It’s Something to Talk About by Beth Ashworth

Saturday night and the same folks are over, half of ‘em drunk or halfway there, the other half watching. Amy is so quiet that sometimes I forget she’s here, sitting carefully on the arm of my chair. Fuck carefully. I ask her to get me a beer, just to see if she will—I’m sitting right next to the refrigerator—and she does. Fuck that.

I might be nervous. Amy’s been asking me questions about her, about Mia, who’s coming tonight, because she’s taking me to the bus station or whatever. I haven’t seen or heard from Mia since she moved to Iowa awhile back… despite the money I sent her from pawning my TV… despite the money I sent her from selling plasma… One day I realized it was over… picked up a book she’d given me and threw it at the wall… Then I punched the wall as hard as I could. My knuckles swole up for a couple weeks and when Amy came over, I showed her the dents they’d left in the plaster. “Cool,” she said.

I hooked up with Amy a little while after Mia left, when Amy was… sweet Jesus… seventeen, maybe. I knew she dug me but I didn’t really care… I was bored and lonely and I figured maybe we could get married. The way I see it, the only reason people get married is convenience. It doesn’t matter who you end up with, just that you have someone… Someone to split the rent… Someone to sleep on the other side of the bed… Someone to sit there while you talk… But we didn’t and she left for college or whatever. It doesn’t matter, everyone leaves eventually. She came back with some boy, some Yankee. He calls toboggans “winter hats.”

This kid is standing on the counter with his pants rolled up, revealing two stick legs that look like stained glass, and he’s shouting in his squeaky voice (the first time I heard it, I thought he was joking ‘cause he looks so tough), “I’m Jesus! I can walk on water!” I’m watching to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid like knock over the stereo. Then Jesus jumps into the sink and turns on the faucet. A miracle… Amen.

Amy rolls her eyes at this and gets up to talk with my friends. They’re leaning against the wall and shouting shit at each other. “Dude… I’ve got a thousand words for pussy. I’m like a pussy Eskimo or something.”

One kid’s little brother is laughing so hard, like if he opens his eyes they are going to pop out of his head… like if he stops laughing, he’ll disappear. He leans against the blank wall and touches his head to it, punctuating the joke.

“Hey girl,” one of them says to Amy and reaches out to pet her cheek. “I’m a vaginatarian.” Then he licks his teeth and squints his eyes.

She turns red a little and rolls her eyes at this too, but this time she’s smiling. She disappears as the group crowds around her.

These guys and I would hang out every day in the summer, play ball… The humidity in Kentucky is so thick, the ball ends up slippery if you pass it to the wrong sweaty person. Neighborhood kids would come up picking their noses and stand around until we invited them in. Amy would drive and sit on a bench, sometimes watching us, sometimes watching a train pass through this little wooded area that was supposed to hide the tracks. She’d roll her eyes when the neighborhood kids would shout “balls!” and “queef!” at us, after we whispered the words in their ears. They’d spell them out, and the skinniest kid would kick his feet up in the air like a cheerleader, and the fattest kid would stuff his chin way down in his neck and laugh to himself. Later, at someone’s house, we’d wonder why no one had made a TV show based on us, the five coolest and funniest guys in the world.

Mia’s been gone so long I don’t even know why I want to see her. She missed everything: the red faced fat kid, my swollen knuckles… She doesn’t even know Amy or how her stomach sticks out between her shirt and pants like an Oreo. Sometimes I just want to bite it.

So I tell Amy, when she comes back to me and asks, that it all happened so fast I hadn’t bothered to think it through. An email saying she would be at the bus station at 2:00 am. Maybe I could meet her? Love you, Mia. She knows I don’t drive… that city buses don’t run past 1:00 or so. I asked Amy how far a walk she thought it was, but she offered to take me. And now she’s tricking me into answering all these fucking personal questions, like I owe her something.

*

The people at the Greyhound station at 2:00 am are the ones you’d least expect to be awake at that hour…old folk drooling and little babies running around chewing the floor.

“Check it out,” says Amy, pointing at these black apparitions or whatever in the corner. This young Amish couple… or Mennonite or something.

I say “Mm-hmmm,” and think about what Amy would look like with her hair all wrapped up tight in a bonnet.

“I wonder if they have, like, a travel butter churn… or whatever” she says.

We’re sitting on blue plastic benches that grow out of the floor like mushrooms and watching the buses through wall-sized windows. Some guy’s playing a shoot-em-up game in the arcade, and the explosions keep everyone alert. Next to the arcade is a cafeteria, and a couple of food smells wander out every few minutes, even though it’s closed for the night…right now it smells like a turkey dinner.

A few feet away from the entrance to the cafeteria is a row of chairs with TV monitors attached to the armrests. In one of them sits a woman, melting from her chair into the floor. Especially her cheeks are melting, all the way down to her tennis shoes. She’s got this awesome white hair fluffing out from her skull, and she’s staring at the empty TV box, waiting for something to happen. Or maybe she’s asleep.

Amy’s remembering the same old stories and saying them out loud, to me I guess, because the stories are about us. A walk we took… some lady we saw at the grocery store… She’s ticking off our entire relationship, finger by finger. When I first met her, I thought she was nuts… but in a cute way. I ate dinner at her house once, and her folks laughed at things that weren’t funny, and then she would laugh too. It made me real conscious or whatever of how I hold my fork.

The mirror is disappointing, and I wash the insult off my face with cold water. There’s a stain from work on my pants, and even though it’s been there for about a month, I try to wipe it off.

I shuffle back out of the bathroom, and Amy’s tracing the edge of her chair with a finger. When I sit down, I watch this little ant explore the tiled pattern on the floor of the bus station, and wonder if Amy’s watching it too. The front door of the bus station opens, and I hear rain, shattering as it hits the earth.

Someone walks calmly into the room. The brass buttons on his suit jacket are dewy with rain, and his purple leopard-print pants cling, shivering, to his legs. A single drop of water is dangling from his nose, gathering up the courage to jump over his beard. The room remains silent, and the ant is still exploring.

He speaks: “Who here is in need of a miracle?” The melting woman sinks deeper into the TV box. The Amish kids look at each other and then out the window where the buses should be.

“Behold!” he shouts. His head is aimed up and he shoots each word at the ceiling, allowing them to pour down across the room. “I gave my brother six hundred dollars to take his show on the road...”

A janitor appears, dragging a mop across the floor behind him, his keys reflecting the lights of the bus station into my eye. He sits down, letting the mop hit the floor, and digs inside a box of Junior Mints with one finger.

“Who… here… is in need of a miracle?” the man shouts, this time at the janitor.

“You know I am, Mikah. Amen, brother!” he says, and holds out his free hand, I guess to receive the miracle. He turns his head over his shoulder and closes his eyes in anticipation, but flips another Junior Mint into his mouth, and chews.

The man leans toward him so far that he starts falling. His lips form into an “ooooooo” and it glides along the top of my ears. His body follows his finger, which is pointed at the janitor’s hand.

When they finally touch, Mikah shouts “in the name of Leonardo! Michelangelo! Donatello, and Raphael! Hallelujah!” He looks around at everyone in the room, while shouting “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

“I believe!” shouts the janitor. He stands up slowly, using the mop like a cane, and takes a step. Then he throws it down and folds his hands, screaming
“Lord Almighty, I’m saved! I can walk! Thank you Jesus, Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

In the corner behind this stand two women in the same outfit as the janitor, trying not to laugh… trying to look mad. One of them fills the room with his name… “Brian!!”

The other one looks like a bird, hands on her hips and head fluttering everywhere. “Brian, get your ass over here.”

Brian chuckles and slowly leans over to pick up the mop, shaking his head… happy with himself… He walks over to his gaggle of admirers and leans against a coke machine. I can see the reflection of his smile in the window.

This whole time Amy’s been snickering, probably ticking off each word in this guy’s mouth to tell the Yankee, or to remind me about in a week.

Mikah is still looking around the room, handing out Hallelujahs to anyone that’s watching. His eyes grab on to mine, and suddenly he walks toward us, dragging a puddle behind him. Amy’s fingers remind my leg she’s still there.

As he slides across the floor he sings “I gave my brother one thousand dollars… I gave my brother two thousand dollars… I gave my brother five… thousand… dollars to take his show on the road… and he did!”

When he finally reaches us, he looks right at me. And he doesn’t look away. He looks right at me, like he can’t see me. He looks right at me and shouts “enter… the star ship.” That high pitched “oooo” starts up again, and he spins around a couple times, takes a few steps in different directions, then stumbles toward the bathroom.

“Ooh… Mikah don’t you be making a mess in there…” shouts the gaggle and they drag Brian and his mop across the room and shove them both through the door.

“Wow,” says Amy. “Wow. That was pretty crazy, huh?”

I shrug and say “ehh” and look down at her watch. It’s 3:55 am and still no buses.

I wake up a little and wonder what time it is. Amy’s sleeping with her arms crossed… maybe she’s cold… and I don’t feel like turning around to find the clock. It stopped raining and there’s a drop of light outside. It must be about 5:00… 5:15…

For a few minutes, I think my eyes are open watching the buses pull in and out. There are more of them now, from all over the country. I try to remember what Mia’s should say… I think its final destination is somewhere in Louisiana.

Then there’s this weight. Something pressing, like a hand. Thinking it’s Mia, I whip open my eyes and look… I guess I am nervous… But it’s Amy. I must have woken her up, and she’s dropped her head onto my shoulder and is kind of digging around with her ear, trying to make it more comfortable or something.

“She fucking stood me up. I can’t fucking believe it.”

Amy’s still got her eyes closed. “Let’s keep waiting… maybe she just got… delayed…”

I want to leave right now but Amy’s on my shoulder. That cream filling of hers is spilling out, just asking to be grabbed. The Amish kids and the old lady are gone and now there’s this unbelievably short man standing by the windows with this look on his face like somebody forgot to close his mouth. I want to tell Amy but she’s on my shoulder, and maybe asleep.

Some noises come out of the kitchen, dishwashing and coffee-making. It’s about that time I suppose. Amy’s face squishes together and she scratches her head but doesn’t open her eyes.

“What did he say?” she mumbles.

“Huh?”

“What’d he say?”

“Amy, wake up… what are you talking about?”

“That guy… he told us… to enter something?”

“I don’t know… he was nuts. Ah…. 'enter the starship’ I think”

Amy almost nods, but then stops moving and sighs. I let my head rest on hers, and together, we wait.