Chapter Two

“Actually, they’ll be using the online edition, which is new for this semester.” Dr. Carver adjusted her glasses and leaned over her desktop. “Let’s see...where is it?”

The words “online edition” made Pete gulp. “Um,” he said. “Is there a, uh, substantial difference between the online edition and the…”

Dr. Carver was giving him the “Idiot Stare” again.

“Never mind.” He shuffled over to watch Dr. Carver open the webpage. “So, they’ll all need the access code and the CD…”

“And the lab work is all included in the package,” Dr. Carver said. “Really, they should be thanking me for moving the text to digital. If all this had happened while we were using paper texts, I don’t know how I could have trained my replacement so quickly.”

Pete had a few ideas about how she could have done that, but he kept his mouth shut. Dr. Carver had already made it clear that he was not exactly what she was looking for in a fill-in Geology 101 professor, and Pete wanted to have more of his student loans paid off before he heard another opinion about his Environmental Studies degree.

“So, this document has all the portal access codes, et cetera, et cetera,” Dr. Carver said, “and you’ll get their completed assignments through here for grading. I’ve already set up all the deadlines, so you basically just have to plug in and go.” She switched through a couple of windows. “You will have to grade a few written papers from the lab, but they’re not long.”

“Sounds good,” Pete said.

“And when...hold on.” Dr. Carver picked her buzzing phone up off the desk; her face fell when she saw the number on the screen. “One moment, please.”

She left the office and shut the door behind her. It was really hard to judge her for being condescending or for gouging her textbook prices when you remembered that her mother was dying four states away.

She’d already cleared her office out in anticipation of her absence. The little beige-walled room was bare except for a metal desk and a paperboard bookshelf that didn’t look too capable of holding books. There were a few pale rectangles dotted with nail holes where she’d hung posters or bulletin boards, and the carpet bore the indentation from a houseplant. Pete had to wonder if she intended to come back to the community college after she’d taken care of her mother’s affairs.

As soon as the possibility entered his mind, he felt guilty about it. As badly as he needed a steady job, he didn’t want it to come because of somebody else’s tragedy. Dr. Carver hadn’t filled him in on all the details about what was happening with her mom, but it did kind of sound like everything that could go wrong was going wrong.

When she opened the office door and came back in, her face was clamped into a position best described as a ‘professional rigor mortis.’

“I’m sorry, Pete,” she said, “but I need to make a slightly longer phone call. Would you be okay coming back in a couple of hours?” Her voice was shaky, and her hand looked like it was on the verge of cracking her phone’s screen.

“Um.” Pete stepped back. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve got some errands to run in town.”

***

By the time he was set up to take over Geology 100 and 101, the sun was melting orange over sandstone walls of the canyon. He had the radio up loud enough to drown out the engine’s ominous rattling, and he was cruising just fast enough to keep from holding up traffic.

Even if this year turned out to be as insane as Dr. Carver, he at least had a pretty nice commute.

He’d gotten a month-to-month lease on a little cabin about forty-five minutes out of town. His landlord was a relative of a guy he used to date in college, who’d moved back here to have a real job and a serious boyfriend and be successful. Not that Pete was bitter about that at all.

Anyway, you had to take a Forest Service road for three miles to get there, and in theory the creek could get high enough that he wouldn’t be able to get out his driveway after a heavy rain.

It was on a couple of acres, and it was cute, and he could in theory have chickens and goats. He was starting with tomatoes and squash. He wouldn’t feel bad about abandoning tomatoes and squash if he couldn’t find a long-term gig here.

It wasn’t exactly like there was much to abandon here though. The summer’s garden had proved to be a massive disappointment, and Pete only had a couple of tiny green tomatoes and some zucchini to show for his efforts. No matter what kind of manure or compost or fertilizer he bought, nothing happened. Maybe he’d do better if he just got some potting soil and some big tubs next year.

By the time he was done watering and weeding and begging his plants to please grow a little better, Pete had missed five calls and gotten seven texts. Jeff and Brian must have gotten off work at the university over in the next town.

Pete sighed and dialed Jeff. The phone rang five times, and his voicemail picked up. Pete hung up and dialed again - two could play at this game, asshole.

After two rings, Brian picked up. “What’s up?” he said.

“Hey,” Pete said. “What are we doing tonight?”

“We’ve been trying to call you…”

“Yeah, Brian, I still only get cell signal when I’m literally right next to my laptop,” Pete said.

“Because you’re an evil swamp hag who lives in the wilderness, yes, I know,” Brian said. “So, there’s this girl I went to undergrad with, and she’s very riot girl but she is just super nice, and she’s in this band…”

“Is this the one from the organic farm?” Pete said.

“Yes! It’s Cheese Girl!” Brian said. “So, she’s in this band, and they’re doing this little underground show in a warehouse later tonight…hey!”

“Pete, don’t do it!” Jeff said. He was walking very fast or running and breathing hard. “They’re weird clown people and there are three-dollar tequilas at Hanky Panky for Tuesday…”

“Don’t listen to him!” Brian was trying to catch up. Where were they? “He’s an alcoholic! He’s manipulating you! He’s trying to drag you down...into... “

“I swear to God, Pete, if you let him take me to the creepy warehouse for the riot girl clown party…”

“Yeah, I’m not going to the warehouse,” Pete said. “Where are you?”

“We’re still on campus at the university,” Jeff said. “Did you have your orientation with Dr. Carver today?”

“I think,” Pete said. “I’ll have to tell you about it later. Hanky Panky. Three-dollar tequilas. Yes?”

***

Hanky Panky was apparently “not good anymore,” but Pete hadn’t been in town when it had been good, and he’d been going there for months before he learned it was “not good anymore.” It wasn’t great, but literally nothing about this town was great.

It definitely wasn’t bad. It used to be a roller rink, and it had cute waiters on roller skates wheeling around the dance floor in blacklight-sensitive shorts. Pete knew from experience what was eventually going to happen there, so he stuck around the corner where they still served disgusting roller rink food amongst neon palm trees and psychedelic space carpeting on surfaces that shouldn’t be carpeted.

“So, I guess, uh, not only is her mom dying,” Pete said, leaning close so Brian and Jeff could hear him over the music, “but it’s causing this horrendous family drama, and I guess there’s an affair somewhere that’s getting brought up, and she has all these lawyers involved.”

“God,” Brian said. “Who had the affair, though?”

“I actually don’t know,” Pete said. “It’s so awkward. You know, I don’t want to be here gawking at this poor woman…”

“Oh, definitely not,” Brian said.

“But still,” Jeff said. “Once you know part of that info…” Something behind Pete caught his eye, and he sat up like a prairie dog with an agenda. “Oh my God, it’s him!” he said. “That’s the guy I was telling you about!”

“What guy?” Pete said, turning around.

“The biker?” Brian said.

“Yeah, oh my God,” Jeff said. “Okay. So, the guy in the wheelchair.” He inclined his head toward the group of terrifying individuals who’d just walked into Hanky Panky.

Two of them were women. Specifically, two of them were bottle blonde Valkyries carrying eight hundred-dollar purses and wearing two-dollar eyeliner over about a quarter of their faces. The one in the wheelchair was shaved bald, with a ruddy goatee and full sleeves of tattoos down his arms. He wasn’t ripped from the gym, but he had the kind of upper body that made you just automatically picture him ripping a phone book in half.

“So that guy’s a Double Eagle,” Jeff said.

“Oh my God,” Brian said.

“A what?”

“So, you remember last year when there was that huge fire at the concrete plant and the FBI had to get involved and they said it was “gang related” but they never said who it was?” Instead of breathing after that torrent of words, Jeff took a shot of tequila. “That was definitely the Double Eagles. It’s like, this Eastern European mafia thing or something.”

“What?” Pete said. “Out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“It’s crazy like you would not believe,” Jeff said. “There’s the Double Eagles and the Scorpions and it actually used to be super fucked up in the eighties.”

“My dad investigated a bunch of their shit in the eighties,” Brian said. “After the Cold War ended they, uh, calmed down a lot.”

“Yeah, these days they mostly just sell weed and Chinese AK’s,” Jeff said. “But the Double Eagles and the Scorpions fucking hate each other, and they still have shootouts all the time out in the hills.”

“So, like, real bikers,” Pete said, watching the trio make their way around the edge of the dance floor. “Oh my God, is this a Ukrainian mafia bar?”

“Oh, hell, no,” Jeff said. “This little old crackhead lady owns it.” He flagged a waiter down with his empty glass. “She’s from Memphis. But she will shoot your ass.”

“So why are they in here?” Pete said.

“Why are you in here, dipshit?” Brian laughed.

“No way,” Pete said. The guy in the wheelchair was talking to a waiter who’d wheeled on up to him and handed him a shot. He was saying something while he handed him a wad of cash, and he was definitely appreciating the view. Pete wanted a hot biker to look at him like that. Maybe they could go sexily rob a bank together.

“Look.” Brian was pointing over to the blonde women, who were moving like sharks through the crowd at the bar. “Wow, they’re trying to get him laid.”

“I’m pretty sure those are his sisters,” Jeff said. “He only comes in with them and they are just blatantly trying to get him laid.”

“That’s so awkward,” Brian said. “Yeah, they gotta be siblings.”

“And it matches the news articles, too,” Jeff said. “So, obviously, there’s this other biker gang called the Scorpions, and they have some, like, blood rivalry…”

“Were you by any chance really into serial killers when you were in high school?” Pete said.

“Shut up,” Jeff said. “Anyway, I looked it up, and wheelchair guy is in a wheelchair because there was a gunfight at that truck stop down by the airport.”

“Why would you look that up?” Brian said.

“Because it’s real crime!” Jeff rolled his eyes. “God, sorry I have interests…”

“Interests are things like, I don’t know, going to see live music and supporting my friends from undergrad,” Brian said. “Cyberstalking the local gang bangers is, uh…”

“That’s not even the same thing,” Jeff said. “Cheese Girl is literally a witch who worships the devil in her backyard and she will absolutely put a curse on us and make my face fall off.”

“You are so full of crap,” Brian said. “We could have gotten a whole bottle of actually good tequila for thirty bucks…”

“Why do you always do this?” Jeff said. “Look, I will pay our tab.”

“I don’t care about paying the tab!”

“Oh my God, this waiter is taking forever.” Pete grabbed their empty shot glasses and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

***

The great irony of the night was that the “warehouse concert” was actually at a church housed in a refurbished old warehouse, and a couple of youth ministers checked everyone’s bags for alcohol at the door. Nonetheless, Cheese Girl had managed to get so wasted she could barely stand through the set.

Brian and Jeff had to stay after to help her get home safely. That left Pete by himself, sober, getting a ride from a nineteen-year-old clown cultist to Pete’s apartment complex.

“Is it in here?” The girl, who’d introduced herself as J-Glass for some reason, pointed to the parking lot. She had thin blonde hair and an amateur tattoo of a unicorn hitting a bong on her neck. Whatever the singer on the radio was talking about, she knew every word and was lip-synching along without missing a beat.

“Yeah.” Pete could have spent tonight cleaning. He could have spent tonight looking for steady jobs. He could have spent tonight jacking off and reading clickbait.

“Coo, coo,” the girl said. “Hey man, you want a blow job?”

Pete whipped around in his seat. “Wait, what?”

“A blowjob,” the girl said, turning the volume down like that was the problem here. “I can suck your dick if you…”

“Oh my God, goodbye.” Pete took off his seatbelt and opened the door, not giving a fuck if the car was stopped or not. He bolted away from J-Glass and across the complex’s lawn.

“Hey man,” J-Glass was leaning out her window. “What the fuck, bro?”

Maybe steady work in this town was a mistake. Maybe this town itself was a mistake. Maybe he should just suffer through the semester and deal with the fact that he was going to be a nomad into his thirties.

Maybe he should start looking for work in a different field. Where had environmental science gotten him? Gasping for breath, lost on an apartment complex lawn, with a faint tequila hangover and a faint sense that he should be somewhere else, anywhere else, but this miserable town.

Somewhere in the darkness, like the wheezing laughter of a cruel and petty god, he heard a sprinkler system activate.