Old Folks' Home
Drew had woken up at 4 p.m. It was his policy to remain permanently unemployed so he could enjoy mornings, mostly by sleeping through them. To compensate for his lack of a paycheck, he had been gradually selling his CDs to local shops. He had started with discs given to him at birthdays and Christmas, but now he had started pawning off albums he actually liked, which was beginning to bother him.
“We have to buy something. The manager's glaring.” Anna, like Drew, did not want to buy anything. The two were sitting with their backs against the front window of CoffeeWorks, their cigarette smoke wafting through the door whenever a customer entered or left. Anna brushed her blond hair out of her face and stole another glance inside the shop. “I think he's coming out here.”
Drew sighed. “Alright. Let's walk.”
They heaved themselves off of the ground. Drew shielded his eyes from the sun and glanced around the plaza. There are very few poems written about how the sun looks setting over a strip mall, and it did nothing for Drew and Anna but shine directly into their eyes over the rooftops. They began walking in no particular direction, habitually heading toward the movie theatre that dominated most of the plaza. Drew turned himself sideways and pressed against the wall as a group of giggling, middle-aged ladies scurried past him into one of the shops. He sighed and turned to Anna.
“When was the last time you really wanted to be here?” he asked, brushing some dirt off of his pant leg.
“Never.”
“No, seriously.”
She really had to think about it. It was so usual for her to be sick of suburbia, to embrace that generational need to get out, she hadn't even considered the reasons why she stuck around. “I guess I just can't picture myself anywhere else,” she admitted.
Anna glanced backward at the highway that bordered the plaza. Beyond it, she could see the Jewish geriatric center, and she knew that beyond that was the driving range. “You know, there's not one like, arcade, or roller skating rink or... Chuck E. Cheese around here. You have to drive half an hour just to get to a Toys R Us.” She pointed at a store across the parking lot from where they were. “Remember when that place was a toy store? 'Family Toy' or something like that. It lasted what, two years? Maybe?”
“I couldn't say.”
“Whatever. Not long. It's a hardware store now. There are pharmacies popping up on every corner. There's not one kid-friendly business in town, but we both grew up here. And we're still here.”
Drew blinked into the setting sun and smiled a bit. “There's something wrong with us.”
Anna looked at the highway again. “I'm just afraid I'm going to become an old woman living in that nursing home. Lungs rife with cancer, living in a constant terror that I'm going to get hit in the head with a golf ball.”
She paused in front of the seafood restaurant to light another cigarette. Drew flicked the butt of his into the parking lot and watched the sparks bounce and disappear on the asphalt before following her example.
“Hey!” someone yelled.
Drew and Anna turned around to face the tiny woman addressing them. She was sitting at a table on the restaurant's patio. She looked about forty, and the features on her small face had all scrunched to the center to reflect her anger at the two smoking teenagers. “Hey, what's wrong with you kids? Don't you know that shit kills? Don't you have to take classes on that or something?”
Drew looked the woman up and down. She was sitting alone, a half-finished plate of salmon in front of her. Her New York Times was open to the crossword, and her wine glass was empty. She was exactly the kind of person he wanted to beat with a shovel every second of his life.
“It's ok,” he said to her, taking a drag and letting the smoke pour out as he talked, “I have Lou Gehrig's disease. My brain's melting. I'm just sort of racing it with emphysema.” He twitched a little bit, for effect. Anna turned around quickly, so the woman wouldn't see her laughing. Drew smiled calmly at the woman, who looked back at him, terrified, and picked her paper back up. “Have a great night!” he called as Anna pulled him away.
They began to cross the parking lot to get to the theatre. When they were halfway across, people began pouring out of the doors. Drew looked at his watch.
“It's six thirty. All the movies are getting out for the seven o'clock shows.” The parking lot filled with people swarming to their cars, battling to get out first. “This is going to get ugly, we should get to the sidewalk.”
As Drew and Anna approached the theatre, they noticed a boy sitting on the curb, slouched against one of the emergency exit doors. He looked asleep, in the kind of position that Drew had assumed only homeless people could manage.
“Drew, that's David,” Anna said tugging on Drew's sleeve. Drew squinted, and realized that she was right. He hadn't seen David since graduation. He was one of the few, along with Drew and Anna, that hadn't gone off to school in the fall, but they had never been close.
“He looks like he needs some help.” The two friends approached their classmate slowly, as if they were trying to sneak up on a deer.
“David.”
The boy looked up slowly, as if tugged by a string. He blinked several times. “Oh wow.”
“David, what are you doing here?” Anna asked.
There was a pause as David assessed his surroundings, seemingly unaware where he had been sitting. He lifted his hand off of the curb, revealing a cigarette butt that had left its mark on his palm. “I just got out of a movie,” he said, shutting his eyes.
“Which one?” Anna inquired. She flashed a concerned look at Drew, who raised his eyebrows and lit another cigarette. David opened his eyes again.
“Can I get one of those?” he asked, motioning lethargically to Drew's mouth.
“Yeah, sure.” Drew shoved his hand into his pocket and produced another cigarette. He held it out for David for a few moments, but when his friend made no move to take it, he slowly put it back in his pocket.
“I don't remember what movie it was,” David said suddenly. “I ate a whole bottle's worth of Robitussin pills before I came here. Me, Matt, some other kids.” His eyes lit up like he had just remembered something, and looked behind him. “I wonder where they went.”
Anna threw her hands up, exasperated. “What the fuck? You're tripping on cough medicine right now? Why didn't you say anything? I thought you had a concussion or something.”
“It didn't seem important. I can't feel my legs”
“Jesus.”
There were words in blue ink scrawled all over David's left wrist, continuing down his arm under his shirt. Drew squinted at it, but couldn't make the words out. “What's all over your arm?”
For a moment, David seemed to not understand the question. He glanced at his arm. “Oh, God. Yeah. I wrote my own obituary. During the movie. I couldn't focus on it. The movie.”
“Can I see it?” David produced his arm for Drew, who rolled up the sleeve and looked. Up and down David's arm were the words “DEAD” and “BORED” in various fonts and sizes. Drew looked closer to see if anything else was written, but it didn't look like it. He turned his head and looked quizzically at David, who had his eyes closed again.
There was a screech. Everyone in the parking lot looked up as a purple pickup truck careened around the corner from behind the movie theatre and slammed to a halt outside of it. There was a man inside, wearing a cap that poorly contained his white hair. He was a large man, more horizontally than vertically, and he was breathing heavily. For a second, there was no noise. No one moved, there were just a hundred pairs of eyes fixed on the truck.
Without warning, the man began laying on his horn, pressing the button for ten seconds at a time. Drew and Anna looked at each other with concern, but neither of them moved. The man began screaming at the people who were slowly walking by him to their cars. His windows were rolled up, and his words were drowned out by his horn blasts, but his mouth was stretched into a wordless, noiseless scream.
“What do you want?” David suddenly exclaimed. “What is it that you want?”
The man opened the truck's door and stumbled out. He leaned up against the bed of the pickup and continued to yell unintelligibly at those who walked by. He was clutching his chest with left hand and reaching out to passersby with his right. He turned and began yelling at a little girl whose mother snatched her away with a scream. Anna took a few steps toward him before Drew put a hand on her shoulder.
The man stumbled again, and slammed his shoulder against his truck. For a moment, he seemed to have regained his balance, but he suddenly stopped yelling. As he collapsed, the ambulance that someone must have called sped into the parking lot, lights flashing.
There was a stillness in the parking lot for just a few seconds. Then, slowly, a crowd began to form around the truck and the ambulance, abuzz with speculation. Anna slid Drew's hand off of her shoulder and ran over to join the crowd as a stretcher was being wheeled out of the ambulance.
Drew blinked. He put out his cigarette.
