Always Happy Hour: Stories(28)

His phone rings. Right when it’s about to go to voice mail he answers it in his radio voice with the joyless laugh that stupid people find charming. It’s one of his tenants who can’t pay his rent and my boyfriend is explaining the late procedure to him, probably for the tenth time, because it involves advanced math and lawn mowing. There’s an even more complicated procedure for when they can’t afford to pay the deposit. He learned them from his dad, who is also a slumlord, and the procedures don’t make sense but they sound so completely rational that the person always comes to the conclusion that they’re not only bad with money but also an idiot. It’s how he makes me feel a lot of times but so far I haven’t been able to come up with any hard evidence.

He walks into the kitchen naked. I pour him a glass of Kool-Aid and he takes a seat and repeats what I’ve just overheard him say to Mr. James. He tells me he likes it when they’re a few days late but he doesn’t like it when they just don’t pay, which I already know. When they’re a few days late, he gets an extra fifty dollars. It makes me kind of sad because that extra fifty dollars only ensures they’ll be late again next month and then they’re out another fifty, or a hundred. It’s how my parents handle money, always behind, paying twice as much for everything. I put four pieces of bread in the toaster while the bacon pops and he digs a finger in his ear and looks at it.

After we eat he goes to the bathroom and reads Siddhartha, which is the only book he’ll read and only on the toilet, while I put beer in the cooler. He’s too cheap to buy ice so we have to use a ton of trays, pop the cubes out a handful at a time and be sure to refill them for the next time.

Coach comes in without knocking and lies on the floor. “I’m dying,” he says. He goes into a coughing fit and places his hand on his chest and I’m sure his insides are all black and scabby even though he’s only thirty-two. I don’t want him to die but if he did, then maybe something would be different. I step over him to throw a can away and go back to my trays. He stands and leans against the counter, pulls the flask from his pants. I didn’t know he was coming with us but I don’t care. The two of them go off to hunt turtles while I lay out, or scoop up stuff with my net.

“Your girlfriend spend the night?” I ask.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Okay, your friend with benefits.”

“Why do you torture me like this, Miss Amy?”

“Why do you call me Miss Amy, Coach? A title of respect for fucking your best friend?”

“Something like that,” he says, and lets the screen door slam shut. It makes him nervous when I say fuck.

. . .


We stop at the gas station for another twelve-pack and some snacks and then drop Coach’s truck off at the pull-out. Then we drive back to the put-in and I stand around in my bikini while they carry the canoes down to the water where a Mexican family is fishing and remember the time my friend Travis asked me what I was still doing in this town, like I was too good for this place.

I carry my paddle and life jacket down to our canoe and he holds it steady while I step in. Once we’re situated, I paddle hard so my boyfriend won’t have to tell me to—I know he wants to get away from the Mexicans before we start drinking—and stop when I hit thirty strokes. I ask him to hand me a beer and rest my paddle across my legs while I admire how nice and tan they are. There’s nothing much else to look at—the trees are stick pine and the river is too low and I’d rather be watching Bear on TV instead of listening to my know-it-all boyfriend who’ll make something up if he doesn’t know the answer. Still, I like to ask him questions. I like the way his voice sounds when he doesn’t have a clue.

I point at a big bird, perched at the top of a tree to watch us pass. “Is that a crane?”

“Close,” he says. “It’s a heron. Cranes fly with their necks out, not pulled back like that. And herons are smaller and have a bimodal toe.”

“A what?”

“It’s like an opposable thumb.”

“Like a person has?”

“Exactly,” he says.

When we catch up to Coach’s canoe, he throws a leg over so we can float together, pass things back and forth. The psoriasis doesn’t look as bad as I thought up close; there are a bunch of red splotches but they look more like razor burn than a lumpy patchwork quilt.

We come to our first stop, a nice spot with a flat rock I like to lay out on.

I lie on my stomach and unhook my top like I don’t want to get tan lines, though I don’t care about tan lines—I’m pretty enough so that tan lines seem like the kind of flaw that only adds to it.

They watch me while they smoke their joint.

“Have some Doritos,” Coach says, tossing a bag next to my head.

I take one and hold it between my teeth while I fix my top. Coach and my boyfriend throw the football and I move to the shallow water and dig my fingers into the mud and gravel—the water between my legs cold and warm and then cold again. I try to catch tiny fish with my hands but they’re too fast, so I pluck snails off rocks and drop them back into the water. They make a nice plunk sound.

“I forgot my net.”

“You can use mine when I’m not using it,” my boyfriend says.

“Yours is too big.”

“That’s what she said!” Coach says.