Lamentation by Joe Clifford Read Free Book Online Page B

rang Tom and was in the middle of leaving a message, telling him that if anything came up, anything at all, I sure could use the work, when the call cut out. Didn’t matter. He’d already told me the score. But I needed to be moving, feeling like I was doing something. In times like these, doing anything is always preferable to doing nothing.
    I stared out my fogged-up windshield, panning over the cluster of dumpy efficiencies and converted attic apartments like mine, the spattering of depressing bars and discount retail stores, all crammed into a claustrophobic downtown center. I’d lived here practically my entire life. Even when I went to stay with my aunt and uncle down in Concord after the accident, I was never really gone, taking bus rides back on the weekends until I was old enough to drive myself, calling my best friend Charlie to stay up on the latest. I attended all the Ashton High proms and homecomings. I could never escape Ashton. I had remained tethered to its earth like an old farmer rooted to withering, diminished crops, simply because I couldn’t think of anything better to do.
    It wasn’t yet eleven o’clock. I had no work for the foreseeable future, which meant I finally had the chance to do all the shit I’d been complaining about not having the time to do. Only, I couldn’t think of a damned thing.
    I didn’t feel like going back to my shithole apartment and being alone, watching the same DVDs I’d already seen half a dozen times and drinking beer until it was time for a nap, so I called up Charlie, even though I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be out of bed yet. ForCharlie, Friday nights meant tying one on in order to forget another soul-sucking week working for the phone company. He’d be passed out till three, at least. He didn’t pick up. I headed there anyway.
    I’d known Charlie since elementary school, and when I’d come back from Concord for the weekends, I’d often stay at his house, which he inherited from his mother after she’d died of cancer his senior year. I didn’t understand how he could still live there. Even if the bank hadn’t swooped in and snatched our house, I doubted I could’ve stayed long. It felt weird roaming the same rooms where people you cared about, but who now were gone, had once called your name.
    A split-level on over an acre and a half of land, Charlie’s place was before the foothills in the low-lying plains that stretched for miles, countryside awash in a sea of white and spired evergreens. His mom’s old red Subaru was still parked in front of the garage, tires deflated, shell coated in grime and tree sap. Flowerbeds, long left untended, were now overrun with brush and bramble, buried beneath fallen limbs from the storm.
    I rapped on the aluminum frame of the screen door. Doorbell hadn’t worked in years. No answer. I pounded with the ball of my fist. When Charlie crashed, he crashed hard.
    I knew he was home. His repair van was parked drunkenly beside the grounded riding mower that he’d given up on fixing. Last night he’d asked me to stop by the Dubliner, the pub along East Main where he played in a dart league, the primary social activity in his life. I might’ve done so had it not been for Chris. Probably not, though. I didn’t have much patience for the bar scene any more. I preferred to drink my beer alone, without being subjected to the inane banter of idiots. The girls who went to the Dubliner kept getting younger and easier, which sounds good on the surface, except that I didn’t give a damn about singing competitions or vampires, and it got depressing after a while, pretty heads full of rocks.
    Even when I’d pick up a girl, winning was still losing. After a regrettable night of pissing away money on some dopey girl I didn’t even like, I’d wake up in a hungover fog, having forgotten who was in mybed. When I’d roll over and see that it wasn’t Jenny, my heart would break all over again.
    “What time is it?”