Chapter 7
The next day at work was fairly busy. We were short handed though, so I had to work my shift outside, as a garden center cashier, which I didn’t really mind since there were usually less people out there. It had to be a hundred degrees outside that day, but people were out there buying flowers and loading mulch to beautify their lawns, or because they had nothing else to do with their lives, I supposed. The worst thing about working as a cashier out in the garden center was that customers automatically assumed you had knowledge about the plants and whatnot. They walked into the greenhouse, carrying with them the mindset, that if you were working in the garden center, that you loved plants as much as they did. All day long, I’d get questions like, did we have any azaleas, or geraniums. I didn’t even know what the hell those were. I still don’t. Usually, I would just point to the sign that said “flowers” and tell them to try over there. There were plant experts all over the place in the garden center, and customers would come find the cashier to ask questions like that.
One day I had a frumpy, fifty-something year old lady come set a potted plant down in front of me and ask, “What do I need to do to take care of this?”
I didn’t even know what the damn thing was.
“Water, sunlight, love? Honestly, I don’t know.” I told her. “There’re garden people over there that can help you with that, ma’am.”
She just turned her nose up, with an attitude, and said, “Well you work here, don’t you? Seems like you’d have knowledge on what you sell.”
Unfortunately for her, I was rolling through one of those days where I could have benefited from a prescription for Prozac.
I just sighed, “No ma’am. Those guys over there are the ones who sell garden items. I just ring things up and hand out receipts. Would you like paper or plastic?”
I made sure to smile extra sweetly as I uttered that last sentence.
The woman looked stunned. Retail was such a bitch. The woman finally just snatched up her potted plant and stormed off, but not before saying, “I will be speaking to your manager!”
“Please do.” I urged her. “And when you do, let her know she forgot my break. Thanks and have a nice day!” I said the last part with the same voice and sweet smile again.
Some people were just a headache to deal with, which is why I hated retail half the time. It seemed to me that some of them were under the misguided impression that just because you were employed by the store they were shopping in, you were supposed to wait on them hand and foot, as if you worked for them.
A short while later, the register phone for the garden center rang, and when I picked it up, I realized it was my manager. I figured she’d be calling before too long, if that woman had actually said something to her.
“Hey, Laura, this is Vanessa--,”
“Hey, Vanessa! Girl, how are you?” I cut her off, in a much sweeter voice than I normally used.
“I’m good, thanks for asking.” She said. “I was actually calling out there to find out about what happened out there about an hour ago. Sherry said we got a customer complaint that the cashier out there was rude to her?”
“Oh, really?” I said in a fake dumbfounded voice. “That’s odd. But you know, a woman did come out here a little while ago, going off on me in some other language, and her English was so rough, it was hard to understand her. I tried though. I really did, but she just stormed off saying the word manager.”
Vanessa paused for a second before saying, “Oh, ok gotcha. That makes sense. You know, I figured it was just some kind of misunderstanding. I know how people can be.”
I just did a fake laugh and asked, “So, do I need to sign anything since I had a complaint against me?” I already knew the answer.
“Oh, no girl, don’t worry about it.” She reassured me, “Doesn’t sound at all like it was your fault. Just keep doing a good job out there!”
“Gee thanks, Vanessa!” I said.
As we hung up, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “What an idiot.” I’ve only pulled that crap like five times this summer so far. Either she really believed that foreigners were just constantly walking up and yelling random crap at me, or she just didn’t feel like dealing with it. Either way, next time I’d tell her something different, I reassured myself. Job security, you know.
The rest of the day went by with less incidence or entertainment. I spent some of the most boring parts of the shift, texting Jolene and Tony the muffin top count for the day for the garden center, the number of women who believed that on hot days they could pull off the combination of skin tight jeans with shirts that weren’t quite long enough. The bulge that occurs in the space where the shirt and jeans don’t meet is known as the muffin top…and fyi, most people old enough to be shopping a home improvement store cannot pull this look off as well as they believe, no matter what lies Jenny Craig or Marie Osmond has told them.
“ugh thnx fo that image” Jolene had texted me, upon receiving the official figures.
“No problem buddy :)” I texted her back.
Jolene was on a family vacation to Alabama to see her aunts and uncle who lived out there, and it seemed like every day she was in the car with her family, I would get texts about how she planned to slit their throats that night as they slept. You know, normal teenage thoughts. As I had yet to receive my daily report yet that day, I texted her to ask how the traveling was going, probably mostly because I was bored and wanted a good laugh.
The text I got back less than ten minutes later read:
“hows the trip? girl in bout 2.5 ima bitch slap my bro if he asks me 1 mo thing..thats how the trip is. i cant wait to get back & tell u bout half the shit that went down this week”
I loved her daily reports. It was one of the few times at work I really got to smile. Her messages about offing her family gave me hope, lifted my spirit, and made me think about the future. I often wondered if one day, just maybe, Jolene and I would go from sharing a dorm room to sharing a cell. After all, anything is possible if you believe. I figured since she was going to school to be a lawyer eventually, anyway, we'd have a pretty good chance at bailing out and skipping town.
That day after work, I went for a much needed eight mile run through the neighborhoods, and then collapsed in the old chair in the garage for a few hours, as I had grown accustomed to doing on humid days like that one. After a little while of thinking and daydreaming, I had nearly slipped into an afternoon coma, when I felt my phone buzzing. It was Danny. I hadn’t heard from him in days and had been hoping to keep it that way and never have to relive that nightmare again.
“You have got to be kidding me.” I thought to myself, as I considered just deleting it and taking my nap.
The text simply said:
“we need to talk”
“do we?” I texted him back.
About two minutes later I got another text that read:
“yes”
I remember thinking, “There’s nothing to talk about.”
So I texted back, “no :)”
I wasn’t sure if that tactic was going to work, but I was optimistic and figured, you never know.
I got a text back saying, “no?”
At that point, I realized that maybe I should just get this over with. So I texted back, “k fine”
He texted me back within the minute, saying, “when can we talk?”
“why don’t you just call me right now?” I sent him.
The next text he sent me said, “can it be in person?”
By this point, I was beginning to get irritated that he wanted to do this the adult way, when I could have been asleep by now. This was one of the times I actually agreed with one of Jolene's crazy rules. The way a relationship is ended, should be somewhat equivalent to the status of the relationship itself. One night stand should equal no call back ever. A few dates should equal a text. It seemed pretty common sense to me. Why did everyone always want to do things the mature way and talk it out? Why couldn’t this just be li
ke junior high, where people just washed their hands of one another and did their best to act fake when they ran into each other later. So, I waited it out for five minutes to think about it before texting him back, “k fine. where?”
“This must be really urgent,” I thought to myself, because my finger had barely left the send button when he texted me right back:
“how about the coffee shop right by your house in 20 mins?”
And once again I texted him back, “k fine.”
As I stood up to go get my keys, I remembered that my dad had borrowed my car for the afternoon, while his was getting new brake pads, and he had told me he would be gone for at least a few hours. I couldn’t remember exactly what time that had been, only that I had been asleep when he asked for the keys and I’d handed them to him and dozed right back off in the chair. I thought about rescheduling or asking Danny to pick me up, but neither of those sounded wildly appealing. So, since the coffee place was less than a mile away, I decided to text Danny, “drive slow i’ll be walking.”
Thirty seconds later, my phone was buzzing again:
“do you want me to pick you up?”
“drive slow i’ll be walking,” I texted him again.
I didn’t even bother to change out of my running clothes. I’d probably just jog back, anyway, I figured. The weather had started to cool off a little bit and it had become pretty cloudy. It felt like it might even rain soon, so I grabbed one of my dad’s old sweatshirts on my way out of the garage and began my trek for the coffeehouse. My eyes still felt sleepy, and every step that I took reminded me that I had just run eight miles, and was much too tired for this insanity. I was starting to think that I should have just left it at no and a smiley face. Major life lesson learned that summer: when in doubt…just leave it at no and a smiley face.
I made it to the coffeehouse in about fifteen minutes, but by the time I got there, Danny was already sitting at a table, way in the back, away from the crowd just staring off into his cup. He was bouncing his knee and wringing his hands. His long hair was more unruly than usual, and he just looked like a mess.
“Hey,” I said, as I got to the table and seated myself directly across from him. I must have startled him, because he jumped a little at my greeting. He started to get up to give me a hug before I sat down, but I hadn’t realized and sat down too quickly. Now I sitting, watching him fumble, and thanking God for my swiftness.
“Hey,” he said back nervously, once he finally seemed to have figured out which way was up. “It’s been a few days.”
This whole thing was awkward, and here he was trying to bring up small talk. I just wanted to cut the small talk and get this conversation over with. It hadn’t even been a real or mature relationship, so why did we have to be? In my opinion, it was the kind of thing that could easily have been ended in a text message, or just an assumed ending, like I had been attempting to do before he messed it all up by deciding that we should meet in person to talk. Surely he wasn’t going to ask me out on another date, the thought occurred to me. He couldn’t possibly think this was going well.
“Yeah, it has.” I answered him, purposely nonchalantly, as I slouched back in my chair. “What was so urgent we had to meet right now?”
He laughed uneasily and shifted in his chair. “Cutting right to the chase then, I guess.”
“Well you sure made it seem like an emergency twenty minutes ago.” I remember thinking.
“Might as well.” I said.
Danny just sat there, though. It was probably about five minutes, but no doubt, the longest five minutes of my life. It was like watching Helen Keller learn to speak. Every thirty seconds or so, he would start to open his mouth like he was going to talk, but then he’d stop, as if he wasn’t sure of his words, looking down into his cup the entire time. Maybe he thought he’d find the words floating around in there. After all, he did smoke a lot of pot. Anything was possible. Meanwhile, I could feel my cell phone buzzing in the pocket of the sweatshirt, where my hands were resting. “Something told me I just shouldn’t have left the garage today.” I thought to myself. To top it off, I looked over my shoulder to take my eyes off of Danny’s agony for a moment only to realize that it was now sprinkling outside, and that the sky had grown much darker.
When finally, I could not take another minute of this awkwardness, and Danny hadn’t uttered anything other than indistinguishable vowel-sounding noises in several minutes, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and began scrolling through it and realized I had a missed call from Tony. I scrolled a little further and realized that I also had a missed call from a Tennessee number. It wasn’t in my contacts list, but I recognized the area code from having lived there before moving to Indy a few years before. I felt my heart speed up for just a second and I wondered if it could be who I thought it might be. They hadn’t left a voicemail, according to my icons, which only made me wonder more if my mom had tried to call.
I pushed it from my mind quickly and instead sent Tony back a quick text:
“i’ll call u back..watching danny have a stroke @ the coffeehouse =0 lol can’t believe walked all the way here for this”
It was probably a wrong number or an old friend calling to find out what I was up to. I couldn’t think of anyone, but as I sat there in the coffeehouse, that’s what I had to believe.
Tony replied a minute later:
“haha ok have fun…btw u left a movie at my house so i’m gonna drop it in ur mailbox before i head back outta town just fyi”
I looked up at Danny to see how he was coming along. He seemed oblivious to the fact that I was even still sitting at the table. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was born with functioning, fine motor skills.
“Danny?” I finally said, probably somewhat irritated. “I assume you had something to talk to me about, today? If you've had a stroke or lost your speech in some other tragic way, why don't we just reschedule?”
There was a long pause, during which time I considered getting up and leaving. Then finally, Danny seemed to stir a little. He looked up from his coffee cup at me with sad eyes. His usually somber, grayish-green eyes were all of a sudden red and puffy, and I could see tears welling up in the corners.
“You’re always so funny.” He smiled a sweet, sweet smile at me, as he let the first tear run down his cheek. He grabbed the napkin out from under his cup and let out a sniffle into it. “I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but sometimes I think I love that about you.”
“And you’re always so high,” I thought, silently to myself, “high as a kite, indeed.”
As I stole another glance around the coffeehouse, with every intention of escaping, I felt Danny’s hand under the table, grasp my free hand that had been resting on my knee. He used the other hand to release more sniffles into the napkin as he sobbed, “But I have betrayed you and our relationship.”
“We’re still in a relationship?” I thought to myself.
This was certainly news to me. I wasn’t entirely sure we had ever even actually been in a relationship to begin with. This whole dating thing was becoming quite complex, as it turned out. Apparently, my first relationship ever had come and gone, without my ever having had knowledge of its existence. And with this breaking news bulletin came a new set of issues. I couldn’t decide if I should go with it, so I could get home and go to sleep as soon as possible, or somehow address the fact that I was just informed by the boyfriend I didn’t know I had, that I had been betrayed in our relationship that I wasn’t aware existed.
“Oh?” I said to him, as it seemed like a safe answer either way for the moment. I wasn’t sure I really cared to hear the rest of what he was going to tell me, but I could tell it was already raining pretty hard outside at this point, as I could hear it on the roof of the coffeehouse. So, I figured I had a minute.
He began to sob harder, and a little louder. “I’m so sorry for what I’m about to tell you and I hope that you’ll forgive me.”
He started to squeez
e my hand even tighter and I could feel the clamminess of his own hand, as well as the little bit of circulation left in mine. I looked around and began to sink down into my chair a little, as it was becoming abundantly clear that we were drawing an audience. Suddenly, I was glad he’d chosen that quiet table in the back, after all. I remember wondering, once again, why hadn’t I just stayed in the garage that day. I’ve found that there are times in our lives when we wish we could just disappear, and this boy seemed to have that affect on me lately.
Tears were running down Danny’s face like a faucet. He continued, “I get the feeling that you’ve suspected something all along,” he cried. “Just by the way you’ve distanced yourself from me.”
Now, it seemed that the whole coffeehouse was quiet. Even the noise of the baristas getting orders and chatting with customers had died down almost completely.
Danny looked at me expectantly, like he was waiting for some kind of response, desperate for to find the forgiveness in my heart, for the evil he thought I suspected. Suddenly I was curious enough for the entertainment value of the situation, that going along with this insanity was worth a few stares. Besides, I couldn’t just disappoint him, not to mention, our audience.
I wasn’t sure what to say, but I had to say something. The word “yeah,” fell out of my mouth without even thinking about it.
“I knew it!” He sobbed, even louder yet.
“What the hell is this boy talking about?” I thought to myself, amused.
It seemed like every second, his grip on my left hand intensified, so finally I used slid my cell phone back into the pocket of the sweatshirt and sent my right hand down to rescue it. I gripped the assassin hand that had a grip on my left hand, and after a moment, he latched onto the right hand instead. I seemed to have in the process, however, activated my invisible WWTD (What Would Tony Do) bracelet.
“You can tell me.” I said in an almost whisper across the table to Danny.
Danny shook his head. “I cheated on you.” He said in a high-pitched squeal, as though it physically pained him to say it.
“Really?” I thought. “This guy was able to get more than one girl to talk to him?”
That was pretty impressive in my mind. The same guy, who besides being a good listener and having alright taste in music, was about fifty steps back from being a lady’s man, in almost every way humanly possible. The same guy, whose idea of a good time on a Saturday afternoon was to ride his moped to the zoo to visit the Butterfly Garden Exhibit. I had way underestimated his capabilities, but, nevertheless, opportunity had come knocking, and I was answering. I drew my hand away from his grasp, and scrunched my face up. I wondered if it was too much, but it must have been convincing.
“What?” I said in a mortified tone, though I failed miserably at creating fake tears to go with it.
Danny placed his hands on his face and continued sobbing for every bit of two minutes, as I tried with all my might to hold back my own tears…of laughter.
After a few minutes, Danny went on, in the dead silence of the coffeehouse, to tell me the story of how he’d met this girl at a party, while he was drunk and one thing had led to another, and things had happened and so on, as I inserted phrases, such as “oh my God,” and “how could you?” when appropriate… “At least, he found someone who likes his toilet water-tasting kisses.” I thought in my head. He apologized over and over again for how he’d broken my heart and would do anything for me to forgive him. And please don’t break up with him. In the grand scheme of things, I really couldn’t have care less about any of this. I hadn’t even realized we were in a relationship until like ten minutes prior, and truth be told, I was growing bored with him already. I simply saw an easy way out at this point, and was just about to take it. That is, before his little speech took an unexpected turn.
“And the worst part of all of it,” he sniffled into the napkin, “is that she’s pregnant.”
I heard quiet gasps of shock all around the room. A quick glance around told me that all eyes were shamelessly, on us. They were probably mostly curious as to what my reaction was going to be. Would I hit him? Would I throw things? Would I get up and run out of the coffeehouse with tears in my eyes and a broken heart?
“SERIOUSLY?!” I said in a shocked voice. I legitimately could not believe it.
Danny was shaking , he was crying so hard. His voice trembled and all the color had drained from his face. “It wasn’t my fault though, Laura!”
I just looked right at him. None of it felt real. Maybe I really had fallen asleep in the garage, and this dream was the result of the heat.
“Honestly! I was so drunk and she was like two-hundred pounds! By the time I realized what was going on, she was too heavy and I couldn’t get her off of me!” He blurted out.
In that moment, I could contain it no longer. Even I could not believe the magnitude or intensity of the laughter that proceeded to escape from my body. Danny, along with every other soul in the coffee shop, froze as I laughed and struggled to get out of my seat. They must have found my reaction somewhat puzzling, I suppose.
All in the same afternoon, I had been informed of a betrayal in a relationship that I didn’t know I was in, discovered that my relationship had come and gone before I knew it had even existed, and learned that my boyfriend that I didn’t even know I had was a lying, cheating jerk.
I was still laughing, as a matter of fact, as I turned away from Danny to leave the coffeehouse. From behind me, however, I heard him say, “Are you angry?” He sounded confused. “I don’t understand. Why are you laughing?”
I turned to face him one last time, as I told him, “Don't worry about it. I guess I dodged a bullet. At least, Jolene and I will have something to talk about when she gets home. Goodbye, Danny.”