Chapter Seven
That night, I laid in bed thinking about the Wylee trailer and the Littrells. Brian had been really easy to get along with and Leighanne had seemed nice, too. I stared at the ceiling as the pale blue moonlight wandered across the stucco, making little shadows of the plaster mountain ranges. I rolled over and looked at the LAX picture shining brightly from the computer's screen saver and wondered if I had a family out there somewhere who I interacted with the same way Brian and Leighanne interacted - if I had someone out there that I once hugged from behind and gave kisses to and made jokes about sweet tea with. I really wanted that.
I closed my eyes and dreamt I was hugging Waitress from behind and kissing her.
"How'd the job in Marietta go?" Marty asked early Monday morning when I walked though the door of the break room at Little Red Hen.
"Well," I answered. I pulled my apron out of the locker and tied the waist strings.
"What color did you paint the trailer?"
"Purple."
"Like Barney?"
"Mmhm."
"Wow."
"Yeah, it was a little crazy. It was for some clothing design boutique or something."
"For who?"
"Uh the line was Wylee - the designer was Leighanne Littrell."
Marty spit diet Coke with lime out on the table, spraying Robin, the unsuspecting red haired teenager who was doing her nails across the table from her. Robin scowled and rushed to the bathroom to wash the soda off her shirt. Marty had stood up, barely noticing Robin and her soda-pop-bespeckled shirt. "You were at the Littrell house?" Marty demanded of me.
I shrugged, "Yeah? What, do you know who Leighanne is?"
"Sure as shit I do, and Brian, too."
"Her husband."
"Hell yeah her husband, the lucky bitch." Marty rolled her eyes back, "Please, don't tell me you ain't heard of the Backstreet Boys."
I'll be the first to admit the name didn't sound the least bit familiar. Evidently I was mildly retarded if I hadn't though, the way Marty was looking at me, so I said, "Ohh, yeah. Them."
"Ohh yeah them," Marty mocked my tone, "For Christ's sake, Ben, you didn't know you were in the presence of pop royalty?" she yanked a hair net over her frizzy brown hair, "My God, boys are stupid." And with that empowering thought, she left the breakroom.
Robin came back a second later, her shirt still speckled with soda spit. "Sorry," I said, "I didn't know she was gonna spit soda out at you."
That night, I logged into Google again and pulled up the Backstreet Boys. Brian was, indeed, one of them. I stared at his features in some of the photos and realized that he'd aged quite a bit since some of the pictures were taken. Evidently it had been a while since Backstreet Boys formed - 1993, Jesus, that was almost twenty years ago. Before Self should've been aware of them. I wondered why the name wasn't familiar to me, if they were as popular as the websites boasted them to be.
It led me to wonder, too, why I remembered how to do a complex algebra problem but not my own name. What was it about my freaking identity that was so hard to place? I turned the computer down to its screen saver and laid back into the pillows, staring at it with a dull emptiness inside that I imagined was where my heart used to be.
The next morning I got up early because I had an appointment with Dr. Needleman. I got dressed and headed to the cafe. Kim was there as usual and she smiled when she saw me. I couldn't help but flush because all I could think about looking at her was the dream I'd had after working at the Littrells where I'd come up behind her and kissed her. She made my coffee extra slow, talking but I couldn't really hear her enough to reply because I was too busy trying not to say anything mortifying that might make her think I was insane or something. Not that I wasn't insane, I mean I didn't even know who the hell I really was, so that makes me at least a little bit insane, right?
Kim handed me my coffee. "Have a good day, Stock Boy," she said.
"You, too, Waitress," I stammered, and rushed out the door. I could feel her eyes follow me as I left. I hoped to God she hadn't guessed what my problem was. I could almost imagine her telling the guy that worked there -the guy who did not have a six inch scar and a reconstructed nose- that the circus freak guy that ordered nutmeg in his coffee everyday had been dreaming about her.
I pictured them as they laughed together at my stupidity to even dream of someone as angelic and perfect as Kim. Who the fuck would want to date someone that looks like they had a fight with the wrong end of a meat cleaver?
Dr. Needleman raised an eyebrow. I'd handed her a copy of the picture of LAX. She looked up at me. "Perhaps you've visited Los Angeles before," she suggested.
"Maybe but I dunno. It felt so... It felt like I was looking at home," I said.
"You were found in a park in Atlanta," she pointed out, "What could you possibly have been doing in Atlanta if you were from Los Angeles?"
"I dunno," I answered truthfully.
Dr. Needleman handed the picture back to me. "Anything else been jogging your memory at all?"
I shook my head.
"How are you faring at your new job so far?"
"It's okay. It's kind of boring work, but I like the predictability of it," I explained. "I like that it's steady hours and the same people there. I like seeing the same people. I like having friends. Even if they don't really know me, they only know Ben."
"You are Ben."
"No I've become Ben," I corrected her, "We have no idea who I really am."
Kim looked up from the counter the next morning - Wednesday. I'd pep talked to myself all the way across the street to act like a normal human being around her today, but it still made my breath catch when her eyes met mine square on and she smiled. "Good morning, Stock Boy," she said, her eyes lighting up.
"Hey," I stammered. I shuffled my feet and we stood awkwardly on either side of the counter for a moment. It was like we were waiting for something.
She hesitated, then reached for a medium coffee cup. "The usual?" she asked.
"Yeah."
She turned to put in the sugar, cream, and nutmg. The jetstream of coffee seamed unusually loud this morning as it sprayed into the cup. She looked up at me. "Two-fifteen," she said, putting the sleeve onto the cup slowly.
I tossed the money onto the counter.
She put the cup down.
The awkward pause continued. I stared at her. She stared at me. I picked up the cup. "Have a good day Waitress," I said, and I turned. I walked across the cafe toward the door and was almost out when I heard her call out --
"Ben!"
I turned around. "What?"
She was coming around the counter, a blue apron tied around her waist, the strings wrapped around to the back and then back to the front before forming a knot. She had on a Beatles T-shirt over a pair of jeans. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail. She was drop dead gorgeous. She stopped in front of me, her hands on her hips, she stared up at me. "When the frick are you going to ask me out?" she demanded.
My mouth went dry. "Ask you out?"
"Yeah," she nodded. Despite the courage in her voice I could see the fear in her eyes. "We've been flirting for God-knows-how-long, I've taken the time to know exactly how you like your coffee, you actually bothered to find out what my name is... When the frick exactly are we gonna go out?"
"Go out."
"Like for dinner? or a drink? Something?"
"I - I -" my voice would not operate properly. My head was spinning. She wanted me to ask her out? I wanted to pinch myself to see if this was legitimately happening.
"How about tonight?" Kim asked, "When you get back from Marietta?"
I nodded dumbly.
"I'm off at seven," she said.
"Okay. Seven. Okay."
"Okay." Kim smiled.
I hear my voice utter, "Thank you," and then I bolted out the door, the little bell on it jingling. My heart slammed in my chest like a raquet ball, and I literally ran down the street toward the bus stop, clutching my coffee. When I got to the little glass-enclosed bench, I sat down and stared at my sneakers, caught my breath, then glanced back towards the coffee shop.
Well, I thought, That could've gone worse. But 'thank you'? Seriously? She asks me out and I thank her?
I wondered if my Before Self was such a loser or if it was something I'd developed as an After.
After Self by Pengi
