Troubled Times Read online

  “Yes!” He cracked up. “It was a dumbass show, but I loved that part.”

  “Me too.” I grinned. “And don’t forget Doug. And Hey Arnold!”

  “Childhood staples, man.”

  “Remember Saved by the Bell?” I asked, and Tyler’s eyes widened.

  “Screech!” we both exclaimed at once, dissolving into laughter and the warmth of childhood memory.

  “I can still watch Fresh Prince,” I said. “That shit never gets old. Remember Blossom? She grew up to be some hippy dippy chick. Advocates breastfeeding until you’re ten or something. And Doogie Howser, remember that show? He's gay.”

  “Yeah, I met him once,” Tyler said. “He's a great guy. Hilarious.”

  “Nickelodeon was always on when I was a kid, I swear. Me and my brother watched it constantly.”

  “We didn’t have cable, but I had a friend who did,” Tyler said. “Sometimes my foster families had it. Sometimes they didn’t. I remember opening a can of Spaghetti-o’s and eating them cold while watching Gullah Gullah Island.”

  “Oh my God, that one was so weird. Benya Benya! Remember that?” I laughed. “I bet watching that high would be a trip and a half. How could you eat Spaghetti-o’s cold?”

  “To this day, I can’t eat them hot.”

  “I used to make boxed macaroni and cheese,” I told him. “My mom would never buy the shapes or spirals though, after my dad left. She said they were too expensive.”

  “Christ.” Tyler shook his head. “Just remembering the days when boxed mac and cheese was too expensive. We lived on PB and J’s.”

  “Me and my brother too. I used to bug my mom for that peanut butter and jelly that was mixed together in the jar—in stripes—remember that?”

  “Yeah!” His eyes widened at the memory. “Wasn’t it, like, Goober Grape or something?”

  “That’s it!” I exclaimed. “I shouldn’t be hungry, but I am.”

  “It’s the attack of the ganga.” He grinned.

  “Is that like Godzilla?”

  “Yeah, except it involves the wreckage of a great many snacks instead of tall buildings.”

  “We could raid the vending machines again,” I suggested.

  “Get clothes on,” he said, glancing appreciatively at my bare legs. “I’ve got a better idea.”

  “Where are we going?” I protested as he stood.

  “To get Spaghetti-o’s and macaroni and cheese,” he replied, holding out a hand. “Spirals and shapes, because I can afford them.”

  “Damn, big spender!”

  Wal-Mart was packed, as usual, and people stared when the limo pulled up. At least he didn’t pull right up to the door but parked on the side of the building. I was wearing the three-thousand-dollar dress and heels because I didn’t have anything else at the hotel.

  “You sure you want to do this?” I eyed Tyler curiously. He was easily recognizable. What if we got mobbed? “I mean, without a bodyguard and everything?”

  “We didn’t get mobbed in Canada,” he reminded me.

  “Yeah, but everyone’s nice in Canada. This is the U. S. —and that’s Wal-Mart. There’s no more dangerous place in the history of humankind unless you count Sparta.”

  He laughed.

  “Come on, I thought you liked to live dangerously?” He grabbed my hand.

  “There’s dangerous—and then there’s dangerous.”

  We rushed through the sliding, automatic doors, into a wall of stifling air that smelled like old socks sprayed with pizza flavoring. There was a Subway right inside the door, which accounted for the pizza smell. The old socks were just people, a lot of them, who bathed only occasionally, most of them riding motorized scooters. That site, “The People of Wal-Mart,” really wasn’t a joke. If you wanted to boost your self-esteem, all you had to do was walk into a Wal-Mart.

  “The gene pool really could use some chlorine,” I muttered as we went around a heavyset woman in a scooter who was looking through the bag propped up in her basket.

  “This isn’t Sparta,” Tyler said with a sad shake of his head. “This is poverty.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed.

  “Been there, done that.” He shrugged.

  “And don’t want to go back?”

  “True dat.”

  An old man—and I mean old, this guy could have helped Noah herd the animals on the ark—stood at the entry, blocking our way.

  “HELLO, MY NAME IS GERALD!” he yelled. He didn’t say it, it wasn’t just a casual hello. This was a top of his lungs yell. Clearly the poor guy needed to change the batteries in his hearing aid. “WELCOME TO WAL-MART!”

  “Hi Gerald!” Tyler yelled back. I giggled. He wasn’t as loud as Gerald, but still. Tyler patted the old man gently on the shoulder, and I knew he was raising his voice to make sure the old man heard him. “Thank you for welcoming us to Wal-Mart!”

  The old man smiled and nodded, but his eyes told a different story. He thought Tyler was poking fun.

  “Which way to the snack food, my man? We’ve got the munchies!”

  Oh God.

  I glanced around to see who was looking at us—several people were, although I didn’t think any of them recognized Tyler.

  “CHIPS AND POP, ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE ON THE RIGHT!” Gerald pointed.

  “Pop?” Tyler glanced back at me.

  “Soda,” I translated with a laugh.

  “Thank you, Gerry!” Tyler gave the man’s shoulder a squeeze.

  “GLAD I COULD HELP!” Gerald’s smile was a little more genuine this time as he waved us past.

  “I’m pretty sure he was a waiter at the last supper,” Tyler whispered—like Gerald could hear us—and I laughed. He grabbed a cart and pushed it down the aisle, stepping up on the first bar and riding it.

  “Hey! Wait!” I ran to catch up, which wasn’t easy to do in heels.

  “Want to go for a ride?” he asked over his shoulder, eyeing me. Then he grabbed me in his arms, making me squeal, before plopping me down into the cart. “There. Stay.”

  “Woof.” I fake-panted and he laughed, push-riding the cart further down the main aisle.

  We loaded up with chips and pop—soda, to Tyler—and then headed toward the boxed food aisle. They had Goober Grape—the peanut butter and jelly stripes in a jar—and sure enough, there were the Spaghetti-o’s, cans with happy orange pasta O’s smiling at us, and hundreds of blue boxes of macaroni and cheese. Tyler handed them to me and I lined them up in the cart at my feet.

  “Spirals, bien sur.” He presented the box to me like a waiter presenting wine and I cracked up. “Now, for shapes, would you prefer Spiderman? SpongeBob? Perhaps, Pokemon?”

  “Are you kidding?” I gaped. “When I was a kid, all they had was dinosaurs!”

  “One of each it is.” He tossed them into the cart. “We’ll have to taste test them all to see which is better.”

  “Of course.” I giggled. “Hey Tyler, who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”

  “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!” he yelled, push-riding the cart down the aisle. I giggled again.

  We were so fucking high.

  “Absorbent and yellow and porous is he...” I sang.

  “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!” he yelled, almost as loud as Gerald the greeter. People looked at us as we zipped by, although probably not, as I’d feared in the car, because Tyler Cook from Trouble was pushing the cart, but rather because we were singing the theme song to SpongeBob SquarePants in the middle of Wal-Mart.

  “If nautical nonsense is something you wish...” I continued.

  “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!”

  “Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish.”

  Tyler stopped the cart, looking at me with big eyes. Then he started jerking. First his shoulder, then his arm, then his whole body, like it was out of his control.

  “Tyler!” I panicked when he fell to the floor, tongue out, eyes wide, flopping all over, and it didn’t even occur to me what he was doing as people gasped and someone said, “H
e’s having a seizure!” until a little girl in a cart halfway down the aisle to my right squealed a laugh and pointed and said, “He looks like a fish!”

  I was already out of the cart beside him by then, calling his name, panicked, when he stopped. Just like that, he stopped and grinned up at me from the floor.

  “Tyler?” I whispered, cupping his face in my hands.

  “You said to drop on the deck and flop like a—”

  “You asshole!” I started beating him on the chest, swearing at him, and he caught my wrists, laughing. “I thought you were dying!”

  “Well it’s good to know you care,” he said with a grin as he got up off the floor.

  The crowd that had been growing started to disperse now that there was clearly no real emergency.

  “I’m going to kill you!” I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. “Don’t ever do anything like that again!”

  “Aw, did I really scare you?” He stopped me from grabbing the cart and storming off by taking hold of my arm and pulling me to him. We were in the middle of the aisle, but he didn’t seem to care. People just went around us with a deep sigh or a grumble.

  “That wasn’t funny.” It should have been. I was as high as a kite. Everything made me laugh. But he was such a damned good actor, he really made me believe…

  “I’m sorry I scared you.” He kissed my eyes closed, one at a time, and I felt brimming tears on them. “I was just playing around.”

  “Well don’t play dead,” I countered, frowning at him.

  “Woof.” He agreed, fake-panting like a dog, and that made me laugh.

  The self-checkout lanes were all full, but the twelve-item one next to it was open so we went there instead. We piled up our food. We had way more than twelve items and I thought the girl behind the counter was going to get mad, but when Tyler pulled out his card to pay, the cashier recognized him.

  “Oh my God, you’re Tyler Cook!” She whispered the words like someone might overhear her, and the hand that went up to check her hair—it was long and dark and pulled back into a ponytail—trembled.

  “Yeah, I am.” He dropped her a wink as he bagged the last of the Spaghetti-o’s. “Who are you?”

  “Me?” She touched her nametag and actually glanced down to check. “Donna. Donna McMann. Can I have your autograph?”

  “Well I’m about to give it to the credit card company, might as well give it to you, too, right?” He winked again as she rang up the final total.

  “How long have you worked here, sweetheart?” Tyler asked, signing her tablet for her.

  “Two years.”

  “You going to school?” He handed back both pen and tablet and saw he’d scrawled both her name and his on it.

  “Beauty school,” she replied. “I’m going to be a hairdresser.”

  “You stay in school,” Tyler told her.

  “I will.” Her eyes were all wet and shiny. That’s how I felt every time I looked at him too, so I understood.

  “Gerald over there,” Tyler jerked his thumb in the old man’s direction. “How long has he worked here?”

  “About a month.” Donna craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the old guy. “He’s hard of hearing.”

  “I noticed.” Tyler nodded sympathetically, and I giggled at the understatement.

  “He yells at all the customers,” Donna said in a mock whisper. “My boss keeps threatening to fire him. But I feel bad. He lost most of his hearing in the war...”

  “You know which one?” Tyler asked, frowning.

  “World War Two, if you can believe it.”

  I could believe it.

  “Guess old age is just taking the rest of his hearing.” The cashier shrugged.

  “Old age gets us eventually, if nothing else does.” Tyler nodded. “Hey, Donna, how much cash can I take out here at the register?”

  “Oh, uh… a hundred dollars.” She looked like she had just remembered she was actually working.

  “Awesome. Can you make it for a hundred over then?” He nodded at the register.

  “Sure.” She did something on the register and then had Tyler sign electronically again. “Thanks for the autograph.”

  She held the pad to her very padded chest, smiling at him.

  “Sure.” Tyler winked at her as he started pushing the cart, now full of bags, forward. “Any time.”

  “I think she wanted to follow you home,” I muttered as we walked away.

  “Woof.” He grinned. “How about you?”

  “How about me what?”

  “Do you want to follow me home?”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Well how about you follow me on tour?” He glanced casually over at me, as if he was just asking a casual question, but I think my heart stopped. “Would you want to do that?”

  “Ummm...” Now I felt like ditzy Donna, tripping over my own tongue.

  “Is that a no?” That adorable eyebrow, up again.

  “That’s an are-you-sure-about-this?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” He pushed the cart slower, so he could look over at me and not run into anyone.

  “You want me to come with you on tour?” I asked aloud, like if I said it, I might make it seem more real.

  “Why not?”

  I couldn’t think of one goddamned reason. Not that I was looking very hard.

  “Think Gerald will say goodbye to us?” Tyler asked, glancing ahead.

  “Yell goodbye you mean?” I smirked. “I have no doubt.”

  We could hear him greeting customers and we were only halfway to the door.

  “Hey, Katie, who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”

  “Don’t you start!” I laughed.

  “I bet Gerry will sing it with me.”

  “Gerald doesn’t even know who he is, let alone who SpongeBob SquarePants is.”

  “Oh, I bet he does,” Tyler countered. “Tell you what, if Gerald knows who this is, will you go on tour with me?”

  Tyler grabbed a box of macaroni and cheese from the bag and held it up, the one with SpongeBob grinning goofily on the front.

  “You’re on,” I said, regretting it instantly. I’d never been able to turn down a dare, to resist a bet. But I had a feeling I was going to lose this one, because Gerald probably hadn’t seen a cartoon since Walt Disney invented Mickey Mouse—and I didn’t want to lose. I wanted to go on tour with Trouble so bad I would have agreed to ride strapped to the top of the tour bus.

  “Hey Gerry!” Tyler smiled at the old guy, holding up the box of macaroni close enough he could see it, even if his eyes were going as well as his ears and pointing right at the cartoon character. “Can you tell me who this is?”

  Gerald squinted. It was just as I feared. He had no idea. I was screwed.

  My dreams of traveling cross-country with Trouble were going to die right here.

  Besides, I didn’t know if Tyler was serious.

  Celeste said he invited girls on the road all the time, so I knew inviting me would be kind of par for the course—but I wanted it anyway.

  And I wanted him to want it. To want me.

  But here he was, leaving it up to chance, to some addle-brained old guy’s knowledge of pop culture. I couldn’t do anything but close my eyes and pray. Please God or whoever might be up there, out there, anywhere, by all that is holy, by SpongeBob, Squidward, Patrick or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, please let Gerald know who that is…

  “SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!” Gerald yelled.

  I actually squealed, right out loud, and hugged the man like he was a long lost relative, jumping up and down like I’d won the lottery. And in a way, I had.

  “MY GRANDDAUGHTER WATCHES THAT SHOW,” he told me, cocking his head and looking at me like I was insane. And I probably was, a little.

  “Yes!” Tyler pumped his fist, giving out a little “woot!” He grabbed me around the waist, kissing the top of my head. “I win!”

  Right. Like he was the one winning here?

  “Here you go
, Gerald!” Tyler reached into his jacket pocket and handed over the wad of cash he’d taken out.

  “WHAT’S THIS?” Gerald blinked in surprise.

  “You won me a bet, you get a prize!”

  “WHAT DID YOU WIN?”

  “Her!” Tyler’s hold on me tightened.

  “YOU GOT THE BETTER PRIZE, YOUNG MAN.” Gerald grinned at me. “BUT I’M TOO OLD FOR HER, SO I’LL TAKE THIS, AND THANK YOU!”

  “You’re welcome! And thank you for your service, sir!”

  Tyler got serious for a minute, giving him a little salute, and Gerald did the same. I actually thought I saw tears in the old guy’s eyes for a minute and that made me lean over and kiss him on the cheek before we left.

  “YOU TAKE GOOD CARE OF HIM, YOUNG LADY!” He patted me on the shoulder and I nodded an assent, smiling as we pushed our cart full of junk food out of Wal-Mart.

  “That was sweet of you.” I nudged Tyler as we headed toward the limo.

  “So that’s it, you’re coming on tour with me.” He pulled me into his arms beside the car as the limo driver loaded all of the groceries in the trunk.

  “I guess… I am,” I agreed, arms around his neck, wondering if there were as many stars in my eyes as there were in the clear winter sky that night. There had to be, I guessed.

  “Yes! Spaghetti-o’s and Katie.” He lowered his face to my neck, lifting me into his arms so my feet weren’t even touching the ground anymore. “Does life get any better than this?”

  I didn’t think it possibly could.

  Chapter Seven

  We spent the night having sex, smoking weed, and eating our supply of junk food. The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—on Wonder bread, of course—were the worst I’d ever had in my life, but the spiral macaroni and cheese was amazing. My favorite was SpongeBob, just because that particular box had won me a spot-on Trouble’s tour bus, thanks to my good friend, Gerald the Wal-Mart greeter. We put it all in grocery bags in the morning and had the driver lug it all—cans of Spaghetti-o’s included—so we could sneak it on the bus. We were like two giggling little kids trying to get away with something.

  Tyler wasn’t kidding when he said you wouldn’t know you were even on a bus once you entered their coach. We took a detour—in the limo—long enough for me to pack a bag. It was crazy seeing it parked outside my house. My neighbors kept peeking out their windows at it. I threw a bunch of clothes into a suitcase, packed the things I couldn’t possibly live without for two months, locked the door, and didn’t look back. I didn’t even have any houseplants to water. Tyler said he’d take care of my rent while I was gone, which was a relief, since I didn’t have much left in savings.