Girl in Pieces

The next afternoon, before my first night shift, he’s waiting inside the employee entrance of the coffeehouse, folded into a green plastic chair, reading the Tucson Weekly. He stands up, blocking me from walking any farther.

“You okay? We okay?” The last two words he whispers in my ear and I turn my head from his husky breath. “Come on now,” he says as if talking to a petulant child.

“You almost hit me,” I hiss, sidestepping him. From the doorway, I can see the mounds of dishes stacked in the sinks.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Please, I’m sorry. I would never do that, I promise, I promise, Charlie. Things got a little out of control. I mean, come on. Did you think I’d jump for joy when I saw your little box?” He shoves the newspaper into the pocket of his jacket.

He takes my hand, but I yank it away. The Go players look up at us curiously, coffee cups in midair.

“Please, Charlie, I’m sorry.” His voice gets softer, worming its way through me. I feel myself giving in. He wasn’t expecting to find my kit. Anyone would be upset, I guess. To see something like that. But—

Linus pokes her head out the screen door. “Charlie, Julie’s waiting for you in her office, kiddo.”

I drop Riley’s hand, relieved, and step away from the dangerous warmth of his body. My heart flip-flops the entire time as I walk down the hallway to the office.

Julie looks up at me from her swivel chair, sighing heavily. “This is hard, okay? I don’t want you to think I’m going to like any of this one bit, okay, Charlie?”

She rubs her temples. “Don’t think I don’t like you, because I do. I just know my brother better than you, you know? Can you understand? I’m not going to…” She stops talking and looks away as if she’s thinking.

“Hand me to him on a platter?” I finish, looking directly at her. I feel bare today, as though something has been shed from my body. I spent all night in the tub, not sleeping, thinking about the dark that spread across Riley’s face, the fight that appeared there just behind his eyes. I looked at my charcoals and papers in the morning and ignored them, going to the library instead. I checked my messages (No Casper; Mikey’s in Seattle; Blue says the doctors are rethinking her release); I stole twenty dollars from a woman’s purse in the bathroom. The bill was tucked awkwardly in a front pocket. I was washing my hands, wondering about the stupidity of leaving a purse on the shelf above the sink with money hanging out. I didn’t really have to think much about it all. Stealing it was a delicious thrill.

Julie turns her mouth down. Her face becomes a little lost. “Riley gets things and he hasn’t done the work to get them. He’s an addict. He’s a liar. He’s charming. He’s not charming.”

She looks right at me. “In the big picture, he’s not old, but he’s had a life and you’ve had none.”

I kind of choke-laugh. “No offense, but you don’t know anything about me. Like, at all. You have no idea what I’ve been through and seen.”

“Oh, Charlie.” Julie puts her chin in her hands and gazes at me for so long, I become uncomfortable. Her sad tone grates at me. I feel for the lapis stone in my pocket, fret a finger over it.

“Never in a million years will a relationship between an alcoholic junkie and a scared young girl work out.”

Before I can say anything, she stands up, briskly ponytailing her hair. “We had a terribly violent father, growing up. My brother got the brunt of it. To my dying day, I will protect him, no matter how much money he steals from me and how much he siphons off my soul. But I won’t be responsible for collateral damage, do you understand? That, I can control.

“Don’t ever have sex in my office with my brother, or anyone, ever again. And if you two happen to overlap with schedules and you are here while he is here, I don’t want to see anything, anything, that even hints at affection between the two of you. Because I will fire you.”

We stare at each other. I look away first, because, of course, she has me. I need this job, and I need her brother. I nod at the floor.

“Now, go find Temple,” she says.

—

Temple Dancer is a tall girl wrapped in a batik skirt with bells dangling from the waist-tie, a Metallica T-shirt, and dyed blond dreads bundled into a bun on each side of her head. She crosses her arms. “Really? A girl dish? At night?”

“Do you have a problem with that?” I’m angry, Julie’s words still stinging my ears.

Temple Dancer’s face loosens and she laughs, a deep sound, like owls fluttering from her throat. “Just testing. It’s awesome. I’m totally sick of dudes.”

Julie appears, changed into drapey pants and a tank top to go to her yoga class. “Girls, play nice. Linus!”

Linus emerges from behind the grill, Riley’s grill, her face sweaty. “Welcome to nights, Charlie. And I know, I know, I work too much, it’s true, even nights. I never leave!”

“Let’s try to keep it together tonight, okay, girls? Kibosh on the drinking?” Julie pleads.

“No problem, J.” Linus spins a dish towel with her forefinger.

As soon as Julie’s gone, two waitgirls burst through the doors to the front, planting themselves right in front of me. Temple Dancer joins them. I’ve never been in the coffeehouse at night, so I’ve never met them.

“You’re the one that fucked Riley in Julie’s office? Oh my God.”

“Jesus! You totally fucked Riley in Julie’s office. How was it?”

“I thought he was fucking that Darla girl from Swoon? Does she know? Because she will die. She’s such a pussy.”

“I thought you were with Mike Gustafson. Did you guys break up? You were a totally cute couple. I saw you guys eating fries at Gentle Ben’s once.”

The comment about Mikey cuts me a little. The comments about Riley horrify me. Darla from Swoon? Did that really happen?

Linus waves the dish towel in the air. “Enough. Officially over, no more questions asked or answered. Temple, do your bit: train Charlie.”

One of the other girls says, “I’m Frances. Nights are hell here.” She tucks her orange bob behind her ears. “But in a good way,” she finishes before taking off to the café floor with her green order pad.

Temple says ominously, “The best and worst thing about nights is when we have live music. It can sucketh or it can giveth. Tonight, our pleasure is…” She fishes a sheet of paper from under the counter.

“Modern Wolf. Tonight will sucketh.” She jams a finger into her mouth, gagging.

The other girl says, “I’m Randy.” She does a little two-step shimmy. She’s dressed in a black miniskirt and white T-shirt with a spray-painted red target. Her saddle shoes scuffle against the hardwood floor.

Randy rolls her eyes. Her blond, feathered hair swings against her cheeks. “Modern Wolf sucks ass. This means we’ll get mostly bangers and some art types thinking this is prog rock, which it is not. It’ll be loud and awful and hell getting rid of them at closing.”

Temple is spearing receipts on a spindle. “Sucks for you, since you have to clean both shitters and the main floor at the end of the night.”

Randy nods. “And we’ll all be waiting for you, and stuff, to finish because Julie says we all have to leave at the same time? But we can’t help you.”

“Because nobody helps the dish.” Temple makes a sad-clown face.

“So we’ll be getting angrier, while we wait for you,” Randy says.

“And angrier,” Temple concurs. She frowns. “Jesus, you’re going to burn up in that shirt.”

Randy cocks her head at me. “We know about you. Julie told us. I have a T-shirt with short sleeves in my bag, if you want it.”

Desperately, because their machine-gun conversation has made my head spin, I say, “Do you guys ever shut up?” Behind the grill, Linus laughs.

Temple grins. “Never.”

“It’s cool with me, you know,” Randy tells me, leaning in closer, so that I can see the shine of the piercing in her nose. “Julie hardly ever comes in at night, anyway. My cousin, she was a cutter. She’s in law school now. Stuff happens, you just keep on truckin’, am I right?”

Move forward. Keep on truckin’. I’m getting tired of everyone thinking it’s so easy to live. Because it’s not. At all.

Randy gives me a friendly little nudge with her elbow and I try to smile, just to be nice, Don’t be a cold fish, but I’m starting to feel sick, and heavy inside. I look out the front window at the dark sky. Working at night is going to be a lot different.

Around eight-thirty, Modern Wolf come in drunk and take a long, noisy time setting up; one of them falls off the riser and passes out. Temple empties a pitcher of water over his head. The band has a core of friends who fling themselves into the battered wooden chairs and smoke inside even though they shouldn’t and drink enormous amounts of beer they smuggled in stuffed in paper bags. They stomp booted feet on the floor so hard that Linus shakes her head at me and says, “You stupid, stupid children. Why do you think that’s music?”

The band reminds me of the ragged kids Mikey and DannyBoy used to take me to see in St. Paul: skinny, loose-jeaned kids, girls and boys, with bad skin and crunchy hair who whaled on instruments in the moldy basements of houses, popping strings and bashing on drums. It was exciting to me, that you could throw yourself into something so much simply because you loved it and it consumed you. It didn’t seem to matter if you were good or not. It only mattered that you did it.

Modern Wolf sings, My heart is a political nightmare / Guantánamo Bay every day / You’ve searched and seized and strung me up / I’m left with nothing to say / I ain’t got nothing to say!

A girl in a mesh top and hot pants lurches through the doors to the kitchen area, takes a look at Linus and me, spews fries and beer from her mouth, the dregs caking instantly to her chin, and whispers, “My bad,” before Randy shoves her out. I sop up the chunks, holding my breath. They were right, nights are way worse than days. No one ever vomits during the day, except for that time with Riley. I’m exhausted and my head hurts from all the noisy music and there are still two hours until closing, and longer after that to clean. My heart sinks farther and farther.

At closing, Temple brings out a large bottle of Maker’s Mark and pours cups for everyone except Linus, who grimaces. Temple raises her cup and shouts, “Salud!” I just leave mine by the dishwasher. Even though I’ve had some drinks at Riley’s, mostly when he’s sleeping, and that half bottle of wine, I haven’t had anything else.

Someone has menstruated in an ugly way on the women’s toilet seat and that takes me some time. The men’s room is all graffitied walls, piss on the floor, paper towels stuck to the tiled backdrop above the sink. I drop stream after stream of cleanser in the toilet, but it remains a defiantly burnished yellow. My hands burn from the chemicals when I’m done.

While the other girls bustle and laugh behind the counter and in back, I tackle the tables: wiping them down and heaving the chairs on top of them so I can mop. It’s a lot more work at night. My face is red from the effort and I’m breaking out in sweat. Modern Wolf is still straggling out, the last of them bleary and unsure of the direction of the doorway. It’s Friday; Fourth Avenue will be packed with people going to hear music along the street, to Plush, O’Malley’s, the Hut with its enormous, glowering tiki head, all the way down to Hotel Congress with its pretty, old-fashioned awnings. Mikey’s probably calling Bunny every night. Maybe buying things for her in truck stops, stupid stuff, like pencils with fuzzy tops.

I wonder what Riley’s doing, because we’d be together now, on a good night, maybe listening to records in his living room, something quiet like that that I like. I wonder if he’s thinking about me at all.

It’s while I’m mopping the sloping hardwood floor, listening to the other girls laughing and drinking and smoking, that I suddenly get really lonely. They’re a gaggle of girls, together and happy, normal girls doing normal things. They’re all going to go out after, find friends and boys, maybe go to the bars. And I’m mopping shit up and smelling like old food.

The bell tinkles on the front door and happy girl-squawks erupt from the counter: Hi, Riley, hey, Riley, taking us out for drinks, Riley? My heart sinks and soars at the same time when he answers, So sorry, ladies, I’ve just come to collect my girl, and then there’s an awkward, small silence before Temple says, Oh, right, because she, and they, all of them, I know, were really thinking, But we thought you just fucked her.

He said My girl.

My heart leaps, but I don’t want him, or them, to see it. I can feel everyone watching me from behind the counter, so I ignore them, pushing through the double doors to the kitchen area. I dump the grimy, slick water in the sink, run my apron through the washer. There are two tiny white cups of untouched Maker’s Mark on the counter by the washer. They’re called demitasses and they’re for single espressos. Linus has been teaching me the names of cups for coffee drinks. I love them because they’re perfect and compact and unblemished.

When I finally turn around, the girls are there, giving me little half-smirks, Riley standing among them, already several drinks down. He wobbles slightly on his feet.

We aren’t going to listen to records. He might have said My girl, but will he remember that in the morning? I look down at the demitasses. What does it matter if I drink now, too? Would he even notice?

A tiny, tiny part of me whispers: Is there even room for me in what we are? A cookie, a book, a record on a shelf.

“I’m almost ready,” I say, and turn back to the sink. A wave of resignation washes over me. I down the Maker’s Mark and rinse the cups. My throat and stomach burn, but the warmth that spreads through my veins obliterates that. I wipe my mouth and turn around to face them.

“Are you ready?” I ask Riley. “I’m ready to go.”

Outside, I have to push through a gauntlet of bodies to get to my yellow bike. I’m fumbling with the lock when someone shouts, “Hey, Riley, man, is that your girlfrien’?” Slurry laughter creeps from the Modern Wolf crowd. In that moment, looking at the sea of drunken, black-shirted boys with greasy, dark hair and boots with dangerous soles, I know that Mikey has heard, or will hear soon, about what I’ve been doing. And I don’t think I care anymore. I feel heavy and numb.

A rumble of ooohhhs seeps from the crowd and Riley takes the bicycle from me, puts my backpack over his shoulders, settles on the seat. “Don’t be mad,” he says quietly in my ear. “I came to take you home. I swear I would never hurt you, Charlie, never. You have to let me show you that.”

He angles me on his lap so that I’m facing forward, my hands gripping his thighs, my feet up on the bike’s bar.

He tells me to hold on or we’ll both die, and we ride to his house.