Free Another Perfect Catastrophe by Brad Barkley Page B

away all his hard work.
    We get Lyndsey on time this go around, and have already been to the 421 for pony beers and Slim Jims and Ding Dongs. We find our way to Green Valley Golf Course and find the cart paths chained off, a security guard’s car parked next to the clubhouse.
    â€œWell, damn,” Sugar says. “Somebody ruined it for us.”
    â€œWhere to?” I ask.
    â€œJust drive around,” Sugar says. “Cruise and eat and drink.”
    Lyndsey shakes her head. “I don’t want to just drive around all night.” Her Hen House pin is still in my dash, where she stuck it five months ago.
    â€œWhy not?” Sugar says.
    â€œI know a place,” I tell them.
    I drive us over to the giant parking lot behind Burlington Industries, where in the summer the tennis hacks line up to pound balls against the concrete slab at the back of the lot. We scale the wall from its tapered end and sit in the high middle of it, our legs dangling, asphalt twenty feet below us. Behind us is the big steel-and-glass building with its fountain spewing water up past the fourth floor. We are nearing Christmas, and the white lights in the fountain have been replaced by red and green ones, the mist blowing off the fountain, holding the color for a second, then vanishing into darkness.
    Lyndsey wraps a blanket around her legs and scoots close to me, the hood of her coat edging her face with fake fur. We pass the little bottles of beer and fire up foul-smelling Swisher Sweets and sit in the cold drinking and smoking, not talking, Sugar pushing the mask of his welding helmet up and down so that the hinges squeak.
    â€œYou ever think about doormen?” Sugar says. He says this from behind the mask, his voice muffled. “I mean, it’s weird. Say you’re at that job for forty years. That is forty years of doing a single thing eight hours a day: opening and closing that one door.”
    I nod. “Yeah, strange. After so much time you must develop a relationship with that door. You know how many seconds it takes to swing closed, how much it weighs, what it smells like, where all the little nicks are in the wood.” I feel Lyndsey shivering beside me. She finishes her second beer and opens a third, reaches for my cigar and holds it in her mittened hand, puffing and coughing, like a cartoon of someone smoking. Sugar is not done with doormen yet.
    â€œI mean,” he says, “that would be the worst part, that after you’re seventy years old you look back and that’s what you can say about your life. ‘Well, I opened that door a lot.’ Like, that’s the whole ball of wax. That would be death to me, a job like that.”
    â€œAt least it’s a job,” Lyndsey says. “At least you know what you’re doing the next day.” I give her hand a squeeze, open another beer.
    â€œWhat would be the worst way to die?” I ask them. “Aside from being a doorman, I mean. I vote drowning.”
    â€œNo way,” Lyndsey says. “Burning up in a fire. Think how much a little arm burn on the toaster hurts.”
    â€œBut it’s quick,” Sugar says. “The worst would be falling, like from a plane. All that time down and down and down, knowing what’s coming, thinking about all the ways you fucked up.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t have time to think,” Lyndsey says. “You’d be panicking.”
    I shake my head. “There is always time to think, no matter what.”
    â€œHell, yes,” Sugar says and tips up his mask. “Watch this.” He stands up, wobbles, stretches his arms out, then jumps off the high wall toward the parking lot below, his loose jacket fluttering up behind him. Half a second later he lands on both feet and his mask clanks shut, then he limps around in a fast circle, saying, damn damn damn over and over, a fast little song.
    â€œNice going,” I tell him. “You could’ve broken your stupid