Supermarket(30)

I ran into Frank while restocking. I told him everything. The conversation between me and Rachel, and even Mia walking in and how it must have looked. “People see what they want to see, man. You should know that better than anyone else,” Frank said.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, wrinkling my face.

“I mean Mia’s insecurity was giving her a suspicion that something was going on, so she prodded. Then she let it go because, regardless of what was happening before she walked in that room, she has no reason not to trust you. It’s perfect.” Frank smiled.

“Wait . . . why is it perfect?” I asked, confused.

“Because you got Rachel’s number, man! Now let me see it!” he said, eager to hold it in his hands. I reached in my left pocket, pulled out the torn magazine page with the number on it, and handed it off for him to do with as he pleased.

“I’m gonna call her tonight. Meet me on the roof in five for a smoke.”

And Frank was off. I grabbed an AriZona iced tea and headed up to meet him.

On the roof I looked out over the other side, opposite where there was the loading dock and endless trees. On this side, I faced the dreary parking lot and the rest of our shopping center—the record store, the bank, the dry cleaners, and, of course, the diner where Lola had left me.

Reminded of Lola, I took out my wallet and stared at the picture of us. I felt bad. I was into Mia, and keeping a picture of my ex in my wallet? That just couldn’t be healthy.

But I couldn’t bear to let it go quite yet. I don’t know why. I just didn’t feel ready. As I contemplated it, I could hear the flick of Frank’s Zippo.

“Beautiful day,” he said.

I turned around to him sparking his cigarette.

“Even in this shitty little town, we still get some breathtaking views,” he said.

Now that I thought about it, it was beautiful. It had been raining for weeks and I hadn’t realized the sun was finally out. But then again, with all the shit on my plate, finishing a novel, and trying to forget the pink balloon that was derealization, it was hard to notice what was going on right in front of me sometimes.

As Frank snapped the lighter shut, I realized something.

“Hey, hasn’t Kurtis been looking for his lighter?” I asked, and Frank smiled.

“Yeah, I guess so, huh?”

“You swiped it?”

“Yeah, fuck that guy!” Frank said.

“Frank, you aren’t that evil. What if it’s important to him?”

“Fuck Kurtis and fuck everybody else who works in this godforsaken hellhole. I’m corrupt, Flynn, just face it. You know it’s true.” He smiled. “Somebody’s gotta be the evil villain. But deep, deep down, I’d like to think there’s a good man in there somewhere . . . he’s an elderly black man named Billy, hahaha.”

“Oh, come on, Frank. You should really give it back. It may be more significant to him than you know, I mean, even if he is an asshole.”

Frank smirked and lit another cigarette.

“What greater meaning could that asshole’s lighter have when it’s engraved with the words Vanilla Sky? He either loves Paul McCartney or is gay for Tom Cruise.” He gave a heavy laugh.

When Frank and I talked like this, it really felt like the conscious and subconscious were battling, the angel and devil on the shoulder. I suppose that was just Frank, though. He was the guy who said all the shit most people only thought about. That was part of why I loved him, and hated him. Maybe he filled out a part of me I wish I had more of. The irreverent, unabashed anti-authoritarian. It’s funny how you can have so many perspectives inside one person. How you can feel like one person one day and another person a different day. But Frank was also an annoying asshole who treated women with little respect and stole from his employer. I’m no Goody Two-shoes but I have a conscience.

Once again, I pulled out my notebook to take note of all this, and it occurred to me why he was perfect for my book: Frank was a guy who just didn’t give a fuck. Or, at least, didn’t give a fuck about what other people thought—their rules and regulations. That’s what most people wanted. He was saying “fuck morality.” He was an antihero of sorts.

Frank kept talking, going on with his graduate-seminar-in-philosophy ramblings. Talking about the beauty behind the madness, saying that without destruction, blood, and pain, life just wasn’t any fun. He was a nihilist, he claimed. The world was without meaning. He was a hedonist, he said. A pure pleasure seeker, and he didn’t care about the moral rules broken to get it. He didn’t seem to ever show a crack in the fa?ade, a vulnerable side, a weakness. That made me suspicious.

“How can you appreciate the things you have if you’ve never experienced loss?” he said.

It was this kind of reasoning that made me understand the thought process behind taking the lighter from Kurtis—if Kurtis didn’t mourn over the lost artifact, he wouldn’t appreciate the next one that came his way.

At the same time, I told Frank that maybe Kurtis already experienced mourning over an item or person he had lost in life. Maybe that’s why he was so bitter and seemed to hate everything, and maybe because of that it was the lighter that he appreciated more than anything. This inanimate object with more meaning to it than Frank or I could even begin to comprehend.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Or maybe it’s just a fucking lighter.” He laughed, but I didn’t. Sure, I thought Kurtis was a clown, but I wasn’t going to take his shit from him.