few deleted scenes you can’t get in the on-demand version, and a behind the scenes documentary and…”
But she’s staring back at me with dead eyes, nostrils still flaring, her young, pretty, blank face wrinkling with every syllable, so I stop. “Or, you know…”
My voice trails off. What can I say? The chick scares me.
She seems happy with the silence, at least for the moment. Then she groans and says, “Come. On. Josh,” in that annoying high school voice, before sliding through the door and out into her car.
“Sorry,” he says, putting his wallet back in his pocket.
“For what?” I say. “She’s your girlfriend.”
He gets the joke right away, but of course can’t laugh at it. Nodding his head silently, he heads for the door. “Happy Halloween,” I call out again, just before he leaves.
“You know,” he says, turning around in the doorway and risking the wrath of Mia. “I didn’t have to come here for DVDs senior year. I mean, I could have streamed most of the stuff your Dad turned me onto.”
“So why’d you come?” I huff, Mia’s cheap perfume wafting through the video store like a bad aftertaste.
“For you, silly,” he says, quickly, softly, our eyes meeting briefly before he turns and gets swallowed up by Mia’s passenger seat. As I watch them back out of the parking lot, I swear I can see Mia smirking triumphantly before they pull away, peeling rubber back to her house where I imagine they’ll get immediately naked and play some kind of game where they make out every time someone in the movie says the word “princess”!
I sigh and reach for a piece of candy, glancing down at the clock on my cell phone. Not even nine p.m.!
Then again, what do I care? It’s no different from any other night. Well, it’s a little different. I stay open a little later than usual, just this once. Partly I’m figuring I’ll get a little late night traffic. You know, stoners drifting in while they wait for their pizza to cook next door at Papa Pepperoni’s. Or their lo mein to stir fry at the Asian Wok on the other side of me.
Hey, it happens. Just… not tonight.
But partly I stay open late because I’m secretly hoping Josh will see through Mia’s diva act and stop by to rent some real movies. Scary movies, this time.
When it’s nearly eleven and he still hasn’t shown, I turn the old-fashioned “Open” sign in the front door to “Closed,” lock up tight and unplug all the orange Halloween lights. I leave the TV on because I’ll watch it, later, after dinner.
Alone, like always.
Then I head to the backroom. Inside is a roll away bed I bought from a local hotel for $50. It’s creaky and stiff but it folds up real nice so I can shove it in the corner and still use the store room as an office for most of the day.
There isn’t much else that’s homey about the place except for the old monster movie posters on the wall and an end table full of flickering pumpkin spice candles and maybe a throw pillow or two on the wicker chair in the corner.
There’s a window above my desk, and that’s nice in the daytime, but now it’s dark except for the candles. I unlock the back delivery door and prop it open with an old metal coffee can full of dried cement.
Here is where I live, mostly. The service door may open onto a back alley, but it’s wide – for the delivery trucks – and covered with bushes and feels almost like a backyard. There’s even a small deck Dad built, before he got sick. Not much, but enough for two plastic Adirondack chairs and a matching table between them. There is a waist-high post in each corner and, tying them together, shaggy rope strung from one to the other. He strung white Christmas lights around them the day he finished and I plug them into a rusty old outlet under the power meter. Their warm, gentle glow always reminds me of him. And the nights we spent out here together, quietly, before he went into Hospice.
It feels kind of like a dock… minus the river. And the boat. And the house you would normally find attached to a dock.
The neighbors in our strip mall liked it so much they each asked for one, so Dad built them all, at night, after work. And sometimes in the morning, before he opened up the video store.
So now the guys who run Asian Wok can come and sit and smoke after another long shift whipping up take-out Chinese for the neighborhood. Same with the gang from Papa Pepperoni’s and the lady who runs the dry cleaners and the dude who owns the jewelry shop at the end of the Lucky Penny Shopping Center.
No one’s out tonight, though, which is just as well. I probably wouldn’t be very good company anyway. There’s a little grill in the corner of the deck, and I dump enough charcoal inside to make one dinner and not much more.
I spray on lighter fluid and fire it up and, while the coals are taking I dip back inside the office for the package of hot dogs I bought the day before. The buns are on top of the little dorm fridge in the corner, along with a plastic bowl full of ketchup and mustard packets from the Burger Barn across the street.
The dogs smell good on the grill, sizzling and sweating and plump. I let them brown up nice and crusty before taking them off and toasting a couple buns for good measure. I don’t need them all toasted, and probably won’t eat half of them, but I hate to waste fresh coals. And they’ll be good for breakfast tomorrow.
I’m drizzling runny ketchup on my first dog when I hear footsteps crunching to my right. Half of me smirks knowingly even as the other half reaches for the pocket knife I keep handy, just in case.
“Haley?” he asks, standing tentatively by the grill.
I’m so happy to see him, so relieved, so surprised, yet not surprised, I wave the pocket knife at him playfully. “Did you bring her with you, Josh? Is she there, lurking in the dark?”
“Who?”
“Mia!”
He laughs and I fold the knife back up. “No,” he says, climbing up the plywood steps to sit in the Adirondack chair next to me. “But keep it handy, just in case she decides to hunt me down later.”
“With pleasure,” I sigh, putting it on the table between us. “Are you hungry? Did she feed you?”
He looks hungrily at my plate, literally licking those full, red lips. “What do you think?”
I hand him mine and make two more for myself. He sits with the Halloween paper plate on his knees, patiently, until I’m done. When I bite into the first one, he does the same.
After my first swallow I sit back, take it slower and say, “So I have to ask… Mia? What’s that all about?”
He chuckles, snorting and covering his face with a dollar store witch napkin that matches our plates. “I got into town a few days ago and was grabbing a soda at the Stop ‘n Go and her car was stalled out front, needing a jump start and…”
I roll my eyes. “Wow, that’s the oldest trick in the book.”
“Really?” He looks seriously surprised. This kid who got an academic scholarship really can’t figure that out for himself? “I thought… I mean, it seemed like she really needed it…”
I roll my eyes. “So… one thing led to another and… now you’re dating a high school girl?”
“We’re not dating,” he grumbles before adding, under his breath, “anymore.”
I smirk because… hey… good news!
The coals cool as we sit, quietly, midnight softly approaching by the glow of Dad’s strings of half-off Christmas lights.
Of all the ways I thought I’d spend this Halloween, eating cheap hot dogs behind my father’s video store with Josh Ridgeway was the absolute furthest thing from my mind.
Now, I can’t ever think of spending it any other way.
And by the way Josh reaches over and clasps my hand, gently, as we stare up at the midnight sky, it feels like he agrees…
* * * * *
About the Author:
Rusty Fischer
Rusty Fischer is the author of A Town Called Snowflake and Greetings from Snowflake, both from Musa Publishing. Visit him at Rushing the Season, www.rushingtheseason.com, where you can read many of his FREE stories a
nd collections.
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