The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘I used to smoke two packs a day,’ he says. ‘Now I smoke less than half a pack.’ Actually, most days he smokes more. She knows it, and Ray knows she knows it. That’s marriage after awhile. That weight on his head gets a little heavier. Also, he can see Biz still looking at her. He feeds the damn thing, and he makes the money that pays for the food, but it’s her he’s looking at. And Jack Russells are supposed to be smart.

He turns in to the Quik-Pik.

‘You ought to buy them on Indian Island if you’ve got to have them,’ she says.

‘They haven’t sold tax-free smokes on the rez for ten years,’ he says. ‘I’ve told you that, too. You don’t listen.’ He pulls past the gas pumps and parks beside the store. There’s no shade. The sun is directly overhead. The car’s air conditioner only works a little. They are both sweating. In the backseat, Biz is panting. It makes him look like he’s grinning.

‘Well, you ought to quit,’ Mary says.

‘And you ought to quit those Little Debbies,’ he says. He doesn’t want to say this, he knows how sensitive she is about her weight, but out it comes. He can’t hold it back. It’s a mystery.

‘I ain’t had one in a year,’ she says.

‘Mary, the box is on the top shelf. A twenty-four-pack. Behind the flour.’

‘Were you snooping?’ she cries. A flush is rising in her cheeks, and he sees how she looked when she was still beautiful. Good-looking, anyway. Everybody said she was good-looking, even his mother, who didn’t like her otherwise.

‘I was looking for the bottle opener,’ he says. ‘I had a bottle of cream soda. The kind with the old-fashioned cap.’

‘Looking for a bottle opener on the top shelf of the goddam cupboard!’

‘Go in and get the ball,’ he says. ‘And get me some smokes. Be a sport.’

‘Can’t you wait until we get home? Can’t you even wait that long?’

‘You can get the cheap ones,’ he says. ‘That off-brand. Premium Harmony, they’re called.’ They taste like old stale cowshit, but all right. If she’ll only shut up about it. It’s too hot to argue.

‘Where are you going to smoke, anyway? In the car, I suppose, so I have to breathe it.’

‘I’ll open the window, I always do.’

‘I’ll get the ball. Then I’ll come back. If you feel you have to spend four dollars and fifty cents to poison your lungs, you can go in. I’ll sit with the baby.’

Ray hates it when she calls Biz the baby. He’s a dog, and he may be as bright as Mary likes to boast, but he still shits outside and licks where his balls used to be.

‘Buy a few Twinkies while you’re at it,’ he tells her. ‘Or maybe they’re having a special on Ho Hos.’

‘You’re so mean,’ she says. She gets out of the car and slams the door. He’s parked too close to the concrete cube of a building and she has to sidle until she’s past the trunk of the car, and he knows she knows he’s looking at her, seeing how she’s now so big she has to sidle. He knows she thinks he parked close to the building on purpose, to make her sidle, and maybe he did.

He wants a cigarette.

‘Well, Biz, old buddy, it’s just you and me.’

Biz lies down on the backseat and closes his eyes. He may get up on his back paws and shuffle around for a few seconds when Mary puts on a record and tells him to dance, and if she tells him (in a jolly voice) that he’s a bad boy, he may go into the corner and sit facing the wall, but he still shits outside.

The time goes by and she doesn’t come out. Ray opens the glove compartment. He paws through the rat’s nest of papers, looking for some cigarettes he might have forgotten, but there aren’t any. He does find a Hostess Sno Ball still in its wrapper. He pokes it. It’s as stiff as a corpse. It’s got to be a thousand years old. Maybe older. Maybe it came over on the Ark.

‘Everybody has his poison,’ he says. He unwraps the Sno Ball and tosses it into the backseat. ‘Want this, Biz? Go ahead, knock yourself out.’

Biz snarks the Sno Ball in two bites. Then he sets to work licking up bits of coconut off the seat. Mary would have a shit fit, but Mary’s not here.

Ray looks at the gas gauge and sees it’s down to half. He could turn off the motor and unroll the windows, but then he’d really bake. Sitting here in the sun, waiting for her to buy a purple plastic kickball for ninety-nine cents when he knows they could get one for seventy-nine cents at Walmart. Only that one might be yellow or red. Not good enough for Tallie. Only purple for the princess.

He sits there and Mary doesn’t come back. ‘Christ on a pony!’ he says. Cool air traces over his face. He thinks again about turning off the engine, saving some gas, then thinks fuck it. She won’t bring him the smokes, either. Not even the cheap off-brand. This he knows. He had to make that crack about those Little Debbies.

He sees a young woman in the rearview mirror. She’s jogging toward the car. She’s even heavier than Mary; great big tits shuffle back and forth under her blue smock. Biz sees her coming and starts to bark.

Ray unrolls the window.