Page 8 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“It’s just a small hole. Putty and some paint,” I say.

“But still. It’s weird,” Crystal adds. “You’re like a normal chick. Pretty, even. I guess. You know any other chicks who fix dishwasher pumps and patch drywall? You should get a man for that.”

“Yeah,” Jackie agrees. “You could be on The Bachelor. You look like one of them chicks.”

“Like Ashley B,” Crystal adds. “With the glossy hair.”

“No. She looks like Ashley K, stupid. Ashley B isn’t there for the right reasons. She don’t look like Ashley B.”

“Anyway,” Crystal continues. “You won’t get no man with those overalls and dirty nails. Jackie could give you a manicure.”

“How you know how to fix pipes and stuff?” Rosa asks softly.

“I went to jobs with my dad. I was gonna go into business with him after school—handyman services,” I say and then see their looks soften and their eyes flick back to their cards. I had a few gin fizzes one night by the pool and shared with the pool girls that I didn’t really have my parents anymore. It was just me and my dad growing up for most of my life. My mother died when I was still young, so when he lost the house and shifted between rehab and homeless shelters around my senior year of high school, I was on my own and the dream of a father/daughter company—Abbott Family Repair—died along with his sobriety. But he himself? Not actually dead...for the most part. Technically. I received pitying looks when I joked about how he didn’t even know who I was the last time I went to visit—that he just sat, slumped in his armchair in urine-soaked pants, calling me Roxy and asking if I wanted a stack of pancakes.

They don’t ask me questions about my family anymore. It’s unrelatable for them, I suppose; their lives revolve around their kids. Family is all they have, Crystal always says—it’s everything, so I seem extra pathetic to them with no kids of my own and no parents to speak of, I’m quite sure—like the loneliest person in the world.

The silence is awkward, so I just get up, unnoticed, and head to the front office for my supplies and wonder for the thousandth time today how I got here. Maybe that’s my answer—that it’s weird I can patch drywall. That’s what Reid always said in a roundabout way. When I think about how and when my life started to spiral out of control, I make lists in my mind of things I did wrong.

I went to trade school instead of real college. I wanted to be a mechanic, since my dad was clearly in no shape to start a business with me. I thought, who ever heard of an all-girl auto shop? No one. I could hire only female mechanics, and we’d be the best, and every woman in the state would want to bring their car to us because they knew they could trust us and not get hit on or ripped off. I thought it was genius. I thought I’d get funded on Shark Tank even...but when I met Reid, I slowly started to give up on the idea. He thought it was weird. Oddly masculine and not practical.

Then I thought we could flip houses together since he was a real estate agent and I could fix anything. We’d make a fortune, get our own HGTV show even, ’cause how many couples have the wife be the contractor? But I wasn’t a wife, was I? And I embarrassed him or emasculated him, like it was my fault he doesn’t know how to use a circular saw. So, that’s the first bullet point on the mental list of ways I fucked up my life. I let Reid decide I should pursue something more normal—something where I wouldn’t be called a lesbian or would make him look bad. Court reporting, he tried to convince me, would be good. But I hated typing and gave up on it.

The bullet points on my mental list pile up. What an idiot I was for living with a man shortly after meeting him and acting like not getting married or having anything in my name was okay with me. I know deep down that how badly I wanted kids—a family—was the major bone of contention. It was fine he thought marriage was stupid, but he wanted kids, too, and after two failed pregnancies, things changed between us. I think we both gave up a little, but on happiness.

But really, my biggest fault was aging. Maybe if I’d stayed under thirty years old, I’d still have my old life. Pitiful. I’m not proud of having these thoughts, but I can’t seem to control them when they ride in on waves of regret and resentment.

Another thing I know is that I can’t goddamn stay in this dump. The compensation is mostly the crap apartment I get for free, plus a pittance for necessities. I need to find a part-time job I can take, then I can save a little and get away from this hellhole. I’ve tried over the months I’ve been here to find something. Trying to get a job at an auto shop is almost always the same general experience. They never actually call after I apply, so I show up there and ask to talk to the boss, who is always male, and who looks me up and down and sometimes suppresses his laughter, but more often can’t help himself and smirks the whole time I’m explaining my skills.

Then, when he realizes I actually do know what I’m talking about and that I’m qualified, I’ll see a sort of embarrassed flush bloom on his face, and then he’ll get me on a technicality—that I never actually finished my certificate program—although I will guarantee you none of the coverall-clad men in the back of the shop giving me sideways glances from the underside of a Chevy sedan have any certificate or formal training of any kind themselves. I’m a chick. That’s it.

I applied at Milly’s B&B as a housekeeper and a couple bartending gigs that no one called me back about, either. So I feel like I have no choice, I have do it again. The thing I said I wouldn’t do. I have to try to lure a guy in. Just this one more time...and maybe get five hundred bucks or so to get me through until I find something. I won’t get greedy. Just enough to get by for now.

So after dark, I get a drink at the Lamplighter across the street. The place is exactly what you’d imagine a dive bar across the street from The Sycamores to be: dimly lit to cover all its filth, deep red carpet stained with decades of spilled beer and cigarette burns, the palpable smell of stale smoke and the bleach that tries to cover it up. The vinyl bar stools are held together by duct tape, and a pool table with purple felt and warped cues is in the corner where a few men argue over the legality of a bank shot.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” blasts from the jukebox and a few couples in the corner booth sing along in the obligatory exaggerated way one must when the song plays. The busty blonde uses a spoon as a makeshift microphone, and the guys laugh insecurely at themselves.

I belly up to the bar and order a Hamm’s beer. It’s not everywhere you can get this shit on tap. My dad says it tastes like pears, and you know what? It sure does, so it’s my favorite. I can tell I’m probably the only one who orders it because it’s stale and flat, but that’s okay. I’m not here for the drinks. It’s just a prop.

“Some will win, some will lose. Some are born to sing the blues...” the man next to me sings, leaning in too close.

“Christ, ya want an Altoid or somethin’?” I ask him, but he just leans to the couple on the other side of him, unperturbed, and continues his song, eyes closed, fist clenched. I see another guy squeeze in beside me to order a drink. I notice the pale circle of skin around his ring finger. Bingo. Perfect target. I could start with the drunk guys because it’d be faster, but a married guy who doesn’t want you to know he’s married is exactly what I’m looking for, so I’ll be patient.

He nods a hello at me—since we’re squeezed in so close it would be more awkward not to—and then looks at the drunk guy belting out the Journey lyrics. We raise our eyebrows at one another.

“Song’s overrated,” he says.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘Open Arms’ is a better song. It was their number one chart hit, too,” he says, and I already hate him. I can’t really explain why—maybe just the fact that he has any opinion on something so stupid at all. I suppress the urge to roll my eyes, so I blink a few times instead and bite the inside of my cheek.

“Good point, good point,” I mutter.

He asks what I’m drinking and laughs when I tell him, and then he orders the same, and it begins. Some Steely Dan, some Eagles, and three or four Hamm’s beers later, and he’s asking if I wanna get out of here. This is when I start to nervous sweat. It could all go terribly, terribly wrong, but I do it anyway.

“I live just across the street,” I say.

“No way.” He stumbles ever so slightly as he gets up from his bar stool.

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