Everything that followed was standard quarter-life crisis crap.
I lay in bed. I cried like a baby while I sprawled across the stained carpeting in my apartment, balancing a bottle of wine on my chest and an ashtray on my knee. I took a bath, an actual honest-to-goodness bath in my filthy tub until my fingers wrinkled and it was cold to stay in there any longer, but I did attempt to slip under the water, to see about that peaceful drowning bullshit people like to spout, but my legs were too long, and I was tired, so I gave up on it.
Tanya's friend Jane came around to gather some old books and a pair of boots Tanya claimed to have forgotten. Jane had thin, wispy blonde hair and wide blue eyes and she always smiled when she talked to me. Once, Tanya had told me she thought Jane wanted to sleep with me; I didn't think she was right, but it turned out she was, because Jane didn't leave with old books and a pair of boots. She actually stayed for two days, rode me four times and cleaned out my refrigerator, then told me if I wanted to be with her, I'd have to give up eating meat.
Thing is, I couldn't even remember saying like, four words to her in my entire life, much less the past two days. I don't know why she slept with me, but if I would've really reflected on myself, I think I slept with her just because when she was there, looking at me, I knew I was still there. That maybe I wasn't completely lost in my head or invisible or whatever.
Still, it was a shitty thing to do to poor old Janie, the look on her face when she asked me if she was a rebound was heart-cracking…what was worse is I hadn't even considered her that. It was strange, how she was like a lifeline in one way, but in another, she could've been anyone.
She spit on my floor on her way out. I smoked cigarettes and counted the butts to remind myself I was still there and in motion. It worked just as well as sleeping with Jane, and I hated myself for that, for being that guy to a girl.
The thing about having your business go under is, yeah, it's sad. It's scary. But the absolute worst of it is it's utterly humiliating.
When we started this venture, we'd certainly considered the fact that it wouldn't succeed, but never once did it occur to me that failing would feel so fucking humiliating. Not to mention it would come with dire hopelessness or feel like a big, black hole stretched and gaping from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
I always thought of myself as the type that would subscribe to the old adage "at least I tried."
I do not, but I sure wish I did. I wish I'd had the satisfaction of knowing I tried, knowing that had I not tried, I'd always wonder, but now I know.
The truth was I wish there was nothing to feel bad about and nothing to miss at all.
The week after closing, I had to call and borrow a thousand bucks from my parents, who looked at me from their floral print sofa in that exact way you never want your parents to look at you; it's this weird cross between disappointment and pity which is always, always followed with a talk about fiscal responsibility while they reluctantly hand you over a check that should feel like relief, but it feels like a million pounds in your hand. Then you make a futile promise to pay them back, but everyone in the room knows you won't but they nod anyway and then you feel obligated to stick around for lunch because they just gave you a thousand bucks so you can't just walk out but god; all you want to do is not have to be near them, not when they still have that look and you still have that check.
And it was just so awkward, sitting there with that check in my pocket staring down at a tomato and cheese sandwich on a dish with light blue daisies painted on it; feeling like I was a twelve years old but way too old to be this big of a fuck up at the same time. My mother put a glass of milk in front of me and my father sighed a lot.
"Have you thought about going back to school?" my mom asked, and at the very same time my father said, "they're hiring at KFC."
I stared at the sandwich on my plate until it was acceptable to leave, at which point I went home and watched The Price is Right for approximately seventeen hours.
People fresh from the psych ward of the hospital if admitted because of a suicide attempt aren't supposed to drink.
Luckily, I couldn't definitively say I attempted suicide. Attempting anything ever again was just not something I was up to doing; and it was a rough day, so though there were concerned glances, no one said much when I drank at the pub.
Or when I drank a lot at the pub.
Or when I was toe up wasted with my head on the mahogany table in the back, sweater wrapped tightly around me with a half empty glass in my clutch as the conversation inevitably turned to how, exactly, we were going to fix me.
Whiskey made my tongue loose and my thoughts fly free, the way only whiskey and love do.
"So what? You think you're too good to sling chicken?" Emmett asked as I recounted the week.
"No."
"So, go work at KFC then."
"I can't."
"Why?"
"I think I might have ambition paralysis. I just can't see the point."
"The point is you have to make money for food and shelter."
"I can't really see the point of money and shelter, either. I just…don't give a fuck. Like, truly. For the first time ever, I seriously don't give a damn about anything. It'd be liberating…if I cared about being liberated."
"Is this the part where you ask us to drop you off at Beekler and Maine to 'meet up with a friend' that no one has ever heard of while you score meth with money you borrowed from your parents and claim latent teenage rebellion? Or the part where we bust out Cover Girl eyeliner in midnight black and all cry about how our dads fucked up our lives?"
"I'm not blaming—wait. How do you know you can buy meth at Bleeker and Maine?"
"Look, you're gonna need a job to pay me back for this tab. And I do give a damn. So, original or crispy?"
"He's right. You need a plan. Your girl left you for greener pastures, and by greener pastures I mean a bigger dick, your business went under and you tried to off yourself," Alice said, ticking the events of my super week off on her fingers, her own eyes swimming in gin and tonic. "I'm just saying…you need a plan."
"What kinda plan?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
"Typically one has some kind of outlet for life crises," Alice shrugged, pulling on her stupid hat.
"Like the time you maintained a steady level of stoned for a month after the second time you were homeless?" I asked.
"Precisely," she beamed.
"You need to be in therapy," Rosalie cut in, and I swung my eyes to her. "If you deal with this in an unhealthy way and bottle it all up it will manifest in something terrible, like suicide or addiction or you'll shoot up Itunes headquarters or something. Tomorrow, I'll get you a few numbers."
I didn't have the heart to tell her I had no insurance or any kind of steady income. She just looked so damned earnest about therapy, I kept my mouth shut and swallowed my drink.
"You know what therapy got me?" Alice asked, pulling down on her orange hat, so I could barely even see her eyes.
"No," I shrugged.
"A couple grand in debt, bipolar disorder and a shrink who spent more time looking at my tits than speaking a word. If you want to go to therapy, I'll nod my head in silence and leer at your dick and I'll do it for free."
"Oh man. Thank you," I told her.
She grinned and Rosie huffed.
"You need help. I'll find you someone reputable," she said, glaring at Good Ol' Al, but that just started an argument between the two of them, so I lay my cheek back down on the table and gave a limp grin to Emmett, whose attention had turned to Keno.
A half hour later, we'd picked up old and new friends at the old table, all of whom kept buying us drinks and lamenting and celebrating the loss of our business and chanting about how Tanya was a bitch.
"You're better off. Who the hell doesn't want a fresh start?"
"That fucking slut."
"But, Edward, now you're not saddled down with shit. You can move to motherfucking Amsterdam if you want. You got no strings. You got nothing."
That one killed me.
I got nothing.
And then Emmett slid something across the table from me. The fishbowl full of numbers that used to sit on the counter of the Pull Out Kings for the monthly drawing.
"What?" I asked.
"It was your fishbowl," he shrugged.
I finished my drink, put the fishbowl under my arm and decided to head home even when everyone looked at me like that was a very bad idea and offered me rides and couches to crash on.
I was about six blocks from my building, trying to figure out exactly where things went so wrong, when it occurred to me.
The cute kleptomaniac stole from me and it probably led to my current crisis. She had probably set off a domino effect by taking that stuff, just like she said.
It was cold outside, the kind of cold that makes your legs ache and bites into your skin, but I'd had a few drinks and I hadn't felt much of anything for about six months or so, so I sat on the curb and dug through that fishbowl. I wasn't really sure what name I was looking for, but I was pretty sure that I'd know it when I found it. Sometimes, even though you know nothing, you just know anyway.
I sat there, tossing cards and scraps of paper in the gutter, disregarding everything I knew couldn't be it.
"Way to litter, Pig," some scrappy looking girl scoffed when she walked by with another, taller girl. I tossed a card at the back of her legs but it got caught in the cold, and sailed right down with the other garbage.
This went on and on until I couldn't feel my fingers and finally found a scrap of paper that said SorrySwan—and had a phone number scrawled on it.
Sorry.
It had to be her and if it wasn't, really, literally speaking, what did I have to lose?
I dug my phone from my pocket, briefly wondered how I'd keep it turned on next month, and dialed the number.
"Hell—"
"Are you the girl that stole from the Pull Out Kings?" I asked.
"Hell."
"It is you!"
"Listen—"
"You changed your mind about arresting me? Look. I said sorry. I can't go to jail or pick up trash by the freeway. I may have looked sturdy but I'm really frail. I only have six months to live and I'm taking care of my dying grandma and…kittens. I have…hempshchmeiheroisis, you wouldn't have heard of it and besides, haven't you ever heard of like, paying it forward? If you let this go—"
"You won the free album," I blurted out.
There was a pause and a rustle.
"How do I know you're not just luring me there to arrest me?"
"Are you always this paranoid?"
"Do I have reason to be?"
"Any album, your pick."
I don't know why I said it, I don't know why I was so adamant about seeing her again, and what, really, I wanted. She'd said sorry and I was never much of a grudge-holder. I had no idea what I wanted from this girl, I just really felt like someone should offer me some kind of justification for how crappy things have gotten.
"You're closed now, how can you be giving away free albums?"
"Because we're closed. Come pick anything. Everything. Whatever."
"For the record, I'm bringing a stun-gun because this doesn't sound legit. And because you have reason to want to commit bodily harm. But I'm also curious and like to think the best of people. I'll show up. Tomorrow at seven. What's your name?"
"Edward."
"I'm Bella. This feels like a secret meeting drug deal."
"I can't afford drugs."
"Right."
"So. Bye."
"Bye."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx
I saw her standing near the fountain in the center of the square, across from the former Pull-Out Kings, which was boarded up, or so I assumed. I couldn't look.
Bella had an old red handkerchief around her hair, dark shades in place and a wallet chain going from her hip to her ass. She wore a bright yellow sweater with the sleeves pushed up and was walking heel to toe on an imaginary line.
"Edward," she smiled when I started walking toward her with determination. "I'm thinking about an old Miles Davis I saw a few months back—"
"Pull Out Kings, the only thing I ever put any real part of myself into went to shit. Do you know how that feels? It feels like the shop wasn't a fucking loser, it must mean that I'm a fucking loser because if that's the only thing I ever really put my own heart into and it failed, then my heart must be worth shit. I see other people, who are really crappy people make big successes with their lives and I think that even though I think they're utter shit, I must be shittier, because at least they can, like, navigate life without everything imploding on them," I rushed out, pointing to my chest and drew a deep breath.
"I ended up in bed with some idiot vegan with a heart of gold because I thought it might help me in some weird way but it didn't and I think I broke her heart and I never, ever set out to do that or to fail at one more thing but I couldn't let her stay with me full of this weird kind of hope for something that I know is an impossibility. I can't even look at my friends anymore without my skin crawling and I'm not sure if it's because they're looking at me like I'm a time bomb or if it's because I am truly the pretentious prick I've always suspected I might be. Three weeks ago I ended up in the hospital because nothing in the whole fucking world mattered and I can't figure out if that makes me depressed or just a prick with way too high of standards but I walk down my street and I swear to God, I swear to you or to anyone that I'm lost even though I know exactly where I am. My girlfriend, who I know I must've loved at some point, took off to get off with some jerk who actually has his shit together and I hate that. I hate that either I wasn't good enough for her or she wasn't good enough for me, but mostly I feel like I've gone fucking crazy and it's all your fault."
Bella took that all in, much more calmly than I had any right to expect her to, then she shrugged.
"It's entirely possible. I'm a terrible person."
"Don't patronize me," I said, like a five year old who did, indeed, deserve to be patronized.
"I'm not. I was at The Pull-Out Kings the day before my grand confession to you. Only you weren't there. Some other guy was, but he didn't look like he'd take any shit. But then I saw you in there and you looked defeated and I saw the hospital bracelet. Yellow is for psych. So I told you because I knew you wouldn't really hold me accountable."
"You're a terrible person."
"I know. I'm also pretty sure I didn't really win a free album. So. I'll just…" she nodded her head, like she was going to just mosey away, but hell.
No way was I letting her go anywhere.
"You're going to help me," I told her, pointing a finger at her. "I'm getting my stuff back."
"I can say with ninety-nine percent certainty that while that's a really nice idea, it's also impossible."
"I'm riding on one percent, then. One percent is all I have. So start tracing your steps."
"And if we don't get all of it back?" she asked. "You what? Lose all hope and sit in a garage with the engine running?"
"No. I don't know. I just know I have to have that stuff back."
"How much is all this stuff actually worth?"
"That's a good question to ask after you stole it all."
"I said sorry!"
"I have no idea the monetary value. Probably nothing. It's probably worth nothing at all…but that's not the point. The point is….it's…if this can happen on a one percent chance, then something, I don't know what, but something about life is serendipitous and good and that's all I need to know."
"Hope."
"What?"
"You've lost hope and you're looking for a little. It happens to jaded people all the time."
"Philosophical cheese isn't on my menu today. What did you do with my stuff?"
"It'll be like a treasure hunt," she said, eyes suddenly lit up and she reached for my arm, kind of yanking on it and hugging it at the same time. "We're on the hunt! The Hope Hunt."
"I don't really—"
"Gosh," she sighed, "look at you. You're exactly my stereotypical type. By the time we're done, I'm going to be harboring a massive crush on you. You'll have to tell me your last name so I can spend my days Googling you."
I looked down at my jeans, hanging lower on my too narrow hips the past few weeks, the rubber shell on the tip of my tennis shoe had a ragged gash right over the small toe and my sweater had to have smelled. I couldn't smell it, but I haven't really washed it or taken it off, it can't have looked good. My fingernails were ragged and practically bleeding near the edges, maybe from the cold but I suspected I'd been biting my nails in my sleep. My hair hadn't been washed in days, my face hasn't been shaved in longer than that and I had thirty eight cents in my torn pack pocket.
"I'm in no shape to be anyone's type."
"That's exactly why. I'm very typical in that I swear to you, I will find the most soul shattered looking guy in a fifty mile radius—I mean, if you look exhausted and possibly hungry and sad and bleak and depressed, as though life, God and everyone who ever met you turned their backs on you at your lowest point, I get like, convinced I can save you just by sleeping with you and reading you poetry at night. When I saw the yellow bracelet on your wrist, I thought…Oh god. I want to make him soup and give him a hand-job."
"This was a mistake. I'm sorry—just….don't worry about the stuff," I told her, and turned to go. The last thing, the very last thing I wanted was to have to drag another girl into this, to hurt one more thing or fail at one more thing, but the way she was looking at me, I'd let her. Make the soup and give the hand-job. And then I'd feel even worse.
"Shit, wait," she said, waving her hands. "I came on too strong. I do that. It's an issue I'm working on."
"Along with the kleptomania?"
"I've got several," she said, ducking so her pretty smile disappeared in a pocket of shadow. "So, look. I swear I won't try to fix you via hasty seduction. Maybe we could just…look for a little of that hope together?"
My mouth pulled into this terrible frown and I didn't even know why.
Maybe it was the way she was standing there alone and I was standing there alone, or the way I never, ever thought I'd be this way and I had no idea which way I'd end up or how to get there.
"I don't know how to do that," I whispered, probably the most honest admission I'd ever made and I'd confessed it to a kleptomaniac stranger.
"It's okay," she said, then linked her arm with mine and was kind enough to turn her head to the sky when I used the back of my hand to wipe a splash of tear from the edge of my eye.
