Free Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards

store.
    “Zellers wasn’t made to keep the likes of you in pantyhose,” Joe said, coming into the room, and looking about gruffly. Her room had been completely changed over since he had last been in it. Now there was a big poster of a flower above her bed, when before there wasn’t. Now there was a sign on her door saying: “To all little creeps – stay out on pain of death,” whereas before there wasn’t. Also her bras and beanies were lying about the room, and her panties were lying on the chair. Joe noticed all of this quickly and felt he had intruded. He stepped over to the chair and moved the panties off carefully. He sat down.
    Adele was lying in bed reading. Her face was white, and her lips moved over what she read. Now and then she slapped the magazine pages abruptly. The Russian ship whistle sounded in the distance. There was a great big curler in her hair, right at the top, while her hair was taped down on the sides, which made her ears look particularly innocent.
    “How come you didn’t visit old Allain – ya know,” he stuttered. “We been down there for supper a hunnred times?”
    “As no relation to me,” Adele said, under her breath.
    “Ya used ta get him ta buy bubblegum for your hockey cards though, didn’t ya?” he said. “Ole Allain walkin around chewin big wads of bubblegum.” Adele sniffed.
    Her pink blouse was buttoned up to her throat and made her skin look cream-coloured, except for a little pimple on her nose, which had a dab of Noxzema on it.
    Joe had a stutter and Adele liked to mimic it when she was showing off. So he was often hesitant to speak to her in case she would start to mimic his stutter. Sometimes when he was out in the woods alone, he would go up to a tree and say: “Hello how are you, me name’s Joe Walsh, boilermaker, mechanic of sorts who lives with Rita and two kids,” and would not stutter at all, and nod with conviction.
    And it seemed as if he would be able to pronounce every word correctly from that moment forward, and that he would never stutter again. But by the time he got home, the same identifiable stoppage in speech would have reappeared.
    Even Rita became intolerant and impatiently finished sentences for him. Adele had picked up on this also and she would finish sentences that he hadn’t even intended to say.
    The stutter only came when he was nervous, as he waswhen he went to the unemployment centre to talk about getting a job, or now and then when he went out with Rita to a play at the high school or church.
    Joe sat in a chair with a cigarette in his hand. His bottom lip had puffed out and had developed a little sack for putting snuff. He sat on his fingers and looked about. On the dresser, there was an old black and white picture of Adele as a child with pigeons all over her body. Her arms and legs were covered with pigeons, and two pigeons were sitting on her head, and she had the absurdest look of terror on her face. Seeing this and Adele’s pictures of flowers, and her decals and stickers, Joe, sitting there with his large arms and shoulders, once again felt as if he had intruded and that there was no way he could be stern with her. He had every intention of being stern when he came into the room, but now he became silent, and listened to the train off in the distance above the creamery.
    And suddenly without knowing he was going to, he told her he had not meant to hurt them when he was drinking, and he was sorry she had melancholy feelings.
    He spoke about his last drinking binge which lasted eighteen days. Days went by and he wanted to come home, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He thought everyone would have gone. At one point he woke up sitting in this office. Everyone was walking back and forth and not paying the slightest bit of attention to him. The personnel manager was standing over in the corner whispering to the secretary, who was looking at him. Joe found out that he was in a mine in Quebec. How he’d gotten there he didn’t