4. Calliope
Calliope
“Don’t do this to me.” I slam my hands on the steering wheel once, twice, and a third time for good measure just in case it works like the old television in my apartment that I have to slap to recover the picture.
It doesn’t start my car and I hit a nerve in my hand that sends a zing up through my pinky.
That is precisely when the tears start. I don’t want them to. Hell it’s the middle of the night. Mostly, near midnight.
All I wanted were some fucking cookies. Cookies. That’s it.
I deserve the goddamn cookies.
Well I got the cookies, at the local Acme and now, my car will not start. It does a little cough then gives up.
I rip open the cookies, let the tears fall, and shovel one in my mouth while I try to figure out what the fuck my next move is.
It’s dark out. Crazy dark, new moon dark. The city however hums with life and maybe that’s the only reason I’m not losing my absolute shit right now.
I shove another chocolate chip cookie in my mouth.
Joy got me through the worst of times and the worst of times. She was the first thing I’d ever signed for with only my name on the line. No co-signer, no and spouse, no asterisk. The receipt is still in the glovebox. I check sometimes. Just to make sure it’s still mine.
And now it is dead.
Gone.
I turn the key again. Cough, sputter, and absolute death.
Tears blur my vision because I don’t even have a plan. I have an unhinged sister. Who would pick me up. Ironically she probably has one of her flavors of the day in her phone on speed dial who owns a fucking tow service.
I should call her.
I don’t, instead I open my phone and turn on music because my radio won’t even work.
It’s probably the battery. Or something even more catastrophic. Something that no mechanic can repair. Then it’s dead for life.
I sob, spitting cookie crumbs everywhere. Even when I brush my tears away the wet salt mixes with the crumbs caking my face in dough.
Music rolls from my speakers and I swallow because it’s almost midnight and I need to hit those first few lyrics like an addict. I sip the soda I got knowing I do not need the caffeine I’m downing.
Just one song then I’ll get my shit together. Then I call a tow and not my mom or my dad and certainly not my sister.
The former wouldn’t show up anyway.
Unless I begged and I refuse.
My mouth opens, and… my phone rings.
I squeak grabbing the phone again thinking it’s Hadley but instead it’s Calypso’s name.
I let it ring twice on principle.
“Why is my twin telepathy screaming that you’re in trouble.” Calypso rushes the words out like they’re annoying her. “Bitch, you better be okay.”
“How do you even know?” I sit back choosing to nibble on my third cookie. No shame.
“Twins.”
“Funny how that works in one direction.”
“You cut me off.” She says it like a statement, no empathy. As per usual. “Now are you even in trouble?”
“I am.” I stare at the lights of the Acme as they flicker off one by one as the time ticks over officially to tomorrow. “Car died.”
“Where you at?”
“Acme.”
“By the Penn?”
“Yep.”
“I got you,” she says around a yawn. No idea if she’s at home or in some guy’s bed. The possibilities are endless. “Alright I got a guy right down the street. Stay on the line.”
The call ends.
I’m guessing that wasn’t the goal. I doubt she even knows she hung up but my music starts up all over again. No longer giving me the happiness I was seeking, I shut the music off, and I instead wait for my sister to call me back as I sit in my car in the dark parking lot alone. In silence.
Not that I don’t find myself here often. I do. This time it’s just because my car died and I can’t possibly fathom leaving her here. Which is ridiculous because it’s an inanimate object.
“I don’t mean it, Joy.” I pat her dashboard. Instead I clear dust that’s gathered there.
It’s these moments in the middle of the night when I get the most lonely.
When the grief begins in my chest, right below my bra line.
It builds there like a deep ache I can’t unseat.
Burning and growing up and up to my shoulders until all the emotions I’ve buried over the years leak out with one lone tear.
Resting my head on the cool window I let it roll through me, letting the grief of the life I’d planned for bubble up so I can acknowledge just how deeply fucked the turn was.
One I can still see in the rearview mirror represented by an unused car seat. It still sits back there. With little pink stripes. I even had the police station install it.
After everything happened.
It’s fucked up really, I put a car seat back there even knowing my baby died. Even knowing I’ll never get to use it, ever.
Barren, they said.
Inhospitable uterus, they declared.
Infertile, they said, with sympathetic smiles practiced on women like me.
The car seat is the only thing of hers I have. So the car seat stays.
My phone rings. I answer before the first ring finishes, because the alternative is sitting in this car with the car seat behind me and I have already learned what happens when I fall victim to my own mind.
“Why are you crying?” Calypso greets.
“How do I turn the twin thing back on?” I sniffle.
“You have to want to,” Calypso says in a moment of rare emotion. “Got a guy on his way.”
“How?” I wipe away my doughy tears.
“I promised him head.” She chuckles and I can’t tell if she is lying or not.
“You’re a fucking pimp.”
“Slut,” she says.
“Me?”
“No I’m a professional slut,” she clarifies. “I bargain in favors.”
“That’s a war crime, Calypso.”
“Maybe to you,” she says. “He’s pulling in now. Well not my guy he’s on his way to me, he got his boss to come by.”
A truck swings into the lot, headlights raking across my dashboard. It pulls up nose-to-nose with Joy. No tow rig. No flatbed. Just a truck.
“I owe you.”
She laughs. “Girl I’ll be making shit up to you for the next three years,” she says before hanging up on me.
Doesn’t even make sure I’m okay with whoever she sent. Just hangs up. On my own, again. Story of my fucking life. Gripping my pepper spray in my hand I flip the safety off.
I don’t get out. He climbs down. Boots first, then jeans, then the rest of him and rounds the front of his truck. Out of frame. Gone.
My passenger door opens. He sits down. In my fucking car.
The scream is out of me before I register I’m the one making it. The pepper spray in my hand goes off, not because I aimed it at him but because my involuntary reaction is to fucking squeeze.
Unfortunately I spray myself.
I scream again for an entirely different reason.
“You maced yourself,” he says flatly, like he’s reading a temperature. He plucks the canister out of my hand and tosses it. Where? Only the gods know.
Blind and crying now, mostly because my cookies are no good anymore, I give up. White flag. This is defeat.
My door opens and arms grab me, manhandling me until I’m sitting on something cold.
“Lean forward,” the voice directs with annoyance. “This wasn’t the plan,” he mutters but it’s more to himself.
“Don’t kill me,” I cry because I’ve been rendered to tears now. How very girlie of me. But the small self-preservation part of me reminds me this man could be a serial killer.
“That wasn’t the plan.” He bends my head forward. “Open your eyes.”
“I can’t,” I cry. “They no longer work, call the surgeon. I’ll need a transplant.”
“You don’t need a transplant.” He laughs a little, and it’s cute.
“I literally cannot see.”
“Because your eyes are still closed, open them.”
“Cannot do as requested.”
He pulls my hair off my shoulders, and neck. His hands are clumsy and thick in my hair as he gathers it together on the top of my head. “I’ve got sisters.” He whispers it like a confession.
I’m not sure why I pocket that secret from this stranger but I do.
“Open those pretty eyes, baby girl.”
“Ugh.” I shudder. “As long as you don’t call me baby girl.”
“Alright, princess.”
“No, again.” I do my best to open my eyes.
He knows it because as soon as I do the cool flush of water hits. Which doesn’t in fact feel any better.
I let out a shriek that probably wakes the dead in the nearby cemetery. The water stings my eyes, my skin, my very soul.
“Stop moving.” His voice is harsh but his hands are gentle. “I need to flush it out.”
“Are you trying to drown me?” I cough crumbs onto his sleeve. He doesn’t flinch.
“Open them wider.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” He tips my head back and pours more water in my eyes. “Open your eyes wide.”
I obey, because crying through pepper spray isn’t going to help me. The water stings going in and stings going out. My face feels like I napped at the park. Right on a mound of fire ants.
Not that I know what that sensation feels like. Okay fine, once. One time.
“Better.” He isn’t so much asking as confirming this to himself.
I blink rapidly. Tears stream down my face as my eyes slowly adjust back to normal. “Define better.”
He laughs. It’s a quick, surprised sound, like he didn’t mean to. “You can see now, right?”
I squint at him through swollen eyes. He looks like someone took a perfectly good face and forgot to finish smoothing it down. Sharp jaw. Pouty kissable lips. Dark hair that’s been touched too many times. And his eyes. That’s the part I can’t quite figure out. They’re too bright for the hour.
What are they called? Sanpaku eyes I think.
“Who are you?” I ask, suddenly aware that I’m sitting on the cold hood of my car with a stranger’s hands still in my hair and I don’t hate it.
“Vex.” He smirks at me. “Calypso called me.”
“You’re not the tow truck guy?”
“I own the shop. My guy was supposed to come. Your sister had other plans for him.”
“My sister has a habit of doing that.” I pause. “Calliope.” Ugh, context. “My name is Calliope.”
“Nice to meet you, Calliope.” He says my name like a secret.
“You got into my passenger seat.” I shake my head. “Who the fuck does that?”
Vex doesn’t look sorry. He looks interested. “I wanted to,” he pauses as though telling me the truth may reveal too much about him. “Meet you. That’s all.”
“Meet me?” I blink at him in disbelief. “I just maced myself in my own car.”