Each morning thereafter, I’d wake it, feed it, flush its rear ejection, and let it hang out while I smoked my first Quill, but instead of then sleeving or playing with the guy, as had been our custom since forever, I’d return it to its PillowNest, which new practice it protested with very little vigor. It hardly, in fact, would protest at all. Just do an Allen-throat-clear, maybe a pratfall, maybe a brow-wipe, sometimes a combo, and then close its eyes. Which spooked me further: it seemed to me Blank must have sensed that I was changing in just the way I feared; it seemed like confirmation.
* * *
—
Not long after I altered our morning ritual—three days later? four?—it occurred to me that if I really wanted to nullify the risk of doing something I’d later regret (my wandering thoughts about potentially “worth-it bad” paces through which to put a cure were occurring more frequently), I should not only keep Blank out of my reach while I did my daily transcript work, but for at least a couple hours after I’d been finished with the work as well. So the next few days, I kept it nested til just before dinner, and spent my afternoons on tasks and errands that I’d been putting off.
I opened two accounts, a savings and a checking, at Permanent Bank, activated my ATM card, and filled out forms for a low-interest credit card. Around twenty-five twenties I then withdrew, I folded a sheet of looseleaf paper on which I wrote, “Thanks, again. —Belt,” and mailed it all to Lotta, care of General TrustGroup. I went to Tax Genius and hired an accountant, with whose help I filed a quarterly return, wrote a check to him and to the US Treasury, and went back to Permanent to open a second savings account in which I put aside the money I’d have to send later, with my annual return. (As much as I’d like to think my skills as a writer could render the calculations of my income taxes an engaging—if not a thrilling—subject to read about, I lack the drive to put those skills to the test. Suffice it to say that, when all was said and done, my $100k was reduced to roughly $73k, which initially—given that I’d thought I’d owe only $20k—disappointed me a little, but the disappointment wore off quickly, for with the writing of the checks (the first checks I’d ever written) came, for the first time, a sense that the $100k had been real, material—something I was losing a palpable part of—which, in turn, meant the remaining $73k was also real. I.e. I had $73k I could spend! Or save. $73k that was mine either way. I had it. And sure, I’d had it, already, for a couple of weeks, and I’d known I’d had it, yes, but I hadn’t really known that at all. I hadn’t, til I’d written those checks, felt my money.)
My taxes, debts, and banking taken care of, I practiced driving my father’s truck: parked it, unparked it, merged it onto highways, and then I took my test at the DMV, and passed. The following evening, Clyde and I visited the dealership out in McHenry that his tavern buddy Rocky Sims was head of sales at. I went there thinking I’d get a humble little Japanese hatchback, but Rocky walked us straight to a Chevrolet pickup, an egg-yolk-orange 2012 mid-size with 17,000 miles on it that he’d bought off a tweeker in dire straits, and that he said he’d sell to me for $9,000, which my father assured me was an unbeatable deal (“I’ll buy half this guy’s beers for a month,” Clyde said) even when you added the cost of a paint job. And I liked the paint job—it made the truck seem friendly—so I said I’d take it, and we went to Rocky’s office and called up Hiram, the tavern buddy of my father’s and Rocky’s who sold insurance, and I purchased a policy over the phone, and I drove the truck off the lot and headed south. I drove it all the way to Hammond, Indiana, and, for what just twelve would have cost me at Pang’s, I bought myself twenty cartons of Quills, and I bought Clyde a bottle of Ardvag 10—the Scotch that he’d liked so much at the tavern—and bought Herb a bottle of Glenfibbly 21 in anticipation of his future success.
* * *
The next afternoon, I drove my new truck to the Deerbrook Park Mall and bought myself a hoodie at the clothing outlet, seven novels at one of the bookstores, two more novels at the other of the bookstores, and a pork fried rice and a king-size marshmallow-chocolate-chip cookie I ate too fast in the noisy, overly air-conditioned food court.
The afternoon after that, I went back to the mall, bought five more books, bought a couple CDs, bought a pair of blue jeans, then considered buying an eleven-pound laptop for $2,000, went to the food court for chicken fried rice and a peanut-butter brownie, determined that I didn’t need a new computer, or a new pair of blue jeans, or any more trips to the mall too soon, and returned the blue jeans, then returned the CDs, and headed for the parking lot.
On a bench outside the mall’s automatic doorway, a twentysomething redhead in a leather jacket appeared to be talking to a Zippo lighter she repeatedly opened, lit, and shut.
“I’m trying, you know, but I have other things to—I have a life outside of you,” said the redhead; open, light, shut. “It’s not humanly possible for me to keep doing this,” open, light, shut. “Well, it makes things really awkward for me. I mean, people see us and think—” open light shut. “I was saying, people see us and I look like a fool to them. A clown. I can’t continue—”
“Hi,” she mouthed at me, smiling rather warmly.
Owing, perhaps, to a feeling of competence—or even strength—that had imbued me in the wake of having returned my needless purchases, I’d approached her directly without thinking twice: I’d taken a seat on the bench, beside her. I said, “I’m wondering—”
She showed me the palm of her Zippo-less hand, said, “I have to call you back,” and then reached into the hair on her head’s farther side and came out with an earpiece, connected by wire to a phone in her jacket, through which she’d been speaking—it was suddenly clear—to another human being.
She pocketed the earpiece, shook out her hair. “So you were wondering?” she said.
“I was wondering,” I said, “where you got that Zippo.”
“It’s great, right?” she said, laughing, and handed it to me.
“It is,” I said, “yeah,” though the lighter looked pretty standard to me. Smudged bright silver, an engraving—D.S.—in Olde English letters on the lower part. I lit a cigarette with it, asked if she wanted one.
“What kind are they?” she said.
“Quill Black,” I said.
“A dark archer of solemn death type,” she said. “No thank you.” She had her own pack of smokes. Bijou Jade.
I didn’t know any clever names for Bijou smokers, so, pretending not to realize she was waiting for me to call her such a name, I looked at and blew on my glowing cherry.
“Can I, uh, maybe get a light?” she said.
I lit her Bijou with her Zippo, and when she drew the flame closer by touching my knuckles, I seemed to remember a novel or story in which the narrator claimed such touching to be a form of flirtation. And it felt that way, too. Like I was being flirted with. Did I want to be flirted with? At first I didn’t know. I found this woman attractive, but there wasn’t any thunderbolt. Nor was she a woman who talked to inans. And yet that didn’t, strangely, disappoint me as much as I might’ve suspected. In fact, I might have been more disappointed—given the absence of thunderbolt—if she had been a woman who talked to inans, for I wasn’t in love with her, nor was I able to imagine I would be. Mostly, I compared her, unfavorably, to Fon. And I felt a little terrible about making that comparison, firstly because it just wasn’t a very nice thing to do—it was fratboyish somehow; would’ve made my mother frown, and perhaps Clyde, too—but also because I was struck by how doomed I’d be to a loveless life if Fondajane had become the standard by which I now assessed other women. Who could ever possibly compete with her? with the feeling that being near her gave me? I thought of only three people who could, three people who might: Stevie Strumm and Lisette—both of whom, for all I knew, were dead—and an even more hypothetical woman who talked to inans while being as attractive as I imagined Stevie and Lisette would be in those moments when I imagined they’d be as attractive to me as they’d been when we were kids.