Page 43 of Rookie Recovery

“Dancing? There’s a place near me—actually there are a few places near me—but there’s this one. Plays nineties and early noughties cheese-pop?” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Macarena?”

Still, he ignored me.

“Goddammit, Jesse, take the body when he tries that dangling shit,” he muttered towards the ice in a clear demonstration of exactly how much he was ignoring me.

He … was kind of right, though. Impressive. Doc knew him some hockey, I guessed.

“Alright, what about some culture? Got to be museums or some shit around here.”

“No, there’s nothing. No museums, no culture. Bringham’s a cultural wasteland. So you can just stop that now.”

“Is that so?”

I pulled out my phone. Out of habit, I checked the TopTier icon for a new DM notification. Nothing. I brushed off the slight pang of disappointment since I should’ve been used to it by now, and began typing.

“Says there are over thirty-five museums in, or near, Bringham, Maine.”

Jamie rolled his eyes. A gesture I was so familiar with now, I could have painted it blindfolded. If I knew how to paint. “That’s wrong. Must be out of date.”

I began listing off museums as I read them. “Bringham Natural History Museum. Hmm, could be fun. You like dinosaurs, Kitty? Or … International Museum of Calligraphy. Yeah, I’m gonna veto that one. The National Collection of Ventriloquists Dummies. Yeesh, yeah, maybe you were right. Oh, my God!”

“What is it?” Jamie asked, his attention snapping to me as though I was in danger.

But I couldn’t answer him because I was laughing too hard. Tears sprung from my eyes, and I folded over in my seat, pushing my face between my knees like I was having a panic attack.

“Are you choking or—” His warm hand found my back, between my shoulder blades, but in that moment he must have realised what was happening. “Are you laughing? What the fuck is so funny?” He swiped my phone from my hand. “Bringham Trolley Museum? … A. Trolley. Museum? What’s so funny about that?”

“A trolley museum. A trolley museum! Why would anyone ever make a museum dedicated to trolleys?” I straightened up and wiped my face with the back of my fist.

“I don’t know. Maybe they like them. Maybe they have cultural or local significance?” he said, his brows knotted together in the middle. He handed my phone back.

“Trolleys?! Trolleys though?!” I said, louder this time in case he hadn’t heard me over that deadpan expression of his. Why didn’t he think this was funny? Or at the very least, extremely weird. “Trolleys. Like what you push around the supermarket and put your tomatoes and bran flakes and detergent in?”

“Shopping cart?” Comprehension dawned on both of us at the same time. “Oh, my God, you guys call them trolleys?”

“Yeah. What do you call them, dum dum?” I said, smiling, even though the embarrassment was already creeping up my cheeks and burning my ears.

“Carts. Dum dum. Or carriages.” He swatted my bicep with his hand, but it was too gentle to be anything other than affectionate. “I can’t believe you thought there was a museum of shopping carts.”

“Oh, haha, let’s all laugh at the adorable foreigner,” I said. And because I was a sucker for punishment, I added, “I’ll book us tickets. Pick me up tomorrow at, like, midday?”

Jamie shook his head again and pursed his lips together. “No, Bowman. Not happening.” But I knew, deep in the cavities of my soul, if I were to walk out my apartment’s front doors tomorrow at noon, he’d be waiting for me in his big, white not-quite-a-monster-truck.

“So, what are trolleys, then?” I asked, because I should at least have some base knowledge before we turned up at a museum dedicated to them.

Jamie hefted a huge shoulder. “Maybe train carriages or something.”

Jamie picked me up at precisely twelve o’clock, and drove us forty-five minutes out of Bringham into the middle of hell, probably. Dusty, browning, summer-parched lawns and cracked, weed-infested concrete seemed to disappear into the horizon on every side.

“Ahh,” he said as he pulled up into the car park.

Our first—or seventh—clue should have been the dearth of other vehicles in the lot.

I jumped out of Jaime’s truck, and before us, a little worse for wear, sat an enormous shopping centre. It would not have looked out of place on the set of a zombie movie.

I wondered if Jamie had taken us to the wrong place. Typed the wrong zip code into the sat nav. But there was no mistaking it. This was the correct address. Because outside of the building, in every available square metre, literally hanging from the walls, on posters and signage, and in big blinking neons above our heads, were shopping trolleys/carts/carriages/whatever you wanted to call them. The type that aided your weekly grocery shop. Definitely not the type that were on trains.

“Ha ha ha, in your face! It is a museum of shopping carts. I win!” I yelled, triumphantly punching the air.

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