Definitions of Indefinable Things Page 2

  “He looks bored,” I said. “Definitely in the right place.”

  My dad smiled and went on perusing Flashburn’s obituaries. I tell you, that man had a fascination with death, an inability to let things reach their inevitable end without trying to preserve some fraction of their legacy. Apparently, a career in taxidermy just wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Wherever something died, there he was trying to fix it. Electronics. Kitchen appliances. Cars. He hated when he couldn’t do it, when something was gone and he couldn’t bring it back. He’d start to mumble to himself when his patience was thinning, and I used to find it funny and slightly pitiful. But most of the time, I just found it sad.

  He grunted and adjusted the lever on his seat, keeping his head down to avoid meeting my eyes longer than either of us was comfortable with. The only person who hated serious talks more than me was my dad. “How are you . . . uh . . . how do you feel today?” he asked, glancing out the window at the overgrown hedge.

  It didn’t bother me when my dad asked me how I was doing. He didn’t ask to pry the way Karen did. Dad was a man of few words. He started a conversation only when he really cared about the topic, meaning he spoke only when the topic was dead animals or me.

  “Same as always,” I said.

  “No crippling headaches or anything?”

  “Nope. No crippling anything. Well, unless you count breathing.”

  He kept his eyes on the window and tried not to smile. It wasn’t exactly kosher to laugh at the subject of your kid’s depression, but my dad could appreciate a bit of morbidity every now and again.

  “Don’t let your mom hear you say that. You know how she feels about dark jokes.”

  “As long as my soul is whisked away to heaven at the end, I think she’ll be okay.”

  He craned his neck away from me so I wouldn’t see him smile. If my mom knew he was egging me on, he’d be in a lot of trouble. When it came to joking, there were two house rules.

  Don’t joke about Jesus.

  Don’t laugh at anything Reggie says.

  My dad was smart to hide his amusement, because my mother bustled in from the kitchen right as he was turning in his chair. She had a frilly apron tied around her waist, her hair pinned on top of her head like a housewife from a retro ad. But instead of a gourmet apple pie, she handed me a burnt sandwich and a juice box. “I made you a grilled ham and cheese to eat before work.”

  “Thanks, but I have to be there in five minutes.” I bit the sandwich and tasted the cheese and char mixture between my teeth. “I’ll eat on the way.”

  “You can’t eat while you drive. I heard this story about a sixteen-year-old girl, precious little thing, who tried to eat a cheeseburger while behind the wheel of her mother’s Chrysler and . . .”

  She recounted a horror tale she’d read on some How to Make Your Teen Hate Life blog for conservative moms. By the time she finished, I was walking across the front lawn toward my chariot (see: minivan). “Reggie!” she called. “At least tie up your hair a little neater, it’s all over the place. It’s bad enough you insist on dying it that awful black.”

  I didn’t need to glance at my ponytail in the rearview mirror to know that I looked like a dark-haired troll doll. It kind of went along with the whole “screw this” attitude I had going on. “Will do, Karen! Crochet me a noose while I’m gone,” I shouted out the window, triggering an immediate gesture on her chest and shoulders for the sign of the cross. She wasn’t even Catholic. Just desperate. Poor woman would have prayed to a rock if she thought it would change me.

  I drove to work in two minutes. Karen always got on me for taking the van such a short distance when I could walk. She said it wasted gas, and since she quit her job at the daycare and landed a full-time gig as a homemaker/knitter/life ruiner, the extra twenty cents was really digging into her wallet. I promised her I’d make up the difference with my tip money (plot twist: I rarely got tip money).

  Once I parked the gas-sucking van, I tossed my royal blue uniform shirt over my tank top. Oinky’s Ice Cream Parlor was a doublewide trailer stationed in the parking lot of an abandoned Japanese antique shop. A blowup head of a very questionable pig sat atop the roof and blinked its peering eyes every time a gust of wind blew through. The cherry on top (see: pun) was that not only did we get these badass shirts with a picture of the questionably intentioned pig, but written in swirly lettering reminiscent of a love letter one would find in a twelve-year-old girl’s Trapper Keeper were the words We all oink for ice cream! I only endured working there because my therapist said it would be a good distraction for me. Distraction? Sure. Good? Hell to the no.

  “Reggie! I didn’t know if you were going to show up.” My wonderfully neurotic boss greeted me as I came through the back door. Her brown hair was soaked in grease, and she had a wrench in hand, which worried me because she’d broken her index finger using the register last month.

  “I’m one minute late, Peyton. Literally. It’s five-oh-one.”

  “Ice cream machine’s down. Something is wrong with the crank,” she said in that panicky, the-sky-is-falling way that she had mastered over years of being a total nutjob. “The new guy hasn’t gotten here yet, and there’s no one at the window.”

  “New guy?”

  “Mr. Banks is making Carla go on maternity leave.”

  Mr. Banks, the owner, was this absurdly rich dude who owned a bunch of small businesses and lived by the pond, which was a huge deal in Flashburn, because there was this unwritten law that only elitists were allowed to live by the enchanted swamp of fish piss. His daughter, Carla, had worked at Oinky’s since we were in seventh grade. She was this stuck-up pageant queen/Pilates junkie that I’d had the honor of schooling with from kindergarten to junior year at Hawkesbury. Thankfully, we never talked much. But in the rare yet unavoidable conversations we did have, the only logical takeaway was that her favorite objects were ones she could see her reflection in and ohmigodtotally was her life’s motto. I’d credited it to sweet poetic justice when she got knocked up by some mysterious loser from across town and blew up like a float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Listening to her blast Taylor Swift from glittery iPod speakers while I did all the work was taking a hefty toll on my patience.

  “I’m going to go look for a bolt in the back room,” Peyton said, turning the wrench in what was clearly the wrong direction. “When the new guy gets here, show him how to use the register.”

  Show him how to touch a button and open a drawer. Got it.

  “Okay. Let me know if you need any help.”

  I sat down in the folding chair beside the window and stared out at the empty parking lot. I was just beginning to admire the weeds growing beside the telephone pole when there was a knock on the back door. The guy actually knocked. Knocked as if he would be interrupting something important. At Oinky’s. In Flashburn.

  Newbies.

  “Come in!” I yelled.

  The door stuck a little like it always did. He shoved it with his shoulder and stumbled inside, practically tripping over Peyton’s toolbox, which was sprawled out beside the ice cream machine.

  It was a virtual impossibility that his unwashed hair and puckered lips could go unrecognized. Not far behind a greater virtual impossibility that, evidenced by his subtle smirk, I was pretty recognizable myself. Once I got a better look at him, I couldn’t decide if he looked more or less idiotic in the Oinky’s uniform compared to his THE RENEGADE DYSTOPIA T-shirt. It was probably a tie.

  “We meet again, reptile,” I greeted him, no doubt committing some sort of crime of flirtation by acknowledging him first.

  “Chick with the butch name,” he replied, leaning against the machine to try to look cool or something that really wasn’t working for him. “Shall I call this fate or destiny?”

  “You should call this an underpopulated town.”

  “Fate it is.”

  I pointed to the chair beside me. “Sit. We’re going to be exercising your fingers.”

 
“And here I was thinking this is a family business.”

  “You obviously haven’t met Oinky.”

  He sat down, crossing his knees one over the other in the daintiest fashion.

  I couldn’t help myself. “What are you, a woman? Sit like you have something between your legs.”

  He grinned that same unconcerned grin from the pharmacy. “Don’t make me report you for sexual harassment.”

  “That wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to me today.”

  “And the worst would be?”

  “Waking up.”

  He looked mildly surprised for a moment, like he didn’t know what kind of response I was expecting from him. And then, as if on cue, he erupted with laughter. “I’m starting to think you waking up was the worst thing that happened to me today.”

  “Did you just wish me dead? It usually takes people at least a week to get to that point.”

  “You must hang around some very patient people.”

  “Oh, like you’re some gem.”

  “Well, I don’t joke about suicide.”

  “I wasn’t joking about suicide, I was joking about death.” I grunted. “Whatever. Congratulations on your unshakable moral compass, Mother Teresa.”

  “My moral compass is far from unshakable,” he muttered to himself.

  For the next few minutes, we engaged in the kind of stimulating conversation Peyton would have been proud to witness, taking orders and making change. Riveting stuff. After he got the hang of four quarters equals a dollar, he serviced one of our few-and-far-between customers, who had ordered a large dreamsicle cone; Snake had to sell her on a blueberry snow cone after she pitched a fit about an ice cream parlor not selling ice cream. She left cursing about how she was going to warn the masses of this crime against the dessert industry, and then hopped on a hot pink motor scooter and embarked on her mission.

  “That’s something you don’t see every day.” Snake laughed. “An ice cream vigilante.”

  “Reggie!” Peyton shouted from the back. She ran into the room with black gunk smeared on her face and a screwdriver clasped in her palm. “Oh, hi there,” she said to Snake. “I would shake your hand, but—”

  “You’re gross,” Snake finished. She looked embarrassed. “I would give you a hand, but mine are burned-out from all this strenuous button pushing.”

  “Has it been busy?”

  “Snake almost got stabbed with a plastic spoon handle.”

  “What?” she gasped. Peyton lived in a very nonactual actuality where exaggeration and sarcasm were as foreign as the execution of DIY.

  “I saw my entire life flash before my eyes,” he added. “Which was basically a series of mistakes with an occasional what-the-hell moment.”

  Peyton eyed him but didn’t put much stock in his behavior, considering he was fresh off of spending time with me. She always said that my attitude was a contagious and terminal disease that infected anyone who talked with me for more than five minutes. It had to have at least been ten, so poor Snake was already experiencing symptoms of my dark cloud mentality.

  She stuck the chunk of metal inside the machine and pulled a lever, which released a cloud of smoke. She uttered an obscene word. “I’m going to have to call Mr. Banks. I’ll be outside if you guys need me.”

  Snake sat down by the register and drew a Twizzler from his pocket. “Twizzler?”

  “Are you serious? What’s the deal with the Twizzlers?”

  “You don’t like Twizzlers?”

  “I don’t tote them around like loose change, no.”

  “They help me.” He wrapped one around his finger while he balanced another between his lips. “I used to chew.”

  “Tobacco? So you replace nicotine with strawberry artificial flavoring. Natural substitute.”

  “My moms told me the chemicals would satisfy the craving.”

  “Your moms? What were you, raised by nuns?”

  He shoved two strands in his mouth like a pouty-lipped walrus. “Lesbians, actually. But that was a creative guess. I’ve never gotten that one before.”

  I could have imagined my mother (see: drama queen) in this situation, collapsed on the ground after fainting from such a terrible blow. “Well, my mom is religious. Like, super religious. I think even God is embarrassed by how religious she is.”

  “She sounds lovely. We should get our families together for dinner sometime.”

  “I’m not trying for Clash of the Titans: Flashburn Edition.”

  He laughed, and it didn’t annoy me, mainly because it wasn’t overtly showy or desperate to impress. He laughed softly and manically at the same time, which was so appealing and foolish and cool that it almost made up for the T-shirt incident at the pharmacy.

  Another customer came by and received the news of the ice cream machine’s demise in a far more graceful manner than that of the motor scooter woman. He even wished us luck in fixing the problem, which I personally thought was overkill. Like, you ain’t gettin’ ice cream, dude. No need to plaster your lips to my ass.

  “I bet that guy is a serial killer,” I said after he left.

  “Why? The creeper van?” Snake asked, licking a Popsicle he was probably supposed to pay for.

  “That, and nobody is that nice when they don’t get what they want. He was just trying to balance his karma.”

  “I bet he’s a cannibal.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he didn’t mind not eating ice cream. What’s up with that? It’s inhuman, I tell you.”

  “Ice cream is one of the few things in life that don’t royally suck.”

  “It’s a better antidepressant than Prozac, that’s for damn sure.” He swallowed the last bite of Popsicle, his entire mouth dripping purple. “Do you ever wish that you could stop therapy and pills and just, I don’t know, do trivial and pointless things for purposeless reasons with other humans who are as weak and hopeless as you, and for even the slightest instant in time forget how vain it all is and just let yourself enjoy it?”

  “You just described friendship. And no, I don’t really wish anymore.”

  “Side effect of Zoloft?”

  “Side effect of depression.”

  He seemed to understand, and it made me feel oddly at ease. Talking to him was cathartic for me, somehow. I wanted to go so far as to tell him that I hated Oinky’s and my old co-worker was obnoxious and our hideous shirts made me want to beat myself to death with one of Peyton’s wrenches, but it was still too early to put it all on display.

  Minutes passed in silence. He had this tacky silver ring on his finger that he twisted as we waited for the next adventure in the ice cream–less ice cream parlor saga. After a span of inactivity, he studied my face as if he were searching for a pimple.

  I kicked his chair. “Is there a frickin’ car wreck on my face? What are you staring at?”

  “You have a birthmark above your eyebrow,” he said, still scrutinizing me.

  “Groundbreaking information. Let’s alert CNN.”

  “I’ve just never seen someone with a birthmark on their face. It’s weird.”

  “You’re weird. And your tattoo looks like you drew it on with a dried-up Sharpie.”

  “I wasn’t insulting your birthmark, just pointing out its uniqueness.” He opened the register and tossed a dollar in for the Popsicle he stole. “Some people are so touchy.”

  “I’m not touchy. I just don’t give a damn what you think.”

  He grinned, his lips and teeth bleeding purple. “I’m starting to believe you don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You know, Zoloft is a cure for depression. Not personality.”

  “Stellar insight,” I mumbled. “I’ll mull it over while I’m discarding all of your opinions.”

  I pulled out my phone and brought up my gaming app, hoping it would signal him to shut up. Shooting a pixel creature from a slingshot was more entertaining than anything he could possibly add to a conversation abou
t cannibals and birthmarks. Peyton came back minutes later and tinkered around with the machine. She even had a product manual this time, which would have been great if it wasn’t in Chinese.

  Time dragged on, and Peyton eventually hopped in her Jeep and sped home. Of course, that was after she drowned in aggravated tears, badgered with guilt at her utter failure to save the ice cream. Basically, she had a total meltdown (see: best pun ever).

  Snake and I were left alone to close shop, which meant wiping down untouched counters with cleaning solution, buffing machines that were going to be used the very next day, and cleaning windows that children were going to smear with their grimy fingerprints within the following twenty-four hours. While I was washing the sink, Snake appeared behind me with a cone of vanilla ice cream.

  “Who knew I could read Chinese?” he said, tilting the cone toward me. “Take a lick.”

  “You fixed the machine?” I looked at the gray heap of metal. The top was firmly shut, the levers, bolts, and coils bound in place.

  “It wasn’t broken. I tightened two bolts, and voilà.” He held the cone in his hand like it was a trophy of his not-so-grand accomplishment. “You want it?”

  I reached out and he snatched his hand away, my fingers crumpling into his chest. If I had just tucked my thumb a bit, it would have been a full-on punch. Curse my reflexes.

  “I would like to make a deal,” he said, hanging his head toward me.

  “Does it involve me physically assaulting you with either the ice cream or the cone? Because we’re heading in that direction.”

  “Cage the rage, my friend. I would like to offer you this delectable, carved by the gods, explosion for the senses, if you would hang out with the one and only me tomorrow night.”

  “You want me to go on a date with you? And you’re paying for the pleasure of my company in ice cream?”

  “This is called hitting rock bottom. A concept not unfamiliar to either of us.”

  “I’m rock bottom?” I awwed sweetly, touching the spot above my heart. “That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”