Flatscreen by Adam Wilson Page B

his way to work, took me for a derelict. Considered hitchhiking, catching a ride up the coast, down the coast, west—anywhere. What was the use? Had no money, was wearing a bathrobe. No one picked up hitchhikers these days. Maybe some cannibal molester passing through (Seat Belt Meat Belt , Universal, 1984).
    Sat at Dunkin’ with coffee and the Globe , taking in the familiar smells of by-the-dozen doughnuts, coffee en mass, chemically diluted urine, and stale gas that filtered up through the heating vents into the mostly empty dining area.
    Read about the war, football. Skimmed the obits, looking for worthwhile lives: people who’d traveled, broken the restraints this town invisibly slid over our cold-sick selves. Other news: Quinosset Cinema West showing a retrospective—a dead Frenchie auteur whose films took on the legitimacy of history, whose own history hissed with black, pedophilic asterisks. Metro police blotter: A woman had stolen five hundies worth of housewares from Bloomingdale’s. Claimed temporary insanity; her Amex was overdrawn. She wanted to serve with shining silverware. Opened the classifieds, quickly closed them.
    A woman sobbed at the next table. Mrs. Sacks, my old Whole Foods friend. Small town, etc.
    “Eli,” she managed.
    Gave a slight wave, stood as if to walk over. She held out her hand to stop me.
    “I’m okay,” she said, blew her nose.
    Went to the bathroom instead.
    When I came out, Mrs. Sacks was sitting at my table, fixing smudged eye shadow in a hand mirror. Still crying a bit, so she wasn’t having much success. Black Lycra shirt bore the word “Superstar,” embossed in sequins across her well-proportioned chest. Sequins mocked her tears and dark eyes with their luster.
    “Eli.”
    “Mrs. Sacks. Hi.”
    “You doing okay?” she said, as if I had been the one crying, as if she sensed I was still drying my own damp face.A maternal voice—at once forgiving and resolute, like the safety net beneath a tightrope walker—a voice I’d never heard her use. This was how she’d spoken to Sherri as a child, how she’d bred the confidence Sherri expelled with every ass-wiggly step.
    “I guess,” I said, wanting to please her, to not let her down.
    “That’s good. Everything will work out fine.”
    “I hope so.”
    Tears were gone and she smiled, amused by the absurdity of her own public outburst. Some trauma had sent her here. More cheating from Mark? Problems with Chef Barash? Bad luck breast exam or Pap smear? Her face said: “The world comes down on all of us. Money and healthy sex lives can’t save us. But we persevere; we are from Quinosset, home of the QHS She-Devils, second-ranked women’s tennis team east of the Mississippi.”
    I nodded in agreement. Mrs. Sacks looked around the empty Dunkin’.
    “It’s silly, really,” she said, sipped her coffee, checked out her own gigantic, sparkling chest, then met my eyes, as if to accuse me of staring at her breasts, which I was. “This town.”
    “I know what you mean,” I said, because I did, if not specifically.
    “Do you like it here, Eli? It’s not a bad place, is it?”
    “Not so bad.”
    “There are worse places in the world.”
    “Certainly.”
    “A lot worse,” she said, motioning to my newspaper. Then, looking again at the empty tables, “I guess it doesn’t fill up for a couple hours. That’s when people go to work.”
    She took a stick of lip gloss, applied it without looking in the mirror. Mirror rested like a paperweight on mynewspaper. Radio wasn’t on, but you could hear the morning patter—Spanglish—from the two cashiers.
    “Now they’re all asleep. It’s like we’re the only people in the world.”
    “There are other people,” I said, nodded toward the cashiers.
    Mrs. Sacks smiled.
    “You’re funny.”
    “Why does everyone think I’m funny?”
    “There’s something Dutch about your face.”
    “What does that even mean?”
    “Holland,” she said. “My kinda town,”