What to do next

Augie walked out of the shiny, swift, silent doors with a huge grin on his face. He’d figured it out. He could have flown if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t. He really didn’t.

He moved into the open air to see that it had stopped raining. He looked around again, seeing everything he’d seen an hour when he was out here. The wilting flowers in the giant pots, the cars lining up to drop passengers, even his now disintegrating cigarette sitting in a puddle of water. He stepped off of the curb and hailed a taxi, pulling out the fresh pack of cigarettes as he went.

He lit up and waited, looking around, feeling as if the whole world was fresh. He felt the usual buzz and shake of the nicotine in his system right as the cab pulled up.

“Hey buddy, put that shit out,” the cabbie said as Augie pulled out the door. He complied, but only because he had something else on his mind.  By the time the cabbie dropped him in front of his shitty apartment, in the shitty town, in his shitty life, he was sure.

The phone rang and he cursed himself for becoming nervous.

“Hello?”

“Hey Dad.”

“Augustus?”

“Yeah Dad, listen. I’m finished with my past. I’m tired of trying to sort out what I feel about you or Amy or my mother…”

“Amy is your mother, son,” he replied.

He thought for a few moments about that. About how Amy had saved his life when he father wanted to end it. About how he should really be angry at his father, how she had done nothing wrong. But he’d just said it. He was finished bveign confused. He was ready to start with a clear head. He thought all of this, but said none of it. “I’m not coming home, Dad. I’m sorry.”

There was a pause that felt like an eternity. Instead of spending it trying to decide what to say or how to feel or whether he was wrong by being so frank he just stared at the ground.

“I love you, Aug,” his father said finally and he didn’t bother decide if his father sounded upset or angry or both.

“I love you, too.”

And then he hung up the phone, sliding it into his backpack and turned, facing the city block, and began to decide what the fuck to do next.

That's when he hard the sirens.
"What happened?" he asked a woman walking rapidly in the other direction. She turned to him, her face in that familiar expression of someone trying not to seem excited by something gruesome happening.
"There's been a murder," she said in a mock-solemn voice.
Augie turned again, deciding that his new life would best start safe in his apartment.

To fly or not to fly?

Augie fumbled nervously with the pack of Marlboro in his shirt pocket. When he finally managed to get his freezing and shaking fingers around the box, he paused, patting his pockets for his lighter. Finally he found it. Lighter in hand, he reached desperately for the last cigarette in the pack. His fingers fumbled and he dropped it in a puddle at his feet.
“FUCK,” he said loudly, attracting a dirty stare from a woman next to him. He bent to pick it up, but it was soggy and useless. He let it fall limply from his hand and looked around at the wet world beyond the  airport, not sure what else to do. He could go in, but that was the last thing he wanted to do just then.
Of course, he’d regretted his decision to fly almost as soon as he’d made it. He’s felt panicky and shaky and all around scared. First thing he’d done was place the tickets safely in his desk drawer. Second thing was trek down to Ray’s Liquor store to find himself a dealer. The fact that he hadn’t even begun to search for a good hookup until that day represented to him how much he really had regressed into this flabby mess since moving to the Castle Apartments. He’d lost his edge, become boring.
Now, standing under the airport awning watching the rain piss unrelentingly on the filthy street, he thought of how funny it was that the moment he ran away from home he became tame. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?
After finding some sketchy  standing outside Ray’s Liquor, he spent all of the previous night’s tips. And he’d gotten stoned, for the first time in months. And then he’d decided to go through with it. He’d decided to fly. And now he cursed himself for it.
The loud and unpleasant sound of a taxi’s horn brought him back to the gray, wet day. He had to do it. There’s no use standing here like a little bitch. He told himself, and even as he did, he smiled. There’s the old Augie.
He turned and there they were. Shiny, swift, silent. He looked helplessly at the countless passengers rushing in and out of them on all sides. Why could they do it and he couldn’t?
He put one foot in front of the other, taking a tentative step towards the doors. A man bumped into him.
“Hey, watch where you’re going,” Augie snapped. The man didn’t even look back.
Fuck him. Fuck this. Fuck it all.
Before he knew it, Augie was walking. He was walking at what felt like a normal pace, but he soon discovered was fast. Too fast to look entire normal, perhaps, but he didn’t care. It was as if this moment had all of the anger and angst Augie felt wrapped up in one.
His mother, Amy, his old life, Anastasia, his father. Mostly his father. And then there he was, standing inside. He felt nauseous and shaky. And he was craving a cigarette.
All he’d done since buying this ticket was suck in nicotine. Any start on quitting he’d made since leaving Orange County was damned to hell, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He checking himself in with one of the machines, not sure if he was really ready to interact with a human being. As soon as he’d found his gate, number 11, he looked around for a duty free shop.
“Marlboro Red,” he said crassly to the woman behind the counter. She couldn’t have been older than 20, but she looked cheap and overdone. But boy, was she giving him the eyes.
“You know smoking’s bad for you, babe” she said flirtatiously.
“So it wearing three tons of makeup and putting out every chance you get, so you’re not one to talk, are you sweetheart,” I said sardonically. Ah, here comes the offensive wit. The closer to Orange County he got, the more himself he was becoming. The thought disturbed him.
His fingers itched to rip open the pack and light up, but he knew he couldn’t until hge was back in California. He sat, his foot twitching impatiently, waiting for the cool female voice to announce his boarding zone. Finally the time came and he stood, hauling his backpack onto his shoulder, still clutching the cigarettes in his hand.
He stood in line, watching the people filed in front of him. He smiled wryly to himself, thinking how much like 1st graders lined up for recess they all looked.
Now no trace of the panic he had felt in his chest earlier constricted him. But as he drew closer and closer to the front of the line he realized: he didn’t want to go home. His breath was coming in short gasps. He was second to last. He didn’t need to face his father just yet. But he couldn’t give up on his promise to fly either. He was first in line now, the flight attendant was smiling at him pleasantly...

Screw the Mundane [9]

Augie looked over his soggy waffle morosely. Sometimes he came to Casa de Waffle when Sandra had her shifts just to please her, but he really did hate the food. He’d almost rather eat Chico’s dry food.

“How is it, hun?” she appeared in front of him. He thought quickly.

“Oh boy, I shouldn’t have ordered two. Can’t finish this one!”

She looked down at his lone waffle, which never had a pair on the plate to begin with.

“You ordered the double?” she asked, looking momentarily confused.

“Mhmm, didn’t you notice?”

“I guess I’m just frazzled, hun. Well that’s alright, should I box that one?”

“Absolutely,” he replied. He resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief as she collected the decrepid waffle and cast his eyes around the restaurant. A woman with a small, neat looking child on the other side of the place and felt a small pang. Mothers, everywhere. It’s ridiculous that he should feel like this, really. He can’t exactly blanch at every mother he sees with her child.

She returned with his waffle and he bade her goodbye before walking the short distance to her apartment. He sat down discontendedly. What could he possibly do to get out of this horrible funk. It had been a dark cloud over him since the incident with Sandra. The root of the problem wasn’t his mother exactly. She was dead and there wasn’t much to make of it. But it wasn’t just that incident, he decided.

He was different. He was boring. When he’d moved here, he was full of anger, rebellion, angst. It was cliche and annoying, perhaps, but it was something. The last thing he’d done that was really him was barfing in the church, as pathetic as that sounds. Augie had turned into the kind of person he hated, wallowing in his problems, abstaining from drugs for fear of doing something stupid, falling into routine. Somehow he had digressed, slowly melted into monotony and virtue.

“There’s nothing worse,” he said, aloud, and was disgusted even by the volume of his voice.

“I am sick of routine,” he said a little louder.

“I AM FUCKING SICK OF THIS SHIT!” he burst out suddenly. Chico raised his head from the rug which he used as a bed then let it fall again, seeing that it was only his master. All that and still no consequence. He needed to DO something, not think, just do.

30 minutes later, Augie printed his airplane ticket to John Wayne airport of Orange County.

Shiny Sliding Doors [8]

Augie woke up in a cold sweat, cursing his bad night’s sleep for the 4th night in a row. Ever since Sandra had asked him about his mother, he hadn’t been able to sleep well. His dreams were filled with hot, empty deserts, warm embraces and worst of all-- airplanes. Augie could never stand flying, he never understood why.

He had been on the verge of visiting his mother’s grave, even though he’d vowed to never go back. What good could it do him, he reasoned. It would only make him feel more void. He never knew his mother, so how could he gain comfort from her proximity, even if it was just her long-decomposed body. But then Matilda had implored him to work last minute instead. He hadn’t slept during the day to prepare him for the long night’s shift, so he’d left his wallet there and he decided when he woke up to get it. Might as well do it now, and chances are Matilda’s still there from last night.

He stepped into the eerily still morning air. It was early, he judged, but he wasn’t sure how early. Instead of going directly to the bar, he found himself wandering in the other direction, towards St. Magdeline’s.

No, Augustus. He told himself, and for some reason the voice he heard was Sandra’s. Not a good plan at all, hon. He switched direction and walked towards the slaughterhouse theater. Since the resurfacing of his memories about his mother and the recurring airplane dreams, Augie figured he should figure out what was happening inside of his brain. That was one thing Augie was brilliant at. He was able to remove all emotion, look at himself from outside of his mind, and figure himself out. It was the only way he could understand himself, otherwise he was just a confused jumble of energy.

He tried to do this now, allowing all the emotion to drain out of him and thinking in pure, linear logic. He wasn’t afraid of flying, but he could never fly. Because he could never make it past the shining, sliding doors. Something about the whole place sung heartbreak to him. But that’s not enough to help him find the source of his anxiety. “Heartbreak” is too wishy washy. What’s the association between his mother and airports. That’s the real clue here.

And that’s when it hit him. Anastasia had told him the way his father had met his mother before she even made it to his house and told him to get rid of the baby. His mother had refused, had fought for him. His father was angry, but in the end he left with Augie. Anastasia said it was Amy who convinced him to keep the baby who now stood pacing in front of the mercy hospital agitatedly. He turned a saw a man and woman, outlined crisply in one of the windows. They both wore hospital gowns and looked uneasy. This gave him a foreboding feeling, but he pushed it away, struggling to remain in the logical state of mind.

There was one stipulation to Augie’s remaining alive. The condition was that the baby’s mother never knew her, never knew of his father’s shame. And Augie remained clueless,until Anastasia told him. “It’s a wonder the whole world didn’t know that you’re Kamilah’s,” she had said. “You look just exactly like her.”

Anastasia had told her all the details, all she could remember. But there’s one thing she hadn’t mentioned. Where this faithful separation took place remained unknown to Augie. But he was willing to bet it was at John Wayne airport, Orange County, CA.

He didn’t know what he was going to do, but the emotion had come flooding back and something needed to happen, now. “Fuck you, Dad,” he muttered, turning and marching back towards his apartment.

Uncomfortable Talents [7]

Maybe it was some sort of freaky intuition she has, but Augie suspected that Sandra has the most acute detector of awkwardness he had ever encountered. She seemed to nose out the most uncomfortable topic, the one that people try to hid from the world, the one that always makes them hold their breath when the topic comes up at the dinner party. She finds everyone’s achilles heel and discusses it to death in that deliberate, nasally voice that seems to bore into your very core. “So tell me about your folks,” Sandra said as they took their daily walk with Chico. “They’re just like any suburban parents, I guess,” he said casually. Too casually, he knew. She was interested. “You’ll have to give me more than that, Mr. Mystery!” She smacked him playfully. “Alright, well my father’s a stockbroker. He caters to his rich snooty clients and smokes Cuban cigars when he’s not in the office...which is almost never,” Augie began racking off facts about his father. There was a not-quite-awkward pause. He had the sense that he ought to keep talking before Sandra asked the question he was dreading. Then again, there was almost not point in avoiding it, she would sniff it out, it was just her talent. “And your Ma?” Threre it was. Augie felt the familiar hot feeling around his collar and the lockjaw that forboad him from talking. Somehow he managed to force out the words. “She’s dead.” “Ohh, I’m sorry, hon!” And yet she plunged on. “Are you a Nanny child? You must be if your old man’s so filthy rich.” “No, he remarried,” Augie said coarsley, leaving out the part where his father never told him that Amy isn’t his real mother. That he caused his real mother to die in the streets for all intents and purposes, all because she wasn’t just perfect and shiny. Just because she wasn’t Amy. He was the one that had the affair. Augie could practically feel his eyes going out of focus as he remembered the day when he discovered it. It was a mere 5 months ago, even though it felt like years at least. He had been rummaging through his father’s desk, looking for his iphone that his father had confiscated. His father had blown his casket when he found out Augie had been skipping school and took the phone. Augie didn’t mind really, he didn’t have a girlfriend or any friends to speak of. I mean sure, he had his smoking budies and he knew some girls, but no one he needed to be in constant contact with. Then about two weeks into his parental probation, he ran out of the good stuff and had no way to reach his dealer. That was the one and only thing that motivated him to get off his ass. He had almost given up hope of finding it when something small, square and yellowed slid out of a small compartment behind one of the drawers. It had his name on it. When he began to read it, however, he realized that it was written in some sort of script. He hazarded a guess at Arabic and knew there was only one person who could help him. Coincidentally, it was the one person in his expansive but empty-feeling house he trusted. He was down in the kitchen in a flash, letter in hand. What could be so juicy that his father had it hidden away in the back of his desk so carefully? “Anastasia?” She was there, chopping shallots, her midnight black hair springing out of her bun, her nutty brown skin shining with perspiration. “Try this,” she said in her clipped, accented tones, popping a spoonful of creamy soup in his mouth before he could say another word. It was perfect— rich and spicy and wholesome, as usual. “Needs shallots,” he joked. She made no response besides a small smile before tipping them into the pot. “Anistasia, tell me about this,” he had said said, unable to wait a second longer. He shoves the letter under her nose and for the first time ever, she froze. Not a muscle moved, not her idle hands, not her expressive eyes, nothing. “I told him he needed to tell you sooner,” was all she’d said. And then the whole story had unfolded. The way on their honeymoon his father had slept with his true mother and then left her there when he left with his new wife, Amy. The way his true mother was the daughter of a local governer and was afraid to tell him when she discovered she was pregnant, bearing the American’s child. She had raised money on her own and run away, finding my father with the then-3-month-old Augustus. But what a surprise she had found when she got here. “Augie? Augie? Gustoooo?” she drew out her special little nickname for him, cutting into his consciousness. “Your ma?” “I don’t know my mother,” he said tersely. “Alright, alright, seems like I struck a nerve. Touchy, touchy....” It would have been the last straw, had I not known she didn’t mean it.It’s not as if she means to make people uncomfortable. Sure Sandra may be uncouth and ditzy and careless and flat out annoying sometimes, but she’s never deliberately mean. Not the way Augie had seen his father’s wife act before. The one he used to believe to be his mother. The thought made him uncomfortable, like maybe from his association with her, the way he even still loved her because he really thought she was his mother, made him mean, too. It was for these reasons he bit his tongue.

A dead end [6]

Whenever Augie felt like things were too much, he took a long walk. Predictable, yes. Cliche, yes. But that seemed to be everything else about his life recently. He had tried to adopt a child, drunk on cheap whiskey. I mean really, what’s wrong with that picture?
“Asshole,” he muttered aloud.
He thought of Chico, who he’d left at home today. It was about his walktime, about the time he’d normally be meeting with Sandra and listening to her nasally voice all around this shitty town, but what Matilda had told him the night before shattered his norms.
Augie rubbed the lump still present on the back of his head where he’d hit the corner of the counter behind the bar. He’d woken up in this hospital with a bandage around his head and no one by his bedside, besides a note from Matilda written on a bar napkin, apologizing for minorly concussing him and saying that he could forget making up the shift he missed as a result of the injury. I suppose this meant that his church embarrassment was water under the bridge as far as she was concerned. Or she didn’t feel like hiring a new bartender.
But to him, it represented every failure in his life so far. His parents had failed to be decent for him, he failed at running away and making a life for himself, and he can’t even adopt a child if he wants to fuck up his life even further. He was at a dead end, there was no denying it. And all he had here was a job with his phsychotic boss and a stone with his dead mother’s name on it. What good will that ever do him?
He found himself behind the police station and paused for a moment, for whatever reason. It was beginning to get dark, and even though he’d never lived in an unsafe place in his life, something in him told him to get close to home before it became fully dark.
Even as the thought occured to him, however, he heard a commotion. Shouting and then footsteops, heading straight towards him. Suddenly, a man in a business suit careened around the corner, running flat into him.
“Wait!” Augie heard from around the corner. “Stop him!”
He wanted to reach out a hand, a foot, something to help bit it was too late. The man, whom he’d barely had a chance to glimpse, was gone and he had nothing to show for the encounter either.
Augie stood in the empty alleyway, waiting for something to happen. Just waiting.

Peanuts and Frying Pans [5]

“I just looooove Christmas so much!” the waitress from Casa de Waffle was shuffling alongside him, trying to keep up with his qucikened pace. Every since she had bonded with Chico, she decided that this was how she would spend her afternoon break every day, walking the dog with Augie. She was, giving him sloppy doe’s eyes which he hated so much. Aguie could never stand when women were sweet, he liked them better when they were brutal and rough. He knew how to deal with that. And anyways, everything at home is so sweet and soft. One would think Augie grew up in a museum, the way his father and Amy acted. Amy who he used to call mom, but now wished he could call ‘bitch.”
Augie nodded mutely, but he wasn’t really annoyed. The woman, Sandra her name was, began to grow on him. Thinking of Christmas always put him in a good mood. Funny thing is, he loved Christmas, too. His favourite holiday, ever since he was a kid.
“Are you spending it with family?” she asked as the rounded the corner. He snorted, knowing it was more likely he’d spend the special day with a nice, full supply of whiskey and cigarettes. Before he had time to answer, she said “Ohh, look, we can donate for the holiday!” Augie looked up, already feeling his teeth on edge because of the annoying bell that those salvation army volunteers insisted on wagging every minute of every day all the way until Christmas, until he saw the volunteer himself. He almost turned around and walked the long way home. The blind man which had given him such a scare was stationed there. Normally, Augie felt he had a pretty thick skin. He was definitely no stranger to urban living. But this man seemed to see into his soul, as silly as it seemed.
He forced himself to keep walking, telling himself there is no way the man would be able tell it was him. As they passed him, Sandra dropped a handful of quarters from her apron pocket into his collection bucket. He turned his eyes upon them and said in a slow, deliberate voice. “We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.” Sandra laughed her smoker’s lung laughed and kept walking, without paying him much heed. Augie had since learned that this man was quite a character among these parts, and didn’t really phase anyone anymore. But as he looked over his shoulder, the man was staring at him steadily. Not blinking, not smiling.
“He always has the most creative quotes!” Sandra was musing. And something about her nasally voice commanded attention, so he listened. “That one’s from a holiday movie, I’m sure....”
“Charlie Brown’s Christmas,” Augie supplied.
“Yeah! That’s it! Look at you and your holiday trivia, hun....”
She withdrew a cigarette from her gaudy, leopard-print handbag and lit up. They were nearly in front of the Castle Apartments by now. She reached down and scratched Chico, always with the unnerving habit of holding her lit cigarette by his velvety-soft ear.
“Well Merry Christmas, hun. I’ll see ya when I see ya.” And with these rather unffectionate words, they parted and he rushed upstairs to get dressed for work.
***
“Finally, it’s about time!”
“Matilda, I’m 6 minutes early for my shift.”
“You disappoint me to no end!”
Augie sighed, tying his little apron around his waist. She appeared then from underneath the bar where she was rummaging around for her handbag.
“I hope you know, I should really fire you for that!”
“For what, Matilda? For being early to work?”
“Funny man,” she came right up to me and squinted at me, pulling a hideous face. “Don’t think I don’t know about your shenanigans last Saturday....”
He thought back for a moment, absently wiping off the bar with a wet rag. Then he remembered: that was his night in the church, the night he acquired Chico. He opened his mouth to respond, but didn’t have much to say. He didn’t want to give away unnecessary details if she only knew part of the story. Then again, he only knew part of the story. What if she knew more than he did?
But he need not debate, Matilda didn’t give him a word in edgewise.
“I talked to Sister Mary Clare and she told me all about you and your sinful, fucked up ways!”
“Wasn’t it you who told me I have a foul--”
“The orphanage, Augustus? The orphanage!? Of all the places to wander into, it couldn’t have been Isabella’s?”
“The....what?”
“AUGUSTUS, YOU TRIED TO ADOPT A CHILD! BLABBERING SOMETHING ABOUT BEING A GOOD FATHER TO LITTLE PEANUT!”
Augie felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. His father and who he’d assumed to be his mother had always called him peanut. Still, he couldn’t make head nor tail of what Matilda was trying to tell him.
“Matilda, I don’t know--”
“DON”T PRETEND LIKE YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT,” she looked positivly maniacle and she was advancing on him. He backed into the kitchen area, which was hot and cramped. “LOOKS LIKE YOU SETTLED FOR THAT MANGY MUTT WHEN SISTER MARY CLAIRE TOLD YOU THAT YOU NEEDED TO LEAVE THE ORPHANAGE!!”
The whole thing had a unnerving familiarity about it. He tried desperately to make sense of the situation. “Are you talking about Chico? He just showed up in my apartment one morning...”
“EVER WONDER HOW HE GOT THERE? YOU PROBABLY STOLE HIM, YOU MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A MAN!” She caught up a frying pan. This really would be quite comical if what she was saying didn’t hit so painfully close to home. Maybe this isn’t just one of Matilda’s hairbrained accusations.
“Matilda...” His voice was like that of the man trapped in the lion’s den with one angry lion. “Just explain to me what Sister--Mary Jane--”
“SISTER MARY CLAIRE!” she screeched and with one more lunge forward, she was upon him. He stepped back hurridly, his foot made contact with something slippery on the floor, and everything went black.