Free This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry Page A

school pictures of kids in braces. Alongside those: Incomplete sets of china, stuffed animals, dolls, scaled NASCAR die-cast models, crystal wine glasses, decorations from all the major holidays. An electronic Santa that’s always on, always waving. A few bottles of liquor crammed into a corner. Souvenir shot glasses. Baby spoons from national parks and monuments. Beth gets uncomfortable in here, says the craziness of it makes her nervous. Jack loves it.
    There’s a couple in the round booth in the corner, smoking, holding hands. She’s in a yellow tank top, drunk, skinny, laughing at everything her date says. Two women are sitting at the front of the bar, heavily made up, mid-forties, maybe fifties, drinking something orange out of stemmed glasses. He’s the only other person there. He sits down a few seats away from the women and far enough away from the TV so the sound doesn’t feel like it’s in his skull. The bartender, an older woman, short, the same woman who’s been here every time he’s ever come in, brings him a menu and a napkin, says, “What’ll you have?”
    “A Miller’s,” he says, thinking of his grandfather, who called all beer, regardless of brand, a Miller’s.
    She nods, purses her mouth, reaches into the cooler and then opens his beer for him, something he’s always liked. She sets it on his napkin. “Anything to eat?” she says.
    He’s earned himself a snack, he figures. He orders a cheeseburger.
    “We make all our own ground beef,” she says. “Right here.”
    “Yes ma’am,” he says. She leaves to put his order in, and he watches the TV. The crime scene is poolside, the suspects girls in white bikinis. The detectives are swabbing the bikini girls’ mouths with Q-tips. There is shock and outrage and surprise and the cops look serious, vigilant, preternaturally beautiful. Jack sips his beer, considers the facts: Canavan’s probably out in his lawn by now, assessing the damage. Beth’ll be telling him all about how this is why she moved out in the first place, because Jack’s nothing more than a goddamned overgrown child . She’ll be telling him to go and get his log splitter off the lot at PM&T. She’ll be saying he’s crazy, he’s crazy. He’s not crazy. He was just stopping by, leaving a note. Sorry I missed you.
    The show goes to commercial. When it comes back on, the action has shifted to other bikini girls at another pool. One of the ladies at the end of the bar is explaining something about a house fire to the bartender. Something about money burning up, about having kept money in coffee cans in the house. “You just don’t ever know,” the woman says.
    “I know,” the bartender says.
    Jack orders a second beer when his cheeseburger comes out, and a third, eventually. He watches the end of the cop show. It was one of the bikini girls. Long shot of the bikini girl in the back of a cruiser. Justice. The ladies down the bar are talking now about somebody’s son who has to go to jail for a month. The local news comes on. The anchor’s name is Neil McNeill, which has always seemed impossible, but there it is. That can’t be his name, Beth said, the first time they saw him. Why not? Jack wanted to know.
    He must have changed it.
    You think he changed it to that?
    I don’t know, she said. That just can’t be his name.
    She’ll hold onto things like that, worry them through. She wants to push at the world. It’s something he likes about her, something he admires—that she feels she’s owed some kind of explanation. Jack’s often enough content just to drive the truck over the top of Canavan’s landscaping, see what happens.
    He hangs on for one last beer, for the weather and sports. In minor league action, the Bulls and Grasshoppers and Warthogs all win. Smiles all around the anchor desk. At the round booth, the tank top woman gets up on her knees, pulls her shirt up in the back, shows her date a tattoo. Don’t that look just like a world globe? she’s