Rememberence

Beep. Beep. Beep. The register blinks indifferently at the end of a lethargic belt.

Dramamine. Ginger ale. Antacid tablets. Breath mints. And a bouquet.

No, two bouquets. No, one. No, better make it two. Plastic crinkled as the failing bunch of flowers touched down on the belt. Louis snorted, temporarily clearing the thick scent of settling dust over stale antiseptics. "Can't make up your mind?"

Chris chewed on his lip as he fumbled with his wallet. The sculpted leather sagged in the space where fat stacks used to be. "Sorry."

Louis, his blue hair at odds with the neon orange of his uniform smock, took the credit card Chris handed over. "Christopher Walker?" Louis read. "Not Chip Walker?"

Wincing, Chris mumbled, "Did we go to high school together? Sorry." He put a blunt-nailed finger up to his forehead. It rested at the base of a scar, winding in an angry red streak from his eyebrow up to an emerging widow's peak. "My memory's not great."

"Uh-huh," Louis affirmed. "What happened?"

"Long story." And it was a long story. But not a story Chris knew. "Listen, I was probably a dick to you in high school."

Louis tossed his blue bangs. "What makes you say that?"

"Pretty sure I was a dick to everyone in high school," Chris reasoned. He'd been something of a big deal. So much so that it didn't surprise him when any cashier in his home town could summon up a nickname Chris hadn't answered to in fifteen years. "Anyway, I'm sorry."

The card went through on the second try. "No worries." Louis touched a small sponge, dampened fingers sticking and parting the slick sides of plastic grocery bags. "I heard about your dad."

Years of resentment escaped in a thin-lipped hiss. "Yup."

"These are for the funeral?" Louis guessed, lifting the twig-stemmed bundles. "Quantity over quality?"

"Sort of," Chris muttered over the rattle of antacids. "One for the wife, one for the mistress."

Louis's heart skipped. "What mistress?"

"There's always a mistress," Chris asserted. "I know my dad."

Leaning over the belt, Louis squinted at Chris Walker's scarred face. "That's not the kind of thing a kid should know about a parent."

Chris shook his head. "I've watched three mistresses turn into step-mothers. He didn't have to say anything."

"Maybe you're remembering wrong."

"That sounds like something he'd say."

"Well, you don't even remember us having class together," Louis correctly guessed. "What's a good test of memory? What was the high school mascot?"

Squinting upward, into the thin air where memories are kept, Chris said, "I can almost picture it. Blue, angry face."

"The Blue Demons."

"That's not it."

"It was the Demons," Louis doubled down. "You're the one with the brain injury; how can you tell me that's not it?"

Chris shook his head, struggling with the slip-slidey plastic around the breath mints. "I don't know what's right, but I know that's wrong."

"Why would I tell you the wrong thing?" Louis asked. "You think I have nothing better to do with my minimum-wage time than to gaslight amnesiacs?"

Giving up on the impenetrable plastic, Chris asked his new friend, "Do you know what a 'Dead Ace' is?"

Louis didn't. Shifting the shopping bags, Chris fished around in his pocket, withdrawing an eighteen-inch chain. At the end of it was a six-sided die, made of translucent red resin. It swung back and forth until Louis caught it, the warmed plastic smooth against his palm. Every side had a value of one.

"When you're shooting dice," Chris explained. "A Dead Ace will always land on the one. The pips are weighted; it can't miss. You walk up to a craps shoot with Dead Aces, and your partner knows to bet on a failed pass. You lose so they can win."

"And presumably split the winnings," Louis supplied, letting go of the charm. "Losing, ultimately, for your own good."

"If you're lucky." Chris shoved the chain back into his pocket. "You hope it's worth it, being set up to fall."

Picking up the breath mints, Louis slid a painted fingernail through the plastic packaging. "So you think I'd make up a phony mascot, and you can't even argue about it because you're just that fated to be a loser?"

"No," Chris said, picking a mint from the tin. "Maybe you're honestly just remembering wrong. But I got called 'Dead Ace' in high school because every game, whatever sport I was in, I lost."

Louis whistled. "Unlucky."

"No," Chris specified. "Successfully set up. I don't give a shit about sports, but my dad kept putting me on teams so that I could fix games."

The cashier scoffed. "Come on, Chip, who fixes high school sports? You're remembering wrong. The odds were fair, the mascot was a Demon, and your eggs really scrambled when your dome got cracked."

The mint rolled, curious and strong, over a dissatisfied tongue. "He fixed everything, not just the Demons. I still think that's the wrong name."

"It's right."

"Doesn't feel right."

Pointing his sharp chin towards the bagged bouquets, Louis asked, "This mystery mistress. How do you expect to get the flowers to her? I assume you don't know who she is, and you can't exactly ask those kinds of questions right in front of your mom."

"Step-mom," Chris corrected. "But, no, you're right, I hadn't thought about that."

"You don't know her. Your dad's wife hates her. You hate your dad." Louis reached across the belt and helped himself to a mint. Chris definitely would have bullied him in high school, and remained patient with this petty transgression. "Why get flowers for her at all?"

"I don't hate my dad." Well, that wasn't true. The only reason Chris carried the losing die with him was to pitch it theatrically into his father's grave. "I'm trying not to."

"Twelve bucks' worth of single-stems counts as trying?"

What Chris could not explain was his desire to apologize. There were a fair few 'other women' in his own rearview mirror. His patchy memory and dehumanizing approach to apps rendered direct amends impossible. "Knowing what a manipulator he was, I have to feel sorry for any woman tricked into loving him. She probably had no idea what he was really like."

Louis shrugged. "She knew he was married."

"Did she?"

"It's a small town," Louis pointed out. "Women know. Never spend the night at his place, don't call him at work, always take separate cars. People know when things are seedy. Did you think there was a secret, magical reason that the Demons kept losing?"

"That wasn't the mascot," Chris insisted. "And I knew what we were doing, but I used to think we shared the risk. I did what he said, whatever he said, but I thought he was on my side. Had to be a full adult before I knew I was being used."

"Lots of dads tell their kids what to do," Louis reasoned. "Sure you weren't just being parented?"

"Not after getting abandoned at the airport with a carry-on full of illegal steroids," Chris mused. "I don't know what would have been right, but I'm pretty sure that was wrong."

Louis winced. "Yeah, that's a little dramatic. And when you knew he set you up, when you couldn't deny it anymore, did you rat him out? Or try to protect him?"

"I don't know." Touching his scar, Chris said, "TBI don't testify. Maybe he had a high-velocity way to protect himself."

"No." Louis crossed his arms over his smock. Inside, though, his heart cascaded down into his guts with a seasick plunge. "You're remembering wrong. Your dad wouldn't do that."

"I don't know. I don't have proof that he didn't." Gathering up the flowers, Chris said, "Now, I never will."

"Come on, Chip," Louis groaned. "You think a guy capable of attempted filicide is the same guy wasting his time, sabotaging the semi-regionals of the junior varsity Blue Demons?"

"It's not--! Okay, this is driving me nuts." Chris juggled his shopping bags over to one hand and clung to the only thing in his life that still made sense. Google. "It's the Phantoms! The Bayside Blue Phantoms! Why did you think it was Demons?"

Louis scoffed, flicking a speck of lint from the POS monitor. "Whatever, dude. I didn't go to your high school."

People who become full adults and realize they've only ever been used have no concept of healthy relationships. The only example they've seen is the wrong way to live, without a roadmap toward what the right way might be. It is possible to learn, but it means starting all over. And it hurts that much more to realize you've been lead down the wrong path once again.

Chris watched Louis with suspicious eyes. "How did you know to call me Chip?"

"That's what your dad called you when you weren't around. Chip off the old block." Louis spat his mint into a trash can. "And it made him sad. Cause you were a lot like him, and he knew what falling felt like. He didn't know how to rig the game so that everyone's a winner. Didn't occur to him not to rig it at all."

The plastic bags crackled and snapped with the brisk pace of Chris's departing steps. Maybe it was the betrayed estrangement, or the scarring in his brain, but Chris did not know his father nearly as well as he thought he should. Studying the paint flaking from his fingernails, Louis hailed, "Enjoy your Dramamine!"

"Too little too late!"

The bell jingled soprano protests at the violent swing of the glass front door. There was barely a breath of settled silence before it chimed again in a waft of semi-fresh air from the oil-stained parking lot. Placing one of the cheap bouquets back on the belt, Chris said, "Sorry; these are for you," before dashing out again.

There was a flat clatter on the floor. Louis scooped up the fallen charm by the chain, dusty sunlight caught in the ruby red prism. He watched it swing hypnotically for a moment, then tossed it in the lost and found. Someone else's bad luck didn't bother him.

Distant ceiling fans revolved in a pathetic attempt against the stagnant air. The blue-haired cashier picked at the wilting flowers, peeling off petal after petal. He loves me. He loves me not. "Go Phantoms."

There's always a mister-ess.