What Makes You Think You're Awake? Read online

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, quieter this time, unsure of what she could say that would neutralize his disappointment and need.

  “I was worried that something had happened to you, so I just thought I’d drop in to check,” he said. “My aunt Rose nearly died from accidentally leaving the gas knob on her stove slightly askew. You just never know …”

  “Thank you for making sure I’m not dead.”

  “Listen,” he said. “I still need to grab a bite. I left when you didn’t show. Do you want to come along?”

  She couldn’t really see how to say no at this point, so she acquiesced. He held open the passenger door and offered his hand to give her a boost, but she grabbed the handle that rested just above the window and hoisted herself up.

  They drove down Main Street, a speck of road with a few surviving historical buildings from when there used to be a train stop here, but most of the tiny city center consisted of rundown franchises: a Popeyes and a McDonald’s going toe-to-toe, a Super Dollar, and a BP gas station with a mini-mart that could tide you over until you could make the longer drive to Walmart, two towns over. There was a smoke-spewing stand surrounded by picnic tables called Whole Hog BBQ, which had stopped serving whole hog barbeque several years ago but no one wanted to invest in changing the sign since money was tight. No one wanted to invest in a town that was barely hanging on.

  Joe drove past the barbeque joint, explaining that he was embarrassed to go back since he’d just left not even an hour ago. Instead, they went to Mike’s Grocery, which didn’t even sell groceries, just booze, basic grub, and jukebox tunes, but Joe insisted that the burgers were worth it. The front porch had long since lost any paint or varnish, and two orange traffic cones cordoned off a splintered gap in the planks. Joe held the door open for Amy so that she had to enter first, eyes struggling in the dark interior to make sense of the layers of tarp and strings of lights woven into the ceiling beams. Joe ordered at the bar, then led her to a card table, its surface shellacked with a collage of stags cut from hunting magazines.

  An old man sat hunched at the bar, sipping at his beer and gazing into the mirror behind the shelves of cheap liquor and potato chip bags. Every so often, he’d peer over his shoulder at Amy, stare long enough that she couldn’t help locking eyes with him, and then turn back to the mirror, satisfied.

  “Hey, Billy,” Joe gave a perfunctory wave, then added quietly to Amy, “Poor bastard. His wife died a few years ago and now he just sits here all day, most days, watching whatever game or court show is on the TV, or just sitting like a bump on a log.”

  “You ever live anywhere else, Joe?”

  “I lived in New Orleans for a couple years with a few of my buddies, but it wasn’t a good mix for me, all that fast living. Plus, I inherited a spot of land here.” He took a sip of his Coke. “What about you? What brought you here?”

  “The quiet.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “People don’t just up and move to bumblefuck Alabama. Maybe Tuscaloosa or Mobile or something, but this,” he twirled his finger, pointing at the room at large, “this ain’t that. You running from something?”

  “Yeah, I killed someone,” she said, and he immediately laughed, sensing it wasn’t true.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  Joe lost his smile. “I’m trying to have a real talk with you.”

  “I don’t want to get into the details,” she said, “but someone really messed me up, and I don’t mean broke my heart or played a few mind games, although that could be bad too, I guess. I mean, someone made it so that I couldn’t live anywhere I lived before. I needed zero reminders.”

  “That sounds serious.”

  “It is, but,” she said, forcing brightness, “moving on.”

  Joe nodded, then leaned back in his chair, splaying his fingers out in surrender. “Just trying to get to know you.”

  “I like pizza, drawing, and books. I probably don’t vary my routine as much as I should. I don’t like crowds or loud music or multilane highways. And your friend Billy may be a sad bastard, but I don’t like how he keeps leering this way, like he might just whip his dick out any moment and we’re the ones who are supposed to avert our eyes.”

  Joe looked over at Billy, who was still midstare, oblivious. “Sorry about that,” he said, turning back to Amy.

  “These better be damn good burgers.”

  Joe laughed, so Amy smiled. She wanted to grimace, to show him that the Billy thing wasn’t leaving her in a laughing mood, but he’d apologized, and it wasn’t his fault, even if he wasn’t doing anything to fix the situation. The burgers came and they ate in awkward silence for a while. Amy wasn’t much of a cook, and she was scared of underpreparing meat at home, so this was the first burger she’d had in months. She was on her last bite when she realized Joe was watching her with a smirk.

  “What?” she said, deflated, lowering the last morsel of meat.

  “Just enjoying how much you liked that burger.”

  She pushed her plate back a few inches and wiped her mouth, her hunger draining away from her. This was one of the trajectories she had envisioned, the smarmy endearments, the oblivious persistence. Out of the many possibilities, only a slim fraction played out as congenial, mutual curiosity between two people passing time together. She focused on slow breathing, inhaling through her nose, but then she was overwhelmed by the sour smell of days-old beer and sweat.

  “I’m suddenly not feeling well,” she said. “Would you mind taking me home?”

  She thought about walking — the town was too small for cabs or ride shares — but it was nearly a hundred degrees outside, she was miles away, and there were no sidewalks. She wouldn’t feel safer walking along the shoulder of the country highway, she thought, still uncertain.

  Joe nodded.

  Amy pulled her wallet out, and Joe waved his hand at her, insisting she put it away. “I know Dan, the bartender. He always gives me a deal.”

  What sort of deal would that be? she wondered. Surely everyone here knew the bartender but her.

  “I’d like to pay for my part,” she said.

  Joe ignored her and walked up to the bar, flagging down Dan, a man with a dark beard and a heavy metal tee shirt. Whatever Joe said, Dan laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, then shook his head. Amy imagined the possibilities, but she couldn’t land on one that felt kind to her.

  In the parking lot, Joe insisted on holding her door open, and now she resented his proximity. She wanted it to all be over. She wanted to be home, hidden between the walls of her own space.

  He drove past the two fast-food restaurants onto the highway, a grandiose term defined by the technicality of where the road led rather than the local upkeep or traffic density. The road was elevated, descending into gullies on either side with deep, dark forest stretching beyond, seemingly forever.

  “Do you want to see the lake?” He slowed the truck, already veering toward the shoulder, preparing to turn down an old road with remnants of pavement from years ago.

  “I told you I was feeling bad.”

  “We’ll just loop by it. Doesn’t add much to the driving time.”

  She forced a smile, shifting into placating mode.

  “You’ll see,” he added. “Makes living here not so bad.”

  She had her cell phone by her thigh, wedged between her and the door. She peeked at the screen, saw the low bars indicating bad reception.

  To his credit, there was a lake, and the road led directly to it. One minute they were in a tunnel of black-green leaves and then the sky opened up, an amber gray reflected in the still waters below.

  Joe rolled down the windows and leaned his arm out the side. The air smelled too pungent, like organic matter, maybe leaves, had accumulated too many layers and were concentrating the gasses of their own decay.

  “Do you want to get out? There’s a bit of a beach, even if it’s mostly mud.”

  She shook her head. There was nowhere to go, really, except into the
forest, or into the water. She had a faint memory of being in a lake as a little girl, her mother holding her hand, dragging her in as she wailed. She had hated the way the warm mud sucked on her toes. She could feel the slime swallowing her feet.

  “You feel that bad, huh?” He squinted at the sky, looking remorseful. “I thought maybe it was a mood thing.”

  “How considerate of you.”

  Amy noticed a large heron wading near the shore, its neck collapsing into itself, then extending, over and over, piercing the surface with its sharp beak. Finally, the black-striped head retracted with a tiny fish flailing, trapped in its mandibles.

  “You misunderstand me.” Joe’s stare was intense, unflinching. “I’m speaking to something I go through myself. I get real low and need to change scenery, but sometimes I don’t remember to do it for myself, but once I’m there, I remember how it always feels better, even if for just a second. Now, if you feel real sick, especially if that burger did it, I’m going to feel sorry forever. I just thought I could cheer you up, is all.”

  His response confused her. She couldn’t figure out which script they were on.

  “Thank you,” she said, trying to force soothing tones into her voice. “I think I just really need to get some rest.”

  “You’re shaking.” He reached for her hand and, without any conscious decision to do so, she threw her weight against the door. In a blur, she found herself half leaning out of the truck, her seatbelt still on, cutting into her waist.

  Joe leapt out of the vehicle and ran to the passenger side. When he looked up at her, she could see his eyebrows were raised. He’s at least performing concern, she thought. He might mean it.

  “You okay?” he said.

  She ran her hand over her mouth. “I got really nauseated all of a sudden. I didn’t want to puke in your truck.”

  He nodded. “I’ll get you home.”

  The relief cascaded through her. By the time they were back on the main road, she felt the aftermath of her adrenaline sending her into a state of forced calm, and she struggled to stay awake. Joe was rambling on about all the things she could draw by the lake, listing all the local flora and fauna. White oaks and hickory. Tupelo gums and cypress trees in the swampy areas. The mockingbird, the muskrat, but, he reassured her, no alligators in this lake.

  When they got to her house, he dropped her off. He let her go.

  She went to the shed and curled up on the rug she had placed in the center of the room so that she could stare out at the still evening sky. She lay there in the forced sleeplessness of the timeless space, and she realized no one could open this door, the one that stood behind her, and surprise her while she rested in this closed room. Outside, nothing was moving at all.

  She thought about what it would mean, to stay forever. Would she have stopped the world? Would she have, in effect, ended it? If a storm came and destroyed the shed, time would never stop again, but if time were already stopped, the storm would never come.

  She read the books on her shelves. She read them all. On the outside, it would take her an hour to read forty pages. Here, in the shed, she read thousands of pages before she even considered leaving, but she did eventually decide to leave. She felt outside of herself, like she’d lost a sense of embodiment, and she found herself missing something as simple as sleep, a biological process that would let her thoughts wind down instead of spiraling forever. She returned to her house, to her bed, and folded into herself and her dreams.

  One day, not long after the day of the lake and a hundred books, when the sky was taking on a worrisome green cast and the clouds were stewing low, Amy returned from work to discover a young woman fawning over flowers in the middle of her yard.

  Amy rolled down her window and pulled her car alongside the large hibiscus bush the woman was inspecting. She wore overalls with a gray tee shirt underneath. Her short curly hair was mostly tucked under a baseball cap. Despite the obvious sound of crunching gravel and a rumbling car engine, the woman made a point of turning slowly and smiling, unashamed by her trespassing.

  “Can I help you?” Amy said.

  The woman held out a recently plucked hibiscus blossom, large enough to hide her palm. “Have you smelled these?” she asked.

  “You know this is where I live, right?” Amy asked.

  The woman walked up to the car and extended her free hand. “I’m Fran.”

  They shook hands through the window.

  “I used to know the lady who lived here, when I was little,” Fran added. “That was years and years ago. No one’s lived here in a decade. Not sure why her family was sitting on it, but here you are now. Didn’t even know you’d moved in.” She held up her saucer-sized blossom in a gesture approximating half apology and half shrug.

  “The woman who lived here,” Amy said, “did she ever talk about the shed in the back?”

  “Not that I can recall,” Fran said. “Why?”

  “Just curious. It was full of junk when I moved in, but it’s probably all worthless.”

  “Miss Arleen was pretty reclusive, but she’d have garage sales from time to time, and I’d buy her old romance novels. She was pretty kinky, turns out, but she never mentioned the shed to me.”

  Amy laughed, suddenly charmed and surprised to find herself desiring the company. “Looks like it’s about to pour. Would you like to come in for tea?”

  “That’d be nice,” Fran said.

  Fran carried her plucked blossom with her into the house, and Amy brewed some herbal tea with dried berries in sachets. They sat at her kitchen table, sipping the sweet tea from their mugs. The rain came, and Amy cracked the window so they could hear the drops pelting the leaves. Fran breathed deeply and said, “That is one of the few things that never gets old.”

  Amy smiled. “I forgot how good it smells when you’re not near pavement.”

  Amy told Fran she had been ready to leave Memphis, but she shared a few things she still missed, like the concerts by the river, the live music, and, preposterously, the McDonald’s with the drive-through going the wrong direction so that everyone had to reach across the passenger side to grab their food.

  “Couldn’t they just drive the other way around?”

  Amy suddenly realized that she couldn’t picture the layout of the parking lot well enough to determine the cause of the poor design. “I guess I don’t have any idea why they made it like that.”

  Fran laughed hard enough to send Amy laughing with her.

  When the moment passed, Fran asked why she’d left Memphis, and Amy told her about her need for quiet.

  “I hate my job,” Fran said, revealing that she worked in the office of a car factory an hour away, but she currently lived with her parents down the road to save money. She wanted to start a nursery someday, to grow plants for people’s gardens.

  “Is there a market for that sort of thing around here?” Amy hadn’t seen many nice lawns since the move.

  “I’ll find a place where it makes sense.” Fran said it in faith. “My parents think I should stick with Toyota forever, save up retirement, keep up the insurance and all that jazz. They don’t see anything wrong with the endless filing of paper. I’m their black sheep,” Fran added, pulling on her hair. “Wasn’t always so. I was a debutante down in Vicksburg. My grandma made me. They still do that shit, you know.”

  “No way.”

  Fran gave her a stern look and asked, “Which part you placing doubt on?”

  “Both,” Amy said weakly, unable to lie when put so directly on the spot.

  “I was pretty!” Fran said. “And now I’m handsome. I am at peace.” She took a swig of her tea. “Girl, you better have some more tea to serve after a comment like that.”

  “I didn’t mean you couldn’t be a debutante, aesthetically. I just meant, you seem too free in spirit to do that sort of thing.”

  “Free in spirit. That silliness. I’m deliberating all the time on each aspect of all the minutiae of my existence,” she said. “Are you free i
n spirit?”

  “No,” Amy said.

  “That’s what I thought. And who is, really? No one, that’s who.”

  They made the tea a ritual. She would come on the weekend and leave after an hour or two, sharing nothing more than words. The first couple of times, Fran simply wandered by and Amy spotted her, acting as though it were incidental, but in truth she had hoped Fran would return. She would peek out the window from time to time. After a few weeks of this, Amy found herself spending fewer sessions in the shed, wanting time to pass faster.

  Even as Amy was hopeful for Fran’s visits, even as she would usher her through the front door and say, “Please, come on in,” she was thinking of how to avoid Joe, who had taken to texting her and asking if she needed any help around the house. Sometimes she would ignore these messages. Sometimes she would send a quick reply, like, “Thanks so much but I’m good for now!” And she would add a smile emoji, to appeal to his kindness, hoping it would buy her goodwill if he pressed the issue and forced her to outright reject him.

  One day Joe showed up unannounced. He knocked on her front door, and she ran to open it, imagining Fran on the stoop.

  He held his cap in his hands and smiled. “I’m so sorry to bother you with this, but I have some bad news.”

  Amy couldn’t fathom what such news could possibly be. Joe didn’t know anyone that she cared about. Her mother was already dead, she never really knew her father, and the only person she cared about in her new hometown was Fran. He’d never seen them together, so it couldn’t be about Fran.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I have a termite issue at my store,” he said. “I’m thinking the shelf I sold you may have tracked them into your shed.”

  He went on to describe the horror of termites.

  “You haven’t noticed them swarming, have you?”

  She shook her head. She hadn’t noticed anything, but now she wondered if termites could proliferate in the timeless space. Would they lose all desire to reproduce, to feed? Did they exist like living fossils in the nooks and crannies of her wooden furniture?