Free Fingerless Gloves by Nick Orsini Page B

her car came back to life.
    I shrugged it off and checked the text message. It was from an unknown number beginning with a weird area code. It read: “Meet me at the Insta-Mart in the next half hour.” The cryptic message was marked and read, then discarded. I checked the blinking clock on Beth’s dash as it spouted out 11:40.
    I asked Beth, “Um, can you just drop me off at the Insta-Mart by the gas station? I’m supposed to meet someone there.”
    “Anton, how the fuck, after all these years, do you still manage to be one of the shadiest kids I’ve ever met?”
    Normally, I wouldn’t go meet some random, mystery texter in a convenience store parking lot. In this case, things were different. First, I needed to smoke again…well, I didn’t really NEED to, and there was no guarantee that the person I was meeting would want to. It was worth a shot. I had about half the baggie left and all the heaviness with Beth was really starting to press me into this weird, stoner pancake. I needed to pick myself back up. My head was like Finding Nemo . I had a million thoughts swimming and getting lost, but the most important thoughts were far from my comprehension. I wondered what James was up to, if he had gotten out of the hospital or not, but I refused to let those thoughts materialize into a phone call. I would have rambled on like a maniac. Instead I was wrapping my head around half-hearted realizations, such as the fact that Beth’s brand of perfume had gone unchanged since we were in high school. She bought it from some department store. It smelled cheap, but smelled like her. I’m not sure why I found this so fascinating, but that one thought kept me from spinning off the planet.
    The blue and white Insta-Mart sign flickered from down the road. It was a beacon for taquito-craving late night bottom-dwellers. Cigarettes and greasy coffee with pre-made sandwiches and zip-sealed beef jerky could about the only viable things to be purchased from the highway respite. The parking lot was unusually empty…just a few stragglers trying to assuage some type of hurt feelings with sleeves of processed potato thins. Since I was old enough to appreciate night drives on my own, the Insta-Mart seemed like the end of the world. It was this point on the highway where you felt, if you continued any further, you’d drop off a flat map. The family that ran it, rumor told, had been robbed so many times that they kept a loaded double-barrel behind the counter…just like in classic convenience store holdup scenes.
    Beth pulled in, parked, and gave me a long look. I could tell she wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of just leaving me here. I guess, once you care about someone, it’s hard to just erase that completely, without any pencil smudges and faded marks. Deep down, I knew Beth would always care about where she dropped me off, what was bothering me in the corners of my brain, whether or not I had more real friends than just James and if I’d ever turn my job into a career, relocate to a better place, build some type of life for myself. These are the wishes we have for the people we’ve shared so much with. There was some comfort in knowing that, perhaps comfort that I took for granted. No one ever faulted a person for wishing they were better…for wishing they knew how to treat people. After she turned the music down a few notches, Beth leaned on the center console and looked at me saying,
    “Well, keep me posted with James. It’s decent to see you. You should try to not smoke so much…it just doesn’t suit you.”
    With that, Beth leaned over and gave me an awkward hug. It was one of those neck hugs that overlapped my trying to get the seatbelt off. Her fingertips awkwardly touched my neck and I leaned in, then leaned back too soon…neither movement executed with any kind of grace. I popped the plastic lock up on the door, not waiting for her to use the power locks, and stepped out into the parking lot. As I closed the door,