The First One You Expect Read online

  Anna’s still clicking on the phone when a customer pushes a cart up behind her.

  “I can take you, sir.” I say and wave Anna out of the way.

  My mouth goes dry when I recognize him.

  He’s got a few rolls of paper towels and a stack of Hungry Man dinners in his cart, but I don’t think that’s why he drove all the way out to Stop & Shop when Pathmark is way closer for him.

  “Hello Tony. Is Burt around?” Burt’s dad says. His voice is a wheeze, emphysema or something. I didn’t recognize him at first because his face is so different from the last time I saw him, that was maybe three years ago. He’s lost weight. A lot of weight.

  Anna’s at the end of the aisle, has begun opening a plastic bag, her phone back in her pocket and all attention on this exchange. As far as I know, she’s never been on bag duty in her life. We have a mentally challenged guy on staff that usually helps with that, otherwise some cashiers will do it themselves. I usually only help feeble looking customers.

  My mouth is dry, my tongue feels heavy, like it has swollen and is about to choke me to death, but then I speak.

  “Mr. Ernst, is that you?” I say, trying to put on a tone of happy surprise, hoping my voice doesn’t crack. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  I begin to ring in Hungry Mans, a sudden need to keep my hands occupied. Anna stuffs them into bags longways, the corners already straining against the package. She doesn’t double bag.

  “I checked the produce section. I can’t seem to find my son.” The skin of his face wrinkles as he talks, it’s like crepe paper, I imagine it tearing if he opens his mouth too wide. The sound I lay over this image is Burt’s neck stretching, squeaking against the toilet.

  What few interactions I’ve had with Burt’s dad usually involved him telling me corny jokes. I can’t remember any of them now, I know one punchline has a guy pointing at his brains and saying “Kidneys.” It was funny then, but he’s not joking now.

  “That’s weird, because I haven’t heard from him either. I think he’s running out of sick days.”

  “His car isn’t in his driveway.”

  I swallow hard. He’s been at the house but has he been inside? Has he smelled anything off? Has he gone down to the basement?

  “Huh. He usually drives me to work, but I couldn’t get ahold of him on Friday,” I say. I’m done with the groceries now, but haven’t told him his total yet. “Is he in the city maybe?” It’s a stupid thing to say, but I don’t want any silences, don’t want his red eyes on me without one of us talking.

  “Does he go, usually?” Mr. Ernst asks.

  No, but this will help explain why his car shows up at the train station, if it hasn’t been towed already. My answer is either smooth or incriminating.

  Anna finishes dropping the last roll of toilet paper in the bag, then drops it onto the counter and moves out of sight, deeper into the store. She’s left me to it. I don’t know if this is a vote of confidence or if she’s skipping to Mexico.

  “I don’t know. Not that I know of. When he didn’t answer my texts I thought he was mad at me, or sick. He gets moody sometimes. I guess I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “Yeah,” he says and hands me his debit card without hearing the total.

  “Do you have a Super Saver card?” I ask, grateful for the routine of the words.

  He doesn’t, but I run one for him anyway. Then I take his phone number down on a bit of paper from the receipt roll. I’ll call him if I hear anything.

  EIGHTEEN

  It’s Wednesday night and I’ve got Anna’s face wrapped up like a mummy. It’s the only peace I’ve had all day: she can’t talk.

  Not that she has been talking much, but without the wet plaster over her mouth, there’s now not even the threat of her saying anything. That’s what’s been tying me in knots, the thought of her saying aloud some of the things that I’ve been thinking, externalizing them into a conversation I can’t ignore.

  He hasn’t filed a missing persons. Yet.

  The first stage is coating her face in casting alginate, leaving everything but her nostrils covered. Now I lay down the last strips of plaster. This stuff is top shelf, but I still have to use it right to get the most out of my money, so I’ve overloaded Anna’s face with plaster.

  The water I’m using to moisten the strips started out warm but is now room temperature. I could go upstairs and get more from the sink, but I don’t think it much affects the outcome of the plaster cast. I keep laying it on. Anna’s probably getting a little cold, but fuck her.

  She should be a little uncomfortable. I am, as the thoughts keep rising up in my mind.

  Do you think he has friends? Belongs to a bowling league or something? Do you think he’s seen a doctor about that wheeze? Does he have appointments? Will he be missed?

  “That’s the last one. Now we wait twenty minutes,” I say. The how-to video I watched said to wait ten minutes, but I want to be extra sure. Plus it’s ten more minutes we don’t have to talk.

  Anna gives me a thumbs up.

  I’m making the lifecast, but it has no specific use in the movie, yet. It’s just something to experiment with and Anna’s the only actor we’ve brought on so far. I don’t feel up to holding casting calls yet. If the script winds up calling for facial prosthetics, I can use this cast of Anna’s face to prepare them, making sure they fit exactly.

  “How about some music?”

  Another thumbs up.

  I put on the Re-Animator soundtrack. It’s a shameless borrowing of the Psycho score, but fun in its own way. I feel a bit of remorse for downloading it illegally, but people steal my movies all the time, so I know that I’m owed.

  Anna sits still in her chair and I click around on the computer. There’s one browser tab that I plan on keeping open for the rest of my life, I try to resist the urge to check it first thing, but I just peek. We’re up another five hundred since I’ve gotten home from work. Anna drove me, has spent every night this week here.

  I still wonder about those Kools, because the car’s been parked in our driveway for the past three nights. It doesn’t seem like Anna shares it with her mother. I haven’t asked. I don’t talk to her about anything but the film and even that is in the sketchiest of terms. I have plot ideas, but I don’t share them, I don’t want to cede any more control than I already have.

  What little extra personal information about Anna I’ve gathered has been from dinner.

  Earlier, as we’re sneaking down to my room, my mother catches us and insists we join my parents for dinner. Before Anna arrived on the scene, I’d take a plate down to my room or raid the fridge late at night. I haven’t shared a meal with my parents since high school.

  At least part of what she tells my mother are lies, but I’m not sure how much.

  “How did you meet?”

  “We work together at the grocery store.”

  “Where are your parents from?”

  “The city. The Bronx.”

  “Do you like scary movies like my son?”

  “Of course. Who doesn’t?”

  “Me. How old are you, do you mind me asking?”

  “Not at all. I’m twenty.”

  I don’t field any of the questions, but it’s okay because none of them are directed at me. I only get one statement tossed my way, toward the end of the night, when Anna’s said something mildly charming and gotten both my parents laughing.

  My mother leans over to me, loud enough for everyone to hear, and asks: “Isn’t it so much nicer to spend time with Anna instead of that terrible pervert?”

  She means Burt and, yeah, I guess it is.

  “Don’t move your head, just keep perfectly still and I’ll do all the work.”

  If Burt was here, he’d be chiming in with a “that’s what she said.” Never thought I’d miss that. Still don’t, not really.

  I pull the plaster off first. It’s soft in spots, maybe because I made too thick a layer. It sticks to the alginate in sev
eral places and leaves divots big enough that I’m worried they’ll become holes when I remove the alginate from Anna’s skin.

  I use my fingernails to work a flap of the fleshy alginate off of her neck, and then lift up, like I’m helping her to take off a very snug mask.

  The mold is perfect, so much better than the time Burt and I had tried to do it with the cheaper stuff. Then our actress had been unable to keep still and had refused to wash off her makeup beforehand. That mold had been filled with bubbles and inconsistencies.

  I hold the mask up to the light. There’s just the slightest hint of color in Anna’s alginate lips, some light pink residue left by the lipstick that didn’t come off on the tissue. Despite the mold’s greenish skin, these pink lips give the cast a lifelike quality, as if it were about to open those lips and ask me something.

  “Do you think we have to do something about Burt’s father?” the real Anna asks, interrupting my thoughts.

  “He’s not going to go through the trouble. You saw him, heard him. It was difficult for him to travel out to Stop & Shop, he’s not going to continue his investigation. They didn’t get along, not really.”

  “So he’d let his only child just vanish? He would believe that Burt could just leave like that?”

  “Yeah,” I say, but it doesn’t seem that she likes that answer.

  NINETEEN

  The next day we don’t go on break or eat lunch together. It’s not that I don’t want to, I assumed that we were going to, but when I’m ready to head out I can’t find her. She’s not in the breakroom and the employee restroom has the door left open, unoccupied.

  I walk out into the parking lot, finishing a miniature bag of M&Ms I’ve taken from a package that I caught some kids opening without paying for.

  The car (hers, her mother’s, whoever’s) is not there.

  Suddenly I’m thinking of where we left our situation last night. My balls crawl up into my body, a gym class race to the top of the rope.

  I sit on the stoop outside, thinking it over, wishing I had more M&Ms.

  I didn’t tell her where he lives.

  But she’s clever. I’m sure she can use the internet, idiot. Everyone’s address is online, she could use Google Maps to pick his specific apartment out from space.

  Twenty-five minutes later, when I’m just about to go back inside, the car pulls in.

  It’s a big parking lot, part of a strip mall, so Anna’s just a speck in the distance as she exits the driver’s side. I can see that she’s carrying something, though.

  I ask myself how long she could have possibly been gone, it’s hard to remember the last time I saw her today. I’m guessing that the maximum is an hour. She had time to make it to Lindenhurst and back, but not for much else.

  I have flashes of Mr. Ernst at the bottom of a flight of stairs, his head turned the wrong way, or lying in bed, a bruise at the bridge of his nose where a pillow has been mashed.

  Standing, I start walking out into the lot, closing the distance between us. There are people around, pushing carts or driving slow, gunning for spots.

  “Where were you?” I shout more than I want to.

  She lifts an eyebrow, giving me that quizzical little girl face. Asking “What do you mean?” while she’s got her hand in the cookie jar up to the elbow. She’s holding a small square box in front of her.

  “I was going to hang them up on the bulletin board to surprise you, but I guess you caught me.”

  She opens the lid and hands me a bright-green flier and I read it.

  “Help us Kickstart the film they didn’t want you to see!”

  Under that is one of the snaps of Anna in costume, legs spread wide in the torn stockings, Rambo covering her snatch. At the bottom is our information.

  I don’t remember taking this picture. I try to remember back to that night, what Anna did with the murder weapon, but I can’t. All I can remember is scrubbing porcelain.

  “I’ve got another two boxes in the car. We can wallpaper the convention with them.”

  “You just went and these made yourself? Right now?” I ask. I’m not concerned that she went out of pocket on them, I’m still trying to account for her whereabouts. “Staples does stuff like this, you know.”

  I point to the far end of the strip mall, to the Staples.

  “I had them done at that place on Main. Shop local, ya know,” she takes the flier from me and stacks it neatly back on top of the box and replaces the lid.

  “You don’t like them?” she asks. “The other boxes are printed on different colors.”

  “They’re great. Really.” I shake my head from side to side, trying to look like I’m snapping out of a daze. “Sorry, I just didn’t know where you went. I thought we were getting lunch.”

  “I’ve got some yogurt in the fridge. Reese’s mix-ins.”

  We begin to walk back towards the store and I offer to take the box from her. There’s a thick stack of freshly made photocopies inside, but the bottom of the box is cool to the touch.

  “We’ve been seeing a lot of each other. It’s not bad, but it’s not exactly sticking to a routine.” That’s how I keep her out of my house when she drops me off.

  It works, she drives off eventually. But I can see something in the back of her eyes when I say the words. I hear Robert Shaw. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes.

  When I’m inside the knot that has cinched tight around my heart and lungs unravels and I can breathe again. I thought it would be worse, not having Anna there, but she keeps me strung up, careful what I say and do. In my room I can finally do what I want, be myself.

  First thing I do is have a drink.

  There’s only one bottle in my room and it’s from back when I used to hide these kinds of things from my parents, buried under a pile of laundry in my closet. I take a slug of the old bottle. Fireball whiskey, disgusting shit that tastes like sugar and cinnamon. Warm, it’s even worse.

  I can’t even do a second sip. It’s okay, because drinking only makes me think of Burt anyway. If the bottle was Vodka I’d probably be sobbing into it, dialing up my local precinct.

  I put the bottle down and check the Kickstarter. I’ve got it on the browser of my phone now, so I bring it up on the small screen even though my computer is a foot away and powered up.

  We’re beyond ten grand now, another stretch goal met. Every contributor of fifty bucks or more gets a limited t-shirt. Now I’ve got to look into getting someone to design that.

  That’s the total already and we’ve got over three weeks left to go.

  Anna got us the money. So much money that the thought of being found out through the video doesn’t worry me anymore. Thousands of people have watched the pitch, and none of those views has resulted in the admins pulling the project. Or a visit from the police.

  What I’m really concerned with is Burt’s dad, if he’s breathing or not.

  Walking two towns over to check on the old man isn’t an option and neither is hanging around Burt’s house after sundown to see if anyone’s been inside.

  We leave for Chiller Theatre, for East Rutherford, New Jersey, tomorrow straight from work. Anna says she even plans on switching into her Cat Killer costume in the staff bathroom. If Deloris wants to fire her for her excessive “swag”, she claims that’s no problem.

  I pace the basement, alone for the first time in days but pent in all the same. From my desk, the cast of Anna’s face looks at me, even with its eyes sealed shut.

  I need a real drink.

  My parents used to measure the bottles in the liquor cabinet, mark them off and date them with green Sharpie. It doesn’t surprise me to see that they still do. The most recent date, on a bottle of Beefeater, is Monday. I don’t even like gin, but something about the fresh green line of permanent marker makes me want something floral.

  Not waiting until I get downstairs, I grab a glass and fill it. The smell seems strong enough to wake my parents even if the clanging of glass isn’t.

  My father walks
out of the hallway and grunts at me.

  “I’ll buy you another bottle. Cool your jets.” I say, turn and begin to descend the stairs.

  “Wait.” He says. An actual, full word. Directed at me. Interesting.

  I poke my head through the doorframe and he waves me towards him, walks to the liquor cabinet himself and takes a glass. He blows into it, the dust going straight into his eyes but he tries not to show that he’s just pained himself.

  “Fill’er up.”

  I do. And we drink.

  It’s not like I don’t see my dad. I run into him almost every day, but we never talk. Even at the dinner table last night he was silent, nodding along to some of the things Anna was saying, laughing at the appropriate times. He keeps his eyes on me now.

  “That’s a good girl you got. Better than you’d think. Looking at you, you being like you are.”

  He smiles, this is as close to a compliment as I’ve received since I quit peewee soccer at age nine. We could stand here and finish our drink in peace if that was where he leaves it. But it’s not.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he asks.

  It’s not a set up to a joke, it’s a question. I fill my glass to the brim and replace the bottle in the cabinet. As I turn the question over I feel a warmth inside that isn’t just the liquor hitting me.

  “Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s perfect, didn’t you see?” I think of her perfection, her lips and ass and wonder where she is tonight. I imagine her mother, what I imagine she looks like, standing by the sink smoking a Kool and asking her daughter where she’s been spending all her time.

  The image of Anna and her mother is detailed: her mom knocking ash into the stainless steel of the sink and then running the tap. But it’s just an image, artful lying. I don’t know where Anna is right now.

  It’s two a.m. and I’ve already been upstairs once to refill. Not gin this time, gin had been a bad idea, almost as gross as the Fireball.