What Comes Around

Adriana zipped up her suitcase with a flourish. She was angry. Angry with Chas, angry with her mother, angry with herself. She was so ready to leave this god-forsaken town that had been the setting of so much heartache. She didn’t need to be at the airport for another hour, but she couldn’t stand looking at the poorly painted paneled walls of this room any longer. She picked up her phone and ordered the Uber. Five minutes away. She dragged her overstuffed suitcase off the bed and onto the floor, swung her backpack over one shoulder, and picked up the envelope that just said, “Mom” off her bedside table. She dragged her luggage down the stairs. 

She set the envelope on the kitchen table. It said everything that had been left unsaid between her and her mother for the past year, since her father had died. She patted the envelope, wondering that her letter hadn’t been longer. The silence between mother and daughter had created an irreparable wedge between them.

A black Honda pulled up in the driveway, and Adriana collected her suitcase again, exited the front door, and locked it behind her. She didn’t set the alarm because it would notify her mother that she was gone. She wanted to be ass in seat and in the air before her mom made the discovery. The Uber driver helped her load her suitcase in the trunk and they headed to the airport, Adriana’s one-way boarding pass to Albuquerque on her phone.

#

As the plane reached its travel altitude, Adriana looked out the window over the person seated next to her. She watched the tiny Texas landscape unfold far below until it was just clouds. She thought back over the past year. Her father’s funeral, her mother’s silence, the fucked up relationship with her now ex-boyfriend, Chas. She also thought about Jasmine, the little sister she was leaving behind. That was the only thing she’d miss about Denton. But Jasmine had a phone now, and Adriana, after swearing Jasmine to secrecy until she was gone, told her she’d call every day. She’d still check in on her homework, how she was doing in school and with her friends, all the things their mother should have been doing. She drifted off to sleep.

#

When the plane started to descend, Adriana awoke. She popped her ears. She looked out the window at the scrubby desert terrain and the Rocky Mountains in the distance. She felt her stomach do a little flip. She was going to Red River, one of the cutest towns she’d ever visited and in the middle of the mountains that loomed on the horizon. This was going to be her opportunity to start over, somewhere completely different than the Gulf Coast. Somewhere with snow in the winter. Snow! Somewhere no one knew her. Somewhere she could finally feel close to and grieve her father. Somewhere away from her mother and Chas.

It would be a long, expensive Uber ride to Red River, but she had budgeted for that. She’d found a place to stay with a roommate and applied at one of the bars and been hired online. She didn’t start for another couple of days, which would allow her time to get settled.

Two hours later, the Uber dropped her in front of a small, mid-century cottage four blocks off the main street. The driver helped Adriana get her luggage out of the trunk, and she went up to the front door and knocked. A thirty-something woman opened the front door wearing a t-shirt with a Vodka logo on it and ripped jeans. “Oh, good. You’re here. I was afraid you were gonna make me late for work,” she said, walking away from the door without inviting Adriana in. She pointed at rooms as she walked through the house. “Living room, kitchen, bathroom, you.”

“…and I’m Adriana,” she said quietly to the woman’s back. Louder, she said, “Thank you. I really appreciate you letting me live here. I’m super neat and really quiet, so you won’t have to worry about me. It’ll be like I’m not even here.”

“Yeah, yeah. I gotta go. Make yourself at home. But don’t drink any of the booze - that’s my boyfriend’s, and he will not appreciate it.” The woman, Tammy, if Adriana was in the right house, grabbed a denim jacket, her purse, and her keys. “See ya later - I get off at 3 after the bar closes.”

“I’ll probably be asleep. Can we talk in the morning?” Adriana asked as the door closed behind her new roommate. “Well, she wasn’t very welcoming,” she thought. “But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.” Adriana was paying almost nothing in rent and the room came furnished, so she guessed the amount didn’t include friendship. That was fine. She’d make other friends. She started unpacking her clothes and hanging them in the small closet. When she was done, she shoved the empty suitcase under her bed and explored her new home. She went to the fridge and opened it. Nothing but beer and a half gallon of spoiled milk. She’d have to go shopping. First, of course, she’d have to locate the grocery store. She sat down on the well-used orange couch and found the remote between the cushions. She opened Netflix, but it was password protected, so she turned the TV off. There was a small bookshelf beside the TV, and Adriana stood up and perused the titles. 

“Jesus fucking CHRIST! Where’s the Tylenol?” a loud voice boomed, emerging from the other bedroom. A man in only his boxer shorts and rumpled brown hair walked into the kitchen. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, opening the fridge and pulling a beer off the tab.

“Oh, sorry,” Adriana said, embarrassed. “I’m Adriana. I’m Tammy’s new roommate.” 

The half-naked man gave a half smile as he opened his beer. “Oh, that’s right. Tammy told me you were coming in today. Forgot.” He drank half the beer down and belched loudly. He seemed completely unconcerned that he was standing there in just his underwear. “I’m Bobby.” He held the beer up in a toast and drank the rest down, crushing the can and tossing it at the trash can. He missed but didn’t pick it up off the floor. “I’m here most of the time, so I guess we’ll be getting to know each other.” He smiled completely this time, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Can you tell me where the grocery store is? It looks like there’s not much in the way of food,” Adriana asked. She did not relish the idea of spending enough time with this tool to ‘get to know him.’

“Grocery store? You’re kidding, right? The closest thing we’ve got to a store, kid, is the Stop N Drop on Main. You can get snacks and beer, but that’s about it. If you want a real store, you gotta go in to Taos. We make a trip about once every other week or so.” He looked out the window at the driveway. “Wait - you don’t have a car? How are you gonna get around?” He plopped down on the couch.

“I thought everything was walkable here.”

He let out a scoff. “Yeah, if you wanna go to a bar or to one of the three restaurants we’ve got. This is a small town, sweetheart. It’s a ski town. Most of everything doesn’t even open until winter. We ain’t got shit here.”

#

Three weeks later, Adriana was at work, cleaning the glasses behind the bar. Her co-worker, Crystal, wiped down the tables, getting ready for the 10:00 pm “rush.” The two had become work friends, but the friendship hadn’t progressed to after-hours conversations, even though the two had run into each other at the coffee shop several times.

“So, how’s it going at home? Is the Douche Canoe still after you?” Crystal asked. ‘Douche Canoe’ was their term for Bobby.

“Not too much. I try to either stay in my room or out of the house when he’s there.”

“Do you think you should talk to your roommate about his octopus hands?” Crystal asked, moving to another table. There were no customers in the bar, so they could talk across the space.

“Are you kidding?” Adriana said, stacking the glasses. “She’s about as warm as an iceberg, and about as nice as one.” 

“You don’t talk at all?” Crystal asked. “I’m so glad I live alone. I couldn’t handle living with someone who I didn’t like.”

“You know what’s weird? I actually moved here because I wanted to get away from my mom. She would never talk to me. It was like we both lived in the same house, but we were just coincidentally breathing the same air. I also wanted to get away from my ex, he wanted to talk to me too much.”

“I’m sensing a story there.” Crystal pulled a chair out at the table she’d just finished and sat down. “Sit. Those glasses don’t need cleaning again.” She pointed at the chair across from her.

Adriana put her rag in the tub under the counter and left the bar area. She sat down across from Crystal and looked at her beautiful friend. Crystal was the perfect bartender. She had long, straight black hair, perfect cafe-au-lait skin, warm brown eyes, legs for days, and big boobs. And she was nice to everybody. Adriana was convinced that most of the clientele just came in to see her.

“Well, everything started when my dad died a little over a year ago. He was in a car wreck. My mom and him were really in love. Like, gross in love. But I really liked it. I never worried that they would get divorced, or anything, like a lot of my friends’ parents. It was a wonderful, stable home until we got that call one Thursday afternoon. The guy who hit him had fallen asleep at the wheel, they think. He ran a red light going sixty miles per hour and T-boned my dad’s car. It broke his neck. The cops said he was dead at the scene.” Adriana felt like she was telling someone else’s story, it was just facts. She was numb from not talking about it for so long.

Crystal reached out her hand and put it over Adriana’s. “That must have been really difficult for you. I can’t imagine losing my parents.”

“After that, my mom went radio silent. I mean, she would talk, but only if it was to say, ‘Pass the salt.’ There was no real discussion in our house after that. I kind of had to start raising my little sister, Jasmine. She’s fifteen.” Adriana’s face lit up. “She’s such a great kid. I still talk to her everyday. It helps to have that lifeline to home, but I miss her.”

“Do you have any pictures?” Crystal asked.

Adriana scrolled through her phone and showed her friend several pictures of Jasmine.

“She’s pretty! Is she smart?”

“She’s gorgeous!” Adriana insisted. “And genius. She’s probably going to graduate at the top of her class.”

Crystal cupped her chin in her hand, leaning on her elbow. “You must be really proud,” she smiled.

“So proud. She’s amazing!” Adriana paused. “So, my mom turned into a zombie, I’m watching out for my sister, and then I start dating this total psycho. Chas. At first, he seemed a little intense, but I thought he was just passionate. He was older than me and out of high school already. He started getting weirdly jealous of any guy I talked to. Even if it was just the cashier at a store. He wanted to be with me all the time. He’d even pick me up in the morning and take me to and from school. I thought it was romantic, but then he got really controlling. He wanted to know where I was every second of the day. He made me share my location with him so he could track me on his phone. One day, there was a glitch. He came to pick me up from school, and he was pissed. He asked where I’d been all day, and I said, ‘Duh, where do you think I’ve been? You’re here picking me up from school.’ Then he punched me in the nose. He drove off so fast, we drifted all over the driveway and into the street. I was afraid I was going to die in that car. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned on the child locks in the car. He told me he knew I wasn’t at school because my location had me 5 miles away for two hours in the middle of the day. I insisted that I had been in the building all day long. He could ask my teachers, if he didn’t believe me. I started crying, and there was blood everywhere. My nose was gushing. Somehow, I convinced him to take me home. He threatened to kill me if I told anyone he’d hit me. When I got out of the car, I told him that we were over. He tried to grab me, but I slammed the door and ran into my house, locked the doors and called the cops. The cops came and took my statement. When my mom got home and they asked her about it, she just shook her head and said she didn’t know anything about it and didn’t really know Chas. Since I was still a minor, he got arrested for assault and battery. He went to jail for a whole month before he was released on bail. But I was already gone. Here.” Adriana smiled weakly.

“How do you know he got out?” Crystal asked.

“He started texting me incessantly last week. Some of the messages were sweet, ‘hey, baby, I’m really sorry. I know we can make this work,’ blah, blah, blah. Then he started getting nastier, asking me where I was. They progressed from there until it was actual death threats.”

“Why don’t you block his number?”

“I have it on Do Not Disturb, but every time he texts, I just forward a screen shot to the detective in charge of my case.”

“But you turned off your location sharing, right?”

Adriana laughed, “Oh, yeah. As soon as I got off the phone with 9-1-1.”

“Are you afraid he’ll find you?”

“In this tiny Podunk town? Doubtful.”

Crystal stood up and put her arms out. “You’ve been through hell, my friend.” Adriana stood up and embraced her. “I’m really glad you told me. I’ll keep my eye out, just in case. Do you have a picture of this asshole?”

Adriana scrolled through her phone again until she found the one photo she’d kept. “Can you text that to me? I’d like to have it, if I ever need to shoot someone,” Crystal said. “You know we’ve got that shotgun under the bar, right?”

Adriana nodded. “Believe me, he’ll never come here.”

#

Two weeks later, a young good-looking man with tousled light brown hair came into the tavern. He walked up to the bar and asked Crystal, “Hey, there. Is Adriana around?” The hair on the back of Crystal’s neck stood up.

“I’m sorry, no one works here by that name.”

“See, I don’t believe that. I’ve called up here, and they told me that she does, in fact, work here.”

“You must be thinking of a different Tavern. This is the Olde Tavern Inn. Spelled with an ‘e.’ There’s another one in town called The Old Tavern. It happens all the time.” Crystal smiled thinly through her lie. She took her hands off the bar and held them together to keep them from shaking.

“Why are you lying?” the man asked. “When you know as well as I do that Adriana definitely works here. Her mom sure would like to hear from her. Did you know that she just took off without telling anyone where she was going? I’m her boyfriend, so it’s okay. I’m sure she’d want to see me.”

“I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t know anyone named Adriana,” Crystal said. She felt along the bottom of the bar to the silent panic button and pushed it. Then she carefully picked up the shotgun with one hand and clicked the safety off, just in case.

The man laughed and turned around to leave. “Okay, well, I guess I made a mistake.” Then he swiveled around and grabbed Crystal by the hair, slamming her head onto the bar. He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and held it in front of her nose. “I’d hate to mess up that pretty face of yours. Now where’s Adriana? It took a long time for me to find her, and I’ve driven for two days to get here. Now where. The fuck. IS SHE?!”

“I swear, there’s no one who works here named Adriana. Maybe she started working here under a different name?” Crystal scrambled to come up with the lies to protect her friend. “Could she be going by Leslie now?” Her head was throbbing, but she managed to swing the gun up awkwardly and pointed it at the man’s face. He let go of Crystal’s hair for just a minute and backed up, allowing her to take aim and shoot. A roar exploded through the open-air bar, and the man, minus his face, flew backward several feet, crashing into tables until he landed on the floor. Crystal dropped the gun on the bar and started crying.

After she regained her hearing, Crystal heard sirens in the distance. She texted Adriana, her hands shaking so hard she was grateful for autocorrect. “You don’t have to worry about Chas anymore.”