The pixie scourge seemed to be overtaking the city. Sausages were rolling into the gas station. Scabnettis picked their way through convenience stores. Sprites popped in and out of the apartment. They were all completely mad and no matter where I went, I couldn't escape them. Toad and Josh both succumbed to the disease.
I was sitting at the desk, morosely watching Jerry Springer with Dustin. Stefano, one of our regular pixie customers decided to pop in and try to cash another bad check. His thin black hair was matted to his head. I didn't know if it was from grease or sweat. His moustache twitched and his blue eyes pierced, "Come on man! I really need you to do this for me!"
You couldn't turn around in the gas station without a giant white sign with big red letters reading, "NO CHECKS!" smacking you in the face, but everything was always a matter of life and death with the pixies, "All I can do is call and see if Toad will make an exception."
The reality was, we did accept checks. But only if the customer was on the "approved list." When I first started at the station, the "approved list" was just a piece of ordinary white paper with fifteen or so names scrawled on it in varying colors and styles of penmanship. The paper was old and wrinkled and some names had been scribbled out. Toad changed that by making a new list with PageMaker and printing it out, probably while on pixie dust.
We were all given the power to accept a check or not, at our own discretion. If we accepted one and it bounced and we couldn't talk the customer into paying for it, it came out of our paycheck. I knew Toad would approve Stefano; he always did. But I wasn't going to pay for the idiot's pixie dust when his check inevitably bounced. By clearing it with Toad, I made it his responsibility.
I watched while Stefano's shaking hand scrawled sharply-edged lines onto the blank check. He made it out for twenty dollars more than he originally requested. I put my initials in the memo line, followed with "by order of Toad."
I took out my wad to give Stefano his money and noticed an old lady stalled at our north entrance. She was just sitting in her broken car, looking around with a confusion that was evident even through her blue-blocker sunglasses, "Dustin, go see what's up with that old lady out there."
"Fuck her!"
"Dude, come on."
Stefano turned to the window, "I'll handle it!"
I watched him lunge eagerly to the stalled car. He spoke animatedly with the old lady for a few seconds, then ran behind the car and single-handedly pushed it uphill all the way to our pumps. He came back inside, seemingly elated, "She just ran out of gas!"
I gave Stefano his money and headed outside to deal with the old lady, knowing Dustin was in a foul enough mood that he'd chase the pixie off before I was finished.
When I returned, I opened the desk drawer to put the check away and noticed a stack of credit card receipts. Toad had left the charges out! Normally, the stack of charges was no more than 10 or so receipts thick - a few charges by random employees for random amounts. We were supposed to try to charge no more than a single paycheck's worth. I thumbed through the thick pile of receipts - "Toad," "Toad," "Toad," "Toad..." Toad had accumulated nearly three thousand dollars in charges. It all went to pixie dust and vodka.
I added my own charges up and found they were pushing six hundred dollars. Most of that was books for school and part of the tuition not covered by student loans and the meager grants I received. I longed to be a single mother when it came time to apply for education grants. As if being dumb enough to screw somebody who'd abandon his own kid somehow qualified one for a college education.
I'd never be able to pay off that much money with my paltry income. Even with the reduction in our rent for our new apartment, money was tight. I needed to find a way to make more money or reduce my cost of living.
Dustin had more immediate concerns, "Darren, let's get something from L.C.'s."
There was a lull in customers and I could use some food myself, "Yeah. That sounds good."
I went to L.C.'s and picked up the greasy bags of food while Dustin handled any random customers that decided to annoy him. I sat down at one of the circular plastic tables waiting for them to finish up with our order. I noticed a man standing at the take-out window. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't quite place him. I searched the cobwebby recesses of my mind until it finally dawned on me - it was Jack, the paranoid schizophrenic who had visited the station a few months earlier. He was having what seemed to be a heated discussion with the clerk.
"I'm sorry, sir, you'll have to come back Monday and talk to the manager about that."
"Come on, man, don't be an asshole. I don't want to wait until Monday," he laughed nervously.
"Sorry, I can't help you."
Jack stood at the window, clearly flustered, though he was smiling.
"Number 102!" The clerk called out.
Shit. That was me. I hoped Jack wouldn't remember me as I went to the window to pick up the food, being careful not to make eye contact with him.
"Hey man! You're from that fucked-up gas station aren't you?!"
I smiled vaguely, "Yeah dude."
"Are you guys hiring?"
"Sorry, dude."
"Fuck," he laughed maniacally.
I shrugged, paid for my food and left before he got a chance to strike up a conversation. While Dustin and I sorted our food out and began eating, I told him about spotting Jack at L.C.'s.
"Oh my God!" Dustin called out as though he had just realized something utterly horrific. I thought it was a bit unsettling to have run into Jack, but Dustin's reaction was extreme. As far as I knew, he wasn't on any pixie dust that night - otherwise, he wouldn't be eating.
I darted a furrowed brow at Dustin and then realized he was looking outside. I turned toward the window and saw Jack walking toward the door, "Oh my God!"
❖
Our new schizophrenic friend visited us every day at the station and stayed for hours at a time. He wasn't as bad as my initial experience had led me to believe. Once I accepted the fact that he was just going to spout stark raving madness most of the time, it became easier to ignore it and appreciate him when he was making sense.
He was on parole after being in prison for a few years on a cocaine possession charge. He was living with his sister and brother-in-law and had no job, surviving on food stamps he'd use to buy drugs from Dustin. Jack preferred cocaine, but I guess pixie dust was a good-enough substitute. Jack was also fond of vodka.
Jack wanted to move out of his sister's basement and Dustin and I needed the financial break of a third person sharing the bills. Once he finally got a job at the Hen House supermarket, we offered to let him move in. He accepted and we drove to his sister's in the Family Truckster and collected two trash bags filled with all his worldly possessions. He had been married and I guess his wife divorced him when he got busted. She left him with basically nothing but his clothes. He seemed afraid of women and usually avoided Tracy, though he was obviously fond of her as he liked to talk about her. He was also afraid of homosexuals, which made me wonder what exactly had happened while he was in prison. He would constantly talk about how much he hated "fags." Sometimes, we would be with him around town and he would ask people who he disliked or distrusted if they were gay. Other than coke, pixie and vodka, Jack was only interested in music, for which he seemed to have varied tastes. The only time he refused to listen to a song was if he had identified the artist as a homosexual. Sometimes, as was the case with Jane's Addiction, that didn't even matter, "Yeah, Perry's a fag, but this song is pretty good."
Another oddity we soon discovreed was his tendecy to randomly burst into tears, leaving everyone wondering what the hell was going on. When asked, he'd only shake his head and run to his room. As far as I can tell, he did most of his confiding in the cats and insisted that they "knew things." It was never made clear what it was, exactly, they knew, but we guessed that Dustin's cat, CC, knew more of it as he seemed to favor him.
One morning, after Tracy had spent the night, I was awakened prematurely by the sound of the shower and Jack blabbering away in the bathroom. I realized Tracy wasn't next to me, then heard a crashing sound in the bathroom and scratching at the door. Jack continued talking up a storm with the shower going.
"Bottom line, you're going to see... Yeah, things may be fucked up now... But the rewards will come."
The rusty cogs of my mind ground slowly into motion.
"Most people don't understand. I'm trying to explain to you... I just want to be left alone with my tunes."
Wait a minute, is that Tracy taking a shower? Is he in there fucking talking to her while she's taking a shower??
I got up and opened the bathroom door. The curtain was closed and Jack's voice was still rambling non-stop from the steamy shower. My cat, Joon, immediately shot out the door and hid in my room. Jack had trapped her in the bathroom so he could have a conversation with her while he took a shower.
I guess in some alien way, he was right... the cats did know. Joon would never go near him after that.
Posted by DevilMonkey at 12:37 PM