I sat by the fallen tree until I finished my lollipop. I knew I had to continue my journey, but I also knew that I didn’t have enough strength to do it. If night fell and I was still lying there, I could have died.
But somehow I pried myself from the ground and found my way out. It didn’t take me too long because I could hear cars roaring and people shouting.
When I got out, I realized that I was closer than I thought. The store was only a few steps away now and I knew I could muster that. But when I got up to the door, I was unsure if I should enter. I thought about the woman and wondered if the store manager would kick me out because I looked like a bum. The only thing that prompted me to go inside was the fact that I could sue for discrimination.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to. The clerk took Angie’s film and promised that the pictures would be developed in an hour. While we were talking, I looked around the store and saw my picture. Well, it was a large photograph of the guys and me and they had made an ad of it.
I walked out of the store and sat on a bench. My legs were wobbly and very sore but I wasn’t going to give up. I looked around the area and saw that a pet store was right next door to where I was sitting. The order of the stores was strange to me somehow and I thought that maybe it was a sign of some sort.
I limped over to the pet store and paused by the door again. This time I was afraid that the dogs would bark at me so much that I’d be chased out. They would bark at me because I was so ugly.
But I walked in again with no legal comforts and a kind man looking at the rabbits greeted me. I smiled right back and found my way to the dogs.
They were so energetic behind the stiff glass. None of them were sleeping and they all wagged their tails when I came near. Even though they were very sweet, the glass dome between them depressed me a whole lot. Some were bumping against it, some were pressing themselves against it, but whatever they were doing, it looked painful to me.
The depressing feeling didn’t go away the whole time while I was looking for a dog. It kept me from feeling an attraction to a dog. The search felt laborious to me now and I felt as though it was in vain. I’ve had dogs that died before but they were sick and old. Milky and Wilkie were just puppies. While the dogs in the pet store were prisoners of the glass, Wilkie and Milky were prisoners of open doors.
I took my time in the pet store anyway, because I didn’t want to go back to the store if the film wasn’t ready. That picture of myself and the guys made me nervous and I only wanted to go in and out of there with the film.
An hour later I trudged next door to pick up the film. I sat on the bench for a while because my legs were sore. I’d sat down plenty in the pet store but my legs were sore from walking from store to store.
I went inside and left saying “thank you”. Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to strike up a conversation. My throat ached from the little I had talked today and I dreaded saying more.
I sat on the bench outside again, and opened the package. My hands were shaking because I was afraid of what was in it. When I finally got it open, bandaged hands and all, I dumped the photos onto my lap with my teeth.
Some fell on the ground as I rummaged through them. My clumsy hands made the process all the more difficult. Every time I dropped one on the floor, I had to bend all the way over to see it. My back snapped twice when I did it, but I had to prove that I was right and Angie did take those pictures.
A few times, the pictures landed upside down and it took me forever to flip them over to look at the pictures. Sometimes I felt like un-bandaging my hands because it was just so difficult.
My eyes scanned the pictures nervously and quickly. Angie had taken a lot of pictures and most of them were of her friends and family. I hardly glanced at those in my mad rush but I computed some of them.
It took me twenty minutes to look through all of the pictures and another ten to have a closer look. Some place in my mind was so convinced that she had taken a picture of me. I was so intent that I forgot that it was silly to care so much about it, especially since I had the pictures and no harm could be done.
When I finally convinced myself that Angie hadn’t taken a picture of me, I sat back and analyzed what I had done. There was a terrible feeling of guilt nagging in the pit of my stomach. I felt like I had betrayed my only real friend because of my selfishness.
In my sadness, I looked down at my lap and glanced at one of the pictures Angie had taken. It was a picture of her on her birthday, holding up a cake with my face on it. I hadn’t really looked close at the picture until then and my heart hit the floor when I looked at it. At that moment I felt so guilty that I couldn’t breathe; like the feeling was choking me or something.
I thought back to all of the things that happened to me and how I deserved all of the betrayed feelings I had gotten. As much as I tried to stop feeling sorry for myself, I just couldn’t.
After a while my stomach kicked in because of my intense emotions. I could feel it twist and turn as I sat there unblinking. All I could think of was how much I deserved it and what an idiot I was. I decided to wait it out until I threw up.
It was so painful that I could feel my eyeballs roll around in their sockets involuntarily. I tried to throw up, but there was nothing to throw up. The emptiness in my stomach mimicked the emptiness I felt in my heart. It felt as though someone had reached into my body and was twisting my stomach as tight as they could.
Through the pain I could hardly understand what was going on around me. Once I glanced in the store’s window and saw my pale face. It scared me so badly that the pain in my stomach increased. I could feel it churn and I gasped when the stomach acid hit my small intestine.
People walking by stared at me and continued walking. Even a minister wearing a large cross walked by shaking his head. They might have thought that I was high or something.
Some of the stomach juice traveled up into my esophagus and burned my heart. I groaned loudly and fell into a lying position on the bench. My eyes were squeezed shut and my head was swimming with thoughts like, “you worthless prick,” and “this is how Angie felt.”
No one stopped to help me; they only stared stonily at my pale face. I became scared because in my fragile mind I began to think that I had died and my soul was lying on the bench in pain. For some reason I thought that the cancer was plaguing my soul even after I died and people were staring in my direction because they thought I was death.
Soon after I started to think it, I stared to feel it. It was like I was in a virtual reality room where things you thought came to life. My foot burned and I thought that I was in hell. I nearly screamed, but I remembered that since I was in hell, no one would care anyway.
The only thing that snapped me out of it was the heat on my foot and the smell of burning leather. I was jolted awake by it and in my haste I sat up abruptly. When I did, I discovered that my white Nike shoe was on fire. I tore it off of my foot and stamped on it with the other. In my fear, I’d forgotten all about my pain and my thoughts.
Once the fire was out and I had checked out my foot to see if it was okay, I almost went back to thinking that I was in hell. But I looked around first and saw that a whole crowd of people had stopped to look and were asking if I was okay.
I started to relax and nod my head. Some people even offered to drive me to a hospital, but I refused. I hardly noticed that I was feeling better as I put on my charred shoe. In fact, I was so numb that I forgot to think about how my shoe might have gotten caught on fire. Somehow it felt perfectly natural to me because I had taken a small trip into hell. I felt that something inside of me was telling me that I’d go there if I didn’t give back Angie’s pictures.
It was painful to bend, so I just sat on the ground and attempted to pick up all of Angie’s photos. Once I got a picture in my paw, I would grab it with my teeth and try to put it back in the package. It was so awkward and I was concentrating so hard that I didn’t notice that someone had parked himself right beside me. He had to tap me on the shoulder for me to notice him.
When he tapped me he startled me so badly that I knocked the only picture I had managed to get in out of the package. I turned slowly because I was scared and vulnerable.
He was a bum, I assumed straightaway because of his clothing and the condition of his hair. Then again, if I saw my face I would assume that I was a bum too.
The bum was chewing on a burnt out cigarette, savoring what was left of its “flavor.” I guessed that he wouldn’t be getting another one for quite some time unless he hit the jackpot.
“Hey,” he said flatly, “you don’t deserve an apology, but I’m givin’ you one anyway.”
“I know I don’t deserve one, but why are you giving one to me?” I spoke faintly and timidly but inside I knew if he hurt me, I wouldn’t hesitate to harm him back. When we were shooting a video a while back, some LA bums were being rude and were throwing crap at us. One of them almost got Brian in the head with a mayonnaise jar. Ever since that I’ve never given them any of my money.
“You’re so goddamn stupid ya know that? I set your fucking foot on fire!”
I’d forgotten about that in my excitement to pack the pictures. Maybe I thought he was apologizing for throwing the mayonnaise jar at Brian.
An “Oh,” was all I could muster for this guy. That’s all I had to say because he just kept on talking.
“See I thought you were another bum taking up my spot on the bench. I saw you pick up those pictures and I realized that I had made a mistake. Feel good man, Jizzy never apologies.”
I thanked him and in my mind I thanked him for nothing. Somehow I had to walk back up and my burnt shoe wasn’t really helping.
“You look real sick. What’s up with you?” That was the first time I ever saw a bum show compassion towards me. The thought that I looked so sick that a bum had to comment on it nagged at my brain. I wanted to get away from him and his general concern because it alarmed me.
He saw me trying frantically to put the pictures back into the package and frowned. I thought he frowned because he was mad at me, but as it turned out, he was frowning at the situation.
“Here, let me take care of that,” he said. His kind words were accompanied by a generous smile.
“I used to work in a pharmacy until I found out that my whore Jane was pregnant. She was my first time to, the stupid bitch. I never seen my baby, but Janey made me give her all the money. Then my ‘rents kicked me out when they found out the money was gone and I was whorin’ around. I tried to get the money but I ended up in worse trouble than before, starting with the drugs, ya know?” I nodded my head like I understood and I think he believed me because he saw my jar of pills.
Jizzy finished putting all of the pictures back into the package and put them inside my bag. I could see him eyeing the pills and I waited for him to comment on them.
“These babies are kinda mild. You need to take twenty before you’re really stoned and thirty to pass out. They’re addicting though. Something tells me you’re not using them to get high, are you?” I shook my head no and looked down at my gnarled hands sadly.
Jizzy nodded his head slowly and spat out his cigarette. “So where ya goin’?”
“Up the hill.”
“Then what?”
I thought about that thoroughly then I thought about where I could find Angie and give her back the pictures.
“To the beach.” I had to keep my sentences shorter than normal because my throat felt bloody.
“Well then I’m coming with you.”
Chapter 20
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