mike krumboltz

It was either Tuesday or Wednesday. The days were running together and I’d lost track. I’d been sleeping heavy but it wasn’t good sleep. I was tired. I felt lousy. I opened an eye and focused on the clock on the wall of my office. The hands weren’t moving.

I stood, felt my chair groan and my head pound, and shuffled over to shake the clock back to life.  It felt light. I turned it around. The battery was gone. I figured my landlady must have taken it. She liked to help herself to things like that on account of my being a month behind. For all I knew, she’d walked in, saw me passed out, took the battery, flipped me the bird, and left. She was that kind of lady.

I told her a week before, I said, “Mrs. Planto. If I had money, you’d get the money. But I don’t have it. I’m down to my last roll of toilet paper, even. I mean it.”  And you don’t know nothing until you’ve had to take a massive crap and been worried about only using a few squares. I don’t want to get all deep and say it changes a man, because it’s just toilet paper, but it does make a man think about what he’s doing wrong. It does make a man think about making some changes.

I opened the curtain. It was dark outside. My two shit-box jalopies sat there, busy not making me money. My neon orange sign shone down from the roof. “Clyde’s Car Rentals/Notary Service,” it flashed to anyone who passed by.  Not mentioned on the sign were several other services I offered, including the tracking of deadbeats and the intimidation of lowlifes.

That was my passion, what I was best at. Following people. Seeing the look on their face when I came out of the shadows. It didn’t matter what they did. They could be stealing shampoo of the maid’s cart. I just loved catching ‘em.  Once upon a time, when I was a hotel dick, I got paid for it.

I was about to lock up and get a two-cent taco when a car pulled up. Its headlights sliced the dark. It looked a little out of control, going too fast. I thought it might plow into my office, which isn’t much of an office, just a rusted Airstream at the end of a parking lot.  The car, a nice, new ‘34 Packard, stopped and slid forwards a few feet on the gravel. Its front wheels grazed the concrete block I used as a barrier.

I thought about saying I was closed, because people that show up at night are usually desperate and light on cash. I had a guy in once. He said he wanted to rent the Studebaker.  So, I said, “OK, big spender, step inside.” He walked in, cool as the Pacific, handed me a piece of paper with a stick figure on it, and said that was his driver’s license. I crumpled it up, threw it in his face, and said, “Beat it, pinhead.” Well, he got angry. And then I got angry and it turned into a real dustup. I knocked out a tooth. Fucker stabbed me in the leg with my own fountain pen. Took the pen, left me with a limp. Still, I wasn’t about to turn away a customer.

Leaning against the doorjamb, I watched and waited for somebody to get out. The lights made it hard to see. “You need a car?” I said, stepping into the night. “I’m just about to close up.”

The engine continued to murmur, but nobody got out. I started to get a bad feeling. I’d been ripped off before. Of course I had no scratch to steal, but this guy didn’t know that. I reached behind me for the door handle. I kept a gun in my top drawer, under a stack of bills I had no intention of paying. I started to ease back inside, when the car’s rear door opened and a woman got out. She almost tripped on the gravel. Her high heels twisted under her.

“Can I help you?” I said. She was tall and wore a yellow dress that matched her hair. Walking toward me in front of the car’s headlights, she looked like a ghoul, a specter. The light went right through her. Not just her dress, but through her body. I could see everything. Her lungs, her heart, her stomach. Everything was empty.

“The notary,” she said, like she was ordering her favorite sandwich, like she already knew me.

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There was an unfamiliar car on my lawn, a rust-red hatchback. I parked my Fiero behind it and looked inside. The windows were steamy. Greasy Pizza Machine boxes were stacked on the passenger seat.

The car on my lawn made me mad but that wasn’t the only thing. My husband Dale was the other. He was pushing 500 pounds and hadn’t had a job in almost a year, ever since he messed up his knee at the bowling alley. He’d sit in his recliner and read his bibles and pray for Jesus to heal his knee so that he could get a job in the anti-homosexual recruitment movement, going door-to-door. “Gays are stealing our kids,” he liked to say, sometimes in his sleep. Not our kids specifically. We don’t have any. Kids in general, he meant.

But he never could get out of the chair, he was so big. He went to the bathroom right on the velour because he couldn’t move, couldn’t even roll over for a bucket. I had to clean him myself. The crusty bits clung to his butt hairs like Christmas ornaments. I had to be fast before it seeped into the chair. I don’t say this to be gross.

He wasn’t always like that. Back when I met him, when we were in high school and he was ushering at the church, he was a different kind of man.  This was ten years ago, about. “Jesus,” he said to me one Sunday after everybody except me and my grannie went home, “He had a big dream.” He gestured to the crucifix at the head of the church. “I’m part of it. And so are you.” My grannie, she thought he was the sun and stars. “You know he throws shot-put don’t ya? Varsity! Why that angel wants to help you,” she muttered. She’s dead now, thank God.

I tried to remember that he didn’t gain weight and have accidents on the chair to make me upset, and that I wouldn’t trade places with him for anything. But, still, a year of that, of supporting him, it made me mad sometimes. Plus I’m only 25.

Whenever I left for work he ordered pizzas, always from Pizza Machine.  I knew because I handled the checkbook. I’d been working my way up to talking about it. I’d hung the plastic tarp against the wall behind his chair so I could spray down his hindquarters. This was just the other day. Over the sound of the water hose, I said, “Dale, honey, I’ve been looking over the budget. And we’re spending way too much on pizzas. These tips you’re paying, too. I love that you’re generous, but it’s just too much.” And Dale closed his eyes, looking all sad and remorseful and he shook his head like that sweaty pastor on TV and said, “I know, Lois, I know. But Satan has his claws in me with these pizza pies. I’m praying for guidance. I’m praying for strength. I’m trying so hard.”

I wanted to say, “Don’t blame Satan,” but he was the man and I was the wife and the house was his technically. Instead I said, “Tomorrow, I’ll put out some sandwiches. With low fat ham. It tastes good, so don’t roll your eyes, you big old bear.” He said that he would eat the low fat ham sandwiches. “With the Lord’s help,” he added.

But now, a day later, here I was, and the pizza car was out on the lawn, which was mostly gravel, but still. Made me mad. I wasn’t supposed to be home this early from The Fashion Shack. I wanted to be sure I’d placed the sandwiches within grabbing distance of his recliner. I didn’t want to hear any excuses.

I opened the screen door of our doublewide. The hinges sounded like a crying puppy.  I took a step inside, turned to my left and saw Dale and the pizza delivery boy engaging in a sexual act that I had never seen and never heard of.

My husband was lying back in the chair. His brontosaurus legs were up at the foot of the recliner. The pizza boy’s back was to me. White earphones dangled from his ears. Dale was moving his feet back and forth against the boy’s organ. And at first I didn’t understand what I was looking at, it was all so bizarre. But then I did. I dropped my keys but I didn’t scream. I’m not one for high drama.

I felt the afternoon sun through the screen door. A mosquito was trying to escape. It flew into the screen and bounced off. I thought about Dale. And about how much I’d done for him. Washing him, buying his Pueblo Huevos extra-salty corn chips , and stroking his earlobes when he bawled. Nodding like a puppet whenever he spouted his nonsense. He’d made me hate myself.

I don’t remember walking to the kitchen, but I guess I did because the next thing I knew, I was bashing their heads with a dirty skillet.

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