus! That’s it! Damn, that boy was built like a bull, and just as ornery.”

Thomas glared at the floor.

“You alright?” Vernon asked.

“Yeah,” Thomas said, sighing. “I’m fine.”

“Alright then. Clean this mess up. Mommicking up my back room like that…” He laughed, looked at Thomas one last time, then returned to his office and shut the door.

Up ahead, the incongruous water tower bloomed out of the sand like a mushroom cloud. “BOGUE BANKS WATER” was painted on its side in dark blue, and the rest of it was covered in glossy tan paint. Thomas could remember when it was repainted a few years back. One man hung off its side, a tangle of lines keeping him aloft, and slowly rolled on a new coat. Thomas had anxiously watched him work for at least fifteen minutes, feeling that something terrible would happen. It was the same feeling one got when watching circus high-wire performers. But the man kept painting slowly, deliberately, and nothing happened.

Thomas stopped and looked around. This was usually his stopping point. If he continued, his legs and feet would probably be sore tomorrow. However, he felt spry, and wondered if he should keep walking for a bit. He decided to take a rest, which he needed anyway, and delay his decision. He sat down on the sand and shifted around until he had two depressions for his buttocks. Yes, the sand was wet, but he really didn’t care about getting his ass soaked. He closed the umbrella and set it beside him. It was still sprinkling, but it wasn’t enough to bother him, and he wanted to give his hands a rest.

He tried to forget about “Are You Interested?” (was it a taunt, or was she genuinely curious?) and instead focus on Orianna’s snobbery. Their brief talk about The Fountainhead gave Thomas the notion that she was a self-proclaimed intellectual who looked down on the hoi polloi. The evidence to support this notion was contradictory, since she’d even said she disliked the word “intellectual.” Still — maybe she knew she was a member of the hoi polloi, but still looked down on those who were hoi-er and polloi-er.

Anyway, he was not disposed to think kindly of her after “Are You Interested?” (Wasn’t he supposed to not think about that question?) Saying The Fountainhead was “off the beaten path”? Ridiculous. Anyone who read anything would have heard of it at some point. It was like saying a local fisherman didn’t know where the ocean was. She was surely a snob — much like other people he’d worked with over the years

As Vernon said long ago, some people think they’re better. Many of these “better” people had passed through the doors of Oxendine’s Grocery. Thomas knew many of these would-be prodigies considered him an oaf and a ridiculous lackey. After all, only an oaf would work at a small grocery store for decades. They would never fall into the rut Thomas had fallen into. They would get an education and do great things and make lots of money. Thomas wasn’t so bitterly unreasoning as to think that society had punished them for their hubris. No doubt some of them had indeed become rich and well-respected. Others had found comfortable middle-class jobs. But some had reached up as high as they could, and hadn’t grabbed anything but air.

He remembered one employee, name of Roy. He’d worked at Oxendine’s about a decade ago. Just out of high school, still living with his parents. He was a decent enough clerk, but obviously restless: he talked often about traveling the world, ridiculed the greasy rednecks of the area, and extolled the virtues of higher education. He seemed to regard Thomas as a particularly mawkish monument instead of a man: “Man, you’ve been here forever. It’s almost like you’re a part of the store, like Vernon is.” At first Thomas had chuckled, but when similar comments kept coming, he cornered Roy in the back room and told him to cut out the bullshit: “I give people plenty of leeway, but you’ve used all of yours up.” Roy had stammered and apologized, and from that day on he’d done his best to avoid Thomas. After about three months, he quit to “explore his options,” and Thomas never expected to see him again.

But he did see him once more, on an overcast winter day. Even for winter, it had been a slow day at Oxendine’s; it seemed like only a dozen or so customers had walked through the doors since opening. Thomas stood looking outside at the nearly-empty parking lot and the uniformly-gray sky. There were only three shopping carts in the corral. It almost wasn’t worth it to go out and bring them inside, but he felt like getting a bit of air. He grabbed his jacket from the back and walked outside.

He jammed the carts together, and the clanging metal was deafening in the stillness. In the way of shopping carts everywhere, the wheels spun, twisted, and rattled every which way. Thomas pulled them out of the corral, pointed them towards the store, and started to push them back to their indoor home, looking around him as he walked. After being inside all day, stepping out into the world could be disorienting; it felt like the entire sky was pressing down on him, and the air moved in currents and eddies that defied reason, unlike the immobile atmosphere of the grocery store.

As he was pushing, he noticed a man in a nearby black Lumina staring at him. The car looked vaguely familiar. The driver’s side window was rolled down, and a scratching noise that sounded like the radio buzzed outwards. Thomas returned the stare, wondering why this man was so intent on looking at him. As he approached, a spark of recognition lit in his mind. He knew that face… what was the guy’s name?

“Roy?”

It was indeed Roy, though a different Roy than Thomas remembered. The Roy he knew had been sleepy-eyed, with a lazily-maintained beard. This Roy was clean-shaven and alert, like a hawk perched on an electric line.

“Yes,” Roy replied, “it’s me.”

With a quick, angry movement, he turned off the radio. For a split-second, as he thrust his hand towards the dial, there was a horrible grimace on his face, as if the radio, which had been buzzing along innocently a few seconds ago, had suddenly turned into a mind-chafing annoyance that must be silenced. Then the grimace was gone, and he was staring at Thomas again.

“How’s it going?” Thomas asked, though he was strangely fearful of the answer.

“Oh, it’s going great,” Roy replied sardonically. “Just grand. Life is all sunshine and rainbows, and the home team won in the ninth, and the knight rescued the damsel from the evil baron.”

“Well.” Thomas didn’t know what else to say. Roy continued to stare. Thomas felt like the field mouse who knows the hawk has seen him and is now swooping down to rend with talon and beak. He didn’t like feeling this way, for obvious reasons, so he set his jaw and made his voice as gravelly as possible.

“What’s going on?” Thomas asked. “You look like you want to murder someone.”

This observation stunned Roy. Perhaps he didn’t know exactly what his expression looked like. Perhaps he did, but had expected Thomas to quail beneath his cold steel stare. Whatever the reason, his features softened a little, and a small twist of his upper lip even suggested a smile, however bitter.

“Yes, I am feeling out of sorts lately,” he said.

“What’s the problem?”

“Problems, plural. I have a few of them.”

Thomas waited, but Roy didn’t elaborate.

“That’s not very specific,” Thomas finally said, frowning.

“That’s true,” Roy said, and he finally looked away from Thomas, turning to stare at Oxendine’s Grocery for several long moments. When he finally looked back, his features had softened even more, and he looked close to the old Roy.

“You know,” Roy said softly, “I did enjoy working here.”

“Yeah, I believe it,” Thomas replied, though he didn’t know if he believed it or not. Roy said nothing to this. Apparently he expected more. Thomas searched for a suitable phrase, finally saying: “You were a good worker.”

“Thank you. No one likes to be remembered as a slacker.”

“No, they don’t.”

“But I did quit. Didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Thomas admitted, “you did.”

Again, Roy expected more.

“But a lot of people quit,” Thomas said, a bit too sharply. Roy needed to stop staring and willing him to say things and tell him what the hell was going on.

“Yes, they do. I guess it’s not a job for everyone, is it?”

“Well, no, it’s not.”

“It’s a job for you, though — isn’t it?”

Thomas couldn’t tell if this was said with mockery, appreciation, or bewilderment. Perhaps Roy didn’t know either. In any case, Thomas was tired of this cryptic back-and-forth.

“Roy, you’re acting strange,” he said crossly. “Why don’t you stop this staring contest and tell me what’s up?”

Again, Roy seemed stunned. He sighed deeply, and it was one of the most feeble, hopeless sighs Thomas had ever heard.

“Like I said, I’ve got problems,” Roy finally replied. “I went off to college, but I couldn’t hack it. Didn’t understand the work, couldn’t make any friends. Everyone seemed smarter than me. And cooler. So I dropped out.”

“Well, college isn’t for everyone. No shame in dropping out.”

“Tell that to my parents.”

“Don’t worry about them. Shit, my parents still want me to go off to college. You’ve got to live your life your way.”

“But have you ever thought about going to college? I mean, haven’t you felt that pull?”

No, Thomas had never gone to college like Roy, but he’d had a similar experience, and the memory of it surged into his consciousness, like sewage flowing out of a busted line.

Back when Thomas was in tenth grade, someone had nominated him for the International Leaders of Tomorrow Conference (ILTC). Thomas never knew who it was, as his parents (mainly his father) had instantly pounced on the opportunity, signed him up without consulting him, and then bombarded him with a hurricane of details about the program. It was some time before Thomas could retreat to his room and look over the ILTC materials by himself.

The ILTC, according to its brochure, was “an exciting experience that will show today’s promising youths how to become tomorrow’s acclaimed leaders.” Thomas was intrigued to learn that he was “promising,” as his GPA told a different story. He also didn’t consider himself a leader; most “leaders” at his high school thought that tersely-delivered commands disguised as innocent suggestions and appropriation of other’s ideas were the cornerstones of leadership.

As he continued thumbing through the brochure, he was edified to learn that the ILTC had “brought together students from 75 countries since our inception in 1980” and that “ILTC participants travel to learning-intensive locales to collaborate on horizon-expanding projects and to hear speeches and lectures from top academics, business leaders, and activists.” It all sounded very sunny and innocent. The Thomas of age forty knew that the whole thing was a money trap, just another vacation-cum-resume-stuffer that middle-class parents foisted onto their children, but the Thomas of age sixteen thought the whole thing sounded mighty swell.

Though he’d called his father a “tyrant” for signing him up, he’d settled down and come to understand the value of the ILTC. The worst part was that it took place during summer vacation, that hectic time of endless beach days and nighttime (mis)adventures with tourist girls. He’d also have to miss work, but he was sure Vernon would give him time off. It was only two weeks, after all…

So, a few months later, he happily flew from Raleigh to Washington, D.C., where the ILTC Opening Ceremony was held. A grinning female staffer met him at the airport; she was even holding a printed sign with his name on it. He was, she explained, the only one she was picking up at the moment; his flight had been later than those of the other Young Leaders. As the staffer pumped his hand energetically, Thomas wondered if her smile was going to split her face asunder. He was also impressed by the tightness of her skirt and her skyscraper-high heels. As she led him out of the airport at a brisk pace, babbling about something or other, Thomas watched the twin mounds of her ass bounce beneath the black fabric.

But the staffer soon dumped him in a dorm room at George Washington University and disappeared. It being summer, the campus was deserted, and the ILTC had acquired an entire dorm hall to house its prodigies. As Thomas unpacked, he tried to chat with his roommate, a tall and flat-faced Lithuanian, but as the Lithuanian’s English was poor, he ended up lying on his bed in an awkward silence and counting the ceiling tiles.

The ILTC’s Opening Ceremony was spectacular, if one liked endless speeches. It took place in a small lecture hall with strange acoustics, so that every syllable a speaker uttered seemed to have been bellowed by a god. Thomas sat stiffly as a CEO, a senator, the ILTC’s President, and numerous other luminaries talked about the immeasurable value of the ILTC’s program, and how they wished every participant would do their best.

Finally it ended, and the Young Leaders, after moving to empty classrooms, were placed in small groups to do various exercises, such as determining what Chile should do with its copper resources, although Thomas suspected Chile already had that covered. He breathed easier; now he would get to meet people. He’d never been in such a cosmopolitan atmosphere, and he wanted to learn everything about everyone.

That heady feeling was soon dashed. These leaders, no matter if they were from Madagascar, Germany, or North Dakota, were exactly like the leaders in his high school. They didn’t discuss; they pronounced or commanded. They didn’t ask questions; they battered each other with pointed interrogatives. If another person made a good point, they would say “That’s a good point” grudgingly, then repeat the point using longer and snazzier words so it appeared that it had originated with them all along. Thomas’s gaze bounced from speaker to speaker as everyone talked over each other; he felt like a ping-pong ball during a particularly heated match. Once he tried to say something, but a Frenchman sniffed “Well put” and threw a rarified Continental gloss on his words. He even used a quote from Voltaire for garnish. Thomas clamped his jaw shut, crossed his arms, and sat brooding.

Just a few minutes ago, he’d yearned to escape from the endless speeches. Now he yearned to escape from these young titans, with their bottomless self-assurance and indisputable declarations. He wished he was back home, lying on the beach with his friends and watching the young bikini-clad girls saunter by, or at Oxendine’s Grocery joking with Vernon and the rest of the guys.

The days passed by so slowly that Thomas wondered if God (or a god) had fiddled with the flow of time. He listened to a speech by a supposedly-heroic Canadian activist, but the only thing he seemed to have done was spent some time in a Burmese prison. He listened to another speech by a different senator, one who talked about “the value of bipartisanship, of dealing with my fellow congresspeople across the aisle.” He listened to yet another speech from a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who informed his audience that the key to storytelling was creating compelling characters.

The only decent experience was the walk along the National Mall. The Washington Monument’s plain majesty reminded him of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, and the Lincoln Memorial moved him in a way few things had. There was Honest Abe, the hero of his textbooks, looking out from his shrine for all eternity. Hot tears formed, and he wiped them away quickly, lest one of his apparently unaffected peers see them. What would Lincoln think of these callous young strivers marching around his temple? Surely he would be angry and baffled at their arrogance. Thomas wished the exquisitely-carved statue would come alive and humble these fools with a few calmly-delivered yet mountain-shattering words, and then stomp them with his giant shoes.

Then it was off to New York, and another dorm room at some university. Thomas was beyond caring which one.

He knew New York was big, but he didn’t know it was big. On a normal day in Morehead City, there might be a total of ten people on the downtown sidewalks; here, there were ten people within fifteen feet of him. Buildings towered over him, terrifying in their concrete and brick indifference. Newspapers flew down alley and street, like ghosts that decided they’d come out in daytime just to be cheeky. Dirt was everywhere. Drivers honked their horns. Finally their Big Apple Exploration Group entered a pizza joint for lunch, and Thomas felt relieved to be away from the bustle and whirl, until the mustachioed, portly man at the counter demanded he make up his mind what he wanted cuz he was holding up the line. Thomas stammered that one cheese slice and a small drink would do it, then he sped to a corner booth and ate by himself, like a disciplined child sitting in time-out.

There were, of course, more speeches. Thomas sat glassy-eyed and dreamed of sand and ocean and stocking shelves.

Finally it was time for the Closing Ceremony, which was much like the Opening Ceremony, except drenched in ecstasy-sorrow over “our farewells, although I know each of you will cherish these memories forever.” Like everyone else, Thomas received a completion certificate written in stylized English and affixed with the ILTC’s Gold Seal. Then it was over. The same female staffer drove him to the airport, this time with a few others. He didn’t look at her ass, nor did he talk to the Young Leaders next to him in the van. He got on the plane, the plane lifted off and headed south, he stared out the window at the Atlantic Ocean and the coastline, and in no time at all he was back in Raleigh, and his beaming parents were waiting for him.

“How was it?” his mother trilled.

“Yes, how was it, son?” his father demanded.

“It was shitty,” Thomas snapped.

The ride home was tempestuous.

As Thomas stared at Roy, he wondered if he’d looked like that when he’d stepped off the plane: cold, jaded, impotently angry. He expected he had. But he didn’t want to commiserate with Roy. Roy would have to deal with his own wounds, as Thomas had.

“But have you ever thought about going to college? I mean, haven’t you felt that pull?” These questions would have to be answered, somehow.

“No,” Thomas said, “I haven’t.”

Roy seemed to sense that there was an entire story behind Thomas’s answer, and he waited for Thomas to tell it. When Thomas refused to say anything more, Roy just nodded in an odd sage-like fashion and turned the radio back on.

“Alright then,” he said in a distant voice. “Sorry to get all sorrowful on you.”

“Not a problem.”

“Take care of yourself, Thomas. And tell the others I enjoyed working there — and that I miss them all, sometimes.”

“Will do.”

Roy started up his car and rolled out of the parking lot. Thomas suddenly felt a strong urge to run after the car and stop him before he got out of sight. He imagined Roy driving off a cliff in his Lumina and falling contentedly to his doom — or, since there were no cliffs around here, driving off one of the high-rise bridges and plunging into the cold waters, never to emerge as a living man.

But then Thomas stopped himself. Hadn’t he just refused to commiserate with Roy? And what would he do if someone came rushing up to him and tried to convince him that life was worth living? He might drive off a bridge just to spite them. No, it was better to let Roy go. He would recover — or not, and if not, who was Thomas to tell him to reject sweet oblivion in favor of a life filled with gloom? The Lumina, which was heading west on the beach road, disappeared around a bend. Thomas grabbed hold of the shopping carts and slowly pushed them back inside. Vernon was standing by the door as he entered, watching him curiously.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked.

“Oh, uh,” Thomas stuttered, “no one. Just a customer with a question.”

“What’d they ask?”

Thomas’s mind was suddenly blank. He struggled, and came up with: “They wanted to know how long this store has been here.”

“I gotcha. So you were giving them a bit of a history lesson, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Alright,” Vernon said, rubbing his potbelly. “Oh, have you cleaned the bathroom yet?”

Thomas never told anyone what Roy said in that parking lot on that gray day, and he never saw the man again.

There had been others like Roy, ex-employees who found out that the next stage in their life, though it was supposed to be better, strangely lacked something. Perhaps they missed the camaraderie of Oxendine’s. Perhaps they realized their middle-class job required intelligence and fortitude they didn’t possess. Perhaps they found that college was an endless cycle of read, regurgitate, and forget. Perhaps they’d moved to another low-wage job, only to find themselves overworked and pining for the relative ease of Oxendine’s Grocery. Perhaps there were other reasons.

Roy, however, was the most memorable one. Sitting on the beach now, Thomas wondered what became of him. He supposed he could find him on Facebook or something; this was the Internet Age, after all. But he felt a great reluctance to pull this man out of his past. If he did contact Roy, their last encounter would hang over them like a black cloud, and no amount of cheerful chatter would sweep it away — and Roy might not even want to sweep it away. No, let him stay gone.

Thomas stood up, still pondering Roy, Orianna, and everything. A large part of him wanted Orianna to end up like Roy, wanted her to leave Oxendine’s, then realize her loss and come crawling back a miserable, self-hating wreck. A medium-sized part of him wanted to fuck her. And a very small part of him wanted to be done with her, as he could envision endless complications in the future if they continued to work together.

“To hell with it,” he muttered, finally deciding to continue on. His legs would be sore tomorrow, but he’d heal. He always did.

Chapter Seven

It was now mid-December, which meant Christmas was perilously close — at least, that’s how Thomas’s mother and sister saw it, and their emotions ruled the family in this matter. They didn’t consider that the Copeland/Dowling Family Christmas Get-Together had been the same for years, and that they didn’t need to worry about plans coming undone. They all met at Emily and Dan’s house in Raleigh on the 24th, where they drank eggnog and talked and watched little Dennis (now not so little) open his one allotted Christmas Eve present. Then they retired to the guest rooms, while Emily scuttled to and fro to make sure everyone had clean linens (though she’d made the beds herself two days ago), fresh towels (though she’d placed them on the dressers herself two days ago), and knew where the two bathrooms were (though their locations had not changed since the previous Christmas). Thomas’s mother would flit after her daughter like a butterfly (albeit one wearing furry reindeer horns, a red Rudolph nose, and a red and green Christmas sweater depicting a happy sledding scene) asking how she could help, and Emily would snarl that “this is my house and I’m in charge of hospitality,” to which Jean would reply, “Yes, dear, but you so overwork yourself. Let your mother help.”

This would continue far into the night. In his assigned room, Thomas’s father would be lying in bed in his pajamas, ready to go to sleep but knowing there would be many more minutes of mother-daughter nonsense. Thomas would likely be drunk and watching TV in his room. Dan would be puttering in the master bedroom, waiting for his wife to cease her marching and come to bed, where, if he was lucky, he could convince her to make out a little, though they’d have to be very, very quiet. Dennis would be getting in a few precious minutes on the Xbox. Finally, after many premature “goodnights,” the house was still, and Santa shot down the chimney and filled stockings and put presents beneath the Christmas tree.

The next day was Christmas, and it was such an orgy of present-opening that Thomas was tired by ten AM. Did he really need a pen that wrote in six different inks, as well as having an extendable toothpick and a nail file? Did Dennis really need a fanny pack equipped with GPS? Did Dan really need a digital rain gauge? After the frenzy, Thomas looked at the wrapping paper strewn across the floor and the shiny red and green ribbons scattered about like tripwires, and felt pity for the trash collectors of the world.

After this, they ate lunch. Turkey, ham, stuffing, collards, chicken salad, rolls drenched in butter, mashed potatoes. For dessert, Thomas’s mother’s famous coconut balls, pumpkin pie, key lime pie, chocolate chess pie, with organic yogurt as a Healthy Option, which everyone ignored. Lunch, with its mouthfulled conversations, passing of dishes, bathroom breaks, and reheating of food that had fallen below optimum temperature, took over two hours to eat. After the dining table was cleared and the dishes clean (Emily loudly insisted on doing both, but became agitated when everyone didn’t bully their way into helping), it was midafternoon, and most of the family agreed that it was time for a snack. They’d nibble on this and that and meander through the house, chatting or trying to avoid chatting, depending on their mood. In a short while, it would be dinner time, and the whole buffet would be brought out again. This meal, like lunch, would take roughly two hours to finish. Therefore, in Thomas’s mind, Christmas day consisted of approximately eight hours of continuous eating. At the end of it, his belly bulged and he felt as nimble as a beached whale. Soon, all that food dragged him down into sleep, where he dreamt of enormous gardens filled with god-blessed victuals and decanters filled with magical draughts. Then he woke up and had to shit out logs the size of power-poles.

On the 26th, everyone went home, after much arguing over who would take which portions of the leftovers.

For the past few days, Thomas had come home to find his Gmail account cluttered with e-conversations. His mother informed everyone they’d be leaving St. Augustine at 6:00 AM on the 24th, maybe 6:15, “depending on bodily functions,” because “you never know when you’ll have to take that last-minute trip to the bathroom.” Emily responded that they needed to be careful on Interstate 95, because it was “the worst highway in the country.” (Thomas had, over the years, heard her claim five different highways were the worst in the country, though he had to admit I-95 drew most of her ire.) Thomas’s mother had asked if Dennis needed a new Xbox controller, “because i saw one at wal-mart that was see thru and had bunches of buttons. i believe it was called the xx raptorslayer or something like that. we already have gifts for him, don’t you worry. you know we’re not last minute shoppers. but it might be a nice little extra something.” Emily had replied that “Dennis already controllers. Doesn’t need another one.” Emily then told Thomas to “text me when you leave home on the 24th.” Thomas replied that he’d do no such thing, that he’d show up between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00 PM, as he did every year. Emily: “Settle on a specific time. And text me.” Their mother: “yes thomas, it would be nice if you settled on a specific time and it wouldn’t hurt to send a courtesy text message to your waiting sister.” And so it went.

Thankfully, Thomas’s Christmas shopping was out of the way. He went to Wal-Mart the second week of December and spent a fast-paced hour loading up a cart with goods. If he shopped for less than an hour, he felt guilty for having rushed through this supposedly sacred experience. More than an hour, and he felt suffocated by the endless shelves of low-price items, and the pop music playing overhead had turned his mind to mush. It wasn’t like this at Oxendine’s; there, he was a worker and had clear tasks that needed to be accomplished. Here, he was a consumer trying to fight the impulse to buy, buy, buy.

He’d wrapped the presents in his ham-fisted way (His mother, every year: “Oh, Thomas, didn’t I teach you how to wrap better than that? Don’t you remember helping your mother when you were a wee little fellow? Oh, you used to love sticking on the bows!”) and stacked them in his closet.

At work, the yearly Christmas decorating had been completed. Yolanda had ostensibly been in charge, but Vernon hovered close by, controlling his wife’s excesses. If she had her way, she’d wrap the entire store in blinking lights, wreathes, garland, smiling elves, and red-cheeked Santas, and put a 36-foot-tall Christmas tree on the roof. It was her not-so-secret dream to win the annual Carteret County Chamber of Commerce’s Best Decorated Business (Christmas Season) Award, but her husband lovingly squashed her dream every year. She would sigh and say that “a few more lights and maybe an animatronic snowman and this lil ol’ store would look right peachy,” and her husband would respond that “the store looks fine. My workers have spent enough time on all this glowy-glowy stuff. You know this is a business, right?”

So Thomas had bought presents, helped decorate Oxendine’s, and dealt with the most nettlesome and frenzied family e-mails. He anticipated a lull until the Oxendine’s Grocery Christmas Party, which this year took place on the 22nd. In addition to the food and drink that would be consumed, there was the Secret Santa event. Each employee drew a name from a hat, and had to get a gift for that person. No one was supposed to know who was getting a gift for whom, but of course there were loose-lipped people who couldn’t resist tantalizing their giftee, and there were others who lied about who they’d drawn to confuse and frustrate others. It was an elaborate game, with a little bit of malice, depending on who had grudges with whom. To his dismay, Thomas had drawn Eddie. He had no clue what the scatter-brained deli man wanted or needed, so at Wal-Mart he’d grabbed a package of plain white Fruit of the Loom socks, figuring everyone could use more socks.

But a lull was not to be had. When Thomas was stocking up the pickle section one afternoon, he noticed someone approaching out of the corner of his eye. He turned, meaning to greet the customer with a simple nod, or, if it was someone he knew well, to greet them in the ironic fashion most of the locals liked. He did know this person, but there would be no ironic greetings. It was Kara.

He stared, befuddled. Kara had never visited him at work, because he’d told her not to visit him at work. What did she want now, especially since they hadn’t seen each other in weeks? Hadn’t their non-relationship fizzled out?

“Hey,” Kara said. Already a dull word, Kara made it even duller.

“Hey,” Thomas echoed, with equal dullness.

He looked her over. It looked like she’d put on twenty-five pounds since he’d last seen her. Or had she always been this big? Thomas scanned through mental images, trying to compare past to present, but it was pointless. After all, most girls look at least a little desirable when you’re on top of them and ramming them with your penis. When naked, Kara’s hips were sensually wide, and any fat she had was fun to play with. Now, fully clothed, and with their last sexual encounter an age ago, she looked slatternly. Her face in particular struck him: it had been her best feature, but now it was as round as a frisbee, and her lips looked like they’d been injected with far too much collagen.

“What’s up?” Thomas ventured, when Kara just stood there staring at him.

“I need some help.”

“OK — what kind of help?”

“Well — I’ve got this itch, and I was hoping you’d scratch it for me.” She put on what she evidently thought was a sexy smile, but to Thomas it looked like half her face was paralyzed.

“Was that, uh, meant to arouse me, or what?” he asked, genuinely curious.

She sighed and shook her head.

“I try to be sexy for you, and you make fun of me.”

“No, no, I meant that seriously. Your delivery isn’t — well, it’s different, let’s just put it that way.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“I’m really not.”

“Do you want to fuck then?” Kara asked flatly. “Is that direct enough?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty direct. But we can’t fuck in a public space.”

“Well, in private then. Stop being a smart-ass. You know what I mean.”

He looked at her as closely as he could, but he couldn’t fathom what was going on inside her indolent mind.

“We haven’t seen each other in, what, four, five weeks?” Thomas said. “Haven’t talked either. I thought we were done.”

“I miss you. I miss being with you. It’s that simple.”

“But you wanted to date…”

“Forget about that. We can be friends-with-benefits. I should’ve known I couldn’t push you into a relationship. It’s just… I wanted something more, but I ended up with nothing.”

“That’s… so you haven’t been with any other guys? Since we, you know, stopped?”

“Um.”

“It doesn’t bother me… unless they have STDs, and you get ’em and pass ’em on to me…”

“Thomas.”

“What? It’s a legitimate concern, and we never really talked about it.”

“Thomas.”

“Don’t ‘Thomas’ me. Why are you coming at me like this all of a sudden? You can’t have missed me that much…”

Suddenly the tears came. In many cases, female tears melt right through male defenses, as if they were weaponized acid instead of salt water. This was not one of those cases. It was a sight that filled Thomas with irritation instead of pity. The way her face bunched up and turned red, the way she sob-snorted — it was unseemly. He wanted to slap her, like the men did in those old movies when their women started weeping and being dramatic. He hoped to God no one saw this scene — but just as he was thinking this, he felt a presence at his back, at the end of the aisle. He looked behind him quickly, and just caught Orianna disappearing around the next aisle. There was another issue he had to deal with. They’d barely spoken since “Are You Interested?,” so he had no idea where they stood — or if they stood anywhere at all. But no matter what they thought or didn’t think of each other, he didn’t want her — or anyone — to see him with this teary woman.

“But I do miss you,” Kara blubbered. “You’re the best guy I’ve ever been with. What do I have to do” — face-rattling sob — “to convince you of that?”

Briefly, Thomas’s loins pulsed, triggered by “you’re the best guy I’ve ever been with.” He could say she’d convinced him so she’d stop this damn crying, and they’d hug and make up, and then after work they’d go to his apartment and fuck each other’s brains out. And then they’d rest and put their brains back in, and then fuck them out again.

But deep down he knew it wouldn’t last. Within a week, they’d be right back to “I have a lot on my plate” and “Why won’t you date me?” No, it wasn’t worth it — and his now-soft penis agreed that he was making the right decision.

“Nothing, Kara,” he said calmly. “I think we’re done. You shoved me away, and I guess you expected me to keep crawling after you like a desperate teenager, and when I didn’t, it hurt your ego. You just came here to prove you can pull me back in if you want to.”

“But — I’m standing here crying, and you’re so calm…”

“Well, that should tell you something, shouldn’t it?”

Abruptly the sobs stopped, almost as if they hadn’t been real at all. Kara straightened up and wiped her hands across her face. Makeup streaked, making her look goth and sinister. Thomas felt like she was about to slap him, and he readied himself in the hope that he could block it and avoid the indignity.

“This isn’t over,” she hissed. She glared at him for a few more seconds, then turned and marched away. Thomas watched her blocky body until it was out of sight, then slowly resumed his pickle-stocking.

He smiled at how he’d manfully rebuffed her. Reggie, that bastard, would have been proud. What the fuck was she thinking, coming in here and acting like that? Crying and wailing like he was her One True Lover, and then doing an about-face and hissing at him like a viper…

But his sense of pride and power slowly ebbed. Her last words were already haunting him. What did she mean, it wasn’t over? If she wanted revenge, what could she conceivably do to him? His mind played out various scenarios, from the reasonable (she could come bother him at work, maybe claim he was sexually incompetent in front of other employees) to the sensational (she could slash off his limbs with a chainsaw and then feed his dismembered parts to a bunch of mud-wallowing pigs).

Kara’s eyes were usually as lively as bedridden invalids, but as she’d said her last words there had been holy fire in them. That did not bode well.

Well, he comforted himself, at least no one besides Orianna had seen what happened. The last thing he wanted was a lot of gossip floating around the store.

He was fooling himself, of course. Vernon was the first to accost him.

“Who was that girl you were jawing with?” he asked, leering as if he’d just caught Thomas making out with someone in the walk-in cooler.

“No one,” Thomas replied, frowning. “Just a friend.”

“I know better than that. I saw, I heard. I’ve got eyes, I’ve got ears. Seemed like you two were having a row.”

“No, we weren’t.”

“Alright, fine, be tight-lipped. You can handle your own affairs. But in my opinion, she looked a bit soggy to me — if ya know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Thomas growled.

“Well, uh, you’ll figure it out. Now — we still have four boxes of those gosh durn green beans back here? Don’t people want to eat their veggies?”

Next was Eldridge, and this surprised Thomas, since Eldridge usually avoided gossip, and talking in general.

“Did I hear you made some girl cry?” he grunted.

After Thomas had recovered from this startling question — which took far too long, judging by the impatient look on Eldridge’s bulldog face — he croaked out: “No, I didn’t. She — uh — has a lot on her plate. Gettin’ to her. Stress. You know.”

“Well, if you did make her cry, she probably deserved it. I been married twice, and both of ’em were fit to strangle. You gotta make ’em cry sometimes just to keep ’em honest.”

Thomas knew nothing about Eldridge’s previous marriages. He pictured gray, church-going, bridge-playing women trying to nag the un-naggable Eldridge. He could not imagine what sex had been like, because he couldn’t imagine Eldridge young and virile.

“Uh — I don’t plan on getting married,” Thomas said.

“Good choice,” Eldridge said spitefully. “If I’d’a stuck to that when I was young, I would’ve saved myself a lot of time and money.”

Thomas nodded and retreated to the back room.

Next was Cynthia, who came at him with wide, sympathetic eyes and clasped hands, as if he were a refugee just escaped from a war zone.

“I heard something happened,” she caressed. “Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” Thomas snapped.

“Oh. OK. Just thought I’d ask.”

He immediately regretted what he’d done, and he followed the slumped and pouting Cynthia a few steps, intent on stopping her and apologizing. Then he said to hell with it, people needed to stay out of his business. This whole goddamn store was one big den of gossip, just a bunch of nibbling little rodents trying to find something interesting to chew on.

But he was being too harsh. The people who had asked him about Kara were his friends, or at least his acquaintances. They were concerned, not nosy.

To hell with them! He’d be damned if he apologized to any of them!

He watched Cynthia sullenly slice some roast beef for a boot-wearing commercial fisherman, and was alternately remorseful and unrepentant.

Finally, Orianna ventured down the aisle where he was wiping down shelves.

“Hey, uh, didn’t mean to intrude earlier,” she said warily. “Hope everything’s OK.”

“It is,” Thomas replied in curt dismissal.

Orianna returned to her register quickly, leaving Thomas again agonizing over his actions, and then stubbornly insisting they were just and even courageous.

Chapter Eight

It was the night of the Oxendine’s Grocery Christmas Party. Thomas sped happily towards downtown Morehead City as other drivers stared at his vehicle in rebuke. Though many employees thought the Party was schmaltzy, and either suffered through it or came up with a lame excuse to avoid attending, Thomas loved it. He could be casual with the people he worked with; there were no shelves to stock, groceries to bag, or carts to retrieve from the lot. They could talk, eat, drink (everyone of age was encouraged to bring alcohol, and the employees not of age spent the evening trying to avoid Yolanda’s watchful eye so they could steal a drink or two) and be merry.

Following the Party’s potluck injunction, Thomas had brought a pre-made chocolate cheesecake along with a six-pack of Bud Light. Some employees conveniently forgot to bring something, but most arrived with at least one item of food or drink. Thomas expected to see Maureen’s pigs-in-a-blanket, Eldridge’s miraculously delicious meatloaf, and Eddie’s gooey mac’n’cheese. (“It’s good, ain’t it? Tell me that ain’t good!”) What the newer employees would bring was a mystery; some of them had promised to bring a meticulously-prepared dish that would dazzle the tastebuds, but those people usually showed up with a bag of potato chips and a jar of french onion dip.

Thomas pulled down a side street and parked near the Carteret County Chamber of Commerce’s headquarters. The Party was officially held in the Chamber’s conference room, though it spilled out into all sections of the building. Vernon had commandeered this building for the Party for decades; it seemed impossible that it could be held anywhere else. One infamous year, however, the Party’s location was uncertain, as the new Chamber president — a small, squat man whose most frequent statement was “The problem with this country is that no one wants to work hard anymore” — decided to flex his newly-granted muscle and deny Vernon’s request/demand for use of the Chamber building because of “scheduling conflicts” — though the real reason was because Vernon had made questionable comments about his penny loafers one day at the grocery store. Vernon fumed: “By God, I’ll show that good-for-nothing namby-pamby stick-in-the-mud what’s what!” He “got on the horn,” and the president was soon besieged by angry calls from Chamber members on behalf of “our good friend, Vernon Oxendine,” specifically concerning “his Christmas Party, which has been held at the Chamber of Commerce building since before you were a glint in your daddy’s eye.” (This wasn’t close to being true, but it got the point across.) The president backed down, though he complained to his wife that “they ganged up on me, those bastards. Let me take ’em one on one, then I’ll show ’em something!”

As he walked towards the entrance, Thomas recalled some of the more distinctive things that had occurred at the Party over the years. There was Vernon under the mistletoe, as usual, inviting the girls to give him a smooch, only to get plastered with a kiss from a flamboyantly gay employee, the only out-of-the-closet homosexual Oxendine’s had ever had. As Vernon stuttered and blushed, and as everyone else laughed or looked shocked, the employee purred and stroked the sleeve of Vernon’s Santa suit. Finally Vernon recovered with “I’ve got no problem with you and your preferences, Nate, but don’t plant those lips on me, ya hear?”

There was Vernon under the mistletoe, getting kissed and groped by a drunken Milly, the store’s young sexpot, as Yolanda stared and complained loudly about “that hussy and her siren-like ways.” After this, there were rumors that Vernon and Milly had assignations all over Morehead City: at the seedy Quality Inn, in Vernon’s office after the store closed, on sand dunes. Thomas could neither confirm nor deny these reports. Milly eventually left to study nursing, and Vernon was noticeably glum for several weeks after her departure.

There was the time one of the high-school-age employees insulted Eldridge, who responded with a haymaker that sent the teenager crashing into one of the Chamber’s potted ferns.

There was the time Maureen got a flat tire on her way to the Party, and everyone had driven out to help her in an explosion of goodwill, and she’d cried thankful tears because “you all are so helpful and kind to me!”

There was the time Alexis, a known cougar, had dragged Thomas behind the building and given him a handjob, all the while looking at him in a strangely sinister fashion. They’d had a stormy one-week relationship after that, until Alexis dumped him (though it could be argued they were never dating at all), married a Marine ten years her junior, and followed her new husband to Germany. Whenever Thomas thought of her, he got hard quite quickly: she’d been into crazy, kinky stuff, like anal. After he’d had a few beers, he sometimes found himself browsing through her Facebook photos. Even though she was now in her fifties (and, of course, divorced — twice), her knowing sneer and come-hither eyes suggested she still rolled around in the hay from time to time.

But the one memory that stood out was the first Christmas Party Thomas attended, way back when he was a teenager himself. He hoped the evening wouldn’t be too boring, and he wondered how long he was expected to stay; he had teenage things to do, like play video games. Instead of boredom, however, he found ecstasy in this mirth-filled building. He wished they could stay there forever, laughing, eating, and drinking (he’d stolen a few sips of vodka, and felt powerful), just seal up the building and forget everything else except holiday cheer.

Though the evening had, of course, wound down eventually, to Thomas’s dismay, he held this memory in his mind like an enchanting snowglobe that could be shaken again and again.

As he burst through the door now, he was as hearty as those older people had been so long ago, and he was determined to set a few things straight. He would apologize to Cynthia and Orianna for being rude to them after Kara’s temper tantrum, and he would, if possible, extend his apology to Orianna into a discussion about — things. What exactly they would say could not be conceived, but it would work itself out.

Yolanda was the first person he met. She was standing by the entrance, next to the receptionist’s desk, sipping a drink and admiring the lifesize Santa the Chamber had put in a corner.

“Thomas!” she cooed. “There you are!”

She wrapped him in a plump hug. Thomas was conscious of bosom, hot breath, and a stale attic smell mixed with a sharp perfume of some kind.

“Won’t it be fun tonight!” she exclaimed.

“Of course,” Thomas agreed. “It is every year.”

“I’m glad you think so. We do love to throw a little event for our employees, who’ve worked hard all year, and — what’d you bring? Oh, cheesecake! Yum yum! And beer! Now, don’t let any of the young’uns get ahold of that, ya hear? I’ve got my Eagle Eye on them, but some of ’em are crafty and might get by me!”

Thomas assured her that he would tenaciously defend his beer against theft from minors, and moved to the conference room, which was bubbling with noise.

The long conference table was covered with food and drink of all sorts. Thomas picked out Eldridge’s meatloaf and Maureen’s pigs-in-a-blanket, and smiled hungrily. There was a pasta dish of some sort, a towering platter of barbecue, a small pizza that looked homemade because it wasn’t exactly circular, potatoes au gratin, a saliva-inducing peach cobbler, peanut brittle — and this was just a small sample of all the goodness. There were so many smells drifting around that it was hard to fixate on just one. The alcohol hadn’t been neglected, either: several liquor bottles stood classily and sinfully on the table, and there was a large ice-packed cooler on the floor for the beer. Thomas set down his cheesecake, stuffed his beer into the cooler, placed Eddie’s Secret Santa gift in the large pile with the others gifts, and peered about.

With most of the employees present, and with the room being relatively small, there seemed to be a billion conversations going on at once. Thomas looked around, waiting for someone to come talk to him, and was mildly annoyed when someone didn’t immediately ditch their conversational partner and hurry over. Rather quickly, however, Vernon waddled over in his Santa suit and clamped Thomas’s hand in the well-known Oxendine handshake vice.

“Well, well, well,” Vernon boomed through his fluffy white beard. “Well met, young traveler. Mayst thou partake in the foodstuffs me and mine have prepared for this magnificent occasion?”

“I will,” Thomas replied. He was fairly confident this was the correct answer.

“Good! This’ll be a fun evening, don’tcha think, buddyrow? I’ve got my mistletoe ready, and I believe I can get Carly to give me a peck. What do you think?”

Thomas looked over at Carly. She was ravishing in a curve-hugging, low-backed blue dress. As Thomas should have expected, Noah was grovelling at her feet, and she was giggling in a way that was clearly boosting her admirer’s confidence to cruel and unrealistic levels. There were several other high schoolers (boys Thomas didn’t know very well, since they only worked a few night shifts) drifting around her and glancing at her ass every five seconds, but Noah was keeping them at bay by giving them dirty looks and by holding Carly’s attention with an endless stream of words. Thomas grinned at the scene, then turned back to Vernon.

“If you do get a peck from her,” he said, “looks like Noah will have something to say about it.”

“What! That little pissant!” Vernon hollered. “He’s still after her, ain’t he? Bet he thinks tonight’s the night, don’t he? They’ll get a little tipsy — of course, they’re not supposed to be drinking, but I know they will, nothing to be done about it, but don’t tell Yolanda I said that, she’ll get mad — and then he’ll drag her to the broom closet and have his way, isn’t that his plan? Ha! Never happen!”

“Looks like you’ve been drinking some yourself.”

“Of course, of course. About six or seven or eight beers. Nothin’ to it. Back in the day, I could down a twelve-pack in half a night. Oh son, we went hard back then. I remember scuffling with them Marines…”

“That was back then, Vernon. You’re not young anymore.”

“The hell I ain’t! I feel fit as a fiddle! I — hell, you’re right. Should pace myself. Look out for me, like Yolanda, and maybe the two of ya’ll can keep me straight.”

“Will do, boss.”

“Thanks, buddyrow. Now get to eating! Get to drinking! Ho ho ho!”

Vernon waddled out of the room, probably to go check on Yolanda. Thomas grabbed a plastic Dixie cup and filled it with sweet tea from a large flower-decorated jug. He didn’t want to start in on his beer until a little later, after certain tasks were completed. Namely: Cynthia and Orianna were munching pretzels and talking together in a corner, which was perfect. Knock out two apologies at once, and then later, if he could talk to Orianna by herself…

“Hey, ladies,” he gushed. “How are the both of you?”

Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been obvious to Thomas that he’d butted into a conversation. But his jolliness was rolling along like a choo-chooing amusement park train, and so he was oblivious. Even the two women, who at first scowled at him, had to smile when they saw how beatific he was. Cynthia had on a red sweater and Christmas-tree earrings, while Orianna was dressed in her usual tank-top, jeans, and bandanna outfit.

“Hey, Thomas,” Cynthia said.

“Hey,” Orianna said coolly.

“Listen, while I’ve got you two together, I’d just like to apologize for my behavior the other day. I’m sorry I snapped at you both after that… incident… with my… friend. It won’t happen again — any of it.”

Cynthia and Orianna looked at each other. It appeared they were impressed, or it could have been Thomas’s rose-colored glasses making them impressed.

“Well, thanks, Thomas,” Cynthia said, smiling. “I accept your apology. I didn’t mean to rile you up. I was just concerned.”

“Not your fault at all,” Thomas said. “And I appreciate your concern.”

He turned to Orianna, who was grinning at him.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I don’t accept your apology,” Orianna said.

“Oh, come on,” Cynthia pleaded. “He’s being nice…”

“I know. It’s not what you think. I embarrassed Thomas a few days before that incident, as he calls it, so he deserved to get a little payback.”

“How did you embarrass him?” Cynthia asked.

“Don’t worry about it. It was just some silliness. But I think we’re even now — right Thomas?”

Thomas flushed. This threatened to derail his jolliness. Why did she have to bring up “Are You Interested?” with Cynthia standing right here? Yes, he wanted to talk about it, but he wanted to talk about it alone. He coughed, and muttered: “Well, I wasn’t thinking about payback when I snapped at you, but if that’s how you want to look at it… as long as we’re cool.”

“We’re cool,” Orianna said, nodding.

“Alright then,” Cynthia said. “That’s that.”

“That is indeed that,” Orianna said, but her eyes and body seemed to be screaming “We need to have a real talk” to Thomas — but again, Thomas’s heightened mood could’ve distorted things.

Suddenly, an ear-splitting whistle cut through all the chatter. Everyone winced and turned towards the source, which was Vernon. Like many old-timers, he had a whistle that could shatter glass. He was standing at the front of the room, by the big-screen TV, his white-gloved hands held high, his white beard bristling.

“Friends and fellows,” he roared in his military-grade speaking voice, “I believe everyone is here — and if they ain’t, they’re a bunch of damn stragglers and don’t deserve any consideration!”

Laughter and mutters of agreement.

“Welcome to the annual Oxendine’s Grocery Christmas Party!”

Cheers from some, sardonic grins from a few youngsters, touching smiles from a few other youngsters who felt like Thomas had all those years ago.

“You’re all already drinking and eating, so I don’t need to tell you to begin. That’s the way it should be! We’re not a bunch of hoity-toity lords and ladies who need fifteen different forks laid out on the table before we can eat! We’re a bunch of rough and ready good ol’ folks, who know how to have a good time!”

More cheers, and a cry, possibly serious, of “Vernon for president!”

“No, I’m not going to tell you it’s OK to eat now, or say a prayer, or do much speechifying at all.” And now his voice lowered a bit and became more solemn, like a teacher reading a favorite passage to his students. “I just want to thank you all for working for me, for coming in day in and day out and doing your jobs. I want to thank you for being good people. I’m glad we can all be together and have fellowship tonight.” A long pause as he scanned the room. More than a few people felt the sincerity of that gaze and those words yanking out tears, which were embarrassingly suppressed. Thomas was certainly one of them. Vernon made basically the same speech every year, and each year Thomas was affected. “That’s all I have to say. Now — let’s be merry! Secret Santa time is in one hour!”

Cheers as everyone eagerly burst out of the solemnity. Thomas looked around, but Cynthia and Orianna had drifted away. Orianna was filling a plate with food, and Cynthia was talking with Eddie, who, like last year, was drunk off of two beers.

Thomas was aware of several younger people around him. They were the night-shift workers he didn’t know well. They looked at him, and he looked back at them, but no one said anything. Finally Thomas slid away, feeling only a little guilty. They’d likely be gone in a few months anyway. No use getting chummy.

He thought he heard snickers behind him as he left the knot of teenagers, but he wasn’t certain.

By the doorway to the conference room, Vernon held his mistletoe aloft and got a chaste kiss from Maureen. He pawed her shoulder and said “Ho ho ho!” Carly passed by, her butt bouncing, but she only smiled at Vernon. Vernon said something that was likely inappropriate, but Carly just laughed, wagged a finger, and shook her head. Noah followed in her wake, a barnacle-covered dinghy desperate to catch up to a glittering cruise ship, but as Carly apparently was heading to the bathroom, he could only follow so far.

Thomas grabbed a paper plate and began loading it up with food. Eldridge’s meatloaf would be supreme, so he sliced off a large chunk of the brown mass. Eddie’s mac n’ cheese looked like it had been pulled straight from a perfectly-produced television commercial, and Thomas spooned some onto his plate. There were several other dishes of unknown craftsmanship which looked tasty: chicken parmesan, airy hush puppies, clam chowder as thick as wet cement. He grabbed some of each. After he had a multicolored mountain of grub, he sat down in one of the Chamber’s high-backed and over-priced chairs and pecked away. Like his family’s Christmas Get-Together, one had to pace themselves when eating at the Party, for the feast was hours long.

He hadn’t been sitting there long before Orianna sat down beside him. She bit into a deviled egg and looked at him.

“You know,” she said, “I never expected you to apologize. It’s not like you really needed to, anyway — it was a pretty minor thing. But still, you did.”

“I felt it was the right thing to do,” Thomas said magnanimously.

“Yeah. Well. We haven’t really talked since… well, since the last time we talked. I hope you understand I didn’t mean to embarrass you by asking you that question. You know the one I mean, I think.”

“All is forgiven,” Thomas said, though he again flushed at her mention of “Are You Interested?” Why did she have to keep bringing it up? Was she pouring salt on the wound, or was she truly trying to make amends? And why was he acting like a little bitch about it? Hadn’t he wanted to talk about it alone with her?

“It was a strange conversation, wasn’t it?” Orianna said in a far-off voice. “Almost like — hmmm — how can I put it? Like — no, I can’t put it into words.”

“C’mon. It can’t be that hard.”

“It is, though. Nevermind.” She ruminated while chewing a strawberry. “What do you think of this?”

“The Party?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it’s great. I look forward to it every year.”

“How many have you been to?”

“Oh — twenty five, I believe.”

“Wow. And I’m only twenty-three.”

Of course, Thomas knew this, but hearing it spoken aloud created an incredible gulf between them. He was middle-aged, no longer as nimble and strong as he once was. He’d made choices, seemingly final, that put him in this place, at this time, choices he didn’t regret. Orianna was young, with serene energy, and any choices she made could be altered or reversed as easily as one chooses a new cereal. In the breeziness of work at Oxendine’s, or in his late-night fantasies, the distance between them was but a quick step. Now, in this setting, when they should have been closer than ever before, they seemed as far apart as two travelers trekking across different continents.

His cheer seemed to drain from him. He didn’t know what to say. Should he act the reminiscing old man and tell her a “when I was your age” story? Should he try to summon up lost youth and pretend that he was the same age as her in spirit? Should he simply ask her to hang out? That’s what all the female advice-givers on television, the internet, and elsewhere said, as if every lummox knew that. (Thomas noted that these decisive women didn’t seem to do much asking themselves, but were always ready to ridicule a man who didn’t swagger up to them as confident as Don Juan.)

Orianna, thankfully, said something, and Thomas beat back his mental hobgoblins.

“Can I ask you for some advice?”

“Sure,” Thomas said, eager to impart the wisdom of the ages, now that Orianna had asked for it.

“I’ve been thinking about going to college, but I’ve read so many negative things…”

“I don’t think you’d like it. It seems like it’s an assembly line nowadays. And unless you go into STEM, or become a doctor or lawyer, you’ll probably be scrambling for a job once you get out.”

“My opinion exactly. And I don’t have a mind for STEM, and I don’t want to train all those years to be a doctor or lawyer.”

“I sense a ‘but’…”

She gave him a half-smile. “But… they kind of force you into it, don’t they? Society, I mean. ‘If you want a nice, well-paying job, you have to go to college.’ All evidence to the contrary, of course.”

“There are plenty of trades worth doing.”

“Yes, that’s true — but — did you ever think about going into a trade? If you don’t mind my asking?”

He did, a little. In the question was the scorn and bewilderment of the many people who had asked him that over the years. The question really meant: “Why do you insist on being poor, when there’s money to be made?” Thomas would try to explain that he, being single and childless, could get along just fine on his wage, but it was like trying to elucidate an esoteric philosophy.

“I thought about it, but I was working here, so… I’m not married and I don’t have kids, so there are two things I don’t have to worry about. A man by himself doesn’t need much money.”

“Yeah. A woman by herself — well, I’m technically by myself — doesn’t need much money, either. I only pay a portion of the utilities for my parents, so I’ve been able to save up a nice little amount. What to do with it, though?”

“You don’t have to do anything with it. But — and I have something saved up myself — a trip abroad would be nice.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. I have no responsibilities, right? Europe would be amazing. All that history — like walking through a museum every day.”

“Me, I’d like to go to Australia,” Thomas said. “You know, if I ever went anywhere.”

“That’s a nice choice,” Orianna replied. “Wouldn’t mind going there myself. But really, anywhere sounds good.”

“Yeah, sure does.”

“But I wonder if traveling gets old after a while? Like everything else — you know?”

“Yeah, it probably does. I know I’d miss home at some point.”

“Well, my plate’s empty,” Orianna said abruptly, “so I’m going to go get a second helping.”

Thomas, whose plate had been piled with far more food than Orianna’s, still had a ways to go before he finished.

“Alright. Meet you back here?” It sounded weak and begging, and he regretted saying it.

She laughed, and he couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or pleased.

“Maybe later,” she said. “I want to talk to Cynthia again about something, about a decision I’ve made.”

“Alright,” Thomas said warily, wondering what she meant. “See you later, then.”

As he watched her go, Thomas shook his head. She was so slim, so pale, like a sliver of moonlight glinting off a knife. He thought of Kara, his most recent sexual partner; next to her, Orianna was an ivory goddess.

And she was seventeen years younger than him. He sighed and chomped down on a hushpuppy.

“May I have your attention, please?” Vernon blared from the front of the room. Everyone quieted slowly, though the teenagers, in the way of teenagers when anyone asks them to quiet down, took longer than the others. “It’s now… Secret Santa time!”

Whoops and applause, and sinister laughter from those who’d gotten a gag gift for their assigned person.

“Ya’ll know what to do — well, some of you are new, and don’t know, but you’ll figure it out. Grab these here gifts and let’s get to unwrapping!”

All of the presents had been stacked, not too neatly, in a corner of the conference room. Several people surged forward and acted as the de facto gift-distributors, and soon there was an assembly line delivering each gift to its intended recipient. There was much tearing and tossing of wrapping paper, and exclamations of delight or mock disgust, depending on if the person had opened a “real” gift or a gag one. As with the gift-unwrapping at the Copeland/Dowling Family Christmas Get-Together, Thomas felt mildly uneasy, but the Secret Santa aspect of this affair did add some much-needed novelty.

Eddie had gotten his gift before Thomas, and had opened it incredibly quickly. He was already in Thomas’s face, bawling like an agitated goat.

“A pack of socks? C’mon, man, that ain’t very original. I got so many socks, lemme tell ya…” He tried to think up an analogy, but failed. “…well, I got a bunch.”

Thomas smelled alcohol and onions on the breath Eddie was blowing directly into his face, and he could feel spittle flecking onto his cheeks. He took a step back and frowned.

“You’re lucky I didn’t get you a gag gift. Would you rather have something idiotic that you’ll just throw away?”

“Hell yeah! At least I’d laugh! And I wouldn’t throw it away, I’d put it somewhere and laugh about it every time I saw it!”

“Well, next time I get you — if there is a next time — I’ll remember that.”

“Socks! Man, oh man. Socks!” He’d had three beers, which meant he was far into the danger zone. He would either sit down and doze off, or say something rude and get into a fight. These were the only two possibilities.

“Man oh man,” he said, wobbling and trying to focus on Thomas. “Think I need to sit down.”

The first possibility asserted itself, and Eddie slumped into the nearest chair and was asleep within seconds.

Thomas’s gift finally made its way to him. To his surprise and alarm, it was from Carly; the text on the tag was written in glittery pink ink, with the ‘o’ and the ‘a’ in Thomas’s name turned into smiley faces. It was a medium sized package, wrapped neatly in snowflake-covered paper, with a red bow. Thomas looked over at Carly, but Noah again had her captured — though no captive had ever been so foxy. Thomas tore through the wrapping paper and opened the white cardboard box inside. Boxers. She’d given him boxers. Not just any boxers, either: each one was decorated with a bevy of swimsuit-wearing bombshells contorting themselves into various sultry poses. Thomas grinned and shook his head, then walked over to Carly.

Noah regarded him much as he would a cockroach who’d gotten into the cupboard. Carly, however, was grinning in a way Thomas had seen porn stars grin before they began a particularly mouth-stretching blowjob.

“Thanks for these,” Thomas said. “You have a great sense of humor.”

“You’re welcome,” Carly purred. “I was going to put my image on all of them, but it was too complicated and cost too much.”

Noah, ignorant at first of what they were talking about, finally saw the boxers in Thomas’s hand, and understood all. He clenched his fists and tried even harder to erase Thomas with his stare.

Thomas looked at him, unconcerned. His own look said: What are you going to do? Noah’s look responded with: Just you wait and see. Thomas: I’m waiting. Noah: Keep on! Thomas: I’m still waiting. Noah: To hell with you! Noah finally looked away, muttering.

“Would you have liked that, Thomas?” Carly asked.

“Liked what?” His staredown with Noah had knocked him out of the conversational flow.

“If it was me on those boxers, instead of those average-looking girls.”

Thomas looked at the boxers, and then at the real woman in front of him. Her body was so pressed against her blue dress that he could almost see every pore. He glanced quickly from full chest to tight belly to muscular leg. It was a fine sight, but unlike Noah, he wouldn’t be drawn into an endless string of empty flirtations with this temptress.

“Nah, these women are fine.”

Carly pouted elaborately, and Thomas started to walk away, not bothering to ask what gifts the two teenagers has recieved. Noah immediately sought to regain Carly’s attention: “I would love to have some boxers, or anything really, with your beautiful self on it.”

Carly tee-heed: “But you already have photos of me. Some very provocative ones, too.”

Noah fumbled: “Yeah, but, uh — I can never have enough!”

Thomas sighed at the pathetic futility of the kid and moved to the beer cooler. Someone(s) had swiped a few bottles of his beer, but that happened every year. He wondered who the culprit(s) was/were. Was it one of the teenagers who had mysteriously disappeared during the festivities, only to reappear a few minutes later slushy-eyed and wobbly-footed? Or was it a cheapskate adult? Or both? It didn’t really matter. There were three Bud Lights left, and that was plenty for him. He used the bottle opener on his keychain to crack one open, and took a big gulp. It was incredibly refreshing in this hot room and after the gorging meal he’d eaten.

“I hope you’re not going to get drunk like some of our co-workers.”

Thomas turned to the piercingly pious voice, and saw Peggy staring at him. She was not quite frowning, which would have been surprising, if it had been a normal day or night. But this wasn’t a normal night: this was the Christmas Party, and even Puritans such as Peggy, to whom life was a constant battle against atheism, non-procreative sex, cursing, and other sins, found themselves (almost, very nearly) smiling.

This wasn’t to say she had put her Crusade on hold, even temporarily. The Devil lay in wait for those who let their faith slacken. She would still consign people to Hell, but she’d do so almost happily.

“And what if I do get drunk?” Thomas asked. “What will you do?”

“I’ll pray for you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Thomas scoffed. “Talk to the air all you want. That’s all you’re doing, you know.”

“If you only knew what He has done for me,” she preached, “you wouldn’t be blaspheming like you are. After my husband died, if it wasn’t for Him, I’d’ve been overcome with grief and probably would’ve just curled up in bed and wasted away.”

“Instead, you’re the highly-functioning, lovable person you are now.”

If Thomas had mocked her like this normally, she would’ve railed against his “disrespectful foulness” for a good ten minutes. Her vocabulary increased five-fold during these tirades, and when she quoted Scripture, Thomas could almost see the fire and brimstone of Hell, which was, of course, supposed to be his final destination. But again, this was a different setting, and all Peggy did now was snort, scrunch up her lipless mouth, and say: “You’ll learn one day not to make fun of your elders.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Thomas repeated. “What’d you get your Secret Santa person? A Bible?”

“Well,” Peggy began proudly, “I had Carly, and yes, I did get her a Bible. I do believe a girl of her… type… needs direction and wisdom.”

“What type is she?” Thomas asked with mock innocence.

“Why… you know what type, Thomas. If I had dressed like she does when I was young, even close to it, my daddy would’ve paddled my behind, and my momma would’ve burnt whatever skimpy thing I’d been wearing. Nowadays these girls show the world everything…”

“Do you think she’s having lots of sex, too?”

Peggy blushed, but she valiantly refused to fidget or look away. “I think so. And it’s wrong, and it’s shameful, and I can’t believe her parents don’t take her in hand.”

“Yeah, she does dress provocatively,” Thomas said. “I don’t know about her sex life, but I do wish she’d cover up some. It’s distracting.”

Peggy’s jaw dropped. In her memory, Thomas had never agreed with her on anything that really mattered. She felt like she should be for public nudity now that Thomas had concurred with her on how troublesome Carly’s barely-there wardrobe was.

“We-ell, hm, I’m glad we can agree on something,” she said reluctantly.

“Me too,” Thomas replied, then swiftly moved on, leaving Peggy behind in a conversational vacuum. She instantly forgot their extraordinary accord, instead mentally crucifying Thomas (but in a humanitarian way) for rudely walking away before she got to say her full piece. And he didn’t even ask what her Secret Santa had given her!

Thomas, however, had a legitimate reason for walking away: he needed to piss, badly. It happened every year: he got caught up in the merriment, and didn’t want to take two minutes to go to the bathroom lest he miss something. Eventually his bladder filled to bursting, and he rushed to the men’s room and emptied it in an immensely satisfying marathon pee.

The tradition continued now. As his urine shot out of his half-erect penis like a firehose-blast, Thomas closed his eyes and sighed deeply, and then had a pee shiver. Finally, he had nothing left but a few dribbles, and he shook himself off, washed his hands, and stepped back into the hallway, nearly colliding with Eddie.

“Gangway!” Eddie hollered. “Gotta pee, gotta pee!”

Thomas shook his head and stepped aside as a wild-eyed Eddie lurched into the bathroom. He hoped Eddie didn’t fall asleep while peeing, which happened last year. Vernon had found him slumped by a urinal, his penis hanging out and his pants soaked. As Vernon put it later: “The term ‘Vienna sausage’ describes what I saw.” Eddie’s response: “You lie! It’s as big as a Pringles can! You know it! I know you know it!”

Thomas had no desire to learn who was telling the truth (though he suspected the truth, as in most cases, lay somewhere in the middle), so he let the bathroom door shut behind him and walked away. If Eddie collapsed again, someone else would have to find him.

In the hallway, Yolanda was berating her husband, who was hidden beneath his fluffy Santa suit, although he had, for some reason, discarded his white beard. Perhaps he’d removed it so the ladies would actually kiss skin instead of fluff.

“How many have you had?” she demanded.

“Six!” Vernon howled, as if no man had ever suffered such persecution. “Six! That’s it!”

“I don’t believe it! Thomas!” Yolanda hollered, motioning him over. “Do you believe this man when he says he’s only drunk six beers?”

“Well,” Thomas began, exaggeratedly pondering, “when I first got here, he said he’d drunk six or seven or eight beers…”

“Liar!” Vernon howled. His face was red and sweaty, and with his crouching stance and clenched fists, he looked like a particularly pugnacious Kris Kringle.

“Honey, I’ve never known Thomas to lie,” Yolanda said sharply.

“Uh… then he’s a traitor, if he ain’t a liar! There’s supposed to be a code between us men-folk. When the wife meddles, we got to stick together and knock her nagging aside!”

“You told me to watch out for you, Vernon,” Thomas said, chuckling. “Your words were ‘If you and Yolanda team up, maybe you both can keep me straight.’”

“Uh… well… if I said that, I take it back!”

“Oh, you’re something,” Yolanda said, grabbing her husband’s arm. “Come on, we’re going out to the car. You’re going to take off this Santa suit and get some fresh air. And then maybe I’ll let you come back in instead of tying you to the roof with bungee cords!”

“Leggo o’ me, woman! Why in the world should I take off my Santa suit? I still gots to get a few kissy-kisses from the ladies, and the suit makes it all possible! They may not want to kiss Vernon Oxendine, but they’ll kiss Santa Claus, sure enough!”

“That’s the main reason I want you to take it off! You’ve had enough fun with your mistletoe. You nearly tickled Carly’s throat with that last kiss…”

“I did not! She did that! She came at me like a bitch in heat! I’ve been trying all evening to get her, and then outta nowhere she nearly tackles me!”

“…but I also want you out of it because you’re about to sweat to death. Look at you! Don’t you want to cool off?”

“I do not!”

“Oh, you are something!” Yolanda wailed. “Get out here and take that suit off, before I slap some sense into you.”

“Slap sense into me?” Vernon said as he let his wife drag him away. “Why, woman, in this marriage I’m the one’s got all the sense…”

Thomas watched the arguing couple leave the building. They were certainly two peas in a pod, as the saying went. Thomas had avoided marriage — or maybe marriage had avoided him — but seeing Vernon and Yolanda together made him wonder. If he could find a good woman like that, a woman who dealt with her man as he was…

“What a couple,” said Orianna. She’d appeared beside him at the Chamber’s reception area.

“Yes, they are,” Thomas replied, looking over at her. She seemed more lively than earlier; perhaps alcohol had something to do with her perkiness. “I’ve known them for years, and they’ve always been like this.”

“This may be awkward to ask, but they don’t have any kids, do they?”

“No, they don’t,” Thomas replied. “I don’t think Yolanda is… capable.”

“I see.”

A pause that lasted an age.

“So,” Orianna said finally. “Your beer.”

“Yes,” Thomas replied. “My beer. What about it?”

“I drank a few.”

“Ah. So it was you, you little thief.”

“Yeah, it was me,” she said, rocking back and forth on her feet. It was an unsteady rocking which happily confirmed her tipsiness. “Hope you don’t mind. Didn’t think you would.”

“Nah, I don’t mind.”

“I can pay you back if you want,” she said, grinning.

“Nah, that’s OK.”

Outside, at the Oxendine’s hubcap-less, peeling Pontiac mini-van, Yolanda had wrangled Vernon out of the Santa suit and had it draped over her arms. Vernon himself was somewhere within the bowels of the mini-van, while Yolanda stood on the asphalt and continued her remonstration.

“The party kind of loses its luster without him here,” Orianna said, nodding towards the mini-van.

“No, it doesn’t,” Thomas replied. “Listen to them in there.”

The noise rolling out from the conference room was as loud as ever, and the heat and convoluted smells snaked their way through the entire building. After all the Secret Santa gifts had been handed out and opened, the Party usually tapered off, but this year it seemed only a few people had left.

“Yeah, I guess,” Orianna said.

“What do you think of the Party?” Thomas asked, realizing he hadn’t gotten her thoughts on it. “It’s your first one, after all. And what’d you get from your Secret Santa?”

“Well, I think… I think I’d like to take a walk. Care to join me?”

“What, now? A walk where?”

“Just around here. Down by the docks, maybe.”

“Uh, sure. Let me get my jacket.”

“Yeah, I need mine too.”

The few seconds it took to get his jacket from his car gave Thomas a chance to process things. He was going to take a moonlit walk with a moon-touched young woman. Both of them had alcohol pulsing through them, and both of them were jubilant from the good fellowship they’d had all night. (Well, Thomas was, and while he was no mind-reader, he was pretty sure Orianna was, too.) Anything could happen. Sweat suddenly appeared on his forehead, and he wiped it away quickly.

Orianna was standing on the sidewalk, a few yards from the Chamber’s front steps, waiting for him. Even in her North Face coat, she looked thin and fragile, vulnerable to the cold night air. Thomas wondered if it would be too bold to hug her to him to keep her warm.

Before they took five steps, however, Vernon’s head poked out of the mini-van like a turtle alarmingly looking out of its shell.

“Where ya’ll goin’?” he barked.

“Vernon!” Yolanda chastised. “Quit bothering them and sit there and be quiet! They’re goin’ where they want to go!”

“Damn you, woman! Forty-plus years I’ve dealt with your nagging…”

“Forty-plus, huh? Do you know the exact number?”

“I know it’s been forty-plus years too many! Hey, now… where’d they go?”

Thomas and Orianna were indeed out of sight. They’d jogged away, turned a corner, and were now heading towards the docks.

Chapter Nine

The charter boats rocked back and forth in their moorings, sleek and powerful even though they were unmanned and silent. Their bows stabbed out towards the ocean, seemingly eager to slice through the water. Most had black tinted windows, making them look even more arrogant. Thomas, as always, was intrigued by their names: Feckless Reckless, Sandra Divine, The Fury, Wahooligan. He’d gone offshore fishing on Feckless Reckless years ago, when he was eight or nine, and gotten mildly seasick; he never threw up, but the rolling swell made him queasy the entire trip. He remembered the captain handling his boat with impossible ease and the young tanned mate whipping barefoot around the deck like a pirate of yesteryear. They’d caught a few dolphin, had a chance at a sailfish, and then, as the afternoon waned, they’d powered home through the great blue Atlantic.

Thomas thought of Reggie as well. His friend had been a hot-shot mate when he was young, but he’d had a falling out with his father and hadn’t mated since. Reggie sometimes spoke of those days with a wistfulness that almost embarrassed Thomas, since Reggie was a man who usually powered through the present, and let the past and future go fuck themselves.

Beside him, Orianna was humming a tune. She hadn’t said much since they’d left the Party.

“What’re you humming?” Thomas asked, more as a way to break the silence than out of genuine interest.

“What? Oh, nothing. Just a formless tune.”

The dock creaked beneath their feet. Despite countless hosing-downs, it was still stained dark where the day’s catch of the respective boats had been tossed onto the planks day after day. Thomas could almost see the dolphin lined up on the dock, their blazing colors shining in the sun.

They passed by the headboat, the Salty Queen, and Thomas stopped to peer up at the ninety-five footer. Orianna sat down on the dock box for The Fury and looked at nothing in particular. After a few moments, feeling himself willed to her side, Thomas walked over and sat down beside her — not too closely, though.

“Nice to walk out here at night, when no one’s around,” he stated obviously.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Ever been fishing offshore?”

“No, I haven’t. But I’m sure it’s fun.”

“I’ve only been once. Got a little seasick. It was fun, though. Kind of scary to be out in the middle of the Gulf Stream with no land in sight.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

Dark water sloshed against the pilings. Thomas drummed his fingers on his knees.

“What’s up? You were fine back at the Party, but now it looks like you’re brooding.”

“I know, I know,” Orianna said sadly. Thomas, hearing this tone, felt like he should comfort her somehow. A hand on the shoulder, even a hug, followed by some gentle words. Instead, he leaned forward and looked into her pale face.

“You’re killing me here,” Thomas said. “You’re not going to go drive off a bridge or something, are you?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just… dammit, I felt so good about my decision, but now I feel like I’m letting everyone down…”

“What decision?” Thomas asked, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

“I’m going to put in my two week notice tomorrow.”

“I see.” So that was what she’d discussed with Cynthia. Thomas sat silent, looking up at the night sky. Orianna finally stirred and touched his arm. Two minutes earlier, a touch from her would have filled him with confidence and contentment. Now it felt like a drowning girl trying to pull him down into the abyss with her.

“I wanted to walk out here with you and tell you face to face because… well, I feel like we could have been friends. There was some sort of connection there, don’t you think?”

“There’s nothing preventing us from being friends — or whatever — after you quit.”

“Yes, but… you know how things are. I’ll be doing this, you’ll be doing that.”

“That’s not very good reasoning.”

“Hmmm… maybe so… but… shit, I feel so fucking stifled!”

Snarling, she surged off the dock box, threw up her trembling hands, and glared at the sky. Thomas jerked back reflexively, feeling the cold sting of disillusionment within him. He would not have thought it possible that such a rage-filled, malicious grimace could appear on her face. He thought back to Roy and their parking-lot conversation so many years ago; Roy had had the exact same look when he turned off his car radio.

Orianna’s grimace, like Roy’s, had only lasted a second, and now she sagged, looking ancient and tired.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being over-dramatic, and I don’t think I’m a very over-dramatic person.”

“No, you’re usually pretty reserved.”

“But… after tonight, this party… it’s nice and all… but it’s so… small. I mean, there are wars going on all the time, there are churches in Europe that are hundreds of years old, there are mountains and deserts and glaciers and — all of it.” A sweep of the hand covered the entire Earth. “I want to see some of it, at least, and not be stuck here until I’m old and gray.”

“Stuck here like me, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Come on, I’m not dumb. Me, Vernon, Maureen, Eldridge, we’re the people you’re talking about. People who stay in one spot instead of seeing the big wide world.”

“Yes… well… that’s true… but I’m not belittling you or anyone else. I’m really not. But this life — it’s just not the life for me.”

“What is the life for you? Traveling the world?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not going to run off to college and become one of them. And I don’t want to just sit at home above the garage mooching off my parents. But yes, I do want to… go somewhere.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again.”

“What?”

“If you knew how many people who’ve worked at Oxendine’s felt like you feel… when did you decide to up and quit, anyway?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight? Tonight when?”

“I don’t know. Sometime during the course of the evening. Inside that hot room, with everyone laughing about nothing, and Vernon with the mistletoe, asking every girl five hundred times if he can get a kiss…”

“I think you’re being impulsive. And maybe the beer has something to do with this.”

“Well, maybe it’s time I act impulsive. I’ve been the rational one since birth. Reserved, like you say. My little brother was — is — a wild man, always did what he wanted, but now look at him — playing baseball at East Carolina, while I’m stuck here working at a tiny grocery store.”

“I don’t want to hear any more of your sob story.”

“…what?”

Thomas stood up and stuffed his hands in his jacket.

“You heard me. Like I said, you’re not the first person to walk through the doors of Oxendine’s Grocery, only to walk right back out because you thought you were better…”

“I didn’t say better. I mean I’m…”

“It’s the same thing. I’ve seen it before, I’m sure I’ll see it again. It’s old by now.” He glanced over at her, and the sight of her glistening eyes was sadistically pleasing to him. She should break down and weep. She deserved to feel hollow and hopeless. She deserved punishment.

But — he could stop now, if he wanted. He could apologize, make those tears evaporate, fix everything. He recalled a long-ago conversation with Vernon that had been very much like this one. Back then, Vernon had convinced him to stay when he wanted to quit. But Thomas wasn’t Vernon, and Vernon himself was drunk and babbling back in his mini-van. Thomas would say what was on his mind, and damn the torpedoes: “You drag me out here and ruin my goddamn evening — and I think I’ve made it clear how much I enjoy this Party — so that you can tell me you’re quitting, because we may have been friends, and there may have been a connection, and blah blah blah. You’re just a drama queen who wanted to tell someone else about your Big Decision, and you hoped I would pat you on the head and say ‘there, there,’ and then you’d disappear, because we can’t be friends because I’ll be doing this and you’ll be doing that.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” Orianna said softly. “I didn’t mean to.”

“What you meant to do is irrelevant.”

He self-righteously turned on his heel and walked away, vowing not to look back. He broke that vow after ten yards. Orianna was still sitting on the dock box, but she wasn’t sobbing, as he expected; she was staring across the channel to Sugarloaf Island, as steely as she’d ever been. Thomas frowned, dissatisfied. He wanted to see her broken and weeping, but she’d apparently recovered already. He again vowed not to look back, and this time he kept his vow.

Chapter Ten

The drive to Raleigh only took three hours or so, but to Thomas, who never drove anywhere, it was an epic journey, taxing of one’s concentration and endurance. There were so many goddamn cars, and they were either going much faster than him or much slower. He cursed the slowpokes and wished a state trooper or a highway patrolman would appear and ticket the speeders. The ubiquitous “OBX,” “SOBX,” and “SALT LIFE” stickers dotting the vehicles also vexed him, as did the curly, flowery letters that women put on their back windshields to spell out their initials. Why did everyone have to have the same goddamn things on their cars?

He felt at home up until he passed by New Bern and its wide placid rivers, charming sailboats, and long-tongued bear-logo painted into an overpass hill. Then he stared ahead as Highway 70 unfurled in a seemingly-endless straight line. Little bordered the highway except trees and grass. His speedometer said he was going sixty-five (the speed limit was seventy, but Thomas didn’t want to overwork his old Malibu), but it felt like he wasn’t moving at all. He fell into highway hypnosis, so he turned on the radio to jolt his mind back to reality. The syrupy, auto-tuned pop songs didn’t really accomplish this, so he switched to NPR and listened as an earnest scientist and a bubbly interviewer discussed the intelligence of octopi — or octopuses, which Thomas was informed was the correct plural form of octopus. For a few minutes, he felt like a lucid receptacle of learning, but then the thrum of tire on asphalt and the endless trees just sitting there won out, and he turned off the radio and succumbed to the dullness. He didn’t feel like thinking anyway, he told himself dubiously.

He believed he passed by Kinston, Goldsboro, and Smithfield: he’d noticed a few things, several hours had elapsed, and signs were informing him that he was now nearing Raleigh. This was strong proof.

Thomas didn’t feel excitement or awe as he entered the urban jungle; he only wanted to get to the Dowling residence, and to do that he was not required to learn anything about Raleigh’s endless highways, boroughs, universities, or businesses. He just had to zero in on the few roads that would get him to where he wanted to go.

Finally, after dangerously changing lanes and feeling the cold breath of the Reaper, he exited Highway 40 and made his way onto a relatively quiet residential road. Well-manicured lawns and SUV-filled driveways smiled out at the world — but not so brightly that a passerby would actually decide to drop by. Every yard was decorated for the holidays in a charming-but-not-overblown manner. Some of the burghers were outside, either puttering in their yards or watching the kids or grandkids cavort. A straw-haired little girl, in pink helmet, pink pants, pink shoes, and pink t-shirt, rode slowly down the sidewalk on her pink bike. She sent Thomas a floppy wave, and removing one hand from the handlebars nearly caused her to crash into an azalea bush.

This was the subdivision of Oak Hills (though there were few oaks, and the hills were more like small bumps) where Dan and Emily lived. Thomas pulled into the Dowling residence at 703 Longleaf Pine Drive, and exhaled deeply. Finally he was safe from the motorist-horde.

The Dowling property looked much like the other properties in the neighborhood. The lawn was covered uniformly in Bermuda grass, its color a weak tan now that it was winter. Perfectly-sculpted shrubs stood guard near the house. The house itself was a two-story brick affair, as sedate as a lawyer’s office. The Dowling vehicles were visible in the two-car garage, and Thomas’s parents’ Traverse was parked behind them in the driveway. So everyone was here. Thomas got out of his car slowly; he’d only stopped once during the trip, for a quick bathroom break, and his legs felt as if they’d atrophied into uselessness. He gingerly walked along the lawn until he felt like an able-bodied man instead of a cripple.

As usual, his mother was the first to greet him. She burst out of the front door like a Christmas-spirit-infused meteor and half-jogged, half-hopped, towards him, her red Christmas sweater burning the eyes and her reindeer antlers bobbing jauntily. Thomas was enveloped in a smothering hug, and had to squirm to keep his ribs from breaking. Mothers may be unable to open that sealed-tight jar of peanut butter, and they may stumble when trying to lift heavy furniture, but when they have a chance to hug a child or grandchild, they become as powerful as linebackers.

After his mother released him and stepped back, Thomas looked at her gravely. It had been six months since he’d seen his parents, and his mother seemed to have aged a decade since then. Her sparkling eyes were surrounded by wrinkles, and her gray hair looked parched and unnatural, almost wig-like. She’d always been thin, but now her thinness looked like the skeletal weakness of old age.

“Hello there, my darling boy!” Jean Copeland warbled. “How was your drive?”

“Boring.”

“Boring? Why, you’re a stone’s throw away. Me and your father have to drive all the way up from Florida. I tell you, it’s been a looooong day already.”

“Yeah, you certainly look bushed,” Thomas said, grinning.

“Are you being sarcastic? Listen to you, sassing your momma! I tell you, if I slowed down for a second, I’d be out like a light. But I won’t slow down, because we’re all here now, on such a lovely day!”

She shepherded Thomas inside. As he stepped across the threshold, he felt, as he always did, like he’d entered a catalog or a movie set depicting an upper-middle-class home. Hardwood floors shone. The stairs and banister were stately. Tasteful pictures lined the walls. He turned into the gargantuan living room, with the theater-screen-sized television, the plush sofa that begged one to nap on it, the potted plants that looked as if they’d never wilt, the fireplace that was spotless because it was never used, and the imposing oak bookshelf, where light and skim-worthy volumes (well-thumbed) sat side by side hefty and learned tomes (covered with dust).

Dan was talking to his father. Both men held glasses of eggnog, and with their erect carriage, careful gestures, and clear, brook-no-argument voices, they were as lofty as senators. (Dan, who had put on a few pounds, admittedly looked slightly less senatorial.) Both men turned as one when he entered, and Thomas felt much like a functionary about to be interrogated by a congressional sub-committee.

“Hello, son,” his father said, extending a hand. Thomas shook it reluctantly, as Frank Copeland’s handshake rivaled Vernon Oxendine’s in strength.

As father and son looked each other over, Thomas saw that Frank Copeland had also aged. His hair, which had been receding for twenty years, had now almost completely deserted him; only a few wisps hung around his ears and the back of his head. Like his wife, he had an astounding amount of wrinkles. Yes, he still looked senatorial, but he certainly wasn’t a freshman senator.

“Hey, dad,” Thomas said. “Hey, Dan.”

Dan nodded and also proffered his hand. His handshake was firm but not cartoonishly muscular, the handshake of a man who didn’t feel the need to express his virility and power via a grasping of sweaty appendages.

“How are you, Thomas?” Dan asked. It was the light-yet-commanding voice that had swayed juries, judges, potential clients, and disgruntled secretaries. It made Thomas uneasy, though he knew Dan was a hell of a lawyer, and seemed to be a fair husband — especially considering the wife he had to put up with.

“I’m good,” Thomas replied. “Yourself?”

“Lots of work, as usual. How’s the grocery store?”

“The same as ever.”

“And old Vernon?”

Vernon and Dan had met once years ago, when Emily and Dan had visited Thomas at the store during one of their vacations to the Crystal Coast. Vernon’s rambunctiousness offended Dan’s lawyerly calm, and vice versa. After Vernon had asked how many lawyers it took to screw in a lightbulb, and then supplied the answer before anyone could hazard a guess, Dan had said goodbye curtly and walked out of the store. Emily, angry that her husband had let a lowly shopkeeper get under his skin, had followed in his wake. Vernon said nothing more, but his wink to Thomas was eloquent.

“Like the store: the same as ever.”

With these preliminaries over, Dan and Thomas’s father could return to their conversational topic, which was the price of gas.

“What about you, Thomas?” his father asked. “Did you ever expect to see two-dollar gas again?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Me neither. All I can say is: thank God for fracking.”

“It’s a dubious practice,” Dan said, “but it does bear fruit. Liquid fruit, I should say.” He smiled — but not too widely — at his witticism.

“I hope I see the day when this country is Energy Independent,” Frank Copeland stated. He might have been addressing a crowd of thousands. “When other countries come to us for oil, not the other way around.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” Thomas said blandly.

Jean Copeland had disappeared into the kitchen, but she now reappeared with a mug of eggnog, which she shoved into Thomas’s hands.

“Drink up!” she said. “Oh, it’s so delicious!”

“Always is,” Thomas said, grateful for the mildly alcoholic drink. He’d have to scrounge through the Dowling family’s kitchen cabinets for stronger stuff if he was to survive this holiday, especially after what had happened at the Oxendine’s Grocery Christmas Party. Orianna’s capitulation was still fresh on his mind. He assumed she’d given Vernon her notice yesterday, but he wasn’t certain; Vernon hadn’t said anything about it yet, and Thomas damn sure wasn’t going to ask.

Then again — maybe Orianna had changed her mind, and maybe his gruff speech had been a factor in the reversal…

His sister blasted out of the kitchen, furiously wiping her hands on a towel, then stopped when she saw him.

“You’re late,” Emily said.

“I don’t believe I am,” Thomas replied. “I got here at 3:50, and I said I’d arrive between one and four PM.”

“Yeah… well… maybe you can come a little earlier next time. Mom and Dad drive up all the way from St. Augustine, and they’re still here hours before you.”

“Honey, let’s not bicker…” Dan began, before a look from his wife silenced him. Dan Dowling was respected at the law firm where he worked (and feared, by lesser employees), but in the presence of his wife he was but a footman before a dowager empress. And this was Christmas, a time when Emily had a dozen Plans that had to come off perfectly, and so he found his power further decreased.

Thomas studied his glaring sister, as he’d studied his parents and Dan. Emily Dowling, née Copeland, however, betrayed no signs of aging, nor had she put on weight. (In truth, she weighed five more pounds than she had at age eighteen, a fact which bothered her more than it should, since she was of the “every woman is beautiful” school.) Her figure, currently wrapped in tight jeans and an old Barack Obama CHANGE t-shirt, still enticed: at the supermarket, men of all ages followed her not-so-stealthily down the aisles, pretending they needed soy sauce or charcoal, depending on her route. When she jogged through the neighborhood in spandex and sports bra, she was conscious of the stares of yardmen, postal workers, husbands who happened to be home, wives who looked like they wouldn’t mind a same-sex fling, if only someone would initiate it for them, and skateboarding teenagers.

When she complained to Dan about this “juvenile ogling,” Dan suggested that maybe she shouldn’t jog in such risque attire. This caused Emily to flare up like a volcano that had suddenly decided to annihilate a chunk of civilization: “I should be able to wear what I want, when I want, without having some Cro-Magnon assholes undressing me with their beady little eyes! It’s not my fault they can’t control themselves!” Dan murmured out a few words that have not been remembered, then returned to the New York Times article he’d been reading.

“We will bicker,” Emily huffed now, “if we need to. Like every Christmas, I’m stressed and overworked…”

“Honey, I’ve tried to help you,” Thomas’s mother pleaded, “but you won’t let me. You take on too much, and—”

“Mom, you make the eggnog too eggy, and you don’t clean the dishes properly—”

“How can I mess up the eggnog, when I follow your recipe exactly? And as far as dishes go, why, Jean Copeland can clean a pan, I’ll tell you that much—”

And so it began. The men stood there, listening to the back and forth. (It should be noted that none of them now looked senatorial.) Finally, the miniature hurricanes blustered into the kitchen, leaving behind an awkward silence.

“The same every year,” Thomas finally grumbled.

“Yes,” Dan said carefully. “But it’s sort of a tradition by now, isn’t it? It would seem odd if Emily and Jean didn’t clash.”

“It would seem like a normal family Christmas,” Thomas replied, “not a pointless frenzy.”

“Something the matter, son?” Frank Copeland asked, ever probing for chinks in his son’s armor.

“Nothing. Just work stuff.”

“Well, don’t let it poison the mood,” his father admonished. “This is one of the few times we get together…”

“I’ve never known Thomas to poison anything,” Dan said. “I’m sure his work problems aren’t that major.”

Frank Copeland looked at him malevolently, and Dan Dowling’s station sank from that of an already-low footman to a stable boy. He considered saying something caustic, something about how he was a lawyer of no small account, and that Frank was in his house — but he knew it would accomplish nothing, and Emily would get angry with him for befouling the mood, so he stilled his tongue.

Instead he took a few sips of his eggnog, as if nothing in the world irked him or would ever irk him, and then excused himself: “I’m going to go check my e-mail real quick. Important work stuff, got to keep on top of it.” This left father and son standing by each other. Both men looked outside intently, instead of at each other, as if something engrossing could be seen, but there was nothing besides the skittering of a few leaves across the road.

“How’s Florida?” Thomas finally asked.

“Fine.”

A leaf pirouetted, then flopped back onto the pavement like it was exhausted.

“What have you been doing lately?” Thomas tried. This was a good question to ask, as it could potentially keep his father talking for minutes (or at least seconds) at a time, therefore relieving Thomas of the responsibility of maintaining a conversation.

Frank Copeland hadn’t had many hobbies during his working life, but now that he was retired he’d filled up the free hours with tons of them. Except they weren’t really hobbies, as his father attacked them with ornery zeal. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” Frank Copeland always said. For example, he couldn’t take a lazy birding stroll: he had to bring along his $999.99 pair of binoculars; his water-, fire-, and acid-proof field journal, in which he kept precise data on all bird sightings; two or three birding guides he could consult if he came across an unknown species (which was extremely unlikely, because Frank Copeland knew his birds); and more photographic gear than a red-carpet premiere.

“I’ve taken up painting,” Frank Copeland replied.

“Really?” Thomas thought back. Yes, his mother had mentioned this in several e-mails. “How’s it going so far?”

“Fine,” his father said dourly. “Making progress. Most of my stuff looks like blobs of gunk now, but in time, I think I’ll have something worth presenting.” In truth, this was standard Frank Copeland false humility, which went hand-in-hand, somewhat paradoxically, with his “worth doing well” philosophy. If he hiked up Mt. Everest unaided, at the summit he would curse himself for tripping once a few thousand feet down instead of celebrating.

“Is mom helping you?” Thomas asked, though he knew the answer. Even if his mother hadn’t mentioned it in her e-mail, he would’ve been able to guess it.

“No. I don’t think your mother and I would get along as instructor and student.”

Thomas smirked. He could imagine the scene: Jean gushing that “you’re improving so much, and, oh, look at how real that tree looks! Your style reminds me of someone… who was it… yes, Caiden Willis, who I knew back in Morehead City. You know he moved away, became a graphic designer somewhere, believe it was Chicago, don’t know what he’s doing now…” and Frank replying that “this overdone praise doesn’t help me. I want to paint, dammit. And please stop going off on a tangent about old friends.” It was like this for every hobby, which was why they tried to keep their interests separate.

“I’m taking an Adult Learning class at the community college,” his father continued, “but it’s too slow for me.” This did not surprise Thomas. He could picture the instructor driven to frustration by his father’s hectoring questions, and the fluffy housewives intimidated by the way he attacked a canvas. This mental picture bore a strong resemblance to reality.

“Sounds good,” Thomas said. “Gotta keep active in your retirement, right?”

“I’ll always be active,” Frank Copeland stated. “The rolling stone gathers no moss.”

“Rolling stone… huh, that reminds me of Sisyphus. You know that myth?”

“No,” was the gruff response. Frank Copeland hated not knowing something, and he especially hated it when his son was the one who pointed out his ignorance.

“Well, it’s an interesting myth.”

A pause as long as a winter’s night.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Thomas said, as a way to escape. “By the way, where’s Dennis?”

“In his room. Playing those video games, I expect.”

To Frank Copeland, video games were the biggest time-wasters ever conceived. He didn’t know why supposedly smart people killed their brain cells shooting up characters on a screen when they could be improving themselves. His own son had been passionate about video games when he was a kid, something that still rankled him.

Thomas was recalling this passion himself. He remembered vividly when the original Nintendo console came out, way back when he was in elementary school. He’d played it at a friend’s house, and immediately had to have it. He’d never experienced anything like it. He’d heard of something called “Atari” at some point, but he didn’t exactly know what it was. The Nintendo, however — even in his schoolboy brain, stuffed with state capitals and “in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” he knew that it was Huge.

But his father swore he’d never buy such a thing for Thomas. His mother was more receptive — mainly because other mothers told her the Nintendo kept their children engaged for hours, instead of tearing through the house like they usually did — but in this matter Frank Copeland would not budge a millimeter.

“If you want this thing, buy it yourself,” he told his son.

At the time, Thomas and Emily were paid $10 per week, which they earned by washing dishes after supper, picking up pine cones, and sweeping up pine straw in the yard, all of which had to be done according to their father’s exacting standards. Frank Copeland wasn’t going to just hand his kids money; they would have to earn it.

Thomas spent his money as quickly as he earned it, mainly buying comic books and sweets, and so Frank Copeland did not believe his son had the discipline to save up the $199 a retail Nintendo console cost. And so, to him, the matter was closed.

But weeks passed, then months, and his wife occasionally reported that Thomas wasn’t spending his earnings as he had been. He’d spend a dollar or two here or there, but the bulk of it, she assumed, went into the shoebox he used for the storage of rocks, marbles, baseball cards, and interesting dead things. Suspicious, Frank confronted his son one day, and was alarmed when a reluctant Thomas opened the shoebox and counted off $175.30.

“What’re you saving up for?” Frank demanded.

“A Nintendo,” Thomas replied, as if his father were a numskull for asking such an obvious question.

“Son, don’t you think you could spend that money on better things? Or not spend it at all, save it for a rainy day. We can set up a savings account for you…”

“I’m going to spend it on what I want, and what I want is a Nintendo.”

The Nintendo was soon bought, and Frank Copeland sat in his recliner, reading the paper and stewing, while Mario blipped and blooped across an 8-bit wonderland on the living room’s television.

As the years passed, Thomas bought more and more games, but his $10 per week salary only went so far. His father wouldn’t raise it, claiming that Thomas “ought to be happy with what you get. When I was your age I went without.” Thomas pinched every penny until it squealed, then he pinched some more, until Old Abe was begging for mercy.

There were also other video game systems that enticed him: the Sega Genesis, the Game Boy, the TurboGrafx-16, but he recalled how hard it had been to save up for the Nintendo. He could do it again, sure, but it would be extremely difficult.

One day at school, Thomas overheard a fateful conversation at a nearby lunch table. One of the jocks was talking about his job at Oxendine’s Grocery: “It’s so fuckin’ easy, and Vernon Oxendine’s hilarious. Ya’ll should come work there. He’s hiring, you know.” The other people at the table demurred, claiming that working at a grocery store was for dumbasses, but Thomas was interested. A job would solve his money problems. He was a freshman by now; he was old enough to work. He imagined a massive video game library in his room, dozens of game cartridges stacked on a shelf in alphabetical order, and various consoles sitting by the small television he’d gotten for Christmas last year, ready to be fired up. His father wouldn’t buy him any games or consoles, but he could justify buying a television. This way, his son could play in his own room, and not pollute the living room with those damnably repetitive sound effects.

After school, he got Brandon, an older sort-of friend who had a car, to drive him over to Atlantic Beach, where the grocery store was located. The store was right on the corner of Atlantic Beach’s big intersection. Compared to the chain supermarkets, it was tiny, but, owing to its location, it did a brisk trade during the summer months; Thomas had been in there when it was crammed with tourists either going to or coming from the beach. Now, however, it was fall, and there were only four cars in the cracked, dusty parking lot.

Thomas went inside, his heart pounding. A few minutes later, he walked out, smiling and practically skipping.

“What happened?” Brandon asked as he blew smoke out of his nostrils. To Thomas, who’d never even smoked a cigarette, this looked very fucking cool. “Did you get hired?”

“Oh yeah,” Thomas said proudly. “Mr. Oxendine — Vernon — said he liked the looks of me. I start this weekend.”

“Congrats, man,” Brandon said, offering his hand for a high five.

“Thanks, Brandon.”

His father was not so congratulatory.

“Why are you going to work there?” he asked. “There’s plenty of work to be done at the furniture store.”

“I don’t want to work there.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

This wasn’t the first time Frank Copeland had asked his son to work at Copeland Furniture, and this wasn’t the first time Thomas had rejected such employment. Thomas had heard his father complain about his “lazy” and “surly” employees enough to know he’d be miserable working there. He already put up with enough shit as it was. If his father caught him sweeping pine straw without sufficient alacrity, he would yank the rake out of Thomas’s hands and show him how it was supposed to be done. It was the same for dishwashing, lawn-mowing, and every other task Thomas had to do to get his measly $10 a week.

For his part, Frank Copeland didn’t know if he wanted Thomas to work at the store or not, so he didn’t force him to. On the one hand, he feared his lazy and surly employees would get all buddy-buddy with Thomas and turn his own son against him — well, turn him even more against him. On the other hand, he wanted Thomas and/or Emily to inherit the store one day, and if they were going to be good businesspeople, they needed to know how to run the place.

He vacillated between these two points, and so did nothing.

“Well, I wish you would’ve talked to me and your mother first,” Frank griped.

“Oh, I think it shows great initiative!” Jean beamed, grabbing Thomas by the shoulders and shaking him a few times. “I’m so proud of you for marching in there and putting on a good face and showing Mr. Oxendine you were worth hiring. Your first job! The first of many, I hope!”

“How are you getting there?” Frank asked. “I suppose you expect us to drive you there and pick you up at all hours of the day and night?”

“Oh, don’t be such a Gloomy Gus, Frank!” Jean said, lightly slapping her husband on his arm. “Of course I’ll drive him. It’s not a big deal at all.”

“What about the things that need doing around the house?” Frank persisted. “Are you still going to do those?”

“Well, yeah, I’m supposed to, right?” Thomas asked.

“Yes, you were, but I’m giving you the option to quit, if you want, since you have another job now. You’ll still be expected to help out a little around the house, as a matter of course, but you won’t have to do as much as you’re doing now. And you won’t, obviously, be paid.”

“Who’s going to mow the grass or pick up pinecones then?”

“Me and Emily will.”

Thomas mulled this over for about two seconds.

“OK, I quit.”

Frank Copeland banged out of the house and started sweeping off the driveway savagely. Since he had to do all this household and yard work now anyway, in addition to running a business and trying to feed and clothe his family, he might as well get a start on it.

Inside, Thomas was blissfully playing The Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo, trying to beat it for the eighth time. He was aware he’d failed some test of his father’s, but he saw no point in stressing about it. He’d failed so many tests by this point that he wished his father would just slap a big red F on every metaphorical bubble sheet he turned in and save them all the hassle.

He killed an Octoroc, a big-eyed rock-spitting enemy, with an arrow, and all was right in the world.

Both men were thinking of these memories now, but if either man suspected the thoughts of the other, they didn’t acknowledge it, and Thomas slipped out into the hall and shut himself in the bathroom.

As he pissed into the blue toilet-bowl water, and sniffed the overbearing Ocean Mist scent emitting from a Glade plug-in, he wondered why the hell his father was so goddamn stuffy. He was stuffy when Thomas was young, and he was only getting stuffier as he aged. Thomas supposed it was an incurable condition.

After drying his hands on the downy hand towel, he exited the bathroom and went in search of Dennis. He was already tired of adults, and although he’d never been able to establish a rapport with the teenager — or with any kid, really — perhaps this Christmas would be different.

Dennis was in his room, or so it sounded judging from the gunshots and explosions rattling out from behind the closed door. Thomas looked at the posters, signs, and other paraphernalia tacked to the door: there was a large red and white DO NOT ENTER sign, a poster of wrestler John Cena, a poster of the entire cast of Dragonball Z, and a photo of what looked vaguely like Dennis with an unidentified smolderingly-attractive female, possibly a girlfriend. Thomas thought back to what he’d had on his own door when he was young, how he’d evolved from G.I. Joe and Where’s Waldo? posters to ones of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kelly LeBrock.

Thomas knocked on the door and continued looking over the paraphernalia as he waited.

His knock, however, was barely a whisper compared to the sounds of warfare within the room. He banged louder, and the noise inside abruptly stopped. He heard movement, and the door was opened halfway. A shockingly mature face looked out at him. Thomas hadn’t seen Dennis since last Christmas, and, like adults everywhere, he’d forgotten to take into account the effects of puberty. The Dennis of last year had been a gawky string bean, with hair as thick as steel wool and a string of pimples on his forehead. The Dennis of today was solid and lantern-jawed, and his hair now looked like the unkempt lion’s mane of a wilderness he-man. His t-shirt and jeans hung on him as if they’d been specially tailored. He was obviously inheriting his mother’s good looks, and there was a hint of his father’s poise, which, if he chose to cultivate it, would benefit him greatly.

Thomas realized he should’ve looked closer at the photo on the door instead of dismissing it as the trickery of poor camerawork.

“Hey, Uncle Thomas,” Dennis said. His voice also astonished. It was still somewhat high-pitched, but in several more years, it would be a voice that could command legions.

“Hey, uh, hey there, nephew,” Thomas fumbled. “How’ve you been?”

“Good. Yourself?”

“Fine, just fine. What’re you up to in here?”

“In here?” He looked back into the room, as if he didn’t quite know how to answer the question. “Just playing some Call of Duty.” He smiled, but it was strained. He clearly wanted to return to his video games until his mother marched in and forced him to come out and visit with the family. Thomas knew he should leave the kid alone. When he was Dennis’s age, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted some forty-year-old uncle (or aunt, as the case was, since his father had five sisters) to barge into his room and try to “connect.” But, like the adult he was, he rationalized that he wasn’t really barging in, he was just hanging out for a few minutes.

“Mind if I watch for a bit?” Thomas asked. “I won’t bother you for long. I just want to see how things look on these new consoles. I haven’t had one since the Playstation — the first one.”

“Sure, come on in. I don’t mind you watching.” He said it with so much nearly-genuine sincerity that Thomas wanted to hug him.

He stepped into the maelstrom that was a fourteen-year-old’s room. Clothes were strewn everywhere. The sheets lay tangled on the bed, as if Dennis had been thrashing in his sleep, and the pillow, for some reason, was not covered with a pillowcase. The drawers of the sticker-covered dresser were open for no apparent purpose, and two socks hung from one drawer like white panting tongues. A strong odor pervaded the room, but the odor wasn’t exactly rank: it was the smell of sweat, earth, and various hefty colognes.

“Where can I sit?” Thomas asked.

Dennis had already picked up his controller and plopped back down onto the beanbag that was camped in front of the gigantic television. The question seemed to confuse him. Perhaps he expected Thomas to stand.

“Oh, uh, you can sit on the edge of the bed, if you want.”

Thomas did so, after brushing aside some blades of grass that had found their way onto the sheets. It wasn’t a very comfortable perch, but since he was only going to stay for a few minutes, he could stand it. He sipped on his eggnog and stared at the television.

Dennis unmuted the television, and the cacophony of war resumed. As Thomas soon figured out, Dennis was playing online, against other people who popped in and out of the battlefield so quickly that Thomas was soon dizzy from the action.

The opposing team had pulled ahead while Dennis was answering the door, but being the warrior he was, he grimly continued, perforating players with names like YOLO720NOSCOPE_XD and ISnipedJFK and slowly whittling away at the other team’s lead.

Thomas, in his meanderings through the internet, had seen the occasional YouTube video showing Call of Duty gameplay, and he’d thought it looked fine, but to actually see the Xbox One churning out powerful graphics on a large High Definition television was stunning. He stared as Dennis ran, jumped, and strafed through a gloriously-detailed cityscape. He thought back to Mario on his cherished Nintendo; the little plumber was downright sluggish compared to Dennis’s frenetic soldier. To think he’d once felt so powerful when he grabbed that brown leaf and turned into a raccoon!

“Things sure have changed since the old days,” Thomas said wistfully.

“What? Oh, yeah. It gets better with each console.”

“How do you react so quickly? There’s so much stuff going on, but you’re still blowing those guys away.”

“I play a lot. You get used to it.”

Thomas’s words had broken his focus, and an opponent named Tr1ggerHappy had gunned him down. Suppressing a curse, he respawned with a cold fury.

Emily suddenly appeared in the doorway. Thomas turned towards her, but Dennis’s eyes remained on the screen. Her hands were on her hips, and Thomas knew sharp commands were imminent.

“Dennis, get off that thing and come visit,” she ordered. “And what are you doing, Thomas?”

“I’m watching him play.”

“Yeah,” Dennis agreed, “he wanted to see how the graphics look nowadays. On the Xbox, I mean.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Emily said, “but gunslinging time is over. Both of you, out here.”

“Five more minutes, mom. Need to finish this match.”

“It’s one match out of the millions you play per day. Get off.”

“Five minutes.” He’d been speaking softly but sternly, as if his mother were a supplicant who needed to be gently rebuffed. It was clear he would not move from his beanbag again until he’d finished his match. Thomas marked the change: last year, Dennis had been too awkward to oppose his mother, but now he managed her with astounding ease. With an overabundance of glee, Thomas imagined the remaining years of teenagehood his sister would have to deal with. Dennis would not be so easily controlled as Dan, if he could be controlled at all.

“Fine,” Emily said lackadaisically, as if she really hadn’t cared about the matter at all. “But Thomas, I don’t see the need for you to stay…”

“I do,” Thomas replied. “I want to see the end of the match. Dennis has had a hell of a game — or so it seems to me, and I admit I only understand about one percent of what’s going on — and I want to see if he can pull off a victory. It’s like watching a close basketball game that’s down to the final two minutes.”

Emily chewed her lip. She looked at her son, at her brother, at the wall, at the overflowing trashcan by the nightstand. She looked back to Thomas, who gave her his most winning smile.

“Fine,” she said again, this time not so lackadaisically. “But after this match, that’s it. You hear me, Dennis? Don’t try to sneak in another one.”

“OK, mom,” Dennis said.

She disappeared from the doorway, and Thomas chuckled in triumph. Dennis, however, remained zoned in on the game. Apparently he’d had many such victories over his mother, and they’d lost their novelty.

Chapter Eleven

Thomas sat down in the thoroughly uncomfortable wooden dining chair at his customary place between his mother and father. Emily, Dennis, and Dan sat on the other side of the table. Emily had planned it this way years ago, telling her husband that “it separates the families.” Dan didn’t understand why this was important, and he really didn’t care to learn, so he’d simply nodded in assent.

There was a seat at the head of the table for Dan’s aristocratic mother, but everyone knew she wasn’t coming. She hadn’t set foot in this house in five years, not since she said that “most women don’t deserve the vote, because all they do is elect empty-headed liberals” to Emily’s face.

This being the Christmas Eve “light meal,” there was only twenty pounds of food on the table. None of the Christmas Day heavy hitters — the turkey, the ham, the coconut balls — were present, but there was still enough hearty variety for any stomach. Thomas eyed the meatballs, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie with particular interest.

For this meal, Emily had used her Roxy Wesley dish set. Roxy Wesley was a feminist chef with a half-hour cooking show on the Food Network (her catchphrase, which she said without irony: “I’m not a piece of meat, but I know how to cook one”), and the dishes in her set were designed with delightful garden scenes in soft colors. In other words, they looked like dishes from any other set.

Before the families could begin eating, they had to have a Prayer. Emily had rejected her parents’ stuffy Presbyterianism way back in college, but her agnosticism was suspended during Christmas. She looked as pious as a nun as everyone locked hands and she chanted:

“Thank You for this food, and for bringing the family together. We don’t see each other often, so each moment we have together is a blessing. May this Christmas be joyful and fun, and may everyone get what they wanted — but maybe not what they deserved.”

Everyone chuckled at the light ending note — though, judging from Emily’s expression, it hadn’t been said lightly — then attacked the food.

“This casserole is great,” Thomas said in between mouthfuls, “but it tastes a little different than I remember.”

“Yeah, it’s a new recipe. I’ve been trying new things lately,” Emily said, looking at her husband pointedly.

Dan sat there, pretending to be oblivious. Just two more days, and he could get back to the firm…

“So Dennis,” Frank said, “haven’t seen you much since we arrived. What are you doing with yourself?”

“Nothing special,” the teenager replied, his cheeks bulging with mashed potatoes. “Just school and other stuff.”

“Tell your grandpa about basketball,” Emily insisted, then immediately began telling about it herself. “He’s playing on the JV team. Power forward — right?”

“More of a small forward,” Dennis replied.

“How do you like it? Score any points?” Frank Copeland wanted his grandson’s basketball experience quantified, preferably with detailed game-by-game averages — unless the numbers were poor, in which case he didn’t really want to know about it.

“Not really,” Dennis said. “I mainly just grab rebounds and play defense.”

“Well, last game you had ten points and ten rebounds,” Emily said, aware of her father’s searching gaze. “That’s a double-double.”

“Yeah, it is,” Dennis said after washing down a buttered roll with a gulp of sweet tea, “but it’s not really that impressive. It’s all kind of boring, actually. You run up and down the court, and everyone’s yelling at you, and the coaches don’t really tell you anything, they just say stuff like ‘Hard work beats talent that don’t work hard.’ Anyway, I probably won’t play next year.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard about it…” Emily complained.

“I’d think long and hard about that, Dennis,” Frank lectured. “Athletics builds character. It’s a good way to test oneself, and in a pretty safe environment. Because trust me, once you get out in the Real World, people will eat you alive if you let them.”

“Nah, I’m not worried about that,” Dennis said nonchalantly. “I don’t plan on letting people eat me alive.”

It was said so simply, and with such easy confidence, that Frank Copeland was silenced. Who was this mature young man in front of him? Last year, Dennis would have replied with a humble “Yes, Grandpa,” but now he disregarded Frank’s hard-earned advice with the certainty of someone infinitely wiser. Which was impossible. Frank Copeland was a successful businessman who had retired to a pleasant life in Florida, while this kid had done nothing except play video games and pop zits.

Thomas, meanwhile, thought back to his own athletic career. He’d played baseball and basketball for a few years, but quit when he was in middle school. The coaches, he found, did not really believe that “hard work beats talent that don’t work hard.” The kids with the most talent played, and if they faltered, their only punishment was a mild scolding. Meanwhile, the lesser-talented athletes (Thomas being one of these) grinded day in and day out, galloping across the hardwood and winning wind sprints, or diving after pop flies in the outfield — and when game time came, they sat on the bench, where they were expected to cheer and congratulate their contemptuous starting teammates.

He felt like he should say something now, to let Dennis know not everyone shared Frank Copeland’s vision of athletics as shapers of men.

“I agree with Dennis,” he said. “I never got much out of sports either, and the Real World, when you think about it, isn’t like a basketball game at all.”

“Maybe if you had tried harder, brother,” Emily said snarkily, “you would’ve gotten more out of it.”

“Oh, I tried as hard as anyone,” Thomas said, not to be baited. “Dad can tell you. You remember watching me play, don’t you? That is, when you could get away from the store.”

“Yes, I do,” his father glumly replied. “You did put in a good effort.” His son had tried hard, at least the few times Frank had gone to his practices or games, but he’d never gotten the playing time he deserved. Frank Copeland had not been a delusional parent who thought his unathletic child should play every minute of every game. He’d known his son’s jump shot was ugly, almost a comedy act, and he’d known Thomas couldn’t hit a curveball to save his life. But, like Dennis, apparently, Thomas could rebound, and his defense was fierce, and if a cocky or just plain dumb pitcher threw him a fastball, he could tear the cover off the ball. His son would have been an excellent sixth man, or a dangerous pinch hitter, but basketball quarters ticked off and baseball innings slid by, and Thomas sat on the bench.

It wasn’t right, and to Frank Copeland, who believed that hard work had to win out, no matter what, it was an aberration that couldn’t stand. He tried talking with the coaches, but they dismissed him with the same banalities they used on their players. Frank Copeland stewed, but he could do nothing to change the situation.

He didn’t like being reminded of his powerlessness, especially since it directly contradicted what he’d been saying about sports, so he said no more, and poked at his peas listlessly.

Jean noticed the sudden onset of melancholy in her husband, and she rushed to counter it.

“Well, whatever you decide to do, Dennis,” she said, pointing her fork at her grandson for emphasis, “I’m sure it’ll be the right decision. We adults don’t give you young people enough credit, but I know you, in particular, have a good head on your shoulders, and I’m confident you won’t do anything rash.”

“Thanks, Grandma,” Dennis replied through a mouthful of meatball.

“He won’t do anything rash?” Emily asked in exaggerated disbelief. “Mom, if you knew what I’ve had to deal with this past year…”

Thomas didn’t bother to hide his grin. Judging from what little he’d seen so far, she’d had to deal with quite a bit.

“Like what, dear?” Jean asked.

“First, there was that fight…”

“It wasn’t a fight,” Dennis said, as if he were explaining a vocabulary word to a hopelessly dense child. “I punched a kid and he fell down, and he didn’t feel like getting up and getting punched again.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a strong punch,” Thomas said approvingly.

“Yeah, I guess — or the kid had a glass jaw.”

“Or both.”

“Thomas!” Emily snapped. “Don’t encourage my son to solve his problems with violence.”

“Since when have you been a pacifist?” Thomas said. “Now, I don’t know exactly what happened, but a kid’s gotta protect himself. And I remember you getting in a few scraps back in the day. In fact, I bet I know of a few instances that mom and dad never even heard about.”

Dennis and Dan leaned forward ever so slightly. Over the years, Emily had built up a mythology around her past. She had been the Golden Child, and had cruised through school with incomparable ease. Her peers loved her, and she loved them. She’d never been disciplined, and she never brought home a grade lower than a B+. Dennis and Dan both believed this was horseshit, but neither of them could call her on it; Dennis, of course, wasn’t yet born when all this was happening, and Dan hadn’t met Emily until they were both in college. They were both ignorant regarding her true past. But the members of the Copeland family weren’t, and their recollections were always listened to intently.

“Thomas, don’t bring up my past,” Emily warned, “or I’ll bring up yours.”

“That’s fine,” Thomas replied, shrugging. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

“What do you mean, fights we never heard of?” Jean asked apprehensively.

“Oh, you know,” Thomas said wickedly, “like that one fight after school — believe Emily was in eighth grade — because so-and-so’s boyfriend had a crush on Emily, and so-and-so wanted to make Emily pay…”

“Thomas!” Emily snapped again.

“No, Mom, let him keep going,” Dennis said jauntily. “We love hearing these old family tales. Right, Dad?”

Dan Dowling was wise enough to remain silent.

“Your mother was a little sparkplug back then,” Thomas said. “Kind of like she is now, but imagine her personality in a teenage body.”

“That would be wicked,” Dennis said. “So she got in a lot of fights?”

“Not really,” Thomas admitted. “I’m just riling her up. But she was fierce, and she didn’t care who got in her way — teacher, student, parent, whoever. Again, like she is now.”

This was meant as a compliment, sort of, but, at this moment, Emily’s mind would not have registered a compliment had it been delivered to her by the President in a fawning speech. She tapped her knife against her plate and glared at her brother. Clink, clink, clink, clink-clink, clink… it seemed to be Morse code for “I’m going to murder you once you fall asleep.”

“What about boyfriends?” Dennis asked. “Did she ever date?”

This topic had been discussed a few times in previous years, but never in as much detail as Dan and Dennis would have liked, because Emily had nipped the conversation in the bud. Maybe this time they’d learn some new, juicy tidbits. Dan was especially interested; he suspected his wife had been promiscuous before she met him (and he suspected she had a few paramours now, but he had no proof), though she always maintained she’d only had a few “worthless” boyfriends. He watched his brother-in-law closely; even the slightest involuntarily tic might give something away.

“Well, I remember her first boyfriend,” Thomas said, playfully drawing a heart in the air with both hands. “His name was Brett Hickman…”

To everyone’s surprise, Emily stood up quickly, knocking her chair down. Her knife clattered against her plate, then fell onto the floor, taking a few morsels of food with it. She exited the dining room, stomped down the hall, and stomped up the stairs. When she slammed her bedroom door shut, it rattled the whole house.

Everyone sat motionless, as if a wrathful goddess had just sentenced them to torment and death.

“Oh dear,” Jean said sadly. “Something’s offended her.”

They all looked at Thomas, since his last statements had, it seemed, driven her away from the table. Thomas frowned, miffed at being made a scapegoat, but feeling powerless to counter so many denouncing stares.

Dan knew that, as a supportive husband, he would have to go up and check on his wife eventually. He might as well do it now, before Emily, alone in their bedroom, whipped her anger up to holiday-ruining levels. With a genial “Excuse me,” he left the table and headed upstairs.

“Maybe I should go up there, too,” Jean wondered aloud.

“What for?” Frank demanded. “Let Dan handle it. He’s her husband. And if he can’t handle it, I’ll get involved.”

“Well, I’m her mother. Mothers understand things husbands and fathers don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Well — things, Frank. Women things.”

“I’m sure Emily feels comfortable talking about ‘women things’ with her husband, who is, like her, a mature adult — as am I.”

“I don’t know about that. Not all husbands can talk about that stuff easily. Why, remember when I went through menopause. You were absolutely helpless. Couldn’t even talk about it without your face getting all scrunched up like it does sometimes.”

“Well, uh, that’s different…” Frank sputtered, his face scrunching up in exactly the manner his wife had just described.

Dennis sensed his freedom. His mother would be poring over her grievances for a while, and his father would be trying to comfort her in his meek way. Dennis didn’t understand either of them. His mother acted more childish than he did, and his father was “whipped,” as they said at school when a guy let his girlfriend wrap him around her finger. Still, he wasn’t really complaining. Moments like these allowed him to sneak back to his room, where Call of Duty was waiting.

He announced he was already full, and was going to “clean up,” which meant taking his dirty dishes and cutlery and putting them in the dishwasher. After he’d done this, he slipped out of the kitchen and returned to his room. He assumed, correctly, that his grandparents and uncle wouldn’t stop him. They probably thought he was actually cleaning something up, somewhere, and not blasting noobs with a shotgun.

Well, his grandparents probably thought this, but they’d always been gullible, and they seemed to get more gullible each year. His uncle, though — he probably wasn’t fooled. His mom had occasionally commented on her brother’s “laziness” and “lack of drive,” but Thomas seemed the most “self-actualized” among them. (Dennis had just been introduced to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which, in his opinion, was fairly obvious, and not worth studying.) Uncle Thomas didn’t seem to worry about much, while everyone else around him worried about everything.

Then again, this family was pretty fucked up (every teenager in history has thought this at some point) so maybe Uncle Thomas was fucked up in some way too. But then Dennis zoned into Call of Duty, and everything else fell away.

Thomas snuggled down into bed, sighing happily. It was an almost lasciviously comfortable bed; his body sank into the cloud-soft mattress, and the satin sheets were as smooth and cool as a woman’s fingertips. He yawned and smacked his lips. He would not be long for this world.

After Emily’s tantrum, the family had slowly dispersed from the table. Dennis was the first to leave, and then Thomas had escaped, borrowing his nephew’s “cleaning up” excuse. In his case, however, he had actually cleaned up a little in the kitchen. Emily’s cooking had left a slew of dirty platters, cutting boards, knives, whisks, and mixing bowls scattered about. Thomas washed and dried a few larger items, and put the smaller things into the already-stuffed dishwasher. He looked around as he wiped his hands on a towel, but he’d only cleaned up about a third of the mess. Shrugging, he went looking for the liquor. There were five other people in the house, and they were more than capable of handling the rest.

The liquor was in the same place it had been for years: in an overhead cabinet by the refrigerator, on the tallest shelf. It was located there to keep it out of a young Dennis’s hands, but Dennis was not so young anymore, and could reach the bottles without much difficulty. (When he did pilfer his parents’ liquor, he only took two or three sips from each bottle at a time, correctly guessing that his parents monitored the levels closely.) Thomas stretched to grab a bottle of whiskey, and poured himself a glass on the rocks. He then tiptoed upstairs and shut himself into his assigned guest room.

Luckily, his room, like nearly every room in the house, including the kitchen, had a television. Thomas propped himself up with the half-dozen fluffy pillows that were splayed out on the bed like women in a harem and flicked on the TV. He was soon channel surfing adroitly. Reggie, that fucker, would have been proud.

After an undetermined length of time, Dan entered the room — without knocking, which the quarter-drunk Thomas pointed out sharply. Dan apologized through clenched teeth, then told his brother-in-law that Emily had decided to “retire for the evening.” Thomas asked what the hell was wrong with her, and then asked why he was being told she’d retired when everyone else had already retired themselves. Dan said she was “dealing with issues,” and he was telling everyone Emily had retired just so everyone knew what was going on. Thomas nodded and turned back to Top Gun. After standing there awkwardly for a few seconds, Dan left, grumbling about the disrespectful attitudes of some members of the Copeland family.

Two whiskeys-on-the-rocks later, Thomas was certain this would be the best Christmas ever. (He thought this every year after guzzling a few drinks.) No one else had bothered him. Whenever he needed to replenish his glass, he’d been able to slip down to the kitchen and then back up to his room without being detained by familial chit-chat. Dennis was likely in his room remorselessly slaughtering people, though it seemed he’d turned down the volume out of consideration for the laughably early bedtimes of the guests. His parents had cleaned up the kitchen, and now they were somewhere on the premises, probably in their room asleep. Dan was probably still trying to decode his wife, while Emily was probably still acting indecipherable.

After his fourth drink, Thomas had decided to call it quits. No point in pushing himself and ending up with a nasty hangover tomorrow. He brushed his teeth, slipped into the nylon shorts and ratty “BIG ROCK BLUE MARLIN TOURNAMENT” t-shirt he used for pajamas, and waited for sleep to take him. He couldn’t wait for the alcohol-fueled dreams. Those were the best: so vivid they felt completely real, yet so wild that the most plot-scorning director in Hollywood would’ve called them far-fetched.

The house was quiet. He was sure everyone else was asleep, or trying to fall asleep, like he was. A light wind stirred the pine trees outside. An owl hooted. Thomas’s eyelids slowly closed…

There was a commotion outside. Two people were yelling. A car door slammed shut and an engine started. Thomas pulled himself from the depths of the mattress and walked to the window, which looked out onto the front lawn. A pajama-clad Dan (and those pajamas looked ridiculously boyish; what were those designs? Sailboats? Dinosaurs?) was standing out on the grass, waving his arms in what looked like an overacted portrayal of hysteria. The sun-like glare of the garage’s security light made him look even more like an actor under the spotlight.

After a few seconds, Thomas saw Emily backing out of the garage in her Jetta. Since Thomas’s Malibu and his parents’ Traverse were parked on the driveway in stagger formation, this prevented a conventional departure. Emily, however, seemed to have the unconventional in mind. She backed the car in a wide arc, ending up halfway on the grass. Her headlights were now pointing at Dan, who continued to wriggle around like a method actor hyped up on some powerful stimulant. She honked the horn, but when Dan didn’t move, she gunned the Jetta’s engine, and blazed across the lawn. Dan jumped aside, and finally stopped having a seizure; nearly getting run over had apparently sobered him. The Jetta bumped over the small ditch by the road, swerved onto the pavement, and then zoomed away into the night.

Dan stood there, a barefoot man in silly pajamas, his shoulders slumped, and stared in the direction the car had disappeared. He finally looked up at the house sadly, and Thomas quickly moved away from the window. He didn’t want Dan to know he’d witnessed this embarrassing moment. Not that it mattered; Emily’s exit had been loud and dramatic, and Thomas was sure others in the house had seen or heard the disturbance.

The question now was: what should he do? The obvious thing would be to walk downstairs and ask what had happened, and then comfort Dan, who looked like he needed a whole household’s worth of comforting. But he was drunk, and that bed was so damn comfortable, and he was tired of dealing with crazy women. He would find out tomorrow, if everyone would let him sleep and not barge upstairs and bother him. Emily would surely be back by dawn, anyway.

He belly-flopped onto the bed and sank down into oblivion. His dreams were exactly like he’d expected: vivid and implausible, though the details would be lost upon waking.

PART TWO

Chapter Twelve

“Happy New Year!”

The collective yell was deafening inside Reggie’s small apartment. Thomas winced, wishing they were out on the beach as he’d suggested. There, they would have space to celebrate, and their laughter and hollering would be blown away by the wind, and washed away by the hissing surf. Here, everyone was all crammed together, and it was more raucousness than Thomas could handle. He counted fifteen people in the apartment, all of them at least halfway drunk, most of them trying to be louder and more outrageous than everyone else.

Reggie had invited him to this New Year’s Eve party a few days ago, fully expecting Thomas to decline, as he usually did. It had surprised the both of them when Thomas said yes, especially since he had to work in the morning. Thomas had suggested they walk out on the beach as the hours moved towards midnight, maybe not at the Atlantic Beach Circle, where there would be a crowd milling around a bonfire and listening to live music, but at some lesser-peopled spot on Bogue Banks. Reggie nixed the idea: he’d had bad experiences with the Park Service, the Atlantic Beach Police, and, it seemed, various other law enforcement/governmental authorities on previous New Year’s Eve celebrations. A younger Reggie would have said “Fuck it! Let’s pour the coals on ’er!” but the Reggie of today was weary of tickets and harassment. He was going to stay inside his apartment where it was safe.

Since Reggie had to work on New Year’s Eve, the party didn’t start until he made it home at ten o’clock. Thomas was the first to show up, closely followed by a short blonde in a slinky dress. She was one of those incongruous women who have craggy faces and ghastly skin, but whose bodies are “built like brick shithouses,” as the saying went. Thomas wasn’t feeling picky this evening, and he looked on her mountainous bosom and sequoia-like legs longingly, but she zoned into Reggie and deleted Thomas from existence within thirty seconds of walking in the door.

Thomas sipped his beer bitterly as more people streamed into the apartment and ignored him. He assumed the entire evening would be like this: everyone gravitating towards Reggie, since they were all his friends, lovers, ex-lovers, or potential lovers. For a few hours, it seemed this would be the case: most of the men were slobbering “bros,” pale copies of Reggie, and most of the women were smart-phone-addicted princesses whose emotional maturity remained at fourteen-year-old cheerleader levels.

Surprisingly, however, there was one girl who’d been willing to converse with him, and Thomas had been talking to her until the “Happy New Year” blast interrupted them. She was a plump forty-two-year-old nurse named Allison. While the other girls were homogeneously flashy in their dresses, make-up, and perfectly-coiffed hair, Allison was wearing jeans and a plain black t-shirt. Her only concession to stylishness were two large silver hoop earrings, which glinted in the light.

“So here we are in 2016,” Allison said.

“Yes, we are,” Thomas replied, sipping his Bud Light. Allison wasn’t the best conversationalist, but she was the only person, besides Reggie, who hadn’t looked at him like he was a desperate loser trying to leech off his cooler, sexier betters.

“Have any resolutions?” she asked, biting her lip in a way that probably meant he should say something like, “Yes, my resolution is to get to know a cute girl like yourself.” Thomas, however, resisted — barely.

“Yes, I do have resolutions,” Thomas replied, trying to sound stern, “but I’m not going to share them.”

“Awww. Why so secretive?”

“Well, it’s serious stuff. There are some things that need to be solved. I really don’t want to get into it.”

“Well, poop,” Allison pouted. Thomas had noticed that she replaced her curse words with cutesy euphemisms: shit became poop, fuck became frick, hell became h-e-double-hockey-sticks, and asshole became bumhole. Now that Thomas thought about it, perhaps she was just as immature as the other women, only instead of never-ending text messages and “OMG” drama, she acted as if she were in an animated movie. She reminded Thomas of Cynthia, but even Cynthia had more intelligence and nuance than this dumpling.

But… he would like to get laid… wouldn’t he?

“What about you?” he asked. “Any resolutions you’d like to share?”

“Well, I’d like to lose a little weight. I go to the gym sometimes, but not often enough to do any good. I’d like to start a schedule and stick to it.”

Again, this was Thomas’s cue to say something like “Oh, you don’t need to lose weight. You look fine.” But he didn’t want to say something like that. He tried mightily not to say something like that. He told himself he’d sound like the biggest doofus on earth if he said something like that.

It was all futile. He finally sighed, and succumbed.

“Oh, you don’t need to lose weight. You look fine.”

“You little sweet talker!” Allison gushed. “A few more compliments like that and I’ll have to drag you out to my car and have my way with you!”

Thomas took a large gulp of his beer so he wouldn’t be able to reply.

Why was he being such a goddamn peckerhead, as Rock Lewis would say? Hadn’t his goal been to get laid, to clear his head (both of them) via sweaty intercourse? Here he had a moderately attractive (well, not ugly) woman ready to let him climb on top of her, and he was acting like a kitchen wench had dared to flirt with the lord of the manor, while at the same time acting like a complete dumbass himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I need to step outside for a minute. Need to, uh, get some fresh air.”

“I’ll come with,” Allison replied happily. “It’s hot and noisy in here anyway. Some fresh air sounds great.”

“No, I’d like to be alone for a few minutes. Get my head straight.”

“Oh. OK. Uh — see you when you come back in?”

“Sure.”

He looked away from her crestfallen face, half-walked, half-shoved his way out of the living room and kitchen, and stepped out onto Reggie’s small landing. He shut the door behind him, and it muffled some, but not all, of the ruckus inside. It was much cooler out here, so Thomas zipped up his jacket and turned up the collar.

From the landing, you could see part of the driveway and part of the Weavers’ tiny backyard, which was bordered by a small picket fence. Other houses, much like the Weavers’ modest two story bungalow, were bunched in close. This wasn’t the McMansion section of town by the waterfront; this was an older, blue-collar community.

A movement below caught his eye, and when he looked down he was so startled he nearly dropped his beer. The Weavers were sitting in wicker chairs out in the yard, glasses in hand. They were looking up at him with what looked like amusement.

“Sorry to scare ya, son!” Benny Weaver yelled up.

“My, I thought you were gonna have a heart attack,” Maribel Weaver cackled. “Are we that ugly that we cause a young boy like you to have a heart attack?”

Recovering his poise, Thomas laughed along with them. “You know better than that, Mrs. Weaver. I was just a million miles away.”

“I bet you’re thinkin’ bout all those girls in there,” Benny said. “I snuck a peek out the window at ’em when they were arriving, and I must say, some of ’em are mighty fine.”

“Benny, if you ain’t a dirty old man!” Maribel scolded. “Drooling over girls and making them uncomfortable.”

“Bull! They never saw me — I think. And even if they did see me, I don’t care! If a woman is gonna dress in no more material than it would take to make a handkerchief, why, I’m gonna ogle her till my eyes burn, and if she don’t like it, tough!”

Thomas laughed. “Yes, there’re some lookers in there.”

“Got one lined up for yourself?” Benny asked scandalously.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, he says,” Maribel said. “In other words, mind your own business, Benny.”

“Hush, dear. I’m trying to get pertinent information out of the boy.”

“That’s all the information you get,” Thomas said, pulling an imaginary zipper across his lips to illustrate his commitment to privacy.

“Fine then,” Benny said in mock peevishness. “How’s Reggie doing? Maybe you’ll tell us how his courting’s going, since you won’t tell us about yours.”

“He’s Reggie,” Thomas said, shrugging. “You both know how his courting goes.”

“That we do,” Maribel said, a note of disapproval in her voice. “He’s a good kid, but I wish he’d settle down, find him a nice girl. He can’t be a Casanova forever, you know. Age will take care of that.”

“Yes, it will,” Benny agreed, “but let him have his fun while his equipment’s still working. He can marry some rich old widow when his one-eyed snake’s gone into permanent hibernation.”

“Like you did?” Maribel said sassily.

“You? Rich? Hah!”

“Richer than you were!”

“That’s not saying anything! I was so deep in it back then, I said I was ‘po,’ not poor, because I couldn’t afford the ‘o’ and the ‘r’!”

Thomas listened to the banter, smiling. Part of it was done for his benefit, yes, but the Weavers truly had a solid marriage and didn’t mind needling each other. They reminded him of the Oxendines and their endless loving quarrels. It seemed only the older generations had these bonds. The marriages of the middle and upper classes of today were more like tenuous accords between historically hostile nation-states: there would be war, it was just a question of when. The marriages of the poor were sloppy and ridiculous, with far too many kids being popped out, more like the fumblings of naive teenagers (sometimes, quite literally) than a contract between two adults.

No, it was all too messy these days. Thomas was thankful he’d never slipped an overpriced ring on some princess’s manicured finger, even more thankful when he considered how Emily had gone AWOL a few days ago and thrown everything into confusion.

The door opened behind him. He figured it was Allison coming out to try another cast of the net, but it was a plastered, goggle-eyed, sweaty Reggie.

“Tommy! Tom! The Tomster!” he yelled. “What’re ya doing out here?”

“Needed some fresh air.”

“How much you need? You gonna stand out here and suck up the whole atmosphere? Oh, hey Benny, hey Maribel!”

He waved down to his landlords, who chuckled and waved back.

“Sounds like the party’s hopping, Reggie,” Benny said.

“Oh, it is, it is. It ain’t hopping too much, though, is it? Don’t want the noise to bother ya’ll.”

“It’s fine for now,” Maribel said. “Just don’t let it go on till too late, now, ya hear?”

“No problem. I’ll kick ’em all out at two o’clock, that good?”

“Yup, that works,” Benny said. “We’re about to retire, but we can sleep through hurricanes, so don’t mind us.”

“You can sleep through hurricanes,” Maribel said, “but I’m a light sleeper.”

“You slept through that one nor’easter just last week that banged on the house like a herd of elephants!”

They were at it again, and Reggie laughed and turned back to Thomas.

“Come on back in, Tommy,” he exhorted, nudging Thomas on the shoulder. “That nurse was giving you The Eye. She’s ready to drop those panties, all you have to do is spit a little game at her.”

“Yeah, she seems eager — but she’s also dumb as a post.”

Reggie spread out his arms and stared up at the heavens in exasperation. He mumbled a few words that Thomas didn’t catch; he may very well have been praying to a God he ignored pretty much all the time.

“Who cares about her intelligence?” Reggie demanded. “You’re gonna be ramming your rod into her vag-hole, not sipping Earl Grey and talking about Shakespeare!”

“Reggie, no need to yell,” Thomas said, motioning to the couple sitting below.

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” he said, looking shockingly abashed. “They don’t like my language sometimes.”

The Weavers, however, had both recognized that this conversation should not involve them. They got up creakily, complaining of bad joints and general decrepitude, said goodnight, and went inside. The light pouring out from the sliding-glass door on their back porch was extinguished, and curtains were drawn across it.

“Now we can talk like we want,” Reggie said, again giving Thomas a playful shoulder-nudge. “So let’s go. Talk.”

“Nice party. A few vixens…”

“Aw, hell, cut the crap. They ain’t worth two cents. I ain’t worth a nickel myself, but that’s still better’n those walking Instagram accounts. I wanna know what’s going on in Tommy’s world. Something’s bothering ya. So spill the beans.”

“Just not up to it tonight, Reggie. Thought I was. Felt like getting drunk and fucking some girl, but there’s this stuff holding me back.”

“What stuff?”

“Family stuff. Co-worker stuff.”

“I want details, Tommy! Tell Dr. Willis what ails ya.”

Thomas began reluctantly, but as soon as he got in a rhythm, the words poured out. He was soon going into minute detail, and he feared Reggie was going to interrupt him and say “Yeah, yeah, yeah, get to the point.” But Reggie stood there, as still as he could, his eyes as focused as a drunken man could possibly make them, and listened.

First, Thomas told him about Orianna. He described how she looked: her paleness, her fondness for bandannas, her tattoo. He recounted how she’d embarrassed him with “Are You Interested?” and how she’d caught him with a weeping Kara. Finally, he relived their moonlit walk by the docks, when Orianna had discarded Oxendine’s Grocery and ruined his evening — and, truth be told, his past several weeks.

He described how Orianna had given her notice on Christmas Eve, and how Vernon and she had agreed to a five-day notice instead of a two-week one. Her last night had been the 29th. Thomas wasn’t there. He hadn’t talked to her since the night of the Christmas Party, and he had no intention of being part of any farewell ceremony Vernon or anyone else might plan. Vernon tried to talk to him about all of this, since he seemed to know there had been some sort of disagreement between them, but Thomas had evaded him each time.

Next Thomas talked about his sister. He described their Christmas Eve dinner, and how Emily had suddenly raged up to her room. He placed a weirdly hysterical Dan on a front lawn in a quiet subdivision, and dragged a Jetta across said lawn and out into the vastness of Raleigh. He told Reggie how he’d fallen asleep instead of dealing with the drama.

He woke up from his soon-to-be-forgotten dreams with a parched mouth and a strong sense of guilt. Color was coming back into the world outside, but the sun had not yet risen. He pulled himself out of the sensual bed, sloshed some water in his mouth, took an epic shit, and went in search of a family member. He found everyone easily: they were all downstairs on the living room sofa, save Dennis, who was still sleeping contentedly. No one said Merry Christmas. They had, Thomas learned, been up all night waiting for Emily to return, and their vigil had taken its toll. His pajama-wearing parents looked haggard, but Dan’s appearance was downright shocking: he was startlingly ashen and hollow-eyed, and his hair, usually so well-combed and well-oiled, now looked like a bird’s nest, if the bird who’d built the nest had gone insane and forgotten its centuries-old nest-building instincts.

Thomas was strangely enlightened to learn there were actually honeycomb-licking bears on his pajamas, not sailboats or dinosaurs.

The accusing looks of the family suggested that, while Dennis may have been tacitly excused from the vigil due to his young age, Thomas was a grown man and should’ve counted down the dark minutes with them, especially since it was really his fault Emily had run away. Thomas apologized weakly, although no one had actually denounced him.

They made room for him on the couch, and he joined the vigil, proud to finally suffer with them. But after two minutes, he felt embarrassed because he’d crumbled beneath his family’s accusing stares, and he reasoned that suffering was pretty much pointless. He asked if Emily had contacted any of them in any way. She hadn’t. He asked if anyone had called Emily’s friends, her co-volunteers at the rape crisis center, or anyone else who may have acted as a port for Emily’s storm-tossed ship. No one had; Dan said he wanted this kept “within the family.” Thomas asked what they had been fighting about last night. Dan stated with almost childish obviousness that they’d had “a major marital quarrel.” Had they had any other quarrels recently? No — well, sort of, but nothing major like this. Thomas sighed and got up from the couch to go get some breakfast, to the disapproval of all. As he walked away, his mother started telling a story about the fisherman Emily made out of clay in the third grade, and his father told her to quit going off on tangents.

About half an hour later, Dan’s phone buzzed. He snatched it from the coffee table as if it were a bomb about to go off — which it was close to being, metaphorically. His fingers were shaking so badly that it took a few tries before he could successfully open the text message.

“What’s it say?” Jean asked timidly.

Dan pored over the message for another small eternity. The suspense was so thick that Thomas, who was munching on his fourth Eggo waffle, would have felt justified in grabbing the phone from his brother-in-law and reading the message himself. Glancing at his parents, it looked like they felt the same way.

Finally, Dan replied: “It says, quote, I need to spread my wings. I’ll be in touch. Don’t worry about me, end quote.” Before anyone could comment on this, the phone was sailing through the air towards the wall. Thomas expected an electronic explosion, with chips, wires, and cracked plastic flying everywhere, but nothing of the sort occurred. The phone was as tough as a brick, and it thumped loudly against the wall and fell to the hardwood floor, apparently unharmed. The wall itself actually sustained more damage; a small indentation now marred the off-white paint.

“That bitch! That selfish, idiotic, self-centered bitch!” Dan raved, pacing back and forth. “All I put up with, the long hours I work at the firm, and she runs away like some, some, hippie named Sunshine, and all she feels obligated to do is send one lousy text message to me! I thought she was mature! I thought she was an adult! Now I don’t… there’s a man involved with this, there has to be! That sneaking adulterer!”

“Now, now Dan,” his mother-in-law cooed, “we don’t know anything for certain…”

“Shut up! Stop defending her! You’ve been trying to convince me she’s ‘just had a spell’ all night. She’s not your perfect little daughter! She’s a heinous, lying whore, and by God, I’m going to do something about it!”

“Control yourself, Dan,” Frank Copeland commanded, rising from the couch to challenge his son-in-law. “You’re not going to talk to us this way.”

But Dan ignored his father-in-law. However, the “something” he was going to do had not yet been determined, so Dan stood there, momentarily lost, his figure trembling in the charged air, his hair even wilder than before, the formerly innocent bears on his pajamas transformed into mauling beasts.

Finally, Dan, perhaps emulating his wife, ran outside, hopped into his Touareg, and backed out of the garage. However, he immediately encountered the same problem his wife had had: Thomas’s Malibu and his parents-in-law’s Traverse blocked him in. He madly spun the Touareg around, and now the emulation became complete: he zoomed across the yard, bumped up onto the road, and was on the hunt, or whatever it was he thought he was doing.

The rest of Christmas day was mostly spent trying to track down the fugitive Dowlings. Dennis appeared eventually, looking disheveled and half-blind, like all just-woken teenagers. He listened as his grandparents informed him of the terrible, terrible events that had blighted an otherwise happy Christmas, but he refused to be traumatized, despite his grandmother nearly making him traumatized by asking him at least ten times if he was.

There was some present-opening after lunch, and Thomas saw in his parents the same anti-consumerist feeling he always had after everything had been opened. They frowned at the scattered wrapping paper and the needless gifts, and they only reluctantly reached into the personalized stockings hanging from the mantle. All of it seemed so pointless in light of what had happened to the family.

Dennis, however, persisted in acting normal. He’d energetically opened his presents and thanked everyone profusely, then returned to his room and fired up the Xbox.

Dan returned a few minutes after sunset. Where had he been? “Around.” Had he found Emily? “No.” Well, what had he accomplished, if anything? “I calmed myself down, which, believe me, is very important right now. Now excuse me — I’m going to take a bottle of some sort of liquor to my room, along with a bucket of ice and a glass, and I’m going to stay there for the rest of the evening. Don’t bother me.” No one did.

The next day, Thomas packed up as soon as he woke up. He had to work that night, and while he could’ve called Vernon and gotten the day off, he needed to escape this insane asylum. Dan had emerged from his cave and was prowling around the house, staring at old photos and mementos, as if trying to figure out a way to return to those golden days. Jean’s optimistic warbling had gone into overdrive, since she felt she had to battle the gloom that had settled on the house, like an elvish princess battling a dark lord. (She’d just read a good fantasy novel with that plot.) Frank Copeland frowned and muttered, since this wasn’t a problem he could immediately solve in the bull-headed Frank Copeland way. Only Dennis remained unconcerned; he seemed to regard the whole situation as an overblown comedy, the kind where you laughed at the actors for their ridiculous performances, not because the gags were actually funny.

Thomas’s parents weren’t leaving, as was the custom, and they chastised Thomas for abandoning the cause.

“What if she’s… well, mentally unstable?” his mother whispered.

“I think that’s already been established,” Thomas replied.

“You know what I mean…”

“Yes, consider the family history, son,” his father said forebodingly. “I know you have to work tonight, but in this case, the situation here trumps work.” It caused him great psychic pain to say this. To Frank Copeland, very few things trumped work. During his own working life, he’d missed graduations, ignored his wife’s sicknesses, skipped church, and drove through hurricanes to get to his furniture store. This, however, was different. Something had happened, was happening, to Emily, and while he didn’t understand all of it, he knew that tragedy was likely at the end of the trail she was slashing for herself — and maybe death. He thought back to his father’s suicide, to the bloody remains of Wallace Copeland’s head, and shuddered — though when his wife noticed his shudder, he grumbled that the room was too cold.

No, Dan clearly couldn’t handle the situation. Frank Copeland would have to solve everything, as he always did, though no one ever gave him any credit.

Thomas was worried about Emily, of course, but he didn’t see any point in staying. All they’d do was wait. And wait. And wait. With no one having any idea where she was, and with Dan not wanting to involve anyone outside the family, it meant the ball was in Emily’s court — and Emily had made it clear she’d deflate the ball and burn it rather than keep playing the game under someone else’s rules.

So Thomas had returned to Oxendine’s Grocery. Since then, Emily had sent two more text messages to Dan, both on the 28th. One said “I’m fine, stop worrying. The more you try to contact me, the more you drive me away,” and the other said, in response to Dan’s harsh accusation of adultery, “NO I AM NOT CHEATING ON YOU GOD.” Thomas was informed of these epistles via e-mail from his mother, who was still, along with his father, staying at the Dowling residence “until this all blows over.”

“And that brings us up to the present,” Thomas said now, completing his story.

Throughout this tale, Reggie continued to be remarkably patient. He only interrupted to ask a few clarifying questions, and when someone from the party came outside and tried to pull him back into the fray, he jokingly but firmly sent them back in empty-handed. Thomas, who’d never before dropped such a monologue on Reggie, was impressed with his friend’s comportment.

But now Reggie laughed. It was a side-splitting, tear-inducing, snot- and spit-blowing laugh. He careened off the landing’s railings like a pinball, at one point even tripping on the stairs and nearly tumbling down disastrously to the yard.

Thomas was irritated at first, but the longer Reggie laughed, the faker it seemed. It occurred to Thomas that his friend was trying to dispel the depressive fog Thomas had socked in by employing an over-abundance of mockery and hilarity.

“Man, oh man, if that don’t beat all…” Reggie finally managed, heaving as if he were in labor.

“Reggie, it’s not that funny,” Thomas said, smiling. “You’re overreacting.”

“It is that funny, Tommy. I knew you liked to twist yourself up into knots sometimes — heh heh heh — but I didn’t know it was this bad. What you need is some Reggie Willis Wisdom.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Good!” Reggie’s mostly-fake fit was finally subsiding. He wiped his eyes and massaged his laugh-stretched mouth. “You’ve talked enough, now it’s my turn.”

“That’s fine. Go ahead.”

“Well, first off, this Orianna chick. You thought she was The One, didn’t you? Don’t give me that sheepish look! You know ol’ Reggie speaks the truth. She was so cute, so pure, so — what’d you say about her? ‘Like moonlight on the ocean.’ Ha! When a man starts getting all poetic like that, you know he’s fucked!”

“Reggie…”

“Don’t Reggie me! This drama queen played you like a fiddle. Got you all wrapped up in her — what’s the word? — wanderlust, that’s it. And now she’s gone, and she’s laughing at you, the guy she left behind in that little grocery store. You were the Nice Guy, and she poured her little heart out to you, because you were so kind and willing to listen — that is, until you told her to fuck off. I give you props for that. But you should’ve told her to fuck off as soon as she started rambling about her Life Goals, and how tiny old Oxendine’s couldn’t handle her greatness, and you should’ve forgotten about her as soon as you walked away. I mean, you’re still hung up on her, and ya’ll never even fucked! What the hell, man?”

“Sounds like no woman has ever gotten inside the almighty Reggie Willis’s head…”

“Hell no they haven’t! I hit it, then I quit it. Oh, don’t get me wrong, plenty of women have tried to tame me. ‘But Reggie, don’t you care about’… fuck no, bitch, I don’t care about your complicated female bullshit, how this one guy at work said this one thing to you and it cut you so deeply you might never recover, or how life is just so cold, and it just freezes your insides, or how your mom criticized you because you did something stupid but she’s the one who’s the fascist because she just doesn’t understand. They want to talk about Feelings, they can go to a shrink. They want their pussy pounded, they can come to me. If they don’t like it, there’s the door.”

“Well, we’re different people…”

“Obviously! And what’re you doing mooning over a twenty-three old? Even I know not to mess around with those young’uns anymore — most of the time.”

“I don’t know, Reggie. She just struck me, I guess.”

“Well, un-struck yourself. You didn’t act like this with what’s-her-face, that single mom.”

“No, the situation with Kara is, uh, different. She’s…”

“Trash?”

“Yeah, sure, might as well call it like it is. Orianna isn’t Kara, that’s for damn sure.”

“You think so, because you ain’t thinking. They’re the same, pretty much. They both messed with you, but Orianna got to you more because she’s cute and has a super-duper smile and she says something that isn’t bumfuck stupid every once in a while. You’re just like those morons who put up with the worst shit imaginable from their woman just because she’s hot. Treat ’em all equal, I say. Ain’t that what they’ve been yelling for all these years? Equality?”

“Yes, they have. Alright, Reggie, thanks for the advice. Glad to get all this off my chest.”

“Glad to hear it. Wait, you ain’t leaving yet! Reggie ain’t done laying down his Wisdom!”

Thomas closed the door, shaking his head. “Reggie isn’t done? What else does Reggie want to say?”

“I have a few words to say about that wild sister of yours.”

“Ah.”

“Now, I know family’s family, and blood’s thicker than water, but you know what happens when those arteries get clogged? Heart attack. Death. Kaput.”

“Reggie, that’s one mixed metaphor I’ll always remember.”

“Thank you, Professor Von Brungenstein the Fourth. This sister of yours is hellbent on blowing herself up. Anyone who’s around her when the bomb goes off is gonna lose a few limbs. I’ve seen it happen. When they get those crazy eyes, run, and don’t look back.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? And she’s the one who ran away all crazily. We still don’t know where she is.”

“She’ll be back, trust me. And there’s a lover-boy involved in all this, has to be.”

“I don’t know…” In truth, Thomas did believe Emily was philandering, but for some reason he felt incumbent to uphold his sister’s faithfulness.

“I do. I can see what’s gonna happen. She’s gonna announce her undying love to this other guy, divorce this lawyer husband of hers, take half his stuff, and be sitting pretty. She’ll probably take the kid, too, because the courts always let these bitches have their way. It’ll be ugly, Tommy. You don’t wanna be around when all this goes down.”

Of course, Thomas had considered this scenario, but having it presented in Reggie’s straightforward, profane style made it seem much more terrible. How should he act if such a thing happened? How should his parents act? Emily was his sister, and their daughter, but should they support such a selfish woman? Wives divorced husbands all the time, true, but not too long ago people whipped slaves all the time, too.

Or maybe Thomas was just being self-righteously indignant, like pretty much everyone in 21st-century America. He had never been married, he had never had a kid, so he didn’t know what it was like to grind through day after day with a family pressed in close around you. It was very likely he’d have done the same thing Emily did — but this was why he’d never gotten married or had a kid in the first place.

“I hope that doesn’t happen, Reggie,” Thomas said. “If it does…”

“If it does, then the Earth keeps spinning on its 22.43 degree axis, or whatever the fuck it is, and we get on with it. It ain’t your problem, Tommy. This lawyer guy married her, it’s his problem.”

“I feel like I should say something about family responsibilities…”

“Responsibility?” Reggie spat. “Fuck that. What did I just say about blood and arteries? A ball and chain, that’s what responsibility means, family or no family. People lock themselves up and throw away the key because they’re scare’t. If they didn’t have these responsibilities, well, then they’d have to live, and nobody wants to do that. Well, I say again: fuck that. I’m gonna live, and ain’t nobody gonna stop me. Not some bitch, not family, not someone at work — and not you, either.”

Thomas didn’t know how to respond to that last sentence; he couldn’t tell how serious Reggie was being. He said nothing, and waited.

“Ah, I’m just busting your chops,” Reggie finally said, smiling. “You’re alright, Tommy, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I ain’t dumb or cocky enough to think you’re gonna follow everything I just told you, but I hope at least some of it sunk in.”

“Thanks again for the talk, Reggie.”

“Anytime, man. Well — not any time. You know what I mean.”

“I think I do.”

“Alright, now I release you. Go forth, middle-aged man, and get some pussy! That is, if Allison ain’t moved on to some other dude, which is highly likely, since you and I been out here jawing forever. If that’s the case, looks like you’ll be sleeping alone tonight.”

“You act like Allison’s the only one here I have a chance with.”

“Wellll — hey, you said it, not me!”

Chapter Thirteen

Thomas was outside Oxendine’s Grocery, pushing carts in from the lot. It was sunny and warm; he was glad to get outside for a few minutes. Maybe he’d take a beach walk after work…

But then a fire-spewing dragon appeared in the sky, trailing storm-clouds and lightning behind it. It bore down on the grocery store with great speed, and Thomas knew he and the store would be incinerated, and that there was no escape…

“Good morning, Tommy,” a voice said.

Thomas surfaced from the brightly-colored, emotionally-charged dream into the grayness of his bedroom. He looked over, and saw Allison smiling at him. She was sitting up in bed, the sheets wrapped around her naked body.

“It’s Thomas,” he said groggily.

“I’m sorry?”

“My name. I prefer Thomas.”

“Oh. But — Thomas is so, well, proper. Don’t you think Tommy or Tom is more casual?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, it’s your name. You have a right to be called what you want.”

Thomas propped himself up on his elbow to look at her. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and the blinds were shut and the bedroom door was closed, but there was still enough artificial light seeping in from outside to make out some details of Allison’s face. She looked cherubic, and it was too early in the morning for anyone to look like that.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked. I didn’t want to, you know, ruin the moment by worrying about time.”

Thomas reached across her body to the alarm clock sitting on his nightstand. It had large red digits which displayed the time with electronic certainty, which was why Thomas pointed it away from the bed when he clocked out for the day; he’d never fall asleep with that red glare boring into his face.

As he reached, however, Allison shifted uncomfortably. Thomas hesitated, then continued until he’d turned the alarm clock towards them. 5:15 AM. They’d only been asleep two hours. He sighed; he’d be dead on his feet at work today.

As he drew his hand back, Allison again fidgeted. She looked at him like a squirrel that was about to get run over by a car.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah. Nothing.”

“You’re acting like you’re afraid of me.”

She laughed, or more accurately neighed. Thomas suppressed a groan.

“Why would I be afraid of you?” Allison asked. “We’ve just, uh, churned the butter. A few times, even.”

Again, a groan suppression.

“But every time I move, you wrap yourself up tighter in the sheets,” Thomas said. “Look, you’ve got all of them over on your side.”

It was true. Thomas had just one sliver of a corner, and was lying there completely exposed, and a little chilly. The blanket had fallen to the floor; if it had been on the bed, Allison would surely have commandeered it too.

“Sorry,” she said feebly. “I just… I’m a little…”

“What?”

“OK, OK, I’ll tell you, but don’t get mad. When we came here, we were both a bit tipsy and it was dark, and then we, you know, made whoopee, and it was great, don’t get me wrong! But now we’ve — you’ve — sobered up, and if you see me, you know, in my birthday suit…”

“But I already saw you naked.”

“But that was different!”

“How?”

“Because we — you — were a bit tipsy, like I said, and it was dark, like I said…”

“Are you trying to say you’re self-conscious about your body?”

“Well, erm… not exactly. I just don’t want you to be disappointed when you, uhm, see me for real.”

“But I saw you for real last night at the party.”

“But I had clothes on. Now I’m in my birthday suit.”

“Can you please say naked instead of birthday suit?”

“I like saying birthday suit.”

“And I like saying fuck, shit, damn, and hell. Is that OK with you?”

“Y-es, if you want to be mean and vulgar…”

“Oh my God. What have I gotten myself into?”

“What do you mean?” she whined. “What have I done wrong?”

He could lie and say she’d done nothing wrong, and that he was always testy after he’d just woken up. Then they would cuddle, and maybe screw a few more times before he had to go to work. He could tell the blunt truth, which was that she was a neurotic child who needed to stop hiding herself behind the sheets. He felt like he was in a PG-13 movie, where the women were always fully covered after sex, usually by bedsheets, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Or he could simply kick her out and be done with her, the Reggie Willis way — or the Thomas Copeland spin on the Reggie Willis way.

The last option seemed best.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Thomas said. “It’s not you, it’s me. You see, I have night terrors. I actually don’t like to sleep with women, because I might kick them off the bed or something. That’s why I’m acting cranky. I’m thinking about your safety, and how I’d feel if I harmed you.”

“Are you sure?” Allison said doubtfully. “I mean, I’ve just been here one night, but I haven’t seen any signs of sleep terrors. You were sleeping peacefully. You didn’t thrash around, and you woke up lucid. How often does it happen? Is it something you’ve dealt with your whole life? Have you talked to a doctor about it?”

Damn. He’d forgotten she was a nurse.

“It’s a, uh, special case,” Thomas replied. “Doctors are flabbergasted. Anyway, I don’t want you to get caught up in my dangerous illness, so I think it’s best if you leave. I’m damaged goods, Allison.”

“Sleep terrors don’t make you damaged goods, Tommy — Thomas. It’s just a parasomnia. I can make you an appointment with Dr. Duer at the hospital, he’s very good…”

“No, no, that’s OK. Like I said, doctors are flabbergasted. Can’t be cured. I didn’t want to mention it, but I nearly throttled the last girl I had over during one my episodes. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you. So, please leave, and save yourself — and my conscience.”

“But we’re both awake now anyway…”

“No, it’s still too dangerous.”

It felt delightful to bullshit someone so thoroughly. It wasn’t like he was really hurting her, anyway. She’d cry to her girlfriends and post something about the treachery of the male gender on Facebook, and then she’d get over it in a few days.

But even in the dim light he could see those wide eyes, and it almost made him drop the deceit and comfort her with a hug. She knew she was being bullshitted, but she was going to take it; Thomas was pretty sure this wasn’t the first time she’d been treated like this. Not my problem, he thought. She set herself up for a one-night stand, after all.

“Fine, I’ll leave,” Allison said, in a poor semblance of anger. “See you around.”

She climbed out of bed, but she still held the sheets around her. She looked back at Thomas for a moment, perhaps on the verge of asking him to turn his head. Then, likely realizing how foolish that would be, she let the sheets drop to the floor, and quickly pulled on panties, jeans, bra, and t-shirt. Thomas had never seen someone dress so rapidly; it was obviously practiced. He’d barely caught a glimpse of a large posterior riddled with cellulite, a side profile of a drooping breast, and a lower-back tattoo of some unknown design. Her body type was remarkably like Kara’s — well, the Kara of their sexual romps, not the chunky Kara who’d hissed at him at Oxendine’s — and both women even had a tattoo in the same spot. In the drunken groping of early morning, he hadn’t really noticed the similarity, but now he looked at Allison as if she was Kara’s evil twin sister.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just thinking about what I’ve got to do at work today.”

“Yeah, working at a grocery store must require a lot of thought.”

Ouch. He stirred on the bed, planning out a razor-sharp rebuttal, but then he slowly relaxed. He’d let her have that one. She deserved to score at least one point, the way he was treating her.

Allison knew her comment should provoke a response, but Thomas remained silent, and they simply stared at each other. Confused, she put on her hoop earrings, picked up her purse (in their passion, it had been slung into the closet), and opened the bedroom door. She looked back, still expecting Thomas to lash her with a comeback, but the gray figure on the bed said nothing.

“See you around,” she said softly.

“Yup.”

And she was gone. Thomas expected her to slam his apartment door shut, but she closed it as softly as she’d uttered her last words.

Smiling at his masterful manipulation, he picked up the tangled sheets from the floor, along with the blanket, and nestled down into bed. That had been easy — almost too easy. He thought back to Kara’s venomous threat. Maybe Allison was already scheming some revenge herself, since she was, after all, Kara’s evil twin sister…

Ah well — let the chips fall where they may. He’d deal with it if and when he had to. Right now, he needed to get at least a few more hours of sleep before work.

Chapter Fourteen

“You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” Vernon said as Thomas stepped through the back door. He was sipping coffee and glaring at those damnable green beans that refused to sell. He supposed he’d have to discount them even more, or they’d sit back here until the End Times.

“Yeah, it was a wild night,” Thomas admitted, putting his jacket on the eternal coat rack.

“Get yourself any strange?”

“Vernon, it’s uncouth to ask that.”

“I ain’t had any couth since third grade. That was the year lil Lizzie Locklear stabbed me with a pencil, and I whacked her upside the head in return. She didn’t get in any trouble, cuz she was a sweet lil girl, but I did.”

“I guess you also learned that justice can be elusive, huh?”

“Damn right I did. So, did you get any strange or not?”

“Vernon…”

“Alright, fine, don’t tell me nothing. But do me a favor: try to hide your face when a customer’s near. If they see how haggard you look, they’ll run right out the door.”

“Ha ha.”

“Yeah, I thought that was funny myself,” Vernon said, chuckling. “So, what’re you starting with today? The usual?”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Orianna.”

Vernon rubbed his potbelly and sipped his coffee. He looked very much like a Zen Buddhist contemplating an exceptionally difficult koan.

“That’s interesting,” he finally said. “You’ve been dodging that topic since she gave her notice. In fact, you walked right away from me a few times soon as I started talking about it. Was right rude.”

“Yeah, I know,” Thomas said. “Sorry about that. Me and her had a disagreement, or whatever you want to call it, at the Christmas Party.”

“Huh. You mean when ya’ll walked out into the night? I thought ya’ll were going to do some kissy-kissy stuff.”

“I guess I did, too. But she dragged me all the way down to the docks just to tell me she was leaving. Pissed me off.”

“Huh. She didn’t mention any of this.”

“She didn’t? I figured she would’ve ripped me apart.”

“Well, she didn’t mention you at all when she gave notice. What’d you say to her?”

“I just told her she was like all these other restless youths who’ve quit over the years. And I was pissed off cause she ruined the Christmas Party for me. She just wanted to be dramatic and have someone ooh and aah at her performance.”

“Or maybe she wanted someone to talk her out of her decision.”

Thomas had considered this, but only briefly. If Vernon was right, then his response had been completely wrong, and had actually cemented Orianna’s decision. But even as he reexamined this potentiality now, he reaffirmed his innocence. Orianna should never have put him on the spot like that, should never have created such a scene and then expected him to act perfectly.

But, on the other hand, he’d acted in a similar way decades ago, and Vernon had handled it perfectly. He sighed and looked away at the cinderblock walls, thinking of Orianna sitting steely-eyed on that dock box in the night.

“Yeah, I know it’s tough,” Vernon said kindly. “Seems she threw you for a loop. You did the best you could, I guess.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, she came into my office and gave notice, and I gave her The Talk, but it didn’t have any effect that I saw. She wanted to be gone pretty quickly, so I said OK. And we shook hands, and that was the end of it.”

“The Talk, huh?” Thomas said, frowning.

“Yeah. I seem to remember giving it to you about — oh, man, I don’t even want to do the math…”

“Twenty-three years, roughly.”

“Wow-ee. Hell, that’s as old as Orianna is. She’s twenty-three, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Thomas said, feeling foolish. He remembered Reggie’s words: And what are you doing mooning over a twenty-three old? Even I know not to mess around with those young’uns.

“Well, she’s gone now, Thomas,” Vernon said, putting his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “I know you had a little crush on her, if you don’t mind my saying. Maybe I had a crush on her too. Now don’t laugh! A geezer like me can still enjoy the company of a slim young thing. But I try not to let it get to me. Sometimes it’s hard. You know how many people have come and gone over the years. I try to make ’em understand that they’re family, but some people don’t want this family — maybe they don’t want any family.”

“What did you say back then? Some people think they’re better?”

“It was true then, it’s true now, and it’ll always be true.”

The two men made strong efforts not to look at each other. There was too much emotion in the air. Past and present swirled together, faces nearly-forgotten and faces just-seen formed and reformed, until a shifting mosaic of Oxendine’s current and former employees seemed to hover in the air. At the center of the mosaic, Orianna’s calm, thin visage glowed softly. Thomas tried to subsume it into the mass of humanity, and succeeded — for a few seconds.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” Thomas muttered. “And it’ll be déjà vu all over again in the future, too.”

“Yup, that’s right,” Vernon said. “Oh, by the way, can you clean the bathroom today?”

Thomas laughed, glad for the tension to be cut. “Sure thing, boss.”

“Alright. Well, I’m-a go up front and check the weather. And by check the weather, I mean stand up there and do nothing.”

Vernon walked away, rubbing his potbelly. Thomas followed for a short distance, then veered off towards the dairy section.

The Talk. He wished he’d been a fly on the wall when the old fox had given it to Orianna. But then, he just had to recall his own experience, when Vernon had given him The Talk back when he was a confused teenager…

Chapter Fifteen

Thomas had been in a malaise. He’d just broken up with Danielle Shaw, his girlfriend of two years. He may have been in love with her, but older people told him he was too young to know what love was. Danielle was pretty in a frail sort of way, she was smart (or she got good grades, which was supposed to be the same thing), and she belonged to no clique at their high school. The hot, popular girls thought she was too plain and not manipulative enough, the athletes (of both genders) thought she looked too fragile, and the nerds thought she didn’t fully embrace her nerdiness. She was a floater, drifting here and there but never settling into an easy category. As Thomas was somewhat of a floater himself, this seemed to be an ideal match. It worked for two years. They laughed at how gloriously free they were from the hive mind, and reveled in intimacy (tickle-fests, belly-button licking) that their more lascivious peers would have laughed at.

But then Danielle went to work for the first time. For a summer job prior to her senior year, she was working as a front-desk receptionist at a high-class-yet-economical oceanfront hotel in Pine Knoll Shores called the Scotch Bonnet. (It was named after North Carolina’s state seashell, and had a three-foot-by-five-foot plastic replica in its lobby, along with plastic smiling crabs and a cross-eyed plastic seagull.) This hotel job was an entirely new thing, one her parents insisted upon because they claimed colleges liked to see work experience on applications.

After being shunned or ignored in high school, Danielle was shocked to find that men out in the “real world” took notice of her. She’d never really been out in the “real world” before: during the school year, she was either in school, hanging out with Thomas, or in her room doing homework. During previous summer breaks, her parents had signed her up for every camp in the area, and she barely had free time to write Emily Dickinson-inspired poems.

Things were certainly different when you put yourself out there.

These men flirted with her and slipped her their numbers as she checked them in, or they lumbered in from the beach or pool, shirtless and dripping, a towel suavely hanging over their shoulders, and asked when she got off work. At first, Danielle rejected them with self-righteous zeal. “I have a boyfriend,” she’d snap, and then she’d think of Thomas’s thick shoulders, his thick brown hair, the way he held her after they’d made love.

But some of her suitors had shoulders equally as thick, hair equally as thick, and she imagined their post-coital snuggling ability equaled, if not surpassed, Thomas’s. She took a chance one night, luring one of the guests (or getting lured) into the dunes as the ocean whispered and the stars shined overhead. (It was too dangerous to go up to the man’s room; there were strict rules against employee-guest relations, and Danielle didn’t want to get caught.) The guy was well-built, with the confidence of a college frat boy, which he falsely claimed to be. (He’d dropped out of community college after one semester, and now lived with his parents in New Jersey and worked at McDonald’s. It had taken a year to save up for this trip, as his fascist parents insisted that he pay $50 a month for rent.)

Technique wise, it was perhaps no better than sex with Thomas, but being under the stars, lying in cool sand, hearing the ocean’s murmur, feeling wickedly rebellious… well, it was amazing.

For two days, she’d abased herself. Then she’d broken up with Thomas. She sat him down at their favorite booth in their favorite restaurant, a seafood joint in Morehead City called Finn Finnegan’s, and told him the news. The usual vague reasons were given: the spark between them had petered out, they were going in different directions, her heart was no longer in port. She patted Thomas’s hand, and told him they could still be friends.

Thomas was dumbfounded, but even worse he felt constrained. If they weren’t in this restaurant, he could yell and storm and demand answers. He could make Danielle cry as she deserved. He might even slap her. How fulfilling that would be! But in this place, with its murmuring conversations, tinkling silverware, attentive wait staff, and fake sailfish mounted on the wall, it would be an outrage to act that way. The best he could do was growl and speak in curt sentences. Finally he told his now ex-girlfriend to “fuck off,” threw down the complimentary hushpuppy he was eating, and power-walked to the exit.

As he pushed open the door, he looked back once. A tall blond waitress was standing by the table, and Danielle was calmly ordering something. He knew what it would be: crabcakes with a side of coleslaw.

So Thomas was in a malaise as he sat down in Vernon’s office and told him that he was going to quit. The reasons he gave were vague, similar to the reasons Danielle had given him: he wanted to “try something different” and “explore his options.” He expected Vernon to smile and nod, tell a joke, shake his hand, and then wish him a happy future. But Vernon did none of these things. He sat rocking in his ancient, squeaky duct-tape-patched office chair, arms crossed, and glared at Thomas.

Confused but still wanting to prove he had courage, Thomas manfully tried to return the glare, but couldn’t hold out for more than a few seconds. He looked at the rust-brown filing cabinet in the corner, the pile of invoices on the desk, the coffee mug that said “The Ol’ North State,” the pink- and purple-colored paper clips that Yolanda foisted on her husband — anywhere except into that face. He had said all that he planned to say; now it was Vernon’s turn. But Vernon said nothing. The chair squeaked. A fly buzzed.

“Thomas, have I done right by you?” Vernon finally asked.

“Yes,” Thomas replied, though the question momentarily bewildered him.

“I mean really, son. Don’t bullshit me. I’m gonna give you a good reference no matter what, I want you to know that. So don’t bullshit me. Tell me straight.”

“Yes, you have. I’ve gotten a few raises. The job’s been fun. Good people here.” He felt he should say more, but he didn’t know what Vernon expected.

The chair squeaked.

“You’ve worked here, what?” Vernon said. “About three years, right?”

“Something like that.”

“You make, what, $5.50 an hour? You started out at minimum wage, but you’ve done good work, so I bumped you up. If you keep it up, I’ll bump you up again.”

Thomas nodded. It seemed appropriate enough.

“I’m just confused, buddyrow. You don’t have another job lined up, right?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“So you want to quit a good job — and those are your words, not mine — and run off into the unknown. And now I’ve got to find another person to replace you, since it’s summer and we’re busy. And this person may or may not be a rascal. Now, lemme tell ya something…”

The chair squeaked dangerously as Vernon leaned forwards and planted his arms on the desk. His glare was even more intense at this closer distance. It was like someone had thrown a few extra logs on an already-raging fire.

“…many of the people I hire, they turn out to be… not of good quality. You’ve worked here three years, you’ve seen ’em come and go. Work one, two, three months, poof, they quit. They go off to college or find some other job — a job more in line with their abilities. You know the type of people I’m talking about. Working at Oxendine’s Grocery, well, that’s just temporary, they deserve better. Everyone these days is better, Thomas.”

Thomas ventured a look into his boss’s face. To his surprise, the glare was gone; in its place, a kind, almost pleading look, like a grandfather who wanted to read a story to a reluctant grandchild.

“I thought you were different,” Vernon said. “I thought you appreciated this job. You know Miss Early?”

“Yes.”

“She’s worked for me at the cash register for twenty-four years. She’s sixty-five now. What would happen if she went to work at Wal-Mart? Would they give her a day off when her hip starts acting up? Would they schedule her in the morning-time, like she wants? I doubt it. I sincerely doubt it. They would tell her how it would be, and that would be that, take it or leave it.”

Thomas said something confirmatory.

“My point is, and I’m getting to it by the long route, is that you have a home here. I think you know that. I’ve done my best to make it feel that way, at any rate. But something’s happened, and now things are all cattywampus. You ain’t acting right. Maybe it has something to do with a girl?”

Thomas said nothing. Finally he frowned and nodded.

“Well, I thought so,” Vernon said.

The chair squeaked.

“I’m sorry if I’m coming on strong,” Vernon said, “but I take this stuff seriously. You ain’t some part to be replaced whenever I feel like it. You’re a friend. I mean that. Just because some silly girl did you wrong and got you all in a tizzy doesn’t mean you have to quit.”

The way Vernon said “friend” made Thomas uncomfortable. It sounded almost holy.

“And I’m thinking about your future, too. I don’t know what your plan is after high school, but if you’re still working here, you can switch to full-time. I’ll give you a raise, give you the hours you want. And I’ll keep giving you raises as long as you work here — up to a point, of course.”

“Well… uh… couldn’t I come back here? I mean, if I did quit? Wouldn’t you hire me again?”

Vernon sucked his teeth and considered this.

“Yeah, you could — if there was an opening. I may be fully staffed. You never know. I’m not trying to be mean, but that’s how it is.”

“I understand.”

“I tell you what: I’ll give you a few days off. Get your head straight. If you still wanna quit, that’s fine. I won’t say another word. But think hard about what I said.”

Thomas did think hard. He’d never had a conversation quite like that, even with his parents. His mother usually chirped and sang and called him her “sweet little boy” whenever she had something important to tell him, and his father opted for the terse-and-tough route, using phrases like “that’s how the Real World works” and “nobody owes you anything.” Thomas’s conversation with Vernon had been real — perhaps the realest thing he’d ever experienced. Vernon had spoken straight from the heart, outlining honorable principles that he hoped Thomas shared. Thomas felt like he’d been initiated into an elite group of strong, noble men, but instead of embracing his brothers, he was going to reject them because some trifling girl had pissed him off.

But on the other hand — he thought about the word “friend,” about how Vernon had uttered it. Vernon wasn’t really his friend; he was Thomas’s boss. Plus, there was like a twenty-eight-year age difference between them. They weren’t going to hang out after work at the beach, or go on road trips together. They would interact at the grocery store and then go their separate ways. That was not true friendship.

And Thomas sensed a trap. There were thousands of other jobs available in the world, but Vernon didn’t want Thomas to go out and try his hand at any of them. He seemingly wanted Thomas there at Oxendine’s Grocery forever. It was ludicrous. He tried to imagine what it would be like to work at Oxendine’s after high school, but he could only picture endless gray days and a dark, silent, cramped apartment-hovel. He would waste away to nothing, and be forgotten by the world.

But he didn’t have to work here forever. He could quit anytime, but it would be better to do so when he had a legitimate reason. Vernon was right: he was all in a tizzy because Danielle had dumped him, and he wanted to do something drastic to prove he still had “agency,” as Mr. Hinkley, his psychology teacher, would put it. He was treating the grocery store like Danielle had treated him, as if that would even things out. But it wouldn’t.

He didn’t want to act like those “better” people who left Oxendine’s Grocery for supposedly greener pastures, or those International Leaders of Tomorrow super-beings who frowned upon lesser mortals. He wanted to stay at Oxendine’s, where people — Vernon especially — appreciated him for who he was.

After his two-day holiday was up, Thomas walked into Oxendine’s, opened Vernon’s office door, and told him he wasn’t quitting, that he’d stick around for a little bit longer.

Vernon peered up at him through his thick reading glasses. He smiled, stood up, and obliterated Thomas’s hand with his crushing handshake.

“Welcome back,” he said, “though you never really left, did ya?”

Chapter Sixteen

Thomas trudged up the concrete steps to his apartment, feeling as if whatever omnipotent force controlled the universe had doubled Earth’s gravity. He’d drank too much on New Year’s Eve, then had tiring sex, then hadn’t gotten enough sleep, then had to slog through an eight-hour day at Oxendine’s. The last two hours at work had been rough. He could’ve cruised through them, but, angry at his fatigue, he worked harder than normal, to prove he still “had it.” His body, which knew he didn’t have it, was now laughing at him, and every slow step was an “I told you so.”

Thomas thought back to his ruminations on his birthday. He’d believed himself superior to those middle-aged schmucks trying to shave off a few years by being adventurous and outdoorsy. He didn’t need to prove anything. And now he’d gone and overworked himself, because, it turned out, he did need to prove something, at least today. He was running on fumes, and he didn’t know if he had enough in him to fix dinner. He might skip it, since even throwing something in the microwave seemed, in his present state, as exhausting as preparing a ten-course meal for a two-hundred-person wedding reception.

But when he reached the top step and saw his sister sitting outside his door, he knew he’d have to pull energy from some deep, rarely-tapped source, because it was going to be a long night.

Emily was crouched against the wall, arms wrapped around knees. She tilted her head up at Thomas as he approached, and the look on her face was one of ecstatic defiance: it was the look of the battle-scarred protester, the troublemaking kid at school, the employee who’s about to tell their boss to go fuck himself.

“Hey,” she said. It was more a challenge than a greeting, like she thought of herself as a sentry posted outside his door, and would turn away anyone who didn’t have the correct credentials — including the tenant of the apartment. “Figured you’d show up eventually.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Thomas replied, trying to muster up some anger, but instead producing impotent whining. “We’ve all—”

“Don’t wanna hear it. I know everyone’s been looking for me. I’m sorry. I’m here now. I want to talk, not listen as you berate me.”

“You want to talk? You don’t want to listen?” Now he sounded angry — he thought. “Of all the goddamn selfish things—”

“Thomas, if you don’t stop reading me the riot act, I’ll leave. I’ll leave, and you may not see me for a long time.”

“Fine by me.”

Emily gaped. She was like all those supposedly decisive leaders who issue an ultimatum to some underling, who say take or leave it, and who are then surprised and offended when the person being put on the spot shrugs and decides to leave it.

“Well?” Thomas said. “Are you going to leave, like you just threatened to do?”

Emily sighed and stood up, wiping off the seat of her pants. Thomas watched her. Even on the roofed landing, with the day fading, she seemed healthy, if a bit crazy-eyed. Whatever she’d been doing the past week — and Thomas had imagined a slew of possibilities — it probably wasn’t self-destructive. Then again, it seemed few things could tarnish his sister’s beauty. He could remember growing up with her: Emily ate a pint of ice cream? Her body tossed metabolic gasoline on it and enthusiastically burnt it off. Emily stayed out late? She’d straggle home, sleep three hours, and wake up looking like she’d just returned from a getaway to some tropical island. Emily was down with the flu? You wouldn’t believe she was sick until you took her temperature.

Right now, she was dressed in a stylishly unstylish manner. Her jeans, as usual, were form-fitted to her long legs, and her hair lay tousled across her face and shoulders, as if she was windblown from the beach — which she very well could have been. Her black North Face jacket was tight at the right places, and her wearing it had driven many a lesser woman to fury over the years: here they were, showing off ten miles of cleavage and arms which they’d done their damnedest to sculpt in that muscular-but-still-feminine style, and this bitch looks better than them in a fucking jacket.

When Thomas compared how she looked to how he felt, he believed a great injustice had been visited upon his person in particular, and in general upon the Copelands and Dowlings who had worried about her. Someone who’d run away from her family should look like they’d been languishing in a dank, rat-infested prison cell, not like they’d been enjoying themselves at a spa.

“No, I’m not going to leave,” Emily said. “You called my bluff.”

Thomas frowned; a large part of him wished she hadn’t been bluffing.

“Well, guess you better come in,” he said.

He pulled his key ring out of his pocket, but the omnipotent force that had adjusted gravity had also transformed the metals of his keys, as well as the plastic of his countless rewards cards, into heavier, denser materials.

“You OK?” Emily asked, noticing her brother’s grumblings and his slow movements. “You look plum tuckered out, as mom used to say.”

“It’s been a long day and night. I was planning to skip dinner and collapse right into bed.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can fix you dinner, though. And we don’t have to talk for long.”

“No, I don’t want you to fix me dinner,” Thomas said firmly. One didn’t let family-abandoners and possible adulterers cook for them. “And you know this talk of ours is going to last till midnight, if not later…”

“No, it won’t, not if you don’t want it to. I’ve got plenty of time to talk. I’ll be around for a few days.”

Thomas didn’t reply. He just wanted to get inside and get himself horizontal, at least for a few seconds. He opened the door, flicked on the ceiling light in the living room, let his keys fall anywhere, and dropped onto the couch as if he’d been shot. Immediately he felt better. The cushions seemed to have some sort of healing force within them. He closed his eyes, and would’ve drifted off to the blissful dreamless sleep of the truly weary, but his sister was here, and she wanted to talk.

“Huh,” she said from somewhere in the apartment. It sounded like she was in the bedroom. “I haven’t been here in a while. Forgot what it looked like. It’s… nice.”

Thomas blinked his eyes open. “Nice? It’s just basic decor. Compared to your home…”

“That place in Raleigh is no longer my home.”

“Well, shit, Emily, what’s that even mean? I ask again: where the hell have you been? Answer the question this time.”

“I’m reenacting a story that’s as old as human history,” she said in delighted self-mockery. “I ran away with a boy.”

She was now in the living room, standing in front of a painting Thomas had picked up at a thrift store. It depicted a man and a hunting dog walking across a marsh on the edge of a large body of water. Their destination was a hunting blind, which they’d nearly reached. The day was overcast, the clouds and the water a slate gray, the cordgrass and scrub a dull green. The painting had an impressionistic quality, since the man, dog, and hunting blind were little more than jagged smudges. The painting had stirred Thomas when he first saw it, and he still sometimes felt that vigorous pang when he happened to glance at it. The picture wasn’t sunny or optimistic, but neither was its grayness and vagueness oppressive. It just was.

And Thomas didn’t like his sister looking at it. Such a morally bankrupt person didn’t deserve to be in the presence of any sort of art. Yes, he realized his thoughts were similar to what Peggy, that Bible-thumping pestilence, would say at work during one of her condemnation marathons, but he didn’t care.

“Nice painting,” she said, as if she’d read his thoughts and was trying to needle him. “I don’t remember this one.”

“Can you elaborate on how you ‘ran away with a boy’?” he said, ignoring her comment. “I feel like I’m pulling teeth here.”

“No small talk? Just dive right in, huh? Is this how you treat every lady who comes here? No foreplay, let’s get down to the serious stuff?”

Thomas sat up, though the increased gravity tried its hardest to keep him down.

“Emily. Enough of this shit. You wanted to talk. So talk.”

Emily walked over and sat down beside him, folding her hands across her lap. Up close, in this light, she looked even healthier than she had outside — and just as glowingly defiant.

“OK, I’ll talk,” she said brightly. “I ran away with a boy, an old flame. You know the story: that one guy returns to your life, and you thought it was done years ago, but it isn’t.”

“Who the hell is this old flame?”

“Thomas, can you not?”

“Can I not what? Curse? Emily, you’ve deserted your family. Dan went crazy, acted like I’ve never seen him act before, and mom and dad are still in Raleigh, sitting around and waiting for you to turn up…”

“Really? Dan, the definition of calm, went crazy?” She seemed thrilled at the idea. “Well, he acted crazy the night I left, but I figured it was just something that happened in the heat of the moment. And I don’t know why mom and dad haven’t gone home yet. I told everyone I was fine.”

“Emily, have you seriously lost your mind? You disappear, and you expect everyone to just go ‘Ho-hum, guess I’ll go back to my normal routine and wait for her to come back?’”

“Well, that’s what you did, didn’t you?”

She had him there. He had returned to his normal routine, though he checked his phone and e-mail constantly, and he believed he’d worried about as much as was expected of him.

“So what?” Thomas said defensively. “I have to work. Should I have stayed in Raleigh and sat around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for you to turn up?”

“I wanted you to do whatever you felt was best.”

“I… alright, you’re just dragging me around in circles.”

“You’re the one who gets angry every time I say two words.”

“Fine. OK. I’ll listen, as neutrally as I possibly can. Go on.”

Emily smiled and crossed her legs.

“You remember Brett Hickman?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah. Your first boyfriend? I mentioned him at Christmas?”

“Yes, that’s right. You did.”

“So he’s the one? The boy you ran away with?”

“Yes.”

“But… how does that work? He broke up with you decades ago.” Thomas could see a teenage Emily on her bed, seemingly done with life, despite Thomas’s encouragement and sympathy, however forced.

But his sister had surfaced from her fog, and it seemed like the chapter on Brett Hickman was closed for good. It was just an over-dramatic breakup with a first boyfriend, something that happened to every girl.

But now he was back, more than twenty years later…

“Yes, he did dump me,” Emily replied, “but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” Emily said. “You know, I think you’d like him.”

“Why on earth would I like him? I don’t like him now, I didn’t like him back then. Ponytail, dressed like a punk, a bully…”

“No, he wasn’t a bully. He was just… hard.”

“In more ways than one, I guess.”

Emily laughed and squirmed in her seat. Thomas regretted his quip, and hoped to God she wasn’t going to go into too much detail about the sex they were obviously having, which was sure to be entrancing, wild, hot, and all the other words people threw out. If she did, he may already have to renege on his agreement to keep his anger in check.

“Yes, he was excellent,” Emily said sultrily, “and he still is.” Thomas waited, but thankfully this was all the detail she wished to give at the moment.

“So where is this Hickman guy at now?” Thomas asked.

“He’s around.”

“Oh sure,” Thomas said sarcastically. “He’s around.”

“Yes, well, I suppose you want to know how he came back into my life?” Emily said eagerly. Thomas tried to object, but she was off and running before he could form his words. “Well, I was in the gym one day, doing squats with Becka, my trainer, and I feel this presence behind me. Literally, I got goosebumps. I’m not lying. And it was him: Brett Hickman. Still had his ponytail, still as ripped as he was in high school — well, he wasn’t all that toned back then, but anyway — still with that grin that just gets inside your heart and twists it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. He was in workout clothes, had a sleeveless t-shirt on, and I tell you, those biceps looked like they’d been carved out of marble…”

“How wonderful,” Thomas said acidly. He thought they’d bypassed Emily’s lustful thoughts.

“OK, OK. You don’t want to hear me gush over his physical attributes.” She paused, apparently wanting to gush over those attributes mentally for a few seconds before continuing. After a beat, she shook her head happily, chuckled, and resumed her narrative. “Anyway, we got to talking, or he talked and I stammered out some stuff. Said he had just moved to the area, and had been looking for a gym, since he was pretty hardcore into weightlifting and fitness and all that. Said it was his first time there, and lo and behold, I just happened to be there too. Not that I believed him. Sounded a bit melodramatic to me…”

“What’s he do for a living?”

“He’s sort of semi-retired. He did some stuff in Silicon Valley and made a lot of money. He helped develop some note-taking app for smartphones, for example. Now he mostly spends his money and has fun, though he’s sort of a venture capitalist, too.”

“Sort of. He’s sort of this, sort of that.”

“Yeah, is that a problem?” Emily asked haughtily. “What, you want me to print out a résumé for you?”

“That would actually be helpful. I mean, do you have proof of all this?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking that. You think he’s a con man, don’t you?”

“Well, do you have proof or not?”

“Yes, I do, actually. I’ve looked him up. There’s this thing called the Internet? And he’s shown me his investment portfolio. Very impressive.”

So he’d shown her his portfolio, too? Way to set the hook, Brett. Thomas sighed. He was tired of sighing, but it looked like he’d be doing it many more times tonight. “So this guy shows up, he’s a stud, has lots of money, and you go for it.”

“No, Thomas, I did not go for it, at least at first. We had coffee a few times, and he was clearly interested, but I kept him at bay. But then Dan…” She scrunched up her face at the memory of her husband’s slight, and clutched at her kneecaps as if she wanted to rip them off and throw them at something.

“What about Dan?” Thomas asked.

“He forgot our anniversary,” Emily said. The guillotine sliced downwards, and Dan’s head was lopped off. Blood spurted out of his neck-hole, and the body twitched once before giving up the ghost.

Thomas didn’t remember when their anniversary was either. He actually had it written down on a Master List of birthdays, anniversaries, and other important events that was posted on his refrigerator, but it would be silly to walk all the way to the kitchen to find out.

“When was it?” he asked.

“You don’t know either?” She blew up like a pufferfish, but before she could make use of her spines, Thomas squished her back down again.

“Oh, stop acting wounded,” he said. “I’m not married to you — thank God for that! I have it written down, but I can’t be expected to remember it off the top of my head. You know, not everything revolves around you.”

“Well… fine. It’s on September 21st, and this was our fifteenth anniversary. And he forgot.”

September? That recently? Yes, he remembered now: he’d sent them something, a cheap bauble of some sort. No, it had been a gift card to Outback Steakhouse. He knew Dan salivated over their Bloomin’ Onion.

“Well, that’s no good,” Thomas said lamely.

“I know. It was because of work. It’s always because of work. He’s so busy, I swear he forgets he has a family. You know, he’s forgotten our anniversary four times now. I put up with it the first three times—”

“You did, huh?”

“OK, I got angry, but I didn’t go nuclear.”

Thomas would disagree, and he was pretty sure Dan would too, but he decided not to contest the point — this time.

“So you decided to shack up with Brett because of that? Emily, come on now…”

“No, there are — were — other things. Haven’t you been listening? That was just the catalyst. I have needs, you know. Brett has time for me. Dan doesn’t.”

“So you just run away at Christmas? When the whole family is together?”

“Yes, I did exactly that. I couldn’t stand that harassing conversation, ‘Emily did this, Emily did that, let’s all talk about Emily’s past.’ I was stressed out from fixing all the food and preparing all the rooms, and then you actually mentioned Brett by name, like you knew, somehow. So I just said fuck it.”

“I guess it’s my fault, huh?” Thomas asked sardonically. “The straw that broke the camel’s back, right?”

“No, I don’t blame you. But I am disappointed that you didn’t really respond to the e-mail I sent you on your birthday.”

Thomas had to rack his brain again. He tapped his fingers on his chin, refusing to give up until he’d pulled out this particular memory. He didn’t want Emily to have a conniption because yet another person hadn’t memorized her every word and action. (Of course, this played right into her hand, but Thomas was too angry and tired to care.) Emily waited expectantly. Finally he remembered her vague e-mail and his flippant response.

“What was I supposed to say?” he asked. “Wouldn’t therapy have been the best option? I mean, every time you have one of your little episodes, it seems like you want everyone to gather around and help you, but then you get mad when they do. That’s not how it works. But what am I saying, you’d probably get mad at the therapist too…”

“That’s not how I act.”

Thomas sighed. She was so delusional it was frightening. “How about the time you got strep throat? That’s just one example.”

“What about that time? Everyone gets a little cranky when they’re sick.”

Thomas shook his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“Don’t act like you’ve got me figured out,” Emily said. “You’re acting like I’m this evil bitch because I’m doing what I have to do. You don’t know what it’s like to live with Dan. He’s so fucking respectable, it drives me insane!”

“Dan’s busted his ass to provide for you and Dennis…”

“Oh, that’s typical!” Emily scoffed. “A man provides for me, so I should be his slave. I never wanted him to work the long hours he’s worked. He could cut back, and I’d be perfectly happy.”

“But would his bosses? And do you really expect me to believe that you’d be happy if Dan worked for some piddling little practice in the boonies? And you’ve never worked while you’ve been married, so how can you say—”

“Again with the patronizing horseshit!” Emily raged, pounding the sofa with her tiny fists. “Emily’s just a little housewife, so she should shut up and know her place! Barefoot in the kitchen, huh? Fuck that!”

“Don’t throw that nonsense at me! You always say you’re a feminist, but you act just like every other woman! You chose this lifestyle. You chose to marry Dan. You knew he was going to be a lawyer. You chose to have Dennis…”

“Thomas, I seem to recall you saying you’d be a neutral listener. And here you are once again berating me because I dare to live my life my way!”

“You know what, I’ve had enough,” Thomas said, standing up shakily. “I’d like you to leave. I don’t know why you came here anyway. Did you drive all the way from Raleigh, or wherever you’ve been hiding out, just to talk to me?”

“No, I didn’t come back here just to see you. There are other reasons. But I do want you to understand, but you won’t listen to me.”

“You’ve explained yourself. Like you said, you ran away with a boy, and now I guess you’re going to get divorced. What do you want me to say? Do you want my approval? My forgiveness? You don’t have either. If Dan was abusive or something, I would be behind you one hundred percent. But you just saw something that shined a little bit brighter, and you tossed aside the poor guy. And what about Dennis? We haven’t even discussed him. How is this going to affect him?”

“He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need me, or Dan, or anyone really. You should’ve seen that at Christmas, if you were paying attention. He’s already matured.” Thomas actually agreed, but he’d be damned if he admitted it openly. “And you know, Thomas, people get divorced all the time. It’s not that big of a deal…”

“Then why have you been on the run like an escaped convict? You’ve turned it into a big deal, like you turn everything related to Emily Dowling, maiden name Copeland, into a big deal.”

“OK, I agree. I need to go.” She stood up and strutted to the door, but stopped once she placed her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll say one more thing, Thomas. Maybe I should’ve led off with this. It might’ve kept you from getting so pissy.” She looked at him almost tenderly. “I actually want to apologize to you. I’ve made a lot of negative comments about you over the years. You’ve heard some of them. I thought you were a failure. You were working at a shitty little grocery store, after all, and you seemed to be sleepwalking through life. But you weren’t, were you? You had freedom. Somehow, you don’t give a shit about money and status and marriage and all of that. I wish you’d tell me how you pulled it off, how you knew what you wanted from the beginning, but I guess we’re on bad terms now and we won’t be talking. But now I’ve tasted freedom myself. Brett gave it to me way back in high school, but I’d forgotten about it. Now I’ve got it back, and I’m not letting it go — ever. What I’m trying to say is, you’ve always done what you wanted, even when we in the family didn’t back you up, and now I’m doing what I want. So, even though I know I keep repeating myself, I hope you try and understand how I feel.”

Thomas could think of numerous replies to this monologue. He could say that freedom wasn’t steamrolling over every obstacle and throwing everyone aside to get what you wanted. If Thomas wanted that to be his mantra, he would’ve cast his lot in with the budding leaders at the International Leaders of Tomorrow Conference way back in high school, and would’ve powered through college so he could obtain a lucrative degree and set up a fiefdom within some large corporation or hungry young business.

But he hadn’t done that. He’d stuck with a job he loved, with people he loved. Oxendine’s Grocery was not some dismal place where everyone either ignored or hated each other, and where managers barked at employees over frivolous infractions. Though it seemed hokey to say so, the people at Oxendine’s were his family. He doubted Emily truly understood that concept. She was convinced she was the misunderstood one at present, and wouldn’t even consider that the freedom Thomas enjoyed was very different from the freedom she claimed she’d never let go.

He could reiterate the point he’d made about his sister choosing this life. She had snagged Dan, knowing he’d eventually be making tons of money, so that she could secure herself a good life. True, Dan probably hadn’t minded being snagged by this drop-dead gorgeous woman, but a marriage contract went both ways — or it was supposed to. Now Emily was ripping it to shreds and daring anyone to stop her.

He could also reiterate how his sister’s running off into the great unknown had been self-dramatizing and immature. She had wanted everyone to worry about her, had wanted them to ponder just what sort of metamorphosis she was going through. She could contest this, but her “I sent text messages” defense was as flimsy as a piece of wet cardboard.

Then again — Thomas had had a one-night stand just last night, and he’d treated Allison terribly. He’d taken what he wanted, and then basically told the poor woman to get the hell out of his apartment; Emily had had her fill of Dan, and she’d discarded him for a new beau. If you took marriage out of the equation, what was the difference?

But Thomas tiredly pushed these nagging thoughts aside. If Emily had been truly miserable, there were better ways to fix her life than going on a scorched-earth rampage, but Thomas wasn’t going to argue with her anymore. Let his sister’s one-woman Declaration of Independence stand. She believed she was as inspiring and majestic as Lady Liberty herself, and nothing he said would dent this myth.

“Is your speech over?” he asked curtly. “Or is there more? If there is, maybe I can get you a podium and a microphone to make it look more official.”

Emily shook her head angrily and opened the door.

“We’re done, Thomas. Don’t expect to hear from me again.”

“Where the hell are you going?” Thomas said, trying to freeze his sister in place with his stare.

“Wherever I want,” Emily said, her return stare just as icy. “What, are you going to stop me?”

Thomas ground his teeth.

“No,” he finally said, “I’m not.”

“Didn’t think so.”

The door slammed shut, rattling the entire apartment. Thomas winced, hoping his neighbors weren’t moved to furious denunciations by the noise — or more likely, moved to complain passive-aggressively to the management company.

He half-expected his sister to pop back in to emphasize that they were done by repeating herself using slightly different wording. He waited, but nothing happened, so he staggered over to the door and turned the deadbolt.

He debated whether he should contact his parents or Dan tonight. He would be somewhat of a hypocrite if he didn’t inform them immediately of his sister’s visit, since he’d condemned Emily for withholding her whereabouts and motives. On the other hand, contacting them would lead to an hours-long conversation, with everyone getting frustrated because he didn’t remember every word she’d said and because he’d let her escape. Thomas was spent; he wanted to go to bed, not deal with more family drama.

“Dammit, Emily,” he muttered. “You’ll pay for this, somehow.” He knew he sounded like a comic book villain, but he didn’t give a fuck.

He lay back down on the couch, dialed Dan’s number, and waited for his brother-in-law to pick up.

Chapter Seventeen

“I can’t believe they actually hooked up!” Cynthia exclaimed. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, alcohol was involved,” Thomas said. “Alcohol makes things happen.”

“I guess.”

They were discussing a very important piece of news: Noah, to the surprise of everyone, including Noah himself, had actually lured Carly into his sweaty, groping arms. It had happened just after the Christmas Party, but had remained a secret until yesterday. Noah had been commanded by Carly never to tell anyone what had happened, ever. Noah kept this secret as long as he could, but finally the dam burst: during his shift last night, he had told everyone he’d “tapped that ass, even though ya’ll told me it’d never happen.”

No one believed him, especially since his tale was full of contradictions and porn-level sexual prowess. Also, Carly wasn’t working, so she couldn’t be questioned. Eddie, however, had Carly’s number — the possession of which was a source of great pride — and sent her misspelled and sarcastic text messages asking if she really had done the deed with Noah. Carly’s panicky responses seemed to confirm Noah’s story, against all probability, but when she actually roared up to the store in her Camaro and dragged Noah outside for a talking-to, unwisely yelling that he’d “taken advantage of her,” everyone was ready to believe that Noah had indeed “tapped that ass.”

As in so many other hazy sexual encounters, alcohol was to blame. Noah had made a plan prior to the Party: he would pilfer liquor and beer during the festivities and shove them down Carly’s throat until she was pliable. He would drink some himself, but not enough to get hammered; he wanted to be reasonably clear-headed so he could guide an intoxicated Carly to the Promised Land. He’d finagled Carly into giving him a ride to the party, which was very important to the plan. When they were ready to leave, Noah would insist on driving her home, since Carly would be too wasted to be trusted behind the wheel; he could then call his parents and get them to pick him up, or so he would claim. However, instead of driving Carly home, he’d take a little detour over to Atlantic Beach, park at a certain parking lot, sure to be deserted this time of year, convince Carly to take “a short walk on the beach, just to look at the stars,” and then get him some.

All during the Party Noah had worried and sweated. His plan could be foiled an infinite number of ways. Someone might offer to take him home, and Carly, happy to be free from the responsibility, would heartbreakingly agree. Carly might get distracted, and let another guy woo her; there were certainly a number of men and boys who were chomping at the bit to bag her. Carly might not drink enough. She might drink too much and pass out. Noah weighed the morality of having sex with an unconscious woman, but he was pretty sure that would be rape, so he refused to do it, if the situation did present itself. In his mind, this put him firmly on the side of the angels.

But the plan, to Noah’s astonishment, went off without a hitch. Carly got sloppy drunk: she slurred her words, and kept talking about how she “loved everyone, because there’s not enough love in the world, and someone has to spread the love, and that someone is me.” This sentiment sounded great to Noah. She let him (ostensibly) drive her home, although she was “totally fine. Totally. I actually drive better when I’m drunk.” They made it to the empty parking lot, and though Carly was initially baffled, it didn’t take much to persuade her that a nighttime beach walk would be fabulous: “Adventure! There’s not enough adventure in the world either. We need adventure.”

After about thirty seconds of star-gazing, Noah sat Carly down on the cold sand at the base of a dune, put his arm around her, and went in for the kill. Carly, who in her state believed that somehow it was her boyfriend Gabe she was kissing (even though Gabe wasn’t usually so frenzied), was receptive at first; she even put her hand down Noah’s pants, which so stunned Noah that he pulled away, giving Carly a chance to collect her scattered, murky thoughts.

“What… what’re you doing?” she yelled. “What the fuck, Noah!”

She tried to shove Noah off and get to her feet, but moving so quickly made her head spin, and she slumped back down to the sand. Noah wrapped her up again and slobbered all over her face and clutched at her breasts. By grabbing his crotch, she’d even inspired him to venture down and tentatively poke her vagina. His passion was so cute. It no longer seemed threatening, just silly. She bet Noah was a virgin, and didn’t have a clue how to handle a woman of her caliber. Maybe she should show him…

Ten minutes later, her orgasm had ripped through her mind like a scorching comet, and she was able to snag at bits and pieces of clarity. As they lay there, still mostly clothed, with sand nonetheless in places it shouldn’t have been, and with the cold air making them shiver, Carly forbade Noah from ever mentioning this… this… whatever this was. Noah promised he would never tell a soul: “You can trust me, darlin’. I’ll be like a vault, won’t nothin’ get out.”

Of course, he’d broken his promise, and now Oxendine’s Grocery was abuzz with scandal.

Thomas watched Cynthia as she sliced some honey ham for a customer who had wandered down the beer aisle while he waited. It looked like she’d overindulged over the holidays: her thickness was once again dangerously close to becoming fatness. But, as she’d told Thomas, her New Year’s Resolution was to get in shape, so she would be slim and trim in no time! Thomas didn’t mention that, as far as he could recall, that had been her resolution the past two years.

He briefly thought of Allison, since she’d had the same futile resolution. He wondered if he’d ever see her again. He hoped not.

“Kudos to Noah, though,” Thomas said sincerely. “He kept at it. Didn’t quit.”

“But do you think they actually hooked up, you know, consensually, or do you think he sort of took advantage of her?”

“Took advantage of her” was the term Carly was using. She’d stopped short of using the word “rape” to describe what had happened to her. She feared the word as much as Noah did; it meant lawyers, chubby policeman, tearful depositions, the lewd glare of the community. No, it was better to withhold the word, but still use its possible deployment as a cudgel to make Noah behave.

And indeed, Noah had backpedaled, claiming that their encounter “wasn’t that hot n’ heavy. Was just, ya know, a lil sumthin’ sumthin’.” Few believed this, but since Noah was no longer giving out salacious details, the employees at Oxendine’s had to satisfy their voyeurism somehow, so they came up with their own. Some of the scenarios were wildly unlikely, even impossible, so that, actually, sticking to the relatively prosaic truth would’ve been beneficial to both Noah and Carly.

“No, I don’t think Noah did anything wrong,” Thomas replied now. “Carly knew what she was doing — sort of.”

“But she was drunk.”

Thomas sighed. He’d already measured Carly’s blood-alcohol level with three different people today, and he didn’t want to do it with a fourth.

“Yeah, well, like I said: alcohol makes things happen.”

“That doesn’t mean he has a right to throw her down on a sand dune and have his way with her.”

Thomas sighed again. He should’ve known what Cynthia’s opinion of the Beach Romp (as Vernon called it) would be. Verdicts had been divided right down the gender line: Thomas, Eldridge, and Vernon thought it was just a bit of harmless teenage drama, while Peggy and now Cynthia thought that Noah was a lecherous villain. Thomas hadn’t talked to anyone else about the Romp, but he assumed opinions would remain predictable based on gender.

“We’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Thomas said diplomatically. His argument with his sister had happened a few days ago, and Thomas didn’t want to trade barbs with yet another woman regarding the dos and don’ts of relationships and sex.

“Fine,” Cynthia spat. Thomas arched an eyebrow. She was now slicing mesquite turkey breast, which she did with angry speed. Thomas didn’t want to consider which body part of his or Noah’s she wished she could jam into the slicer’s sharp, whirling blade.

“So, have you heard anything from Orianna?” he asked with an abundance of nonchalance. He didn’t know if Cynthia was aware of his altercation with Orianna at the Christmas Party. He didn’t think so, since Cynthia hadn’t yet mentioned it, and in fact hadn’t had much to say about her friend at all.

“No, I haven’t, actually,” she said thoughtfully, and perhaps unconsciously slowing her meat-slicing. “It’s kind of weird. Since she quit, she doesn’t really want to hang out with me. I mean, we never hung out that much, but now she barely answers my texts.”

“Interesting,” Thomas said vaguely.

“Yeah, I guess. It ticks me off, though. I don’t know if I’ve done something wrong, or…”

“No, it’s not you. Trust me.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe I upset her somehow.”

“You upset her by working here,” Thomas blurted out before he could lasso his words. He cringed, waiting for Cynthia to question him thoroughly about what he meant.

But to his surprise, Cynthia had already considered this: “Yeah, maybe. You know, when she first quit she went on and on about being free and traveling and all this stuff. I thought that sounded great, but she looked at me like I didn’t get it, and then she said something about how Oxendine’s is like a prison, with wardens and everything. Maybe that means I’m a dumb prisoner for working here — or maybe I’m a warden.”

“What a bitch,” Thomas said half-heartedly.

“Yeah, maybe,” Cynthia said just as half-heartedly. “I think she’s just going through a rough patch.”

“Aren’t we all?” Thomas said. “Speaking of: what about you? Still having trouble with your roommates?”

If Cynthia had still been slicing, she would’ve fairly tortured whatever meat needed to be cut. Now, however, she was weighing and bagging the turkey, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t slam the filled plastic bag onto the scale and yank out the price label once it printed.

“Yes, I’m having trouble,” she said, as if it were obvious to all the world. “I’m ready to move out, but it’s not that easy. I could live on my own, but that would cost a lot more money. Or I could try to find new roommates, but they could end up being just as bad as the ones I’ve got now.”

“Maybe you could move back home. Temporarily, I mean.”

“Never.” She stared at Thomas as if he’d just advised her to sell her soul. Hearing and seeing such conviction disquieted him. If wholesome Cynthia was finally cracking under the pressure, what hope did anyone else in the world have?

“Well, I’m sorry to hear about your troubles,” Thomas said lamely.

“Yeah, you were sorry the last time we talked about it.” She threw the bags of meat in the deli cooler and started to tenaciously clean the slicer.

Thomas was tired of women getting the last word, but no good could come by arguing with Cynthia, especially since he didn’t know what he should argue about. He stared at her for a few seconds, then walked away, his destination uncertain.

He checked his watch: two hours until his shift ended. Not enough time to prepare for the big meeting that was taking place this evening, but then again, two thousand years wouldn’t be enough time.

Chapter Eighteen

The four people sat down at a window booth, then waited until the hostess was walking away before beginning their conversation. The staff of Finn Finnegan’s looked at them critically: the older man looked like he had a stick up his ass, but the woman who appeared to be his wife seemed nice and outgoing. The two middle-aged men were also opposites: one was in creaseless black slacks, gleaming leather shoes, and an Oxford shirt, while the other had on a t-shirt and jeans. An out-of-town family, seemed to be, here on a winter jaunt. They’d probably leave a small tip and complain about how their entrees were cooked.

“This brings back memories!” Jean Copeland tweeped. “How many times have we eaten here over the years?”

“Many,” Frank Copeland said sourly. Here he was, back in this damn restaurant with its maritime kitsch and yellowed, framed newspaper articles dotting the walls. As if anyone cared that Surf ’N Surf: The Coastal North Carolina Restaurant Review had given Finn Finnegan’s a glowing review twenty years ago!

Frank Copeland hadn’t wanted to return to Morehead City, but he knew it was necessary: Emily needed to be Saved. Their mission was simple: find his daughter, and return her to Raleigh. She couldn’t stand against the combined might of the family; they’d be able to set her straight. (That Emily ruled over everyone on every occasion the family met was a contradiction that Frank ignored.) This damn fool boy she’d run off with would be dealt with, too — physically, if need be.

Frank hadn’t been in a fight since junior year of high school, but he felt capable enough. He’d have help from Thomas and Dan, after all, if the damn youngsters didn’t stick their tails between their legs and run.

Thomas’s phone call had spurred all this. After he called a few days ago to tell them about Emily’s visit — and why the boy hadn’t stopped his sister from running off into the wild blue yonder again was beyond Frank — Dan had decided to take a few days off from work and drive down to Morehead City. He wanted to talk to Thomas face-to-face, get all the information he could out of him, and then go looking for Emily, since she’d told Thomas she’d be in the area for a few days.

Dan announced his intent to his parents-in-law, hoping they would stay behind and look after Dennis. Frank Copeland, however, had a different plan.

“We’re coming too,” he said.

“That’s not necessary,” Dan said, frowning. “I’d rather do this myself.”

“She’s our daughter,” Frank said, his voice iron. “We care about her just as much as you do. And remember our family history. We’re going.”

It took Dan a moment to comprehend what his father-in-law was talking about regarding family history. Then he remembered the suicide of Wallace Copeland, that event that was so crucial to Frank, so unimportant to everyone else. Yes, suicide was horrible, but it had happened, what, forty-plus years ago? Dan saw no need to dig extra graves so you could just dump a family member in if they offed themselves.

“As I said, Frank, this is between me and my wife,” Dan glowered. “Let us work this out ourselves.”

“No.”

The two men glared at each other in a staredown that, had it been seen by more people, would have gone down in legend. Dan had recovered from the angry helplessness that had demoralized him in the aftermath of Emily’s departure, and attacked Frank with a look that would have melted the resolve of the most hard-bitten courtroom witness.

He might as well have been trying to burn through a mountain with a laser pointer.

Frank and Jean came with him, though he did prevail upon them to drive separately and to stay at a different hotel. Dennis stayed in Raleigh, because, as Dan told him, “if I find your mother, this might get ugly, and I don’t want you to see your parents fighting.” Dennis didn’t mind being left behind, although he didn’t like that he’d be staying with their next door neighbors, the Cobbs. The Cobbs were two smotheringly-loving retirees, and Dennis had had enough smothering love from his grandma during this charade.

And now the three Copelands and one Dowling were about to eat some greasy seafood and yak about things they’d already yakked about for hours. Frank was tired of yakking. He wanted to sleuth (he’d just read a mystery novel, and sleuthing was on his mind), though he didn’t quite know how he’d sleuth, since Dan refused to involve anyone else. One needed to interrogate people to sleuth.

“Thomas, do you eat here often?” Jean asked. “You used to love coming here when you were a wee little fellow.”

“No, not really,” Thomas replied. “I go to Clamshells and get a discount, since Reggie works there.”

“Ah, that’s smart!” Jean said. “How is he?”

“He’s the same old Reggie.”

Their waitress, an emaciated girl as plain as a dock piling, came over with a basket of hushpuppies. She took their drink orders, and then asked if they wanted any appetizers. In the way of certain families trying to order shared food, there was an elaborate discussion about the qualities and prices of the various appetizers listed on the menu. Each person gave their preference (Jean: “I remember their shrimp being divine!”), then exercised their personal vetoes (Dan: “I’ve never liked crab dip — or crab anything.”), until finally a consensus was reached: they would have a shrimp cocktail. The waitress scribbled on her pad and left.

“So, Thomas,” Dan began, “tell me again about this Brett Hickman person.”

“What do you want to know?” Thomas said, feeling vaguely uneasy, as if he was being asked to snitch on a close friend. Dan wasn’t the wreck he’d been at Christmas. He seemed back to normal — in fact, he seemed better than normal, at least in the short time Thomas had had to observe him. He exuded a sense of happiness and freedom — much like his estranged wife had.

“I want to know everything, of course,” Dan said, smiling. “Mainly how he was able to seduce my wife away from me.”

“You’d have to ask Emily that.”

“Emily isn’t here. I just want to know what you think.”

“Well, she said he was a stud,” Thomas said, annoyed at all the eyes fixed on him, “and that he’d made a bunch of money. Other than that, I couldn’t tell you exactly what made Emily fall for him — again. I guess he has that bad-boy edge that a lot of women like.”

“Did she go into any detail about this affair?” Dan asked. “Where was all this… stuff taking place?”

“I don’t know. Like I’ve told you, they met at the gym, and then things just kind of happened.”

“Isn’t that always the way?” Dan asked, still smiling. With a sinking feeling, Thomas suspected that Dan’s mood was buoyant because he’d decided to let Emily go. For some reason, Thomas had pictured Dan as the still-loyal husband desperate to get his wife back, despite her cuckoldry. His anger at Christmas had been an aberration, soon to be cast off once he regained his senses. After all, Emily had had him squarely under her thumb. But Thomas hadn’t considered that her metaphorical thumb was now nowhere near Dan. In a relatively short time, he had grown tall, like a plant that, having struggled through a drought, was now being blessed with a life-giving rainshower.

Thomas looked at his parents, wondering if they had noticed this. If they had, they were likely in denial over it.

The waitress returned with their drinks, informed them that their shrimp cocktail was just about done, and were they ready to order? Another round of discussion began, which baffled Thomas, since each person was ostensibly ordering what they wanted. But as soon as someone would give the waitress their order, someone else (specifically, Thomas’s parents) would ask if they had seen this other option, which may be just as good, and was cheaper to boot? Thomas himself was ridiculed when he ordered a prime rib. (Jean: “This is a seafood restaurant, Thomas!” Frank: “That steak’s a bit expensive, too.”) Dan ordered a shrimp salad (“I’ll take your word that the shrimp are divine, Jean.”) claiming he was trying to save room for dessert, and was pilloried for his unmanly, rabbit-like eating choice. Throughout all this, Thomas and the waitress suffered. He caught her eye and shook his head slowly, subtly telling her that he wasn’t really part of this circus. He thought she understood.

Finally the orders were placed, and the waitress bustled away. On her pad, next to the orders written in shorthand, she’d drawn a crude machine gun spraying bullets into the space beyond the page. It was her habit to scrawl violent imagery when dealing with a difficult table.

“Well, I hope this Brett Hickman fellow is happy with Emily,” Dan said, though his tone suggested he doubted they’d have lasting happiness.

Again, Thomas looked at his parents, but his father was brooding, as usual, and his mother was smiling obliviously, perhaps imagining a happy ending to all this — which meant, to her, the Dowling marriage restored and this Hickman person banished.

“So, did you two get a chance to drive around and look at the old sights?” Dan asked, motioning to Frank and Jean. Since they’d driven separately and checked into different hotels, they hadn’t seen each other since noon, when they left Raleigh.

“Yes, we had a little reminiscing drive,” Jean said happily. “We haven’t driven by our old bungalow yet or by the old Copeland home, but we drove by the furniture store. Frank didn’t want to go inside, though.”

“It’s no longer my store,” Frank stated, “so I don’t see the need to walk inside and stare at it. And the owner wouldn’t want me coming in and sniffing around and finding fault in how he does things. It’s his store, he can do what he wants.”

Though Frank Copeland did think the lettering of “POTTER FURNITURE & INTERIORS” on the store windows looked terrible.

No, he would never admit it openly, but he had wanted to see the store, if only to ponder what could have been. He wished it was “COPELAND FURNITURE” still on those windows and on the sign by the road, instead of that ugly “POTTER FURNITURE & INTERIORS.” He wished his children (one of them, at least, but preferably both) were running the store, with him acting as a sort of consultant and sage, but they had both rejected that path long ago.

After Thomas started working at Oxendine’s Grocery, he exhibited less interest in the store than ever, which Frank would have hardly thought possible. Thomas either didn’t understand or didn’t care that he had a ready-made business waiting for him to inherit. It was a good way to earn a living: everyone needed furniture at some point, especially these rich folks who kept pouring in to build or buy waterfront homes. All you had to do was knock a few hundred dollars off a bedroom set and people thought they’d gotten the deal of the century. Yes, Frank Copeland’s employees were lazy and appallingly ignorant, but that was just something you had to deal with. No one knew how to work anymore.

As father and son grew older, Frank still tried to subtly interest Thomas in the store: “Don’t quite know what I’m going to do with it. Getting older. Might sell it and move to Florida.” This was Thomas’s cue to say, “Don’t sell it! Keep it in the family. I’ll run it, if you’ll teach me how.” But Thomas replied that selling the business and moving to Florida sounded like a great idea, especially since Frank was always complaining about Morehead City.

Frank had also tried to interest his daughter in the store, but Emily had no interest in furniture or interior design, unless she was the customer and got to tell the store workers and interior designers what to do. And unlike Thomas, she bolted from Morehead City the minute she was able, getting her degree from NC State and then staying in Raleigh to date and eventually marry Dan. Nonetheless, Frank had still tried his “sell it and move to Florida” gambit on her during one Thanksgiving dinner, only to have her reply exactly as her brother had.

So Frank Copeland had sold the store and moved to Florida, more out of spite than out of any love of Florida, and dragged his wife with him. Jean was at first frustrated at this upheaval, since she had so many friends in Morehead City, and sold so many paintings to such wonderful connoisseurs. But Jean could be happy anywhere, and soon cultivated another flower garden of friends down in St. Augustine.

Meanwhile, aided by the Florida heat, Frank stewed. He didn’t like this goddamn state — too hot, and too many old people.

Maybe he should’ve forced his children to work at the store from the get-go, instead of worrying about a bunch of stuff. Then he would be back in North Carolina instead of down here in this baking swamp with all these white-haired idiots.

Well, you couldn’t change the past, Frank Copeland told himself constantly, so best to get over it — and he stewed some more.

Eventually, though, he convinced himself that Florida was the best state in the Union, and that North Carolina was the worst. This simple binary distinction got him through the day — most of the time.

Their appetizer had arrived, and Frank bit into a shrimp, ignoring the taste and frowning as everyone else used words like “delicious” and “scrumptious” to describe the “delicacy.”

“Well, I’ll be durned!” a voice roared from somewhere in the restaurant. “The Copeland family!” Thomas looked in the direction of the noise, and recognized the squinting person lumbering towards them instantly. It was Rock Lewis. Thomas smiled, knowing that things were about to get interesting, and perhaps contentious — which suited him fine.

Dan, who had never seen this scraggily-dressed man before, had furrowed his brow and twisted his mouth into a sneer, as if there were a barbarian at the gate that needed to be riddled with arrows or doused with hot oil.

Jean smiled warmly when she recognized Rock. He was such a character! Oh, and then there was her husband’s silly quarrel with the man. How Frank had let it bother him! Her husband could be the strongest man in the world, and also the weakest. It was so exasperating! She hoped he didn’t start trouble with Rock now and ruin their meal…

Frank Copeland was the last to recognize his old employee, likely because he didn’t want to recognize him. Once he did, he put on his deepest frown and fixed Rock with the same stare he’d used recently on Dan.

But Rock didn’t even try to contest it, as a real man would; he ignored it, and made eye contact with everyone as he came to a stop by the table.

“What ya’ll doing here?” Rock asked jovially. “Thought ya’ll old folks moved to Florida. And who’re you?” He looked at Dan as if a member of some lost tribe had suddenly appeared in the restaurant, with all the exotic trappings of his people.

“I’m Dan Dowling,” replied Dan in his best lawyer’s voice. “Emily’s husband, Frank and Jean’s son-in-law, and Thomas’s brother-in-law.”

“Well, ain’t that something!” Rock blared. “You know, I coulda figured out you were such-and-such an in-law based on your being Emily’s husband, but I’m glad you drew the whole genealogical tree for me!”

Dan was suddenly very interested in the shrimp cocktail.

“Yes, we do live in Florida now,” Jean said amiably, “but we’re here on a visit. We have some, uhm, family things to take care of.”

“Family things?” Rock asked, raising a bushy eyebrow. “No one died, did they?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Jean replied uncomfortably, wishing she’d chosen her words better.

“Well, no one’s died yet,” Frank said ominously, hoping Rock took the hint.

But Rock wasn’t going to take that hint or any other. He laughed, and the sound was like fingernails on a blackboard to Frank’s ears.

“Just as stiff as ever, ain’t ya, Frank?” Rock said. “Toight as a tick, I say. Whaddaya do down in Florida? Thomas says you stay busy.”

“Yes, I stay busy,” Frank replied, glancing over at his traitor son, who had apparently been conversing with the enemy.

“Oh yeah, I stop in to Oxendine’s from toime to toime,” said Rock, who had caught the look. “Lemme tell ya, everyone appreciates your boy. Vernon’s right-hand man, I tell him all the toime. Does his work, good with the customers, all that good stuff. You know, I bet Vernon’ll give him the store once that ol’ Injun decides to retoire — or when he keels over, which may happen first.”

Frank Copeland had never seriously considered this. He assumed the Oxendines had family to bequeath the store to, even though Thomas had said numerous times that they were childless and that their relatives didn’t care about the store. That Thomas would be given the store, or sold the store at a bargain, was incomprehensible.

But would Thomas take it? That was the big question. If he did, it was yet another slap in the face to Frank Copeland, because his son would be saying that grubby little grocery store was more worthy than the stately luxuriousness of Copeland Furniture.

“What do you say to that, Thomas?” Frank asked. “Has Vernon talked to you about all this?”

“I think Rock’s exaggerating, as usual,” Thomas said, though he was pleased by Rock’s remarks. “This guy lays it on so thick, you’d need a chainsaw to cut through it.”

“Haw!” Rock laughed “Ain’t it the truth!”

“But if that store were to… fall into your lap, would you take it?” Frank asked.

“Hmm. Probably.” Thomas rubbed his chin and looked thoughtfully around the restaurant. “Depends on how things look at the time. I’m not planning on that possibility, though. Vernon’s probably got ten more good years left in him, and anything can happen in that time period. He’ll probably just sell the store to whoever makes him the best offer, anyway.”

This was a realistic answer, but Frank Copeland felt like someone had run him through with a broadsword. He ground his teeth and joined his son-in-law in concentrating intensely on the shrimp cocktail.

“Ten years?” Rock said. “Vernon’s what? Sixty-seven? Sixty-eight?”

“Sixty-eight,” Thomas replied.

“I’d say he’s got fifteen good years in ’im,” Rock said, “but that pot belly of his is getting out of hand. Maybe you can get on him, Thomas, get him to exercise more instead of sitting in his office looking at those nudie mags I know he has.”

Thomas laughed. “I’ve tried, Rock, but he’s stubborn as a mule.”

The waitress appeared, her arms laden with steaming dishes. Rock moved out of her way, though he sniffed and scrutinized each dish she was carrying. After the food was set in place and the family mercifully said they didn’t need anything else, she left, though not without glancing approvingly at Rock Lewis’s disheveled presence. She didn’t know his relationship to these four people, but maybe he’d learn ’em a thing or two.

Rock, however, felt it was time to leave. Thomas and Jean were alright, but the other two were stuck-up peckerheads. However, he did look at the food laid out on the table longingly as he inched away. Beanie Weenies and toast every night got old after a while. That was why he stopped by Finn Finnegan’s every so often: one of the cooks was an old school buddy, and slipped him some grub when he was able.

“Well, nice talking to ya’ll,” Rock said, nodding and tipping an imaginary hat. “Good seein’ yuhs. And nice meeting you, Mr. In-Law. Thomas, I’ll be in sometoime to give your ears a workout.”

“Sounds good, Rock,” Thomas said, returning the nod. “Take care of yourself.”

“Always do, always do,” Rock said, laughing as he walked away. The table was strangely silent as he left. Thomas was irritated; he knew certain people at the table thought Rock was a contagion that had come dangerously close to infecting them, and that they needed to refrain from doing or saying anything that might make him walk back over.

“Nice guy,” Dan said caustically as he stabbed at his salad.

“Yes, he’s a character,” Jean said. “You know, he used to work for Frank.”

“Really?” Dan said, very much interested in how his father-in-law had gotten along with that salty gnome.

Frank stared down at his plate, wishing he could throw it across the room without feeling like a buffoon and earning the opprobrium of the people dining and working at Finn Finnegan’s. Rock Lewis had been right in front of him. It was the confrontation he’d dreamed about for years, and instead of telling the man just where he could get off, he’d let him babble on and be buddy-buddy with his son. And his son — Thomas was going to get Oxendine’s Grocery, and hated Copeland Furniture and likely would’ve burnt it to the ground if he’d ever gotten it. And Emily hated Copeland Furniture too, and she was hiding out somewhere, probably having passionate sex with this fellow of hers right at this very moment.

“He was a terrible employee,” Frank finally said, “and that’s all I’ll say about the subject.”

The rest of the meal’s conversation flowed around him, like river water sliding by a large mossy rock.

Chapter Nineteen

Stepping into Oxendine’s Grocery was like returning to a secure military base after weeks in the trenches. Thomas sighed as he shut the back door behind him and put his wet jacket on the eternal coat rack. It was raining out, and thunder rumbled across Bogue Banks like giant waves crashing through the clouds.

It had been a long night. After dinner at Finn Finnegan’s, Thomas, who wanted nothing more than to go home to his silent apartment and get away from this aggravating family, was shanghaied into driving over to the Hampton Inn at Pine Knoll Shores, where Dan was staying, so that everyone could “continue visiting” — which really meant “irritate Thomas.”

He’d told and retold what happened during his bitter talk with Emily, and given all the information he knew about Brett Hickman, but Dan kept asking him the same questions over and over. Thomas didn’t know which was more annoying or disconcerting: the questions themselves, or the fact that Dan seemed to be going through the motions.

Thomas’s parents were just as irritating, but in their own unique ways. His mother, flush with excitement because they’d returned to Morehead City (and also influenced by the two glasses of wine she’d had at dinner) had gotten sidetracked from the main mission, which was to rescue Emily. She wanted to tell old stories, and she was baffled if her family didn’t remember every detail of every one: “You don’t remember when we took the ferry over to Ocracoke for a day-trip? Are you sure? It was spring, 1980, or maybe ’79. So clear and gorgeous! We walked on the beach for hours, and Thomas found a whole scotch bonnet! Don’t you remember that, Thomas? You were so excited! You don’t remember? But just think about it, you were a wee little fellow, not even in school, and you literally jumped for joy when you found that shell! You still don’t remember? Well, I just don’t know what’s happened to your minds!”

Frank Copeland kept saying they “ought to do something.” What they ought to do largely involved “sleuthing,” but Dan wouldn’t hear of it: “Let’s keep this in the family, Frank. I have a plan, don’t worry.” He wouldn’t elaborate on this plan, which made Frank Copeland very suspicious. Either Dan didn’t have a plan, and he was just trying to quiet his father-in-law, or he did have a plan, but didn’t believe Frank was trustworthy or competent enough to be involved in it. Either option galled Frank Copeland. He was beginning to believe that his staredown with Dan, when he’d won the right to accompany him here, was just a minor victory that Dan had allowed him.

Thomas had finally been allowed to leave at midnight, and as he drove home he cursed his meekness. He had to work at eight o’clock, and that didn’t leave enough sleep time for his liking. He thought back bitterly to his New Year’s Eve marathon, when all he’d wanted to do was fall asleep, not stay awake all night dealing with family drama. No one seemed to care about his schedule; he was supposed to be on beck and call at all hours, like some servant.

Suddenly, Thomas realized that Vernon wasn’t in the back room. He’d been so self-absorbed that he hadn’t noticed it at first. For years, Vernon had met him as he came into work. He’d be meandering around the back room as Thomas walked in, sipping coffee, rubbing his potbelly, and looking over his stock. Only sickness or some rare pressing need elsewhere in the store prevented him from being there to greet his longtime employee.

Thomas knocked on Vernon’s office door, but there was no answer and the door was locked. He pushed through the plastic double-doors and headed up front. Maybe one of the cashiers knew where he was. If not, he’d swing around to the meat department and see if Eldridge had heard anything.

Vernon was indeed up front, along with Peggy and an unknown man. Vernon and the man were hollering at each other, and both of them were pointing their fingers at the other in a way that presaged violence. Peggy looked absurdly pleased: the devil was in both these men, and they were putting their sins on display for all to judge.

Thomas looked over the man as he approached. He was a short, chubby guy with a goatee and a closely-shaved head. His beady eyes peered out from hipsterish black-rimmed glasses, and his voice was the shrill, indicting bleat of one who is perpetually offended. He gave Thomas the impression of being the fat kid who everyone had picked on in high school.

As Thomas walked through Peggy’s checkout aisle, the man noticed him, and his attention was instantly diverted. He left Vernon dangling mid-harangue and stepped in Thomas’s way challengingly.

“You’re Thomas Copeland, ain’t you?” he asked, as if he expected Thomas to lie about his identity.

“Yes, I am,” Thomas replied. “Do I know you?”

“No, we’ve never met in person,” the man said, seemingly proud of this fact. “But you know who I am. My name is Grant, and I’m dating Kara now, and I’m here to tell you to back off.”

Vernon was now between them, and he resumed his harangue with even more anger, since this impertinent pup had walked away before he’d gotten to the good bits.

“…as I was saying, you’re not gonna come into my store and stir up a lot of trouble, I’ll tell you that right now! If you want to have words with Thomas, do so after he’s off the clock, don’t poison my establishment with your cockamamie accusations and threats!”

“Poison your establishment?” Grant echoed. “There’s, what, one customer in here?”

“That’s one person who’s not going to hear your foolishness!”

“Listen, old man,” Grant said in one of the most patronizing tones Thomas had ever heard, “you’re the one who started yelling. All I said was that I wanted to see Thomas.”

“No, you said you wanted to ‘see that idiot who thinks he can steal my girl.’ And you said you’d ‘beat some sense into him if he doesn’t stop his harassment.’ Ain’t that what you said?”

“Well, yeah, but what business is it of yours?” Grant sneered. “You gonna fight his battles for him?”

“No, but he’s my employee, and my friend, and I’m gonna stick up for him when some blabbering sack of manure tries to slander him!”

“Guys, guys,” Thomas said, raising his hands mollifyingly. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on. You say you’re dating Kara, and that I’m harassing her or something?”

“That’s right,” Grant said. “Don’t deny it, either. I’ve seen the text messages and the Facebook posts.”

“Listen, I haven’t talked to her in weeks,” Thomas said. “I don’t know what texts and posts you’re talking about…”

“You do. You most certainly do. I’ve seen them,” Grant said, pointing to his eyes in case Thomas didn’t know what “seen” meant. “You’re bothering her all the time, trying to get her back, even though you know we’re dating. I’m tired of it, and it’s going to stop — one way or the other.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Thomas said loudly, his anger rising, as Vernon’s had, at the arrogance of this portly troll. “You’re saying I have been bothering Kara? Like I told you, I haven’t talked to her in weeks. She’s pulling the wool over your eyes, somehow.”

“She’s doing nothing of the sort. I’ve seen…”

“You’ve seen what?” Thomas demanded. “Whatever she’s shown you, it hasn’t come from me.”

“What, she’s faked all this? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, knowing Kara, I wouldn’t put it past her. Would you?”

For a brief moment, Grant pondered the possibility that he was being deceived. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but seeing Thomas’s apparent bafflement unsettled him. Either Thomas was an exceptional actor, or he really was innocent of stalking his “sexy mama,” as Grant called her. True, Kara hadn’t shown him the actual “harassing” messages on her phone, she’d shown him print-outs, which did seem to be a waste of paper — but she had cried a lot, on numerous occasions, and she’d threatened to start cutting herself “to relieve all the tension that Thomas is piling on me.” Surely that wasn’t fakery — was it?

But Grant quickly put his game face back on. He’d come here for a reason, and he wasn’t going to back down because Thomas was acting persuasively ignorant. That would mean he’d been a fool, and he could not accept that. He could not accept that this woman — though she wasn’t the liveliest person, and contradicted herself when talking about ex-boyfriends and her ex-husband — would go to such lengths to humiliate both him and Thomas.

“You expect me to believe that?” Grant asked, back on track, as if doubt was something for lesser men. “That the messages I’ve seen with your name as the sender aren’t real?”

“I don’t know what Kara’s doing,” Thomas replied. “Why don’t you show me these goddamned communications, and maybe we can see what’s going on?”

“I don’t have them,” Grant admitted, though he made it sound like it was an unreasonable request for Thomas to ask for them.

“Thomas, you don’t have to put up with this,” Vernon said. “If this walking chunk of excrement won’t shut up and leave, we’ll throw him out.”

Grant swelled up, which, if Thomas had been in a lighter mood, would have made him laugh, since Grant had no muscle to show off.

“You lay a hand on me, old man, and I’ll put you in a nursing home,” he puffed. “This is between me and Thomas, and I don’t know why you keep sticking your dirty old nose into it…”

The punch seemed effortless. Thomas’s fist collided with Grant’s pudgy chin, and Grant’s head spun and his glasses flew off. He would have fallen, if he hadn’t been standing right beside the checkout counter; instead, the blow sent him stumbling into it, and he was able to catch himself. This disappointed Thomas; he wanted to knock this asshole unconscious, or at least drop him to the floor.

“That was a cheap shot,” Grant said, blinking at them through nearsighted eyes.

“Maybe,” Thomas said, “but we can go out back and have a real fight, if you want.”

Peggy, who had believed everything Grant said and saw Thomas’s punch as a cowardly attack on a helpless man, quickly picked up Grant’s glasses, which had skidded to rest a few feet away. Grant took them with a small nod of thanks and examined them closely.

“They’re cracked,” he said hotly.

“Buy some new ones then,” Thomas replied, just as hotly.

“You’ll buy some new ones,” he snarled. “You sucker punched me.”

“I’m not buying anything,” Thomas snarled back. “You came in here pissing everyone off, you should’ve been ready to get hit. You’re too dumb to realize that Kara’s playing you. If you came to me man-to-man, we could’ve talked things out. But you wanted to make a scene to prove you’re a tough guy.”

“Yeah… well… this isn’t over…”

No. That’s what Kara had told him. This was going to end — now. He stepped forward until he was inches from Grant’s face. Grant clenched his fists, but didn’t make any other move.

“No, this is over,” Thomas said, in a voice that seemed to him as gravelly and powerful as the thunder booming overhead. “If you ever bother me again, I’ll do more than give you a light tap on the chin. We’ll fight for real. It won’t be one of those four-punches-thrown-then-let’s-shake-hands-and-get-a-beer fights. I’ll be fighting to hurt you.”

He paused to give Grant a chance to speak, but Grant said nothing.

“You need to investigate what Kara’s telling you, instead of just blindly believing her because she’s letting you fuck her. She’s a cunt, Grant. She was when I was involved with her, but she’s reached a new level, I guess. Do yourself a favor and get rid of her.”

Again he waited for Grant to say something, and again silence was the response. Thomas turned to Vernon, who looked very pleased with his employee. Thomas could only imagine how he’d describe the fight later: “Thomas hit him with a thunderbolt straight from the heavens! That’s what I thought it was at first, I thought lightning had struck the store, because it was stormin’ at the time. It would’ve felled any normal person, but that guy musta had a chin made of titanium, because he didn’t fall. And then Thomas gave him what for — verbally, I mean, no use punching him again, after he’d already proven how goddamn strong he was — and the guy just stood there quivering!” Thomas couldn’t help but smile, despite the anger and adrenaline flowing through him.

“I’ll be in dairy,” Thomas said.

Vernon grinned and drummed his fingers on his potbelly, as if he were playing a tune to celebrate Thomas’s heroism.

Chapter Twenty

Something “incredible” had happened, according to his mother’s excited voicemail. Dan and Emily had had a “strange meeting,” and Thomas needed to get up with the family once he got off work, and why didn’t he carry his phone with him at all times like everyone else?

So here Thomas was, plodding into the Hampton Inn where Dan was staying. He ignored the greeting from the sprightly girl at the front desk and entered the stairwell. Dan’s room was on the second floor, but Thomas didn’t feel like waiting for the elevator, and he didn’t want to be enclosed in that ponderous box with people who might be inclined to talk to him.

He climbed the stairs slowly, his footsteps echoing off the bland concrete. A hotel stairwell is its own little world. It lacks the cheap sophistication of the hotel’s lobby, rooms, and hallways; since few people use the stairs, there’s no point in adorning it with wallpaper, generic pictures, or convoluted light fixtures. It’s just concrete and metal doors and lights enclosed in white plastic. This simplicity was like a cooling salve to Thomas’s fagged mind. He wished he could climb up and down these stairs for several minutes, just him and his reverberating footsteps, but when he reached the second floor, he stepped into the long, empty hallway and headed towards Dan’s room. His family was waiting for him.

Thomas knocked twice on the door to room 215, and instantly there were the sounds of shuffling people on the other side.

“Who is it?” his mother asked through the wood, likely peering out at him through the peephole.

“Open the door!” his father commanded. “You know it’s him! Who else would be knocking on the door?”

“I’m just making sure, Frank. No need to holler.”

The door finally opened, and his mother ushered him inside. The hotel room looked like any hotel room: wine-colored carpet, air conditioning unit by the window, large fluffy bed with a headboard jutting halfway up the wall, executive-style office chair. The room’s only distinctions were the coastal prints on the walls — seagulls flying over a whitecapping sea, charter boats docked peacefully — which informed the guest(s) that they were near the ocean.

Dan was lounging in the office chair, his socked feet propped up on the edge of the bed, his shirt halfway unbuttoned. He had a beer in hand, and judging from his sudsy grin, several others had been drunk before this one. Thomas’s father was standing with his arms crossed, staring down at his son-in-law.

“Well, here he is,” Jean said. “Now he gets to hear the story, too.”

“Yes, Thomas, hello,” Dan said happily. “Pull up a chair. Or stand, if you want, like your father. He’s been standing for hours, wearing out those old knees.”

“My knees are fine,” Frank Copeland stated haughtily — as he shifted his weight to give his right knee a break.

“Whatever suits you, Frank,” Dan said blissfully.

“What’s going on?” Thomas asked, though he knew the answer would probably be hours in the telling. He wished he was hanging out with Reggie and talking about his one-punch showdown with Grant. Reggie would love the story, though he would probably chastise Thomas for stopping at one blow instead of mauling the cocky little twerp, and he would probably want Thomas to track down Kara and slap some sense into her.

But Thomas would tell no tales of his own tonight. He would have to be content with the in-depth analysis he and Vernon had had of the “brawl.” Vernon insisted that Thomas was 100%, maybe 110%, in the right, and that if “that lousy sack of rotten white potatoes” ever came into Oxendine’s Grocery again, well — just let him come, he’d see! Eldridge had also grunted his approval, though he said Thomas had a “feather-soft punch” since he hadn’t dropped Grant.

It was now Thomas’s job to listen, so he tried to forget about Kara and her jello-y boyfriend and instead focus on the Copeland/Dowling Family Drama.

“The saga is over, Thomas,” Dan said, raising his beer bottle in a one-man toast. “Emily and I have reconciled, and everyone is happy.”

“Everyone is not happy,” Frank growled. “You’re being too cavalier about this. This is the opposite of reconciliation. This is the fracturing of a family.”

“So what?” Dan said. His answer caused his father-in-law to bristle, and even Thomas was taken aback. He’d noticed Dan was different last night, but he didn’t know he’d completely transformed. Then again, it could be just the beer…

“So what?” Frank repeated. “That’s what you have to say? You’ve been acting this way all afternoon, and I’ve had it…”

“Then leave,” Dan said.

“I… what?”

“If my behavior bothers you, then leave. I didn’t want you to come down here anyway, but you just had to shove your way into my and Emily’s business. Now you’re mad because things haven’t turned out the way you wanted. Frank, you need to understand that the world’s population isn’t waiting for you to put the Frank Copeland Seal of Approval on their actions.”

“Oh, let’s not be unpleasant,” Jean pleaded, but it was like a songbird chirping during an aerial bombardment.

“Let me tell you right now: I’ll leave when I’m good and ready,” Frank said, jabbing his finger at his son-in-law’s tainted heart. “And you — you need to start acting like a mature adult, not some flaky kid who can do whatever he wants…”

“What? Did I hear right?” Dan looked at Thomas and Jean, feigning confusion. “I’m a flaky kid? Your daughter ran off with an old boyfriend, went incommunicado for days, and then finally shows up, only to tell me she doesn’t want a ‘normal’ divorce, that I can keep everything — basically — and that she and this Casanova of hers are going to Barbados! If that’s not flaky, I don’t know what is.” He took a sip of beer. “Not that I care anymore, of course.”

“Yes, well…” Frank said, grasping at a point that refused formulate itself.

“Barbados?” Thomas said, astonished. “Is that what you said?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Thomas,” Dan said. “You came in here — what’s the term? — in medias res. Yes, I did retain something from those literature courses I took.”

He swallowed the last of his beer, tossed the empty bottle towards the trashcan, missed, didn’t seem to care, and then leaned forward to open the microfridge and retrieve a new, cold bottle. Jean made noises about being careful and not wetting the carpet, picked up the empty bottle daintily, as if her son-in-law’s “alcoholism” was contagious, and placed it gently in the trash.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Dan said, shifting in his seat to get into a better storytelling posture. “As you know, I’ve constantly been trying to contact Emily, but until today she’d only sent me two text messages back. Today, however, she responded. She knew I was here — I told her I was coming, and left a voicemail as soon as I got here — and wanted to meet with me. Well, of course I agreed.”

“Without telling us,” Frank complained.

“Again, I fail to see why you can’t let a husband and wife work out their own problems.”

“Because she’s our daughter,” Frank said. “Something’s happened to her, and she needs our support.”

“Yes, something happened to her — a penis attached to a man named Brett Hickman.”

“Dan!” Jean wailed.

“Yes, you’re right, I need to keep it PG-13 so no one gets offended,” Dan said brutally. He took a large gulp of his beer and resumed his story. “So me and Emily met here, and it was really strange, Thomas. I thought we’d start yelling as soon as we saw each other, but we didn’t. We smiled. Then we laughed. Can you believe it?”

“I can’t,” Frank said, much like a man centuries ago refusing to believe the earth was round.

“That’s not surprising,” Dan said sarcastically, taking another gulp. “Anyway, after we had a good laugh, we sat down and just talked. About everything. It was, maybe, the best conversation we’ve ever had. Emily actually listened. She sat there and listened. Amazing, isn’t it? Thomas, Jean and Frank may have blinders on, but you know how your sister is, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, “I do.”

“She seemed so happy, and I was so happy,” Dan continued. “We seemed to know instinctively that we’d never get back together. And that was fine. I asked her about divorce, and she said she didn’t want to battle in court forever. She just wanted her car and a few things in our home that are, I admit, really hers. Brett has enough money, she said. She doesn’t need more.”

“What about Dennis?” Thomas asked.

“Joint custody. Apparently they’ll remain in Raleigh, which should make things easy for all of us — after they get back from their ‘honeymoon’ in Barbados, of course.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yup. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, as my mother used to say.”

“I don’t get it,” Thomas said. It was anti-climactic, as if two heavyweight boxers had decided to go pluck some pretty flowers instead of pummeling each other. “It seems too easy…”

“I don’t get it either, son,” Frank said.

“It’s not that complicated,” Dan replied. “We understand where we’re at in our lives. To be blunt, I’m glad to have Emily out of my life. She’s domineering, hypocritical, and—”

“Dan, please,” Jean whispered.

“Come on, Jean, don’t be so goddamn protective of your precious daughter’s reputation. You all want me to tell the truth, but every time I say something, I get cut off. I mean, why is Emily getting a free pass? Is it just because she isn’t here? You can’t browbeat her, so you browbeat me?”

“I will ask you not to talk to my wife that way,” Frank warned.

“Or what?”

“OK, OK, enough,” Thomas said, waving his hands, and very much surprised to find himself mediating this dispute. “Dan, please continue. Mom, Dad, you’re forgetting that I haven’t heard all this. I’d like to find out what happened without you both interrupting all the time.”

“Well, since I’m not needed or wanted,” Frank said injuredly, “I guess I will leave.”

Frank Copeland walked to the door regally, opened it with a correct turn of the knob, stepped out into the hallway, and closed the door behind him with the softest click possible. His wife watched him go, uncertain if she should follow. At length she sighed and clasped her hands across her lap, in a gesture that plainly said “I’ll be quiet.”

“Dan?” Thomas prompted.

“Yes, well, as I was saying, I’m glad Emily’s gone. I don’t really know why I married her. I mean, yes, she was the hottest girl on campus, but personality-wise — maybe I’m like most men and just wanted a trophy wife.”

Jean’s lips quivered, but she said nothing.

“And Emily — this Brett has something I don’t. I’m just a normal guy, Thomas. I work a lot, I come home, I fall asleep on the couch, I get up and do it again. I’m the most stable guy in Raleigh, but Emily doesn’t want stability. She wants fun, excitement, maybe even a little danger. I guess she’ll get all that with Brett.”

“I don’t know, Dan,” Thomas mused. “Emily has always been pretty conventional. I mean, she yells a lot about feminism and all that, and she can do drastic things sometimes, but she’s not really rebellious.”

“I thought so too, but think about what you just said,” Dan said, pausing to let Thomas do just that. “Looking back on her actions — say, for example, when she drove all the way to Asheville by herself because I’d forgotten our anniversary — well, all those things were cracks in the foundation. And she said something today that stuck with me: ‘Brett’s the only guy I’ve been with who can completely dominate my life while at the same time making me feel free.’ That’s what she wanted: someone to take charge, to lead instead of follow.”

“Sounds like the old ‘I need a real man’ line,” Thomas scoffed.

“Yes, it does,” Dan agreed, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Clichés become clichés because they really do occur over and over.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And now that’s really it, Thomas,” Dan said, once again tossing his empty beer bottle and once again missing the trash can. This time, however, Jean didn’t move to pick it up. “A happy ending, for two people, at least. Your parents don’t agree. You haven’t shared what you think.”

“Well, I mean, as long as you’re both happy,” Thomas said, shrugging. “You don’t need my approval, do you?”

“No, I guess not,” Dan said, grinning. “But thank you for not getting on your high horse like your father.”

“No problem.”

“When she first left, I — well, I acted like the typical enraged husband,” Dan said, speaking more to himself than Thomas. “You saw it. But as the days progressed, I wondered if I was acting genuine or just, well, acting. I still wish she hadn’t just run off — and she said she’ll make amends for that, though I doubt it’s high on her to-do list — but hey, if that’s the price of my freedom and hers, so be it.”

“That’s that, then,” Thomas said.

“Yes, that’s that.”

“But I do have one more question…”

“Ah. So that’s not really that, is it?”

“Guess not,” Thomas replied, smiling thinly. “Why did she come here? Back home?”

“Well, this is where it all began — with her and Brett, I mean,” Dan replied. “They wanted to return to the old haunts, act like they were kids again. And she said something about smoking pot down desolate dirt roads… anyway, I guess they sufficiently indulged their nostalgia.”

Dan swung his feet off the bed and stood up, yawning and stretching, then reached down and placed the tossed beer bottle in the trash. It rattled loudly against its compatriots.

Thomas waited for Dan to continue. He expected his brother-in-law to say something like, “And there was another reason she came home: she wanted to apologize to you and tell you she understood you.” This, however, would seemingly remain between Thomas and his sister — or either Dan wasn’t going to tell him he knew, for whatever reason.

“Well,” Thomas sighed. “A toast to happy endings?”

“Yes!” Dan exclaimed. “A toast! We aren’t holding any glasses, but who cares?”

They clinked imaginary glasses together, then downed their imaginary drinks.

But when Thomas looked over at his mother, she was sniffling, and quickly wiped tears from her eyes.

Chapter Twenty-One

“This is where your grandfather committed suicide,” Frank said, pointing at the house needlessly.

Thomas looked over at the old home. It was a two-story clapboard building painted off-white, with bright red shutters. It had two end chimneys and a small portico with unassuming white columns. The pothole-free gravel driveway looked like it had just been poured on, and the yard was tidy, the centerpiece being the noble magnolia tree, its thick, twisting branches begging to be climbed, even though Thomas was now forty, and well past the scamper-up-trees stage.

His father had always called the home he grew up in a “decaying country manor,” but there was no decay evident on this property. The place looked fresh and inviting, right down to the birdbath sitting a few feet from the magnolia. Thomas had no doubt that the interior would look similar, and that the owners would be cheerful and hospitable, if he ever met them — which was doubtful. His father would peel away down the highway if anyone walked out to see just who was staring at their home.

Thomas, of course, knew the history of the old home, specifically as it related to his family: his father had grown up there; his grandfather had sank into depression after losing an election for clerk of court; times were tough; his father had strived to better himself, moving out after high school and working doggedly at McAllister’s Furniture in the hope of one day opening his own business; his grandfather had killed himself when his father was twenty years old. It was a tragic story, yes, but Thomas would be very surprised if ghosts sometimes wafted through the corridors of the house, waking up sleepers with plaintive wails, as his father seemed to believe. The house didn’t look haunted, and its miseries had likely been forgotten by the current owners, if they’d ever known about them at all.

His father, of course, had not forgotten, and if he were to step foot into his old home again, or even spend the night, Thomas felt sure he’d be tortured by bogeymen, hobgoblins, and all manner of vile spirits, including Wallace Copeland’s shotgun-deformed ghost. This amused Thomas more than it should have.

They were parked on the shoulder of Highway 101, or more specifically they were halfway in the ditch, since the road didn’t really have much of a shoulder. Traffic roared by, each passing vehicle causing the Traverse to shake slightly. Thomas kept glancing behind them, convinced that some clueless text-messaging girl would drill into them, or that a sleepy trucker would let his big rig slide a few feet to the right and reduce them to scrap metal and pulpy, scattered body parts.

“Why are we parked here?” Thomas asked. “They have a driveway, you know.”

“I don’t want to park in their driveway,” Frank replied stubbornly. “It’s their property. They wouldn’t want someone on their land bothering them.”

“So instead we park an inch from the highway on one side, an inch from a ditch on the other. And they can still see us, if they look out here. They’ll know we’re staring at their house. What difference does it make if we park here or pull into their driveway?”

“Son,” Frank Copeland said, gripping the steering wheel tightly, “I’m trying to tell you something, so please stop nagging me about inconsequential matters.”

“If it’s so inconsequential, then…”

“Thomas!”

The sharpness with which his father shouted his name caused Thomas to jump. His father hadn’t used that angry, scolding voice on him since he was in high school; nonetheless, it still had the power to reduce him to a helpless child while contradictorily enraging him.

He wasn’t going to put up with it. He was forty goddamn years old, not a callow teenager who had to do what his father said. He shifted in his seat and met his father’s stern gaze.

“If you bark at me like that again, I’ll get out of this car and hitchhike back to Morehead City.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Frank said, the words seeming to scald his lips and tongue as he uttered them. “I’m worked up. With all that your sister and Dan have done…”

“Yeah, well, you don’t get to take out your frustration on me.”

“I said I’m sorry,” Frank said, and again the words burned, though he was technically not saying he was sorry again, just emphasizing that he’d already said he was sorry. “Will you please let me say what I need to say?”

“Alright,” Thomas said, sighing and shaking his head. “Go ahead.” He’d heard all this many times before; he knew his grandfather’s depression and suicide had shaped his father into the man he was today. Why did they need to review this?

“As I said: this is where your grandfather shot himself,” Frank Copeland said. “He used a shotgun. He sat down in his recliner, where he spent nearly every waking hour, and shot himself with buckshot.”

It had happened on April 10, 1970, an otherwise fine spring day. Frank had not been present when it happened, but his mother had been in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. The blast was deafening inside the house, like a cannon shot; Carol Copeland started, slicing herself with the potato peeler. She grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her finger, and ran into the living room.

Her husband’s head was nothing more than a blood-covered flap of plastic. Gore had spattered everywhere, even onto the ceiling. The shotgun was still in his lap, and it looked absurdly innocent, as if it had nothing to do with what had just happened. The radio squawked out a weather bulletin: “Clear skies for the next few days, then showers developing on…” She turned it off.

Carol Copeland wondered if the sight would make her throw up or faint, but nothing stirred within her bowels, nor did she feel woozy.

She next wondered if grief and shock would hit her very much like the killing shell had hit her husband. She waited for several minutes, but nothing happened. She had, after all, expected this. No one else in the family had, because they were fools who pushed disagreeable things as far away as possible, like everyone else in the community. But Carol was no fool. She had expected that Wallace would sit there until his mind was eroded to a single grain of consciousness, and then, realizing he would soon cease to exist, he’d decide to go ahead and finish the job.

But then again, her own conduct was far from unimpeachable. She could ridicule others, but she’d tip-toed around him like everyone else, because you didn’t talk about these things, and a woman was only supposed to have so much power over her husband. She let her husband sit there all those years, when she should have grabbed him by the lapels and jerked him out of his recliner and his funk. But she shook away these thoughts with an animated fury that would’ve seemed inappropriate given the situation, if anyone had been watching. Wallace had shot himself; no one else had a hand in it. She’d suffered enough because of him. She wasn’t going to suffer anymore.

She called the sheriff’s office, and waited. She would call Frank soon, as he was the only one of her children who’d stayed in the area — the girls had all married and moved away, even Sarah, the rebellious one who swore she’d never walk down the aisle — but first she wanted the body out of the house. No point in her son gawking at it.

At McAllister’s Furniture several hours later, Mr. McAllister pulled Frank aside, saying he had a phone call.

“Your father’s shot himself,” Frank’s mother said flatly, after his boss had handed him the phone.

“What? Uh, Mom?”

“Yes, it’s your mother. Your father has shot himself. He’d dead. I’m fine, but you should come home. There are things that need to be taken care of.”

“What?” Frank repeated dully. “This is… are you sure? I mean, this is out of the blue…”

“Really? Your father’s been depressed for years.”

“Yes, but… we never really… I mean… aren’t you upset?”

“I won’t lie to you, Frank. I’m not upset. Your father’s been gone a long time.”

“I… I guess so… but this is so sudden…”

“Just come home, Frank.”

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

He rushed out of the store, not bothering to tell Mr. McAllister or anyone else where he was going, hopped in his Falcon, and sped through town. Of course, the drawbridge into Beaufort was up, and he could do nothing but sweat and curse and wait until it dropped back down and the traffic finally moved ahead at a pace that made glaciers seem speedy.

(He would later apologize profusely to Mr. McAllister for leaving so abruptly, and his boss, knowing what had happened, would look at him like he had mackerels jumping out of his ears.)

Once on Highway 101, he passed five cars, one of which belonged to Mr. Bynum, his old science teacher. Mr. Bynum was very much concerned with the driver’s reckless speed and complete disregard for double-yellow lines, and he was fairly certain it was Frank Copeland behind the wheel. He might have to say something to Mrs. Copeland, the next time he saw her at church.

Frank crashed into the driveway of the Copeland home, slinging dirt and rocks, and stopped behind a deputy’s vehicle. He was inside in an instant. His mother and the deputy (was that Layton Lewis, his old classmate?) were talking calmly, and this didn’t seem right, especially since he now saw the blood spattered all over the living room.

“Mom? You OK?” he rasped, out of breath.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, looking at him like she’d done years ago when he refused to eat his green beans. “I told you I was.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“The coroner’s already been here and taken him away.”

“Oh… but… where did it… happen? How did he…?”

“He was sitting in the recliner. He used a shotgun.”

“Do you need anything else, Mrs. Copeland?” the deputy asked.

“No, thank you. Frank is here now. We’ll be fine.”

The deputy nodded and turned to Frank. “Sorry about this, Frank. Hell of a way to go.”

“Thanks for the concern,” Frank replied by rote.

The deputy — and Frank never learned if he was Layton Lewis or not — nodded again and then walked to the front door. The screen door slammed shut, and the noise seemed to seal the two Copelands off from the rest of the world. Thomas stared at his mother, who continued to look completely unruffled. He then stepped forward tentatively, surveying the aftermath. Blood everywhere — and was that brain matter on the floor and walls? Looking closely, some tiny skull fragments had even become embedded into the wall, like macabre ornamentations. And the smell: sickly pungent, like rotting fruit.

“Yes, it’s quite a mess,” Carol said, watching her son take it all in. “We’d better clean up.”

“Mom…”

But she was already in the kitchen, pulling out cleaning supplies from under the sink.

Frank stood alone, looking at the empty recliner. His mother was right: Wallace Copeland had been gone a long time. The hunk of wasted flesh that had sat in that recliner for years wasn’t really his father. Perhaps it was for the best, him being gone now. The years had been hard on his mother; maybe now, with all her kids grown, she’d have a chance to live a little, instead of navigating around the immovable shoal that was her husband. Maybe she’d even marry again, after she’d grieved — but then again, it seemed she’d already grieved in the short time since she discovered her dead husband, or maybe she’d dispensed with grief altogether.

What did all this mean to Frank? He’d sworn, after all, to escape this shameful family, which really meant he’d sworn to escape his father. He was doing well: Mr. McAllister was pleased with his work, and he had a talent for getting people to spend money on furniture, despite his less-boisterous personality. Most of his co-workers seemed to think he was “prickly,” but being reserved and knowledgeable was, in Frank’s opinion, preferable to howling about “unbeatable prices” and “impossibly high-quality” furniture and in general acting buffoonish. He was absorbing all the knowledge he could, in the hope of one day opening his own business.

But Wallace Copeland, his father, had always been there, staring at him when he woke up in the lonely darkness, staring at him when he made some blunder at work. He said: “This is your heritage, like it or not.” Frank didn’t like it; it terrified him. Suppose his father’s tragic flaws had been passed on to him? They said craziness skipped generations, but what if they were wrong?

And now Wallace Copeland was dead. On the one hand, Frank would never see his father sitting in the recliner again, a gross and contemptible symbol of total failure. His living presence could no longer frustrate or frighten him. Frank felt unfettered: the past had killed itself, and the future lay open like a fertile plain waiting to be explored and bent to the uses of man.

On the other hand, Wallace Copeland had not died naturally. He’d shot himself with the shotgun he’d had for years, the one he used to go quail hunting with. This fate might also be Frank’s, if he wasn’t careful. Suppose he made some mistakes, like his father had, and his entire life came crashing down? Would he be able to reassemble himself and march right back into the world that had disparaged and wrecked him? Of course he would, he told himself — and with a shiver he could almost feel the shotgun in his hands, could almost feel his finger inch towards the trigger. Damn Wallace Copeland, Frank thought. The living man had indeed tormented him, but his father’s shade may be even worse.

In short, Frank didn’t know what to think. The conflicting emotions and worries pounded against his mind, like ocean waves voraciously eroding a dune. When his mother returned with some rags, a bucket filled with cleaning fluid, and a trashcan, he began the cleanup with gusto, eager to lose himself in a menial task.

As the afternoon wore on and the blood was wiped away and the skull-ornaments were removed from the wall, the seas within him calmed, and he was able to think with remarkable lucidity. He knew what he had to do: exactly what he had been doing. Straying from the path of success would doom him, or at least consign him to poverty and humiliation. He would succeed, no matter what. He would not pause to rest or indulge in pointless reflection; idle hands were the devil’s playground, as his father had proved. He wouldn’t get into any situations that could sink him; if you gave people enough rope, they’d hang themselves, and Frank planned to have no ropes of any sort around him, ever.

His life philosophy reaffirmed, Frank Copeland cleaned up what was left of his father almost happily.

“And I still believe what I did back then, even though I’m retired now,” Frank Copeland said now, looking at Thomas meaningfully. “That philosophy may have saved my life.”

Thomas looked away, not because he was touched, but because he was bored. His father had gone through the whole rigmarole again; Thomas had heard this tale at least five times. It was stirring the first two times, but now it was quite literally overkill. Wallace Copeland had been in the grave forty-five years, but Frank wanted to reanimate and kill him again and again to perversely validate his personal creed.

“Do you understand why I’m telling you this?” Frank asked.

He’d asked Thomas this same question the previous five or so times they’d gone down this dark corridor of family history, and each time Thomas had made empathetic noises that, in theory at least, were supposed to let his father know that he did indeed understand. His father, however, had seemed to be disappointed in the answers. It was as if he believed that Thomas hadn’t suffered enough to truly comprehend what he was talking about, which made Thomas wonder just what suffering he must endure to pull even with his father. Was his father going to off himself too to show Thomas what he meant?

No, Thomas would speak truthfully now. He was already angry with his parents’ behavior during and after the Emily Crisis, and he was glad they were returning to Florida tomorrow. The other crises and dramas in his life had also built up inside him until he felt like beating some hapless bystander to a pulp just to release it all. He would speak truthfully, and if it upset his father, tough shit.

“No, I don’t really understand, Dad,” Thomas said, looking back at his father and frowning. A UPS truck sped past, shaking the Traverse, but Thomas was no longer concerned about their idiotic parking spot. He almost wished someone would ram into them just to prove how foolish his father was being.

“Well, uh — why not?” Frank hadn’t expected this answer. He’d expected Thomas to respond as he had before, so that Frank could shake his head and conclude that his son still didn’t get it. It seemed he would get a candid answer, and candor in other people made Frank Copeland uneasy.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Thomas said. “You keep telling the same story, but all this happened before I was born. This all happened to you, it affected you.”

“It’s meant to be an instructive story…”

“No, it’s more than that. You think there’s some Copeland Family Curse, and that unless we all confront it — and not just once, but over and over! — we’re going to, what, kill ourselves?”

“Don’t be so flippant, Thomas. I care about you and Emily. I don’t want you two to succumb to what took away my father. That’s why I insisted on coming down here with Dan…”

“I’m not succumbing to anything. Emily, yes, she’s been wild lately, so I can see why you’d be concerned. But now that’s all been resolved, apparently, and she sounds happy. But you keep bringing up doom and gloom, and now it sounds like I’m the focus again, instead of Emily. What do you want, Dad? Do you want me to be miserable so that, what, you can have something to fix? So that you can say the Copeland Family Curse really does exist, it’s not something that just affected you? I mean, Grandma didn’t go through all this, did she? She moved on with her life. She was happy. She never talked about what happened — at least, not to me.”

Frank Copeland put the Traverse in drive and jolted onto the highway. He’d pulled out right in front of someone, and the driver pressed on his horn angrily, and revved up to within inches of their back bumper.

“Dad?” Thomas said, gripping his seat. “What the hell? Are you trying to kill us?”

“No, I’m not,” Frank growled. “Not that it would matter, anyway.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Just shut up, son. Just shut up.”

“Shut up?” Thomas yelled. “Like I’m five years old? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Frank pulled onto a side street, then whipped back out onto Highway 101, heading south towards Beaufort. Again, the turning-off and turning-on were harrowing experiences for Thomas and other motorists, with horns blown and drivers mouthing infuriated words through their windshields.

“I’ll just say this, Thomas,” Frank began with the gravity of a 19th century orator, “and then I won’t say anything to you again. You don’t like me. I know that. You never have. You’ve never listened to me. You didn’t want to work at Copeland Furniture when you were young, and then when it came time for me to retire you still didn’t want any part of the business. We sent you off to that whatever-it-was, that leadership conference, and you were ungrateful. You didn’t want to go to college. All you want to do is piddle around in that goddamn grocery store, and let Vernon Oxendine take advantage of you.”

“Listen, Dad…”

“No, you listen. Let me finish. Now, I’m not throwing everything on you. Emily is the same way. Once she went off to Raleigh, that was it. She was done with us. We were lucky if we saw her twice a year. And now she’s going through a divorce, and fornicating all over the world with this new lover, and me and your mother still haven’t seen her since Christmas, and everyone acts like that’s OK, especially that idiot husband — ex-husband — of hers.”

Frank paused to let this sink again, and then was quickly back on his foaming charger. “Do you know what it’s like for your children to despise you? No, you don’t, because you don’t have any — which, I’ve always thought, is another repudiation of my lifestyle.”

“It’s not…”

“Let me finish. I drove out here, back home, because this place, what happened here, is important to me, and it matters to all of us. I know you’ve heard the story five times or ten times or fifty times, but it’s still important to me, and it still matters to all of us. But instead of talking to me about it like a civil human being, you call me a fool and accuse me of wishing suffering on my own son. Well, I’ve had it, and I’ll be glad to get back to Florida and away from the contempt of my children — because that’s what it is: pure, unadulterated contempt.”

They had reached the outskirts of Beaufort, and Frank reluctantly had to slow down. They merged onto Live Oak Street and drove past the small, quaint houses that lined the road.

“Are you done?” Thomas asked, after a minute or so of silence.

“Yes, I am,” Frank Copeland responded.

Thomas wondered whether he should reignite the argument. He was tired of his father instigating conflict, and then acting like he was the injured party when someone dared to fire back at him. He was tired of his father believing that everyone needed the Frank Copeland Seal of Approval, as Dan had sarcastically put it. He was tired of his father’s mood swings, when he’d act forthright and efficient in one moment, downtrodden and put-upon the next. Someone needed to knock some sense into him — and Thomas wouldn’t mind doing it right now, though at all other times he would’ve considered striking a parent to be a mortal sin.

In sum: why was the man so fucking difficult?

Frank Copeland was asking himself the same thing about his son, but neither of them revealed their parallel thoughts. Father and son were silent as they drove across Radio Island and over the high-rise bridge into Morehead City, and the only noise in the vehicle was the soft crackling of the radio.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Morning, Thomas,” Vernon said as Thomas stepped through the back door.

“Morning, Vernon,” Thomas replied, smiling. It had been a rough few days, but his mood had improved slowly, and now he was feeling freer and happier than he had in a long time.

Amazing how things could change. Just three days ago, as his parents drove off to Florida, he’d felt an abyss-like emptiness within him. Nothing had been settled with his father, and Thomas could imagine a furious Frank Copeland at the wheel of the Traverse, plunging southward like a rampaging forest fire, destroying the I-95 corridor in a way that General William Tecumseh Sherman would’ve thought damn impressive. Thomas almost followed behind his parents, so that he could catch up to his father and have a roadside reconciliation, with hugs, tears glinting in the sunshine, and touching violin music playing in the background. But he steadied himself, and let them go.

Yes, it had been the worst argument he’d ever had with his father, but Thomas did not consider himself the villain. His father, after all, had said things that were just as harmful, and he’d driven like a maniac on Highway 101, nearly causing several wrecks. He’d also refused to say anything to Thomas as he prepared to depart, and even ignored his son’s hand when Thomas meekly held it out. Thomas’s mother noticed all this, but she was still reeling from Emily and Dan’s unionizing disunion, and she didn’t say or do anything that would help heal the rift.

But after beating himself up for a few days, Thomas got tired of the self-inflicted blows. His main thought became: So what? People argued all the time, especially families. True, his father would continue to act like his tender soul had been lacerated, but that was his problem. He would get over it, or he wouldn’t. Thomas wasn’t going to help or hinder him either way. He had been weary of all the drama for days, but now it seemed that the drama had finally ceased, and he wasn’t about to create more. His parents were back home, Dan and Emily had solved their problems, Kara hadn’t sent another hitman after him, and things at Oxendine’s Grocery had apparently taken care of themselves. Why shouldn’t he smile?

“Before you get going,” Vernon said now, “I’d like to talk to you in private. Would you mind stepping into the smelly old garbage dump I call my office?”

“Sure, Vernon,” Thomas said, curious as to why his boss sounded so grave.

Vernon entered the office first and sat down in his duct-tape-patched office chair, which dutifully squeaked. Thomas sat down in a bland cushioned seat that looked like it had been snagged from a school auditorium — which it in fact had. The rust-brown filing cabinet still sat in the corner, though its top drawer was missing. Thomas wondered about it, then he remembered that last week Vernon had thrown a fit because it wouldn’t close properly, and tossed it into the dumpster. The files that had been in the drawer were now stacked on the floor, likely to remain there until Rapture.

The desk was, as usual, covered with invoices and all manner of paperwork. Thomas saw Yolanda was still supplying her husband with pink and purple paperclips, but she’d also added ones that had zebra stripes and twinkling glitter.

And yes, the office did smell, but its odor wasn’t quite that of a garbage dump. It smelt of unwashed bodies, coffee, wet paper, and toasted bread. Some middle-class office worker, used to perfectly sanitized rooms and insipidly invigorating air fresheners, would have fidgeted and counted the seconds until they could escape. Thomas and Vernon, however, sat quite at ease.

“So what’s up, boss?” Thomas asked.

“Just wanted to talk about a few things,” Vernon replied, looking down and fiddling with his coffee cup. Thomas leaned forward a little. It wasn’t like Vernon to not make eye contact. “You’re not in any trouble, though. Just want to be clear on that.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“It’s just… I want to get your thoughts on this mass exodus.”

“Mass exodus?”

“Well, first Orianna left. Then Carly. You know about those two.”

Thomas nodded. Of course he remembered his dockside walk with Orianna — though, like his argument with his father, its intensity was already fading with time.

Carly had given her notice two days ago. According to Vernon, she couldn’t stand working at the same place as “that dirty little cockroach who took advantage of me” — meaning, of course, Noah. Although Noah had been properly chastised, and avoided Carly like the plague, others in the store still made smart-ass comments about the Beach Romp. Eddie had asked her if Noah’s “wang” was as big as an ark, “because his name’s Noah, and the Noah in the Bible had an ark. Get it?” One of the teenage night-shift workers had said to Carly that “Noah said to tell you he thinks he’s got gonorrhea, so you might want to check yourself out, since he for sure hasn’t hooked up with anyone else.”

Vernon had privately (and sometimes publicly, when he couldn’t help himself) chuckled at these comments, but in the interest of fairness he’d tried to curtail them. His efforts, however, had not been enough, at least in Carly’s mind. “You’re just as bad as them,” she’d rebuked as she gave her notice. Vernon had protested, but, knowing this was a truly lost cause, and fearing a sexual harassment charge (which was very possible; look what she’d done to Noah), he had not given her The Talk.

This should have been good news to Noah. The righteous archangel who had filled him with guilt and dread was leaving. He would now be free to act as he pleased, without wondering if Carly would descend upon him and smite him down yet again. But he didn’t feel relief; instead, he felt even guiltier. Yes, Carly had been drunk, and very willing to “do the nasty” once Noah “got the juices flowing,” but he’d still manipulated the entire situation to his advantage. And now she was quitting, because of him.

He asked himself one question over and over: was it worth it? After it had happened, the answer had been a resounding “yes.” After Carly had chastised him for revealing their secret, his answers had been split, half “yes,” half “no.” But as the days passed, the percentage of “no” answers steadily increased, and they now stood at ninety percent. Noah reckoned he was developing this “conscience” thing people always droned on about, and he didn’t like it.

He’d actually dropped hints about his struggle to several people in the store, Thomas and Vernon included. Thomas, mystified that Noah seemed to be asking his advice, told him not to worry: “Carly’s worried about her social status more than anything. If you were some stud, she wouldn’t be complaining one bit.” When Noah had frowned at this, Thomas had shrugged: “Just being honest. You’re not a stud. You’re… well, you.”

Vernon’s advice had been slightly more colorful: “People tell you to grab the bull by the horns, but then when you do, they say ‘Whoa, now, don’t hurt the poor animal!’ Why, I remember when I was a young’un, chasing after the girls — don’t squint at me like that, this white-haired old man you see now used to have pep in his step, and a tingle in his dingle, I tell you — well, if those girls started to have second thoughts about their fornications with their men, buyer’s remorse, you know, we’d just laugh and move on to the next one! No point in listening to a bunch of touchy-feely horsecrap from some female who suddenly decides she’s as pure as the Virgin Mary.” He paused and studied Noah. “On the other hand, it’s good that you’re feeling a bit guilty. Shows you’ve got some heart — which is good, cuz you’re sure lacking in the brains department!”

“Yeah, I know about Orianna and Carly quitting,” Thomas said now. “What about Noah? I’m thinking he might be ready to quit too.”

“Maybe,” Vernon said, sighing. “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? Though he is working harder than he was. I thought I’d have to fire him because of lackadaisical-esness, but he’s pulling his weight now.”

After he’d been banished from Carly’s presence, Noah shuffled around the store pathetically for a few days. He could no longer loiter up front and stare at her body, and he didn’t know what else he could do to pass the time. How was he going to survive his four-hour shift? Maybe he should try doing some real work for once — then he shook his head angrily. Work? Had it really come to that?

No, it wasn’t a preferable option, but he figured he’d try it out anyway. It was better than moping around like a lost puppy. To his surprise, he found out that time moved pretty quickly if you were actually engaged in the work. He would front and clean shelves, and hours would pass by unnoticed. It was strange, but satisfying. Time acted like this when he played video games, but he hadn’t known it could act like this when you were doing a menial task. Once, he even looked up to hear Vernon perplexedly questioning him, since he was still cleaning shelves when it was ten minutes to closing, and he’d done none of the close-down procedures, such as retrieving the shopping carts from the lot or bringing Vernon’s truck around to the front of the store. (“So the burglars don’t get me and the money-bag when I leave for the night,” Vernon would say, only half-jokingly.) Noah just had to shrug and say that time had gotten away from him.

“Yeah, he is working harder,” Thomas agreed reluctantly. “But anyway, that’s not an exodus, is it? Only two people have quit recently.”

“Well, they say two’s company, and three’s a crowd,” Vernon said. “Kind of twisting that meaning for my own purposes, but you know what I mean. Cynthia put in her notice last night. That’s number three. They’re dropping like flies, Thomas.”

“Really?” Thomas said, though he wasn’t really surprised. He thought back to Cynthia’s problems with her parents and roommates, and their bleak conversations about it. Yes, this had been brewing for some time.

“Yeah,” Vernon said, fingering a zebra-striped paperclip. “She actually said she’s going to Europe with Orianna. I tried to give her The Talk, but I should’ve known I was wasting my breath. She was already on the plane to London, or wherever they decide to fly to.”

“Europe? With Orianna?” Thomas said, baffled. “But… last time I talked to Cynthia, she said that her and Orianna weren’t really friends anymore.”

“She mentioned something about that,” Vernon said, rubbing his chin with one hand and tapping the paperclip on the desk with the other. “Said Orianna had bad memories about this place, and it sounds like that hurt their friendship. Anyway, guess that’s all in the past, cuz they’re buddy-buddy now and going to travel the world.”

Thomas wondered how he should handle this, or if he should handle it at all. What should he say to Cynthia as her tenure winded down? Should he reach out to Orianna, who still, apparently, harbored ill feelings? Should he go to Europe with them? Would they accept him if he ingratiated himself?

These last thoughts came unexpectedly; they were the romantic dreams of a youth stricken with wanderlust, and he was no longer a youth. Still, the image of him flying across the Atlantic and touching down with them in London, where Big Ben tolled out the hours and pale men and women with stiff upper lips perambulated through a city as old as time, was a palpable as the chair frame he was now gripping tightly.

But he remembered Vernon’s Talk, and Reggie was calling him a fool, a sentimental jackass, and much more besides, and the vision passed. He was back in Vernon’s office, in Oxendine’s Grocery. He wouldn’t say much of anything to Cynthia. He wouldn’t reach out to Orianna. Both of them would drift away into the past, and he’d get on with his life. That was how they wanted it to be, after all; why should he try to catch up to them when they were running their hardest in the other direction?

“That’s something,” Thomas finally said.

“Yeah, it sure is,” Vernon nodded. He let the paperclip clatter to the desk and leaned forward, staring at Thomas. It was a look Thomas remembered well, though it had been twenty-three years since he’d seen it. This time, however, he had no trouble returning the gaze.

Vernon cleared his throat. “What I really asked you in here for, is because I want to know if you’re still on board. Everyone’s had problems these past few months, you included. And now everyone wants to quit, seems like. Of course, you’ve been here twenty-five years, you’ve stuck it out, but I just want to know if you’re still with us.”

Thomas hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yeah, I’m with you. I’m here for the long haul.”

“Good to hear,” Vernon said, leaning back and wiping some sweat from his forehead. “Let’s seal the deal, then.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked, suddenly confused, and a little scared.

“I’m not going to live forever, you know. Me and Yolanda don’t — can’t — have any kids, and none of our relatives care about the store. I’d like for it to be passed on to someone who does care about it, instead of some guy off the street who’s going to change everything around and cut wages and fire people when they don’t treat him like lord and master. You care, and you say you’re in it for the long haul, but are you in it for the real long haul?”

Thomas again clamped down on his chair, this time so hard his fingertips started to ache. He’d daydreamed about this very moment, of course, but he’d never been foolish enough to believe it would actually happen. He squirmed in his seat, and wiped his forehead exactly like Vernon had.

“You’re saying you’re going to give me the store? Someday, I mean? Whenever you retire?”

“Well, I don’t know about give,” Vernon said, grinning to try to lighten the mood. It didn’t work; Thomas remained rigid. “I was thinking of selling it to you at a good price. Below market value, I mean. You’ve worked here faithfully for years, but I do want to have a little nest egg for me and Yolanda. Don’t worry about financing. We’ll figure it out. And there are a lot of things you need to learn — oh boy, a ton of things — but we’ll work on that too.”

“Sure… of course… that’s great, Vernon. I… thank you. Thank you for this.”

“You’ve earned it,” Vernon said, rising from his chair, which of course squeaked. “Besides, Jack Caldwell did the same for me when he retired. Wouldn’t be right if I tried to squeeze every last penny out of the place and then leave my employees at the mercy of some buffoon who doesn’t know his asshole from a hole in the ground.”

“Thank you, Vernon. I mean it.”

“You’ve said thank you enough,” Vernon said, extending his hand. “Let’s shake on it and be done with it, before we start tearing up like a bunch of women.”

Thomas stood up shakily, but when he clasped Vernon’s hand, his grip was just as strong as his boss’s. Vernon, who’d long thought his handshake was the most powerful in Carteret County, was at first shocked, but then he relaxed and smiled, letting Thomas out-squeeze him a little bit.

“You know what, Thomas?” Vernon said, chuckling. “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

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Copyright

Copyright © 2016 Matt Cowper.

All rights reserved.

Author Website: mattcowper.com

Cover and Jacket Design by BeeGraphica

Book Formatted by Polgarus Studio

Content

Matt Cowper
THE CLERK

PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

PART TWO

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Author’s Contacts

Copyright