Phantasos (5 page)

Eight

BENJI WOKE UP AT A LITTLE after ten in the morning, because what good is the first day of summer vacation if not for sleeping in?

He bounced down the stairs of his empty house, walked to the fridge, grabbed a carton of Orange Juice and took a huge gulp straight from the container. He was wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve when he heard a bike go whizzing by the front of his house. The bike slowed down, turned around, and stopped on the sidewalk in front of his home.

Benji walked towards his living room uneasily, and through the sheer floral print curtains of his front living room window saw Rodney Frye sitting on his bike, looking in.

“I know you’re in there,” Rodney hollered.

Great,
Benji thought.
He got a new tire. Or a new bike.
Rodney’s family was the type that replaced the living room television when the remote broke, or upgraded the family car when there was a problem with the radiator.

“Come out, butthead. Bring whatever cash you’ve got, take your beating, and we’ll call it square, all right?”

Benji stood in his living room, motionless. He felt his hands turn cool and the orange juice was sitting bitter in his stomach.
Screw him,
Benji thought.
In a day or two he’ll be in miserable Florida, with his miserable father, getting sunburns and riding roller coasters. With any luck, maybe an alligator will eat him alive.

“Come out, Bauer!” Rodney yelled. “Come out and take it like a man, let’s get this over with!”

Benji continued to stand still, a mannequin in his own home. Frozen in place.

“Whatever, dickweed,” Rodney called out. “You can try to hide until fall if you want, but I’ve got all summer. I’ll see you around.” And Rodney took off on his bike.

He’s got all summer?
Benji thought, suddenly panicked.
What does he mean by that?

Benji took his time showering and getting ready before he headed over to the Emerson’s house. He put on a thin, white t-shirt with a Batman emblem in the middle of it and the lightest pair of shorts he owned. It was barely noon, and yet the heat was relentless. Every window in his home was open, but there was no breeze. The fans sprinkled throughout the home offered little relief.

He was optimistic that him and his friends would have a good day of quarter fishing; so good, perhaps, that they could stop in the McDonald’s by the Shop-and-Save for lunch afterwards. But, just in case, he made himself eat a small bowl of cereal before heading out the door.

Benji biked across the street to the Emerson’s house and parked his Huffy behind their front deck, hiding it. There had been so sign of Rodney since earlier, but it was better to be safe than sorry, Benji figured.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Lauren opened the door, smiled, and let Benji inside. Benji hopped onto the couch beside Alley, who didn’t bother to look away from the television set when he said, “Hey, Benji. You’re here early. They’re about to play Plinko!”

On the fifteen-inch screen in the middle of the room, Bob Barker escorted a young contestant from one end of the stage to the other. A giant, elaborate prize board was set up.

“I hate Plinko,” Benji mumbled.

“It’s my favorite,” Alley said.

“There’s no skill involved. It’s just luck.”

“Well, that’s why it’s exciting. Could you imagine winning fifty-thousand dollars?”

“I could,” Benji said. “We certainly wouldn’t be quarter fishing at the grocery store today.”

“Fifty-thousand dollars in quarters,” Alley said. “We could fill a room with them, then swim through them. We could play at Planet X forever.”

“We could buy Planet X,” Benji offered. “Then we could set all the machines to free-play. We wouldn’t ever have to pay to play them.”

“That would take some off the fun out of it, don’t you think?”

“No. I think unlimited plays on an arcade cabinet would be awfully fun.”

“Well,” Alley said. “The fun comes from putting a quarter in and trying to get your money’s worth. If you do really bad, you feel like you wasted the quarter. If you do really well, then you don’t feel bad for spending the money. If you play for free, then where’s the pressure? What’s the reward for doing good? If a ghost eats you in Pac-Man, then you just press start and go again? That doesn’t sound like fun.”

Benji shook his head. “Leave it to the smartest guy in the room to ruin the thought of unlimited, free video games.”

“Hey,” Lauren said to Alley, glancing at the watch on her wrist. “Finish your lunch, you need to take your noon dose before we leave.”

Alley rolled his eyes. On the tray table in front of him, where he sat legs crossed, was a grilled-cheese sandwich that Lauren had so lovingly prepared for him. Beside the sandwich was a plastic, translucent case that housed a dozen pills in varying sizes. The noon dose. 

“Come on, I mean it,” Lauren said. “You’d do it if mom asked you to.”

“You’re not mom.”

Lauren stopped what she was doing—fidgeting with the laces of a shoe she just put on—to stand up straight and give Alley a look. The
look.
The look that said:
Somehow in all of this I became responsible for your well being, and even though I’m only a year older than you, you’ll do what I tell you because that’s the way it is and I can make your life difficult if I have to.
All that, all in a single look. Alley started to eat his sandwich.

“I don’t like these new ones,” Alley grumbled, finishing a bite of sandwich and chasing the first of a dozen pills with a sip of Hi-C. “They give me bad dreams.”

“I’m sorry they give you bad dreams,” Lauren said. “But you still need to take them.”

Alley swallowed the second, third, and fourth pills. He grimaced on the fourth one; Benji noticed that it was quite large. He felt bad for his friend.

“What kind of bad dreams?” Benji asked, curious.

“Well, last night I dreamt that my teeth kept falling out. All of them. My whole mouth. And each time I’d spit out a mouthful of teeth, a new set would grow in, and right away I’d have to spit those out, too. So, all night, I was spitting out blood and teeth.” Alley made a mock choking sound. “So grody.”

The bike ride to Shop-and-Save was pleasant, even in the heat. Lauren led the way—she was always fastest, considering Benji was pedaling for two—and the trio caught the occasional cool breeze.

“I hate having to wear this stupid thing,” Alley said, as Benji turned into the Shop-and-Save parking lot. Alley shook his head from side to side to keep the helmet from sliding down his forehead.

“Your sister doesn’t want you getting hurt,” Benji said.

“I look like a major dork.”

“No you don’t.”

“Says the guy not wearing a bicycle helmet. It’s making my head sweaty. I want to feel the breeze!”

Benji parked his bike beside Lauren’s on the side of the Shop-and-Save, and Alley hopped off. Right away, the three began to scan the mostly empty parking lot ahead of them.

The scheme was simple. Shop-and-Save used shopping carts that had small contraptions on the handle. The carts were locked up in front of the grocery store, daisy-chained together, and customers would have to insert a quarter into the contraption to free it from the other parked carts. The hope, was, that customers would return their carts to the front of the store and retrieve their quarter, and the parking lot wouldn’t be cluttered with carts.

This, of course, wasn’t a reliable system. Benji, Lauren, and Alley counted on the laziness of shoppers to fund their summer afternoons in the Planet X Arcade, their favorite hangout spot for the past few years. They would patrol the parking lot, pick out stray carts, return them to the front of the store, and keep the quarter. Shoppers who were lazy didn’t have to return their cart, Shop-and-Save kept a clean parking lot, and Benji, Lauren, and Alley would pocket fistfuls of quarters to use at the arcade. Everybody won.

“I see one already!” Alley shouted. There was a cart parked next to a lamppost in the middle of the parking lot. Alley started to jog towards it.

“Be careful,” Lauren hollered, but Alley had already taken off and she wasn’t even sure that he heard her.

“Are you all right?” Benji asked Lauren. Behind the big lenses of her glasses, Benji could tell that her eyes were starting to water.

“I hate having to be the one in charge when no one’s home, having to make sure he takes all of that damn medicine,” Lauren said. “He shouldn’t have to take it, and I shouldn’t have to force him to take it. It’s not fair.”

“I noticed some new ones on his table today, while we were watching The Price is Right.”

“A lot of new ones,” Lauren said.  “He had an appointment last week. He can’t go a single appointment without needing some kind of new prescription. It’s driving my parents wild and it’s making him loopy. The poor kid, he doesn’t sleep well anymore. Some of the nightmares he has—you wouldn’t believe.”

“Yeah, the teeth one was the strangest one he’s ever told me about.”

“And I’m such a bitch, right, forcing him to wear his helmet? I know he just wants to fit in. But Christ, the kid gets a paper cut and it’s an emergency room visit.”

“Next time we ride bikes,” Benji said, “I’ll be sure to wear my helmet. To make him feel better about it. A little solidarity can’t hurt.”

In the parking lot, Alley was racing the cart towards the front of the store, one foot on the back of it, the other foot kicking forward, riding it like a scooter.

“That would be really sweet of you, Ben,” Lauren said. “And I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

“That little monkey is my best friend. I’d do anything to keep his spirits up.”

“Me too,” Lauren said, and Benji noticed the sadness in her eyes subsiding.

In the distance, Alley held up a single, gleaming quarter triumphantly. “First one of the day!” he yelled, excitedly.

Benji and Lauren nodded, smiling.

“He’s going to have a great party tonight,” Benji said. “Wait until you see what I got him.”

Nine

DANNY WALKED TO THE FRONT OF the arcade and hollered back to Todd, “I’m about to open us up for the day.”

“Go ahead, do it,” Todd shouted from the office.

It was early afternoon, and a small group of kids had clumped together in front of the arcade’s entrance, anxiously waiting to get out of the heat and into the cool air conditioning of the building.

Danny unlocked the door, stepped outside to hold the door open for his customers, and found a small, camel colored envelope taped to the glass of the door.

“Hey, Danny, about time,” one kid said. “I’m sweatin’ my nads off out here.”

“Hi, Craig,” Danny said, recognizing the customer.

“Yo, Danny,” a chubby high school freshman said.

“Hey, Shane,” Danny said. He waved the envelope in his hand at Craig, Shane, and the rest of the crowd pouring into his establishment. “Hey, did any of you guys tape this to the door?”

“No.”

“Not me.”

“Nadda.”

“Un-uh.”

Danny raised his eyebrows and examined the envelope. Too small and dainty to be from a bill collector chasing Todd. “Did any of you happen to see who left it?”

The crowd shook their heads and murmured a variety of different “no’s” before filing into the arcade.

Danny walked to the back office. He was practically shaking at the thought of turning the mysterious note over to Todd. The envelope gave him a bad feeling; he knew, deep down, without having to open it, that it might illicit a reaction in Todd similar to the prank phone call from the night before.

Danny rapped on the half-open office door of the arcade with his knuckles. “What’s up?” Todd asked from inside.

“We’re open. Got some customers.”

“That’s great news,” Todd said, not looking up from the work on his desk.

“Uh, this was taped to our door when I unlocked us for the afternoon.”

Todd looked up slowly from his paperwork until his eyes rested on the light brown envelope in Danny’s outstretched hand.

“Well? What is it?”

“I haven’t opened it,” Danny said. “Prank phone calls are one thing, but prank letters are a whole other level. Who knows what grossness could be tucked in here. Figured I’d leave it for the boss man.”

Danny set the envelope on Todd’s desk and headed back out towards the floor of the arcade.

“Hey,” Shane said, waddling towards Danny. “Final Fight ate my quarter. What you gonna do about it?”

Danny thought for a second. Final Fight was one of the newer machines. The arcade had it for a year or so, and it never gave him any problems. Strange that it would start acting up now.

“Follow me to the register,” Danny said. “I’ll get you a quarter.”

“Make it two,” a voice said. Craig. “Streets of Rage at my quarter, too.”

Another new machine. Danny was there the day it was delivered, just six months prior.

“What are you guys trying to pull?” Danny said. “Amateurs. If you want to try tricking me into free quarters, you could at least complain about older machines.”

“You calling me a liar?” Shane said, his voice much too thick and raspy for a kid his age. “Come over to the machine, I’ll prove it to you.”

“Same here,” Craig butted in. “You’ve seen me in your arcade for years, Danny. You think I’m gonna try ripping you off for a quarter now?”

There was a cloud of aggravation hanging in the arcade. Everywhere Danny turned, customers were having problems with the machines.

Danny shook his head. It was going to be a long day on little sleep.

In the back office, Todd was oblivious to the commotion on the floor. He looked at the envelope at length, thought about whether or not he should try to dig out a pair of latex gloves from the broom closet before he opened it.
What if someone is messing with me?
Todd thought.
What if, as a joke, they filled the envelope with some novelty sneezing powder or…ugh, gross, what if they taped pubes inside or something awful?
Todd audibly retched. Some of the individuals that hung around his joint were known to have a sick sense of humor—such a prank wouldn’t necessarily surprise him, but it would still disgust him.

Todd opened the envelope slowly. On the inside of the top flap, in a light shade of red, was a limp imprint. As if whoever left the letter, before sealing it, glossed on a thick layer of lipstick then kissed the inside fold.

“Flattering,” Todd said to himself.

Tucked inside of the envelope was a piece of paper no larger than an index card. Carefully, Todd slid the paper out. Blank. He flipped it over, and dropped the note on the desk before him.

“Miss You,” the card read.

Miss You. Miss You, Miss You, Miss You. Exactly the same way she would write it, Todd thought. Capital M, capital Y. Miss You.

In an instant, Todd left his body, travelled to another time and place the way one does when an old memory triggers their thoughts so vividly.

He remembered New York with Shelly. He remembered their tiny, cramped apartment in the lower east side. He closed his eyes and he could smell the way the home would smell when she cooked—oh, it was amazing, just amazing how she could cook. Rosemary, garlic, onion…the apartment was so damn small, you couldn’t help but catch a whiff of whatever was simmering or sautéing no matter what room you were in. He was glad that she was such an excellent little chef. Whenever he cooked, the food burned and charred and made the curtains stink of grease and fire.

He thought about his laundry list of odd jobs: painting, electrical work, bussing tables. Whatever he could get his hands on. Towards the end of his stay in New York, before he moved all the way out to Grand Ridge, Oregon, he got a decent paying job working in an arcade, servicing the machines.

And Shelly, with her equally long list of varied occupations: barista, waitress, usher. Chef, when there were openings—she was good at it, but she had no formal training, so it was always at divey little places who would take her in when they needed the extra help, and let her go when business slowed back down. Cash under the table. 

But it didn’t matter what Shelly did, because she was beautiful. Gorgeous. Todd often wondered how a schlep like him ended up with a girl like her. But love is love, and they were in
love
, madly in love. And somehow the two overcame the odds and made it work.

Shelly’s true love was performing, and she was auditioning for any gig she could find: stage work, theatre, soda commercials. She even tried out as a movie extra a couple of times when something exciting was being filmed in town. She landed a small part here and there. Never anything big.

Which Todd could never understand because she was so downright
stunning.
And it wasn’t just her looks—though that was always the first thing people seemed to comment on—she had genuine charm and a knack for delivering lines. She was so damn likable. A breakout role, or being discovered by an agent…it seemed like an inevitability.

Any day now.

And, with their frantic schedules, personal time between the two rarely overlapped. When it did, they savored every moment of it together. When it didn’t, they always phoned one another to check in on how the other was doing.

And Shelly, she’d do this cute thing—she’d hide notes all over the apartment for Todd to find while she was away at work or auditions. Sometimes they’d be taped to a box of cereal, other times they’d be hidden underneath the cat’s dish. Wherever they were, they always said the same thing:

“Miss You.”