Chapter 3
DISSOLVING
After he’s gone, I walk through to the bathroom and stand in the doorway, taking in the avocado-green shower stall and the ripped brown patterned linoleum on the floor.
Rusty stains run down the basin from the tap to the drain.
The wet shower curtain is pushed back to the end of the rail, and I step forward and slide my hand over the bottom of the once-white fabric.
My palm comes away all yellow and green.
Yum. Black mold is scattered across the whole stall, gathering in dark clumps at the edges.
He just showered in here. Something hot and sharp burns through me. When did I start ignoring everything?
I can’t persuade Luis, the crook who owns this place, to do anything about the problems here, but I can goddamn clean.
I find the Clorox in the back of a kitchen cabinet and spray the entire bathroom, then slap descaling gel on the faucets.
I take down the shower curtain and stuff it in the washing machine.
The dark mold on the stall starts to fade, and I’m suddenly grateful to whatever genius came up with cleaners that you spray on once and leave.
I fetch a trash bag and gather up the empty pizza boxes and dirty plates, then collect the crumpled clothes for the next load.
Unopened mail is spread across every surface, and I toss it all on the kitchen table.
I’ll be back tonight.
I strip my bed and pile up sheets, the comforter, and more clothes.
Everything is getting washed. I’m lucky this place has a washer and a dryer and I don’t have to take it out.
I vacuum and mop all the floors, attack the kitchen, then sit down and rip open all the letters before I can think twice about it.
They’re all overdue notices, and the urge to hide them underneath a large cushion makes my fingers shake, but I spread them all over the table.
The picture of an exploding life. My artist’s brain stirs and, on impulse, I snap a picture.
Then I sit down with my phone and pull up my checking account.
I have two hundred dollars in there that was supposed to cover me to the end of the month, ten days away now, but if I pay ten dollars on each of the main bills, I’d have a hundred left, and I can survive on the remaining ten dollars a day until the next overdue bill comes in.
I can live on pasta and beans. The debt’s been accumulating for years.
There’s always some crisis I don’t have the money to cover. My car, getting fired …
The last time I got fired it was because that jerk put a hand on my ass and I karate-chopped him.
When he went down like a sack of potatoes, I was so surprised I laughed.
I mean, I’m a girl and not a very strong one.
I don’t lift weights. Although in a happier time I ran races with my brother, Dan.
I think the laughter was what got me fired.
On impulse, I add it all up. The energy company, the credit cards, insurance, drug costs. Over $10,000, and I live hand to mouth in the smallest cheapest place I can imagine.
The therapist’s voice is like a worm in my ear.
“And when did the drinking start, Carly?” When he died.
When he fucking died. I never told her that, of course …
Who wants that kind of analysis? It’s obvious, isn’t it?
You fuck something up, you don’t recover.
How does therapy fix that? They don’t come back. He is never coming back.
The sky is darkening outside the window: 3 p.m. Must be an incoming storm. My hand shakes, and my muscles ache as my eyes drift over to the pick-me-up cabinet. Normally, I’d have had a drink ages ago. But I’m fucking trying, okay?
My phone vibrates with a text. Marni.
Well?
A smile curves over my lips. I type out:
Kitchen counter sex.
and press send.
And?
Pretty good.
See you at Callahan’s later. I want a full rundown on the liquids thing.
Yeah, you’re going to be disappointed.
The rumors that he uses liquids during sex must be bullshit; there was just the beer on my hand.
And if he’s coming back, do I want to go out to Callahan’s?
It’s going to cost you a lot more than ten dollars to drink in a bar, Carly.
I walk to the fridge and open the door. The stuff Rig bought when he went to the store is sitting on the shelves: cheese, ham, bread. I’ve got food for the day, anyway.
I head through to my bedroom and study the stripped bed, then collapse onto it face down and fall fast asleep.
When I wake, the sky is dark outside and I drag my wrist toward my face: 7 p.m. Shuffling through to the kitchen, I make myself a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
Remember to eat, Carly. I text Marni and say I’m too wiped to make it, and then an hour ticks by, two, as I watch pictures flicker over the TV screen.
By 10 p.m. I’m pacing across the floor. He said he’d be back, goddammit.
But I have no way of finding out if he is or isn’t coming.
Can I remember that road to his trailer?
Where we went? Fuck it, I’ll find a way.
And I’m out in my rust bucket of a car and on the road out of town before I can second-guess myself.
My hands are still shaking, I haven’t had a drink all day, and fuck, fuck this shaking.
The track he turned down is easy to spot. The gate on the field and the daub of yellow paint on a post as we flashed past last night.
When I arrive at the trailer, the lights are blazing and he’s in there, a shadow moving behind the windows. As I pull up, he peers out then shifts away, and I walk up to the door just as he opens it.
“What’re you doing here?” he growls.
My stomach sinks. That wasn’t a friendly “Hello, babe,” was it? I can tell from his expression that this was meant to be one fuck and we’re done, and somehow I didn’t get the memo. But fuck him, he gave me a different memo entirely.
“You got your trailer door fixed.”
He sighs and folds his arms on his mile-wide chest. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. You said you were coming back.” And he did say that, but maybe I should have kept my dignity intact by not turning up here.
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” He runs his hand around the back of his neck. “I got some shit to do now. Something came up.”
And fuck, it was good, and I’m obviously not getting the memo at all because I ask, “Can I come in?”
“No, babe. Go home.”
I stare down at my feet, and he sighs as he drags a hand through his hair.
“Look,” he says, but I’ve heard the conversation that starts with the word “look” from men for most of my life, so I turn blindly.
I can’t meet his eyes anymore because I’ll start crying.
Don’t hope. Goddammit, I should have grasped that by now. Why the fuck did I come out here?
“It was good, babe,” he shouts after me when I’m close to the car.
I want to say, but not that good, right? Or you would have come back. But I don’t say anything I just wave my hand at him.
“See you around,” I say, and climb in.
I stew on Rig all but telling me to get lost over the next couple of days, coming home after work and drinking the vodka in the apartment, because my ten-dollar-a-day budget doesn’t stretch to buying more booze.
I want to ask him why. Why, when it was good like that, he’s not interested.
I’m not ugly. I’m not a liability, well, not much of one.
A bit damaged, maybe, but aren’t we all?
So after a few more days, I head out to his trailer again.
Yeah, I’m kind of an idiot like that. I could never take no for an answer.
I hammer on the door, but all the curtains are drawn and the place has a sort of ringing silence about it like no one’s been here for a while. I examine the lock. Could I bust the door in? Come back with my lock picker? Why do I even think shit like this?
Two days later, when I’m in Callahan’s, I spot Maggot Mike drinking with a buddy. I wouldn’t say he’s friends with Rig exactly, but I’ve seen them talking over a beer. So I slide onto a bar stool next to him, and he turns to me with a tight smile.
“What’s up, Carly?”
“You seen Rig around?”
His eyes roam over my face. “I think he got a job on the rigs about five days ago. Why?” His eyes drift down my body, as his mouth curls up at one corner. “You hook up with him?”
And this is why I don’t talk to Maggot Mike that much. He lives up to his nickname.
“Why’d ya do that, girl? You know he don’t stick with the ladies, not ever.”
Yeah, I know that. So what, asshole?
He leans toward me and says quietly, “I’d be very happy to help you out if you want that.” He winks, and it makes me want to vomit.
That’s the kind of man Maggot Mike is. Married and on the make. Unsurprisingly, you never see his wife around town. Now I come to think of it, I don’t think one decent guy lives in this whole town, and there are a bunch of women settling for assholes like Mike. I’d love to leave, but I can’t.
I give Maggot Mike my best smile. You don’t get on the wrong side of people in a place this small. “I’ll bear that offer in mind,” I say, and I head back to where Marni is sitting, already chatting to a man I’ve never seen before.
So, Rig’s gone. Maybe he moves on from all his one-night stands this way. That memo I didn’t get when he left? I think I’ve got it now.
Over the next few weeks, I do my utmost to forget about kitchen counter sex and being made breakfast. I tried to step out of the level I usually live on, and that’s never a good idea. I’m on that level and I always will be.
Instead, I hook up with Dave. Dave’s a pushover—everyone knows that—but he’s company and he’s a drinker like me.
He’s always amenable to hooking up, but this time I hold on to him and try to make things work.
And it’s fine. He chills with me and cooks me food.
Having him around makes my finances easier, no question.
As a trucker, he earns okay money, so he buys me drinks and I can put more of my paycheck into paying off the debt.
Which I do at the beginning of the month this time, and for the first time in a long while I’m a bit smug about how organized my life is.
It’s not a bad life; it’s just never been the life I wanted. I wanted to paint, but I don’t do that anymore. Whatever, I’ve got this whole life thing under control now and I’m never randomly hooking up with rough scary guys in bars ever again.