More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse (4 page)

Morton came in and threw a fit.

“
What the hell are you doing?” he
shouted.

I spun around, my heart double-timing it in
my throat.

“
Checking out the calendar,” I
said.

“
Didn’t we talk about this before?” He
stepped a bit too far into my personal space.

“
What are you talking about?” I
asked.

“
You remember your tiff with Ben? You
turning the calendar a day early?”

What the hell?
“For one thing, I was
looking ahead to see when I might pay a visit to my daughter. And
for another thing, Ben’s not even in here! So what do you
care?”

Mort’s face was beat red at this point. I
could tell that his gears were cranking and that he was having a
hell of a struggle trying to calm himself down.

“
Is there something I’m missing here?”
I asked. “Is there something about this particular calendar that
makes everyone nuts?”

His eyes darted from me to the calendar. I
had the feeling he wanted to tell me something, but all he said
was, “Don’t let me catch you messing with it again.” He turned
around and stormed out of the break room.

I was angry. Confused. I guess I don’t know
what I was feeling, exactly. If someone’s going to get angry at me,
I like them to have a good reason. I tried to let it go. Slept on
it a few days, trying to figure out what it was all about. What was
I missing?

Forget it, I told myself. Just forget it.
Let it go. But the more I thought about it, the more angry I
became. I couldn’t just let it go. So finally, a few days later
–

–
I decided to take the fucker down.
If it was causing this much bullshit, then to hell with
it.

On a slow day when Mort was gone and I was
the only mechanic in the shop, I walked up to the break room’s
bulletin board, reached up, grabbed the pin holding the calendar in
place and yanked. The pin flew out, and the calendar fell in my
hand. I glared at it, as if daring it to complain. Then I flipped
forward through a couple months. September, October, November. Your
typical months. Just a calendar. I tossed it in the
wastebasket.

I sifted through the magazines on the card
table. There – the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit edition. If they
wanted some T&A on the wall, then why not something current? I
ripped the cover off the magazine and pinned it up in the space the
calendar had occupied.

Problem solved.

I passed the wastebasket. The old calendar
stared up at me. I walked over to the coffee maker, pulled out the
basket with the filter full of spent, wet coffee grounds and dumped
it on top of the calendar. Even better. And to top it off, to make
things absolutely final, I yanked the garbage bag out of the waste
basket, tied the top ends together tightly and carried it out to
the large blue trash bin behind the station and lofted it over the
edge.

There. Problem
really
solved.

I spent the rest of that day feeling at
turns satisfied and prickish. It was such a silly thing, wasn’t it?
Silly on their part; that’s what drove me to get rid of the thing.
But silly on my part, too. Why couldn’t I ignore the whole deal? It
wasn’t hurting anything. Not really. I mean, people get
superstitious about a lot of things, and if they wanted to be
superstitious about a lousy calendar, who was I to get in the
way?

Well, what was done was done, and I knew I’d
catch hell the next day. I decided if that was the case, I’d
apologize, make amends, and eventually the whole thing would blow
over. This kind of petty shit always did. In a week, a month, we’d
be laughing at it over a few beers.

The next morning I entered Morton’s Service
Garage, bracing myself, ready to receive a lot of shit from Ben and
Mort. I was surprised to see Jenny at the register. She’d finally
come back. She waved and gave me a tenuous smile.

“
You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I
said. “How are you getting along?”

“
I’m okay.” She looked down at her lap
and her smile disappeared. “I’m managing.” She wiped at the corner
of her eye.

“
If you need anything…” I
offered.

She nodded. “I appreciate that. But I’ll be
fine.” Her smile reappeared.

I nodded back. I believed her.

I walked into the break room. The Sport’s
Illustrated cover was still in place on the bulletin board. I
poured myself a cuppa Joe, punched in and headed out to the
garage.

Ben was bent over the guts of a Lexus. I
sidled up next to him. “What do we have going on today?”

He backed out from the hood and straightened
up, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

Here it comes.

He stared at me. Nodded at an old VW van.
“Needs an oil change. Someone’s bringing in a Taurus any time now.
Tire rotation. When that’s done, you can give me a hand on this
‘un.”

I waited, and when he turned back to the
Lexus without going into rage mode, I was surprised. That hadn’t
been so bad.

Mort poked his head out. “Jordan,” he
called. “Step into my office, will ya?”

“
Sure.” Okay, maybe
now
was the
time to brace myself.

I sauntered toward him. He put his arm
around my shoulder and guided me into his office.

“
What the hell?” he asked
quietly.

“
Sir?”

“
The calendar,” he said, his voice
calm. “Just what the hell?”

I hung my head. “I don’t know – it just
bothered
me. And the way Ben treated it like something
holy
…and then you – ” I stopped.

Behind Mort, hung on the wall of his office
directly behind his desk was the calendar. The coffee-stained, bent
up fucking calendar. Nailed into the drywall.

“
Jesus,” I said, walking over to it.
“Don’t tell me you actually fetched this thing out of the
trash?
”

“
Have a seat,” Mort said.

I settled into the green plastic chair in
front of his desk. He sat in his big cloth swivel chair and leaned
forward, putting his elbows on his desk.

“
Here’s the thing.” He looked up at me
and tapped the top of his desk gently with his knuckles. “I know
this seems silly. I get that. But what it all comes down to is if
you touch that calendar again, you’re fired.
Understand?”

I’d been expecting a tongue-lashing,
yelling, swearing, but
this?

“
Fired?”

Mort shrugged. “It’s the principle of the
thing.”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. It
was a calendar. A stupid old calendar. But all I could do was
shrug. “Okay,” I said.

“
You understand, then?”

I chuckled. “Not really. But I know when to
let things go. I won’t touch the calendar.”

Mort gave the desktop one final rap of his
knuckles. “Good.”

“
Is that all?” I asked.

“
Yep, that’s all.”

I stood. “And Ben?”

“
I had a talk with Ben. Told him if
anyone was going to give you crap about the calendar, it would be
me. He’s okay with that.”

I walked back to the garage bewildered. Ben
nodded at me. “So everything’s cool?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Everything is
cool.”

We shook hands.

The flow of cars in and out of Morton’s
Service Garage remained steady as the weather cooled. October 1st
brought the usual smell of early morning bourbon on Ben’s breath,
and after coming out of Mort’s office, he was in his usual good
mood. Jenny’s father had left her a nice chunk of change in his
will, but she decided to continue working through her senior year.
At least now she had a better selection of colleges to choose from
as long as she kept her grades up.

Speaking of confident young women, I called
Angie.

“
What are your plans for Christmas?” I
asked.

“
Carl’s folks and his sister are
coming over.”

“
Don’t suppose you could put your dad
up for a few nights over the holidays?”

She sighed. “Well…”

“
What?”

“
Mom already made plans to
visit.”

“
Ah. I see. I thought you were going
to see her over Thanksgiving.”

She was silent a moment, and then her voice
brightened. “How about New Years’?”

I nodded into the phone. “Yeah, New Years’
will do.”

“
Great. I’ll let Carl
know.”

“
Speaking of Carl, how’s he been
doing?”

“
Oh, he’s – you know, he’s
okay.”

“
Has he found a job, yet?”

“
It’s a tough economy out
there.”

“
It’s been how many years,
now?”

The brightness in Angie’s voice disappeared.
“Dad, he’s trying.”

“
Okay,” I said. Then, “Why don’t you
come out here to visit? Just you. I can send you money for a plane
ticket.”

Angie didn’t answer.

“
Honey?”

“
Look, Dad, I gotta go, okay? Love
you.”

“
Love you, too.”

She hung up. I stared at my phone for a
moment before sliding it back in my pocket. God, I could be an
idiot sometimes.

I found Jenny in the shop sitting behind the
cash register, chuckling. It was the first time I’d seen any real
mirth on her face since her father died. “Looks like Thanksgiving’s
been called off,” she said.

“
Huh?”

“
According to Mort’s calendar,
November only has seventeen days.”

I squinted at her. She was kidding, right?
“Must’ve run out of ink,” I said. “Does that mean we all get the
rest of the month off, then?”

“
I wish,” Jenny said.

On the way out of the garage, I glanced in
at Mort’s office. He had the day off, but both Ben and I had keys;
one of us opened it up first thing in the morning depending on who
arrived first.

November’s pinup girl was Kim Novak. She lay
voluptuously on a tiger skin rug. I looked at the days of the
month, the first through the thirtieth. All there.

I remembered Jenny’s dad, how he claimed
February was missing the twenty-ninth. And then he had his
aneurysm.

Were aneurysms inheritable?

Or maybe –

Maybe…

Aw, hell. She was pulling my leg. That had
to be it. I didn’t really see the humor in it, but we were a
generation apart, and maybe it was something funny to kids her
age.

I was going to ask her about it, but Ben
pulled me into the garage. “Jord – give me a hand in here?”

“
Sure,” I said.

It was a busy day, and by closing time I
convinced myself to forget about the damn calendar. The last time I
thought too much about it, I’d nearly gotten fired.

But on November sixteenth, I asked Jenny,
“You feeling okay?”

She set down the book she was reading.
“Yeah. Why?”

“
No headaches or anything?”

She frowned. “No. Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just…”

“’
Cause of my dad? Don’t worry. After
he died, I went to Iowa City and had an MRI.” She tapped the top of
her head. “Everything’s fine up here. Doesn’t even need a
tune-up.”

I smiled. “Good. That’s good to hear.”

“
I appreciate it,” Jenny said. “You
and Mort and Ben have always been so sweet to me. Especially after
Dad passed. It means a lot to me.” She hopped off her stool and
gave me a hug. “Thank you.”

I was touched. “No problem.” I didn’t know
what else to say, so I pointed my thumb at the garage. “Well, I
better see if Ben needs some help.”

I guess it’s easy enough to see what’s
coming. But if you were in my place, walking around in my shoes,
even if you had some kind of
inkling
, I’d be willing to lay
odds that you would’ve ignored that inkling same as I did. Because
to act on something like that seems more like a sure-fire shortcut
to the loony bin than a bona-fide sensible thing to do. And you
know what they say about hindsight being twenty-twenty.

Jenny’s funeral was held in St. Paul’s
Catholic Church on November twentieth. It was well attended. She
was well missed. Morton paid for her coffin. I paid for the
flowers. The teachers and kids at her high school pitched in for a
nice headstone.

Yep, sure as shit, she died on the
seventeenth of November. But not from a brain aneurysm. It was a
car accident. She lost control of her dad’s pickup on I-35. The
vehicle rolled into a ditch and flipped over, killing her
instantly. Her neck snapped, her cell phone still clutched in her
hand when they found her. They say she’d been texting just before
the pickup went off the road.

Look, I know it’s a coincidence. But damn,
ain’t that the kind of coincidence that turns a rational human
being into a superstitious fool?

Maybe I should’ve paid her a visit that day,
offered to drive her. But what it all comes down to is if it’s your
day to go, it’s your day to go. Only one who’s got any say over
that is the ol’ grim reaper, and he ain’t much of a negotiator.

The funeral was beautiful and sad, and her
tombstone was made of black granite. She died too goddamn young.
The station stayed closed that day, and after the funeral, I called
Angie. She was doing fine, and after I hung up the phone, I don’t
mind telling you that I cried for a bit.