Opal

by Ben Kujawski

Standing in a fresh bout of drizzling rain outside the diner was a payphone. It was positioned at the far end of the parking lot, close to some sort of pine tree I didn’t know the name of and two spaces away from my white Saab. On the other side of the payphone -opposite the side my Saab was parked on- was a young girl in her early 20s. I watched as she checked the payphone for change every five minutes or so. Nobody was using the phone, why would they?.. Positioned so far away at the edge of the parking lot. Just use the one in the diner... Yet, she kept checking for change. She’d ask anyone who passed by for their spare change. She asked me when I got out of my Saab. She’ll ask again when I return to it. Her drab coat and thin blond hair, already wet from the day’s previous rainfall, began to re-saturate with the newly begun precipitation. It was 57 degrees outside and she looked very cold. I thought for a moment the drugs she was using couldn’t be good enough to shield her from the coldness of the rain... I was being a cynic. She was probably going through hell. And what did I know? I’ve never done drugs. I used to drink more beer than I do now but that’s because I used to have friends. I’d smoked pot a few times too.

I suppose I could have given her some change. Maybe I will on the way out. There’s just always something that tells me not to. Like she’s gonna spend it on 25 cents worth of heroin. I don’t imagine that would get you very far… I guess I wish there was more of a guarantee of sorts. A way to know where my money was going… If I gave her food, I’d know she had food. You can’t trade food for heroin... How do I know it’s even heroin?..  The alcoholics say it’s a spiritual deficiency. I’m not sure I’d know how to address that. You can’t very well give someone 25 cents worth of your spirit. How do I know if mine’s even any good?

For a few minutes I shifted the focus of my eyes between the rain drops on the window and the sopping wet drug addict in the parking lot.

On the table in front of me lay two opal earrings. I was tapping them on the table, perhaps a bit too loud. I could tell a few nearby diners were throwing sideways glances at me. I’m not entirely sure who the earrings belonged to, maybe Fabiola, but I’d had several semi-long term girlfriends while living in that house and seeing them lying there at the bottom of an empty dresser drawer, I couldn’t picture them on any one of those women. Maybe they belonged to the old lady who rented before the place me. The dresser did come with the house, and who wears opal anymore?

I’d been with Fabiola for 9 years, my longest relationship to date.  At that point you get lazy, you don’t think proposing is so urgent. You’ve been together this long, it’ll just keep going. But it didn’t because she left me. She moved to Maryland where her brothers live. Ellington City or something like that. I don’t know if she’s still there. I think she was bored of me… I can understand that.

Things haven’t necessarily changed for the worse. I’m having more sex than I used to... That isn’t always a point of pride. The women I usually find myself accompanying have their fair share of issues. They’re usually alcoholics in some sense, and usually slightly older than me, and always divorced, and I usually feel deeply saddened when I wake up next to them, or sneak away in the night, or take food from their refrigerator as they lie under the heavy blanket of deep alcoholic slumber.

Just then, Brendan, walked in the door. Brendan was not my friend, and I didn’t know a thing about him but part of me blindly hoped that we might hit it off. That quickly faded as I sized him up. He was about 19 years old, wearing khakis and a yellow argyle sweater. Why would a person so young dress like that? It seemed unnatural to me. Too appeasing. If I went to high school with him, me and my friends would probably have let the air out of his tires during lunch. We used to do that pretty often. I guess it was funny. But, I don’t know, high school was some time ago.  I wouldn’t do something like that today.

He smiled and we shook hands. I asked him to have a seat. He shot a quick, seemingly involuntary look of judgement at my John Mellencamp shirt. It was then that I realized how bogus it was that I asked someone over the internet to meet me at a diner to perform a thirty second exchange of cash and earrings. We weren’t making an oil deal... He looked as confused to be in a diner meeting a 48 year old man as I was about why I had invited a 19 year old to meet me here. People probably thought I was some sort of sexual predator.

Brendan uneasily sat down. I asked him if he wanted to order anything. He politely said “no, thank you”, adding in a friendly laugh. I could tell he said it in the same tone he probably used on his dumb ass parents to get in their good graces. Of course he didn’t want to order anything. I could understand that. He wanted to get away from this middle-aged potential sex offender before I reached under the table and touched his thigh. That’s what he wanted. He also wanted the earrings... He told me it was his girlfriend’s birthday.

Closely inspecting his purchase to be, Brendan had the gall to ask me if they were real opal. “Yes” I said, staring him right in the eyes. I didn’t know if they were real opal, who knows how to tell if something is real opal, but I knew for a fact that he didn’t know what real opal was so, the answer sufficed. Next the little bastard asked me if he could have them for 35. I quickly reminded him that we had already agreed over email that 40 dollars would be the price.

His parents were probably rich. Kids that grow up rich always think they can pull shit like that. Like his scummy CEO-dad taught him how to spot poor people and take advantage of them. I’m not poor, I can’t say I’m poor. I’m not rich, but I’m not poor. It just peeves me to have some smart ass kid thinking he can pull one over on me. What teenager wants opal earrings for his girlfriend? This isn’t 1956… I threw him off by asking once again if he wanted to order something. He quickly agreed -for a second time- to the 40 dollars. We sat there for a moment in awkward silence, he with the opal earrings and I with 40 dollars. I asked him where he went to school. My turkey club arrived, it came with french fries instead of the coleslaw I ordered but I didn’t want to make this kid think I was some schmuck who didn’t know how to order food, so I let it slide. “Want a bite?” I asked. He responded by saying “Thanks for the earrings” and smiling awkwardly while shuffling out of the booth we sat in. He didn’t look back after leaving his seat… He was probably an alright kid... What do I know? I don’t have any children, I probably never will.

I sat there chewing on my turkey club like a stunned bovine. It was mediocre at best... I hoped I didn’t come off like a jackass trying to sell those earrings. It was my first time using craigslist. I think it went well... There was something about the mayonnaise on the turkey club that didn’t sit right with me. It made me think that perhaps one of the disgruntled dishwashers had masturbated into the mayo. I told myself that couldn’t possibly have happened and finished that half off the sandwich. When it came time for the second half I just asked the waitress to throw it in the trash. Then I remembered the young woman outside. But it was too late. I suppose I could have asked for them to dig it out of the trash but part of me felt like it would be insulting to give her food that had been in the trash, though I guess she wouldn’t have known.

When I went outside it seemed to be raining lighter than it had appeared to be from inside. The greasy French fries had given me a headache. I approached the young tweaker girl still standing by the phone. I watched her, drenched to the bone. She sensed I was near and asked for change without bringing her eyes up to meet mine. I apologized and said I had none. In reality there was $1.43 of change in my pocket. She could probably hear it jingle as I walked by, lying. I felt bad, I felt like I should give her the 40 dollars I just received. Instead, I climbed into the driver’s seat of my white Saab with its cracked black leather seats.

The air in the car was still and cold. I breathed it in then out in a cloud of steam. I watched it dissipate in front of me… Through the raindrops on the window she reminded me of my mother. They both had that thin blonde hair, but it was really something about the way she held her arms with both elbows cupped in the opposing hand. My mother used to do it when she listened to people in conversation, like she was neutralizing her appendages in order to allow her conversation-mate full freedom. Then she would lean in slightly with one ear, as a display of her attentiveness. I think the girl was just standing like that because she was cold.

A thought crossed my mind that perhaps my mother had summoned this young woman into my life a some sort of test from the spirit world. But what kind of test?  A test to reveal to her son that he was falling short on his moral aptitude. That he was a self-centered cheap ass, a penny pinching curmudgeon? A guy who couldn’t even give the change in his cup holder to a hungry rain soaked young woman?.. I don’t think I believe in those sorts of things… Ghosts, spirit worlds, great beyond. At one point I might have, but I don’t remember... I watched her check the payphone's empty change return once again. I wondered why she thought she would find something in there that she hadn’t seen the last hundred or so times she checked. I guess it’s important to have something to believe in, even if you can’t be too sure of it.