Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (9 page)

“Capers?” Charley Altamont says, laughs, gets shushed by Sally-Anne. He shuffles closer to her, fully immersed in the relaxed pace of beach life, no matter what is happening right now.

“Yeah. Capers. Those little salty pickled bulbous Mediterranean things? People would demand them on like honey-glazed chicken. That's pretty nasty, right? You gotta admit . . . ”

“Ronnie,” Charley says after gently removing the phone from Sally-Anne's grip.

“Dad?”

“You moved to Gainesville, and you're talking about capers?”

“He's on a payphone because the phone in the trailer was shut off,” Sally-Anne says.

“Hi, Dad.” Ronnie says. “Hi. I was just explaining to Mom what happened and why I ended up in Gainesville.”

“No job?”

“It's like this,” Ronnie says, over the sounds of screaming babies and arguing couples from the Laundromat next to the minimart where Ronnie found the payphone. “I'm living in this trailer, and there's no rent because the dude who owns it has it all paid off, so like, there aren't that many bills, except the phone—but whatever. The payphone's only like a five minute walk.”

Sigh. Right View. Right Thought. Right Speech. Right Behavior. Right Livelihood. Right Effort. Right Mindfulness. Right Concentration.

“How are you eating?”

“Oh, that's fine, Dad. I found this place where you can donate plasma twice a week, and that pays like $40, so I get food money that way.”

Sigh. Existence is suffering.

“Plasma.” Charley repeats.

“Yeah, see, it's fine because now—”

“Give me your address.”

“OK.”

“I'm sending you money. Get your phone turned on. Get a job, Ronnie.”

“I've been looking. It's the end of the semester though, so nobody's hiring.”

“And you moved to Gainesville, why? I know why you left Orlando, what with the pretentious use of capers and everything . . . ”

“That wasn't the only reason.”

“Why Gainesville?”

“Hang on . . . I need to put more change in the payphone.”

Charley waits. Sharp shocks of indigestion he hasn't felt since converting to veganism four years ago. Leave it to his son to give him indigestion, because it sure isn't the quinoa.

“OK, I'm back. I'm here to be a writer and a musician.”

“You couldn't do that in Orlando?”

“No, not really.”

“Get a job, Ronnie. Use your degree, and get a job.”

“This degree from UCF doesn't count for much here in Gainesville.”

“Get a job. This is the only time I'm doing this. Write and play music in your free time.”

“Sure.”

“And no more plasma donating for money. For your mom's sake. Promise.”

“Of course. I got a plan here . . . ”

“You don't.” Charley says. “Otherwise, you wouldn't have moved up there. Give me your address.
”

 

 

SCENES FROM A STOP AND SHOP AND GAS AND GO

 

“Thankth hon,” a haggard blonde lisps to Ronnie between missing front and bottom teeth, grabbing the pack of Newports off the cracked plastic wood counter, shakes what remains of her emaciated frame out the door, in that sloppy strut natural to run-down addicts, as her flip-flops flip, flop, flip, flop out the door.

“That's Crazy Annie,” Travis, Manager of the 7:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. shift, explains. Travis is one of those short guys with all his fat compressed and isolated into his belly, with salt and pepper hair in a receding pompadour, bushy black moustache centering a bloated face.

“See, she's crazy,” Kim, the Assistant Manager of the a.m. shift, one of those thin raspy flame-broiled looking middle-aged women indigenous to the South with sunscarred skin and a frizzy perm circa 1982, the kind who chain smoke Merit cigarettes.

“Hence the name,” Travis supplies.

“I see,” Ronnie says. It's Ronnie's first day on the job, clerking here at the Stop and Shop and Gas and Go. He had filled out applications all over town, but it was true what Mouse had told him: There were no jobs to be had this time of year, unless you want to join the military, babysit rich kids at Club Med, or teach English in some ambitious country eager to learn the lingua franca from a card carrying native speaker. He lucked out getting hired here—if by “lucked out,” you think working the morning shift in a convenience store nestled between seedy motels on 13th Street where beat-to-hell black and white men who stumble in with bloodshot eyes and tattered flannel shirts buy all the cheap wine they can afford to guzzle down on a 72 degree Wednesday morning constitutes “lucking out.”

“Cigarettes ain't all she smokes,” Kim says, punctuating her comment with a wheezy, coughy laugh, her breath like the stale smoke/dirty laundry stench of the clothes Ronnie wears to shows and doesn't wash for a month.

“No?” Ronnie says, blue eyes widened in an attempt at Andy Kaufmanesque childlike innocence.

“She smokes crack,” Travis says, leaning in close to Ronnie, elbowing him in the ribs and adding, sotto voce. “And dick, if you know what I mean.”

Ronnie stares, from Travis, to Kim, and back, trying to look befuddled. “Crack? Dick? Jeez, Travis, this is a lot to figure out for my first day.”

“She's a prostitute!” Kim laughs, then coughs. “Smokes dick! Get it?”

“Ohhhhhhh,” Ronnie says, in exaggerated epiphany.

The store's walls are covered in fake wood paneling. The floors are a pee-stained white tile. The wet turdish mint smell of chewing tobacco. The eye-watering tinge of cheap bleach. The counter area is an overcrowded island in the middle of the store. Inches above Ronnie's head are hanging trucker's caps extolling the virtues of fishing over working, of the inherent stupidity of women, of cartoon criminals shooting off sparks from an electric chair with the caption, “JUSTICE COMES DEEP-FRIED OR EXTRA KRISPY.” Ronnie's first morning behind the counter is a steady hum of American retail commerce; the alcoholics and prostitutes are replaced by the morning rush of the gainfully employed purchasing coffee, cigarettes, gasoline. The rush of the morning passes into the quiet of mid-day.

“Well, here comes Retard Gary,” Travis announces as a short bald man wearing an oversized black t-shirt with a silkscreen on the front of a silhouette of a coyote howling at a full moon as lightning and F-15 fighter planes fill in the background, baggy acid-washed jeans, dirty white sneakers and thick nerd-framed glasses parks his adult tricycle in front of the store and limps in from the bright muggy morning.

“Retard Gary?” Ronnie asks, standing in front of the register, Travis to his left, Kim to his right, both managers standing over to make sure Ronnie pushes the right buttons for the corresponding purchases.

“He's a retard,” Kim says.

“We was just talkin' about you, Gary,” Travis says, wicked yellow smile from his fat face. “Your girlfriend Crazy Annie was here asking about you.”

“No way!” Retard Gary says, hobbling to the Coke dispensers. “Nuh-uh. I don't like Crazy Annie.”

“So you're a fag then,” Travis hollers. Kim snorts, laughs, coughs. “You probably got AIDS all over you.” Ronnie laughs—not at the joke, but the quietly desperate laugh you laugh when your boss says something so horrible that you don't know what to do because you need the job because you need the money.

“Shut up, Travis!” Retard Gary says as the ice machine rumbles and delivers a mini-avalanche into his orange and blue extra-extra large (“Thirst Annhilator”) 64-oz cup. “I don't got AIDS on me! I like girls!”

“I'm from Missouri, Gary,” Travis says, leaning forward to follow Retard Gary's path from the coke station to the register, belly pressed into the counter. “
Show me
a girlfriend.”

“And not one of them crackwhores out here on 13th Street neither,” Kim says. Travis laughs like a boorish dog from a 1970s Saturday morning cartoon. Ronnie does not laugh.

 

•

 

Ronnie Altamont sits on the closed toilet seat, staring at the racist graffiti, body in the pose of “The Thinker” statue and everything. It's like: How far out of your element can you feel in 98 percent of your waking hours? Florida. Fucking Florida. Ronnie. Fucking Ronnie. It's why they call it “work,” right? Life must be sustained by doing stressful seemingly pointless tasks like clerking convenience stores because somebody somewhere needs this job done and is willing to pay somebody else something for it.

Ronnie leaves the men's room, returns to the register. Two fishermen—a father and son—son a smaller, less round version of the father—both in matching teal Miami Dolphins sleeveless shirts and two white fishermen caps with hooks encircling the brim—set two 12-packs of Old Hamtramck on the counter.

“It's all you, chief,” Kim says, pointing to the register's rows and columns of buttons.

Ronnie punches in the prices, adds the sales tax. The fisherfather and fisherson stare at the trucker's hats dangling inches over Ronnie's faded vermillion hair.

“Hey man,” the fisherfather says. “Raise that flap!”

The hat directly above Ronnie's is light blue with white mesh and a velcroed flap reading, in the girlish bubble cursive of hearted I's, “IF GIRLS ARE MADE OF SUGAR AND SPICE . . . ”

Ronnie turns, raises his arms, unvelcroes the flap. Underneath the raised flap, the question, “WHY DO THEY TASTE LIKE ANCHOVIES?” above a picture of a dead green fish with white stink squiggles.

Everybody haw haw haws, including Ronnie, who actually finds it funny. He might even buy it if he had the money. But he doesn't, and it would be bad form to steal on the first day of the job.

“Y'all, that's gross!” Kim says, eliciting further laughs from the fishermen.

“Yeah, I'd buy it,” the fisherfather says, starting to walk away with the two Old Hamtramck 12-packs. “But I have a feeling his mother,” and here, he turns his head to his fisherson, “wouldn't take too kindly to it.”

Ronnie does not share these concerns. The hat should be his. It is already so close to his head, hanging there. He was never a thief, never had klepto tendencies growing up the way some kids were always stealing gum etc. from stores. It's only one white trash hat out of dozens that never get sold in these kinds of stores. They're practically decorations anyway. Travis is on his lunch break. If Ronnie is to make the hat his, he will have to do it now, with Travis gone, and when Kim goes off to take one of countless smoke breaks.

The temptation is too great. While Kim stands on the minimart's front sidewalk puffing a Merit, Ronnie removes the hat, bundles it up, stuffs it down his “professionally attired” khaki slacks. His blue Oxford shirt is large enough to cover the obvious bulge, and no one can see over the counter anyway.

Ronnie rings up Lunchables and Cokes for the workaday construction or landscaping crews on their breaks. Kim watches his fingers for any slight mis-hit of the register's buttons from Ronnie as she sings along with the Young Country Music from the store's speakers—off-key renditions of tunes tackling topics like memories of the fun had near rivers as a randy teenager, of overly confident rural men with tremendous pride in their country and background, of rowdy bars full of questionable characters who, despite all outward appearances and behaviors, are a swell bunch of folks. And so on. And so forth.

“What kind of music do you like?” Kim asks. “I seen your hair.”

Ronnie hates this question. “I don't know, man . . . ” he says, unable to hide his annoyance. “A lot of things. Punk? Jazz?”

“That ain't music,” Kim says, matter-of-factly. She points to the ceiling, where the Young Country never stops. “Now this—
this
—is music.”

Ronnie doesn't speak to her again.

Travis returns from his lunch break, waddling through the front door, proclaiming, “Hooeee, those were some mighty fine ribs. My-tee fine!” Ronnie immediately steps away from the register, announces “Going on my break now!” He leaves the register island, circling away to the main walkway out the door. “Be back in half an hour,” Travis says, and Ronnie blurts out a “Yup!” and pushes open the doors, steps out, hears the sleigh bells taped to shing-shing when anyone enters or leaves the Stop and Shop and Gas and Go.