Shimmer

 

And I'm 22, and it's my day off, and so here I am at work, sitting at the lunch counter and waiting for Cathy's shift to end.  Waiting to drive up to the lake, waiting to get drunk and get laid, and I shoot her a smile from across the dining room, and she licks her lips and blows me a kiss.

 

And someone's got the jukebox on, Guns 'n' Roses with too much bass, Paradise City making the coffee tremble in the truckers' cups, and on the front page of the local news section of the paper I see a story about a kid I went to high school with.  No one I was friends with, but a face I knew, a quiet guy named Allen, can't really remember if I ever even heard him speak, and what it says is that he's dead.  Says his truck went off the highway at three in the morning, hit a bridge abutment at better than seventy miles an hour, and the picture looks like it's from the yearbook, his smiling face airbrushed free of pimples, five years left to live, and I'm not really sure how much this news is supposed to matter.  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react.

 

Guy probably had friends, I guess, maybe had someone he loved.  Paper mentions a mother, a younger sister, not much else, and I fold it up and set it on the stool next to me. The sun is too bright, even through the tinted windows.  My head starts to pound in time to the music. I finish up my Pepsi, set the glass back in the ring of condensation its made, and Cathy walks by, lays a check face down in front of me, keeps walking back into the kitchen.  I turn it over, and she's drawn a heart, a smiley face, a sun.

 

And the song picks up speed, finally fades away, and nothing comes on to replace it. Conversations step forward, the clinking of silverware, of plates and glasses, the sound of the dishwasher roaring to life from somewhere behind the deep fryer, and it comes to me from out of nowhere, how much I hate this place.  How many years I'll waste working here or at other jobs that I'll hate just as much, how Cathy will become Lisa, and then Nikki, and then Tina, and then here we are.

 

I'm 38 and it's my day off. I hate my job.  I have an ex-wife, two children who I don't see nearly enough, a friend who's just been diagnosed with prostrate cancer.  I've met a marrie

d woman who calls me up to tell me she can't stand her husband, who stops over every few weeks to fuck, or maybe just to sit and talk and be held.

 

And I have no use for God.  For any god.  Have no clue what happened to Cathy after we broke up, but I remember her on that afternoon, hot and sticky in the tiny bedroom of a cabin that belonged to her parents.  Told me she loved me, and maybe she meant it, and I said it back, and her hair smelled like flowers when I pressed my face against her neck. Her fingers traced circles around her nipples, mine drew a path over her stomach, down through her pubic hair, between her lips, and she arched her back against them.  I was blind to everything else. We were through with words.