American Outlaw - Jesse James [100]
“She had a sweet hairstyle,” I said, laughing. “Look, I was just having some fun, okay?”
“I was down there naked,” she hissed at me. “That was not the time or the place!”
We reached our car. “Give me a break, all right?” I said. “It’s not that big a deal . . .”
“You don’t know what a big deal is!” Janine cried, digging in her purse. “That’s always been your biggest FUCKING PROBLEM!”
She found her big ring of keys, gripped them in her fist, and threw them directly in my face as hard as she could.
“OWW!” I yelled, dropping to my knees in the parking lot. “Janine! What the hell was that for?”
“You think this is all a joke?” Janine screeched, standing over me. “I’m going to have your baby! And you want to treat me like some fucking joke?”
Slowly, my breath heaving, I picked up Janine’s keys from the ground and handed them to her.
“Drive yourself,” I said. “I’m walking.”
——
I slept at the shop that night.
I can’t go on with this woman, I thought to myself, rolling uncomfortably on the futon I kept in my office, trying to steal an hour or so of sleep. There’s just no way.
But I seemed to have little choice in the matter. I was boxed in with nowhere to go. She’s going to have my kid! I thought, desperately. And yet . . .
And yet I’m afraid she could run me over.
I rolled off the futon at six o’clock sharp the following morning, having gotten about forty-five minutes of rotten, dreamless shut-eye.
“Hey, Jesse. Good morning!” My custodian, Dennis, was a mentally challenged guy about my own age—like Boyd, I’d kept up the tradition of employing developmentally disadvantaged adults. Dennis never failed to raise my spirits and keep me humble at the same time.
But this morning, I didn’t want to hear anything from anyone.
“Hey,” I said shortly, brushing past him to go wash my face in the restroom.
“Did you sleep here?” Dennis asked, giggling.
I didn’t answer, just slammed the bathroom door hard behind me and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and underscored with dark rings. Fuck, I thought. I’ve aged ten years the last ten months.
I splashed cold water on my face and tried to come back to reality. There was business to take care of. Soon everyone would be arriving. As always, I had to be ready to take the wheel of the ship. Pretend like I knew what I was doing.
“Jesse,” my assistant began, as soon as she settled in. “Season two of Monster Garage is going to start filming in three weeks. Thom Beers called. He wants to get together ASAP, to bat around ideas.”
“Yo, Jess,” Bill Dodge yelled, “we got two CFL frames to get chromed by next Tuesday—are we ready to send them over to the shop in Riverside?”
“Jesse,” apologized Melissa, my secretary, “I don’t want to alarm you, but retail’s been experiencing a ton of shoplifting lately. Are we going to go forward with installing those electronic scanners by the door, or what?”
Leave me alone, guys. Please, fucking leave me alone . . .
“Jesse, we’ve got a big show set up in Japan for you to make an appearance at this November. They’re still waiting on your decision. Do you want me to tell them yea or nay?”
“Jesse! Walmart’s looking for a quarterly update on the menswear line. Do we have anything new?”
I hid behind my desk, feeling completely overwhelmed.
——
When I got home, the house was empty. Exhausted beyond belief, I sank into my couch and switched on the television. I watched fifteen seconds of a basketball game, then fifteen seconds of cable news. Then some cheesy murder mystery. And on and on. My stuttering mind wove the random TV snippets into a singular saga, a story bearing a nonsensical plotline that nevertheless seemed to make more sense than my own life.
I waited for Janine to show up, but she never did. I went to sleep uneasily, and woke up alone.
Her absence continued the following day. Janine was nowhere to be seen.
When, on the third day, she still failed to appear, I began to relax. Maybe it’s over, I thought to myself with some relief.
The following week, I was scheduled to have surgery on my shoulder. Over the years,