SAM.
Knowing that your only computer was about to crap out on you despite not having nearly enough money to replace it can only be described as horror. Horror and terror. Torror.
Sam drummed impotently on the trackpad a few times and pounded hard. The pinwheel of death persisted.
Shit.
He calmly closed the sticker-covered laptop, briefly considering rolling into a ball and ugly-crying for the rest of the day.
The ancient machine—his trusted steed since junior year of high school—already didn’t qualify as a laptop because it had to be plugged in or it would die. Plus, the colors bled together on-screen so you felt as though you were on hallucinogens no matter what site you were on.
But if a computer was at a virtual standstill on the information superhighway, it had to be taken out back and shot.
Sam breathed deeply and raggedly counted to ten.
By his tabulations, he didn’t have enough in his checking account to get money out of it. An ATM wouldn’t dignify you with a response unless you had the minimum of twenty bucks and Sam had seventeen dollars. Minus the two bucks for the ATM fee.
The catch-22 was demoralizing. He needed the laptop to take an online film class through Alamo Community College so he could learn what he couldn’t from YouTube tutorials—how to block a shot like Roger Deakins, the best cinematographer in the world. Or to light in the style of Gordon Willis, who’d DP’d The Godfather. Okay, so he knew he wouldn’t learn exactly that in a sixteen-week course, but forking over the $476.00 for class and access to supplies was cheaper than camera and gear rentals for four months. Only now he couldn’t torrent any of the required watching.
Sam flexed the toes on his right foot. The sole of his black sneaker was split where it met canvas. He grabbed black gaffer’s tape out of his backpack, tore off a piece, and taped the hole shut. The sticky electrical tape solved most issues—except fried motherboards. Maybe he’d stop going outside altogether. He’d shuffle shoelessly from his bedroom to House and back again—a correspondence-course-taking Sisyphus.
He checked the clock above the door: two forty-five. That glorious lull between the lunch rush and the four p.m. caffeine fix. The only customer was a short guy with a ridiculously coiffed pointy beard working on his gleaming thirteen-inch MacBook Air, complete with portable laptop stand and extra keyboard. Sam briefly considered mugging him. Even if it was possibly the dumbest idea to rob someone where you not only worked but also lived.
He listlessly thumbed through the discarded copy of the city’s alt-paper of record, the Austin Chronicle, on the coffee table closest to him. Ever since he’d moved in upstairs, his world had become tiny. He wondered if he still possessed the necessary antibodies to venture outside. Maybe he’d get some ancient disease that we thought we were done with, like polio or smallpox. Did people get smallpox anymore? He needed to read a book once in a while. Isn’t that what people in recovery did? Get a hobby? Christ, “recovery” was so dramatic.
Sam could have killed a beer right now. Hell, he could tear through a six-pack lickety-split. He thought about the yeasty bite of a Shiner Bock, his mother’s favorite and the first beer he’d ever tasted at six years old, and how it had been months since he’d held a cold one to his mouth.
Instead he took a long pull from a glass of water and cleaned. He needed something to do with his hands while his thoughts churned. Sam fluffed pillows, bused tables, wiped down counters, recycled the papers, twisted the group handles from the espresso machine, dumped their filter baskets with a series of satisfying snaps, and rinsed everything out with scalding water. He was reassured by the way his knuckles felt tight and parched afterward.
Sam imagined his rough hands entwined with Lorraine’s. Liar Lorraine. His ex. She’d had beautiful hands. “Hand-model hands” her friends had called them. Long, articulate fingers with slender nail beds. But Sam worshipped her feet. Stubby-toed and flat, she hid them as a policy, refusing to wear sandals in the summer, which only served to make them more desirable. They were hilarious, full of personality. Clever feet that picked pens up from the floor when they thought no one was watching.
The rest of Lorraine had consistently been too cool for him. As aloof as a black-and-white photo of a French girl. Sam knew from the second they met that he had to ask her out. He had to.
He was seventeen to her nineteen. She was DJing at a tiny club with no sign called Bassment, wearing a white silky slip dress. Her hair was pale pink and shoulder-length, dyed ultramarine at the tips. Huge swoops of black encircled her shimmering hazel eyes. She was unmistakably sexy. Sexy. Sam hated that word the way other people hated “moist” or “panty,” but there was no other way to describe her. The Great Love of His Life was plain sexy. And terrifying.
Not that Sam was all the way innocent when they met. From the time he was eleven, he hung out with a ragtag assemblage of derelicts who thought it was hilarious that this little kid had no curfew and drank as much booze as they did. “Little Sam” had a smart mouth and the ladies loved him. He was selfie bait for older drunk chicks.
There wasn’t a bar that the kid couldn’t get into—he knew everyone, or at least his dad did and he was the spit-and-image of his old man—though precocious as he was, he’d never been in love. That was until he saw Lorraine up there on the dais, neon green headphones, ignoring him. Sam was a goner. Sucker-punched and clobbered.
He waited an hour to talk to her. Then another. Another two passed.
At three a.m., when the lights came on, he nodded and asked, “So, where we going?”
“Food,” she said, tossing her bag at him.
They drove to a diner, where she devoured a heaping plate of migas. Sam ordered coffee, and when they were finished and walking out into the street, without warning she hoisted herself into his arms, wrapped her legs around him, and kissed him. Sam was stoked—stoked that it was happening and stoked that he’d grown three inches over the summer and could lift her. Her breath tasted of green peppers and cigarettes and her confidence was mind-blowing. His mother used to say you shouldn’t marry anyone you wouldn’t want to divorce, and he understood that now. Lorraine was the emotional equivalent of a hollow-point round; the exit wound was a shit show.
Sam restocked the almond milk, consolidated the baked goods into a single cake stand, and switched out the bar mops. The new ones smelled good, bleach-clean. He held them under his nose. Sobriety meant a low-level boredom all the time. Taking pleasure in small, repetitive tasks was the big show of the whole day. Sure there weren’t dazzling, dizzying highs anymore, no careening around town with the most enigmatic and emotionally toxic woman he’d ever met. There would be no screwing each other’s brains out in a dazed, compulsive panic, but at least there were clean bar mops. He admired the neatly folded squares of cotton and rearranged one so the blue stripe lined up in the stack.
Right then, as if she begrudged him this tiny victory, Liar texted him.
Call me.
Shit.
Sam’s hands got clammy when his fight-or-flight response was triggered. Under the right light you could actually see the sheen of moisture appear on his palms. He’d made a time-lapse video of it once.
He felt equal parts sick and excited when he heard from her after an absence. The last time they spoke was twenty-seven days ago. Just one day more and he would’ve kicked the habit for good. At least that’s what the books on substance abuse told him. He thought he’d turned over a new leaf. In fact, he’d even begun jogging. Okay, so he’d hopped around the block twice in his busted shoes, but he’d cut back to three cigarettes a day, which for him was the same as completing a half marathon.
He thought about the pressure of her lips on his. The lemony scent of her hair. He closed his eyes and considered their last meeting and the bad ideas that followed. She’d stormed his newly small life and disappeared in a mushroom cloud of devastation. Again.
After that last run-in, he’d sent three unanswered texts before he’d been sufficiently humiliated. The first because he told himself he wasn’t the type of guy who slept with someone and ghosted. The next two because his stupid brain was gobsmacked and running on a flustered delay. Now boom: Liar on line one.
This is what she did. It was as if she knew the moment he was able to wake up without wanting to die and couldn’t abide by it.
Sam stared at the text.
Call me.
Three more hours of work to go before he could stew in the dark in his room.
What the hell was “Call me”?
Only sadists left that message.
Sadists and bullies. She might as well have written:
“Gnaw off your hand.”
Sam knew he was on the right side of history. Let the record show that she was the cheater. He was the spurned lover, the cuckold, the humiliated, the victim.
GTFO with your Call Me’s!
Not that he wasn’t tempted.
Sam sighed. Maybe if he called she’d tell him where she’d buried his balls and his heart.
People cheated on people every second of every day all over the world. It’s just that Sam couldn’t believe it had happened to him. By Lorraine no less. His Lorraine.
Jesus.
He’d entombed the event of their actual breakup so deep it’d been effectively redacted from memory. Sam leaned on the counter and retrieved the original file from 103 days ago.
That fateful morning she’d told him she wanted to go to the breakfast taco spot before work. The not-that-good spot on Manor that charged extra for pico de gallo.
Sam wondered if ordering a michelada with his eggs would be distasteful. He needed something to take the edge off after the night they’d had. They’d doubled-down on martinis after a week of fighting about money and Lorraine’s crazy work schedule. And while they both knew going out was a doomed enterprise, compounded by Sam’s desire to swing by his mom’s, they didn’t care.
That morning Lorraine’s hair was pulled into a bun. She appeared admirably refreshed, and Sam was grateful that no matter how much dysfunction there was at home, he could rely on his girlfriend to be there for him. He reached under the table to touch her knee when the chips arrived. He’d shoved a few in his mouth before she told him about some guy named Paul from her work.
It hadn’t meant anything.
Though it had been building up for some time.
It had happened more than once.
Sam reacted by yelling loud enough that parents eating nearby with their young children gave him the stink-eye.
Lorraine sat there stone-faced.
“Do you love him?”
“Do you love me?”
“Is it something I did?”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Did it feel good?”
“Better than me?!!!”
She wouldn’t tell him his last name. Or where he lived.
“I don’t love him,” she said.
“Why, then?” Sam implored. He was sobbing. Inconsolable. Lorraine, on the other hand, rarely ever cried, and turned cold whenever he did. Her expression hardened, as if his outpouring of emotion slaked any desire for her to feel anything.
In hindsight he was glad it wasn’t the good taco spot because it would have been ruined forever. Anyplace that charged seventy-five cents for condiments could burn in hell. On principle.
“This,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “This is the problem. Why does it have to be this way with us? Someone having a meltdown. Paul was . . . He was a distraction. I needed to get out of this. Us.”
“No,” he said. As if that would make the moment less real. Sam shook his head, mind stalled out at the denial stage of grief. “No. We love each other. We’ll always love each other. You’re a part of me.” He searched her face, uncomprehending. It felt crazy to him that she was even another person. Her arm may as well have been his arm. That his arm had the power to turn against the rest of his body and walk away made no sense. Sam felt something in his chest crack.
“We’re addicted to each other,” she said. “It’s not healthy. Paul’s boring—don’t get me wrong—but he has stability.”
Stability. Sam knew what that meant. Stability meant rich. Paul must have been rich. Rich in the same way she was. Rich like he’d never been and never would be. Sam reached for her just as she stood up, hesitated, and then walked out.
After that morning, he’d moved into House and they’d gone months without speaking or running into each other. Sam had made sure of it. He avoided their old haunts, telling no one where he lived, and he worked as many hours as Al had for him. It was while on a toothpaste run at Walgreens that she called his name from down the aisle. Sam couldn’t believe how companionable they still felt as they hung back in the parking lot. They made small talk, and no one brought up Paul. When she suggested they run to Polvo’s for a margarita, it seemed like a great idea. A pitcher of House Ritas later, it seemed an even better idea to take their trip down memory lane all the way back to her apartment. He hadn’t drunk a drop since. Twenty-seven days. Each one a feat.
When she disappeared again she became “LIAR” in his phone, and he tried to forget.
But with a text, a single directive, he felt the pinprick of the tiniest portal open in his heart. She had such beautiful skin. Especially her clavicles. Christ, and her elbows. He loved tracing his fingertips across the crest of bone on any part of her body.
No, he told himself.
He wanted to reconfigure his brain. Why couldn’t he control when he thought about her? Why couldn’t he control when she thought about him?
When they first broke up he’d watched Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and High Fidelity on a loop. He stopped sleeping. One morning Fin, sensing a need, reached out and hugged him. The two of them stood there for well over ten minutes while Sam cried so hard he got the hiccups.
Nope. Never. Again.
He deleted the text.
• • •
For the next two hours, he tidied obsessively. Jude texted again, and Sam nearly had a heart attack thinking it was Lorraine. It was another invitation to dinner, but again he begged off, citing work. He felt equal parts guilty and annoyed. He considered telling Jude he would be busy for the foreseeable future but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. His lower back hurt and Sam wondered if the customers could detect the crazy in his eyes.
When his shift ended, he was spent. Sam settled the register and yawned. He could hear Fin in the back, hauling trash. Fin unfailingly let the screen door slam, which drove Sam nuts, but this time he was too tired to bitch. The only good thing about getting up at the absolute asscrack of dawn was that he was closed by eight and in bed sometimes by eight fifteen. Even if all he did under the covers was blink and not drink.
Earlier that year, Al had installed an impenetrable security system that amounted to a fake video camera affixed above the door and an automated gate that was already no longer automated. Sam walked outside to pull it closed. It took both hands and his full body weight.
“Put your back into it, flaco!” Fin yelled over his shoulder.
Sam laughed. “Your mom,” he said. Fin cackled and cracked open a beer.
Your mom? God, he was tired.
Sam’s nickname in high school had been AIDS because kids are jerks and because he was so emaciated. He hated his concave body with his visible veins and the individual, stringy muscles that you could watch move under his skin when he worked. Yet somewhere along the line, girls started seeing something in him other than the skinniness, and by then he stopped caring.
Still, there were times when he wished he were a big, hulking, ham-fisted dude who could slam the stupid gate shut in one go.
“Sam,” called a voice from the shadows.
Sam jumped and made a high-pitched “wooot” that he immediately regretted.
He knew who it was instantly. And she’d for sure heard his sapless, startled woooot.
“I texted you,” Lorraine said. He could detect flint in her tone.
Sam was surprised that it had taken only one afternoon for Lorraine, a.k.a. LIAR, to materialize. Patience wasn’t her thing, though dropping by after a disappearance was bold even for her.
“What do you want, Lorraine?” Sam shot back.
“We have to talk,” she said.
Original, he thought.
“What could there possibly be left to discuss?” He finished locking up. “I mean, if anything, your silence for the past month suggests there’s nothing on the docket.”
He wished he could subtly sniff his pits to see how he smelled. Why was he only ever running into her when he was completely unprepared? Of course, she was buttoned up for work and wearing a blazer. Liar was the worst.
“Seriously, Lorraine,” he continued. “You made it clear. We’re ancient history. The Paleozoic era. Older even. Whatever comes before the Paleozoic era. The Anthropocene . . . No, wait, that’s now. . . .” He shoved his sweaty hands into his pockets.
“Stop talking,” she said.
He scowled at her.
“Please.”
Lorraine stepped into the light. She was pale. Paler than usual, which was already poet blouses and Oh-My-Goth levels of pallor.
Sam walked toward the porch steps and sat down. She followed. The sunset smeared pink across the sky as they stared out to the street.
“What is it?” His hand twitched for the cigarettes he didn’t want to smoke in front of her.
“Sam,” she said. “I’m late.”
No joke, he thought for the split second before the full weight of her words hit him.
He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. They felt numb.
Of course she was late. It made sense. In fact, it was the only news it could have been. It’s not as if anything ever went the way he thought it would. Lorraine, for that matter, was not returning to his life after a spell of soul-searching to tell him she still loved him.
Christ.
Late.
They’d done it this time.
The dreadful rush of adrenaline was so immediate that he clapped his hands. Just once. Some lizard-brain Texas hardwiring kicked in to where all he knew was to act out the caricature of a high school football coach in times of crisis.
“Okay,” he said in a purposeful tone. “How late?”
Clear eyes, full heart.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What?” Sam squawked. “Aren’t girls supposed to, you know, keep track?” Sam understood that the female reproductive system was a mysterious universe, but this seemed far-fetched. Then he thought about the teen moms on TV who accidentally had their babies on the toilet.
“Did you take a pregnancy test?”
Lorraine rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Sam.”
“And?”
“Positive.”
Shitshitshit.
“How many?”
“Four,” she said. “No, three.”
Now, Sam wasn’t an ob-gyn or anything, but this seemed an irrationally small number of sticks to pee on before any thinking human could declare themselves in or out of the unwanted-pregnancy woods. In fact, Sam couldn’t believe she hadn’t taken at least twenty, and even still Lorraine should go to the doctor for a blood test to be completely positive. Positively positive.
Shitshitshit.
“Okay,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. “You have to take a bunch more. I’ll take you. We’ll go right now.”
He almost pounded her back in high-strung jocular cheer.
“Sam, you’re freaking me out.”
“No, don’t freak,” he shrieked. Sam smiled with all his teeth displayed. “It’ll be fine. You should go to a doctor, a specialist, eliminate any doubt. For peace of mind.”
“A specialist?” she said. “You sound insane.”
Sam wiped his palms on the tops of his thighs.
“What about your regular doctor? Don’t you go to some fancy guy?”
“I can’t go to Dr. Wisham,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s my pediatrician.”
Why was she still going to a pediatrician?
“Why are you still going to a pediatrician? It doesn’t matter,” he recovered. “I’ll pay for it.” Sam wondered about the going rate for plasma donation and how much a slightly underweight human male could spare before he keeled over and died. Maybe he could donate a toe to science.
Sam cleared his throat. He rubbed his chin. Most of the time they’d been good about condoms. Most of the time.
“I have an appointment with Planned Parenthood on Thursday,” she said.
It was Friday. Thursday was way too many nights away.
“I can’t miss work,” she explained.
“I’m sure they’d understand if—”
“I can’t,” she interrupted. “It’s a big deal. I’m the only entry-level team member, and I’m running production on three tent-pole activations for a client. Some random can’t cover for me because I’m . . . ‘worried.’ ” Lorraine rolled her eyes. Sam found the rest of the word salad more offensive than “worried,” though he bit his tongue. “It’s not as if I work in fast food or anything.” She peered at him guiltily. “No offense.”
First of all, managing an artisanal coffee purveyor was not working in fast food. Second of all . . .
“You’re in advertising,” he said. “You’re not exactly saving lives. No offense.”
Shit. Tact. He needed to chill. Sam took another deep breath.
She glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m still processing. So next week, do you need me to come with you?”
Sam considered the logistics. Maybe he could borrow Fin’s car.
“No,” she said.
Paul was probably driving her. Every time Sam thought about faceless, rich-ass Paul, he felt rage collect in the pit of his stomach in blistering pea-size sores.
“How late are you?”
“Three weeks?”
Jesus.
Three weeks was an eternity in the life cycle of late periods. Or so it seemed from everything he knew about periods. Which wasn’t much.
They stood in silence. Sam pulled out his cigarettes. Then he imagined pink, teeny-tiny, microscopic baby lungs coughing. He put them away.
“I wanted to take a morning-after pill,” she said. “But then I didn’t, and . . .”
Sam thought about how careless they’d both been.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were worried?”
Sam’s stomach lurched guiltily at the prospect of Liar dealing with this herself.
“I thought about it.”
“You waited three weeks to text me.”
“I figured it was only a little late.”
“Well, now it’s kinda very incredibly late,” finished Sam.
“I’m worried,” Lorraine said, not meeting his eyes.
Wow. Was she going to cry? As screwed up as the circumstance was, was this when Sam would get to see Lorraine cry?
“Well.” Sam held her and she let him. It made him feel strong and capable. “We’ll figure it out.”
“How?”
“Just that I’m here for you. I support you. I mean, it is mine, right?”
She pushed him away. Hard.
“Are you serious?”
“Well, Jesus, Lorr, it could be Paul’s!” His anger swelled red-hot and righteous.
“I haven’t been with Paul since before you!” she yelled.
Sam smiled before he caught himself.
Ha. Suck it, Paul.
Sam studied Lorraine then. Shit. He was in way over his head. Still, he couldn’t help focusing on how she was mad at him and how he was stupidly elated that he was capable of making her this mad. It was all quite possibly the most idiotic circumstance to bring a baby into. A blameless, chubby nugget of person caught in the middle of two selfish screw-ups. Sam could feel his anxiety thrum in the back of his chest.
“If you are pregnant,” he said slowly, “what do you want to do?”
He thought about the A word.
A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N
AH BORSH SHUNN
BORSCHT
As in the beet-red soup with soft bits in it.
Borscht. Borscht. Borscht.
“I don’t know if I could terminate,” she said.
TERMINATE.
Sam’s mind glommed on to the glimmering red light in the Terminator’s eye at the end of the movie, when the cyborg refused to die.
“I’m not a child, Sam,” she said. “I’m not some knocked-up fifteen-year-old. I’m twenty-three. That’s old enough to know better. My mom had me at twenty-four. . . . I can’t.”
He stared at her. Just drank her in. Blond hair. Small hands. Blue blouse. Black slacks.
It was a fair response.
It seemed exactly the sort of thing you’d know about yourself. Except Sam didn’t know anything anymore.