There isn’t any, said Guthrie.
What’s wrong with everybody? Irving Curtis said. Jesus. It’s the middle of the week. I come in here feeling good and now look what you’ve done to me. I’m depressed already and it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning.
You could shoot yourself, Guthrie said.
Ho, Curtis said. He laughed. That’s better. That’s funny.
They sat and smoked. Maggie Jones stopped the machine and gathered up her papers. Your turn, she said to Guthrie, and left the room.
Bye-bye, Irving Curtis said.
Guthrie rose and fed the ditto master into the slot on the drum and closed it and cranked the machine once and once more to see how the exam looked.
No shit, though, Curtis said. Just once I’d like to get her in a dark room.
You want to leave her alone, Guthrie said.
No. I mean, think about it.
Guthrie cranked the machine and turned the damp exams out into the tray. There was the sharp smell of spirits.
I told you what Gary Rawlson said about her.
You told me, Guthrie said.
Do you believe it?
No. And neither does Rawlson when he hasn’t been drinking. When it’s in the daylight.
Victoria Roubideaux.
At noon she came out of the noise and crush at school and walked over to the highway and then up a block to the Gas and Go. In her purse she had three dollars and some change and she wanted to think she could eat something now and keep it down. Thinking anyway she ought to try.
Approaching the store she passed two high school boys leaning together at the gas pumps, running fuel into an old blue Ford Mustang. They watched her walk across the blacktop in her short skirt. Once she glanced up at them. Hey, one of them called. Vicky. How you doing? She looked away and he said something she was unable to hear but it made the other boy laugh. She went on.
When she entered the store a group of high school kids was lined up at the counter, talking and waiting to pay for the cold meat sandwiches they’d taken from the refrigerated case and also the bags of chips and the plastic cups of pop. She walked back through the aisles, glancing at the labeled cans and the bright packages on the shelves. Nothing looked good now. She picked up a can of Vienna sausages and examined it and read the label and put it back thinking how slick they were, how they dripped and ran when you lifted them out. She moved over to the popcorn case. At least that would be a salty taste. She filled a bag of popcorn and then chose a can of pop from the cooler. She carried these to the front and set them on the counter next to the register.
Alice rang them up, a hard-looking thin woman with a black mole on her cheek. Dollar twelve, she said. Her voice sounded harsh. She watched the girl raise the purse on its strap and open it.
You’re looking kind of puny today. You okay, hon?
I’m just tired, the girl said, and set the money on the counter.
You kids. You need to go to bed at night. She scooped the money up and sorted it into the drawer. And I mean in your own bed.
I do, the girl said.
Sure, Alice said. I know how that is.
The girl moved to the front window of the store past the double glass doors and stood at the magazine rack, reading about three girls her age who had trouble in California, while she ate the popcorn one kernel at a time and sipped at the can of pop. More kids came in and bought drinks during the noon hour and went out, calling back and forth, and once a couple of sophomores began to shove each other in the aisle stacked with cans of motor oil and pork-and-beans until Alice said, You boys can knock that off anytime.
A senior came in and paid for gas. He was a tall blond boy with sunglasses pushed up on the top of his head. She knew him from first-year biology. On his way out he stopped in the doorway, leaning toward her, holding the door open with his hip. Roubideaux, he said.
She looked at him.
Want a ride?
No.
Just back to school.
No thank you.
Why not?
I don’t want to.