Andersen Prunty's Blog

We get together and make fun of each other’s girlfriends until we have to fight. Each of us is left without a choice and we can’t get on with the evening until it’s resolved. My therapist tells me it’s a form of primal therapy. We’re modern men and try not to be too misogynistic about it. We try not to talk about appearance or sex, although that does swiftly cut to the quick.

“I saw Joan at the bar with that hunk from the gas station yesterday,” I tell Klaus. Often, I opt for lies.

“Yeah? What did Liz make for dinner last night? More hot dogs and chips? She must like big guys.” It’s okay to insult the other’s appearance. Also, he’s right. I’ve gained over thirty pounds since meeting Liz. And we did, in fact, have hot dogs and chips for dinner last night, but I made them.

“We mostly eat out,” I lie. “It keeps things equal.”

Klaus rolls his eyes.

“Did Joan buy those shoes for you?” I say.

Klaus looks down at his shoes. “What the fuck’s wrong with my shoes?”

“They’re super weird. Whoever picked them out clearly doesn’t have a functioning brain.”

“They were my Christmas present. I’d wanted them forever.”

“Still. Joan should know better.”

“Is it true Liz makes you shit in the yard?” It is, but I’m not going to tell him this. I understand her reasoning.

“What about you? You have to pee sitting down?”

“It’s a choice, okay? Less mess.”

“Then she must shave your ass as well.”

“Sure. It’s erotic.”

Klaus punches me in the stomach.

“What the fuck?” I say after catching my breath.

“I couldn’t think of any more insults.”

This is usually the way it goes. Klaus and I are not bright guys.

I hit him in the arm and then we’re off, wrestling on the floor until we get tired and sweaty.

When we’re finished, we clamber back onto the couch and watch some porno Klaus brought over.

He checks his phone before going home.

“Joan broke up with me,” he says. He doesn’t seem incredibly sad.

“This really changes things,” I say.

“You never even met her,” he says.

“It’s because she’s too good for me.” This feels like an admission of some kind. “Which means she’s too good for you.”

“You’re probably right,” Klaus says. He slides his phone back into his pocket and heads out to his car.

I pick up my phone and text Liz before remembering she’d blocked me months ago.

I’m at an outdoor gathering. The night is heavy with humidity. The owner of the house won’t let anyone inside. There are maybe twenty of us broken into groups of two or three. I’m standing around with two guys whose names I’ve forgotten.

“So what kind of stuff do you watch?” the guy on the right says.

“I like fail videos.” I take a sip of my beer.

“You know who else likes fail videos?” the guy says. “This guy.”

He points to the guy on my left before drifting over to another group.

“So … fail videos,” I say.

“I could watch them all day,” he says.

“Some of them get repetitive.”

“Like the people falling down their porch steps. Like, it’s snowy and icy, you’ve just come out of your door, you’re probably going to fall.”

“I was surprised this one time. I thought that was going to happen. And it probably would have, but a bear charged the porch and mauled them. It didn’t say no one was harmed but the camera didn’t like … linger.”

“I’d watch that,” the other guy says.

“I’ll send you a link if I can find it. Do you … remember why we’re here?”

“I’m here for the free beer. I just saw a group of people in a yard and wandered in.”

“I don’t even know whose house this is. I think I got a text from … someone. I don’t know anyone here.”

The modest house attached to the yard bursts into flame.

The other guy motions to the house with his beer bottle.

“I guess we’re here for an immolation or arson or … something.”

“You gonna stick around?”

“Probably until the fire trucks show up.”

A man on fire charges out the back door of the house flapping his arms. He hits the first step on the porch, rolls his ankle, and goes sprawling into the yard.

The other guy and I can’t help but laugh, even though it’s a pretty tired fail.

Two other guys rush over to the burning man and dump a cooler on him. They didn’t have time to empty it so a lot of cans and bottles bludgeon the man on the ground.

The guy I’m talking to, illuminated by flames, says, “I wonder if he’ll live.”

The flames are making the already warm night unbearably hot. I drift into the shadows of the yard and farther away as the shadows are consumed. I keep receding until I’m out of the yard and wandering the glowing orange neighborhood, sirens erupting around me.

*This story originally appeared in If I Only Had Cocaine and Other Drug Stories (edited by Will Paoletta)

My grandmother Ruby was the biggest drug addict I knew. Some people see the elderly as stodgy and authoritarian – something to be rebelled against. But I saw my grandmother as something of the ultimate rebel. Much like an aging Keith Richards, she dazedly stumbled through her latter years. She had used the system created for her generation and now moved through her days free from time or financial restraint, her brain wrapped in a comforting fog provided by her collection of amber bottles. She even had kind of a rock star name. We called her Grube.

***

“You got any pot?” Todd asked.

He was in town from college. This was his first summer back since we’d both turned twenty-one and the only reason we weren’t going out to a bar was because neither one of us had any money. I worked part-time at a used bookstore and lived with my parents. My first marriage had already ended and most of my meager earnings went to pay child support.

When Todd asked this question we were actually sitting in my childhood/current bedroom and looking at the crib I’d had to sell my record collection to buy.

“Um … no,” I said.

“Know where we can get some?”

I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer this. I did know where we could get some. At least half my coworkers were chronic pot smokers and would have happily shared but then I would have felt like I owed them something. And probably the real reason was that I was now sort of embarrassed by Todd and actually would not willingly introduce him to anyone I’d met after graduating high school. He had dreadlocks, perpetually wore something that looked like pajama bottoms for pants, a shirt that looked like it could have been made from a rug, smelled like patchouli, and listened to the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Bob Marley. I wore a lot of black and was going through an experimental jazz phase. We didn’t really mesh anymore.

“I have no idea.”

He shook his hair back and ran a hand through his beard, inspecting his nails as though he’d snagged a nit or some old food crumbs.

I had to think of something. Todd was the type of person who wouldn’t leave unless you either asked him to or came up with some excuse like going to sleep. I was way too nice to ask anyone to leave, and since it was still relatively early evening, I didn’t think the going-to-sleep thing would work. That actually wasn’t guaranteed to work anyway. There were times in high school when I’d fallen asleep only to wake up to him playing my video games, rocking around in a chair and shouting at the TV like it was filled with real people. Now, of course, I didn’t have any of those games. It was pretty much just me, my bed, a highly distressed wardrobe filled with more distressed clothes, and the crib, currently minus one child.

If I didn’t think of something soon I imagined falling asleep out of sheer boredom and waking up in the harsh light of dawn to find Todd in exactly the same position.

Then I thought of Grube.

It was a long shot.

It could possibly work with Todd. He was the type of person who just needed to be drunk or high at all times but was too naïve to see himself that way. He still looked at everything as an experience. To me, most of the time, that experience seemed to consist of watching Star Trek reruns or going to Taco Bell and ordering disturbing amounts of food.

“Does it have to be pot?” I asked.

“Why? You got anything else?”

“I don’t have anything but I know someone who does.”

I would have gotten specific with him but it proved to be unnecessary. He stood up, pointed at my bedroom door, and said, “Let’s go.”

***

Being an adult child is way more humiliating than being an actual child. We ran into my mother as we tried to leave the house. She sat at the kitchen table eating a bag of chips and staring dazedly into the middle distance.

“Goin’ out,” I said.

“Don’t stay out too late.”

“Might stay over at Todd’s.” I had no intention of staying over at Todd’s but if I didn’t tell her this she would stay awake until I got home. It was more of a motherly anxiety thing than a controlling thing.

“Be careful on the roads. All those drunk drivers …”

My mother rarely left the house after dark. I have no idea what she imagined it was like, swarms of drunk drivers rampaging through our conservative rural town of fewer than 5000 people.

“Will do.”

“And you boys don’t do anything you’re not supposed to do.”

Now, I have no idea what my mom was like at my age. Okay, well, I guess I do. She was married and had already had my older brother but, before that, before responsibility, I had no idea what she was like. I knew she graduated high school in the late Sixties though. My knowledge of the Sixties came primarily from classic rock, Hunter S. Thompson, and Allen Ginsberg. I pretty much imagined everyone doing bong hits in between gangbangs with the Hell’s Angels. I wanted to tell her she didn’t really have anything to worry about. This was the mid-’90s. We grew up with U2, REM, Morrissey, and grunge. If we ever, for a second, felt like we were having a good time, we knew something was wrong. And while dance music did exist and I knew a few people who’d been to a rave, these were people with far fewer social anxieties and much less cynicism than me.

***

After a few minutes of riding in my trashed Pontiac, Todd finally asked, “Where we going, anyway?”

I didn’t want to tell him we were going to my grandmother’s house. Even though I was sure he would be excited about all the treasure contained therein. I needed to make it sound cool and desirable so I said, “Well, let’s just say I call it the pharmacy.” I’m not sure why I did that. I wasn’t and never had been a drug user but whenever interacting with them, I tried to sound like I used way more drugs than they did. I’m not sure how convincing it was. I looked and acted like a guy who read for fun. And I was.

“Cool,” he said.

Success?

***

“Dude, isn’t this your grandma’s house?”

We sat in Grube’s driveway. Grube slept whenever the hell she felt like it so I had to quickly scan her windows to make sure I could see a light or the television flickering, even though it wasn’t yet dark. I couldn’t remember Todd ever being here but then I recalled a summer where we were around each other all the time. So much so that I had grown so used to him being there I’d apparently just erased him from that time period. He just came over and never left.

“Trust me,” I said.

I was sure we’d be able to find something. I remember staying with Grube when I was something like twelve and, when I complained about a headache, she’d given me a Darvon and I’d blacked out. My older brother, who’d often gotten in fights with my parents about being drunk and high all the time, moved in with Grube briefly. He’d told my parents it was so he’d be closer to his job but I knew it was because of the never-ending supply of Xanax and also, because of Grube’s chemical oblivion and loose moral code, he could have his girlfriend there for sleepovers. Of course, Grube – my father’s mother – hated my mother so it’s possible she was rebelling against her milquetoast born againism by introducing my brother to the party lifestyle of the elderly.

***

The door swung open and I was met with the stark appearance of Grube. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a large hatchet nose and ice blue eyes. She wore her gray hair in the typically fluffy old lady perm. My brother referred to this style as the ‘Vicious Poodle.’ Today she wore a powder blue blouse with ruffles down the front tucked into elasticated white cotton pants in a crazy jumbled fusion of elegance and leisure. Because of some blood pressure medicine that increased her sensitivity to light she was pale as a vampire.

“Grandma Rube!” I usually used this voice shortly before asking for money or coming to retrieve some moderately high-dollar piece of furniture or electronics I’d convinced them they didn’t need. I was hoping it was not announcing I was there for her to give my friend drugs.

“Hey there.” She pulled me into her cloying scent of perfume, cigarette smoke, instant coffee, Doublemint gum, and fabric softener.

It wasn’t until receiving cards for my graduation and failed marriage that I realized Grube didn’t know my name. I was one of four children, we were all boys, and that was too confusing and not worth her time. Plus she had a few other grandkids she liked way better. My name was relatively close to one of my uncles’ – give or take a few letters – so, if forced to address me by a name, she usually chose that one. I didn’t bother re-introducing her to Todd. I knew from her previous encounters she didn’t like his personality and, while he looked completely different now, I knew she wouldn’t understand why he looked like that. Any male who didn’t wear button-down shirts and creased polyester dress pants or a full suit was pretty much a hobo.

She also never seemed concerned or asked why you were there. She assumed you were there to hang out with her.

“Come on in. I was just folding laundry.”

Grube did few things. She cooked. She cleaned their small ranch house. She did laundry and dishes. She occasionally had to lie in bed for days with her back. And she did drugs and sat in a chair and smoked, sometimes while having languidly laconic conversations with a relative either over the phone or in person, sometimes with the ad section of the newspaper spread before her. I wasn’t sure she could read the actual paper.

She waved us in and said there was ice cream in the freezer. I had liked this in my fat youth and it was the one thing she remembered about me.

“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t really want any ice cream but knew she kept all her pills on the top of the refrigerator so I needed to draw Todd’s attention to them and then distract Grube while he helped himself. As I grabbed a bowl from a cabinet and glanced at Todd while moving toward the freezer I saw him looking at the pills with the same reverence an alcoholic stares at all those lighted, gleaming liquor bottles behind the bar. My plan was to get some ice cream and lure her out to the renovated garage where she did the bulk of her lounging and smoking.

I grabbed the container of ice cream from the freezer and sat it down on the faux wood counter. It was store-brand vanilla in the form of a half-gallon brick. Grube still stood in the kitchen, staring at me. Todd still gazed at the pill bottles and remained unacknowledged by Grube. Hopefully Todd was reading the prescription labels and deciding what he needed. I opened random drawers looking for a spoon or ice cream scoop. My incompetence would soon make Grube anxious and impatient and she would either do it for me or go calm down. Either one of those would provide the necessary distraction. I grabbed a spoon and, as soon as I started bending it in the tundra of the ice cream, she moved in.

“Maybe I should use the scoop,” I laughed.

I grabbed the scoop. She made an exhausted sound and slowly sauntered out to the finished garage.

I glanced at Todd and mumbled, “Just take the whole bottle.” I figured since Grube was a collector, she would have plenty of backup to last until her next pill run. He reached up and grabbed three bottles with a silence and dexterity I didn’t know he was capable of. Then he vanished back to the bathroom. Looking down at my current project, I realized I didn’t want any ice cream and deemed the sliver I had chiseled and transferred to the bowl enough. I put the box of ice cream back in the freezer and carried the bowl out to the garage.

Grube sat at the faux wood bar they’d had installed, a Viceroy 100 burning in her mannish right hand while her left clasped to forehead. The room smelled like cigarette smoke, new carpet, and newspaper.

“That all you got?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

“I coulda got it for you.” Grube had rightfully assumed I was too lazy to carve any more out.

“So how ya doing?” This was always a good question, leading her to rattle off a series of ailments or a list of grievances with particular family members.

“Back’s been killing me.”

“I thought you took stuff for that.” I wanted to tell her that most people her age would have back problems if they did twenty loads of laundry a day and rearranged furniture on a weekly basis.

“I took the last one this morning. I’ve got a prescription waiting at Meijers. Dad was supposed to take me but … I don’t know where he is.”

Grube called my grandfather Dad, which was creepy. To heighten her rock star image and because she was super stoned all the time, Grube did not drive. When he was younger, my grandfather had been an alcoholic and, since retiring, if he wasn’t at home Grube jumped to the conclusion he was on a bender. But it was Sunday so I was pretty sure he was at church, where the most nefarious thing he did was to sneak a cigarette on the way there and back. He’d already had one surgery for lung cancer and Grube wouldn’t let him smoke anymore.

She would never ask me to take her. It was possible she didn’t even realize I was old enough to drive and had just assumed me and my derelict friend had been transported there by sorcery to eat her ice cream and keep her company until my grandfather returned from his Dionysian revelry.

While Todd was all about the drugs, I was all about making my life as ridiculous and difficult as possible so I said, “I could take you. If you think they’re open.”

“It’s Meijers. They’re always open.”

I knew they were always open but I didn’t think the pharmacy was. Most of them had even more restrictive hours than bars.

“That’d be a big help. We could take the T-bird.”

“We can just take my car. I think I’m parking it in anyway.” Truthfully, the Thunderbird was just so huge I was terrified to drive it.

She crushed out her cigarette, stood slowly, and put her lighter in a red pleather case housing her pack of cigarettes before snapping its gold clasp shut.

Todd wandered into the garage, looking eager to leave.

“We gotta take Grube to pick up a prescription.”

Todd looked crazy paranoid.

***

I opened the passenger-side door for Grube, always the gentleman. Todd raked a bunch of stuff from the backseat onto the floorboard and dropped himself in. I got behind the wheel and looked over at Grube. Her eyes were so icy and expressionless they were virtually unreadable. The giant lenses of her transitional glasses were now so dark it was impossible to see her eyes anyway. But her disgust was plainly evident by the way her mouth was frozen in something like a silent scream. She had ground her feet down to find the floorboard, fast food wrappers and some old clothes covering her white orthopedic shoes. I had to get out of the driveway while she was still trapped.

“Is this your car?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sorry. It’s a little messy.”

“It’s disgusting.”

I would have had to agree with her but I didn’t know if it represented the irreparable and debilitating character flaw she would have seen it as. It was disgusting. What could I say? I was a young, poor single father who had a job and went to college and sometimes my sloppy girlfriend borrowed my car. I’d clean it when I had time. I wasn’t one of those self-delusional types who didn’t even know how filthy he was.

She continued looking around, moving only her neck.

“If I had knowed it was like this I woulda brought out a trash bag.”

It was no real secret to me how Grube spent entire days doing – in the grand scheme of things – not much of anything. Everything was turned into an Olympian sprawl of OCD.

She began fanning her face with her hand and I could feel some sort of impending meltdown. I had rolled down my window. Todd had rolled down both of the back windows. Still, this cacophony of wind didn’t tip her off that my car did not have any air conditioning.

“Phew,” she said. “Shoo boy. Hot. Why don’t you turn on some air conditioning?”

“I don’t have any.”

One of the reasons she was hesitant to roll down her window was that she didn’t want to mess up her hair.

“Agh. How do you stand it?”

“It’s tough. I have to take a lot of showers and sometimes I have to drive nude and put my clothes on before I get out of the car.”

This was another cool thing about Grube: Because she was usually so stoned and self-involved you could say anything and it wouldn’t get much of a reaction. When I was a few years younger, she and my grandfather had felt brave and let me and my two younger brothers ride with them on a family trip. After most of our conversational efforts and pleas were ignored, we just started saying things like: “I was diagnosed with Leukemia,” and “Mom’s pregnant again.” Nothing got a reaction.

“Shoo,” she said again. Beads of sweat stood out from beneath all the powder on her face. Her cheeks were redder than I’d ever seen them and much of the fluff had fallen out of her perm. “This is just terrible.”

She shuffled her feet around in the trash and searched the door for a lever or button that would automatically roll the window down. My car had neither. The knob was a pair of pliers held in place by a C-clamp and could only roll the window down manually.

“This is just jenky.” She cranked it down using a billion times more effort than was necessary and said, “Why don’t you get rid of some of this garbage?” She reached down and began chucking bags out the window. I laughed and turned the radio on. It was some mix tape I’d made and Aphex Twin’s “Ventolin” came grating out of the two working speakers. Grube chucked another bag out the window and I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if Todd was getting any of this but he’d fallen asleep. I suppose I should have asked her to stop but I hadn’t really learned to care about the environment yet and Grube probably didn’t even know what it was.

Once most of the trash was eliminated, her thin hair was plastered to her scalp and her face powder had separated into weird clumps. It took her way longer to notice the music than I thought it would. If you’re not familiar with the song, you should check it out. I used it to drive customers out of the store at closing time. For all I knew, it took her so long to notice it because it matched the sounds in her head all the time. When she did finally notice it, she looked in horror toward the stereo, her top lip drawing back from gleaming dentures.

“Is this what you kids listen to? It sounds evil.”

“You just have to give it a chance.”

“I like that Kenny Rogers. You ever listen to him? ‘Love Will Turn You Around.’”

“Oh yeah. That was in Six Pack. Good song. I don’t have it, though. This is all I have.”

But our discussion had ended once she stopped talking. I could have pretty much said anything.

“Is your prescription going to be ready?” This question involved her and would get a response.

“Should have been ready since yesterday.”

“I really need to get back so I can get my girlfriend to the abortion clinic.” This question did not involve her and would not get a response.

It didn’t.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

***

Todd was still asleep or passed out or whatever by the time we got to Meijer. I asked if he needed anything.

Grube lit a cigarette and began ambling through the parking lot.

“Did you already take the pills?” I asked.

His dazed expression answered my question.

“Did you take all of them?”

“You told me to take the whole bottle,” he slurred.

“Fuck. Do you even know what they are? Are you going to be okay?”

“There weren’t that many. Leave me alone.”

I left him alone.

By the time we entered the air conditioning of the store, Grube looked like some kind of midnight monster. The break up of the make-up revealed the deep wrinkles in her rawboned face. Her hair now resembled a fright wig and she shambled along like something that wasn’t completely alive.

Large department stores are designed to waste the time of the very simple. Putting everything on display makes it all look like something you should probably own. The pharmacy was in the back of the store. Grube picked up every item on the way, looking at it, saying something about it that wasn’t really intended for anyone but her and then putting it down wherever she felt like. By the time we reached the pharmacy, I was starting to think the Unabomber had some really great ideas.

I was not incredibly surprised to find the pharmacy darkened, a blue and white ‘closed’ sign in the window next to the sign with the hours.

“It’s closed,” I said.

“Huh.” Now that the tint had gone from her lenses, I could see Grube’s casual blankness replaced by a cold and murderous rage. “Meijers is supposed to be open twenty-four hours. That’s what the commercial says. That’s what the sign out front says.”

“Well, the pharmacy’s closed.”

The particular look she gave me sent a shiver of fear through me. I’d never seen it before. I had heard epic tales of her rage but had never actually witnessed it. My dad’s excuse for Grube not having a license was not that she was permanently stoned or had delusions of grandeur. He said she would have certainly murdered someone by now if forced to deal with road rage. Grube descended to this relatively flat section of Ohio from the dark hollows of the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and her family was the source of stories that made Flannery O’Connor seem like a gentle read. It also occurred to me that, because she couldn’t drive, she never really went anywhere unaccompanied.

Was I now Grube’s handler?

Could there be a more ill-equipped person for the task?

My philosophy regarding almost everything was to just stand back and observe.

Grube clutched the strap of her red vinyl purse so tightly I thought she was going to sever her arm at the shoulder.

I pointed at the sign like that would help and said, “Closed.”

“I ain’t leavin here till I get my prescriptions. Meijers is open twenty-four hours. I’m here. My prescription’s here. I just need to find the right person to get it.”

I probably should have offered some comforting advice or, hell, just a bit of wisdom from someone who left his house for reasons other than picking up prescriptions or exacting vengeance, but I really just kind of wanted to see how it played out.

“Where’s one of those little jackasses? They’re never around when you need them. I need to rest for a minute. My back is killing me.”

She sat down on one of the plastic chairs put there for people to wait for their prescriptions when the pharmacy was actually open. She fished her cigarette cozy from her purse, pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I laughed.

“Fuck it,” she said.

I moved a little farther away from her. I saw an employee coming down the aisle, probably to tell her to stop smoking. She had her forehead buried in her hand and didn’t see him right away. The man drew closer. He was darker skinned, possibly Indian, and I immediately knew this wasn’t going to go well. Grube was the only person I knew who used the word ‘nigger’ freely and without any apparent malice. Just complete and total ignorance.

Surprisingly, he didn’t even glance at Grube. Unfortunately, she caught sight of him just as he passed. She snapped her fingers at him and said, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Pedro?”

Dear God.

The man gave her a nervous smile, his eyes now finding the cigarette burning between her fingers. He opened his mouth and I was sure he was going to say something about it but Grube spoke before he could.

“I’m here to pick up a prescription.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I need to pick up a prescription. My doctor called it in. It’ll be under Ruby McGwire.”

“I’m sorry but you cannot smoke in here.”

Grube dismissively waved her cigarette at him and now she spoke loudly, as one would to a deaf or foreign person even though, judging by his English and complete lack of accent, I’d be willing to bet he was born here.

“Maybe you didn’t understand me. I said I’m here to pick up a prescription.” She angrily thumbed her hand at the darkened pharmacy behind her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s closed.”

“Ain’t you all open twenty-four hours? You sure try to make people think you’re open all the time.”

“I’m very sorry. Not the pharmacy.”

“Then why don’t you say that in all your commercials?”

“The rest of the store is open for your convenience.”

“This ain’t convenient. My back has me almost paralyzed and I had to find a ride all the way down here. I ain’t leavin till I get my prescription.”

“I’m very sorry but it’s closed. There isn’t anything I can do about it.”

“Sure you can. You’ve got a key. You open that door, find my prescription, and give it to me. I have my insurance card. There ain’t even a charge.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I need to talk to Mr. Meijers.”

This stunned the man. I’m not sure he really knew what she was talking about.

“You know, the guy who runs this place? I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

“I will go get my manager.”

“I think I’d like you to do that.”

As he walked away, Grube looked at me and said, “That guy’s drunk as a fucking Nazi,” before dropping her cigarette to the floor and crushing it out.

We waited for a really long time. Probably because the harried employee had to explain the bizarre situation to his manager.

A fat middle-age man in a blue Oxford and khaki pants came stalking up to Grube. He caught Grube somewhat off guard, not even addressing her prescription concern.

“Is this your cigarette butt?” He pointed to the floor.

The younger employee stood behind him and said, “Yes. She was smoking it.”

“I have to ask you to leave,” the manager said. “We don’t allow smoking in our stores.”

Grube stood up. She was taller than the manager.

“That doesn’t matter. Did the little sand nigger tell you I’m here to pick up a prescription?”

“Ma’am, you need to leave the store immediately.”

He looked at me like I was going to help. The situation quickly escalated.

“I’m not leaving here till I get my pills!”

Then the man made an even greater mistake than disagreeing with Grube. He tried to grab her arm.

She violently jerked it away, no sign of crippling back pain anywhere, and said, “Get your fucking hands off me. I’ll knock you back to college, you fucking robot.” Grube assumed anyone who worked in anything other than jeans or a uniform was a college graduate.

She grabbed a candle from an end display and threw it at the window of the pharmacy.

“Okay,” the manager said. “I’m calling the police.”

“Why don’t you just unlock that damn door and we all get what we want?”

The man was already walking to the phone.

I approached Grube and said, “I think we should go.”

“Fuck that.” She kicked over one of the chairs.

Sadly, I didn’t really care if Grube got arrested. I mean, it wasn’t something I wanted to see happen but it wouldn’t have had a great effect on me. However, if I were somehow drawn into it and forced to deal with any more hassles, I would feel pretty put out.

“Okay. Well, I’m leaving,” I said, walking back toward the entrance.

Grube followed behind me in a rage, knocking things off shelves and snarling profanities. I found the commotion reassuring. It meant she was keeping pace behind me. I was afraid to turn around and look. I imagined the goonish manager and his henchman were somewhere behind her, all of us with the singular goal to get her out of the store with as little property damage as possible. I doubted they had actually called the police.

We reached the front of the store and I saw Todd, wearing only his underwear, talking to the elderly door greeter. He was sweating profusely and it looked like he had a hard time standing up.

I grabbed his left arm and said, “This one’s mine too,” before roughly dragging him out into the parking lot.

“I got so hot,” Todd said. “And thirsty. I didn’t know where I was. I just came in for a drink of water. They wouldn’t give me a drink of water.”

Grube kicked over a trashcan, turned toward the employees gathered at the entrance, and shouted, “Rapists!”

When we got to the car both Todd and Grube sat in the back, having apparently forged some unknown connection on a mysteriously occluded chemical highway. I pulled out of the parking lot feeling like a chauffeur for the world’s most bizarre, worst two-person band.

I pulled up to Grube’s house, happy to see my grandfather’s car in the driveway. She got out of the car without saying bye or thanks and started back to her clean palace of order where the drugs, air conditioning, and chores waited to take her in their loving embrace.

I met Todd’s half-lidded eyes in the mirror and said, “Get the fuck up here. This isn’t a cab.”

Todd got out of the car and grabbed his bundle of clothes. Two of the empty pill bottles fell out and hit the ground. It was like Grube knew this sound as well as the opening chords to a favorite song. She turned toward the bottles. She moved toward Todd with surprising quickness. Normally I would have let Todd fight his own battles but he probably needed to go to the emergency room. Grube made a sound I’d never really heard before, something like a group of cats being sucked up into a tornado maybe. I panicked and moved in between her and Todd. I covered my head, expecting the worst.

I heard my grandpa say, “Come on now, Grube,” and looked up to see him gently wrangling her toward the house, a white waxy bag in one of his hands.

Grube still thrust herself toward Todd and shouted, “Don’t never bring that hobo around here again!”

Grandpa forced the bag into her hands and she visibly slackened.

“Them boys took me to a terrible place, Dad. Just … awful. I thought I was gonna die.”

I run out of alcohol and go to the bar. It’s not my usual bar but my girlfriend’s kid wanders the house with a microphone and headphones, trying repeatedly to get us to sit in chairs and talk while he occasionally praises promotional products spread out on the coffee table in front of him and I need to leave the house. He doesn’t actually have a podcast. I told my girlfriend I’d have to be nearly blacked out to indulge him in his delusions. She told me I’m the worst stepdad in the world and I told her I’m the only thing she has besides … and I nod to her son who’s sitting in his chair eating nicotine pouches like candy.

The bar’s so small it only consists of the bar and some stools. I order a whiskey and a beer and try not to look at the television. They have it tuned to the stoning channel. Stoning was only made legal last week and I wonder how they already have a channel for it, but I guess AI can do pretty much anything as long as it closely resembles things that already exist. The bartender and the one other patron are pretty enthralled by it—groaning, laughing, and cheering with abandon.

“You get anybody yet?” the patron asks the bartender. I notice the patron has a gun on his hip.

“Nah,” the bartender says. “I don’t think I could. Pretty damn fun to watch though.”

“I ain’t got none neither,” the patron says. He digs into the deep pockets of his tactical pants with his short, fat arms. He pulls out a rock slightly larger than a softball and clunks it down on the bar next to his razor shades. “But I’m just waitin’ for the chance.” He mimes throwing the rock and the imagined person in front of him gives his eyes a glow. “It’s gotta feel pretty good. Real satisfying. Course, I wanna make sure I ain’t gonna go to jail.”

I pound the whisky and think this guy probably belongs in a mental institution. I drink my beer quickly, happy I got the twelve-percent pint. When I’m finished, I decide to head back home, even though I’m nowhere near blacking out. The bartender’s too taken with the stonings to ask if I need anything else anyway.

I walk home quickly so I don’t have the time to sober up.

Approaching the house, I can see my girlfriend and her boy sitting in the chairs and talking.

I grab a couple rocks from the flowerbed and put them in my pocket.

Opening the door, I hear the boy say, “Stay tuned for our next guest,” before launching into an ad for a security company.

Over a span of 83 years, the old writer moves 25 times. Each time he moves he keeps his writing area the same.

He has an ancient black desk with a narrow drawer in the middle. On top of this desk sits his typewriter, perfectly centered. In the right-hand corner is the same pale green lamp with its paper brown shade. To the immediate left of the lamp there is a picture of his wife and children. He keeps a ream of blank typing paper on the right side of the typewriter. Printed papers go on the left side. Dali’s Impressions of Africa hangs above the left half of the desk.

The writer considers himself a Surrealist.

My face melts off so I pick it up and put it back on, runny and twisted as it is. Putting on my shoes, lumpy black things that look more fitting for a janitor, I step outside into the fresh, early morning air.

A Boy Scout troop is collecting dandelion specimens from my front yard. Their leader is blowing a whistle and shouting at them to collect more, more! Eventually, they all spot me. One of them shouts: “Oh God, look at that guy’s face!”

The leader blows his whistle furiously and says, “I think it’s best we get outta here.”

A little kid who has been busy urinating in the corner of the yard runs up to me and shoves a wad of grass down my pants before hurrying to catch up with the other boys.

“Yeah!” I call after him. “Well you’re fat!” But he isn’t fat at all. But my face is indeed hideous.

I go back inside, remove my face, and throw it in the trashcan.

I got a bonus for a year’s work down at the paper factory. It was a big bonus. I wanted to buy something for myself with this money. I went to a department store and bought myself a black leather jacket. First I tried it on and looked at myself in the display mirror. It made me look dangerous and warm. I had to have this black leather jacket. After buying the jacket I still had over a hundred dollars left from my big bonus. I wanted people to see me in my new jacket so I decided I would go out and have a drink. I went to the G Club. I especially wanted a pretty woman to see me in my black leather jacket and be attracted to my new sense of  dangerous warmth. I sat at the bar and ordered a drink. I drank the drink and looked around. A small woman sat in the smoky back corner. She was wearing a thin emerald green dress. I could not see up the dress. She looked neither dangerous nor warm. She looked seductive and cold. I walked over to her, drawing myself down into my new jacket. I asked her if I could buy her a drink. She said she would rather do something else. I said we could go back to my place. She said that sounded good. But I’m with my mother, she said. Girls’ night out. She can wait downstairs, I said. I have a couch and television and a dog named Seamus to keep her company. Yes, she said, that sounds good. So we all went back to my house. Me and the girl, whose name was Tracy, went upstairs to my bedroom. She went to the bathroom to insert her diaphragm. She told me, I’m going to go into the bathroom and insert my diaphragm. I said okay. I took off my leather jacket and the rest of my clothes. Then I put the jacket back on. She came out and she was naked. She lay down on the bed. I took off my jacket and hung it on the footpost, hoping I’d used just the right amount of extravagance. I crawled into bed and rolled over between her legs. I’m pretty sure she didn’t come. I rolled off her and lit a cigarette. She said, Well, Mom’s waiting, I better go. I said okay. On the way out she took the leather jacket. When I finished my cigarette I went downstairs to feed the dog and watch television but the dog and the television set were gone. So were the stereo and the silverware. There wasn’t much left in my house. It felt like even the heat was gone. I could have used that black leather jacket.

Lowprice Head gets into his car and takes a drive down to the local supermarket. It is a pleasant drive. Not a day for revelation but a nice day nonetheless. The sky is blue and clear. Not a cloud in it. He sings, “I wear high pants,” to himself and realizes how much he sounds like his father. This irritates him because he does not like his father. He tells himself the rest of the day will be better once he has stocked up on assorted fruits and vegetables.

Suddenly, he is struck with the overwhelming urge to stop the car, get out, and point at the sun for a few minutes. So he does that. And as he stands at the gravel shoulder of the road a black truck pulls up behind his car and a group of three teenagers gets out. They all have a lot of tattoos and wear extremely short running shorts.

The most well-muscled of the three approaches Lowprice and gives him a little shove. Lowprice continues to point at the sun.

“You wanna start some shit?” the muscled guy says.

“No,” Lowprice begins. “I’m perfectly content just pointing at the sun for a few minutes or so.”

“That’s some fucked up shit,” the guy says. “You better stop that.”

“I can’t,” Lowprice says.

The muscled guy tries to force Lowprice’s arm down but it stays, ironlike, pointing at the sun. The heavily muscled youth’s friends begin laughing at his failed attempt to bring Lowprice’s frail arm down.

“If you don’t put that arm down I’m gonna fuck you up real good.”

His friends collectively make a sound like, “Whoo!”

“Sorry,” Lowprice says, continuing to point.

“You asked for it, you little shit.”

He walks around to the front of Lowprice and punches him in the face. Several of Lowprice’s teeth shatter and he collapses back onto the gravel, his arm continuing to point toward the sun.

“All right now,” the muscled guy says to his friends. “I’m gonna roll him over here and when I do that I want one of you to get in the truck and drive over his arm.”

“Right on, Mitch,” one of them says.

Mitch rolls Lowprice over and the guy driving the truck runs over it once going forward and again in reverse. Mitch kicks Lowprice over onto his back so his arm rests floppily and broken on his stomach. “Serves you right, you damn pointing shit!” Mitch screams before joining his friends in the truck and speeding away.

Lowprice begins singing, “I need medical attention,” to himself around broken teeth and a busted jaw. Luckily, he no longer sounds like his father when he sings. That makes it an alright day.

We go see a movie called Bloodfest. The title is horribly misleading and it ends up being a four-hour documentary of people with all different ethnic backgrounds donating blood. Midway through, my date turns and starts making out with the man on her right. I tug on her sleeve and tell her she’s confused. A woman behind us shushes me.

Fatigued, we exit the theater onto the bright city street. From behind my date, I notice a large red blotch on the back of her skirt. I tap her on the shoulder and point to her behind. Lightning fast, she throws a right hook at my face. I stumble backward, lose my footing, and collapse onto the street. Once I can focus again, I look up at her. She has discovered the stain. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” she says before coming over and lending a hand, helping me up. She then sticks her hand down the front of her skirt, bringing it back out and smelling her fingers. “Yep, that’s blood all right,” she says. “Damn, I don’t have a san nap!”

I am briefly taken aback by her crudity until I remember. “Here,” I say, reaching for my wallet. “I’ve got something.” I pull a pad from my wallet, warm and smooshed. She snatches it away.

“Oh, God, thank you,” she says.

Amazed once again, I watch as she pulls down her skirt and underwear in the middle of the sidewalk. I see an old couple walking out of the theater and I rush to shield them from my date, blocking their view with my expansive coat. “I liked the part where that Cuban fellow has a crisis of conscience when he realizes he can’t go through with the donation because he is getting over a cold,” the old woman says. The man casts a cold, suspicious glance in my direction.

“Hi there!” I shout, not knowing what else to say. He grabs his wife a little tighter and they move closer to the road.

“All ready,” my date says.

Relieved, I put my coat back on. I look at her and shake my head. She has merely used the device to mop up some of the excess blood and now has it fastened to her wrist like a bracelet.

“You’re hopeless,” I laugh.

Walking away, I notice she has hiked her skirt up in order to hide the stain beneath her shirt and now her buttocks are practically hanging out … but I can’t see the stain. I think about letting her borrow my long coat, its hem drifting just millimeters above the sidewalk, and then think better about it.

In my search for spiritual enlightenment, I travel to the desert to study a group of people called the Johnsons. Living in total isolation, their village has the look of a suburban street. There are only about sixty of them and none of them have a first name and, since all of their last names are Johnson, the only way to address them is by their street number. I visit 468 Johnson Lane and speak with the man and woman there. All of the men have very thick hair, which they keep heavily gelled and parted to the side. I ask them why there are no children around and Mrs. 468 says, “Oh, they’re really worth too much money to keep.”

“You mean they cost too much?”

“Oh, good heavens, no. We get paid so much for them. The men with the mustaches give us so much money … Well, it’s impossible to resist—look at all the nice things it has bought us.”

The house is nice. It has all the modern amenities. The electricity, Mrs. 468 tells me, is supplied by sorcery. I stay overnight at their house, sleeping in a luxurious bed, and get up the next morning to follow Mr. 468 to work. He dresses as though going to an office—a clean white shirt and navy blue tie, khaki trousers, his hair all thick and gelled. I follow him out into the desert, across a low dune where he is, in due time, joined by the other Johnson men.

They do not speak. They merely shuffle around in the sand, as though the others don’t exist. This continues for a few hours until they decide it’s lunchtime. They pull sandwiches and bottles of water from their baggy khaki trousers. After they finish eating they all begin ridiculing one man. They tell him his wife doesn’t love him and they all slept with her last night. They tell him his house looks like a garbage sack. They accuse him of being impotent, flatulent, and disease-ridden. They tell him the only person uglier than him is his wife. Then they pull out barber’s clippers and shear clumps of hair from his lustrous head. They all laugh at this new haircut and circle up around him, chanting, “Flumpy hair! Flumpy hair!”

When lunch is over, they all go back to shuffling around. I start back to search for the village, but I can’t find it. When I go back to ask the men if they could point me in the right direction, I can’t find them either. I stare at the sun and continue moving west.