The Highway Kind(18)
Cisco rubbed his shoulder beneath the jacket. I could see the crimson stain spreading on the white T-shirt he wore under the leather.
“Got me right in the rotator, I think. Probably going to get a new shoulder to go with my new knee.”
I didn’t answer. I leaned against the car next to him and watched traffic build up behind the accident scene. Pretty soon it would be a parking lot stretching all the way back to downtown.
RUNS GOOD
by Kelly Braffet
CARO MISSED THE bus. She usually did. The last one left the mall at ten and unless she managed to clock out a few minutes early, she inevitably saw it pull away from the curb as she was still running across the parking lot. Tonight, sweaty, heart pounding, feet killing her, she put her headphones on and started walking.
Past the car dealership, on the side of the road near a place that sold outdoor furniture, she came upon a battered white Civic. One side mirror was held on with duct tape and there was a decent-size dent in the bumper. The sign in the window said FOR SALE, $1,000, RUNS GOOD. It was late; she was tired and bitter about missing the bus, which was bright and quick and safe. Too often her life seemed disproportionately inconvenient and annoying, and now, looking at the car, she found her feet slowing, and stopping, until she stood by the side of the road in the cool damp grass as cars roared by on the four-lane next to her.
A thousand dollars. What a big, slippery number that was. If she managed to squirrel away a hundred a week she could have it in ten weeks (three months-ish, by which time the car probably wouldn’t even be there anymore so why was she even bothering to do the math). She put the numbers together in her head, food and electricity and the phone—Margot’s SSI almost covered rent—and looked away. She couldn’t manage to save fifty dollars a month, let alone a hundred a week. And that wasn’t even figuring in insurance and gas. Her last boyfriend had been all worked up about insurance and gas, how much they cost.
But at the same time, she wanted the car. It pulled at her. Having her own car would make everything better. It would mean no more walking by the side of the highway in the middle of the night, no more hauling everything she needed for both of her jobs around in her backpack. The car would mean no wrestling Margot onto the bus for doctors’ appointments, no more hikes to the bank to deposit checks. No more having to take Does he have a car? into account when a guy asked her out, no more having to take But he has a car into account when she didn’t want to see him anymore.
Caro was not quite eighteen, but she was smart, and, more than that, she was realistic. She knew that right now, as things stood, she could not have the car.
Someday, she thought—as she always did—I will look back on this part of my life, and it will be in my past, and I will not have to live it anymore.
Still, she burned with frustration.
It was not fair.
Caro had applied for a job as a bartender and she would have gotten it, but her fake ID was terrible, and Freddy, the manager, didn’t buy it for a second. He said he’d hire her as a waitress, and she needed money so she took the job. She acted more grateful than she was and got good at finding reasons not to be alone in a room with him.
The place was at a new midrange hotel out on the strip outside Pitlorsville, the kind that was supposed to appeal to business travelers, a step above the hot-breakfast-buffet sort of deal in that it had an actual restaurant with an actual bar. Caro didn’t think the food was anything special. All the sandwiches came with sauces that were basically mayonnaise with stuff mixed in—Parmesan or garlic or pesto or whatever—and the French fries and bread all came frozen off the Sysco truck. Caro mostly worked the dinner shift, which was normally dead. She usually had one table going at any given time. Two was rare. Three tables left the kitchen in the weeds, even though everything was basically reheated. Her paychecks were minuscule. Her tips were nothing. But after a few weeks, Freddy started giving her bartending shifts, and that was experience she might be able to turn into a real job somewhere else.
The humid air of September gave way to the brisk mulchy wind of October, and still the car sat. Waiting, she thought—for a thousand dollars to fall out of the sky at her feet, for whatever cosmic forces controlled the world to decide she’d been taunted enough, for someone luckier to drive it away. Halloween was coming. November and December were right around the corner. Winter would bring snowstorms and icicles and long hours in the dark predawn, numb hands stuffed into Margot’s old mittens, scraping ice off the front steps of the rickety little duplex where they lived, clearing the driveway. (Caro had negotiated that last winter, shoveling the snow in exchange for an embarrassingly small break on the rent.) Winter would bring school closings. Caro didn’t like school but it was better than home, better than hours spent curled up under a blanket in the barely heated duplex hiding a book from Margot and forcing herself through it one sentence at a time. Yanking herself, by sheer force of will, into any world other than this one, any room other than one of the three tiny ones she shared with Margot.
The guidance counselor, who thought he knew things, passed her in the hallway one day and said, “Hey, Carolyn! How’s your mother?”
She forced a smile and said, “Good.” As soon as he was around the corner, one of the other girls said, “God, she even fucks the guidance counselors.” Caro stared at her until she looked uncomfortable and walked away. The girls at school thought they knew things too.