Kevin B.
Bonnie didn’t come into work on Thursday, because the storm destroyed her shoes. Bonnie keeps all her shoes in one part of her closet, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the part that caved in when the rain was coming down like “Noah get the boat” and she told everybody she was under the weather, but really, she was just shoeless and you can’t show up with no shoes on even if everybody feels bad for you, because of your house. The steakhouse is a Joe Jeremiah’s and they have high standards for their employees. The JJ’s we worked at was right off the bridge in the same plaza as the Target and the Roberta’s Rugs and at the edge of the parking lot was a Motel 6 where the chef would take two or three of the bartenders after work to get high or fool around.
The worst thing you can be at JJ’s or really any place is be a no-call-no-show, and Bonnie wasn’t a no-call-no-show, because even though she didn’t show, she still called. The second night, she didn’t call, and by then, we all figured she would have found some shoes. When it was an hour past the start of her shift, Chris, our manager, let us all know that he felt really bad for Bonnie, but that she was going to be fired, because rules were rules, and even tragedy shouldn’t stop you from calling your place of work so they know you’re not coming in. Chris said “Courtesy is free” and we thought that was his low-key way of calling us poor, and letting us know that being poor doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know how to act. Lily was friends with Bonnie, and she was the one who said that somebody should drive by Bonnie’s house and check on her, but Chris said that Bonnie lives with her dad and her dad’s girlfriend, so if anything was wrong, they’d know about it. With that, he let us know that somebody had been stealing potato salad from the salad bar, and that wouldn’t be tolerated.
We didn’t find out until a few days later that Bonnie had left for her shift the night she didn’t show up with some shoes she borrowed from her dad’s girlfriend that were too big, and so she should have made it to work okay, but she didn’t, and then when she didn’t come home, her dad was too drunk to notice, but her dad’s girlfriend noticed, because she doesn’t drink, because she’s some kind of religious (one of the ones where you don’t drink), but she thought Bonnie was being an s-word hanging out with the chef at the Motel 6, because Bonnie’s dad’s girlfriend used to work at JJ’s (that’s how she met Bonnie’s dad) and she used to go to Motel 6 with the chef, so that’s what she thought Bonnie was doing, and she was a little bit jealous, because she kind of missed getting high with the chef, because he was really cute even if he was like forty-seven or fifty-three. So she didn’t say anything, but then when two days went by and nobody had heard from Bonnie, her dad called the police, and at first, they thought he did something to her, because why would he wait so long to call about his daughter going missing, but he had to worry about the damage to his house from the storm and his girlfriend being so young and wanting them to move to another city where there’s more going on and him being a drunk so the police wrote him off as someone who couldn’t pull off a murder even if he wanted to, and they didn’t know for sure that Bonnie was dead, but everybody kind of felt it the way you can feel it when your taxes are due or your boyfriend is going to break up with you or when it’s going to rain, but then it doesn’t. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Bonnie went missing at the beginning of hurricane season, and at the end of the season, we had a hurricane that made the one that destroyed Bonnie’s shoes look like spit from a cloud. JJ’s lost power, and we have a generator, but the generator ended up konking out, because nobody ever serviced it, and none of the customers wanted to leave, because getting drunk in a dark steakhouse seems fun, and Chris didn’t want us eating anything from the salad bar, but we convinced him it was all going to go bad, so he said “To hell with it” and we all loaded up plates of potato salad and pasta salad and salami and hard-boiled eggs and chopped red onions and whole-grain bread, and we sat at tables and talked about who on the island does drugs and who’s really nice even though everybody hates them and whose boyfriend is going to break up with them and Bonnie. We talked a lot about Bonnie. The chef said in honor of the storm, he was going to get two rooms at the Motel 6, because they still had power, and did everybody want to go over there and hang out?
One of us, Sarina, couldn’t go, because her son was bringing home the class parakeet from his fourth grade class, and she had to help him not kill it, because her son killed a bunch of fish (by accident) two gerbils (by accident) and a ferret (tbd) and she didn’t want him bringing anything home, but watching the parakeet for the night is part of the curriculum, apparently (?) so Sarina didn’t have a choice and neither did her son, and she was going to have to stay up all night staring at the parakeet (named Iron Man) to make sure it didn’t die, because her son was already getting bullied, and she didn’t need to give his tormentors anymore ammunition.
The rest of us went to the Motel 6 and got high with the chef, and he started kissing one of us, and then two of us started kissing each other, and then Lily started crying about Bonnie, and then one of us tried to kiss Lily, but she told us to drop dead, and she left, and the chef said that something bad probably happened to Bonnie. Like really bad, and the way he said really, we all got goosebumps, and that’s when the thunder hit and the lights at the Motel 6 went out, and we all felt like we were going to throw up our potato salad and our boyfriends were going to break up with us and Chris was never going to let us eat from the salad bar again.
At Sarina’s house, her son was sleeping, but the parakeet was scared of the storm, and she kept telling it that everything was going to be all right.
She kept talking to the parakeet waiting for it to talk back.
Kevin B. is a writer and poet from New England. Their work has been published in Lemonwood Quarterly, Mania, storySouth, Folly, and Apotheca. Their story “Uncle Grendel” won the George Lila Award. They are the recipient of the Rose Warner Prize for Fiction.
