Milkrun. Sarah Mlynowski

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ three hours by myself. And then I’d have to talk to myself at the bar. “No. It’s okay. I’m tired, anyway.” Someone knocks on my door. “The pizza’s here. Gotta go.”

      “Swear you’re not mad?”

      I’m mad. “I’m not mad.”

      “Good. Love ya, hon! Have fun!”

      I was only going to eat half the pizza and save the rest for Monday’s lunch, but now that I don’t have to wear anything tight tonight, I’m going to eat the whole thing and stuff myself with misery. I hate my life. I’m spending an entire Saturday in front of the TV. Jeremy doesn’t love me. Jonathan Gradinger doesn’t want me. Natalie’s guy called the next day.

      Sam walks into the living room. If she asks me if I’ve cleaned the bathroom yet, I’m going to take the pizza and rub it all over her toilet.

      “What’s up?” she says.

      “Nothing.”

      “What are you doing tonight?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Wanna come see the new James Bond movie with us tonight?”

      “No.” Actually, I do want to go see the new James Bond movie with them tonight. “Well, maybe.”

      “Come on! Why not? You haven’t moved in six hours.”

      “Since when is a movie aerobic? Are we going to be fighting crime along with Jimmie?”

      “At least you’ll have to get off the couch to walk to the car.”

      This is true. Although at this particular moment it seems like more work than it’s worth. “Okay, I’ll come.”

      Standing in the shower, I try to ignore the greenish-brown circles of dirt that sporadically appear on my tub. Tomorrow I’m definitely cleaning.

      Marc pulls up at a quarter to nine. He rolls down the window of his brand-new two-door Civic, and Sam plants a kiss on his lips. If they’re going to be smooching all night, I’m sitting by myself.

      I maneuver my way into the backseat, through the seat belt that is doubling as a limbo stick, recalling an earlier conversation overheard through paper-thin walls. “We weren’t arguing—we were discussing,” Sam told me later.

      Sam: “Two-doors? We’re not sixteen.”

      Marc: “A four-door? What am I, thirty-five?”

      This went on all night—two doors or four, four doors or two—the same old thing over and over, keeping me awake (I was forced to sit in a rigid position, with my ear cupped to the wall) until I went to my desk to write Honda a letter begging the company to please produce a three-door vehicle so that Sam and Marc would just shut up already.

      I step on a crumpled old burger bag on the floor of the backseat. It smells like rotten vegetables. Sam lets him get away with that?

      “We should take your car for a wash,” Sam says, sniffing. She picks up an old Big Mac carton with her thumb and index finger as if she’s holding a soiled diaper, and folds it into a compact rectangle.

      “Yes, Mom,” Marc says, and turns on the radio. There’s only so much nagging even he can take, I suppose. I wonder if he’s ever tempted to smear stale McDonald’s fry grease on her toilet seat?

      “Don’t be rude,” she says.

      I’m feeling a bit like their kid in the backseat. “Are we there yet?” I ask.

      “Soon,” he says.

      We pull into the twenty-four-theater multiplex parking lot, which is already crammed with at least a thousand cars. Apparently, we’re not the only ones with a let’s-go-to-the-movies-and-see-the-stars idea. Don’t any of these people have a real life? We pull into a tight spot at the back of the lot.

      “Couldn’t you have let us off in front?” Sam asks.

      “Sorry,” Marc says. “I forgot.”

      A front drop-off would have been nice. Some sort of trolley would have been even nicer. Couldn’t you have built us a trolley, Marc?

      Not a bad business proposal, actually. A trolley that runs up and down the parking lot, picking up and dropping off passengers like at Disney World. But people would constantly want to get on and off, the train would have to stop every few seconds, and it would take longer to get a lift back to the car than to actually walk.

      “Hurry up, girls, we’re already late,” Marc tells us. Tells me actually, because I’m the one slowing us down. I’m a slow walker. Is it my fault that short people have short legs?

      If he had dropped us off at the front door, like a gentleman, we’d have tickets by now.

      The multicomplex looms in the distance like Cinderella’s castle. Three-D cartoon animals impressively swirl over the entranceway. The theme-park adventure continues with giant bats, which would have terrified a younger, less mature version of me, that hang threateningly from the ceiling. We buy tickets and then join the popcorn line. Sam and Marc buy jujubes and two Diet Cokes. Puh-lease! Not buying popcorn at the theater is like going to a baseball game and not buying a hot dog. Why else do you go to a baseball game?

      “We’ll get seats,” Sam says, and they disappear hand in hand.

      “One small popcorn with extra butter and a small Orange Crush, please,” I tell the eyebrow-pierced teenager with bleached-blond hair.

      “Would you like to upgrade to a large, ma’am? Then you get free refills.”

      Ma’am? Ma’am?? “No, thanks.” The smalls are already giant size.

      “It’s only an extra thirty-five cents,” the pierced kid says.

      “Well…okay.” For an extra thirty-five cents, why not?

      “Would you like to upgrade your popcorn to a large, ma’am? It’s only an extra sixty-five cents.”

      “No, thanks.”

      “You get free refills, ma’am.”

      I’m not sure when exactly I’m going to refill, considering that the movie is starting in about thirty seconds. But free is free. I can do the refill right after the movie. I can bring a snack to work.

      The pierced kid hands me two huge cartons, a drink about the size of a two-gallon container of orange juice, and a popcorn the size of a water cooler.

      Oooh! Sour berries! I love sour berries! “Can I have those, too?”

      “Here you go, ma’am. That will be $15.50.” Fifteen-fifty? Why is my snack twice the price of the movie?

      Uh-oh. I have to pee. Maybe if I go now, I won’t have to go in the middle of the movie. One can always hope. Only now I feel kind of like a kid in a snowsuit. How can I carry the tub of popcorn, a pack of sour berries, a gallon of soda, and a separate straw into the cubicle without spilling everywhere?

СКАЧАТЬ